I am just the same as all the other boys. (Mindfulness Part One).

Life is hard.

This is Buddha's first noble truth, and the first sentence of M. Scott Peck's Road Less Travelled. I have bought that book ten times, and still I don't have a copy in my house. The Road Less Travelled is named for a Robert Frost poem. One of Peck's central points, as I recall (and can't check) is that a life of personal development is a lonelier, sadder, wilder, richer ramble through our lived experience: "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference."

This is not a blog about Buddhism. And Buddhism, I have learned, has many paths. It offers a Way, but in many senses the Way is best discovered by each individual for themselves. Many schools of Buddhism encourage mindful meditation. And most of mindful meditation is about letting go, not being 'hooked into' responding to any given worldly object or occurrence. Most people are hooked in. In psychology terms, we call that a fused response. The wife-beater cries that when she insults him, he has to hit her. And sometimes when she seems about to insult him. He has no choice, according to him.

This isn't a blog post about Peck, either. Maybe a subsequent one will be. This is a blog about a psychological treatment. This is a blog about mindfulness, in the psychological sense. It is also a blog post about the normal, failed humanity which constitutes my own self. It is about being broken.

Mindfulness, in the psychological sense, originates meaningfully with Jon Kabat-Zinn. An accomplished professor of medicine and founder of a stress reduction clinic, Kabat-Zinn has brought mindful practice into the psychological mainstream - and, further, into mainstream society. In the context of decades of Westerners having fled our culture to embrace Buddhist practice, Kabat-Zinn has made it possible to incorporate Buddhist principles into the Western way of life.

Mindfulness has been used as a cornerstone of treatment approaches by people such as Hayes, Wells, Linehan, Teasdale, Williams and many, many more. Mindfulness is the backbone of the third wave. Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy are all extremely useful therapeutic approaches to assisting people whose lives truly need some support. If you're looking for a way to improve your psychological health, mindfulness comes second only to regular exercise and a good diet.

Yes, I said regular exercise and a good diet. If you want to be well, exercise forty minutes a day, don't drink too much alcohol and have plenty of dark green vegetables. Seafood, lots of water, and getting outside to soak up vitamin D (without contracting skin cancer) are the heart and soul of a healthy psychological state. Good things, and not too much of them. Moderation. That. Is. All.

In an earlier post I described how hard it is to achieve such a state, though. And, without boring you with too much neuropsych, that is a symbiotic process where actions are inspired by the brain, which is guided by our actions. The right pre-frontal cortex can be conservative, negative and avoidant. The left side tends to be articulate, goal-focussed and good with detail. When we're bodily healthy, the left side kicks in to encourage us to go out and hunt and gather (or whatever). When we're not healthy, the right side tends to try keeping us in the cave to sleep and avoid danger 'till we're well again. In the West, our cave is well stocked with high-fat foods, usually, and so our down-ward trend to obesity and type-II diabetes is kind of pre-determined by our unprecedented wealth and our fundamental biology.

So, if we are able to force ourselves out of the cave and to exercise and eat less, then we're more likely to get back into optimistic goal-focussed living. Here is my problem with positive psychology: it puts the cart before the horse. Rather than its stated ambition to promote well-being, my lived experience of positive psychology practitioners has been that they want people to focus upon being happy. Happiness is a by-product of good living, rather than an input. While positive psychology does add some excellent balance to what had become a very depressing debate, my observations are it tends to promote the out-of-cave experience without helping us to get up and walk.

Which brings us back to mindfulness.  Freud's original clinical position was that when people achieve insight into their true situation, they will resolve the psychological problems they are experiencing. This approach has been traced back to the writings of Plato. Sigh. Nothing new under the sun, and all that. By the way, my rabbiting on about caves can't help but put the well-read in mind of the Simile of the Cave from Plato's Republic. Good for you. I have tended to congratulate Carl Rogers for making the insight point most articulately: "The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change".

Ok, so if we are to be dragged out of the cave and embrace a new life, one reflected in Aristotle's Golden Mean, (moderation in all things, or the 'middle way', which also has a long history in the Buddhist tradition) we need actual practical help. Help to see ourselves as we are. Help that enables insight. Help which defuses our automatic, cave-continuing actions. And the third wave therapies have capitalised upon the impressive demonstration by Jon Kabat-Zinn that mindfulness is that practical help. Mindfulness helps us out of the cave. Mindfulness is the way.

If you have struggled through the earlier posts of my blog, then you have my sympathy. You've put up with a lot of whining. You already know a lot about me. I work too many hours, I have bad dreams, I loved a woman I can't be with and I wrecked my own marriage through being a weak and conceding man. There's also a lot of good stuff in my life. My curry nights with mates every second month, my international travel, the brilliant times I've spent camping and laughing with my wonderful children. I own and love a motorbike. Some days I am mildly funny in hilarious company. I like to cook. I am blessed with brilliant friends in a wide range of contexts. So, there's that. And I am rarely home.

Like many men of my acquainatince, I eat and drink too much. I exercise litle - I walk a bit, play squash once a week, I wrestle my motorbike in windy conditions. I get laid when I can, and count that as virtuous calorie burning. I can't describe myself as incredibly active. In short, I need to get out of the cave. I spoke to my GP this week, and he gave me a gruff look and said bluntly: Jim, you're a psychologist. You know the deal. Just change things. Make better choices.

He was right, damn him.

But how do I change these things?

Mindfulness.

I can explain what mindfulness is, and will do so in my next post: but it seems more polite, in the first instance, to let Jon tell you himself. So here are the links, and see how you go. My next blog post will be about my struggles with practicing mindfulness.

I'm not like all the other boys

The truth is, I don't really get most blokes. I don't mind League but I kinda just don't get AFL or Union. Cricket is ok on the radio but I can't watch it on tv. One of my favourite movies is 'While you were sleeping'. Relationships fascinate me. I don't mind wandering about with women while they shop. There is a point at which I kinda shrug and wonder why blokes try so hard to be macho. It just doesn't interest me.

Most of the women I have been with in my life have not, in their heart, trusted me. Years ago, I swapped favourite cigarettes regularly and one girlfriend called me a tobacco slut. I got that. When I saw 'High Fidelity', and John Cusack made a different tape of 'best music' for every woman he loved, I totally got it. John and I have led parallel lives: except for the whole 'he's good looking, rich, and made good life choices' bit. Aside from that, I'm sure he'd agree, we're brothers with different mothers. Sigh. Ok, he'd wander off and ensure his security detail never let me near him again. But whatever. Whatever the girl who fascinated me smoked, I'd smoke. I tend to gravitate toward interesting women, and I often have a focus on someone new. I gave up cigarettes years ago, but somehow I still graze female fascinations.

This is a blog post about boundaries. More importantly, though, it is a prelude to a blog about mindfulness, and Jon Kabat-Zinn. He's the guru of modern psychological practice. He is the defining moment in how psychologists actually started to help people. That may be a bit harsh, but it will come to make sene as we go along. Young John rocks. That. Is. All. Except that, next time, I'll be outlining his contribution to modern psychology.

So this is also a summary of learnings from blogs gone by: let's review the issues we've covered to date. Firstly, assertiveness is the best bet for anyone in a really crucial situation. And what that, in essence, means, is this: I will think through what I think I should do next, and what you should do next is best decided by you. If I think your choice sucks, then we're both about to learn something.

The next big key learning comes from Victor Frankl: the things you do in life can only have meaning if you give them meaning. The meaning you invest in an action defines how your life unfolds. Life is 10% what happens to you, and 90% how you respond. And an assertive response is generally the best option.

Beond that, Fairbairn taught us that generally we look to the responses of others for confirmaton that we see us in the way we want to be seen. If they look at us in a judgemental, negative sense, we will have a tendency to demand: why are you treating me lke this? Can't you see what I have done for you? Don't you know who I am? because we want them to reflect back at us the perfect person we want to be seen as. The perfect person who, tuth be told, we know we are not.

And here is where I step into the limelight. I love a good chat with a woman, and I love to see myself reflected in that conversation as an attentive, genuine, caring male. I am all those things. Briefly. Actually, I was all those things for one woman for ten years. Longer, in truth. But the reality is, I wanted the whole world to see me as a good husband. There was a layer of my self, beneath my public self, which was not fond of my wife. And she knew it.

My next blogpost was all about Wolpe and the development of tolerance for a situation that is unpleasant. And, re-reading it, I find the whole thing ironic. That post is infused with love for a woman who accepted me, who loved me, who still loves me. She told me so just the other day. But she wasn't my wife. My wife of ten years knew I didn't like her much. There is a sense in which I don't blame her for the life choices she made: although I utterly despise her for those very same choices, 'cos I didn't make them. I stayed faithful. I had the disgusting, holier-than-thou, morally superior high ground. And just as I began to develop tolerance for her, just as I began to grow up, basically, she decided not to grow up and she junked our marriage in the kind of 'in your face', meet-you-at-the-front-door, shamelessly-flaunting-the-worst-behaviour kind of way.

It is not so very long since I sat with my ex wife, drinking coffee, discussing our elder daughter's preferred secondary school. In passing, my ex wife mentioned that she knew I hated her. I said I didn't. And in that lower, underlayer of self I rarely show anyone, I wondered: maybe I actually do hate her. And I wasn't sure. There was a way in which I had never fully confronted my dislike of her. There was a sense in which I had never developed my tolerance of her. There was a sense in which, to be brutally honest, I absolutely hated her. But really that had more to do with me.

The following blog post was about how important pain is. It stings, it guides us, it helps us to find the boundaries of what we can tolerate. Some wounds never heal: some lessons we never learn. Some pain we never learn how to tolerate. And, quite honestly, there are some boundaries we never want to extend. I never do want to learn enough to be truly tolerant of what my wife did. It would make me less human. Less of a man. And so we come back to the opening theme of this blog. What does it truly mean, to be a man?

From my perspective it is not about hitting people. Nor is it about how many goals I kicked. That'd be fair, I think, given I spent my whole football career at Full Back. But, really, I think the best of men can take a huge hit rather than dish one out. We all went to primary school. We all faced down bullies, of some sort. But the Achillies' heel that bullies go for, the part where a bully is strong, is where they make public the secret truth about ourselves which we don't want to face. Boys and girls the planet over only fall victim to bullies because they try not to face their uglier selves. Which brings us to the next blogpost.

Carl Rogers said we can't grow and change until we see ourselves as we are. That's the secret to defeating bullies; it is also the secret to growing up. Ellis and Beck offered a rational perspective on insight to ourselves. The tragedy of the psychological profession prior to them was that we needed their approach. But whatever. Mostly, clinical insight is about helping people to see what they wilfully ignore. And to date I have wilfully ignored my marriage in this blog. From every angle, that has been a defining omission.

The last three blogposts, aside from some neuropsych and night terrors, have been taken up with Ericksonian hypnosis. Hypnosis is a very dangerous topic, because it is laden with the kind of agressive implication that one person can, through some kind of trickery, impose a different psychological reality upon another. I ranted about NLP in one post for exactly that sin. And said such a result was impossible. But there are times when we accept a warped reality because we exist witin an imbalanced power relationship. That's not hyponosis or NLP though. It is just bullying.

The truth about my marriage is, that if not for me, it could have turned out very differently. I was weak, I was timid, and I was self-indulgent. If I had challenged myself to set firmer boundaries, earlier, then my marriage would have ended sooner. Because my wife was never going to brook limitations to her own selfishness, and I knew it. I compromised, in order to have some peace. I gave in, I conceded. I sold out. I thought I was buying security. And when she betrayed me, and crossed the next line in an endless succession that I had heretofore conceded, she was absolutely surprised to find I actually meant that that one was too far. Because until then I'd given in. But I was never bullied openly in my marriage. At times, I was the headstrong, demanding one. Often, perhaps. But the person who wants least to be in the relationship is the one who ultimately has the most power: they can end it. Sometimes bullying is implicit, and everyone knows it.

You may not have seen this coming, but we are back at the beginning of this blog. We're back with Victor Frankl. If we are to have any hope of overcoming the (sometimes implicit) bullying which is everyone's everyday reality. If every we are to achieve a life of contentment within the heirarchy of power which presses in on us from every angle: if ever we are to defeat the normal neurosis which besets each and every one of us, it can only be by heeding the answer to this question:

What will I respect myself most for doing next?

If we can enact the truthful answer to that question, then we will behave healthily. That question is a pathway to Bowen's differentiation. To Fairbairn's object relations. To assertiveness. To integrity. To a live of tolerating the most painful course of action that could befall us. In simple terms, it leads us to a long hard look at ourselves, and consequent action.

I have been feeling bad about disclosing my nightmares. They're real enough, but in truth I have always found them easier to talk about than a whole range of other, deeper issues.

When I came back from Boston last year, I stood at the fork of two paths. On one lay the usual process of cognitive behaviour therapy which is typical of the 2nd wave. On the other lay a consuming, undertravelled route of mindful reflection which could transform my life. I dithered. I prevaricated. I have waited, and not chosen.

My main reason for not choosing to try the lesser path was the self-knowledge that I was already weird enough. I don't like football. I talk about feelings. I am too intense for most people. I saw no reason to become even more like me. I feared what I might become. I have been bullying myself. And in fact, the truth is, I have been bullying myself for most of my own life. Nobody has any power over me but that I hand it to them. And all too often I hand power to others by the bucketload.

My next blog post begins the journey down a road less travelled. My next post starts the real encounters with the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn.

Hang onto your hats, gentle readers. We are all in for quite a ride.

Ethics, Milton Erickson, and Your Sex Life.

Role Confusion


It is usually pretty hard to enforce boundaries, and I have a lot of trouble deciding if I am any good at it, or not. And Milton Erickson doesn’t help much.

This post is the third in a series about the utility of Ericksonian hypnotherapeutic techniques. It is also about boundary confusion and the ethics of using advantageous knowledge.

Psychologists have a set of rules which they are supposed to adhere to: they include some fairly obvious things about mandatory reporting under government legislation, and not sleeping with clients. But there is also a more subtle one which comes under the label of ‘role confusion’.

I have two jobs, and since the people in my day job know I am a psychologist, I am sometimes asked for some advice regarding very sensitive issues. My first response is always to ensure people understand that I cannot be their treating counsellor. Gentle reader, I know you are very astute, so I will spare you chapter and verse of the power relationships of therapeutic relationships. It is pretty obvious that someone I work with should not be under the duress of trying to work out when I am just saying stuff to help them, and when I’m doing my job by pushing the interests of whatever group might be in their way.

Similarly, I ought not to be a counsellor for someone on my cricket team; or my sister-in-law;or the husband of a work colleague; or my ex wife. Or, heaven forbid, the friend of my daughter, or nephew. You begin to appreciate, gentle reader, the fine line which psychologists walk every single day within regional Australian communities. The next time you are at a dinner party and feel the drunken desire to unburden yourself to a psychologist (the spouse of a friend, who is sitting next to you), and to ask them what to do about your personal sexual dysfunction, do both of you a favour. Ask for a referral.

The Ethical Paradox of Ericksonian Hypnosis Techniques

Anyway, this is all supposed to be about our brand new best friend, young Milt. He was a bloody genius, by the way. And perhaps best I now explain Milton Erickson’s own genius contribution to the role confusion paradox of psychotherapy. It really is a corker.

Freud had a high, squeaky voice. So he studied hypnosis under Charcot, but abandoned it. There is a single recording which exists and is testament to Freud’s singular failure as a hypnotist, apparently.

But if Erickson had been about in those days, Freud would have had another alternative to consider. Erickson was pretty freaky, really. Some of his induction techniques are non-verbal, and Freud’s lack of mellifluous oratory could have been overcome. So Freud need not have developed his talking cure. And the world would be a different place today.

Freud was using what is called classical hypnosis. It involves very clear signals – of the “Now I am going to hypnotise you” kind. Erickson, by contrast, was an artist; he developed subtle, sneaky ways to mess with people’s subconscious. He had what is now called disruptive technology. An Ericksonian hypnotist can induce you into a trance just by rubbing your elbow. I have seen it done. The technique is used to help people who are frightened of needles.

Our code of ethics states that hypnosis can only be used by consent and on people who are aware of what is happening. Since all hypnosis is voluntary, anyway, there is at times some heated argument about what that consent consists of. But I have seen a couple of gun hypnotists who are able to gain consent from a client and then undertake the most remarkably subtle interventions. Provided the client wants to go there (and defining THAT gets tricky), these therapists can achieve all kinds of stuff and the client will barely be aware of the process.

So, put simply, Erickson hypnosis cannot make you do something you do not want to do, but assuming you do want to do it, Ericksonian hypnotists can put you into a trance without you even being aware of it. And they may not even say a word. Erickson once famously put someone under by tossing them a big fake bowling ball.

So ok, I am Ericksonian trained. I could do all sorts of stuff. But I don’t: because without the subject’s consent, it would be unethical to help them. Do you start to see the paradox?

If Neuro-Linguistic Programming Were Real, It Would Be Unethical

Before I fully articulate the problem which Erickson gives us, let me take a moment to slag off at Neuro-Linguistic Programming. NLP was developed by Bandler and Grinder, based on what I believe to be a misinterpretation of Erickson’s work. NLP often assumes that techniques can be deployed to achieve a manipulation of others behaviour . It is a retelling of the Svengali myth, which presumes you can use hypnosis to make others do what you want them to – even involuntarily. It makes for great movies, but is, in essence, crap. NLP is often promoted (at the bottom end of the market) by pick-up artists and sales gurus.

The proponents of NLP would have you believe that you can impose your will on others and get laid and/or rich by using techniques inspired by Milton Erickson. Governments had concerns that Scientologists were using hypnosis to achieve those kinds of outcomes, and so in Australia a law was passed in the sixties to control who was allowed to use hypnosis.

And so: interestingly, until roughly a decade ago, it was illegal to practice hypnosis in Australia unless you were a psychiatrist, a psychologist or a dentist. The official course run by the Australian Society of Hypnosis is still restricted to this group of professionals. When I did the course we spent most of the time paying out on the one dentist who was there. He was a great bloke and took it well.

My personal belief is that NLP is based upon an aggressive paradigm. My brain will tell your arms and legs what to do. Since all hypnosis is self hypnosis, all hypnotic achievement is an empowerment of the subject and the facilitation of assertive self improvement, and so NLP does not work, cannot work, and comes from a fundamentally flawed basis.

This is just as well, because otherwise there would be a lot more crime committed in the world. As it works out, the true victims of NLP are the poor fools who willingly shell out big dollars for the courses. And there is a sense in which that would be justice, to my way of thinking. Because it is my sincere belief that anyone who signs up to NLP in its purest form is being deceptive, manipulative and self-interested. But maybe that’s just my opinion.

Role Confusion for Ericksonian Hypnotists

So let me sum up: a skilled Ericksonian hypnotist can intervene in your subconscious without you ever knowing. Such an intervention cannot contravene your willpower, but can help you along in a direction which you already want to go. Such an intervention is unethical. Psychologists are forbidden to do it.

Once a therapist knows the techniques though, the temptation is immense. Especially since Ericksonian hypnosis, at its core, promotes the assertive behaviour of its subjects. The very scripts invite the client to reflect upon the best course of action and to choose to buy into it. In many ways, the shallow end of Ericksonian hypnosis is just good, empathic counselling.

So how do I draw the line? How do I ensure that I only send a message to your unconscious self that has been considered and endorsed by your conscious self? And what if your conscious response to my question is a lie?

And what if I am not in a clinical setting? What if I suddenly realise that I could help you with the needle we both need to have for work? What if we are off to work with the staff of an abbotoir, but must have the q-fever injection first? And what if you tell me you’re fine but I know you’re scared? And I could help you with the needle – and you would never know – but THAT WOULD BE UNETHICAL.

To date, I have resisted temptation.

I sometimes offer to write a script for people, for them to record, which will help them with certain situations. My own voice is my best hypnotist, anyway, since I can trust it better. I will never accept payment for this service if there is a role confusion involved, and I always encourage all people to reflect upon my motives and what I could be getting out of this.

I do this because withholding help from family and friends just because we have a connection strikes me as being just as unethical as taking their money. I insist they record the script themselves, though, and I try to ensure I disclose something which balances the power equation. Otherwise, I just refer them.

Erickson and Sex

There are only two sections left in this post: I am trying to set up the planks which can form the platform of a life of contentment, and I need to get through two more things before I am done with Milton Erickson. So bear with me, please.

The first bit comprises two stories about Erickson. They are a part of the mythology which is perpetuated by his faithful followers, and his detractors. And those are two sides of the same coin, for mine.

Erickson once treated a woman who, today, would be referred to as sexually dysfunctional. She might be unkindly called frigid, or a prude. Her issue was that she found it difficult to be sexually present with her partner. She just didn’t get into it. Erickson used his techniques to awaken her sexually playful self, and declared her cured once she had stripped for him. Alone, in a private consulting room. He wrote this up as a case study. It seems to me Erickson was a braver therapist than I. Or, that he should have got out more.

Erickson also treated a young man for premature ejaculation by describing the way time can seem to slow down as you watch a clock. There was a lot more to it than that, but basically he encouraged the young man to wear a watch during sex, and laid out for his unconscious a metaphorical solution to the problem. One session. The young man never returned. Erickson concluded he did not come back because he was cured. The disciples rejoiced, and wished they were half as good as Milt.

The reason I wanted to tell these two stories is because I am, by nature, a sceptic. You don’t get (in a dream context) smashed under a truck as many times as I have been and come out the other side with a thoroughly trusting nature. I can see many other reasons for what happened.

Maybe Milt got his jollies off with the girl. And maybe the lad did not return because he thought Milt’s approach was a total crock. A watch, for God’s sake!

But here’s the thing. If you are interested in hypnosis, you are looking at messing with your subconscious. Do. Not. Automatically. Trust. Anyone. Not even Milt. Especially not me. I don’t need the lawsuit.

Hypnosis is by definition an exercise in mucking about with non-conscious phenomena.

Sure, it can improve your sex life. But don’t go using it to mess with someone else’s sex life. And be very, very cautious about allowing anybody else near yours.

Autogenesis and the Life of Contentment

Ok. So here’s my last point in relation to Ericksonian hypnosis. It rocks. It thoroughly works and is brilliant.

But the point of this blogpost has been: do not trust in the intentions of a hypnotist. Understand the possible motivations of anyone who might mess with your mind. Guard yourself against the overlapping of roles within your life. Don’t ever receive therapeutic services from someone who exists in your life in another context. Listen to their advice, by all means, but never pay for it and weigh their motivations carefully. You owe that to yourself.

The most powerful hypnosis, in my opinion, is Ericksonian hypnosis, delivered as self hypnosis. As this blog proceeds, I will give you tips about how to utilise Milt’s approaches in a way which will benefit yourself and allow you to undertake self hypnosis.

I will not be teaching you to hypnotise anyone else.

And hypnosis is no substitute for psychotherapy. You can’t just hypnotise your problems away. You must outgrow them. There is no silver bullet. There is no tape, no weekend program, no book, no blog, which will take away your pain. In a very real sense, life IS pain.

Hypnosis can help you to embrace the pain and to transcend it. And that, I believe, is the proper path to a life of contentment.

Learning To Fly

So you want to learn to fly, huh?

It is pretty simple, really.  I'll explain how, soon, but on my way I'll need to explain a bit more about Milton Erickson's hypnosis techniques, the limbic system of the brain, and what dreams are all about. Before long you'll be zipping through clouds and over tall buildings. Take you 30 days, tops.

This is a post about messing with your own unconscious.  There are some excellent films about why this is a bad idea.  One of them starred Leslie Neilson.  The basic argument seems to go: the unconscious is, by definition, unknown to the conscious mind.  It is therefore dangerous and full of vitriol. It may well be of a different ethnicity to our conscious minds. It is probably very dangerous and must at all times be restrained. The Unconscious, gentle reader, is Very, Very Bad.

In fact, the Unconscious is so bad we don't refer to it as the Unconscious any more.  These days we tend to refer to the subconscious. Apparently Freud gave the unconscious a bad name. Well, let's face it. Freud gave even motherhood a bad name. Not too many nouns escaped blacklisting after Freud whacked his grubby paws across them. Women's purses and cigars the world over got a good rince down and a splash of parrafin. Which didn't end well for the cigars, just quietly. And the purses never quite smelt the same either.  You probably didn't see what I just did there. Freudian joke. Nevermind.

Yeah, yeah, I'm getting to it. Shut up with your "I want to fly!" nagging.  It's not like I'm not going to tell you. I'll get to it after your biology lesson.

The brain is composed of many areas.  Phineas Gage served to help us map out the brain into discrete areas. Almost worth getting a big iron spike through the noggin, to help humanity along like that. Almost, but not really.  It turns out that a lot of the stories about poor Phineas are contradictory, and many based upon the presumption that someone with a brain injury must become a dissolute animal. And these days we don't quite envisage the brain as having such discrete areas. Still, here's a pretty picture:

Just above the pons and beneath that pretty green temporal lobe there are a few bits and pieces we tend to call the limbic system. Yes, system. That would imply they work closely together and relate vaguely to the rest of the brain bits. Well, not really.  The brain is very adaptable and everything can relate to everything else. It's kind of a grey floppy lego set. Depending how you prefer to do stuff, some things will join together more emphatically and other things will have a loose association.
So here's the limbic system.  There are some disputes about regarding how much we can call it a system these days, but anyway here's another pretty picture:

Now, what I'm about to tell you is rushed and superficial. I am paraphrasing some training I was lucky enough to receive by John B. Arden and Lloyd Linford, who gave a lot of credit during their presentation to Louis Cozolino. I heartily recommend their respective books on Brain Based Therapy and the Neuroscience of Psychotherapy, should you want a proper education about all this. For now, though, just bear with me, please.

Current thinking emphasises the brain's neuroplasticity.  This means it can be rewired. The lego can be joined up in different configurations, based upon our behaviours and the way we structure our thoughts. This is the new basis of cognitive behavioural therapy, and runs along this kind of logic: the brain has a plastic composition, and is pretty much wired according to our habits. So if we change our habits, or the way we think and act, we can rewire the brain and thereby change the way our mind works. And it takes about thirty days or repetitious behaviour to establish a habit.

In particular, the brain's limbic system has two key elements.  The amygdala (Latin for almond, whose shape it resembles) is the bit which moderates the release of the stress hormone cortisol. You may wish to know about the relationship of cortisol release to the 'rush' chemical epinephrine. I'm not playing. It is all a bit complex, and I'm trying to do this summarily.  Suffice to say, if the amygdala cuts in bigtime, we're hammer down on the road to panicville. The other key element (for our purpose in this blog) is the hippocampus (Latin for seahorse, whose shape it resembles). The hippocampus is our brake on the road to panicville. It moderates te release of cortisol by the amygdala.

If you're truly biologically minded, Cozolino explains this in vivid detail and throws in amygdaloid-hippocampal memory interaction. I would explain what that means, but my mama raised me better than to do such a thing.

Now, the brain has a left and a right hemisphere, and they tend toward language and symbol as shown here:

So in simple terms, the right side is hardwired into the amygdala to enable a global panic, whereas the left side works through the hippocampus (usually at a slower rate) to figure out the cold, hard reality of it all once there is time to reflect.

If I stepped into a road and a truck was headed straight at me, the right side of my brain would quickly process a symbol of something rapid, heavy and close. The symbol would be used to fire up my amygdala and release the stress hormone, cortisol, which would help me to react fast. I'd jump back onto the curb, safe from harm. The right side of the brain works globally, responds to threats, is fairly conservative and tends toward a pessimistic view of anything novel. Eventually, my left side brain would form a sentence, and feed it through my hippocampus to reduce the stress in my body by assuaging my amgdala. It might say something like: that was an image of a truck, maybe a Bedford - probably 40 years old - and not a bit of rust on it! As I start to process such sentences, I begin to calm down. Language helps to reduce stress, and the left hemisphere is very good at detail, planning, optimistic appraisals and goal setting. Hence the efficacy of Freud's talking cure.

Obviously, it is an advantage for survival to have a highway to the amygdala. But the neuroplastic nature of the brain means that the more you use a highway, the bigger it gets. An experience of trauma will often see that highway triggered and re-triggered as a person starts to perceive most things as a truck.

So the right side of the brain has no language, and is pretty good at panicking. The more you use it, the more it panics.

Let us imagine for a moment the benefits of such a brain structure way back in the day.  A caveman... um, caveperson... becomes wounded and is unable to hunt. They retire to the cave, using the right side of their brain: everything is dangerous, everything is to be avoided, I don't want to go anywhere, I just want to sleep. Eventually our cave dweller heals and feels better. The left side forms a plan and feels good about it: Imma kill a bisson, and I know exactly how. And so out of the cave and into the light, there to commit mayhem. (That was a Plato joke, if you care about such things).

I know you want to get on with sleeping and try out your wings, gentle reader, but please indulge me a little further. I'd like you to take a moment to think about Western society's prevalence of obesity and depression. If I have a lot of food in front of me, both sides of my brain will tend to suggest that I'll be fine if I dig in and eat heaps, and Lord knows there may be a very long time till I see food again. But in Western society that is usually only a few hours, and the same set of optimism and fear of famine will repeat the engorged performance. Which will lead to some extra kilos and a feeling of illness. As we get bigger, our right side brain will tend to take over and suggest we stay away from the tiger-country, safe in our cave. We'll get conservative, pessimistic and disinclined to leave our beds. Depressed.

That is not to suggest that only overweight people get depressed. There are many ways to trigger the global sense of danger that enables right-brained caution to predominate. But it IS interesting that exercise is streets ahead of counselling as an efficacious treatment for depression. Twenty minutes walking a day, lots of leafy greens in a healthy diet, and some sunlight, will go a long way to redressing many peples' depressive symptoms. Take only as directed. See a doctor, please, people.

So, you can stop looking for the subconscious. It is the right side of the brain. It works on symbols and not on language. It has a preference for emotion, and in particular it can do wonderful things with fear. Oh, and it needs to practice and to sort stuff out. It has a tendency to want to be ready for any given scenario, in order that it can make the right decision quickly. Left to itself, it tends to practice a bunch of bizarre scenarios on the off chance it might need to navigate an unusual situation in a hurry. It can be a bit negative.

Enter Milton Erickson. There has been a lot of crap written about our Milt. I suspect some of it was written by Milt himself. But no matter. He worked out a series of techniques to speak directly to the unconscious. It was cleverly done. He realised what it is that the subconscious cared about: images, and making sense of dischordant situations. So all good Ericksonian hypnotists know to use nouns and word-pictues in preference, to apply what are called Ericksonian confusational techniques, and to encourage a subject to imagine what a scene looks like. Some prefer to use smell, or touch: anything which enhances the non-verbal interaction with an idea or scenario. Anything which enables the subconscious to process a situation. 

We're very close to dreaming, now, people. Very close indeed. The astute reader (yeah, I know - all of you) will by now have realised what dreams are: the subconscious running various scenarios. Left to itself, it tends to run a bunch of emotional pathways and whip through the options for resolution. Run away screaming this time, stab someone the next... the subconscious just projects a bunch of images which create an emotional reaction. That is why the stories don't make sense. Surreal things happen in dreams: their logic is emotional, not practical. The subconscious is running through feelings and testing which response works best. Typically, a nightmare leads to a sense of horror, and the subconscious learns that - in real, waking life - that sequence of responses is probably not going to lead to a happy outcome. If you stab someone in your dream and wake up shaking, you're unlikely to do the same thing in real life. The subconscious will have crossed that sequence off its list. Tested, and rejected.

Ericksonian hypnosis helps the subconscious along. The person in chronic backpain goes into a trance and is led through the idea of turning down an imagined pain dial, thereby enabling hitherto impossible bushwalking. The subconscious likes the outcome, and enables that trance state to gain a subconscious hold. This is a process which successfully resolves various subconscious tensions. The medical hypnosis patient feels better, and can walk up Cradle Mountain with his son. It is a miracle.

So a hypnotic technique is used with a person who is struggling to lose weight. The subconscious is unable to process the word 'no', so it would be counterproductive to say: you will have no cake.  The subconscious will only hear: you will have cake. Better to substitute the cake with fruit. Smell the fruit, enjoy the fruit, hunger for the fruit, love the fruit. Feel light and happy and strong after eating fruit. So well that you want to walk in the sunshine, stride through the rain. You get the idea.

So, you want to fly?

Just say to yourself, each night for 30 nights, "Tonight, I fly!" before you drift off to sleep.

Sometime before the 30th night, you'll fly in your sleep. Try to start by practicing safe landings, if you can. It is more than 20 years since I learned the trick, but I still remember the importance of a light landing.

It can be a lot of fun.

Ericksonian Hypnosis Is Totes A Thing

Sometimes People Are Just Very, Very Tired


A few weeks ago I was talking to a mate about a mutual friend whose husband died last year. She is struggling. He told me she wasn't suicidal, but she was ready to go. She’s tired of it all. It just feels too hard. I nodded and blurted, unthinkingly: yeah, me, too.

He looked at me with an odd, sideways appraisal. And I felt the need to explain. When I wrote this post to further explain, I took it down because I still hadn’t got it right. Chris on twitter sent me a Direct Message to check out if I was ok. (Thanks, bro). I was basically ok, but I was also incredibly tired. I hope this third explanation makes things clear.

I’m not really suicidal. Seriously.

But the last few months have been very, very hard.

This is a post about Milton Erickson. He was the most astonishing psychiatrist. Ever. Fair dinkum. He was the most influential hypnotist in history. He’s so cool, he’s getting three blog entries on this site. Yes. Three. Pick your jaw up, gentle reader.

This is also a blog about my bad dreams, my weight, why I needed to love Julieanne so much, and why I hate my life some days. I seem to be facing some hard realities. I may as well take advantage of this, and further my own journey, by inflicting my whiney little diatribes upon you. Yes, you. Never mind. I will feel better, at least.

Ok, so let’s start with young Milton. He was born on 5 December 1901. That’s important, because he was of that generation which was at risk of polio. And he got it.

At 17, he was already dyslexic and colour blind, and then he scored the trifecta and got polio, too. (And here I thought my life sucked).

Can you imagine what it was like for him to lie in the hospital and hear the doctors tell his mother he probably wouldn’t last the night? Put yourself in that hospital bed for just a moment. Oh. My. God. He got angry, and he asked his mother to adjust the mirror. She didn’t know why he wanted it, but she did it. Remember, she thought he’d be dead in the morning. He was determined to watch one last sunset before he died.

Imagine being that mother for a moment. Imagine having a son who asked you to move a mirror for him. You don’t understand why. All you know is he’s going to be dead by morning. The doctors said so.

He watched that one glorious sunset. Think of the best sunset you ever saw.

Imagine if you thought you were dying while you watched it. Try not to cry.

I dare you.

Milton lost consciousness for three days, but he lived.

From my own perspective, I envy him those three, dreamless days. Because from an early age (about grade three), I have had a thing called night terrors. And counsellors, doctors, psychiatrists and sleep therapists have not been able to cure me of it. The nightmares come and go. I have been free of them for years some times. But there is no cure. This is what drove me to become a psychologist. And there is no cure. None. Not ever. I was talking to another psychologist, again, about it, this week. Concerned look. Shrug. Invitation to talk about my feelings. Sigh.

But let’s consider Erickson, who had far worse to put up with.

He spent a long time in a room watching his sisters, knowing he’d never be a farmer like his dad. He watched how sisters communicate with sisters. He saw the raw, savage power of children interacting. He watched his baby sister learn to crawl, knowing he’d need to learn how to walk again.

Imagine if you were paralysed and an invalid. Imagine the experience of wasted, weary tiredness. Take a moment to appreciate the use of your limbs. Your lungs move when you want them too. That, in case you hadn’t noticed, is handy.

My lungs don’t work so well lately. Complicated set of reasons: I was always an asthmatic, but kicked that when I was sixteen. Sixteen till roughly twenty-three, I was seriously thin. I was accused of being a male anorexic at a time when such a thing was theoretically in dispute. Referred to psychiatrists, yada, yada, yada. I started to put on weight properly at about 25. Until then I hovered between 63 and 76 kilograms. I can remember lying awake in the early hours of most of the late seventies listening to 3GL, the local radio station, with a familiar feeling of hunger, and even weakness. But that did yield some benefits. I am often sought-after for my friends' tables for music trivia nights.

Erickson didn't squander his sleepless hours on popular culture. He invented a new branch of hypnosis and he refined it, using himself as the test case. Often I listen to people dismissing hypnosis as a showbusiness trick, as a sleight-of-hand or sleight-of-mind. I heard a friend say in conversation the other day: Hypnosis? Is that, like, really 'A Thing'? I wanted to tell her, from my own personal experience, that Hypnoisis Is, Indeed, A Thing.

Various altered mind states are so infused within our lives (listening to music, zoning out when driving, exercise 'high's - that we might not notice how real they are, how useful they are, how much we rely upon them. I accept you may feel a bit sceptical about that - but I'd hope I don't need to convince you about tiredness. I'm sure you'll agree my widowed friend feels tired, that Milton often felt tired, and that I feel tired.

So there are plenty of ways in which people can feel very, very tired.


People Have A Range Of Responses To Day-To-Day Stress

I got married at 25, and several things occurred. I started to put on weight and my nightmares reduced. They didn't stop completely, but they occurred less regularly I accumulated fewer new ones. Then when my marriage failed I lost a lot of weight, got back to within cooee of 76 kilo. I am 5’ 11”, or 180 cm. People I worked with asked if I had cancer. It shocked me because for most of my 20s I had been lighter. All these changes are a consequences of ways of responding to stresses.

OK, so since then I have progressively put on weight and exercised less. My alcohol intake varies, but basically I am accumulating more calories than I am burning. About three years ago I met a woman I’ll call Julieanne, and things paused briefly – but otherwise I have been progressively getting fatter and the nightmares have been getting more frequent. Again, these are consequences of unconscious ways a person may cope with stress.

It is getting on for 18 months since I last saw Julieanne face to face. In that time I have put on a huge amount of weight. My life has been different. I am different. I am not sure I'm adapting healthily - but I am also well within the range of normal functioning. I have a very typical set of issues around being too heavy - I am, like most people, struggling to lose weight, not to gain weight.

I'm labouring this point because I have come to see weight gain as a typical, if unhealthy, way of responding to life's stresses. I kinda like the normalcy it implies. Because for a large part of my life I have viewed my dreams and my sleeping as abnormal, weird, different and strange. Being overweight is a pain and a problem, but there's a sense in which I kinda like it.

It's like I am a real boy, if you'll forgive my Pinocchiosis.

And weight gain often occurs in relation to stress, or perhaps even to feeling tired. And from time to time various people make claims that hypnosis can help with weight loss.

Another of my responses to stress is a fairly standard compulsivity for overwork, and a lot of 40 something middle-class people have that. Unless I have my kids I pretty much work every hour I am awake. My workload, like my nightmares, is not really anything new. One idea about nightmares is that they occur in response to stress, or to trauma. Whatever. Working too much and not sleeping well cause tiredness, they’re responses to stress, and sometimes hypnosis is held up as a solution.

While I have had patches of incessant nightmares before, about eight weeks ago they returned once more, in earnest. For a period of six weeks I slept between three and six hours per night. Once a week I might have caught up with two four hour stretches in a single night.

Napoleon slept five hours a night, and so did Churchill. Churchill went to the trouble of having two beds, so he could sleep in the other if the first didn’t work for him. My own father slept five hours a night, but always napped in the afternoon. I don’t do naps. I hate sleep. I try to avoid it.

I know the minimum I can get away with, without psychosis, is 4 ½ hours' sleep. Typically, this patch aside, I manage about six. But my dentist is worried because I am slowly grinding my teeth (and his expensive teethguards) to dust.

But let’s get back to Milton. Imagine a young man thwarted in becoming a farmer, who taught himself to banish pain and learn to walk with a cane. He did this using his own hypnosis techniques.

Imagine a young man who did that, in part, by embarking on a thousand mile canoe trip. The bloke was made of iron. He leaves me ashamed of my own reactions to adversity.

So Milton was a self-taught hypnotist who used his skills to respond in an extraordinary way to extraordinary obstacles.

I am currently more than 101 kilograms: roughly. I vary, week to week, and sometimes am under 100. Exercise, in particular the many kilometres I used to walk each day, are a thing of the past. I defer everything ‘cos I am exhausted, and I rarely walk any more. I am too tired. I am now flat-lining on the tiredness I used to walk for a couple of hours to achieve.

This is all part of a cycle. A very unhealthy cycle.

I have given up, somehow.

I can’t have Julieanne, and somewhere late last year I accepted that.

Nothing took its place. I just got sadder and sadder. I occasionally see photos of myself, or catch myself in a mirror or a shop window. I am always shocked by how fat, sad and old I look. But mostly sad. I can’t believe how I came to look so sad. Imagine not being able to look at yourself, because you look so sad. I actively avoid mirrors these days. I don't like admitting that, but hey, I made a commitment to myself about this blog. And I can only change when I fully look at myself. And sometimes a cycle of low mood occurs as a response to everyday stress.

Interestingly, in Australia the Australian Society of Hypnosis strongly advises against using hypnosis for depressed or suicidal clients for fear it will result in increased suicidal ideation. I have been to significant psychology conferences in Europe and the USA where such arguments are dismissed out of hand. There are experienced hypnotists in Western society who argue hypnosis can be used to treat depressed mood.


Ericksonian Hypnosis Is Totes A Thing

By contrast with my shameful mirror-phobia, Milton Erickson had much to be proud of. He studied hard, and achieved a psychology degree while studying medicine. In the field of clinical hypnosis, he is without peer. His followers speak of him reverently, and repeat anecdotes of his life as a guide to their own behaviour. Milton Erickson is just this side of a religion. Ericksonian Hypnosis Is Totes A Thing.

If I responded to my own challenges in life the way Milton Erickson responded to his challenges, I would have climbed Mt Everest by now. Not that I want to, but you get my point. None of this hanging about pining after some woman I cannot be with, and getting progressively fatter. I’d love to have sat down with young Milt and discussed my nightmares with him.

God knows, I have talked to everyone else about them.

So apparently I can’t breathe. I can’t draw breath properly, and haven’t been able to for about two months now. My GP called it a virus. Well, ok.

Actually, I’d say that it is associated with a poor sleep regime and being overweight.

But we could all see that diagnosis coming.

So, ok. Here’s the deal. It is entirely possible to argue that Ericksonian Hypnosis is the answer to all our woes, and that it is the answer to my own woes. Erickson used his self-taught techniques to alter the entire field of medical hypnosis, and to influence: brief therapy, hypnosis, object relations theory, family systems theory and neuro-linguistic programming. (I hate neuro-linguistic programming). He also used it to achieve physical functioning which most polio victims never managed, and to manage the pain of post-polio syndrome in a way which was, frankly, emblematic.

But I would argue that use of the hypnotic techniques of Milton Erickson is not the solution to achieving a life of contentment. Not the whole solution, anyway. And my argument includes an exploration of the limbic system of the brain and the modern ethics of psychology. It also has reference to Seligman’s positive psychology. And it is hard-won and personal. Milton could not help me to escape my personal hell. I wish I had met him before he died, age 79, in 1980. Maybe then I’d have a different view.

Either way, though, I swear to you: Ericksonian Hypnosis Is Totes A Thing. (I can probably stop saying that now).


Ericksonian Hypnotic Techniques Can Be Extremely Valuable In Addressing Non Conscious Phenomena

There are two points I wish to make explicitly clear about the mighty and amazing Milt’s rockin’ treatment techniques.

First, Milton Erickson cured himself of being confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He was a self taught medical hypnotist, and his techniques have saved many, many lives. On top of that, he has improved the lives of many more people who suffered from a variety of maladies including sexual dysfunction and chronic back conditions. I have personally seen people who gave up smoking as a consequence of his techniques, and who undertook surgery without anaesthetic as a consequence of his approaches.

Milton rocks.

Second, I just spent six weeks in hell. For all my wonderful knowledge of Ericksonian hypnosis, and other psychological techniques, I can see that, at times, I am struggling to step up to the challenges that beset me. I am 41 years old. My career is thriving in two disciplines. My relationships with mates, and my children, and my family, are better than they have ever been. And, recently, every night of the week - for six weeks – my life was hell.

Each night, I plunged under a truck on the corner of Melbourne Road and Bell Parade, Geelong. Or I’d fail to save victims falling from a monorail in the Swiss Alps. Or I failed to stop a 10 year old being raped and mutilated in a slave market. (That one has been going on since the third grade). And there are more. Rooftop running from the devil. Fights with a bunyip. Drowning in a tar pit. Being stabbed in a knife fight. Burial alive. And others.

There are a lot more, but lucid dreaming and the techniques of Ericksonian Hypnosis have saved me from most of them. In the average nightmare, I can pretty much rip your average bogey man a new one. I am 41 years old and I am the kind of warrior who can tear your average nightmare to pieces. Nothing defeats me anymore. Nothing scares me. I am iron.

When I was 16, I learned of lucid dreaming and I learned how to fly. In the next blog post I can teach you the same trick. Soon after, I learned how to create an iron fist in my dreams. Ever since, I have evolved rat cunning about ways to avoid being boxed in and how to defeat demons.

I hate the Bell Parade dream because I am in a car - if I was driving a convertible (and one night I f**king well will be), I'd be able to escape the b-double which turns in front of me. (By the way, there's no way that truck can get to that turn. It wouldn't make it through the Ballarat Road roundabout or the subsequent Rippleside turn into Bell Parade. I have never seen a truck like it at that set of lights. It is impossible).

Lucid dreaming is actually fairly easy, and there are few dreams which can resist its few basic techniques. It is actually not that hard. I haven’t screamed in my sleep in years.

The worst challenge in fighting the kind of war I am fighting is, often I let others die in my dreams. They can’t fly or fight with an iron fist, and I usually have to choose which one I let die. That is the Swiss Alps scenario. It sucks. The worst of my life is, I’ve become hardened to the experience. There are some people I have seen die so many times, I no longer scream. I just sigh inside. And sometimes I am tired of their inability to help themselves and a secret, nasty part of me quietly decides they deserve it.

What I am trying to explain is, I have been able to utilise a range of techniques, many of them having originated in Milton Erickson’s practise, to combat my problems. But these tricks are not enough, and the key aspects of humanity which are intrinsic to a life of contentment depend on other things. On knowing ourselves. On sincere reflection. On a commitment to decency, sometimes despite our life’s experiences.


Hypnosis Is A Tool, Not A Therapy, And Personal Growth Is Ultimately The Key To A Life Of Contentment

But it shocked me, when I said I was ready to die. The unrealised truth of it escaped my lips and I suddenly realised: some days I have nothing to look forward to. Some days it is all just too much effort.

Last night I didn't have a nightmare but I couldn't sleep. So I woke up, got up, and went to work (yes, on a Saturday). Julieanne texts me occasionally. There was a flurry of contacts recently when I was in Newcastle. She was in Broke, about an hour away. That kinda hurts. But it is better than when she doesn’t contact me. Milton has helped me to survive, where sleep therapists and other psychologists failed. But there are very real human pains which no trick will overcome.

How we respond to our dreams is a practice for responding to real life, and there are aspects of me which are paranoid and defensive; an angry, tired man. I try to be pleasant and I sorta function healthily. I could do better, though. In real life, it can be good to be boxed in. In real life environmental scans are not compulsory. And the experience of today can be something which doesn’t replicate what has happened a thousand times before. Novelty happens. And writing this blog post has reminded me of these things.

Next time, we’ll look at lucid dreaming and the way hypnosis affects the limbic system. If you have night terrors, it’ll help you stand up longer. Lie down longer. Whatever.

As we discuss hypnosis, though, we need to remember we’re playing with defence mechanisms which exist for a purpose. I have come to understand that I was clinging to my love of Julieanne as a smoke screen for the harsh reality that is a regular fight with my own unconscious. It had, in some ways, nothing to do with her. Like object relations theory dictates, I am the center of my own universe and I was using her to shield my own experiences. As I let her go, my nightmares returned with a ferocity I was unprepared for. The same thing had happened when my marriage ended.

But it is easy for me to reduce her to a defence mechanism. Simplistic. Untrue. She sent me an email last week, and my heart sang. The truth is, we're all hoping to escape the thing which causes us pain. We all hope to be impervious. We all want to be bulletproof. I’d like to shut down my nightmares and ride off into the suntet with Julieanne. I know if I did, though, that someting else would arise to deal with basic existential conflicts which are a part of who I am. And it is very important to see basic psychological mechanisms for what they are, and also to see people as people. That is a skill called mature ambivalence, and it is the most important skill we can have.

So Milton's techniques weren't a cure-all for him, and not for me either.

They are incredibly useful, though.

And next time I'll explain how.

Albert Ellis, Aaron Beck, Blayney and a Broken Down Motorbike.

"The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind!"
-- William James
 
A few months ago I set off, from Victoria, for New South Wales to visit friends who were about to move house. I had been threatening a visit for, literally, years. I wanted to get to see them before their house was gone. I was recommended not to ride a motorbike to the Blue Mountains in the middle of winter. Apparently people die in such conditions.  There was temperature to consider, and black ice, and fog. Pretty silly thing to do, really. And of course I broke down in Blayney late in a night which was forecast to drop to -4 degrees celcius. By then my fingers were already frostbitten.
 
I can be very impulsive. My closest friends know that about me, and some of them seem to treasure it. I get so bound up with my various jobs and my annoying pithy rules for every eventuality that it must be a great relief to see me set forth on an impetuous, doomed adventure.  Even as my mates' laughter is ringing in my ears, I enjoy the freedom of my impetuousness. I feel a bit like a lemming in the early part of spring. No doubt, one day I will feel a lot like a late-spring lemming. Such is life, I guess.
 
This is a post about the way people relate to logic. It will describe two of the greatest psychologists who have ever lived, Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck. Aaron isn't done yet, by the way. I saw him this year. This blog post is ultimately about the Second Wave of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), and why we needed a Third Wave. I have been procrastinating about this entry for months. There is something immensely hubristic about judging the two co-founders of the second wave, and finding them wanting. I feel vaguely heretical.
 
I didn't feel at all heretical as I stomped through Blayney trying to get someone to answer their bloody doorbell. No-one did. I was shivering and becoming alarmed. I'd been listening to music on my phone, and the battery was low. Sometimes technology convergencge isn't worth the abacus it was calculated upon. Or whatever. At the time, I was hoping to get indoors before I froze to death, and then sort the bike out the next day. It wasn't to be. And at the back of my mind I could hear my friend saying, "Hey, Jim, I know you want the adventure, but I'm not sure of your logic in doing this trip this way..." Yeah, what a dumb idea. I am so illogical.
 
Life, of course, is not logical. Well, people aren't. Sigh. I'm not.

That is the nub of what was wrong with the second wave of cognitive behavioural therapy - but it is unfair of me to view things from that perspective, and so let's begin by praising two of the greatest people ever to walk the earth. Let us bow down before the glory of Ellis and Beck. We have time. I started by ringing RACV for help, and with my one bar of battery remaining I had to wait on hold...

So here we are at the start of the business end of my blog. This entry is about two of the four giants of late last century's psychology. This one is about Ellis and Beck. Last time we covered off Carl Rogers, and the next blog entry will be about Milton Erikson. But in Ellis and Beck, we are talking about the second wave of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. These two are teh bomb, psychotherapeutically speaking.

In 1982 there was a professional survey of US and Canadian psychologists. Carl Rogers came in first. Freud was third. And second place belonged to Albert Ellis, the originator of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy. Ellis was born in 1913 and died in 2007. Until just before his death he typically worked a 16 hour day. He was one of the most respected psychologists who has ever lived.

So you'd think I'd have more respect for his ideas. I guess I am a brat psychologist, when all is said and done. I don't (and probably can't ever) appreciate fully the sacrifices made by this elder child who, when still a young child himself, bought an alarm clock with his own money and ensured he and his younger brother and sister were dressed and ready for school each day.

The RACV did finally answer, by the way, and once they heard my sad story through literally shaking teeth, they asked me to hold while they transferred me through to an operator in NRMA. First they'd explain the situation to her. My phone beeped plaintively and I huddled in the doorway of the closed hotel, staring at the railway crossing. I wondered if I would die here. I knew I wouldn't. This was just another silly chapter in an illogical life...

Albert Ellis lived a full life and a productive life. He co-authored more than 80 books and over 1200 articles. He married an Australian. He founded a new approach to counselling. If I'd ever met him in a pub, I'd have bought him a beer. Just not the friggin' Blayney one. 'Cos that door was never gonna open.

Ellis was a sickly kid and painfully shy. He seems to have innately understood the way psychology works. At age 19, Ellis once devoted a month to talking to 100 women at the local botanical garden in order to overcome his fear of rejection by women. Our old mate Wolpe would have been very proud of him, despite the complete lack of any suggestion Ellis ever tortured kittens. Ellis, I'm sure, would have been forgiven this omission.  (I also have to acknowledge of course that finding 100 women at the local botanical garden does suggest to me that there was more happening down at the park than appreciation of chlorophyll. Botanical gardens were clearly the RSVP and Match.com of an earlier era.)

After brief careers in business and as a writer, Ellis bacame a clinical psychologist. At that time, this meant psychoanalysis, complete with the mandatory analysis of Ellis himself. But by 1954 Ellis had broken with psychoanalysis and established Rational Therapy, the precursor to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy which would become the key movement of the next generation against the backdrop of behaviourism.  Theoretically, Ellis was influenced by Adler, Fromm and Harry Stack Sullivan. Sigh. I haven't told you about that lot yet. Let's just say they're a fine pedigree for a genius to cite.

Jan from NRMA wanted to know how I was. I said I was very, very cold. She asked where I was, and I said Blayney. Well, she said. You would be cold. Somehow I began to feel warmer already. She was reflecting back to me how I felt about the world. Empathy. I love it. Then she started to tell me she would get a mechanic from Orange to come and help. While I waited, I sent a text to Blackheath, to let my friends know I wouldn't be there that night.

In essence, Ellis' approach comprised a firm view that people tended to be self-defeating in what they believed, and that by challenging irrational beliefs and restructuring their cognitions (thoughts) into positive new structures, then these new beliefs would lead to healthy thoughts, emotions and action.

James might have said that by altering his attitudes of mind, a person could alter his life. Actually, he did. Sexist pronouns and all. But Ellis commercialised the notion, developing a therapy which redefined psychotherapy and aligned with the Behaviourists' predilection for logic, evidence and measurement. It was an idea whose time had come.

Within a very impressive career, Ellis also championed the humanistic revisioning of homosexuality, being at the forefront of rewriting the way homosexuality was described from 'an illness' to an aspect of human existence.  It is very easy to condemn some of what he wrote early in his career, if you're prepared to be wilfully ignorant of the courage he demonstrated in evolving his views and bringing the field with him into a more modern conception of what it means to be gay. Ellis was at the forefront of the sexual revolution.

Ok.  Enough sucking up to Ellis. Let's grovel a bit to someone who is actually still alive.  Someone I've shared an auditorium with. Someone whose daughter I have sat next to.  Aaron Beck was born in 1921, and I saw him speak this year in Boston. He was lucid and straightforward as ever. What a legend. I saw his daughter Judith speak three years ago in Barcelona - and sat next to her by mistake in Boston. I thought she looked familiar as I sat down, nodded politely to her, and listened carefully to the panel. No doubt she wrote me off as a rude Australian. Maybe she let me off on the basis I could have been one of Ellis' in-laws. If so, then never has the phrase "G'day", served me so well.

Aaron Beck developed the Beck Depression Inventory, the Beck Anxiety Inventory, and Cognitive Therapy. I use all these regularly. He formed the view that people's negative views about their world led to conclusions about themselves, their world and their future. In short, Beck, and Ellis, together pioneered an evidence-based method of approaching psychological illness and altering cognitive beliefs in order to have a positive impact on thoughts, feelings and behaviours in everyday members of society. They rock.

Ok. Take a breath. That was a lot of psychological history and the sort of blind-faith hero worship which starts to smell like people trying too hard to be persuasive. Why do we need such a cult of hero-worship in a field which claims to be based upon theory, and evidence base and logical thinking? We just do. Now shut up with your whinging.

My own whinging wasn't nearly done. It turned out that, had my bike broken down on the other side of the railway tracks, I could have had a tow truck take it to Bathurst. But because I was outside the pub, on THIS side, it would be taken to Orange. That was a long way from Blackheath, where I was headed. I felt very sad. The mechanic, a friendly guy with many injuries from a bike accident a few months before, tinkered with the spark plug. Gee, he said. It's black. When was it put in? Yesterday, I said miserably.

The truth is, the second wave wasn't completely correct. If it had been, we wouldn't have needed a third wave. And a bit of hero worship covers the cracks in the statue's foundations. But what I, and my brattish ways, need to acknowledge is what a great leap forward from Freud's approach the second wave was.

After all, I'm describing the history of modern counselling psychology as if we all knew what was happening. We didn't. There are always all kinds of crap, crackpot ideas competing for space and audience within psychotherapy and how was the average punter within the field to know if Ellis and Back were just another weird non-helpful addition? A modern day example of such stupid dangerous quackery is Thought Field Therapy. Google it and giggle, please. And an earlier example was phrenology. Google that, I dare you. It is where the idea that beady, close-set eyes were a sign of evilness originated.

So at the time of the second wave, behaviourism was still emergent. No-one called it the first or the second wave. The phrase cognitive-behavioural therapy (an amalgam of Ellis' Rational Emotive Therapy and Beck's Cognitive Therapy) hadn't been invented yet. Beck was pissed off (and remains so) that the American Psychoanalytic Institute black-balled him.

It was, in short, a mess.

So was my bike. Owen from NRMA and I had no idea that the choke cable was stuck on due to a broken spring in the carburettor. That was making the engine run 'rich', and turning the spark plugs black. I'd learn that several days, and several hundred dollars, later. For now, he was looking sadly at me and deciding to break the rules and get some poor bloke out of bed in Bathurst to come pick up my bike. Empathy. Sympathy. Whatever. Owen, I love you.

Ok so what faults do I, as a third-wave psychotherapist, find with Beck and Ellis? Not too damned many, if I know what is good for me. It is worth me considering that a substantial government rebate within Medicare is based upon the assumption that 2nd wave CBT is a fundamentally valid option for treating the psychologically ill. In order to get paid, a psychologist must generally describe themselves as cognitive-behavioural therapists. And there is an entire industry of 2nd-wave manuals for treating various specific issues, from social phobia to schizophrenia, which pretty much hold sway in the market place as established wisdom and THE way to treat clients. CBT rules. And there's a line in our code of ethics which specifically forbids a psychologist from denigrating the profession. It is all very neatly tied up, really.

But sometimes it is important to break the rules. Owen saw the broader picture and he helped me. I try to see the broader picture within psychotherapy and I try to help my clients. Ultimately that is the real requirement of our code of ethics. So what is my problem, from a treatment perspective, with Ellis and Beck?

To be incredibly unfair to them (and please be aware, this is a 'straw man' argument), the rational therapists see thinking as logical. By challenging false assumptions, they think that my behaviour will change. But my friends all told me I was mad to ride a 250 cc motorbike, in the middle of winter, to Blackheath. I agreed with them. But it is an adventure, I said, pulling on my lemming suit. My lemming suit  is very warm. Shame the gloves were so thin. Every 10k of speed is one degree colder. Riding through Blayney at 60k the air hitting my gloves was perhaps at -10. (I doubt it though. Only felt like -5).

So my point is this: arguing with my cognitions is not enough. Even if you persuade me that my ideas won't hold water, it is only when I gain insight that those are truly MY ideas that I will begin to change. I actually think Ellis and Beck understood that, perhaps intuitively. But it was only later technology which has made that point explicit, and so many of the 2nd wave technicians have not understood a key aspect of delivering effective therapy. They're knocking out their own copies of David, I guess.

The rest of my Blayney story turns out pretty well. I talked to Owen and waited for the tow truck.  I forget what time it was, but my friend Renae arrived first. She'd driven from Blackheath to Blayney to collect me. Just under a two hour trip. Renae rocks. The tow truck rocked along soon after. By five a.m. I had put everyone to way too much trouble and was running numb fingers through my hair in the hottest of showers in Blackheath. It would take two months for my fingers to return to normal. I guess I was lucky. After the shower, I slept. My decisions had inconvenienced a lot of people, but ultimately they enabled me to have a very special experience with no serious consequences. In the wider scope, my logic was, perhaps,  weird - but not completely flawed.

We don't just have a mind. We have a brain, and it makes decisions based, not just on logic, but on chemicals and history and phobias and traumas. Not enough of sleep, water, exercise or folate can all affect our decisionmaking. Peer groups, cultural assumptions, alcohol and sugar all can also distort our decisions. Examining our thoughts can expose the gaps in our logic - but old-style cbt was sometimes equal in effectiveness to being on a waiting list. And sometimes our thoughts can't be successfully challenged because we're arguing with biology.  Beck and Ellis weren't the first to argue that our thoughts determine our behaviour. Not even William James was. I can show you loads of works by Plato where Socrates tries to challenge the cognitive frameworks of his fellow Athenians. But we're more than minds. That is where 2nd wave CBT fails.

I am impulsive, in part, because I am habitually impulsive. I have been accused of having a death wish. I am also impulsive because I like being impulsive. I think I feel vaguely like a pirate when I say damn the torpedoes. Not that there were torpedoes in the 17th century. But hell, lemmings don't actually commit mass suicide either. I guess sometimes we can't rely upon our assumptions. My impulsiveness comes from my neural pathways, and my schooling in boys-own adventure stories. Ultimately, my own actions are more complex than answering the question:  what makes the most sense to do next?

Ultimately, the second wave of CBT was impressive technology. And it was superseded later. And we're over the hump, reader! From here on in, the posts relate to the newer technology. We're up to current best practice.

The RACV paid for all kinds of stuff that weekend. They were brilliant. The NRMA road crew were excellent, too. Renae and her household were wonderful friends and fine company. By Monday afternoon I was headed back through Blayney on my way home. I was relishing the adventure, and my bike was running well. I stopped for fuel, and I looked at the pub. It was a nice little bustling town on a sunny day. Only my numb fingers remained to reassure me how much I had hated the place. Hated myself, more like. But somehow, didn't hate my impetuous spirit.


I like the way I take risks. It is one of the finest attitudes of my mind. And, some days, that alters my life's experience.

I was a teenage Rogerian

Before I went to Boston I wrote the most heartfelt, shattered disclosure I have ever communicated. I wrote as though lost in an endless winter. It was honest and it was healing. I have never been so open in my life. And, having said it, I'm not sure it is still true.

This is a blog about Carl Rogers and his insights. It is also about deep changes in me.

I was barely eighteen when I became a telephone counsellor. They accepted me into the program, and I was the youngest ever to graduate in the State. I think you have to be 21 now. So I guess my record is likely to stand. And so at that impressionable age I became indoctrinated into the many ways of Rogerian therapy.

When Behaviourism was in full swing, it was in competition (commercially) with the Freudians.  At that time, a 'Third Force' emerged which was predominately championed by Carl Rogers. He was an astonishing pioneer of Client Centred Therapy, which is influential across many disciplines to this day.

Rogerian therapy placed the client at the centre of treatment. The practitioner was expected to facilitate the development of insight for the client. Rogers is celebrated for his empathy, for active listening, for mirrored repetition of what the client said. That's right. He has contributed some of the most annoying behaviors that counsellors of Western society have evidenced in the past forty years. Carl, more than anyone else in the history of counselling, has pissed people off.

How does that make you feel?

I wish I had never heard that phase and I would sell a kidney to be assured I'll never hear it again. It is the most abused, cliched, insincere and disrespectful non-phrase in the counselling dialogue. It is anathema to true listening and respectful behaviour. And Carl Rogers started it. I'm surprised I still love him, despite his sins. Perhaps I have unconditional positive regard for him.

I was taught to listen completely to people, to offer empathy and positive regard. I was taught cues to indicate listening, and I endured endless rounds of roleplay where I was expected to mirror statements back to people who weren't being themselves, parrot-fashion. So they knew I understood them (or who they were pretending to be). The idea was that by getting people to see how congruent and involved I was, they could gain insight into their own incongruent and undifferentiated lives.

It was an approach which sometimes changed the season for a client's psyche.

The Rogerian approach is actually pretty damned good. Well, I think so, anyway, but then I came to the Client Centred Approach a therapeutic virgin and it held me gently through the process. Lots of other people still use it faithfully, and it does seem to achieve results. My intention, though, is to tip you off within this post as to WHY it is good. And I believe a lot of people get that wrong. So let's briefly wander back past the insights of Freud and Fairbairn.

The talking cure. That was the intent of psychoanalysis. People talk about stuff and they gain insight into themselves. From that insight, they change and evolve and get better. Fairbairn extended the model to describe people as talking constantly about how they expected others to see them. The poor buggers couldn't see themselves because the mirror seemed flawed. ('Can't you see who I am?') What Rogers did was to sit a sycophant in front of the client and mirror back the perfect agreeable nodding friendliness of someone who sees me as I want to be seen.

People think that Rogers' genius was to bring love into the equation. Where Freud was making power-based assertions about sexual urges repressed into unconscious sublimation, and Skinner was co-ercing people into good behaviour usng a cattle-prod, Rogers offered unconditional positive regard. A little bit of love to soothe the soul and send someone out into the world just that little bit stronger. It is a nice, caring idea. And it doesn't work. Well, I don't think it does, ayway.

I have experienced a lot of Rogerian-based therapy over the years. Take a moment to reflect upon most of the 18 year olds you know, and whether their life experience would see them trained up as a counsellor. At 18 I had had enough crap to deal with that I got accepted into the training. I sometimes look back upon my life and wonder if God is a soap opera writer. A bad one. The evidence seems to fit the theory so far. Some day I hope to have words with the producer. Although maybe the problem has been in the direction. Too many windswept moors, too much snow.  Winter overkill.  In any case, lots of people have asked me how I feel about that.

In time I came to divide Rogerians up into craftspeople and artisans.

The craftspeople learned the skills and reproduced the behaviours. A bit like learning to be Michelangelo by churning out cheap copies of David. Lots of 'How does that make you feel?', and the obligatory glazed-eyed listening posture. Head on side. Wait for the encouraging throat-noise and, in a minute, something beginning: 'So what I'm hearing you say is...' Some of them are very good at it. But their empathy never reaches their eyes, and ultimately their unconditional positive regard is so very vomit-inducingly fake.

But oh, the artisans. Those people who get it. They look at me and I feel loved. They wait for me to tell them about me. And I do. I tell them what a wounded soul I am, with big dramas and big problems and a big history with pain that just won't go away. I tell them how the world ought to have been nicer to me, and how Charley was my brother and shoulda looked out for me a little bit. I coulda been a contender. And like that. And the artisan watches me with care and attention as though what I am saying seems true and I have every right to believe it.

And in that moment the way I see myself is being reflected back to me.

And in that moment I achieve insight.

And in that moment change begins.

You see, I believe that Carl Rogers' contribution to counselling is not the idea of unconditional positive regard. In my work there have been occasions when I have sat and listened to paedophiles. Some behaviour a sane person ought not to accept or encourage. In one of his books, I vividly recall Rogers talking about losing weight and saying that while a person doesn't admit what they're like they cannot change. Until a person looks themselves in the mirror and genuinely says: I am overweight, or I have sexual issues, or I am dysfunctionally in love... well, until they admit their problem, they're running away from reality and they cannot change. Carl then went on to say (and I wish I could find the passage!) that once a person does accept themselves through insight into what they're truly like, change is then inevitable.

Inevitable, people. Like the progress of seasons.

I look back over my pre-Boston blog post and I see someone who feels the universe has treated him unfairly. He loved Julieanne and always will and she was the only one for him. And at the time it was true. So off I went to Boston. And change was inevitable.

I've had more texts and I have had phone calls from Julieanne recently. She needed stuff and I sorted some of it for her. Her last text thanked me and said she was doing ok. And it struck me, reading it, that she was. She'll be all right. And so will I. Somehow, in some meaningful way that I don't understand, I have let her go. I love her deeply, but I am no longer 'in love' with her. Somehow, I'm waking from the dream.

Carl Rogers found a way to teach people how they might articulate their own truth. He did this by encouraging people to place the client at the centre of the therapeutic process, and by teaching therapists the skills to get out of the way of a person's natural tendency for self-insight and adaptive change.

I have adapted. I am changed. It was a privilege to have my heart broken. I don't think, having felt such love, that I will ever be the same again. Like the velveteen rabbit in the story, what is left of me is content to be as my experiences have made me. I'm richer for my poverty. And I can start to feel the season changing. There may well be another spring.

At its heart, Rogers' approach was a behavioural technique which commercialised Freud's greatest contribution to psychotherapy. This made the third force a movement which offered a creative tension to the discipline of psychology. It gave Psychoanalysts and Behaviourists something to think about - because the Rogerian system got results.

Rogers called for outcomes research which paved the way for the second wave of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, of which more next time.

In closing, then, I would have to say that my bower-bird habits as a therapist contain a big dollop of Rogerian approaches. I try to be congruent, to show my clients I am truly listening and that I have empathy for their situation. I try to ensure they achieve insight into their own circumstance.

But I do it because Fairbairn's housekeeper loved him.

And I do it because I'm not in love with Julieanne the way I was.

I was indeed a teenage Rogerian, and I have kept a firm hold on some of his approaches because they enable a heartfelt, shattered disclosure. Which is what we need, sometimes, if we are to achieve any level of contentment at all.

Pavlov, Birthday Cake, and the Importance of Feeling Pain

Sometimes We Get Rejected

What others thnk about us, matters.

This week I had a party at my house, and invited my whole family to celebrate the birthday of my daughter.

In between handing out pizza and cake, and proffering red wine and coffee (along with soft drink, water and OJ), I overheard a family member say, in sotto voce, that I was too full on to handle. I thought I'd been mistaken, but - well, no. The guilty look and sudden silence when they noticed I'd heard them was a bit too obvious. It took some reflection, but I did come to see this as a good thing.

This is a blog about the first of the 'three waves' of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, which at first was known simply as Behavioural Therapy. And it is a (probably poor) attempt to work through my own relationship with my family.

Ok, so we've all had those moments. I once saw a colleague accidentally find a file about herself which a third colleague was making in preparation for a formal complaint. Awkward. I've seen those 18th birthday party moments when the hostess cried cos she wanted to. I sat with a mate whose directorial debut in Carlton's Courthouse copped a savaging in its first review. Nobody likes that moment when our stomach drops away and we realise that the way we wanted to be seen is not the way we actually are seen.

It is a physical, nauseous reaction. It relates directly to the normal neurosis I have mentioned in a previous blog: that way we are wired to try very hard not be be cast out of the herd, where we'd be a singular target for tigers to eat.


Psychologists Learned To Mess With Our Behaviours

The way we respond to hearing ill of ourselves is an example of classical conditioning which, in my opinion, is a consequence of how we're raised (socialisation) and the way we're wired (genetic predisposition). In our culture we respond to some things because our environment has primed us to do so.

What I'm saying here is that when I felt sick 'cos someone said I was hard to handle, it was an automatic response because - like everyone else - I dearly want to fit in.  And like everyone else, I sometimes don't. And when I know I don't, like everyone else I experience a Pavlovian response.

Pavlov's name rings a bell, I expect. He did nasty things to dogs. It was a variation on the 'nasty things to cats' theme of an earlier blog.

Oddly, the usual pic you'll see of a salivating dog with a tube attached had nothing to do with Pavlov. It was a diferent researcher but early confusion of reporting has seen the error repeated until the present day. From memory, the picture was of a German dog, not one from Pavlov's Russian lab. I think the full story is told in C. James Goodwin's History of Modern Psychology, but it may have been in another book. I was checking the facts using Google, but for once it has failed to come up with the goods. Google thinks it is actually Pavlov's dog in the picture.  

Anyway you know the story: Pavlov rang a bell each day he fed the dog. Eventually he found all he had to do was ring dem bells, and the dog salivated. Specific predicatble conditions bring on predictable responses.  Wolpe based his systematic desensitisation upon this premise. If you can ring the bell and get salivating, then you can modify the conditions and get a preferred response. Sit the dog on a monkey bar until it isn't afraid of heights. Or something like that.

By implication, you'd think I'd be over trying to get my family to accept me by now.

I long ago accepted them. In general, they don't like book learnin', or travelling overseas, or non-commercial radio. They'd like to see our borders closed and they don't hold with jazz music. They're not quite sure who would watch the ABC. And that's ok. They've been good people who will help anyone out whenever they are asked. Generous, direct and loyal. I know where I stand with them. We talk about football and not politics, food and not culture, kids and not population.

From time to time, I've raised the 'no go' issues directly with them, and the discussions have been loud or solemn according to occasion. Generally, the consensus has been that I am different and, if only I'd change my views, I'd be welcome to fit in.

Before we discuss the use of Wolpe's systematic desensitisation in a family context, I'll just mention some of the heroes of Behavioural Therapy's First Wave.


Some Other Behavioural Psychologists' Work (And Why It Was Good)

John B. Watson established the cause of phobias by instilling a little boy named Albert with a fear of white, fluffy things. This led to the establishment of modern day ethics committees, who are charged with stopping bloody psychologists from ever again instilling little boys named Albert with a fear of white, fluffy things.


Watson also created what we'd now call marketing psychology. He figured out ways to stimulate people through advertising so their behaviour would change and they'd buy stuff. He did a lot of work for cigarette companies. His theories were seen as the basis of the behaviourist movement.

Other people whose work provided the basis for Behaviourism are our old friend Wolpe, Eysenck, Hull, and Skinner.  Wolpe and Eysenck are respected for their practical bent, Eysenck is often quoted as saying:  "if you get rid of the symptoms, you get rid of the neurosis". If you can't see it, it isn't there, if you like. Hull established a special kind of scientific method, and Skinner's 'radical behaviourism' banned the idea of thoughts being real: if you can't see it...

Ok, enough name dropping.

What was good about the first wave? Well, it laid the foundations. It actually demanded that we do something and measure its effect. It said that we should consider a difference is achieved if we can measure the behaviour before, and then after, the intervention, and then ascribe the change in behaviour, if any, to the intervention.

I know that sounds wanky and academic and obvious, but this was something you couldn't do with Freud. Freud would wriggle out of it and back-engineer some additional explanation for why what had happened, had happened. At the end of the day, Freud was chicken. You may quote me.

The behaviourists had the guts to back themselves and make a solid prediction. They put themselves out there, and they sometimes failed. Behaviourism was a great leap forward - because (following Popper) it gave psychologists a chance to fail.  This meant they could actually succeed, as well.


Why We Can't Have Our Birthday Cake and Eat It Too


So if Wolpe is my best friend, you'd think I'd have worked out how to have my family in my house and not want them to discuss twitter, or my trip to Boston, or the masters I am just starting, or my recent promotion... basically, I ought to have them around but not try to get them interested in what interests me. I ought to be skilled enough for that not to matter.

Well, largely it doesn't. Actually I forgot to tell them about the promotion, and Boston didn't come up. I've learned to steer them away from asylum seeker topic 'cos, blood relative or not, I carve people up when they use the phrase 'queue jumper' in my house (the masters is in International and Community Development).  I have sat on the monkey bars that are my family for so long that many things don't touch me.  But there's still a level where a lad wants to belong. And it is a relief, in a way, to know they can still hurt me.

One reason the comment hurt was that I actually thought I was on common ground, talking about jokes and comments on twitter. I'd restricted myself to a small aspect of my life and not discussed anything important and I was still too full on!

Many counsellors and psychologists are criticised for feeling things deeply. When we get upset, others sagely shake their heads and say: you, of all people, should understand that... blah blah blah. (I'm not sure what they actually say, 'cos frankly I stop listening at about the 'you, of all pe... ' stage).

There's a lot I have never told my family about things that matter to me. There's an entire life and death they know nothing of. Entire relationships have passed them by. They'd be hard pressed to say who I work for. And only my father really knows the truth of why my marriage ended.  But I refuse to kill those nerves entirely. There's a sense in which that would make me less than human.

Imagine if I lacked empathy when listening to someone talk about the grief of losing the love of their life! The capacity to feel our own pain is so important. Whoever we are, we need our own pain if we are to help friends and family cope with their own pain.


The Importance Of Feeling Wretched Some Times

The first wave of Behavioural Psychology helped us to curb the excesses of some people's problems. Wolpe helped us to reduce extreme fear to what is appropriate to a situation. But there is an endpoint to that process. It is very important that we still feel fear when the situation is dangerous. It is important that we want to belong, that we try to belong. We also need to feel the sting of others' judgement now and again.

So when my family find me too full on, it stings. When someone disagrees with me, I feel it. When my best mate shakes his head and tells me to forget Julieanne, it tugs again at wounds which just won't heal. And that is a very good thing. Such pain reminds us we're human, we're part of a group (or we want to be) and we aren't robotic non-people. Understanding ourselves is not, should not, cannot be about stopping the pain.

It is so very important to be able to feel such things.

Pain is a privilege.