There are days when I just want to die.
Funny thing, this week has been stressful. Aside from an interview to keep my job (and maybe get promoted), my two daughters are on anti-biotics and my Dad has had blood pressure of 215/107 and a pulse of 130. Medication has brought all that under control. (Ok, not the job interview...) But still I am heading overseas, and there's been a few other things. Whatever. Enough.
In the past few weeks I awoke in the middle of the night, short of breath. I have weak knees occasionally and am generally tense. I know the right exercises for breathing and cognitive reframing, and every day this week maybe three things have fallen away from my plate and life has become good again. Life is that much better, then. Except for one thing.
She sent me a text on Monday.
This blog is about Wolpe. It is about systematic desensitisation and the heirarchical behavioural therapy which can help everyone on the planet to a more contented life. This blog is about the things we need to do to achieve our own mental wellbeing. And it is about how miserable I am every damned day I draw breath and walk the earth. Because that is important, and it isn't enough to be merely happy.
So let's start with Wolpe. Wolpe made a name for himself early in Behaviourism by doing nasty things to cats. There's no shame in that: Skinner himself was known for his anti-felinism. You might almost say that being kind to pussies is distinctly un-psychological. Except that is a stupid thing to say. Irrelevant, too. Follow the link and make your own mind up about your furballing cousins. I have other subjects to cover.
This being a blog, I don't need to be clinically accurate. So I will quickly tell you what I think you should know. Wolpe discovered that Freud's teachings didn't help much. (Well, yeah. The technology has now moved on. Freud was a great leap forward but a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Past Freud. Keep going. Go on. You know you want to.) Wolpe discovered that though exposure to a negative stimulus one becomes inured to it. Stick with the program and you get braver, in short.
Ok, so to make this blog even vaguely interesting I have made a commitment to personal disclosure. Hence the assumed name. Not interested in being both honest AND indentifiable, troops. James Monroe was a wonderful fellah but he isn't blogging any more. Never did. Devoted husband and a great president tho. Check him out on Wikipedia. He's the nicest boke I have ever impersonated.
Let us assume that a blog requires some actual research, a commitment to a point, some vulnerability and personal disclosure. You may begin to see my pattern as this entry unfolds. If not, sip your warm milk and nutmeg and enjoy the story. We're going to cure a phobia of heights and whinge about how much I love Julieanne. Sorry, no smell of polish on a piano this time.
Wolpe invented a thing called the SUDS. It is the subjective units of distress scale. Basically, it means that you think about how much something disturbs you on a scale of one to one hundred. Bloody useful in the psychological world, and here's why: your adrenal gland is only good for so long. There comes a point where your responses are no longer chemical, and are more psychological. In short, you can reach a point where you're only scared because you think you are scared.
Ok so let us contemplate the idea of someone being scared of heights. They won't go up a ladder, wouldn't think of climbing a kids' playground structure, and woe betide anyone who suggests a foot bridge or cliff view or one of those span crossings which wave in the breeze. Nup. No, sir. Not for this little black duck.
My last blog was about people who have a mental disorder, and those who might have one but are never diagnosed. The idea was to suggest that half the population is in danger of such a diagnosis some time in their lives, and the other half really ought not to be too complacent about it either. That is to say, we all have a closet we fear opening. We all have the potential for mental illness. We all have a ladder we choose not to climb just yet. We all have an anxiety which we are not currently facing.
Ok, so let us imagine that anxiety is heights. Wolpe's heirarchical exposure therapy is based upon the idea of systematic desensitisation. If you choose the thing you are most scared of, then list four things which are progressively less scary, then you can simply work you way through the list from least to highest and... wow... you're cured!
But it isn't that simple. Except that it is.
Later on in this blog I will be talking about Steven C Hayes. His time is not yet come on this entry, and I don't want to show my hand too soon, but in essence he has come up with a brilliant way to describe a problem that I must admit I have: cognitive fusion. I'll use heights to illustrate it so you can see Julieanne for what she is...
Let's start with the ladder. Stepping on the bottom rung won't kill us, will it? But for some people it is the thin edge of the wedge. It begins a slippery slope. We must not step on the bottom rung because we will begin to feel anxious, and we will be started on a process which ends with danger.
Systematic desensitisation is like any other psychological concept: people think psychology takes away the pain, but in fact good psychology raises the tolerance of pain to where it ought to have been earlier. So confronting a fear of heghts doesn't remove fear: it restructures the fear of heights in line with what ought to be properly and reasonably feared. Like a swaying single span bridge.
So let us press-gang our little black duck onto the bottom rung of the ladder. I have actually been paid to do this. The person stands there for about 40 minutes. Initially their anxiety is through the roof - SUDS sits at about 90 per cent and they're too petrified to move. I usually play music and dance till they thaw out. A good day at the office. I don't even have to torture a cat. We call it quits after an hour when their SUDS has dropped to about 50. At this point you may fairly argue I have lightly torured a duck. But it was for the duck's own good.
The next week we go to a play ground. Over an hour the little black duck will step onto a monkey bars frame. Then calm down. Then climb higher. 90% becomes 70% becomes 60% becomes 50%. Once swinging about on a monkey bar is reasonably easy, we go home. Did I mention I get paid for this? I DO swing on the bars, at least. Leadership role and stuff. I earn my money, all right. The duck's homework is to go romp about on the (now not at all scary) ladder.
So you get the deal, then. Progressively, each milestone makes the previous ones less scary. Eventually we're there on a (perhaps dangerous) swaying bridge, slowly walking across. We mustn't rush it 'cos the adrenal gland wins when you run. A good crossing, a good anything, takes 40 minutes. I get tired of saying "And what is your SUDS now?", but hey, I'm getting paid for it. And by now we are actually matching a fear of heights to a dangerous situation and I am in fact watching for real dangers and genuinely keeping my client safe. And by now they're technically cured.
So cognitive fusion is the inability to choose. It is when one 'couldn't possibly' make it up a ladder, or across a monkey bars. It is when the cognition, or thoughts, are fused or welded to a single option. A person couldn't possibly think of anything else. there is not other way to contemplate being.
I love Julieanne and I always will. She is the only one for me.
To overcome cognitive fusion, you think of five things you need to do and then you do them progressively. Slowly. To rush a thing you fear to do is to 'flood', or just get through it by running across the bridge with your eyes shut. Your adrenal gland will get you across the bridge but that doesn't help you to conquer your fears.
Ok, so you must be starting to twig by now. I couldn't be with Julieanne, and I was desperately in love with her. Every day was a living hell and I couldn't bear to be away from her. I wanted to text her, to phone her, to be with her so badly. But it was just delaying the inevitable realisaton that I can't be with her. It was holding out hope cruelly to a woman who deserved better. I had to get over her.
Five things. Coffee with someone else. Call her Tonia. Cook Tonia a meal. Go places. Develop a bond through shared conversations and experiences. A trip to Daylesford together.
Get to the six month mark. Surely, eventually, I'll forget Julieanne and I will develop feelings for this new person which are just as strong. All it takes is time.
And there's a sense in which that is true. If what you want is to drop your fear of heights, then you can cast that fear aside by working through a heirarchy. And to get through a broken heart, you can apply the same approach. If you really want to.
Except there are days when I just want to die.
Just as my new partner reached a moment when she asked herself (and me) why we wouldn't think about maybe, one day, moving in together, I got an email from Julieanne. She needed my help. She had no-one else to turn to. She would appreciate it if I could help her with a document, but she'd understand if I couldn't do it and if her contact wasn't welcome. And like that.
I helped her with the document and I sent her away. There's nothing else I could do. My kids still live here. I still can't leave them. I still can't offer her hope. And there's this new guy on the scene there in Wollongong who maybe will make her happy.
But then I looked at my new partner and saw her as more than a ladder. Tonia was the most wonderful woman I have ever been with. Funny, friendly, caring and decent. I genuinely cared about her, and had thought our feelings woould mutually develop. One email and I realised the truth. And that wasn't fair to Tonia. She deserved someone who loved her. And every damned day I think about Julieanne. Not because I want to. Not because I will ever be with her. Just because that is who I am. Forty-five percent of the population have some kind of disorder at some point in their lives. Maybe my disorder is called love. Sometimes cognitive fusion is a part of who we are. Sometimes our pain defines us. Sometimes it is better to be alone than to pretend. Sometimes our chosen therapy is just another expression of our disorder. Some days I just want to die.
So I broke up with a woman who was a wonderful, friendly, caring woman. Tonia agreed. She had always sensed there was someone else somewhere back there who distracted me from truly looking at her. She was, to the end, a decent woman who understood where I was at. And I was at the top of my heirarchy. I can live my life without Julieanne, and I don't need to run off and be with someone else to distract me.
Perhaps I used Tonia. I actually firmly believe that we all, always, use each other. If someone is not useful to you, why would you want them at all? Anyway it was only when I reached a point where I could live alone that I didn't need her anymore. Makes sense, yeah?
Mark Twain said he lost the beauty of the river when he came to see it with the pilot's eye. So beware, my fellow contentment-seekers. What you seek will make you different from who you are now. Shaw said that when you have learned something, that means you have also lost something.
You're not content. We are biologically built to be anxious. You can identify that anxiety source through brutal honesty, and by setting yourself a heirarchy and working through the scale using the SUDS approach, you will come to cope with your stimulus and be able to tolerate it. Except that you will start to see it in terms of a score from one to a hundred, and the fearful beauty it held for you will fade to grey. That's what cures are like.
I can live on my own. I can be without Julieanne. Not because she doesn't matter, but because I can tolerate the pain. I have developed that strength. I have overcome my cognitive fusion to that extent. I have choice.
She sent me a text on Monday.
She had the date wrong, she thought I was flying out to Boston on Tuesday just gone. I called her and explained, and I wished her well and I heard how she is getting along ok and she is coping with her kids and her job and all those things which cause her grief. And I said thanks for thinking of me, and I had to go now, and like that. And I ended the call.
There are days when I just want to die.
Next Tuesday I'm getting on a plane to the US and maybe it will fall out of the sky. I love my daughters and I love my Dad. I treasure my family and friends. My last fleeting thought if I die on this trip will be relief that I am about to stop aching for Julieanne every time I wake up and just before I go to sleep. I'll be pleased to stop plodding forward through a grey world where I understand the rules and I know how to exist. There's a sense in which I'll greet any plane crash with relief. I even rejected the option to fly QANTAS.
But the truth is I expect to return from the States two weeks from now. I won't be meeting my death any time soon. And that is the best thing for everyone. Even me. The real path to a contented life is the process of being able to tolerate pain.
On the days you want to die, take a breath, and go on.
It is what life is about.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Why I am not crazy about the USA
I’m going to the USA in June and it scares me. I feel a bit crazy about the whole thing.
There’s a sense in which I think we all struggle with our sanity. I think it is important to know that.
This week I have been stretched many ways: my children have both reached important life crossroads, two of my friends are struggling with deep personal issues, I’m trying to prepare to go overseas, and my two jobs have both become very busy again... you know the drill. There are days when work/life balance for me is about having bushfires in all categories. And I don’t feel normal while that is happening.
This blog entry is about the prevalence of mental illness and what might help some of us with sub-clinical conditions to live a contented life.
I used to think I was very different to everyone else. I still have that sense of being an outsider in my own life. I don’t want to get too Albert Camus about it, but some days I think everyone is normal but me. Then I look around. There are a lot of people in the world who are only just coping, who are only just ok, who are only just managing their own lives. Or not.
Some people have a personality style, and some people have a disorder. Have you ever wondered about that? How do you know if someone is close to the edge but not over it? What constitutes a disorder?
One of the reasons I applied myself to learn more about these things was my own drive to understand myself and the people I dealt with out there in what, for the want of a better description, we call the everyday world. I wanted, in Mark Twain’s terms, to see the river with the pilot’s eye.
Well, it turns out that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) IV TR (which is one of two standard classification manuals) handles this very elegantly. The chief question is one about functioning.
If you gamble a lot, but it doesn’t mean you have lost your job, partner, friends or house, then you can still function and gamble. As soon as the case can be made effectively that your gambling habit is costing you and you’re unable to help that, then your pastime is less of a hobby than it is a compulsion, and bingo! You’re the proud parent of a bouncing baby addiction.
The addiction is called Pathological Gambling, it has its own code (312.31) and it is an Impulse-Control Disorder. Provided the behaviour is not part of a manic episode, a clinician basically works through a checklist and, provided five or more of the ten indicators of persistent and recurrent gambling behaviour are present, then the person is classified as having the disorder. If only four are present they may have a problem, but they aren’t classified as having a disorder.
Here’s where the art of being a therapist emerges. Assessing a real human being is not simply the process of ticking lines on a list. There is a skill to demonstrating the empathy and objectivity required to really decide whether someone is not functioning effectively. One of the items is: ‘has jeopardised or lost a significant relationship, job, educational or career opportunity because of gambling’. Some relationships are easier to lose than others. Some are more significant than others. How do you know when something is really in jeopardy? There’s a sense in which ticking this item can be at the discretion of the therapist.
More importantly, out there in the real world there are many people who are living their lives and not seeing a therapist. We’re all crossing busy roads without enough lollypop people. Over the years I have worked with people who were clearly out of control. Some of them were diagnosed later. Some never were. That was largely irrelevant when dealing with the emergencies of the moment in various workplaces. And yet it was the central emergency.
The DSM is an agreed list, a classification by description. It is one of my favourite books, for sure, but the plot is inconsistent and the characters get up to some very weird stuff. Generally by the time someone is dysfunctional enough for classification, they’re by definition not normal and everyone can see it. The DSM doesn’t really help with why someone is the way they are or what can be done about it. It describes the people who crossed the line, and what they tend to have in common. The S in DSM is for Statistical.
So when I look about the world, really look about the world, there are many things I feel I ought to see. Not everyone who is not coping has a diagnosis of illness. Not everyone who has had a diagnosis is not coping now. I ought to realise this, but we often work with hasty rule-of-thumb judgements and assume the world is divided into those with a mental disorder and those without. And shamefully, we compound the error – I sometimes compound the error – by treating each assumed group differently.
For instance, let’s consider the situation in Australia. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS’), National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing from 2007, the prevalence of mental disorders in Australia for the adult population in the previous 12 months had been 20.0%, or 1 in 5 people. That’s 3,197,800 Australian adults.
One way of representing the categories they considered within those who had a disorder in the 12 months’ previous to the survey could look like this:
This is a very basic depiction of the survey. And this is a blog, after all. I am dealing with the stats summarily to make a point. So please bear the following in mind: the survey is from 2007, so it is a little dated now. The survey had a 60% response rate so it isn’t one of those Australian-election type deals where everyone was forced to answer and you get a tight handle on the whole population. It covered 8,800 Australians aged 16-85 years. The survey covers some specific mental disorders, not all mental disorders – and it is based on the ICD-10 not the DSM-IV-TR. (I use the DSM in preference).
There is also the issue of co-morbidity, where people have more than one condition. See the pack for details.
Here’s an outline which shows the classification categories and prevalence of disorders within the respondents who actually had a disorder within the previous 12 months:
The major point which relates to this blog, though it the point which is made in passing by the survey report:
“Of the 16 million Australians aged 16–85 years, almost half (45% or 7.3 million) had a lifetime mental disorder, ie a mental disorder at some point in their life. One in five (20% or 3.2 million) Australians had a 12-month mental disorder. There were also 4.1 million people who had experienced a lifetime mental disorder but did not have symptoms in the 12 months prior to the survey interview.”
I’ll just take a moment to point out that ‘having a lifetime disorder’ means that at some point in the past they qualified for the diagnosis. Doesn’t mean they ‘have’ the disorder permanently and are diagnosed for life. It’s a survey category people, not a lifetime sentence.
So 45% of Australians, it is estimated, had a mental disorder at some time in their life. Of them, a little under half are diagnosed with having the condition now. To way oversimplify this statistical point (and please understand there are 1,000 flavours of what I am doing with the finer points of the maths, here), if you had one hundred people in a room, you could divide them up into this kind of a table:
The numbers don’t add correctly because of co-morbidity – some people have more than one disorder.
Now the temptation is to assume that 55 people of my imagined 100 have nothing wrong with them, from a mental disorder standpoint. Never mind that this survey leaves out some disorders, WHAT ABOUT THOSE WHO TICK 4, BUT NOT 5, OF THE BOXES? You could argue that they’re the ones in the 45 who have a lifetime disorder but didn’t qualify in the last 12 months. You could. But actually that’s not based in fact. That 25 did at some point previously make the magic 5 cut-off, sure, but I’m betting there are some of the 55 who will have 4 ticks perennially and NEVER meet the criteria for a disorder.
By now your head may well be spinning and you may just wish I’d tell another story about Fairbairn’s housekeeper. Yeah, I know. I love her too. I have the dustiest piano, by the way. But stay with me. I’m nearly done with the maths.
As we wander through the world, trying to live contented lives, almost half the people we meet will have qualified for diagnosis of a mental disorder at some point, and just under half of them qualify for that diagnosis now. 1 in 5. Of the remaining just-over-half, we don’t know how many are pretty close to a diagnosis but don’t quite make the cut. You’d expect there’d be a few.
And what of you, gentle reader? And what of me? Fairbairn tells us we’re the centre of our own universes, and each of us will say ‘I’m perfectly fine’, and yet the statistics are against us en masse. Maybe we are both in the 55 – but do we tick just one, or four boxes? (And Pathological Gambling wasn’t covered by the survey anyway!)
In one of my jobs I am required to ensure I am in a fit state to counsel people. It is a registration, and an ethical, requirement. And a bloody good idea, just quietly – for me and for them. So in the midst of my busy life it is important to enact behaviours which enhance my ability to cope with life.
I mentioned earlier that the DSM doesn’t explain why people have disorders, or what to do about them. The field of evidence-based treatment development lies in other books. How a person gets a disorder is the subject of many debates relating to genetics and environment. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), the dominant psychotherapy in Western scientific culture just now, presumes that people get better by adapting their thoughts and thereby changing both their affect (emotions) and behaviour. And if a person is classified under the DSM by their emotional state and the way they are acting, then surely there must be some beneficial way to think which helps us not to have a mental disorder.
So finally we’re back to the point. And Fairbairn. And Bowen. And Frankl, since we’re in the neighbourhood and I like him. And Wolpe, of which more in some other post. And – I hate to say it – Freud.
My life is 10% about what happens to me and 90% about how I respond to it. Ditto for my psychological wellbeing. If I can enact mature ambivalence, and respond with integrity, then I am thinking in the way which (I believe, anyway) will best inform both what I do and how I feel about it.
I began by saying I’ve had a huge week. I’m actually frightened to go to the States. People get shot there. A lot. And some of the people who die are killed by the legally elected and empowered government officers.
And if I am so busy and stretched, maybe it is in my best interests to just forget it and not go.
Maybe sometimes we should just quit.
A friend of mine has a favourite saying that was also her father’s favourite: “Start as you mean to go on”. It means, for me, that what we do now are the basis for our habits later – and running away from stuff can conceivably develop or entrench (currently in 14.4% of Ausralia’s adult population) some kind of anxiety disorder. By contrast, developing a tolerance for enduring scary things is the way to conquer a phobia, and in fact it is a good way to deal with all things that disturb us. Who dares, wins.
So does that mean I have to go, or I’m going to be in the 45%? Of course not. But I have a way of responding to this which stops me disappearing into a logical loop of eternal math and dithering. I need to answer this question: for me and my values, which of the two behaviours will I respect more in myself?
Do I feel I have more integrity if I go, or if I decide not to?
Simple to ask, hard to answer truthfully.
It’s a visceral thing, ultimately. A whole-of-self answer.
I’m going to the United States in June and it scares me.
And that’s a good thing.
There’s a sense in which I think we all struggle with our sanity. I think it is important to know that.
This week I have been stretched many ways: my children have both reached important life crossroads, two of my friends are struggling with deep personal issues, I’m trying to prepare to go overseas, and my two jobs have both become very busy again... you know the drill. There are days when work/life balance for me is about having bushfires in all categories. And I don’t feel normal while that is happening.
This blog entry is about the prevalence of mental illness and what might help some of us with sub-clinical conditions to live a contented life.
I used to think I was very different to everyone else. I still have that sense of being an outsider in my own life. I don’t want to get too Albert Camus about it, but some days I think everyone is normal but me. Then I look around. There are a lot of people in the world who are only just coping, who are only just ok, who are only just managing their own lives. Or not.
Some people have a personality style, and some people have a disorder. Have you ever wondered about that? How do you know if someone is close to the edge but not over it? What constitutes a disorder?
One of the reasons I applied myself to learn more about these things was my own drive to understand myself and the people I dealt with out there in what, for the want of a better description, we call the everyday world. I wanted, in Mark Twain’s terms, to see the river with the pilot’s eye.
Well, it turns out that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) IV TR (which is one of two standard classification manuals) handles this very elegantly. The chief question is one about functioning.
If you gamble a lot, but it doesn’t mean you have lost your job, partner, friends or house, then you can still function and gamble. As soon as the case can be made effectively that your gambling habit is costing you and you’re unable to help that, then your pastime is less of a hobby than it is a compulsion, and bingo! You’re the proud parent of a bouncing baby addiction.
The addiction is called Pathological Gambling, it has its own code (312.31) and it is an Impulse-Control Disorder. Provided the behaviour is not part of a manic episode, a clinician basically works through a checklist and, provided five or more of the ten indicators of persistent and recurrent gambling behaviour are present, then the person is classified as having the disorder. If only four are present they may have a problem, but they aren’t classified as having a disorder.
Here’s where the art of being a therapist emerges. Assessing a real human being is not simply the process of ticking lines on a list. There is a skill to demonstrating the empathy and objectivity required to really decide whether someone is not functioning effectively. One of the items is: ‘has jeopardised or lost a significant relationship, job, educational or career opportunity because of gambling’. Some relationships are easier to lose than others. Some are more significant than others. How do you know when something is really in jeopardy? There’s a sense in which ticking this item can be at the discretion of the therapist.
More importantly, out there in the real world there are many people who are living their lives and not seeing a therapist. We’re all crossing busy roads without enough lollypop people. Over the years I have worked with people who were clearly out of control. Some of them were diagnosed later. Some never were. That was largely irrelevant when dealing with the emergencies of the moment in various workplaces. And yet it was the central emergency.
The DSM is an agreed list, a classification by description. It is one of my favourite books, for sure, but the plot is inconsistent and the characters get up to some very weird stuff. Generally by the time someone is dysfunctional enough for classification, they’re by definition not normal and everyone can see it. The DSM doesn’t really help with why someone is the way they are or what can be done about it. It describes the people who crossed the line, and what they tend to have in common. The S in DSM is for Statistical.
So when I look about the world, really look about the world, there are many things I feel I ought to see. Not everyone who is not coping has a diagnosis of illness. Not everyone who has had a diagnosis is not coping now. I ought to realise this, but we often work with hasty rule-of-thumb judgements and assume the world is divided into those with a mental disorder and those without. And shamefully, we compound the error – I sometimes compound the error – by treating each assumed group differently.
For instance, let’s consider the situation in Australia. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS’), National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing from 2007, the prevalence of mental disorders in Australia for the adult population in the previous 12 months had been 20.0%, or 1 in 5 people. That’s 3,197,800 Australian adults.
One way of representing the categories they considered within those who had a disorder in the 12 months’ previous to the survey could look like this:
This is a very basic depiction of the survey. And this is a blog, after all. I am dealing with the stats summarily to make a point. So please bear the following in mind: the survey is from 2007, so it is a little dated now. The survey had a 60% response rate so it isn’t one of those Australian-election type deals where everyone was forced to answer and you get a tight handle on the whole population. It covered 8,800 Australians aged 16-85 years. The survey covers some specific mental disorders, not all mental disorders – and it is based on the ICD-10 not the DSM-IV-TR. (I use the DSM in preference).
There is also the issue of co-morbidity, where people have more than one condition. See the pack for details.
Here’s an outline which shows the classification categories and prevalence of disorders within the respondents who actually had a disorder within the previous 12 months:
The major point which relates to this blog, though it the point which is made in passing by the survey report:
“Of the 16 million Australians aged 16–85 years, almost half (45% or 7.3 million) had a lifetime mental disorder, ie a mental disorder at some point in their life. One in five (20% or 3.2 million) Australians had a 12-month mental disorder. There were also 4.1 million people who had experienced a lifetime mental disorder but did not have symptoms in the 12 months prior to the survey interview.”
I’ll just take a moment to point out that ‘having a lifetime disorder’ means that at some point in the past they qualified for the diagnosis. Doesn’t mean they ‘have’ the disorder permanently and are diagnosed for life. It’s a survey category people, not a lifetime sentence.
So 45% of Australians, it is estimated, had a mental disorder at some time in their life. Of them, a little under half are diagnosed with having the condition now. To way oversimplify this statistical point (and please understand there are 1,000 flavours of what I am doing with the finer points of the maths, here), if you had one hundred people in a room, you could divide them up into this kind of a table:
The numbers don’t add correctly because of co-morbidity – some people have more than one disorder.
Now the temptation is to assume that 55 people of my imagined 100 have nothing wrong with them, from a mental disorder standpoint. Never mind that this survey leaves out some disorders, WHAT ABOUT THOSE WHO TICK 4, BUT NOT 5, OF THE BOXES? You could argue that they’re the ones in the 45 who have a lifetime disorder but didn’t qualify in the last 12 months. You could. But actually that’s not based in fact. That 25 did at some point previously make the magic 5 cut-off, sure, but I’m betting there are some of the 55 who will have 4 ticks perennially and NEVER meet the criteria for a disorder.
By now your head may well be spinning and you may just wish I’d tell another story about Fairbairn’s housekeeper. Yeah, I know. I love her too. I have the dustiest piano, by the way. But stay with me. I’m nearly done with the maths.
As we wander through the world, trying to live contented lives, almost half the people we meet will have qualified for diagnosis of a mental disorder at some point, and just under half of them qualify for that diagnosis now. 1 in 5. Of the remaining just-over-half, we don’t know how many are pretty close to a diagnosis but don’t quite make the cut. You’d expect there’d be a few.
And what of you, gentle reader? And what of me? Fairbairn tells us we’re the centre of our own universes, and each of us will say ‘I’m perfectly fine’, and yet the statistics are against us en masse. Maybe we are both in the 55 – but do we tick just one, or four boxes? (And Pathological Gambling wasn’t covered by the survey anyway!)
In one of my jobs I am required to ensure I am in a fit state to counsel people. It is a registration, and an ethical, requirement. And a bloody good idea, just quietly – for me and for them. So in the midst of my busy life it is important to enact behaviours which enhance my ability to cope with life.
I mentioned earlier that the DSM doesn’t explain why people have disorders, or what to do about them. The field of evidence-based treatment development lies in other books. How a person gets a disorder is the subject of many debates relating to genetics and environment. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), the dominant psychotherapy in Western scientific culture just now, presumes that people get better by adapting their thoughts and thereby changing both their affect (emotions) and behaviour. And if a person is classified under the DSM by their emotional state and the way they are acting, then surely there must be some beneficial way to think which helps us not to have a mental disorder.
So finally we’re back to the point. And Fairbairn. And Bowen. And Frankl, since we’re in the neighbourhood and I like him. And Wolpe, of which more in some other post. And – I hate to say it – Freud.
My life is 10% about what happens to me and 90% about how I respond to it. Ditto for my psychological wellbeing. If I can enact mature ambivalence, and respond with integrity, then I am thinking in the way which (I believe, anyway) will best inform both what I do and how I feel about it.
I began by saying I’ve had a huge week. I’m actually frightened to go to the States. People get shot there. A lot. And some of the people who die are killed by the legally elected and empowered government officers.
And if I am so busy and stretched, maybe it is in my best interests to just forget it and not go.
Maybe sometimes we should just quit.
A friend of mine has a favourite saying that was also her father’s favourite: “Start as you mean to go on”. It means, for me, that what we do now are the basis for our habits later – and running away from stuff can conceivably develop or entrench (currently in 14.4% of Ausralia’s adult population) some kind of anxiety disorder. By contrast, developing a tolerance for enduring scary things is the way to conquer a phobia, and in fact it is a good way to deal with all things that disturb us. Who dares, wins.
So does that mean I have to go, or I’m going to be in the 45%? Of course not. But I have a way of responding to this which stops me disappearing into a logical loop of eternal math and dithering. I need to answer this question: for me and my values, which of the two behaviours will I respect more in myself?
Do I feel I have more integrity if I go, or if I decide not to?
Simple to ask, hard to answer truthfully.
It’s a visceral thing, ultimately. A whole-of-self answer.
I’m going to the United States in June and it scares me.
And that’s a good thing.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
The world war, the housekeeper, and Freud's last friend.
I fell in love two years ago.
It didn't work out, and we had one of those on-again-off-again relationships which mean you really were in love because no sane person would go back for more of the misery I just couldn't stay away from. It was sweet, really. In a horrible, stripped down to the bone kind of way. I knew I was alive 'cos it hurt to breathe.
This blog entry is about maturity. We can perhaps suppose that being content with our lives will arise from some kind of a mature approach, but what is a mature approach, really? I used to think maturity was about the sense to avoid pain. I don't think that any more, and that is for a number of reasons. Mostly because I fell in love two years ago.
There's a story I like about Fairbairn. He was the originator of Object Relations theory. I have to say I find his writings impenetrable, and I probably don't do any of his theories justice. Like any founder of big ideas, apocryphal stories grow with the legend of his ideas' influence, and so I really don't know, by now, what is true and what is false about Fairbairn. So don't assume what I'm about to say is absolutely true. Truth makes for a poor story, all too often.
Enough disclaimers, by now you should be wrapped up in your bunny rug with a nutmeg-and-milk and ready for the story. Tucked in warmly? Ok, here we go, and be careful not to tip your rocker.
Fairbairn was a medic during World War I. That was a war which happened almost 100 years ago. My grandfathers were both 9 when it started. It was a war which saw the first use of planes and tanks, and mustard gas. It was a fine, modern war, if you will. Millions died horribly and a lot of them died in bloody, muddy trenches out of sight of their enemy. Each side rained mortars down upon the other. This wasn't really a new trick, it dated all the way back to Greeks and Persians, but during World War I there was a mass production process which resulted in mortar-storms of an unprecedented scale.
One of the effects of it raining bombs was that you couldn't really duck. It also involved a crisis of psychological functioning where, no matter what you did, the bombs just kept on dropping. You could pray, lend cigarettes, hoard good will, be a prick, carry a rabbit's foot, curse God, be a poor friend, goldbrick, obey orders, shirk responsibility and still get blown to hell. For some, the only possible option was to withdraw and disconnect from the world. Back in the day, they called that shell shock. Now we'd call it severe trauma, or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Or something else. But Fairbairn became famous for explaining it.
There are those who suggest Fairbairn would have been the father of modern psychology, if Freud had never existed. I don't really understand how they do the math on that, but I like Fairbairn because he tumbled to a truth of life that I hold self-evidently true (sorry Benjamin Franklin, but it was a good line and you can think of it as flattery. Now stop spinning or your grave will fall in, there's a good lad).
This truth is: it is all about me. If I am in a trench and I promise to give up smoking if the bombs stop now, or to never swear again, or to write to my dear old mum... but the bombs keep dropping, then sooner or later I will want to shout: WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME? CAN'T YOU SEE I STOPPED SMOKING AN HOUR AGO?
The truth is they can't even see me. They're just over there slinging mortars into the pipes in a vain attempt to live until tomorrow because they've made their own deal with the universe based on rapid reloading and continuous fire. But I don't see that. Fairbairn said the world is a single object, and we relate to it as though it reflects our image of ourselves. And when that relationship malfunctions then we run the risk of some serious mental problems. Well, that's my rephrasing anyway.
I'm still building toward my apocryphal Fairbairn story by the way. He lived in Edinburgh after the war and became famous as a psychoanalyst. He distorted Freud's theory: completely remade it, really, but he achieved something unique amongst his followers-of-Freud peers. Freud really was like a sailor with a psychoanalyst in every port, you know. You may never have considered this, but he had Adler in Austria, and Jung in Switzerland, Lacan in France and Winnicott in England. And way up there in bonny Scotland was the only one of his acolytes to remain on good terms with Freud forever. That's right, only Fairbairn remained on speaking terms with Freud at the time of Freud's death. How remarkable.
For Fairbairn, when Freud got grumpy with him for changing the theory, it wasn't personal. When Freud said, "How could you do this to me? Don't you know who I am? Why are you distorting my great work?", Fairbairn just made him another cup of tea and added a dollop of whisky. Fairbairn got it. Freud wanted to feel that Fairbairn respected him, that Freud got back from his interactions with Fairbairn the kind of respect Freud thought he deserved. Fairbairn didn't need to get upset. The criticism really had nothing to do with him.
Ok, we're getting close to the anecdote now. But first I want to tell my story about Julianne. Her name isn't Julianne, but that's irrelevant. I'd known her a while as a friend and I helped her out of a hassle. That led to an invitation to a 60th. Long story, largely ireelevant, but what mattered was I got off a plane at Sydney airport and I took her hand as we walked to the car. Before I took her hand we were friends. By the time we got to the car we were soulmates. And whatever else happen in my life to show me I don't matter, or am inept, or have been forgotten, I will never, ever forget that moment. And, I suspect, neither will she. We were in love.
Inconveniently, as it turned out. We lived in different states and we came from different worlds and neither of us was free to go to the other. And stuff like that matters and erodes hope and forces one to make pragmatic decisions. Bugger. And like that.
Fairbairn was a sensible man. As he was evolving his thory about mortal men in bloodied mudpits, he found a letter from his housekeeper left for him on his table. She'd professed her undying love to him. Couldn't he see they were meant to be together? well, no. Frankly, that would have been inconvenient, and anyway he'd barely ever said five words to her and he just wanted the piano dusted and he had a theory to get on with. The theory is supposed to have coalesced in that moment. He read the letter about what he should feel for her, and realised the letter was not at all about him but all about her. Lucky he hadn't held her hand, or we'd all be lost. Instead, he originated Object Relations. And he couldn't have done it without her.
Immature love, like Julianne and I had briefly, is all about losing oneself in the reflected mutual glory of boundary-less cathexis. She loved me, she was eveything I needed, she understood me and she really listened. She was all I ever wanted, needed. We were one. When I was with her I felt like I was the man I'd always wanted to be. Seriously. And she felt the same about me. If only the rest of the world had got out of our way, we were all we ever needed. No downside, no doubts, no negativity. A bit too little objectivity too, just quietly, but there you go. I couldn't see that at the time. Another word for this love is limerance: it is that wonderful, 'in love' feeling. Highly addictive and hormonally influenced. Love is a drug, and like that.
The problem with being in love is that it is a distraction, and an unrealistic way of looking at the world. unless you actually manage to never be parted, sooner or later someone needs to have an independent thought and then the boundaries come flooding back and we find ourselves in a different, mournful, reality. Then we can either struggle to get back or become melancholy. For a long while I struggled. Now I am coming to the end of my melancholy. Sadly, I think the journey has done me good.
Since I have started this, I'd best whip through the other Fairbairn states. The in-love one is the no-boundary, self-less state. It distracts us from the existential crisis of being all alone and alive, but it is untenable because it is one-dimensional. We need our boundaries to be able to function realistically. We need a concept of not-me. To be lost in someone else is, eventually, to lose ourselves. Think about it if you like. Take your time. See if you conclude the same.
Alternatively we can shrink down inside ourselves. Fairbairn called this the secondary neurosis. So we withdraw inside ourselves. Apparently Fairbairn had four types of this one:
1) Hopelessness. Despair. Lying on the bd and saying, 'There's nothing I can do, it is all impossible. Nothing I do will matter". Giving up is a way to avoid coping, a way to avoid doing the hard yards. A distraction.
2) Anxiousness. Lying on the bed all night running through various contingencies and wondering "What if this happens..." or "But what if that happens..." as if anticipating every bad event will somehow enable us to avoid pain. Its a distraction from crisis.
3) Obsession. If I bake ten cakes, our marriage will work out ok. If I just work harder, longer hours, then our marriage will last. Clover's solution in Orwell's Animal farm. Do the thing you can do, because doing the thing which might actually work is too hard or scary. Another distraction.
4) Hiding. Running away. Not being there any more. Alcoholism, absconding, hiding, not answering the phone, just plain quitting. Avoidance taken to its logical extreme. Absence, physical or otherwise. Not being there is the ultimate distraction.
Ok, so Fairbairn's four secondary neuroses are about shrinking back within the boundary of self rather than tearing down the wall. I don't have time to explain Pink Floyd just now so you'll have to make your own comparisons. Just don't shave the tops off your nipples. Bob Geldoff did enough of that for us all.
The primary neurosis is the bumping of boundaries. Make way for me, I need more space. I want you to give me what I ask so I can see you recognise my importance. This is the aggressive blame game which forms the basis of the whole 'why are you doing this to me?' debate that kicked it all off. If you yield, I know I mean something.
"Let's have a baby", he says. "Well, let's not," she says. "If you truly loved me, you'd do this for me." "And if you loved me, you'd give up the idea." Bumping boundaries. And evey statement based on the premise, we have a problem and you're it: if only you'd give me what I want, we'd have no problem. This cycle goes on and on, if both people are up for the game, on the basis that the problem can only be solved by the other giving in. He is a prisoner of her lack of desire; she is a prisoner of his insistence on wanting to procreate. Neither one can fix the problem because each says it is the other who truly owns it, who is making the difficulty. "Can't you see what you are doing here? can't you see how you're making me feel?"
Fairbairn's housekeeper couldn't be happy because Fairbairn hadn't married her yet. She'd be fine if he'd just marry her, show her how she really was the one for him, validate the truth she needed affirmed by the world handing over the goods. Her wellbeing was out of her control. She was a prisoner of his behaviour. She'd decided that in her mind, he had to propose to her.
Hey!! Hang on, isn't it aggression when someone decides to separate the whole mind and body thing? My mind says your arms and legs ought to... that'd be aggression, wouldn't it? And the withdrawal thing, that's passivity. So does that make the limerance, in-love deal assertiveness? Have we found the solution to interpersonal relations here, based on the last blog entry?
Nope. Let me break it to you. Julianne and I didn't live happily ever after, and most couples like that don't. A healthy self needs healthy boundaries, so we need to achieve something else to find the Fairbairn solution to resolving a crisis. It's called mature loving, or mature ambivalence. It is two-dimensional feeling.
The best example I can think of is my own. Isn't that always the way? Julianne and I could have made a commitment to be single and committed to each other in chastity until our kids were grown and one of us could have moved to be with the other. We didn't. Ten years of solitude just wasn't a practical answer for either of us. We had to become two separate people again, or drown.
Let's return to the bloke who wants a baby, and railroad him through a sequence of thoughts. "I want a baby, and she isn't ready for that. So we have a problem. What is my part of the problem? There's a gap between what I want and what I have. I'm in a relationship I don't want to leave, and she's not ready for kids. The truth about me is, I'm pining for something I haven't got. My problem is I want to have kids with someone who doesn't want them yet."
Now he's talking. He has identified the thing about him that is disconnected. He wants something other than what he's got. Now he can begin to tolerate the situation, instead of whine that someone else must change it. HTFU? Maybe, or grieve. Both are possible solutions... they're responses to the situation, not helpless prison cries.
I own an embroidered cushion which announces: "Life is 10% what happens to me, and 90% how I respond." This truth is the basis of object relations, the basis of Frankl's solution to Auschwitz, the basis of Freud believing that talking about troubles could heal them. Life is not about what happened, it is about how we respond. And love, especially so.
So we hit a crisis. Immature love says it must be something waaaaay external, some enemy's fault 'cos my love wouldn't do this to me. Secondary neuroses recommend we just give up, be distracted, go away. The primary neurosis would have us fight for what we want, especially with those we love. Mature loving, differentiation, mature ambivalence, would offer the solution: "Given I am in a circumstance I don't like, what is my best response? What has the most integrity? What action will I respect most about myself? What is my most assertive self?"
Mature ambivalence is the capacity to hold two conflicting ideas in one mind simultaneously. She values something different to me, and yet I want to be with her. He doesn't love me, and I love him. She's the most wonderful person I ever met, and we can't be together.
Mature ambivalence is assertiveness with oneself. It is our best chance for growth. It is having insight, and tolerating the uncomfortable so we can respect our own behaviour. Let's face it, it is being very grown up.
I was in love with Julianne and we couldn't be together. I'd have had to leave my children behind. I think of Julianne every day, and I wish her well as I try to get on with my life. I parent my children and I work at my job. I try to be a good friend to my mates. I'd say I'll never get over her, not really. I may yet have a good life, and I'm grateful I met her. My heart aches, and still I respect my own decision.
What small contentment I have from an impossible situation I owe to the housekeeper of Ronald Fairbairn, and how he responded to her.
It didn't work out, and we had one of those on-again-off-again relationships which mean you really were in love because no sane person would go back for more of the misery I just couldn't stay away from. It was sweet, really. In a horrible, stripped down to the bone kind of way. I knew I was alive 'cos it hurt to breathe.
This blog entry is about maturity. We can perhaps suppose that being content with our lives will arise from some kind of a mature approach, but what is a mature approach, really? I used to think maturity was about the sense to avoid pain. I don't think that any more, and that is for a number of reasons. Mostly because I fell in love two years ago.
There's a story I like about Fairbairn. He was the originator of Object Relations theory. I have to say I find his writings impenetrable, and I probably don't do any of his theories justice. Like any founder of big ideas, apocryphal stories grow with the legend of his ideas' influence, and so I really don't know, by now, what is true and what is false about Fairbairn. So don't assume what I'm about to say is absolutely true. Truth makes for a poor story, all too often.
Enough disclaimers, by now you should be wrapped up in your bunny rug with a nutmeg-and-milk and ready for the story. Tucked in warmly? Ok, here we go, and be careful not to tip your rocker.
Fairbairn was a medic during World War I. That was a war which happened almost 100 years ago. My grandfathers were both 9 when it started. It was a war which saw the first use of planes and tanks, and mustard gas. It was a fine, modern war, if you will. Millions died horribly and a lot of them died in bloody, muddy trenches out of sight of their enemy. Each side rained mortars down upon the other. This wasn't really a new trick, it dated all the way back to Greeks and Persians, but during World War I there was a mass production process which resulted in mortar-storms of an unprecedented scale.
One of the effects of it raining bombs was that you couldn't really duck. It also involved a crisis of psychological functioning where, no matter what you did, the bombs just kept on dropping. You could pray, lend cigarettes, hoard good will, be a prick, carry a rabbit's foot, curse God, be a poor friend, goldbrick, obey orders, shirk responsibility and still get blown to hell. For some, the only possible option was to withdraw and disconnect from the world. Back in the day, they called that shell shock. Now we'd call it severe trauma, or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Or something else. But Fairbairn became famous for explaining it.
There are those who suggest Fairbairn would have been the father of modern psychology, if Freud had never existed. I don't really understand how they do the math on that, but I like Fairbairn because he tumbled to a truth of life that I hold self-evidently true (sorry Benjamin Franklin, but it was a good line and you can think of it as flattery. Now stop spinning or your grave will fall in, there's a good lad).
This truth is: it is all about me. If I am in a trench and I promise to give up smoking if the bombs stop now, or to never swear again, or to write to my dear old mum... but the bombs keep dropping, then sooner or later I will want to shout: WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME? CAN'T YOU SEE I STOPPED SMOKING AN HOUR AGO?
The truth is they can't even see me. They're just over there slinging mortars into the pipes in a vain attempt to live until tomorrow because they've made their own deal with the universe based on rapid reloading and continuous fire. But I don't see that. Fairbairn said the world is a single object, and we relate to it as though it reflects our image of ourselves. And when that relationship malfunctions then we run the risk of some serious mental problems. Well, that's my rephrasing anyway.
I'm still building toward my apocryphal Fairbairn story by the way. He lived in Edinburgh after the war and became famous as a psychoanalyst. He distorted Freud's theory: completely remade it, really, but he achieved something unique amongst his followers-of-Freud peers. Freud really was like a sailor with a psychoanalyst in every port, you know. You may never have considered this, but he had Adler in Austria, and Jung in Switzerland, Lacan in France and Winnicott in England. And way up there in bonny Scotland was the only one of his acolytes to remain on good terms with Freud forever. That's right, only Fairbairn remained on speaking terms with Freud at the time of Freud's death. How remarkable.
For Fairbairn, when Freud got grumpy with him for changing the theory, it wasn't personal. When Freud said, "How could you do this to me? Don't you know who I am? Why are you distorting my great work?", Fairbairn just made him another cup of tea and added a dollop of whisky. Fairbairn got it. Freud wanted to feel that Fairbairn respected him, that Freud got back from his interactions with Fairbairn the kind of respect Freud thought he deserved. Fairbairn didn't need to get upset. The criticism really had nothing to do with him.
Ok, we're getting close to the anecdote now. But first I want to tell my story about Julianne. Her name isn't Julianne, but that's irrelevant. I'd known her a while as a friend and I helped her out of a hassle. That led to an invitation to a 60th. Long story, largely ireelevant, but what mattered was I got off a plane at Sydney airport and I took her hand as we walked to the car. Before I took her hand we were friends. By the time we got to the car we were soulmates. And whatever else happen in my life to show me I don't matter, or am inept, or have been forgotten, I will never, ever forget that moment. And, I suspect, neither will she. We were in love.
Inconveniently, as it turned out. We lived in different states and we came from different worlds and neither of us was free to go to the other. And stuff like that matters and erodes hope and forces one to make pragmatic decisions. Bugger. And like that.
Fairbairn was a sensible man. As he was evolving his thory about mortal men in bloodied mudpits, he found a letter from his housekeeper left for him on his table. She'd professed her undying love to him. Couldn't he see they were meant to be together? well, no. Frankly, that would have been inconvenient, and anyway he'd barely ever said five words to her and he just wanted the piano dusted and he had a theory to get on with. The theory is supposed to have coalesced in that moment. He read the letter about what he should feel for her, and realised the letter was not at all about him but all about her. Lucky he hadn't held her hand, or we'd all be lost. Instead, he originated Object Relations. And he couldn't have done it without her.
Immature love, like Julianne and I had briefly, is all about losing oneself in the reflected mutual glory of boundary-less cathexis. She loved me, she was eveything I needed, she understood me and she really listened. She was all I ever wanted, needed. We were one. When I was with her I felt like I was the man I'd always wanted to be. Seriously. And she felt the same about me. If only the rest of the world had got out of our way, we were all we ever needed. No downside, no doubts, no negativity. A bit too little objectivity too, just quietly, but there you go. I couldn't see that at the time. Another word for this love is limerance: it is that wonderful, 'in love' feeling. Highly addictive and hormonally influenced. Love is a drug, and like that.
The problem with being in love is that it is a distraction, and an unrealistic way of looking at the world. unless you actually manage to never be parted, sooner or later someone needs to have an independent thought and then the boundaries come flooding back and we find ourselves in a different, mournful, reality. Then we can either struggle to get back or become melancholy. For a long while I struggled. Now I am coming to the end of my melancholy. Sadly, I think the journey has done me good.
Since I have started this, I'd best whip through the other Fairbairn states. The in-love one is the no-boundary, self-less state. It distracts us from the existential crisis of being all alone and alive, but it is untenable because it is one-dimensional. We need our boundaries to be able to function realistically. We need a concept of not-me. To be lost in someone else is, eventually, to lose ourselves. Think about it if you like. Take your time. See if you conclude the same.
Alternatively we can shrink down inside ourselves. Fairbairn called this the secondary neurosis. So we withdraw inside ourselves. Apparently Fairbairn had four types of this one:
1) Hopelessness. Despair. Lying on the bd and saying, 'There's nothing I can do, it is all impossible. Nothing I do will matter". Giving up is a way to avoid coping, a way to avoid doing the hard yards. A distraction.
2) Anxiousness. Lying on the bed all night running through various contingencies and wondering "What if this happens..." or "But what if that happens..." as if anticipating every bad event will somehow enable us to avoid pain. Its a distraction from crisis.
3) Obsession. If I bake ten cakes, our marriage will work out ok. If I just work harder, longer hours, then our marriage will last. Clover's solution in Orwell's Animal farm. Do the thing you can do, because doing the thing which might actually work is too hard or scary. Another distraction.
4) Hiding. Running away. Not being there any more. Alcoholism, absconding, hiding, not answering the phone, just plain quitting. Avoidance taken to its logical extreme. Absence, physical or otherwise. Not being there is the ultimate distraction.
Ok, so Fairbairn's four secondary neuroses are about shrinking back within the boundary of self rather than tearing down the wall. I don't have time to explain Pink Floyd just now so you'll have to make your own comparisons. Just don't shave the tops off your nipples. Bob Geldoff did enough of that for us all.
The primary neurosis is the bumping of boundaries. Make way for me, I need more space. I want you to give me what I ask so I can see you recognise my importance. This is the aggressive blame game which forms the basis of the whole 'why are you doing this to me?' debate that kicked it all off. If you yield, I know I mean something.
"Let's have a baby", he says. "Well, let's not," she says. "If you truly loved me, you'd do this for me." "And if you loved me, you'd give up the idea." Bumping boundaries. And evey statement based on the premise, we have a problem and you're it: if only you'd give me what I want, we'd have no problem. This cycle goes on and on, if both people are up for the game, on the basis that the problem can only be solved by the other giving in. He is a prisoner of her lack of desire; she is a prisoner of his insistence on wanting to procreate. Neither one can fix the problem because each says it is the other who truly owns it, who is making the difficulty. "Can't you see what you are doing here? can't you see how you're making me feel?"
Fairbairn's housekeeper couldn't be happy because Fairbairn hadn't married her yet. She'd be fine if he'd just marry her, show her how she really was the one for him, validate the truth she needed affirmed by the world handing over the goods. Her wellbeing was out of her control. She was a prisoner of his behaviour. She'd decided that in her mind, he had to propose to her.
Hey!! Hang on, isn't it aggression when someone decides to separate the whole mind and body thing? My mind says your arms and legs ought to... that'd be aggression, wouldn't it? And the withdrawal thing, that's passivity. So does that make the limerance, in-love deal assertiveness? Have we found the solution to interpersonal relations here, based on the last blog entry?
Nope. Let me break it to you. Julianne and I didn't live happily ever after, and most couples like that don't. A healthy self needs healthy boundaries, so we need to achieve something else to find the Fairbairn solution to resolving a crisis. It's called mature loving, or mature ambivalence. It is two-dimensional feeling.
The best example I can think of is my own. Isn't that always the way? Julianne and I could have made a commitment to be single and committed to each other in chastity until our kids were grown and one of us could have moved to be with the other. We didn't. Ten years of solitude just wasn't a practical answer for either of us. We had to become two separate people again, or drown.
Let's return to the bloke who wants a baby, and railroad him through a sequence of thoughts. "I want a baby, and she isn't ready for that. So we have a problem. What is my part of the problem? There's a gap between what I want and what I have. I'm in a relationship I don't want to leave, and she's not ready for kids. The truth about me is, I'm pining for something I haven't got. My problem is I want to have kids with someone who doesn't want them yet."
Now he's talking. He has identified the thing about him that is disconnected. He wants something other than what he's got. Now he can begin to tolerate the situation, instead of whine that someone else must change it. HTFU? Maybe, or grieve. Both are possible solutions... they're responses to the situation, not helpless prison cries.
I own an embroidered cushion which announces: "Life is 10% what happens to me, and 90% how I respond." This truth is the basis of object relations, the basis of Frankl's solution to Auschwitz, the basis of Freud believing that talking about troubles could heal them. Life is not about what happened, it is about how we respond. And love, especially so.
So we hit a crisis. Immature love says it must be something waaaaay external, some enemy's fault 'cos my love wouldn't do this to me. Secondary neuroses recommend we just give up, be distracted, go away. The primary neurosis would have us fight for what we want, especially with those we love. Mature loving, differentiation, mature ambivalence, would offer the solution: "Given I am in a circumstance I don't like, what is my best response? What has the most integrity? What action will I respect most about myself? What is my most assertive self?"
Mature ambivalence is the capacity to hold two conflicting ideas in one mind simultaneously. She values something different to me, and yet I want to be with her. He doesn't love me, and I love him. She's the most wonderful person I ever met, and we can't be together.
Mature ambivalence is assertiveness with oneself. It is our best chance for growth. It is having insight, and tolerating the uncomfortable so we can respect our own behaviour. Let's face it, it is being very grown up.
I was in love with Julianne and we couldn't be together. I'd have had to leave my children behind. I think of Julianne every day, and I wish her well as I try to get on with my life. I parent my children and I work at my job. I try to be a good friend to my mates. I'd say I'll never get over her, not really. I may yet have a good life, and I'm grateful I met her. My heart aches, and still I respect my own decision.
What small contentment I have from an impossible situation I owe to the housekeeper of Ronald Fairbairn, and how he responded to her.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Assertiveness and Paul Keating
It is important to be assertive in life.
So many people abuse the word assertive. Usually just after they've been denied something. And just before they demand someone else gives them what they want.
I try not to do that. I suspect I constantly fail.
This post tends to look at politics from a leftist lean, for example. My intention is to explain what I think and why I think it, but not to demand that you think it too. Yet by its nature a blog expects you'll have conceded the previous paragraph's point as it articulates the next one. It's a tension between writing and communicating. Cut me some slack, I beg you. These are my thoughts offered up to you, and they don't have to be yours.
This isn't a blog about the mundane moments of life, by the way. I'm not really talking about the moments when you pasively stop at the red light, or snap at the child reaching out to hook toast from the toaster with a butterknife. I'm more referring to the moments when the best response is not readily socially agreed upon. Like when you're being bullied, or your partner doesn't want to go to the family bbq, or when you're suddenly expected to contribute your thoughts about pre-marital sex in an Australian Women's Weekly interview http://tiny.cc/8bxbw.
In terms of my own behaviour at moments of grey expectations, apparently I scare the hell out of a lot of people. In a work context, I've been told I'm really, really aggressive. When I think of aggression, I think of Paul Keating: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roIeVEf5alk
I love Paul Keating. He tells everyone else what is wrong with them and why they should change and behave in line with his views - not just John Howard, lots of people. I have a private daydream of Paul Keating struggling with a crossword and colouring in squares black so he can insert his own words. Then sending the 'fixed' page to the editor and demanding a retraction.
But that is not assertiveness. Paul isn't assertive, or at least that's not what he's famous for. He's famous for ripping people a new one and telling them to like it. Let's call that aggression (of which more later).
Despite what others think of me, my aim is not to demand others' aquiescence during uncertain moments. Personally, I feel I lack Keating's aggressive granduer, and I'm not aspiring to adopt it.
I have also been accused of being too passive. By different accusers, obviously. It has been suggested I'm obsequious. I'd love to think that makes me multi-layered, or even deep. I fear it makes me two-faced or machiavellian. When I first heard it I lacked good education and a dictionary and I thought it meant I was everywhere (oh! so it's different to ubiquitous, then?). For a panicked moment I thought they meant I was fat. Now I know better. But then again, now I AM fat.
But I digress. This is a blog about my attempt to be content. Earlier entries have suggested that the most impressive achievement of an intelligent being would be to achieve contentment with one's life, and also to achieve self-respect by having integrity in responses to life's events. I could have stopped there, (and I guess for a time I did,) but there is more to say.
It is important to be assertive in life.
Forgive me lecturing for a moment, please. I want to achieve a common understanding of 'assertiveness' or we'll get nowhere. Bear with me, as I talk about mowing lawns and flies in soup...
Imagine we're neighbours and in our estate the grass is to be kept mown short by local by-law. Helpfully, I lean across the fence and cheerfully inform you that you'd better cut your grass or you'll get in trouble. You'd have three options...
1) If you went and grabbed your lawn mower and cut your grass you'd be passive. That's because my brain did the thinking for what your arms and legs carried out.
2) If you told me to go to hell and get my nose out of your business and stop being such a busybody, you'd be aggressive. That's 'cause you expect to achieve a result where your brain thought through what my arms and legs (and nose and the rest of me) will do.
3) If you say something like, "I appreciate that's your opinion, and I'll consider it. So if I mow the lawn and that's the wrong thing it'll be my fault, or if I leave it alone and that is wrong, it'll be my fault again - but if what I do with my grass works out ok, likewise I will have the credit for that. I'll be interested to see how you go with your grass." Then your arms and legs are moving based upon your own opinion, and you're being assertive.
So the defence 'But you told me to do it!', or 'I knew it wouldn't work, but you were so insistent I just went along!' are ways of saying 'You should have told my arms and legs to do something different with your mouth', and so are ways of being aggressive and passive at the same time. Passive aggressive, one might say.
Ok so let's imagine I am at a restaurant and there's a fly in my soup. The waiter is wandering past and I have the option to be passive, aggressive or assertive:
1) I could be passive and just eat the soup. I don't want to make a fuss. I just want to do what is expected of me. YUK!!! I eat the soup. Seriously, this is unhealthy AND wimpy. But people do it.
2) Aggression. I could upbraid the waiter: "You have broken all kinds of health regulations. You'll take this bowl and empty it out, give me a new bowl, new soup and this better be free buddy. You've broken the law and I'll be telling everyone else not to come here!" This is, of course, an invitation for the waiter to take the bowl away and pluck the fly out then spit in it and return it to me. People generally don't respond well to aggression, and anyone who prepares food out of your sight is best not treated as a target for aggression. Here's someone who discovered this earlier: http://tinyurl.com/6jum2u
3) Assertiveness. I could say to the waiter, "Waiter there's a fly in my soup. I'm not up for eating this, and I'm interested to know what your response is..."
An assertive response to the waiter means that what the waiter does next will be based upon the waiter's own thoughts. In such situations typically we could expect two things: accountability and generousity. People appreciate not being yelled at, and when left to make their own decision would be inclined to be more generous if possible so as not to be thought ungenerous. Please feel free to try this out (if you think it appropriate) and see if you agree.
Ok, so now we have a shared understanding of assertiveness, you may be wondering why I bring the subject up on a blog about trying to live a contented life. It's simple, really.
I have seen Paul Keating give considered responses upon many subjects, and I respect him most when he speaks his own truth and describes the values which he holds up as worthy of his own adherence. Even if I don't personally believe in those values. And while I have no doubt he delights in his own clever insults, I also honestly believe he is driven by an integrity which leads him to, at times, be very assertive. And, for me, Paul Keating's assertiveness makes him an example of what it truly means to lead a nation.
Unfortunately, 'doing a Paul Keating' has become synonymous with an energetic articulation of sophisticated aggression. At the moments when most people have been watching him, Paul Keating is famous for unremitting invective which demanded the behaviour of others fall in line with his own thoughts on proper behaviour and government policy.
When I compare what I know of Paul Keating to my knowledge of Francis Forde (see an earlier blog), it strikes me that the difference between the two men is perhaps one of how they choose to behave in the peak moments that defined the turning ponts of their lives. And, while this is a point upon which I urge you to make your own mind, it seems to me that Forde is known for being a contented person but Keating is, well, not so much.
Over many years of people watching, I have come to the conclusion that those people I think of as the most contented tend to be consistently assertive at key moments.
When I am in the midst of a crisis, I try to be assertive and not aggressive or passive. It is a practiced art and I'm not always very artistic. I honestly believe that when I manage to be assertive those around me become uncomfortably accountable for their actions, and me for mine.
Obviously I have only my own subjective knowledge of my own critical moments. Nevertheless it seems to me that often, at such times, aggressive people perceive this as passive, and passive people as aggressive. And assertive people have tended to be interested where I am at, but to speak more of their own feelings and responses.
So we come to the take-home, glib assertion:
It is my honest belief that true assertiveness is a healthy response to the behaviour of others. Assertive behaviour is behaviour which we tend to respect in ourselves, and I believe that considered self-respecting lives are characteristic of the most contented people I know.
I am not asking you to take this on faith, but rather to reflect upon the way in which people you know conduct themselves, and, having divided them into people who tend to be passive, aggressive or assertive at key moments, to consider which of these groups you would most describe as living a contented life.
So of the little I feel I have to offer others, I heartily recommend this: know what your opinion is, announce it and behave accordingly. Hold no-one to your beliefs but yourself. This will afford you a contented life.
So many people abuse the word assertive. Usually just after they've been denied something. And just before they demand someone else gives them what they want.
I try not to do that. I suspect I constantly fail.
This post tends to look at politics from a leftist lean, for example. My intention is to explain what I think and why I think it, but not to demand that you think it too. Yet by its nature a blog expects you'll have conceded the previous paragraph's point as it articulates the next one. It's a tension between writing and communicating. Cut me some slack, I beg you. These are my thoughts offered up to you, and they don't have to be yours.
This isn't a blog about the mundane moments of life, by the way. I'm not really talking about the moments when you pasively stop at the red light, or snap at the child reaching out to hook toast from the toaster with a butterknife. I'm more referring to the moments when the best response is not readily socially agreed upon. Like when you're being bullied, or your partner doesn't want to go to the family bbq, or when you're suddenly expected to contribute your thoughts about pre-marital sex in an Australian Women's Weekly interview http://tiny.cc/8bxbw.
In terms of my own behaviour at moments of grey expectations, apparently I scare the hell out of a lot of people. In a work context, I've been told I'm really, really aggressive. When I think of aggression, I think of Paul Keating: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roIeVEf5alk
I love Paul Keating. He tells everyone else what is wrong with them and why they should change and behave in line with his views - not just John Howard, lots of people. I have a private daydream of Paul Keating struggling with a crossword and colouring in squares black so he can insert his own words. Then sending the 'fixed' page to the editor and demanding a retraction.
But that is not assertiveness. Paul isn't assertive, or at least that's not what he's famous for. He's famous for ripping people a new one and telling them to like it. Let's call that aggression (of which more later).
Despite what others think of me, my aim is not to demand others' aquiescence during uncertain moments. Personally, I feel I lack Keating's aggressive granduer, and I'm not aspiring to adopt it.
I have also been accused of being too passive. By different accusers, obviously. It has been suggested I'm obsequious. I'd love to think that makes me multi-layered, or even deep. I fear it makes me two-faced or machiavellian. When I first heard it I lacked good education and a dictionary and I thought it meant I was everywhere (oh! so it's different to ubiquitous, then?). For a panicked moment I thought they meant I was fat. Now I know better. But then again, now I AM fat.
But I digress. This is a blog about my attempt to be content. Earlier entries have suggested that the most impressive achievement of an intelligent being would be to achieve contentment with one's life, and also to achieve self-respect by having integrity in responses to life's events. I could have stopped there, (and I guess for a time I did,) but there is more to say.
It is important to be assertive in life.
Forgive me lecturing for a moment, please. I want to achieve a common understanding of 'assertiveness' or we'll get nowhere. Bear with me, as I talk about mowing lawns and flies in soup...
Imagine we're neighbours and in our estate the grass is to be kept mown short by local by-law. Helpfully, I lean across the fence and cheerfully inform you that you'd better cut your grass or you'll get in trouble. You'd have three options...
1) If you went and grabbed your lawn mower and cut your grass you'd be passive. That's because my brain did the thinking for what your arms and legs carried out.
2) If you told me to go to hell and get my nose out of your business and stop being such a busybody, you'd be aggressive. That's 'cause you expect to achieve a result where your brain thought through what my arms and legs (and nose and the rest of me) will do.
3) If you say something like, "I appreciate that's your opinion, and I'll consider it. So if I mow the lawn and that's the wrong thing it'll be my fault, or if I leave it alone and that is wrong, it'll be my fault again - but if what I do with my grass works out ok, likewise I will have the credit for that. I'll be interested to see how you go with your grass." Then your arms and legs are moving based upon your own opinion, and you're being assertive.
So the defence 'But you told me to do it!', or 'I knew it wouldn't work, but you were so insistent I just went along!' are ways of saying 'You should have told my arms and legs to do something different with your mouth', and so are ways of being aggressive and passive at the same time. Passive aggressive, one might say.
Ok so let's imagine I am at a restaurant and there's a fly in my soup. The waiter is wandering past and I have the option to be passive, aggressive or assertive:
1) I could be passive and just eat the soup. I don't want to make a fuss. I just want to do what is expected of me. YUK!!! I eat the soup. Seriously, this is unhealthy AND wimpy. But people do it.
2) Aggression. I could upbraid the waiter: "You have broken all kinds of health regulations. You'll take this bowl and empty it out, give me a new bowl, new soup and this better be free buddy. You've broken the law and I'll be telling everyone else not to come here!" This is, of course, an invitation for the waiter to take the bowl away and pluck the fly out then spit in it and return it to me. People generally don't respond well to aggression, and anyone who prepares food out of your sight is best not treated as a target for aggression. Here's someone who discovered this earlier: http://tinyurl.com/6jum2u
3) Assertiveness. I could say to the waiter, "Waiter there's a fly in my soup. I'm not up for eating this, and I'm interested to know what your response is..."
An assertive response to the waiter means that what the waiter does next will be based upon the waiter's own thoughts. In such situations typically we could expect two things: accountability and generousity. People appreciate not being yelled at, and when left to make their own decision would be inclined to be more generous if possible so as not to be thought ungenerous. Please feel free to try this out (if you think it appropriate) and see if you agree.
Ok, so now we have a shared understanding of assertiveness, you may be wondering why I bring the subject up on a blog about trying to live a contented life. It's simple, really.
I have seen Paul Keating give considered responses upon many subjects, and I respect him most when he speaks his own truth and describes the values which he holds up as worthy of his own adherence. Even if I don't personally believe in those values. And while I have no doubt he delights in his own clever insults, I also honestly believe he is driven by an integrity which leads him to, at times, be very assertive. And, for me, Paul Keating's assertiveness makes him an example of what it truly means to lead a nation.
Unfortunately, 'doing a Paul Keating' has become synonymous with an energetic articulation of sophisticated aggression. At the moments when most people have been watching him, Paul Keating is famous for unremitting invective which demanded the behaviour of others fall in line with his own thoughts on proper behaviour and government policy.
When I compare what I know of Paul Keating to my knowledge of Francis Forde (see an earlier blog), it strikes me that the difference between the two men is perhaps one of how they choose to behave in the peak moments that defined the turning ponts of their lives. And, while this is a point upon which I urge you to make your own mind, it seems to me that Forde is known for being a contented person but Keating is, well, not so much.
Over many years of people watching, I have come to the conclusion that those people I think of as the most contented tend to be consistently assertive at key moments.
When I am in the midst of a crisis, I try to be assertive and not aggressive or passive. It is a practiced art and I'm not always very artistic. I honestly believe that when I manage to be assertive those around me become uncomfortably accountable for their actions, and me for mine.
Obviously I have only my own subjective knowledge of my own critical moments. Nevertheless it seems to me that often, at such times, aggressive people perceive this as passive, and passive people as aggressive. And assertive people have tended to be interested where I am at, but to speak more of their own feelings and responses.
So we come to the take-home, glib assertion:
It is my honest belief that true assertiveness is a healthy response to the behaviour of others. Assertive behaviour is behaviour which we tend to respect in ourselves, and I believe that considered self-respecting lives are characteristic of the most contented people I know.
I am not asking you to take this on faith, but rather to reflect upon the way in which people you know conduct themselves, and, having divided them into people who tend to be passive, aggressive or assertive at key moments, to consider which of these groups you would most describe as living a contented life.
So of the little I feel I have to offer others, I heartily recommend this: know what your opinion is, announce it and behave accordingly. Hold no-one to your beliefs but yourself. This will afford you a contented life.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
The Normal Neurosis
So.
Putney and Putney weren't original, by the way. Start with Fairbairn and ignore his Freudian origins. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Fairbairn For a Freudian he got good - really, really good.
Look at the British Object Relations school. Go on. Use Wikipedia. You know you want to. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_relations_theory Klein. Bowlby. Winnicot. Look at Bowen's Family Systems Theory.
Differentiation is a revelation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Bowen
Then consider Schnarch's sex and marital therapy. You feel you want to. http://passionatemarriage.com/
Ok so you can't be bothered. I'll sum it up for you: Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I respond.
The standout example of this approach is usually Viktor Frankl. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl .
Inadequate summary: man finds meaning in oppressive scenario (he was a holocaust survivor, his wife died in the women's camp in Auschwitz while he was in the mens' camp). Frankl credited his ability to survive to his ability to find meaning in his life despite its awful circumstances.
What mattered was not what happened but how he responded. He was building a cathedral and not breaking rocks.
He wrote "Man's search for meaning".http://www.amazon.com/Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor-Frankl/dp/0671023373 Please read this book. It will make you a better person.
All of which brings me to this single, hubristic point: if I am to be content, it all comes down to how I respond to what happens to me, and so if I am to enjoy a happy life, I must find the best way to respond to what occurs.
Implicit in this argument is the idea of developing a tolerance for what happens, the idea of not needing to respond to particular stimuli in particular ways. Harden up, stop automatically giving predictable knee-jerk reactions. Stop being a prisoner of other's deterministic behaviour...
Contentment is being seen by myself the way I want to be seen, and being transparent with it.
Contentment is based on self respect. Always and only as long as I respect myself for how I respond to the world.
So what is the best way to respond?
In terms of your own life, I could well ask you the same question.
I thought I'd start a blog today. I sent Google out looking for a host to use and, good and faithful servant, it came trotting back with an old one in its mouth that I had begun using years before. I read its single post with grave misgivings. What kind of person suggests they have insight into a happy life? It is incredibly hubristic to think one has cornered the contentment market. That's the kind of lightening rod which storms compete to hover over. And have I been so very happy in the years since I claimed the insight?
Not especially, no.
But must a plumber have no dripping taps? Need a mechanic never break down late at night in a thunderstorm? You get the gist, I'm sure. And yeah, it is a very thin argument, I grant you.
By the way, this isn't one of those 'The Secret' blogs which channel the spirit of Napoleon Hill. Pity, since those ones do seem to make a lot of money. I'm not a big wrap for the suggestion that all you need to do is think positively and the world will jump through hoops for you. The assumption we can be effortlessly content if only we know the secret is, frankly, silly. My own personal experience over decades suggests to me that contentment is elusive, and not simple to get.
Instead of suggesting it is easy to be content, a lot of seemingly sensible people tend to argue that happiness depends upon some level of material success (being able to afford food, at least) and the adjustment of expectations to match that level of attainment. You know, the old standard of 'either earn more, or expect less'. It has another variant: if you want to be wealthy, increase your income or reduce your spending.
Even as I typed that I was anticipating the many hundreds of thousands of people (well, maybe five) who will read this blog exploding angrily and crying out "What about spiritual contentment Jim? What about non-material wealth? What about people who understand the illusion of material wealth and are able to obtain other-worldly, spiritual contentment?"
Best I 'fess up that it was me who thought that. Well, ok: so that is easy to come by, is it, Jim? You meditate diligently for hours and chew ascetically through your meagre bowl of brown rice at the end of a reflective maya-denying day, and a sense of divine well-being just drops into your lap? If it did, don't you think more people would tumble to it? It'd be more popular than any given drug of dependence, surely? C'mon Jim, could Meditation really be such a successful solution? Rewarding, cheap and legal... well, apparently not. Isn't the belief meditation heals all woes just another version of 'it's simple, just do this...'?
I often think of people who fervently recommend meditation as a solution as the modern-day equivalent of my Grandfather's mates who would recommend him to 'just have a drink mate, and forget about it...'And, frankly, even when I have earned money and am happy to earn as much as I do, it isn't a recipe for contentment so much as an invitation to wonder whether I have sold out...
So contentment is hard to get.
Yeah, I know. Self evident. No need to even think about it, really - except: why? If we've evolved over millions of years into some sort of magnificant specimens of genetic self-promulgation, you'd at least think we'd feel good about it by now. What's the point of most of us feeling like crap, most of the time? We don't all vote Liberal. We don't all barrack for Collingwood. Not all of us bought The Sims. Hmmm. But then I guess we all have our equivalent guilty failings.
And there's the point.
We all want to be cool, don't we? Even those of us who have decided to renounce clique-ish fetishism. The outcasts want to be cool outcasts. (Did I just nail the tragedy of Goth-dom?). Whatever way we structure the challenge, success is measured by climbing to the top of a particular social construction: hermit, sex-god, fashionista or parent, we all have a particular way we would like others to see us. If only they saw us like we want to be seen, broke and starving as we might yet still be, we'd be content.
Contentment is being seen by others as we want to be seen.
Go ahead. Argue against it. Think through your various circular arguments about why I don't get your particular take on what would really, truly make you happy. God knows I have. Even those who just want to be alone don't want to be regarded at all by others. A big hole in their reflected rejection.
Please forgive me my presumptions, but I honestly believe our biology is against us. Assuming you're human, you're part of what would broadly be described as a gregarious species. We flock to flocks. We live in society. We all, in some sence, belong. And there's a lot of pressure in the world to fit in. We're all looking for a simple solution, we all want to find the magic bullet, we all want to have others validate us as successful. Contentment is dependent upon the perceptions others have of us.
In 1964 Putney and Putney published 'The Normal Neurosis'. Their thesis was that we all want others to regard us as part of the flock, there is pressure to conform so we can stay part of the group and not be expelled. Lone examples of our species easily fall prey to hunting tigers, speaking from an evolutionary perspective. There is pressure to conform. We mostly all stop at stop signs. We feel anxious when others don't see us as acceptable. We use phrases like "Can't you see what you're doing to me?" and "Don't you know who I am?"Putney and Putney weren't original, by the way. Start with Fairbairn and ignore his Freudian origins. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Fairbairn For a Freudian he got good - really, really good.
Look at the British Object Relations school. Go on. Use Wikipedia. You know you want to. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_relations_theory Klein. Bowlby. Winnicot. Look at Bowen's Family Systems Theory.
Differentiation is a revelation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Bowen
Then consider Schnarch's sex and marital therapy. You feel you want to. http://passionatemarriage.com/
Ok so you can't be bothered. I'll sum it up for you: Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I respond.
The standout example of this approach is usually Viktor Frankl. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl .
Inadequate summary: man finds meaning in oppressive scenario (he was a holocaust survivor, his wife died in the women's camp in Auschwitz while he was in the mens' camp). Frankl credited his ability to survive to his ability to find meaning in his life despite its awful circumstances.
What mattered was not what happened but how he responded. He was building a cathedral and not breaking rocks.
He wrote "Man's search for meaning".http://www.amazon.com/Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor-Frankl/dp/0671023373 Please read this book. It will make you a better person.
All of which brings me to this single, hubristic point: if I am to be content, it all comes down to how I respond to what happens to me, and so if I am to enjoy a happy life, I must find the best way to respond to what occurs.
Implicit in this argument is the idea of developing a tolerance for what happens, the idea of not needing to respond to particular stimuli in particular ways. Harden up, stop automatically giving predictable knee-jerk reactions. Stop being a prisoner of other's deterministic behaviour...
Contentment is being seen by myself the way I want to be seen, and being transparent with it.
Contentment is based on self respect. Always and only as long as I respect myself for how I respond to the world.
So what is the best way to respond?
In terms of your own life, I could well ask you the same question.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Original Thought
I had an original thought once. I remember it distinctly because most of the time my thoughts come and go without commentary. This one had one of those little crosses after it which made me look down at the bottom of my mind for the footnote. It said: source unknown.
I was driving on the LaTrobe flyover in my old XW Fairmont, headed to North Geelong and my mother’s housing commission house in Norlane. It was the close of a warm summery January day, and I was reflecting upon my lecturer’s fascination with the name Norlane. He was the chair of the department of English Literature, a very left leaner who loved words and thought that the name Norlane was the epitome of a working class suburb as told by the inhabitants. I thought how much I respected him, and yet I suspected him of being just a bit condescending toward the suburb I lived in. It also struck me that he didn’t laugh much, and I wondered how someone with so much learning could be so unhappy. It then struck me that the true challenge for a person is not to learn lots of knowledge, but to be content with the life they are living.
Sure, it sounds a lot like what a lot of other people have said… only maybe slightly less profound. Apparently Athena was born as a consequence of Zeus thinking really hard and giving birth through his forehead. I’m tipping that was a pretty profound thought. I make no such claim for my own paltry cerebrum. There was not a trace of placenta smacking the windscreen as I slowed for the lights and ignored the Ballarat turn-off. Nevertheless, that thought has served me very well in the decades since.
I say decades. I thought that thought at the start of 1990. That was an astonishing time in Geelong. Pyramid building society was a flourishing business there then. The waterfront was still a grubby rat-infested relic. I’m sure if I googled Geelong 1990 I would get one of those ‘do you mean…?’ messages with a list of other locations I would more likely want to think about. And possibly some comment about the high rates of alcoholism, domestic violence, Collingwood membership, Elvis tribute nights and purchases of Marilyn Monroe boxed video-sets per head of population which would only get worse as Pyramid crashed and the whole town slid into what can only be described as the Kennet Liberal Government era. And you could get Marilyn on Beta then. Somehow I think she was more attractive on Betamax...the doomed on the doomed. But then, clearly I have thought way too much about the whole scenario.
So let us come back to that original thought… the idea that a person might devote themselves to their own contentment seems at best utilitarian and at worst hedonistic. Actually, come to think of it there are far worse things than hedonism. But you get what I mean. I remember thinking once that hedonism was just altruism taken to its logical conclusion – but perhaps one can be too inclusive.
I remember reading in The Age once where a writer thought that altruism was a really good attitude for life, and that being altruistic is worthy of self-congratulation. This seemed to suggest to the author that being altruistic is self-serving and egotistical. The person then commented that they agreed with the philosopher who had already considered this situation and had concluded that the individual concerned had had ‘one thought too many’. For years since I have wondered who the hell that philosopher was. I did two years of philosophy and never came across such a sensible thinker. Obviously one of those failed, minor philosophers who wrote in the 70’s and didn’t smoke a pipe. Probably not even French.
But back to the point. I have spent years thinking about how to be content with my life. The problem is bad things keep happening. Every time I get close to contentment someone gets shot, or loses the unlosable election, or invades Iraq. Or suggests we should end our marriage. But somehow it goes against the grain to think that the opposite of contentment is self pity. We had a prime minister in Australia once who only served 8 days. His name was Ford, and somehow I wish his initials had been XW. Best Ford ever. But alas young Xavier William was misdiagnosed at birth and christened something else. I’ll google it later and fill in the gaps. It’s the sort of thing I do.
Ok, so it was Francis FORDE. Nevertheless as fine a Prime Minster as was ever designed in Detroit. Once upon a time a man could be bent out of a piece of metal and become the leader of our nation. Thank God we still have the momories.
Ex-prime minister Forde was apparently a decent man. Despite many things which went askew
in his life, including his widowerhood, and tragic death of a promising son (would it have still been tragic if the poor boy had lacked social graces, or an impressive bowling action?) he was a very happy and kindly man well into his 80’s, Personally I remember the 80s as being a time of greed and lemon yellow shirts. I certainly hope his were indeed better. The point is though, he achieved what my lecturers at Melbourne University apparently could not… he was a content man. His post-politics relationships were characterised by good humour and … dare one suggest such a thing?... the sense that he had achieved much and could be generous in his opinions of others. He died in ’83 at the age of ’92, the longest lived of all our Prime Ministers.
So what of me? I have achieved very little, and in fact have even lost most of that. But the idea that I might find some way to achieve contentment has infused my efforts since that day, and somehow, despite grief, loss, conservative dress sense and premature grey hair I have come tantalisingly close. And maybe, just maybe, I have something to share, regarding living a content life, with you.
I was driving on the LaTrobe flyover in my old XW Fairmont, headed to North Geelong and my mother’s housing commission house in Norlane. It was the close of a warm summery January day, and I was reflecting upon my lecturer’s fascination with the name Norlane. He was the chair of the department of English Literature, a very left leaner who loved words and thought that the name Norlane was the epitome of a working class suburb as told by the inhabitants. I thought how much I respected him, and yet I suspected him of being just a bit condescending toward the suburb I lived in. It also struck me that he didn’t laugh much, and I wondered how someone with so much learning could be so unhappy. It then struck me that the true challenge for a person is not to learn lots of knowledge, but to be content with the life they are living.
Sure, it sounds a lot like what a lot of other people have said… only maybe slightly less profound. Apparently Athena was born as a consequence of Zeus thinking really hard and giving birth through his forehead. I’m tipping that was a pretty profound thought. I make no such claim for my own paltry cerebrum. There was not a trace of placenta smacking the windscreen as I slowed for the lights and ignored the Ballarat turn-off. Nevertheless, that thought has served me very well in the decades since.
I say decades. I thought that thought at the start of 1990. That was an astonishing time in Geelong. Pyramid building society was a flourishing business there then. The waterfront was still a grubby rat-infested relic. I’m sure if I googled Geelong 1990 I would get one of those ‘do you mean…?’ messages with a list of other locations I would more likely want to think about. And possibly some comment about the high rates of alcoholism, domestic violence, Collingwood membership, Elvis tribute nights and purchases of Marilyn Monroe boxed video-sets per head of population which would only get worse as Pyramid crashed and the whole town slid into what can only be described as the Kennet Liberal Government era. And you could get Marilyn on Beta then. Somehow I think she was more attractive on Betamax...the doomed on the doomed. But then, clearly I have thought way too much about the whole scenario.
So let us come back to that original thought… the idea that a person might devote themselves to their own contentment seems at best utilitarian and at worst hedonistic. Actually, come to think of it there are far worse things than hedonism. But you get what I mean. I remember thinking once that hedonism was just altruism taken to its logical conclusion – but perhaps one can be too inclusive.
I remember reading in The Age once where a writer thought that altruism was a really good attitude for life, and that being altruistic is worthy of self-congratulation. This seemed to suggest to the author that being altruistic is self-serving and egotistical. The person then commented that they agreed with the philosopher who had already considered this situation and had concluded that the individual concerned had had ‘one thought too many’. For years since I have wondered who the hell that philosopher was. I did two years of philosophy and never came across such a sensible thinker. Obviously one of those failed, minor philosophers who wrote in the 70’s and didn’t smoke a pipe. Probably not even French.
But back to the point. I have spent years thinking about how to be content with my life. The problem is bad things keep happening. Every time I get close to contentment someone gets shot, or loses the unlosable election, or invades Iraq. Or suggests we should end our marriage. But somehow it goes against the grain to think that the opposite of contentment is self pity. We had a prime minister in Australia once who only served 8 days. His name was Ford, and somehow I wish his initials had been XW. Best Ford ever. But alas young Xavier William was misdiagnosed at birth and christened something else. I’ll google it later and fill in the gaps. It’s the sort of thing I do.
Ok, so it was Francis FORDE. Nevertheless as fine a Prime Minster as was ever designed in Detroit. Once upon a time a man could be bent out of a piece of metal and become the leader of our nation. Thank God we still have the momories.
Ex-prime minister Forde was apparently a decent man. Despite many things which went askew
in his life, including his widowerhood, and tragic death of a promising son (would it have still been tragic if the poor boy had lacked social graces, or an impressive bowling action?) he was a very happy and kindly man well into his 80’s, Personally I remember the 80s as being a time of greed and lemon yellow shirts. I certainly hope his were indeed better. The point is though, he achieved what my lecturers at Melbourne University apparently could not… he was a content man. His post-politics relationships were characterised by good humour and … dare one suggest such a thing?... the sense that he had achieved much and could be generous in his opinions of others. He died in ’83 at the age of ’92, the longest lived of all our Prime Ministers.
So what of me? I have achieved very little, and in fact have even lost most of that. But the idea that I might find some way to achieve contentment has infused my efforts since that day, and somehow, despite grief, loss, conservative dress sense and premature grey hair I have come tantalisingly close. And maybe, just maybe, I have something to share, regarding living a content life, with you.
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