Of all the various criminal elements in our society for the last fifty years or so, Big Pharma is the capo di tutti capi - the worst of the worst. The numbing of our populace is their business, and they are tragically very good at it.
Judith Warner writes: "Americans are being vastly overmedicated for often relatively minor mental health concerns. This over-reliance on quick-fix medication is numbing our nation and dulling our awareness of real and pressing social issues and of non-psychopharmacological therapies and treatments. The notion that American children and adults are being over-diagnosed and overmedicated for exaggerated or even fictitious mental disorders has now become one of the defining tropes of our era."
Go to Judith Warner's article called "Overselling Overmedication" at: http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/
Today's Quote
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." Albert Einstein
Just Say Yes!
There was an article in the NY Times today about Obsessive compulsive behavior and how it plays out in places like a restaurant. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/06/dining/06obsess.html?_r=1&oref=slogin)
Here's an excerpt:
"Many of the situations that unsettle people with obsessive-compulsive disorder — driving, for instance — provoke at least some level of anxiety in just about everyone. But restaurants are designed to be calming and relaxing. That is one of the main reasons people like to eat out.
To many of us with obsessive-compulsive disorder, those pleasures are invisible. We walk into a calm and civilized dining room and see things we won’t be able to control. This feeds directly into one of the unifying themes of the disorder: an often crushing inability to handle the unknown. 'The common thread, I think, has something to do with certainty,' said Dr. Michael Jenike, medical director of the Obsessive Compulsive Disorders Institute at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., which is affiliated with Harvard Medical School. 'If you have'O.C.D., whatever form, there seems to be some problem with being certain about things - whether they’re safe or whether they’ve been done right.”
I do agree with Dr. Jenike that many obsessive types have major fears about the "unknown" and tend to prize the illusion of control above all else. The question is: why are so many people this way? Those who are aware of my thinking know that I obviously don't let myself get away with a simple "medical" explanation, which of course would lead to drugs as a solution and lots of profits all around for everyone except the patient. No, obsessive-compulsive disorders are first and foremost about the word "no." That's right - "NO!"
Here's a quote from the famous developmental psychologist, Erik Erikson: "Too much shaming does not result in a sense of propriety, but in a secret determination to try and get away with things."
Ah-ha! Getting away with things. Yes, the OCD person is acting against something forbidden, but what? Here's a quote from Dr. Freud: "Many obsessional acts turn out to be measures of precaution and security against sexual experiences."
I wholeheartedly agree with the great master. I would add, however, that anger and inner aggression are almost as equally feared as sexual feelings in the obsessive person.
Here's a description I put together for a class I taught on the subject listing some of the main characteristic of many people with this disorder:
- Intense anxiety and shame about sexual and/or aggressive impulses and feelings with irresistible urges, expressed in repetitive behaviors, to undo imagined damage to the self or others “caused” by the impulses; most commonly the compulsive behaviors are cleaning, avoiding, repeating or checking;
- Ruminating, worrying, procrastinating and indecision occupying an inordinate amount of daily life (for fear that the forbidden impulses will create some imagined disaster or “mess”); perfectionism serves the purpose of preventing action, while simultaneously bolstering a false sense of superiority;
- Preoccupation with rules, lists, schedules and order in general is so intense that it goes far beyond any practical considerations and prevents opportunities for pleasure, or ruins pleasurable experiences after the fact with anxiety, shame, doubt and/or guilt;
- Leisure and social activities tend to be avoided as “wasting time;” spending money is also thought of as wasteful, so belongings, food and artifacts are kept and collected even though they are outgrown, spoiled or worn out; in some cases this may be accompanied by compulsive spending binges that are extreme and appear to reinforce the concern of wastefulness;
- The person is aware of the irrationality and extreme nature of the obsessions and compulsions, but feels unable to resist either.
Whew! That's a lot of pressure, isn't it? Especially when one could be having hot sex and telling off a few rude cashiers or contractors instead! Ha! Just kidding! If only it were that easy. What really needs to be addressed is one's inner prohibitions against hot sex and aggression. Acting out sexually, or blowing off steam at somebody, just like binge eating, doesn't solve the problem. Discovering why you think your thoughts and feeings are unacceptable when they are, after all, just thoughts and feelings, is the real solution, but that requires a fair amount of uninhibited excavating.
Full Permission Living, which is what I call the process that I practice and teach, is the based on the understanding that human beings are, by first nature, sane, loving, cooperative, creative, humorous, intelligent, productive and naturally self-regulating. It follows then that the inner judgements and prohibitions that we develop against our inner lives are exactly what cause us to act out dysfunctionally.
Just say no? Sorry, Nancy Reagan, but saying no actually is the problem. Learning how to say "YES!" to our human feelings and healthy desires is the real inner solution to self-destructive behavior.
PL
Here's an excerpt:
"Many of the situations that unsettle people with obsessive-compulsive disorder — driving, for instance — provoke at least some level of anxiety in just about everyone. But restaurants are designed to be calming and relaxing. That is one of the main reasons people like to eat out.
To many of us with obsessive-compulsive disorder, those pleasures are invisible. We walk into a calm and civilized dining room and see things we won’t be able to control. This feeds directly into one of the unifying themes of the disorder: an often crushing inability to handle the unknown. 'The common thread, I think, has something to do with certainty,' said Dr. Michael Jenike, medical director of the Obsessive Compulsive Disorders Institute at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., which is affiliated with Harvard Medical School. 'If you have'O.C.D., whatever form, there seems to be some problem with being certain about things - whether they’re safe or whether they’ve been done right.”
I do agree with Dr. Jenike that many obsessive types have major fears about the "unknown" and tend to prize the illusion of control above all else. The question is: why are so many people this way? Those who are aware of my thinking know that I obviously don't let myself get away with a simple "medical" explanation, which of course would lead to drugs as a solution and lots of profits all around for everyone except the patient. No, obsessive-compulsive disorders are first and foremost about the word "no." That's right - "NO!"
Here's a quote from the famous developmental psychologist, Erik Erikson: "Too much shaming does not result in a sense of propriety, but in a secret determination to try and get away with things."
Ah-ha! Getting away with things. Yes, the OCD person is acting against something forbidden, but what? Here's a quote from Dr. Freud: "Many obsessional acts turn out to be measures of precaution and security against sexual experiences."
I wholeheartedly agree with the great master. I would add, however, that anger and inner aggression are almost as equally feared as sexual feelings in the obsessive person.
Here's a description I put together for a class I taught on the subject listing some of the main characteristic of many people with this disorder:
- Intense anxiety and shame about sexual and/or aggressive impulses and feelings with irresistible urges, expressed in repetitive behaviors, to undo imagined damage to the self or others “caused” by the impulses; most commonly the compulsive behaviors are cleaning, avoiding, repeating or checking;
- Ruminating, worrying, procrastinating and indecision occupying an inordinate amount of daily life (for fear that the forbidden impulses will create some imagined disaster or “mess”); perfectionism serves the purpose of preventing action, while simultaneously bolstering a false sense of superiority;
- Preoccupation with rules, lists, schedules and order in general is so intense that it goes far beyond any practical considerations and prevents opportunities for pleasure, or ruins pleasurable experiences after the fact with anxiety, shame, doubt and/or guilt;
- Leisure and social activities tend to be avoided as “wasting time;” spending money is also thought of as wasteful, so belongings, food and artifacts are kept and collected even though they are outgrown, spoiled or worn out; in some cases this may be accompanied by compulsive spending binges that are extreme and appear to reinforce the concern of wastefulness;
- The person is aware of the irrationality and extreme nature of the obsessions and compulsions, but feels unable to resist either.
Whew! That's a lot of pressure, isn't it? Especially when one could be having hot sex and telling off a few rude cashiers or contractors instead! Ha! Just kidding! If only it were that easy. What really needs to be addressed is one's inner prohibitions against hot sex and aggression. Acting out sexually, or blowing off steam at somebody, just like binge eating, doesn't solve the problem. Discovering why you think your thoughts and feeings are unacceptable when they are, after all, just thoughts and feelings, is the real solution, but that requires a fair amount of uninhibited excavating.
Full Permission Living, which is what I call the process that I practice and teach, is the based on the understanding that human beings are, by first nature, sane, loving, cooperative, creative, humorous, intelligent, productive and naturally self-regulating. It follows then that the inner judgements and prohibitions that we develop against our inner lives are exactly what cause us to act out dysfunctionally.
Just say no? Sorry, Nancy Reagan, but saying no actually is the problem. Learning how to say "YES!" to our human feelings and healthy desires is the real inner solution to self-destructive behavior.
PL
IN TREATMENT
Has anyone been watching the new HBO series, “In Treatment?” It’s on 5 nights a week for a half hour as it follows the scenarios between three individual patients and one married couple with their therapist (Gabriel Byrne) and then ends the week with the therapist having a session with his supervisor (Dianne Wiest). Two weeks into it, I have to say that so far, I’m impressed by the subtle intensity of the interactions between the characters, and by the presentation of therapists as “real” people.
It has taken the better part of a century for the western world to begin breaking down the wall between analyst and patient and start exploring in earnest the very human nature of this most powerful and unique type of bond. It is, in the final analysis (sorry, couldn't resist!) the relationship between patient and therapist that effects healing moreso than any particular intrapsychic and historical content that is discussed or examined. I have said many times to patients of mine that what we talk about in therapy is only a vehicle for what’s really happening in therapy.
It’s easier to understand this when you realize that many of our earliest (and worst) traumas hit us at an age when language with words was not our primary way of thinking or relating to the world. In other words, most of our character defenses and dysfunctional adaptations were created during a pre-verbal time, and therefore held mostly in our bodies, and in our feelings and emotions. That is why therapy had to evolve from the highly intellectual (and removed) process of psychoanalysis to more humanistic approaches in which the humanity of the patient and the therapist are understood to be part of the healing equation. Karen Horney, a famous psychoanalyst well ahead of her time over sixty years ago, once referred to the need for therapists to be “wholehearted” in their approach to patients. “In order to approach the ideal of wholeheartedness, we [analysts] must be able to surrender to the work, letting all of our faculties operate while nearly forgetting about ourselves. This is like surrendering ourselves to music or a work of art.” (I would add love to that list.)
Horney continued: “As our knowledge and experience become an integral part of ourselves, we are barely conscious of all that we are while at the same time being all that we are. We can extend the boundaries of ourselves and be more open to the being of others.”
In all relationships, there is an energetic attraction and connection that has brought two people together for a particular purpose, to mutually experience something. That purpose may be accomplished through different forms: parent-child, teacher-student, employer-employee, doctor-patient, colleagues, teammates, friends, lovers, etc. Each of those relationships are as real and valid for growth and learning what it is to be human as any other, even though the exchanges of energy in each may vary greatly.
In the therapeutic relationship, the format is that the therapist and the patient are both focused overtly on the inner life of the patient, with the therapist providing guidance and reflection and a nonjudgmental, accepting environment in which the patient may delve into those inner areas that are unconscious or too painful or frightening to experience alone. (I say “overtly” because the therapist in this situation must simultaneously be focused internally on his or her own feelings and thoughts, while outwardly helping the patient focus on their thoughts and feelings.)
The therapeutic relationship, again, is a real relationship. As in all relationships, feelings are stirred up in each participant according to the dynamics of the interaction and the internal dynamics of each person. As in all relationships in which the two people are not fully actualized, there are degrees of transferences made by each person, relating to the other in a way that is not in accordance with present reality. Ideally, in this relationship, the therapist is aware of his or her tendencies to make transferences to a degree that the patient is not at first.
As in all relationships, the deepest healing occurs when there is trust between the two participants, surrender to the nature of the relationship, and finally, when there is genuine love being exchanged between each person. In her book, “The Intimate Hour,” psychologist Susan Baur courageously posed the question of whether there can ever be a successful psychotherapy without love between therapist and client. The HBO show's characters pointedly debate this subject, and I would add my voice to the discussion by saying that love has to be distinguished from "erotic transference," which frequently occurs in therapy, and is more about the unmet sensual needs for affection from childhood than about real adult attraction. And yes, it is necessary for the therapist to maintain a certain level of anonymity in the therapeutic relationship about the details of his or her personal life so that the patient is not distracted from the purpose of self-reflection, but that does not mean that the therapist isn’t a real person to the patient or that the therapist isn’t really “there” as himself. What the therapist may share about himself personally must always be done with the therapeutic purpose in consideration. (i.e. - for teaching purposes, for challenging idealizations, for bridging a communication gap due to a fear of intimacy, etc.) At the right moment, sharing a personal experience or feeling with a patient can have a deeply healing effect.
So, back to our show, “In Treatment,” I feel that the creators, cast and crew are doing a good job of bringing us inside the once mysterious intimate hour, and I highly recommend it.
PL
It has taken the better part of a century for the western world to begin breaking down the wall between analyst and patient and start exploring in earnest the very human nature of this most powerful and unique type of bond. It is, in the final analysis (sorry, couldn't resist!) the relationship between patient and therapist that effects healing moreso than any particular intrapsychic and historical content that is discussed or examined. I have said many times to patients of mine that what we talk about in therapy is only a vehicle for what’s really happening in therapy.
It’s easier to understand this when you realize that many of our earliest (and worst) traumas hit us at an age when language with words was not our primary way of thinking or relating to the world. In other words, most of our character defenses and dysfunctional adaptations were created during a pre-verbal time, and therefore held mostly in our bodies, and in our feelings and emotions. That is why therapy had to evolve from the highly intellectual (and removed) process of psychoanalysis to more humanistic approaches in which the humanity of the patient and the therapist are understood to be part of the healing equation. Karen Horney, a famous psychoanalyst well ahead of her time over sixty years ago, once referred to the need for therapists to be “wholehearted” in their approach to patients. “In order to approach the ideal of wholeheartedness, we [analysts] must be able to surrender to the work, letting all of our faculties operate while nearly forgetting about ourselves. This is like surrendering ourselves to music or a work of art.” (I would add love to that list.)
Horney continued: “As our knowledge and experience become an integral part of ourselves, we are barely conscious of all that we are while at the same time being all that we are. We can extend the boundaries of ourselves and be more open to the being of others.”
In all relationships, there is an energetic attraction and connection that has brought two people together for a particular purpose, to mutually experience something. That purpose may be accomplished through different forms: parent-child, teacher-student, employer-employee, doctor-patient, colleagues, teammates, friends, lovers, etc. Each of those relationships are as real and valid for growth and learning what it is to be human as any other, even though the exchanges of energy in each may vary greatly.
In the therapeutic relationship, the format is that the therapist and the patient are both focused overtly on the inner life of the patient, with the therapist providing guidance and reflection and a nonjudgmental, accepting environment in which the patient may delve into those inner areas that are unconscious or too painful or frightening to experience alone. (I say “overtly” because the therapist in this situation must simultaneously be focused internally on his or her own feelings and thoughts, while outwardly helping the patient focus on their thoughts and feelings.)
The therapeutic relationship, again, is a real relationship. As in all relationships, feelings are stirred up in each participant according to the dynamics of the interaction and the internal dynamics of each person. As in all relationships in which the two people are not fully actualized, there are degrees of transferences made by each person, relating to the other in a way that is not in accordance with present reality. Ideally, in this relationship, the therapist is aware of his or her tendencies to make transferences to a degree that the patient is not at first.
As in all relationships, the deepest healing occurs when there is trust between the two participants, surrender to the nature of the relationship, and finally, when there is genuine love being exchanged between each person. In her book, “The Intimate Hour,” psychologist Susan Baur courageously posed the question of whether there can ever be a successful psychotherapy without love between therapist and client. The HBO show's characters pointedly debate this subject, and I would add my voice to the discussion by saying that love has to be distinguished from "erotic transference," which frequently occurs in therapy, and is more about the unmet sensual needs for affection from childhood than about real adult attraction. And yes, it is necessary for the therapist to maintain a certain level of anonymity in the therapeutic relationship about the details of his or her personal life so that the patient is not distracted from the purpose of self-reflection, but that does not mean that the therapist isn’t a real person to the patient or that the therapist isn’t really “there” as himself. What the therapist may share about himself personally must always be done with the therapeutic purpose in consideration. (i.e. - for teaching purposes, for challenging idealizations, for bridging a communication gap due to a fear of intimacy, etc.) At the right moment, sharing a personal experience or feeling with a patient can have a deeply healing effect.
So, back to our show, “In Treatment,” I feel that the creators, cast and crew are doing a good job of bringing us inside the once mysterious intimate hour, and I highly recommend it.
PL
Perfection on Superbowl Sunday?
There's an interesting article in the NY Times today about the notion of perfection entitled: "Perfection Is Afterthought, Perfect Examples Say." (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/sports/football/03perfect.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1)
The New England Patriots have won all 18 games they've played this year as they enter today's Superbowl, a "perfect" season thus far. But is it?
“There is no perfect season,” said John Wooden, who coached the U.C.L.A. basketball teams that once won 88 consecutive games. “You can have a season where you win all your games. But that is far from perfect. The other teams you played scored points and your team made mistakes. Maybe a lucky bounce actually won you a game or two. No, winning doesn’t make you perfect.”
Other famous athletes who have attained perfect scores and achieved record-breaking feats of greatness in their sport are also quoted in the article. Most agree that thinking about perfection or breaking records actually interferes with performance.
Winning doesn't make you perfect? I love that! Why? Because perfection, in the way most people think about it, is an illusion, and perfectionism is a crippling defense mechanism that actually prevents someone from achieving even reasonable goals or experiencing even minimal levels of fulfillment.
In reality, perfection is a place we're always heading towards, but never attaining, or conversely, it is the ongoing state of things already, depending on the way you want to frame it. In other words, because we're always evolving, because we're living beings, and therefore never static, anything that we accomplish today in the course of our evolution only sets the bar higher for another achievement tomorrow. Yet, also by virtue of the fact that we are alive, and as such are exact representations in physical form of our soul's intentions, we are already perfect in that we are exactly what we are designing to be in each moment. (Or as John Lennon put it: "Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be.")
Perfectionism, then, is a covert way of resisting the very thing one is trying to accomplish, and/or it is an expression of the resistance to feeling gratified by what one actualy does accomplish. (Does anyone know a happy perfectionist?) Put another way, an obsessive insistance on perfection is a way of not giving, a withholding of one's gifts. It is a passive-aggressive act. The perfectionist will say things like: I can't serve our friends this meal, or present this work of art to the world, because my creation isn't good enough yet. Or I can't go to your party because I don't have a suitable outfit to wear, or I can't take my clothes off in front of you and make love with you because I'm out of shape physically. In other words, perfectionism is a disguised way of saying: "No!" No, I'm not going to give of myself to you. No, I'm not going to share my gifts with you. Etc. And that "no" is all too often disguised under the very annoying and false self-effacement of: I'm not good enough, or what I have to offer isn't good enough. Ugh! Get over it. Good enough is good enough! Give something to someone already. If it's from your heart, if it's a genuine expression of your desire to give, it will be of value to the recipient. Can you improve the recipe for that dish? Rewrite that screenplay one more time? Lose a little weight? Sure. And you will. And those changes will always occur over time according to your intentions in the moment.
You're a living, vibrant, fluid, always in flux human being. Don't let that stop you from offering yourself to others. There is no one else like you. No one else has your perspective on life, your confluence of experiences and ideas and imagination. No one else has your body, and I can tell you, your body is already beautiful and perfect the way it is... if you say it is.
And remember, whether it's the Giants or the Patriots today... it's just a game!
The New England Patriots have won all 18 games they've played this year as they enter today's Superbowl, a "perfect" season thus far. But is it?
“There is no perfect season,” said John Wooden, who coached the U.C.L.A. basketball teams that once won 88 consecutive games. “You can have a season where you win all your games. But that is far from perfect. The other teams you played scored points and your team made mistakes. Maybe a lucky bounce actually won you a game or two. No, winning doesn’t make you perfect.”
Other famous athletes who have attained perfect scores and achieved record-breaking feats of greatness in their sport are also quoted in the article. Most agree that thinking about perfection or breaking records actually interferes with performance.
Winning doesn't make you perfect? I love that! Why? Because perfection, in the way most people think about it, is an illusion, and perfectionism is a crippling defense mechanism that actually prevents someone from achieving even reasonable goals or experiencing even minimal levels of fulfillment.
In reality, perfection is a place we're always heading towards, but never attaining, or conversely, it is the ongoing state of things already, depending on the way you want to frame it. In other words, because we're always evolving, because we're living beings, and therefore never static, anything that we accomplish today in the course of our evolution only sets the bar higher for another achievement tomorrow. Yet, also by virtue of the fact that we are alive, and as such are exact representations in physical form of our soul's intentions, we are already perfect in that we are exactly what we are designing to be in each moment. (Or as John Lennon put it: "Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be.")
Perfectionism, then, is a covert way of resisting the very thing one is trying to accomplish, and/or it is an expression of the resistance to feeling gratified by what one actualy does accomplish. (Does anyone know a happy perfectionist?) Put another way, an obsessive insistance on perfection is a way of not giving, a withholding of one's gifts. It is a passive-aggressive act. The perfectionist will say things like: I can't serve our friends this meal, or present this work of art to the world, because my creation isn't good enough yet. Or I can't go to your party because I don't have a suitable outfit to wear, or I can't take my clothes off in front of you and make love with you because I'm out of shape physically. In other words, perfectionism is a disguised way of saying: "No!" No, I'm not going to give of myself to you. No, I'm not going to share my gifts with you. Etc. And that "no" is all too often disguised under the very annoying and false self-effacement of: I'm not good enough, or what I have to offer isn't good enough. Ugh! Get over it. Good enough is good enough! Give something to someone already. If it's from your heart, if it's a genuine expression of your desire to give, it will be of value to the recipient. Can you improve the recipe for that dish? Rewrite that screenplay one more time? Lose a little weight? Sure. And you will. And those changes will always occur over time according to your intentions in the moment.
You're a living, vibrant, fluid, always in flux human being. Don't let that stop you from offering yourself to others. There is no one else like you. No one else has your perspective on life, your confluence of experiences and ideas and imagination. No one else has your body, and I can tell you, your body is already beautiful and perfect the way it is... if you say it is.
And remember, whether it's the Giants or the Patriots today... it's just a game!
Leadership versus Policy Wonking
So, according to Paul Krugman in today's NY Times, "What are the lessons for today’s Democrats?" Apparently, Mr. Krugman seems to think one lesson is that successful leadership resides in being first and foremost a purveyor of policy. Mr. Krugman believes that Barack Obama's supporters are in for a big, bad surprise because "those who don’t want to nominate Hillary Clinton because they don’t want to return to the nastiness of the 1990s — a sizable group, at least in the punditocracy — are deluding themselves. Any Democrat who makes it to the White House can expect... an unending procession of wild charges and fake scandals, dutifully given credence by major media organizations that somehow can’t bring themselves to declare the accusations unequivocally false (at least not on Page 1). The point is that while there are valid reasons one might support Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton, the desire to avoid unpleasantness isn’t one of them. What the Democrats should do is get back to talking about issues."
I disagree. We had that for 2 terms of the Clinton administration, and yet in spite of the overall good years economically, the country never came together over anything, basically, and it in fact continued and heightened the divisiveness that began with Richard Nixon. My observations tell me that what the Democrats, and the country, need is a leader, not another policy wonk with a fatally flawed personality. (And make no mistake, while Hillary Clinton may not have the same impulse disorder that her putative husband has, her over-the-top-win-at-all-cost drivenness is a major problem in her character.)
Mr. Obama, on the other hand, shows many of the true signs of leadership, primarily in that he speaks eloquently and naturally of the oneness needed in the electorate and in government in order to move the nation forward into a prosperous, safe and respected future place in the world. Mr. Obama seems to intuitively understand that the ego and the intellect must be at the service of the heart and soul, and of one's intuition and genuine gut instincts, not the other way around. Those who have led with their egos and intellects, and that includes Bill Clinton and every Republican president for the last forty years, are either oppressively dogmatic or lacking in direction and integrity, or in George W. Bush's case - both!
We truly do need change in this country right now, and that change has to go beyond the current administration's disastrous and corrupt approach to government. We need to move towards a change in consciousness, now, in the ways that we see ourselves, individually and as part of the country and the world. The Clintons are offering policy changes at best, yet nothing that Hillary or Bill say ever truly elevates us. It is that elevation that genuine leadership is about.
I disagree. We had that for 2 terms of the Clinton administration, and yet in spite of the overall good years economically, the country never came together over anything, basically, and it in fact continued and heightened the divisiveness that began with Richard Nixon. My observations tell me that what the Democrats, and the country, need is a leader, not another policy wonk with a fatally flawed personality. (And make no mistake, while Hillary Clinton may not have the same impulse disorder that her putative husband has, her over-the-top-win-at-all-cost drivenness is a major problem in her character.)
Mr. Obama, on the other hand, shows many of the true signs of leadership, primarily in that he speaks eloquently and naturally of the oneness needed in the electorate and in government in order to move the nation forward into a prosperous, safe and respected future place in the world. Mr. Obama seems to intuitively understand that the ego and the intellect must be at the service of the heart and soul, and of one's intuition and genuine gut instincts, not the other way around. Those who have led with their egos and intellects, and that includes Bill Clinton and every Republican president for the last forty years, are either oppressively dogmatic or lacking in direction and integrity, or in George W. Bush's case - both!
We truly do need change in this country right now, and that change has to go beyond the current administration's disastrous and corrupt approach to government. We need to move towards a change in consciousness, now, in the ways that we see ourselves, individually and as part of the country and the world. The Clintons are offering policy changes at best, yet nothing that Hillary or Bill say ever truly elevates us. It is that elevation that genuine leadership is about.
A President Like My Father-Caroline Kennedy
A President Like My Father
By CAROLINE KENNEDY
Published: January 27, 2008
OVER the years, I've been deeply moved by the people who've told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president. This sense is even more profound today. That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama.
My reasons are patriotic, political and personal, and the three are intertwined. All my life, people have told me that my father changed their lives, that they got involved in public service or politics because he asked them to. And the generation he inspired has passed that spirit on to its children. I meet young people who were born long after John F. Kennedy was president, yet who ask me how to live out his ideals.
Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible.
We have that kind of opportunity with Senator Obama. It isn't that the other candidates are not experienced or knowledgeable. But this year, that may not be enough. We need a change in the leadership of this country — just as we did in 1960.
Most of us would prefer to base our voting decision on policy differences. However, the candidates' goals are similar. They have all laid out detailed plans on everything from strengthening our middle class to investing in early childhood education. So qualities of leadership, character and judgment play a larger role than usual.
Senator Obama has demonstrated these qualities throughout his more than two decades of public service, not just in the United States Senate but in Illinois, where he helped turn around struggling communities, taught constitutional law and was an elected state official for eight years. And Senator Obama is showing the same qualities today. He has built a movement that is changing the face of politics in this country, and he has demonstrated a special gift for inspiring young people — known for a willingness to volunteer, but an aversion to politics — to become engaged in the political process.
I have spent the past five years working in the New York City public schools and have three teenage children of my own. There is a generation coming of age that is hopeful, hard-working, innovative and imaginative. But too many of them are also hopeless, defeated and disengaged. As parents, we have a responsibility to help our children to believe in themselves and in their power to shape their future. Senator Obama is inspiring my children, my parents' grandchildren, with that sense of possibility.
Senator Obama is running a dignified and honest campaign. He has spoken eloquently about the role of faith in his life, and opened a window into his character in two compelling books. And when it comes to judgment, Barack Obama made the right call on the most important issue of our time by opposing the war in Iraq from the beginning.
I want a president who understands that his responsibility is to articulate a vision and encourage others to achieve it; who holds himself, and those around him, to the highest ethical standards; who appeals to the hopes of those who still believe in the American Dream, and those around the world who still believe in the American ideal; and who can lift our spirits, and make us believe again that our country needs every one of us to get involved.
I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.
By CAROLINE KENNEDY
Published: January 27, 2008
OVER the years, I've been deeply moved by the people who've told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president. This sense is even more profound today. That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama.
My reasons are patriotic, political and personal, and the three are intertwined. All my life, people have told me that my father changed their lives, that they got involved in public service or politics because he asked them to. And the generation he inspired has passed that spirit on to its children. I meet young people who were born long after John F. Kennedy was president, yet who ask me how to live out his ideals.
Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible.
We have that kind of opportunity with Senator Obama. It isn't that the other candidates are not experienced or knowledgeable. But this year, that may not be enough. We need a change in the leadership of this country — just as we did in 1960.
Most of us would prefer to base our voting decision on policy differences. However, the candidates' goals are similar. They have all laid out detailed plans on everything from strengthening our middle class to investing in early childhood education. So qualities of leadership, character and judgment play a larger role than usual.
Senator Obama has demonstrated these qualities throughout his more than two decades of public service, not just in the United States Senate but in Illinois, where he helped turn around struggling communities, taught constitutional law and was an elected state official for eight years. And Senator Obama is showing the same qualities today. He has built a movement that is changing the face of politics in this country, and he has demonstrated a special gift for inspiring young people — known for a willingness to volunteer, but an aversion to politics — to become engaged in the political process.
I have spent the past five years working in the New York City public schools and have three teenage children of my own. There is a generation coming of age that is hopeful, hard-working, innovative and imaginative. But too many of them are also hopeless, defeated and disengaged. As parents, we have a responsibility to help our children to believe in themselves and in their power to shape their future. Senator Obama is inspiring my children, my parents' grandchildren, with that sense of possibility.
Senator Obama is running a dignified and honest campaign. He has spoken eloquently about the role of faith in his life, and opened a window into his character in two compelling books. And when it comes to judgment, Barack Obama made the right call on the most important issue of our time by opposing the war in Iraq from the beginning.
I want a president who understands that his responsibility is to articulate a vision and encourage others to achieve it; who holds himself, and those around him, to the highest ethical standards; who appeals to the hopes of those who still believe in the American Dream, and those around the world who still believe in the American ideal; and who can lift our spirits, and make us believe again that our country needs every one of us to get involved.
I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.
Tots at the Bar?
I have a column called “Au Contraire: The Occasional Note by Peter Loffredo,” on the “Only The Blog Knows Brooklyn” blog, run by Louise “Smartmom” Crawford (of Brooklyn Paper fame). I frequently rail on about the epidemic of parental over-involvement that runs rampant among so many enclaves of educated Baby Boomers these days. My over-involvement in this issue stems from my awareness as a therapist of the damage being done to so many children by these otherwise well-intentioned parents. I have said more than once to said parents that they are creating a generation of “cranky narcissists,” and I have, of course, gotten a lot of angry responses back. (I have also dared to suggest that parents should focus a little more on their sex-romance lives, and boy did that really go down like a lead balloon!)
Yet, this is no small matter from which I intend to back away, and here’s why: narcissism, which can be initiated in almost any stage of early childhood, and can be part of any character structure, is an insidious, crippling disorder.
The characteristics of narcissism include: an intense investment in a false self, with extreme efforts to live up to a grandiose, perfect, “special” self-image; an intense desire to be attached to an idealized other, who is objectified, seen as perfect and special and can be merged with in fantasy and used to bolster one’s own unrealistic, idealized self-image (“the special person of a special person”); others are related to as either sources of supply for emotional gratification and self-aggrandizement, or as extensions of the self, not as real, separate beings with their own needs and identities, so there is very little capacity for real empathy with others as a result; a self-righteous sense of entitlement with little ability to tolerate frustration; an intense underlying rejection of the real self, which is seen as weak, vulnerable, inadequate and imperfect and irreversibly flawed; anger, contempt and irritability felt towards others who display what has been rejected in the real self; an extraordinary dependence on external validation by others for one’s sense of worth, with the double-bind that those who do give such support are devalued, while criticism or negative feedback is reacted to with rage and deep feelings of woundedness; and finally, there is a deep abandonment depression underlying all narcissistic disorders.
Narcissistic injury can take an infinite number of specific forms, but essentially it originates when the parents need the child to be something substantially different from what he or she really is, and that includes a parent wanting a child to think of her or him as their “friend.” Children do not naturally think of their parents as friends. In fact, they need not to see their parents that way.
Which brings me back to the OTBKB blog, and the parents of Park Slope, where the latest controversy being bandied back and forth on the blog is over the fact that a bar in town decided to institute a ban on strollers recently. No, I’m not kidding! A bar. As in... a bar! Now, I like to have a drink as much as anybody, and certainly there are times when a few hours with my kids can increase that craving, but I haven’t yet had an impulse to go to a bar with my 6 year-old to knock down a few. I mean, why would I? I AM A GROWN-UP! (And yes, I am also a stay-at-home Dad, ladies, so don’t even try that one!) The local moms here in Stepford, Brooklyn, however, have tried to make this into a “Mommies rights” issue, whining about how they need places to hang out with other moms with strollers somewhere, especially since they were booted out of Barnes and Nobles a short time ago because their kids were wrecking the place and disrupting other patrons, and because recently someone dared to put a sculpture in Prospect Park that takes up about 50 square feet. That’s right – several parents have complained that in all the vastness of Prospect Park, this piece of art for ADULTS to contemplate takes up space where parents and tots might want to have a picnic! So, if bookstores and public parks are fair game for these parents who rely so heavily on the company of their children for self-esteem and value, why not a bar? Why not a fine restaurant? Why not a health club?
Listen, I love children, and children love me. This is not primarily a convenience issue for me. It is first and foremost an issue of mental health. Children are suffering at the hands of these parents who think that their enmeshment with their children is going to make up for the lack of gratification in their adult sex or work lives, or for the slings and arrows of their own childhoods, or for their own generalized anomie.
I’d like to end with this amazing prose by Kahlil Gibran:
“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.”
Yet, this is no small matter from which I intend to back away, and here’s why: narcissism, which can be initiated in almost any stage of early childhood, and can be part of any character structure, is an insidious, crippling disorder.
The characteristics of narcissism include: an intense investment in a false self, with extreme efforts to live up to a grandiose, perfect, “special” self-image; an intense desire to be attached to an idealized other, who is objectified, seen as perfect and special and can be merged with in fantasy and used to bolster one’s own unrealistic, idealized self-image (“the special person of a special person”); others are related to as either sources of supply for emotional gratification and self-aggrandizement, or as extensions of the self, not as real, separate beings with their own needs and identities, so there is very little capacity for real empathy with others as a result; a self-righteous sense of entitlement with little ability to tolerate frustration; an intense underlying rejection of the real self, which is seen as weak, vulnerable, inadequate and imperfect and irreversibly flawed; anger, contempt and irritability felt towards others who display what has been rejected in the real self; an extraordinary dependence on external validation by others for one’s sense of worth, with the double-bind that those who do give such support are devalued, while criticism or negative feedback is reacted to with rage and deep feelings of woundedness; and finally, there is a deep abandonment depression underlying all narcissistic disorders.
Narcissistic injury can take an infinite number of specific forms, but essentially it originates when the parents need the child to be something substantially different from what he or she really is, and that includes a parent wanting a child to think of her or him as their “friend.” Children do not naturally think of their parents as friends. In fact, they need not to see their parents that way.
Which brings me back to the OTBKB blog, and the parents of Park Slope, where the latest controversy being bandied back and forth on the blog is over the fact that a bar in town decided to institute a ban on strollers recently. No, I’m not kidding! A bar. As in... a bar! Now, I like to have a drink as much as anybody, and certainly there are times when a few hours with my kids can increase that craving, but I haven’t yet had an impulse to go to a bar with my 6 year-old to knock down a few. I mean, why would I? I AM A GROWN-UP! (And yes, I am also a stay-at-home Dad, ladies, so don’t even try that one!) The local moms here in Stepford, Brooklyn, however, have tried to make this into a “Mommies rights” issue, whining about how they need places to hang out with other moms with strollers somewhere, especially since they were booted out of Barnes and Nobles a short time ago because their kids were wrecking the place and disrupting other patrons, and because recently someone dared to put a sculpture in Prospect Park that takes up about 50 square feet. That’s right – several parents have complained that in all the vastness of Prospect Park, this piece of art for ADULTS to contemplate takes up space where parents and tots might want to have a picnic! So, if bookstores and public parks are fair game for these parents who rely so heavily on the company of their children for self-esteem and value, why not a bar? Why not a fine restaurant? Why not a health club?
Listen, I love children, and children love me. This is not primarily a convenience issue for me. It is first and foremost an issue of mental health. Children are suffering at the hands of these parents who think that their enmeshment with their children is going to make up for the lack of gratification in their adult sex or work lives, or for the slings and arrows of their own childhoods, or for their own generalized anomie.
I’d like to end with this amazing prose by Kahlil Gibran:
“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.”
Frank on the sex lives of the candidates!
Frank's response to my post on Eros and politics (below) was so great, I'm putting it up as a post itself instead of as a comment. Enjoy!
Hey Peter,
l am glad l am not the only one thinking about this. l have been holding it in for a few months now. So l will start with the Republicans. l am not sure he is still in the race, but l have to go with Fred Thompson. That sexy little trophy looks like a total whore in the bedroom that will do whatever it takes to keep her old man smiling. The only other contender is the middle aged Mormon male model. l think we are only looking at about once a season ( yes, the big 4 ) for 7 minutes on a Saturday night (not too late ) and "don't you dare mess up my hair baby" for a real Mormon throw down. The rest of that pack makes me queasy when l think about it, like drinking too much coffee on an empty stomach, and besides if you read the NY Times today you know that Rudy will find YOU. So the other camp. Poor John Edwards, sorry dude, really. He brings to mind the Rod Stewart lyric " ...some guys have all the luck, some guys have all the pain... " Last year Jon Stewart summed it up for Hillary best: "... this is where penises go to die. " l think that has always been crystal clear. So that leaves Barrack and Koo-sin-itch. They are neck and neck. l think Cleveland has been treated to screams coming from the congressman's bedroom windows on more than one occasion. That Julianne Moore lookalike definitely has the look of love and she's red fuckin' hot. You just know she's grabbing those big ears and riding like the thoroughbred she is. He's always grinning, like he has a secret. lt's no secret dude, she's tearing the skin off that thing everynight and everyone but the blind and sleepy know it. Congrats. Too bad he can't see over the podium - people might know who he is and what he is saying. lf he looked like that Mormon clown, he'd be our next president. So that leaves Barrack. You just know those secret service dudes are nodding and winking at each other when those two are tearing it up. l wouldn't be surprised if early on in their detail they busted into the room thinking someone was having a limb severed. She's kicked the windows out of the back of the bus on more than one occasion l'll bet. Yeah, they got "it." Those smiles are real. l'll bet part of Oprah's deal was: " You gotta tell me what its like girlfriend, PPPLLLEEEEAAASSSE!! " Those two would have some party making over the White House, Chi-town style. Rock on. That's all l got. Frank
**************
Start the year off right. Easy ways to stay in shape.
http://body.aol.com/fitness/winter-exercise?NCID=aolcmp00300000002489
Hey Peter,
l am glad l am not the only one thinking about this. l have been holding it in for a few months now. So l will start with the Republicans. l am not sure he is still in the race, but l have to go with Fred Thompson. That sexy little trophy looks like a total whore in the bedroom that will do whatever it takes to keep her old man smiling. The only other contender is the middle aged Mormon male model. l think we are only looking at about once a season ( yes, the big 4 ) for 7 minutes on a Saturday night (not too late ) and "don't you dare mess up my hair baby" for a real Mormon throw down. The rest of that pack makes me queasy when l think about it, like drinking too much coffee on an empty stomach, and besides if you read the NY Times today you know that Rudy will find YOU. So the other camp. Poor John Edwards, sorry dude, really. He brings to mind the Rod Stewart lyric " ...some guys have all the luck, some guys have all the pain... " Last year Jon Stewart summed it up for Hillary best: "... this is where penises go to die. " l think that has always been crystal clear. So that leaves Barrack and Koo-sin-itch. They are neck and neck. l think Cleveland has been treated to screams coming from the congressman's bedroom windows on more than one occasion. That Julianne Moore lookalike definitely has the look of love and she's red fuckin' hot. You just know she's grabbing those big ears and riding like the thoroughbred she is. He's always grinning, like he has a secret. lt's no secret dude, she's tearing the skin off that thing everynight and everyone but the blind and sleepy know it. Congrats. Too bad he can't see over the podium - people might know who he is and what he is saying. lf he looked like that Mormon clown, he'd be our next president. So that leaves Barrack. You just know those secret service dudes are nodding and winking at each other when those two are tearing it up. l wouldn't be surprised if early on in their detail they busted into the room thinking someone was having a limb severed. She's kicked the windows out of the back of the bus on more than one occasion l'll bet. Yeah, they got "it." Those smiles are real. l'll bet part of Oprah's deal was: " You gotta tell me what its like girlfriend, PPPLLLEEEEAAASSSE!! " Those two would have some party making over the White House, Chi-town style. Rock on. That's all l got. Frank
**************
Start the year off right. Easy ways to stay in shape.
http://body.aol.com/fitness/winter-exercise?NCID=aolcmp00300000002489
A Vote for Eros
What's up with politics anyway? Has anyone else found the current discourse to be so far below even a modest measure of enlightenment, or even just a simple level of adult maturity, that you feel like the inmates are running the asylum?
Listening to the pseudo-populist offensive of the radical Republican right, represented by Mike Huckabee and "Walker, Texas Ranger," trying to convince us that the 6,000 year-old world is indeed flat after all, makes me wonder if anyone is really paying attention. But Huck and Chuck's brand of lunacy is not going to cease as long as it is not confronted directly. Part of the problem is that by referring to the philosophical divide in our society as a ''culture war,'' pundits inadvertently give equal weight to ideas that are not deserving of such elevation. "Social Conservatism" sounds so intelligent and thoughful as a position, but in fact, the attacks on evolution, stem cell research, women's reproductive rights, modern education, racial equality and homosexuality are not rooted in rational thinking, objective observation or even intuitive understanding. The positions of these "righteous" radicals are based in superstition, primitive beliefs and fears of the Other, no different from the attitudes that once led ''God fearing'' people to burn women to death for supposedly being witches. Democrats and Moderate Republicans could stop empowering the far-out far right by no longer treating its arguments as just another part of ''American political traditions,'' but as part of a repressive, retrogressive movement that is ultimately doomed to obscurity. Will they? Ha!
Onto a related matter - I'm going to say this as a psychotherapist, as someone who has scrupulously observed the mental health of people for 30 years, Okay? Here it is: Mike Huckabee is crazy. Certifiable. So is Rudy Giuliani. Okay?! Look at their eyes the next time you see them on TV. Just check it out. The others on the right? Well, Romney's just your garden-variety psychopathic ad-man type, the kind of guy we all know and love to hate. He has no real philosophy, other than "Vote for me because I want to win and you know I'm handsome." And John McCain, though he borders on being the only adult among the Republican pack of whackos, is living in a bad B action movie, with himself starring as the real-life Chuck Norris.
So, why haven't the Democrats been able to secure the reigns of power for their party for so long? (Remember that even during the Clinton years, Congress was controlled by the Republicans.) Because if there's one thing even worse than craziness in a leader, it's insincerity, and for most people not trained in the mental health profession, insincerity is easier to read than madness. Bill "Slick Willy" Clinton made disingenuousness an art form during his run for the presidency, and his putative wife is attempting to follow in that tradition, even though so many people have come to hate "Clintonian" politics. (Unfortunately for them, when the likes of Al Gore and John Kerry tried the mealy-mouthed approach, they couldn't pull off the waffling and pandering without looking ludicrous.) John Edwards and Barack Obama started out fairly high on the sincerity meter, but every time Slick Hillary with the Crocodile Tears wins another primary, watch and see if they slide into prevaricating Clintonian blather.
How to choose who to vote for this year? For me and my wife, it's going to be easy, ultimately, because we have one foolproof method for assessing the best potential candidate to lead this nation. We're voting for the one who looks like they're having the healthiest sex life! Yep. We watch every debate, and a lot of news programs, and if you look carefully, you can see who is experiencing Eros on a regular basis, and I can assure you, that person will not precipitously get us into a war, or belligerently alienate the rest of the world or allow vast portions of our citizenry to live in poverty or without a decent, living wage or home environment or a meaningful education. Think about it. No one who has ever had a mind-blowing, soul-quenching orgasm with someone they're in love with has ever followed that up with an impulse to invade a country or steal someone's pension fund or dump some toxic waste in a nearby river. Right? Freud said it a century ago, and many enlightened spiritual teachers said it before him, and some have said it since - the greatest cause of most social ills in the world is sexual repression.
Think about it.
Listening to the pseudo-populist offensive of the radical Republican right, represented by Mike Huckabee and "Walker, Texas Ranger," trying to convince us that the 6,000 year-old world is indeed flat after all, makes me wonder if anyone is really paying attention. But Huck and Chuck's brand of lunacy is not going to cease as long as it is not confronted directly. Part of the problem is that by referring to the philosophical divide in our society as a ''culture war,'' pundits inadvertently give equal weight to ideas that are not deserving of such elevation. "Social Conservatism" sounds so intelligent and thoughful as a position, but in fact, the attacks on evolution, stem cell research, women's reproductive rights, modern education, racial equality and homosexuality are not rooted in rational thinking, objective observation or even intuitive understanding. The positions of these "righteous" radicals are based in superstition, primitive beliefs and fears of the Other, no different from the attitudes that once led ''God fearing'' people to burn women to death for supposedly being witches. Democrats and Moderate Republicans could stop empowering the far-out far right by no longer treating its arguments as just another part of ''American political traditions,'' but as part of a repressive, retrogressive movement that is ultimately doomed to obscurity. Will they? Ha!
Onto a related matter - I'm going to say this as a psychotherapist, as someone who has scrupulously observed the mental health of people for 30 years, Okay? Here it is: Mike Huckabee is crazy. Certifiable. So is Rudy Giuliani. Okay?! Look at their eyes the next time you see them on TV. Just check it out. The others on the right? Well, Romney's just your garden-variety psychopathic ad-man type, the kind of guy we all know and love to hate. He has no real philosophy, other than "Vote for me because I want to win and you know I'm handsome." And John McCain, though he borders on being the only adult among the Republican pack of whackos, is living in a bad B action movie, with himself starring as the real-life Chuck Norris.
So, why haven't the Democrats been able to secure the reigns of power for their party for so long? (Remember that even during the Clinton years, Congress was controlled by the Republicans.) Because if there's one thing even worse than craziness in a leader, it's insincerity, and for most people not trained in the mental health profession, insincerity is easier to read than madness. Bill "Slick Willy" Clinton made disingenuousness an art form during his run for the presidency, and his putative wife is attempting to follow in that tradition, even though so many people have come to hate "Clintonian" politics. (Unfortunately for them, when the likes of Al Gore and John Kerry tried the mealy-mouthed approach, they couldn't pull off the waffling and pandering without looking ludicrous.) John Edwards and Barack Obama started out fairly high on the sincerity meter, but every time Slick Hillary with the Crocodile Tears wins another primary, watch and see if they slide into prevaricating Clintonian blather.
How to choose who to vote for this year? For me and my wife, it's going to be easy, ultimately, because we have one foolproof method for assessing the best potential candidate to lead this nation. We're voting for the one who looks like they're having the healthiest sex life! Yep. We watch every debate, and a lot of news programs, and if you look carefully, you can see who is experiencing Eros on a regular basis, and I can assure you, that person will not precipitously get us into a war, or belligerently alienate the rest of the world or allow vast portions of our citizenry to live in poverty or without a decent, living wage or home environment or a meaningful education. Think about it. No one who has ever had a mind-blowing, soul-quenching orgasm with someone they're in love with has ever followed that up with an impulse to invade a country or steal someone's pension fund or dump some toxic waste in a nearby river. Right? Freud said it a century ago, and many enlightened spiritual teachers said it before him, and some have said it since - the greatest cause of most social ills in the world is sexual repression.
Think about it.
Bobby Fischer's "Window"... and Yours.
Bobby Fischer has died at the age of 64. America's only world chess champion and a true prodigy, Bobby brought chess into mainstream consciousness in America over three decades ago. He certainly inspired me in his famous match with Boris Spassky in the summer of 1972, right after I had graduated from high school. I watched every game on PBS, and then went on to start a chess club at Rider College in my freshman year. I once got to see Bobby work his magic, playing against 20 of Westchester County's best players simultaneously, winning all 20 games in about an hour. He even smiled wryly at one point when he recognized that one of the challengers was playing one of Fischer's own games against him!
As a budding young psychotherapist, I also knew that Bobby Fischer was probably a paranoid schizophrenic. That both saddened me and fascinated me. It saddened me because he became emotionaly too unstable to continue revolutionizing the game of chess. Instead he descended into madness and isolation over the years. It fascinated me because I wondered how one could be so innovative and brilliant (Fischer's IQ was purported to be 181), and yet also be insane. I pondered this question for many years, and often thought about Bobby Fischer when I did.
The conclusion I came to ultimately was that most people have at least a "window" open in their psyche to their highest self, no matter how pressing their other disturbances and conflicts might be. Each person comes into life with innate gifts to bear, some even monumentally so. From Mozart to Mickey Mantle, from Judy Garland to John Forbes Nash, we have plenty of examples of greatness co-existing with deep fatal flaws in the mind. In the lives of so many people I meet, in fact, I frequently see the same thing - areas of talent and light shining through the window of an otherwise "ordinary" life, constricted by the rigid belief systems and suppressed emotions we created in childhood and have not dismantled.
Is there a purpose for the existence of these windows? Yes. It is the soul's way of reminding us of who we truly are, of what we can and will become as we progress on our journey towards self-actualization. It is our inner inspiration to fulfillment. As Bobby Fischer inspired me and perhaps millions of others in the 1970's to explore the world of chess, our own flashes of creativity and brilliance can inspire us to do the selfwork necessary to explore our own inner world and advance our own evolution.
Thanks, Bobby, for the bright light that briefly shown through you.
As a budding young psychotherapist, I also knew that Bobby Fischer was probably a paranoid schizophrenic. That both saddened me and fascinated me. It saddened me because he became emotionaly too unstable to continue revolutionizing the game of chess. Instead he descended into madness and isolation over the years. It fascinated me because I wondered how one could be so innovative and brilliant (Fischer's IQ was purported to be 181), and yet also be insane. I pondered this question for many years, and often thought about Bobby Fischer when I did.
The conclusion I came to ultimately was that most people have at least a "window" open in their psyche to their highest self, no matter how pressing their other disturbances and conflicts might be. Each person comes into life with innate gifts to bear, some even monumentally so. From Mozart to Mickey Mantle, from Judy Garland to John Forbes Nash, we have plenty of examples of greatness co-existing with deep fatal flaws in the mind. In the lives of so many people I meet, in fact, I frequently see the same thing - areas of talent and light shining through the window of an otherwise "ordinary" life, constricted by the rigid belief systems and suppressed emotions we created in childhood and have not dismantled.
Is there a purpose for the existence of these windows? Yes. It is the soul's way of reminding us of who we truly are, of what we can and will become as we progress on our journey towards self-actualization. It is our inner inspiration to fulfillment. As Bobby Fischer inspired me and perhaps millions of others in the 1970's to explore the world of chess, our own flashes of creativity and brilliance can inspire us to do the selfwork necessary to explore our own inner world and advance our own evolution.
Thanks, Bobby, for the bright light that briefly shown through you.
Is David Brooks becoming enlightened?
Well, not quite, but... this will now be the third time in less than a year that I have had to speak supportively of an editorial piece by Mr. Brooks. Today's entry is called, simply, "McCain and Obama." (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/08/opinion/08brooks.html?ref=opinion)
The basic premise of Brooks' column today is one that I agree with. He states, "The central issue in this election is the crisis of leadership," and he points out correctly that Barack Obama and John McCain are candidates in their respective parties that are answering the call of that crisis. "Both ask their audiences to serve a cause greater than self-interest."
Indeed, as astoundingly backward as the policies of George W. Bush have been, his greater failing is that he has is too immature emotionally, limited intellectually and ego-bound psychologically to be a true leader. Whereas Mr. Bush is (sadly) best known for ridiculously self-referential quotes like "I am the Decider," the key word in any Obama speech is "you,” says Brooks. True. True.
Where I disagree with David Brooks, however, is in his implied conclusion that the differences between Obama and McCain are more about style than substance. He frames it euphemistically like this: "One man celebrates communitarian virtues like unity, the other classical virtues like honor." I think a more realistic way of describing the differences between Obama and McCain would be to say that one man is part of a progressive, forward-looking movement into a more enlightened, cooperative future for the world, while the other man is stuck in a world-view that is essentially adversarial, confrontational and self-righteous. As Mr. Obama has himself said, this election is not about black or white, male or female, liberal or conservative, but rather about old ways versus new ways of approaching governance. So, while I concur that both Barack Obama and John McCain are true leaders in their basic characters, what matters as much as having those leadership qualities is where the leader intends to lead to.
PL
The basic premise of Brooks' column today is one that I agree with. He states, "The central issue in this election is the crisis of leadership," and he points out correctly that Barack Obama and John McCain are candidates in their respective parties that are answering the call of that crisis. "Both ask their audiences to serve a cause greater than self-interest."
Indeed, as astoundingly backward as the policies of George W. Bush have been, his greater failing is that he has is too immature emotionally, limited intellectually and ego-bound psychologically to be a true leader. Whereas Mr. Bush is (sadly) best known for ridiculously self-referential quotes like "I am the Decider," the key word in any Obama speech is "you,” says Brooks. True. True.
Where I disagree with David Brooks, however, is in his implied conclusion that the differences between Obama and McCain are more about style than substance. He frames it euphemistically like this: "One man celebrates communitarian virtues like unity, the other classical virtues like honor." I think a more realistic way of describing the differences between Obama and McCain would be to say that one man is part of a progressive, forward-looking movement into a more enlightened, cooperative future for the world, while the other man is stuck in a world-view that is essentially adversarial, confrontational and self-righteous. As Mr. Obama has himself said, this election is not about black or white, male or female, liberal or conservative, but rather about old ways versus new ways of approaching governance. So, while I concur that both Barack Obama and John McCain are true leaders in their basic characters, what matters as much as having those leadership qualities is where the leader intends to lead to.
PL
Russian Poem I saw on the Subway Today
If there is something to desire, there will be something to regret.
If there is something to regret, there will be something to recall.
If there was something to recall, there was nothing to regret.
If there was nothing to regret, there was nothing to desire.
If there is something to regret, there will be something to recall.
If there was something to recall, there was nothing to regret.
If there was nothing to regret, there was nothing to desire.
Two quotes to think about as you start the New Year
"Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be." - John Lennon
"The truth is that there is no journey. You are right now what you are attempting to be. You are right now where you are attempting to go" - Neale Donald Walsh
"The truth is that there is no journey. You are right now what you are attempting to be. You are right now where you are attempting to go" - Neale Donald Walsh
My Year-End Reflection
'Tis the season to... reflect. At least that's what I always feel most inclined to do at this time of year, much moreso than exchanging impractical presents and over-eating, all in the name of "traditions" which require that we behave in certain rote ways without reflecting on why we're doing it.
I'm not against acknowledging certain dates on a calendar, though. Since we do live under the construct of a linear time continuum, holidays and anniversaries can serve as moments "in time" to look over the period just ending to try and understand what motivated us to live how and where and with whom the way we did ("What did you do and how did it feel?" is the only question I think God actually ever asks anyone at the end of a lifetime.). I find a good year-in-review process at once gratifying and disheartening. Gratifying to see the ways in which I may have evolved in the past year, and to take note of the non-material gifts I have given to others, given of myself, in other words, to the degree to which I was able to be myself genuinely with those others. Disheartening to face the ways in which I was disingenuous at times.
One thing I've stopped saying is: "This year was a year of transition." Ha! Why? Because in looking back, I've been saying that exact same thing about almost every preceeding year for most of my adult life. Perhaps, I'm finally accepting that this is a transitional lifetime for me, though if the present moment is all there is, and all time is simultaneous, then what I am transitioning from and to is up for grabs.
Reflecting on the outer world situation, I had an insight recently, expressed somewhat in my recent essay, "Ain't That America." [http://fullpermissionliving.blogspot.com/] The insight was simply this - that as bad as things seem today, in terms of corruption and greed and dishonesty and brutality in so many areas of our various societies, it has been no better or worse for any long stretch of history that we are aware of going back at least a few thousand years. Which again speaks to the simultaneity of time. Clearly, we are exploring and experimenting with the dark side of the human experience, from Ancient Rome, the European Dark ages and the American continent's use of genocide and slavery to establish its sovereignty, to today's exploitation and despoiling of our world and children under the tyranny of corporate and religious fascism.
Sounds grim, but yet this thought did not leave me at all in despair. Quite the contrary, it focused me on the two things that really matter most: self-knowledge and love. When you examine any extensive text of spiritual teachings that stand up without dogma, the only two things that ever really seem to "interest" God are finding more and more creative expressions of love, and deeper and deeper explorations of God's "I Am-ness." So, too, for human beings, each of us as part of that greater I AM, when we are mostly about love's expression and knowing ourselves, we are in harmony.
So, in looking back at the calendar year of 2007, a year that held more than a few bits of turmoil for myself and many people in my sphere, I am ultimately gratified, as in full of gratitude, because I did indeed find more ways of expressiving myself creatively through love, and I do actually know myself that much more at year's end than at this time in 2006. And I had the great pleasure of sharing similar journeys with fellow seekers. I end this year, then, feeling blessed. And grateful.
So, from the great I AM from which we all originate, I wish you a wonderful rest of the holiday season (and hopefully a little actual rest during the holiday season!) and a spectacular New Year!
All my best -
Peter
I'm not against acknowledging certain dates on a calendar, though. Since we do live under the construct of a linear time continuum, holidays and anniversaries can serve as moments "in time" to look over the period just ending to try and understand what motivated us to live how and where and with whom the way we did ("What did you do and how did it feel?" is the only question I think God actually ever asks anyone at the end of a lifetime.). I find a good year-in-review process at once gratifying and disheartening. Gratifying to see the ways in which I may have evolved in the past year, and to take note of the non-material gifts I have given to others, given of myself, in other words, to the degree to which I was able to be myself genuinely with those others. Disheartening to face the ways in which I was disingenuous at times.
One thing I've stopped saying is: "This year was a year of transition." Ha! Why? Because in looking back, I've been saying that exact same thing about almost every preceeding year for most of my adult life. Perhaps, I'm finally accepting that this is a transitional lifetime for me, though if the present moment is all there is, and all time is simultaneous, then what I am transitioning from and to is up for grabs.
Reflecting on the outer world situation, I had an insight recently, expressed somewhat in my recent essay, "Ain't That America." [http://fullpermissionliving.blogspot.com/] The insight was simply this - that as bad as things seem today, in terms of corruption and greed and dishonesty and brutality in so many areas of our various societies, it has been no better or worse for any long stretch of history that we are aware of going back at least a few thousand years. Which again speaks to the simultaneity of time. Clearly, we are exploring and experimenting with the dark side of the human experience, from Ancient Rome, the European Dark ages and the American continent's use of genocide and slavery to establish its sovereignty, to today's exploitation and despoiling of our world and children under the tyranny of corporate and religious fascism.
Sounds grim, but yet this thought did not leave me at all in despair. Quite the contrary, it focused me on the two things that really matter most: self-knowledge and love. When you examine any extensive text of spiritual teachings that stand up without dogma, the only two things that ever really seem to "interest" God are finding more and more creative expressions of love, and deeper and deeper explorations of God's "I Am-ness." So, too, for human beings, each of us as part of that greater I AM, when we are mostly about love's expression and knowing ourselves, we are in harmony.
So, in looking back at the calendar year of 2007, a year that held more than a few bits of turmoil for myself and many people in my sphere, I am ultimately gratified, as in full of gratitude, because I did indeed find more ways of expressiving myself creatively through love, and I do actually know myself that much more at year's end than at this time in 2006. And I had the great pleasure of sharing similar journeys with fellow seekers. I end this year, then, feeling blessed. And grateful.
So, from the great I AM from which we all originate, I wish you a wonderful rest of the holiday season (and hopefully a little actual rest during the holiday season!) and a spectacular New Year!
All my best -
Peter
The End of the Job
In the first two decades of my adult life, I was convinced that I had a problem with work. I could never successfully force myself to stay at a job for long if I wasn’t really enjoying it, not even if I desperately needed the money - and there were times when I desperately needed the money! In fact, until I finally began my own private therapy practice, I had never lasted more than two and a half years at any one job. I never got fired, and in fact, I was a dedicated and enthusiastic professional. As a clinical social worker, I’d worked in private and non-profit agencies, groups homes and runaway shelters, drug treatment programs, foster care, mental health clinics and even a VA hospital for a while. But in the end, which always came sooner rather than later, the limitations and frustrations of bureaucratic work – the time clock, the paperwork, the regulations and excessive caseloads that prevented one from making really creative interventions with clients, and the general malaise of the social service work force, plus the rush-hour commuting in New York City led me to throw my hands up and give notice. These seemed like good reasons to leave a job at the time, yet a creeping judgement in my mind said I was being irresponsible or self-indulgent, that I had a problem.
I took two hiatuses from my chosen field during those first twenty years, both times going into my family’s small home improvement business, once even starting my own house-painting company in Westchester County, just outside of New York City. What I particularly liked about those two stretches of non-white-collar work was that the jobs felt more project-oriented. Small crews of workers would come together – plumbers, carpenters, electricians, painters – and like a team, they applied the skills of their individual trades in harmony (mostly) with each other to transform or build from scratch a new living environment. Then, the various tradespeople would separate until they might meet again on another project. This made sense to me as an efficient way of getting things done, each person invested in the completion of a project, rather than just putting hours in at the same repetitive task day after day, and somehow, the coming together, accomplishing a task, then separating made the work experience more exciting and festive.
It also made sense to me intuitively that work should be fun, compatible with one’s personality and integrated into the "rest" of one’s life, just as "rest" should be an integral part of one’s work-life. I knew all of this in my gut (though before I started doing bodywork psychotherapy, I wasn’t always sure that gut feelings held true wisdom – see the section on "GUT FEELINGS" in my article entitled: "Feeling Human" - coming soon).
I often recall an older man I knew in my teen years named "George", a very kind man who hated his work. He used to say that even though he hated his job, he was okay because of his attitude towards it: "Work is just an 8-hour interruption of my day", George would say proudly. At the time, I thought he was really a sage, and I tried that attitude on for size when I entered the work force in earnest in the 1970s after getting my degrees. It hit me almost immediately, though, once I actually started working, that eight hours was a third of a day, a third of my life! Way too much time to spend in a state of "interruption." As my transient job history evolved, I felt resigned to the fact that I would be a work-force rebel in a world of nine-to-fivers who were responsibly slugging it out in work-days they couldn’t wait to just get through and at jobs they weren’t gratified in.
In 1994, however, I found vindication in, of all things, Fortune magazine! The September 19 cover story of Fortune that year was entitled "The End Of The Job." It heralded the changes to come as the new millennium approached in terms of work-life. "The job is a social artifact", Fortune proclaimed, born of early industrialization and assembly line production methods that were no longer relevant. "We cannot afford the inflexibility that the job brings with it…Jobs discourage accountability because they reward people not for getting the necessary work done, but for ‘doing their jobs." The article pointed out that before people had jobs, they worked in "shifting clusters…in a variety of locations, on a schedule set by the sun and the weather and the needs of the day."
Although no longer for reasons like daylight or weather, but more to do with advancing technology and mobility, and the elusive "quality of life", it has once again become more effective to work that way. Consultants, sole proprietors, temps and subcontractors have become today’s versions of the itinerant craftsmen of the past. Working by the hour is being replaced with working by the project, as it had always been done in most of the blue collar trades.
Furthermore, the article predicted that leisure time, vacations and retirement as they currently are structured would dramatically change. "Without the job, time off from work becomes something not taken out of job time but something taken during the interims between assignments or between project contracts. And retirement? As ever more people become businesses in themselves, retirement will become an individual matter that has less to do with organizational policy and more to do with individual circumstances and desires."
All of these prophetic declarations by Fortune 13 years ago are now commonplace realities in 2007. People do work differently structure-wise, much more independently, solo or in make-shift teams, and it is now the rare exception to meet someone who has been at one job or with one company for ten years, let alone an entire career. (I hadn’t realized that I was part of a pioneering professional class back in the Seventies!) Now, as feature articles recently in the New York Times Magazine have declared, everybody is quitting their jobs.
My favorite essay from the late 90's was in fact entitled, "The Joy of Quitting", written by Michael Lewis. In the piece, Mr. Lewis not only describes the sound economic and creative reasons for regularly changing jobs, he points out that there can be destructive effects from "sticking it out to the bitter end", as we are often instructed to do in childhood. "Finish what you started!" is a common admonishment that so many of us heard from parents, teachers or other authority-figures. In relationships or jobs, this rigid, often shame-based mindset can in fact cause a person to miss or pass up opportunities for greater accomplishment, growth and happiness that could only come by letting go of a current stagnant situation.
Some things have indeed shifted in our attitude towards work during the last decade, and in the ways mentioned, for the better. Yet, a different problem has re-emerged in recent years as part of this transition, perhaps born out of anxiety about not having the security of a "steady job." People, and especially Americans, work too much!
In a New York Times editorial, entitled, "Working Better or Just Harder?", Stephen S. Roach questions the way we are currently measuring the productivity of our work force, which government statistics say is quite high. Since improving productivity is "not about working longer", according to Roach, but about "adding more value per unit of work time", then our "24/7 culture of nearly round-the-clock work…endemic to the wired economy" of "laptops, cell phones, home fax machines…" is indeed producing more quantitatively, but not producing "better", that is more productively. We are all simply working too much.
How much? Well, while there are no statistics for how many hours people log in by logging on at home to do work, a study by the International Labor Organization states that Americans put in an average of 2,000 hours at work ten years ago, which was 83 more hours of work than in 1980. Juan Somavia, head of the labor organization, quoted in a Times article called, "Americans Lead the World in Hours Worked", by Elizabeth Olson, bemoans the situation we’re in here in the US: "While the benefits of hard work are clear, working more is not the same as working better."
Let’s look at the situation from the other side by examining the stats on comparative vacation time taken around the world. The United States has now become the workaholic capital of the world, it seems, surpassing even Japan. Americans, according to the World Tourism Organization, average a measly 13 days off per year, the fewest on the WTO’s list of countries. The next closest countries are Japan and Korea, with 25 annual vacation days. Italy, of course, my ancestral country, is all the way at the other end of the vacationing spectrum with an average of 42 days per year of rest and relaxation, with France, Germany and Brazil about a week behind at 37, 35 and 34 respectively. (I was in Italy two summers ago and it was quite a revelation to witness an entire country’s work force take off for 2 or 3 hours every day at 1 PM. The Italian in me felt the organic wisdom of this break time, but the American in me wondered how they could ever get anything done!)
If all that’s not bad enough, I heard an insult-to-injury statistic announced on WINS all news radio around April 15 that crushingly declared that the average American works 124 days per year just to pay their taxes. That is almost half the work-year!
Some might make the counterpoint that Americans as a whole are making much more money these days, and it’s a tempting argument, but at what price for our wealth, and more importantly, are we happier?
In a Times article entitled, "Pursuing Happiness", Paul Krugman sites a classic survey by economic historian, Richard Easterlin, who formulated what came to be known as the "Easterlin paradox." The survey found that above a very low economic level, economic expansion does not seem to improve people’s feelings of happiness. Working with people around matters of personal happiness, I see this "paradox" validated in my therapy practice all of the time, though why it is considered a paradox, I don’t know. Conventional wisdom has always known that money can’t buy happiness. Conversely, having money doesn’t bring unhappiness either, but while people’s levels of happiness are rarely determined by their level of income, what is true is that as people become happier, and pursue their hearts desires in all aspects of their lives, including work, a common by-product is that their financial lives expand, sometimes greatly. In my experience, money is not the way to happiness, but happiness is often the way to money.
So, what then are the keys to "working better?" In my experience, both as a working person who has been in blue and white-collar jobs, and as a psychotherapist counseling those who struggle with their work-lives, I have found that there are certain essentials.
First, ferret out the mind’s illusion that we must live compartmentalized lives with separate aspects that compete with each other for time, like George’s job being an "8-hour interruption" of his presumed "real life." When a person arrives to understand that their whole life is just one "work", one creation, and that there is no inherent separation between work and play, time suddenly opens up. You are no longer worried that resting and playing are "wasting time", nor are you experiencing work as robbing you of time for pleasure. Several article recently have appeared in the mainstream press recently extolling the virtues of taking naps during the course of the work-day, as the Italians do, and in fact, several major companies have begun providing rooms at the office with pillows and blankets for that purpose. Afternoon nap breaks replacing the afternoon coffee breaks? This represents an excellent organic shift in consciousness, in my opinion. When one is tired, instead of pumping yourself up with caffeine to keep going, you refresh yourself with a little rest.
Secondly, clear out the guilt and other side-effects of rigid childhood conditioning that can make you blindly hunker down and suffer through an ungratifying work-life because you were told that quitting was "bad." If we are growing, we are continually "graduating" from things, and as with formal graduations, we benefit from celebrating what we are leaving by reviewing what we’ve accomplished, acknowledging what is still ahead to do, expressing gratitude, letting go and moving on.
Finally, and most importantly, follow your heart and do what you really enjoy doing. Working can be a pleasurable and creative experience if it is approached as a vehicle for fulfillment, expansion and pleasure. Here’s a quote on the subject from Alexander Lowen, author and creator of Bioenergetic therapy: "Every creative act begins with a pleasurable excitation, goes through a phase of work, and culminates in the joy of expression. From start to finish, the whole creative process is motivated by the striving for pleasure. Not only does pleasure provide the motive force for the creative process, it is the product of that process."
If there is any theme that we will keep coming back to in Full Permission Living, it will be the importance of pleasure - as the essence of life, as everyone’s birthright, and as Lowen says, as both the motivation and the result of our unobstructed creative process.
So, we arrive once again to the famous "pleasure principle" that’s been already referred to in previous lectures and articles in Full Permission Living. Coined by Sigmund Freud almost a century ago, the term identifies one of the main guiding forces in our lives – the instinct to follow pleasure and avoid pain. As Freud and others realized, the pursuit of pleasure is not a frivolous endeavor, but rather a built-in guidance system in human beings to provide direction for self-actualized living. We all know somewhere inside that any task is better performed when it is being experienced with joy and satisfaction. That knowing feeling in our gut is coming from our place of deepest wisdom.
Perhaps, then, we are arriving to the day when we will leave the house in the morning to go to work, or when we are assigned a task to perform at the job, and our loved one’s or boss’ parting words of inspiration will be: "Have fun!"
I took two hiatuses from my chosen field during those first twenty years, both times going into my family’s small home improvement business, once even starting my own house-painting company in Westchester County, just outside of New York City. What I particularly liked about those two stretches of non-white-collar work was that the jobs felt more project-oriented. Small crews of workers would come together – plumbers, carpenters, electricians, painters – and like a team, they applied the skills of their individual trades in harmony (mostly) with each other to transform or build from scratch a new living environment. Then, the various tradespeople would separate until they might meet again on another project. This made sense to me as an efficient way of getting things done, each person invested in the completion of a project, rather than just putting hours in at the same repetitive task day after day, and somehow, the coming together, accomplishing a task, then separating made the work experience more exciting and festive.
It also made sense to me intuitively that work should be fun, compatible with one’s personality and integrated into the "rest" of one’s life, just as "rest" should be an integral part of one’s work-life. I knew all of this in my gut (though before I started doing bodywork psychotherapy, I wasn’t always sure that gut feelings held true wisdom – see the section on "GUT FEELINGS" in my article entitled: "Feeling Human" - coming soon).
I often recall an older man I knew in my teen years named "George", a very kind man who hated his work. He used to say that even though he hated his job, he was okay because of his attitude towards it: "Work is just an 8-hour interruption of my day", George would say proudly. At the time, I thought he was really a sage, and I tried that attitude on for size when I entered the work force in earnest in the 1970s after getting my degrees. It hit me almost immediately, though, once I actually started working, that eight hours was a third of a day, a third of my life! Way too much time to spend in a state of "interruption." As my transient job history evolved, I felt resigned to the fact that I would be a work-force rebel in a world of nine-to-fivers who were responsibly slugging it out in work-days they couldn’t wait to just get through and at jobs they weren’t gratified in.
In 1994, however, I found vindication in, of all things, Fortune magazine! The September 19 cover story of Fortune that year was entitled "The End Of The Job." It heralded the changes to come as the new millennium approached in terms of work-life. "The job is a social artifact", Fortune proclaimed, born of early industrialization and assembly line production methods that were no longer relevant. "We cannot afford the inflexibility that the job brings with it…Jobs discourage accountability because they reward people not for getting the necessary work done, but for ‘doing their jobs." The article pointed out that before people had jobs, they worked in "shifting clusters…in a variety of locations, on a schedule set by the sun and the weather and the needs of the day."
Although no longer for reasons like daylight or weather, but more to do with advancing technology and mobility, and the elusive "quality of life", it has once again become more effective to work that way. Consultants, sole proprietors, temps and subcontractors have become today’s versions of the itinerant craftsmen of the past. Working by the hour is being replaced with working by the project, as it had always been done in most of the blue collar trades.
Furthermore, the article predicted that leisure time, vacations and retirement as they currently are structured would dramatically change. "Without the job, time off from work becomes something not taken out of job time but something taken during the interims between assignments or between project contracts. And retirement? As ever more people become businesses in themselves, retirement will become an individual matter that has less to do with organizational policy and more to do with individual circumstances and desires."
All of these prophetic declarations by Fortune 13 years ago are now commonplace realities in 2007. People do work differently structure-wise, much more independently, solo or in make-shift teams, and it is now the rare exception to meet someone who has been at one job or with one company for ten years, let alone an entire career. (I hadn’t realized that I was part of a pioneering professional class back in the Seventies!) Now, as feature articles recently in the New York Times Magazine have declared, everybody is quitting their jobs.
My favorite essay from the late 90's was in fact entitled, "The Joy of Quitting", written by Michael Lewis. In the piece, Mr. Lewis not only describes the sound economic and creative reasons for regularly changing jobs, he points out that there can be destructive effects from "sticking it out to the bitter end", as we are often instructed to do in childhood. "Finish what you started!" is a common admonishment that so many of us heard from parents, teachers or other authority-figures. In relationships or jobs, this rigid, often shame-based mindset can in fact cause a person to miss or pass up opportunities for greater accomplishment, growth and happiness that could only come by letting go of a current stagnant situation.
Some things have indeed shifted in our attitude towards work during the last decade, and in the ways mentioned, for the better. Yet, a different problem has re-emerged in recent years as part of this transition, perhaps born out of anxiety about not having the security of a "steady job." People, and especially Americans, work too much!
In a New York Times editorial, entitled, "Working Better or Just Harder?", Stephen S. Roach questions the way we are currently measuring the productivity of our work force, which government statistics say is quite high. Since improving productivity is "not about working longer", according to Roach, but about "adding more value per unit of work time", then our "24/7 culture of nearly round-the-clock work…endemic to the wired economy" of "laptops, cell phones, home fax machines…" is indeed producing more quantitatively, but not producing "better", that is more productively. We are all simply working too much.
How much? Well, while there are no statistics for how many hours people log in by logging on at home to do work, a study by the International Labor Organization states that Americans put in an average of 2,000 hours at work ten years ago, which was 83 more hours of work than in 1980. Juan Somavia, head of the labor organization, quoted in a Times article called, "Americans Lead the World in Hours Worked", by Elizabeth Olson, bemoans the situation we’re in here in the US: "While the benefits of hard work are clear, working more is not the same as working better."
Let’s look at the situation from the other side by examining the stats on comparative vacation time taken around the world. The United States has now become the workaholic capital of the world, it seems, surpassing even Japan. Americans, according to the World Tourism Organization, average a measly 13 days off per year, the fewest on the WTO’s list of countries. The next closest countries are Japan and Korea, with 25 annual vacation days. Italy, of course, my ancestral country, is all the way at the other end of the vacationing spectrum with an average of 42 days per year of rest and relaxation, with France, Germany and Brazil about a week behind at 37, 35 and 34 respectively. (I was in Italy two summers ago and it was quite a revelation to witness an entire country’s work force take off for 2 or 3 hours every day at 1 PM. The Italian in me felt the organic wisdom of this break time, but the American in me wondered how they could ever get anything done!)
If all that’s not bad enough, I heard an insult-to-injury statistic announced on WINS all news radio around April 15 that crushingly declared that the average American works 124 days per year just to pay their taxes. That is almost half the work-year!
Some might make the counterpoint that Americans as a whole are making much more money these days, and it’s a tempting argument, but at what price for our wealth, and more importantly, are we happier?
In a Times article entitled, "Pursuing Happiness", Paul Krugman sites a classic survey by economic historian, Richard Easterlin, who formulated what came to be known as the "Easterlin paradox." The survey found that above a very low economic level, economic expansion does not seem to improve people’s feelings of happiness. Working with people around matters of personal happiness, I see this "paradox" validated in my therapy practice all of the time, though why it is considered a paradox, I don’t know. Conventional wisdom has always known that money can’t buy happiness. Conversely, having money doesn’t bring unhappiness either, but while people’s levels of happiness are rarely determined by their level of income, what is true is that as people become happier, and pursue their hearts desires in all aspects of their lives, including work, a common by-product is that their financial lives expand, sometimes greatly. In my experience, money is not the way to happiness, but happiness is often the way to money.
So, what then are the keys to "working better?" In my experience, both as a working person who has been in blue and white-collar jobs, and as a psychotherapist counseling those who struggle with their work-lives, I have found that there are certain essentials.
First, ferret out the mind’s illusion that we must live compartmentalized lives with separate aspects that compete with each other for time, like George’s job being an "8-hour interruption" of his presumed "real life." When a person arrives to understand that their whole life is just one "work", one creation, and that there is no inherent separation between work and play, time suddenly opens up. You are no longer worried that resting and playing are "wasting time", nor are you experiencing work as robbing you of time for pleasure. Several article recently have appeared in the mainstream press recently extolling the virtues of taking naps during the course of the work-day, as the Italians do, and in fact, several major companies have begun providing rooms at the office with pillows and blankets for that purpose. Afternoon nap breaks replacing the afternoon coffee breaks? This represents an excellent organic shift in consciousness, in my opinion. When one is tired, instead of pumping yourself up with caffeine to keep going, you refresh yourself with a little rest.
Secondly, clear out the guilt and other side-effects of rigid childhood conditioning that can make you blindly hunker down and suffer through an ungratifying work-life because you were told that quitting was "bad." If we are growing, we are continually "graduating" from things, and as with formal graduations, we benefit from celebrating what we are leaving by reviewing what we’ve accomplished, acknowledging what is still ahead to do, expressing gratitude, letting go and moving on.
Finally, and most importantly, follow your heart and do what you really enjoy doing. Working can be a pleasurable and creative experience if it is approached as a vehicle for fulfillment, expansion and pleasure. Here’s a quote on the subject from Alexander Lowen, author and creator of Bioenergetic therapy: "Every creative act begins with a pleasurable excitation, goes through a phase of work, and culminates in the joy of expression. From start to finish, the whole creative process is motivated by the striving for pleasure. Not only does pleasure provide the motive force for the creative process, it is the product of that process."
If there is any theme that we will keep coming back to in Full Permission Living, it will be the importance of pleasure - as the essence of life, as everyone’s birthright, and as Lowen says, as both the motivation and the result of our unobstructed creative process.
So, we arrive once again to the famous "pleasure principle" that’s been already referred to in previous lectures and articles in Full Permission Living. Coined by Sigmund Freud almost a century ago, the term identifies one of the main guiding forces in our lives – the instinct to follow pleasure and avoid pain. As Freud and others realized, the pursuit of pleasure is not a frivolous endeavor, but rather a built-in guidance system in human beings to provide direction for self-actualized living. We all know somewhere inside that any task is better performed when it is being experienced with joy and satisfaction. That knowing feeling in our gut is coming from our place of deepest wisdom.
Perhaps, then, we are arriving to the day when we will leave the house in the morning to go to work, or when we are assigned a task to perform at the job, and our loved one’s or boss’ parting words of inspiration will be: "Have fun!"
Who are you? I am...
Like many people, you probably begin your answer to that question with these two words: "I am…"
Before you read on any further, write down on a piece of paper your own way of completing that sentence.
What followed next? Was it your name? Depending on your level of vanity, maybe your age came next? Then your profession or marital status?
After that, how else would you fill in the blank: "I am ___?"
This is the first question I ask my students when discussing the subject of the "self".
Who are you?
Some people answer with a role that they play in their lives - "I am…a mother, a father, a teacher, a student, a banker, an actor."
Some fill in the blank with a gender-based identification - "I am…a woman, a man, a boy, a girl."
Others use a description of their current preferences or attitudes in some area - "I am…a person who really values hard work." Or "I am a person who has to strive for perfection." "I am a person who doesn’t like change or surprises." "I am a person who needs to be needed."
Do you fill in the blank with a projection into the future? "I am…never going to finish my dissertation." Or "I am never going to be rich." Or even "I am always going to be in love with you."
Do these fill-ins really adequately define the self, the "I" we are referring to when we begin the statement, "I am?" Is it really a sufficient depiction of our-selves to use such narrow and limited images? And can we honestly project those images of ourselves into the future and fulfill their promises with certainty? Closer examination of the human psyche shows that while most people cling to static pictures of themselves for apparent security and identity, there is always a lurking feeling underneath it all that we are something more, something vast and perhaps somewhat vague.
I have often witnessed in my therapy work with people over the years that as one begins unblocking emotionally, and, therefore, as one is more in touch with the intuitive, feeling and energetic levels of being and living more spontaneously in the present moment, it becomes harder to define oneself in any of the aforementioned ways. At a certain point in their healing journey, when frozen or compacted deep feelings start freeing up and old belief systems get challenged, people start saying things like this:
"I don’t know who I am anymore", or "I don’t feel connected to my lifelong dreams and ambitions anymore", or "I don’t know exactly where I’m heading." "But somehow", they usually continue, "that doesn’t feel so bad. Somehow, I actually feel better, more like…myself." At such a time, a person is more likely to fill in the blank "I am…" with a more immediate emotional or physical feeling, such as, "I am…sad." Or "I am…happy." "I am angry." "I am hungry." "I am tired." "I am hot!" (Sometimes referring to their level of sexual arousal, rather than the ambient temperature!) Etcetera. This is much more in the moment, visceral perhaps, at times, and definitely transient, fluid, often changing from one instant to the next. Yet, the sense one has when expressing from that place is closer to being more oneself.
What happens even further down the self-discovery line? If we extrapolate from here, from "I am…a static role definition" to "I am…a transient feeling in the moment", where would we ultimately end up? Perhaps in that enigmatic place that "God" claimed to be in, according to the Bible, when Moses asked: "Who should I say that you are?" God’s purported answer: "I Am…That I Am." What does that mean?! Beyond definition, roles, even feelings, yet including all of the above, "I am" is simply, but profoundly, the ultimate state of undefined beingness, beyond time even, including all experience at once, past, present and future, all lifetimes of a soul existing simultaneously. As Jane Roberts describes it: "The soul stands at the center of itself, exploring, extending its capacities in all directions at once, involved in issues of creativity, each one legitimate."
Perhaps this is the "place" where we are all "heading" in our personal evolutions, to become conscious of the totality of who we are, which is existence itself. "I am that I am!" (Of course, Popeye tried to say it in his own way, too: "I am what I am and that’s all that I am." Pretty enlightened, that sailorman!)
The implications of contemplating the self in this way are indeed profound. If we ultimately are ourselves, and who we are is just beingness itself, beyond any roles, including, but more than mental, physical or emotional states, beyond definition, then we must also be beyond judgement. Nothing that we do can truly be "bad" or "wrong" inherently, but rather just part of our beingness experienced in the moment. What this kind of understanding means for constructs like morality and deviance, and for someone practicing psychotherapy, helping others sort out a variety of supposed "dysfunctions", is momentous. Some writers in the psychotherapeutic fields, from Karen Horney, fifty years ago, to James Hillman, Thomas Moore and Peter Breggin today, have eloquently written about the injurious effects of judgmental labels placed on "patients" seeking guidance from a therapist, and how the processes of healing, growth and development could be enhanced with a non-judgmental view of so-called "psychopathology".
I often think of a person’s "symptoms" as the particular mechanisms through which an individual’s soul gradually unfolds into a given lifetime, the pacing, so to speak, of the soul entering the body. It is said that a human being could not look upon the face of God or directly hear the voice of God without being annihilated. Perhaps what that means is that the full force of someone’s soul cannot be expressed right from birth when our new bodies and minds are so frail and undeveloped. Maybe, in the same way that a caterpillar creates a cocoon in order to make the transition to a butterfly, human beings create their own "cocoons" in childhood that we in the psychotherapy profession call defenses, personality disorders or character structures. Though they once may have served the purpose of helping us survive our childhood wounds, they become painful and dysfunctional when we have outgrown them. Maybe, then, the various therapy processes are the ways in which we seek help getting out of our cocoons. In any case, what can be judged about all of this as "good" or "bad?" Imagine a butterfly engaging in harsh, self-condemnation or criticism for finding itself in a cocoon that it must now remove in order to grow and live. Ridiculous, right? So, accept your temporary existence in your cocoon on the way to becoming your actualized self, even as you make strides with all due effort to dismantle it.
And remember these favorite words of mine in approaching your life and cocoon-removing self-work during the upcoming holidays from the familiar inspirational prose-poem Desiderata:
"Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even to the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexatious to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy."
Before you read on any further, write down on a piece of paper your own way of completing that sentence.
What followed next? Was it your name? Depending on your level of vanity, maybe your age came next? Then your profession or marital status?
After that, how else would you fill in the blank: "I am ___?"
This is the first question I ask my students when discussing the subject of the "self".
Who are you?
Some people answer with a role that they play in their lives - "I am…a mother, a father, a teacher, a student, a banker, an actor."
Some fill in the blank with a gender-based identification - "I am…a woman, a man, a boy, a girl."
Others use a description of their current preferences or attitudes in some area - "I am…a person who really values hard work." Or "I am a person who has to strive for perfection." "I am a person who doesn’t like change or surprises." "I am a person who needs to be needed."
Do you fill in the blank with a projection into the future? "I am…never going to finish my dissertation." Or "I am never going to be rich." Or even "I am always going to be in love with you."
Do these fill-ins really adequately define the self, the "I" we are referring to when we begin the statement, "I am?" Is it really a sufficient depiction of our-selves to use such narrow and limited images? And can we honestly project those images of ourselves into the future and fulfill their promises with certainty? Closer examination of the human psyche shows that while most people cling to static pictures of themselves for apparent security and identity, there is always a lurking feeling underneath it all that we are something more, something vast and perhaps somewhat vague.
I have often witnessed in my therapy work with people over the years that as one begins unblocking emotionally, and, therefore, as one is more in touch with the intuitive, feeling and energetic levels of being and living more spontaneously in the present moment, it becomes harder to define oneself in any of the aforementioned ways. At a certain point in their healing journey, when frozen or compacted deep feelings start freeing up and old belief systems get challenged, people start saying things like this:
"I don’t know who I am anymore", or "I don’t feel connected to my lifelong dreams and ambitions anymore", or "I don’t know exactly where I’m heading." "But somehow", they usually continue, "that doesn’t feel so bad. Somehow, I actually feel better, more like…myself." At such a time, a person is more likely to fill in the blank "I am…" with a more immediate emotional or physical feeling, such as, "I am…sad." Or "I am…happy." "I am angry." "I am hungry." "I am tired." "I am hot!" (Sometimes referring to their level of sexual arousal, rather than the ambient temperature!) Etcetera. This is much more in the moment, visceral perhaps, at times, and definitely transient, fluid, often changing from one instant to the next. Yet, the sense one has when expressing from that place is closer to being more oneself.
What happens even further down the self-discovery line? If we extrapolate from here, from "I am…a static role definition" to "I am…a transient feeling in the moment", where would we ultimately end up? Perhaps in that enigmatic place that "God" claimed to be in, according to the Bible, when Moses asked: "Who should I say that you are?" God’s purported answer: "I Am…That I Am." What does that mean?! Beyond definition, roles, even feelings, yet including all of the above, "I am" is simply, but profoundly, the ultimate state of undefined beingness, beyond time even, including all experience at once, past, present and future, all lifetimes of a soul existing simultaneously. As Jane Roberts describes it: "The soul stands at the center of itself, exploring, extending its capacities in all directions at once, involved in issues of creativity, each one legitimate."
Perhaps this is the "place" where we are all "heading" in our personal evolutions, to become conscious of the totality of who we are, which is existence itself. "I am that I am!" (Of course, Popeye tried to say it in his own way, too: "I am what I am and that’s all that I am." Pretty enlightened, that sailorman!)
The implications of contemplating the self in this way are indeed profound. If we ultimately are ourselves, and who we are is just beingness itself, beyond any roles, including, but more than mental, physical or emotional states, beyond definition, then we must also be beyond judgement. Nothing that we do can truly be "bad" or "wrong" inherently, but rather just part of our beingness experienced in the moment. What this kind of understanding means for constructs like morality and deviance, and for someone practicing psychotherapy, helping others sort out a variety of supposed "dysfunctions", is momentous. Some writers in the psychotherapeutic fields, from Karen Horney, fifty years ago, to James Hillman, Thomas Moore and Peter Breggin today, have eloquently written about the injurious effects of judgmental labels placed on "patients" seeking guidance from a therapist, and how the processes of healing, growth and development could be enhanced with a non-judgmental view of so-called "psychopathology".
I often think of a person’s "symptoms" as the particular mechanisms through which an individual’s soul gradually unfolds into a given lifetime, the pacing, so to speak, of the soul entering the body. It is said that a human being could not look upon the face of God or directly hear the voice of God without being annihilated. Perhaps what that means is that the full force of someone’s soul cannot be expressed right from birth when our new bodies and minds are so frail and undeveloped. Maybe, in the same way that a caterpillar creates a cocoon in order to make the transition to a butterfly, human beings create their own "cocoons" in childhood that we in the psychotherapy profession call defenses, personality disorders or character structures. Though they once may have served the purpose of helping us survive our childhood wounds, they become painful and dysfunctional when we have outgrown them. Maybe, then, the various therapy processes are the ways in which we seek help getting out of our cocoons. In any case, what can be judged about all of this as "good" or "bad?" Imagine a butterfly engaging in harsh, self-condemnation or criticism for finding itself in a cocoon that it must now remove in order to grow and live. Ridiculous, right? So, accept your temporary existence in your cocoon on the way to becoming your actualized self, even as you make strides with all due effort to dismantle it.
And remember these favorite words of mine in approaching your life and cocoon-removing self-work during the upcoming holidays from the familiar inspirational prose-poem Desiderata:
"Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even to the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexatious to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy."
PL makes the PARK SLOPE 100 List for 2007!
From the PS 100: "PETER LOFFREDO because you’re a holistic psychotherapist (and blogger) with strong opinions who is on a mission to convince parents that they deserve to have a life full of love, sex, and fun apart from their children."
See the list at: http://onlytheblogknowsbrooklyn.typepad.com/the_park_slope_100/
See the list at: http://onlytheblogknowsbrooklyn.typepad.com/the_park_slope_100/
Ain't that America?
Good news for the anti-therapy crowd from Gallup.com: "Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats or independents to rate their own mental health as excellent, according to data from the last four November Gallup Health and Healthcare polls. Fifty-eight percent of Republicans report having excellent mental health, compared to 43% of independents and 38% of Democrats. This relationship between party identification and reports of excellent mental health persists even within categories of income, age, gender, church attendance, and education."
Wow! What does this mean?
Libby Spencer at the Newshoggers takes umbrage:
"I’m betting the numbers reflect mostly the 30-percenters who still think Bush is a great president. Of course those Republicans think their mental health is fine. They’ve somehow managed to learn to live with a level of cognitive dissonance that would make most people’s head explode. The rest of us aren’t feeling so good ourselves because we see what the Bush administration is doing and don’t find it acceptable on any level. That’s the trouble with living in reality. It tends to dampen the old peace of mind when you see everything that was once great about this country being incrementally destroyed."
Well, I agree somewhat with Libby that living in denial can give one a temporary feeling of sanity, and that facing the realities of how those whom we trust to run our government, corporations, schools and health care industry are actually incompetent or corrupt or both is very depressing. Where I disagree with Libby is around the notion that our not feeling all right is about "everything that was once great about this country being incrementally destroyed." Everything that is insane about America today has always been there. A country initially founded on the genocide of its native people by religious zealots who thought it was acceptable to burn women they declared witches, while developing our new economy on the backs of slaves was never sane. Liberals and "Movement Democrats" take a bit too much satisfaction in past accomplishments. The bottom line is that the end of slavery only accelerated other forms of insidious racism, while the "successful" sufferage and feminist movements have still not produced a woman president. Why not? Because real change cannot be effected by politics, not even "good" politics. The most idealized movements of the past that were supposed to change things in fact gave us teh likes of Richard Nixon (twice!), right in the heart of the Sixties. His Watergate led to only one brief term for the likes of Jimmy Carter, but was followed by 20 out of 28 years of nutty Republicans in the White House, including 2 terms for Ronald Reagan, the king of "I'm Okay; You're Okay" conservativism, and 2 terms of the indefinably infantile George W. Bush.
Real change only comes from one person at a time evolving their consciousness - by peeling back the layers of denial, challenging their own ego-driven selfishness and narcissism, and developing the genuine empathy that comes from fully feeling all of one's emotions. Easy? No. Does it require a lot of self-work that most people would rather not do? Yes. But doing whatever it takes to become sane in an insane world is still better than the alternative - being a Republican who feels good about himself!
[For further information, see my 3-part series: "FALSE CLARITY TO GENUINE CONFUSION TO GENUINE CLARITY" on this blog.
PL
Wow! What does this mean?
Libby Spencer at the Newshoggers takes umbrage:
"I’m betting the numbers reflect mostly the 30-percenters who still think Bush is a great president. Of course those Republicans think their mental health is fine. They’ve somehow managed to learn to live with a level of cognitive dissonance that would make most people’s head explode. The rest of us aren’t feeling so good ourselves because we see what the Bush administration is doing and don’t find it acceptable on any level. That’s the trouble with living in reality. It tends to dampen the old peace of mind when you see everything that was once great about this country being incrementally destroyed."
Well, I agree somewhat with Libby that living in denial can give one a temporary feeling of sanity, and that facing the realities of how those whom we trust to run our government, corporations, schools and health care industry are actually incompetent or corrupt or both is very depressing. Where I disagree with Libby is around the notion that our not feeling all right is about "everything that was once great about this country being incrementally destroyed." Everything that is insane about America today has always been there. A country initially founded on the genocide of its native people by religious zealots who thought it was acceptable to burn women they declared witches, while developing our new economy on the backs of slaves was never sane. Liberals and "Movement Democrats" take a bit too much satisfaction in past accomplishments. The bottom line is that the end of slavery only accelerated other forms of insidious racism, while the "successful" sufferage and feminist movements have still not produced a woman president. Why not? Because real change cannot be effected by politics, not even "good" politics. The most idealized movements of the past that were supposed to change things in fact gave us teh likes of Richard Nixon (twice!), right in the heart of the Sixties. His Watergate led to only one brief term for the likes of Jimmy Carter, but was followed by 20 out of 28 years of nutty Republicans in the White House, including 2 terms for Ronald Reagan, the king of "I'm Okay; You're Okay" conservativism, and 2 terms of the indefinably infantile George W. Bush.
Real change only comes from one person at a time evolving their consciousness - by peeling back the layers of denial, challenging their own ego-driven selfishness and narcissism, and developing the genuine empathy that comes from fully feeling all of one's emotions. Easy? No. Does it require a lot of self-work that most people would rather not do? Yes. But doing whatever it takes to become sane in an insane world is still better than the alternative - being a Republican who feels good about himself!
[For further information, see my 3-part series: "FALSE CLARITY TO GENUINE CONFUSION TO GENUINE CLARITY" on this blog.
PL
Parental over-involvement gone wild!
URGENT! Check out today's "Domestic Dusturbances" column by Judith Warner, called: "Helicopter Parenting Turns Deadly" (http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/29/helicopter-parenting-turns-deadly/).
Here's a quote from this very tough article: “People now feel like having a good relationship with your child means you’re involved in every aspect of your child’s life,” says Rosalind Wiseman, author of “Queen Bees & Wannabes” and “Queen Bee Moms & Kingpin Dads,” who travels the country speaking with and counseling parents, teachers and teens.
“Nothing is off-limits” now between parents and their kids, she says. “There’s no privacy and there’s no critical thinking," she writes.
This is very painful reading, and yes, these are extreme cases of the harmful effects of parental over-involvement, but please don't excuse yourself, good parents, from using these cases to examine where on the continuum of this kind of vicarious dysfunction you fall. These over-the-top examples are only the most grotesque manifestations of a wide-spread parenting pandemic.
A whole generation of children are suffering because of it, and the worst is yet to come when these kids grow up and try to have real adult relationships in the coming decades. While there's still time, I urge you to do the work necessary to get your own lives and let your kids grow up.
Here's a quote from this very tough article: “People now feel like having a good relationship with your child means you’re involved in every aspect of your child’s life,” says Rosalind Wiseman, author of “Queen Bees & Wannabes” and “Queen Bee Moms & Kingpin Dads,” who travels the country speaking with and counseling parents, teachers and teens.
“Nothing is off-limits” now between parents and their kids, she says. “There’s no privacy and there’s no critical thinking," she writes.
This is very painful reading, and yes, these are extreme cases of the harmful effects of parental over-involvement, but please don't excuse yourself, good parents, from using these cases to examine where on the continuum of this kind of vicarious dysfunction you fall. These over-the-top examples are only the most grotesque manifestations of a wide-spread parenting pandemic.
A whole generation of children are suffering because of it, and the worst is yet to come when these kids grow up and try to have real adult relationships in the coming decades. While there's still time, I urge you to do the work necessary to get your own lives and let your kids grow up.
Hold the Cinnamon Toast Please!
Here's this week's Smartmom from the Brooklyn Paper - and my response:
On Saturday afternoon, Smartmom was in a quandary: the Oh So Feisty One had a temperature of 100.7, her head was pounding, and she said that it hurt to swallow.
There were other telltale signs that the OSFO was sick: Her eyes were glassy, she was uncharacteristically droopy, and she just wanted to sleeeeeeeeeeeep (yes, with that many e’s!).
Smartmom knew that OSFO was down for the count. But Smartmom had longstanding plans on Sunday to attend “Later the Same Evening,” an opera based on the paintings of Edward Hopper, composed by her friend John Musto at the University of Maryland more than four hours away.
That meant that she’d have to leave the house on Sunday at 9 am and wouldn’t be home before 11 pm.
Smartmom was stressing. She knew that OSFO would want her to stay home. She’d already made that perfectly clear: “You’d go to an opera rather than stay with me?”
But Hepcat was urging her to go. “We’ll be fine,” he said, and Smartmom knew it was true.
He’d be home all day Sunday. So would Teen Spirit. Even Beautiful Smile, their babysitter of 16 years, had called to say that she wanted to sit with OSFO, too.
Still, Smartmom was stressing. On first glance, it was a no-brainer. Of course a mother should stay home with her sick child. That’s part of the job description.
Smartmom has luminous childhood memories of being sick and lying on the low couch in the living room of her family’s Riverside Drive apartment watching “Father Knows Best,” “I Love Lucy,” and “Leave it to Beaver” (re-runs! Please, she’s not that old).
Her mother, Manhattan Granny, would bring Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup and cinnamon toast on a tray, fluff her pillows, and pay extra special attention to Smartmom (because her twin, Diaper Diva, was at school).
When Teen Spirit and OSFO are sick, Smartmom tries to emulate her mom. She even has a special tray that she uses to serve Progresso Chicken Noodle Soup and cinnamon toast.
Now you can understand why Smartmom couldn’t make up her mind about the opera. Her friend had already bought the $200 round-trip train tickets and a day of gab and gossip on a train with her best high school gal friends would be a gas (despite the expense of the Amtrak fare. Smartmom admits that she blanched at the cost. Why is train travel so expensive in this country? Do they want us all to drive?)
The delightful train ride and opera was countered by a different image: OSFO lying in her bed with four fluffed pillows, a tray of chicken noodle soup, but no mommy.
So for a few moments, Smartmom was back to staying in Park Slope, keeping an eye on her sick little OSFO, who seemed to take an inordinate pleasure in ringing a blue bell to summon her mother and calling “Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”
Ring. Ring. Ring. That ringing was getting on Smartmom nerves. If that OSFO has the energy to ring that thing so vigorously, she doesn’t need Smartmom to stay home from the opera. And if her throat hurts so much, why is she SCREAMING?
Besides, Smartmom loves Musto’s music and is a huge fan of Edward Hopper.
Naomi Village: In the heart of the Poconos
Smartmom didn’t know what to do and decided to take a wait-and-see approach. When OSFO popped out of bed, on Sunday morning, Smartmom decided that she was well enough for Smartmom to go. Then she took her temperature, which was still hovering around 100.
“Just go,” Hepcat counseled and Smartmom did.
When Smartmom and her friends met up at Penn Station, they found out that there was a power outage on the lines between New York and New Jersey. Every arrival and departure was delayed by more than an hour and no one seemed to know when the lines would be fixed.
Smartmom knew the decision had been made for her. Even when her friends decided to get a car and drive down to Maryland, Smartmom knew she wouldn’t be going.
By 11:15 am, Smartmom was back in the apartment on Third Street. She ran into OSFO’s room, “I’m here,” she cried feeling very heroic and maternal.
OSFO couldn’t hear her. She was wearing headphones and watching something on YouTube. When she finally looked up she seemed mildly pleased that Smartmom had returned and then went back to her YouTube video.
No matter. Smartmom was home. Exactly where she wanted to be.
“Hey, you want some cinnamon toast?”
Peter Loffredo's response:
"Smartmom! You know I'm wagging my finger at you. You almost made it - not just to the opera, but more importantly, to that goal-line of egoless parenting. I, too, have golden memories of being home sick from school and having my mom happily serve me grilled cheese sandwiches and ginger ale, while I watched those same reruns of "Father Knows Best" and "Leave It To Beaver" (We must be about the same age!). In my adult years, however, I've often wondered if those pleasant memories of being sick and getting such special attention for it contriibuted to a strain of masochism in me that I had to later confront in therapy. Indeed, many people that I've worked with in therapy have had to struggle with their own predisposition to invite suffering into their lives in the hopes of receiving the pay-off of extra attention from a parental (transferential) substitute.
I do understand your conflict, though, Smartmom. It is clear that you are a loving and dedicated mother (which is even more important than being "Smart."). By far, the hardest thing for such a parent to do in our times of off-the-scale overcompensation is nothing when it comes to our kids' rearing and well-being. But in this case, you actually had an option - delegating. Your husband was there, presumably ready, willing and able. He said "Just go!" But your own identification with OSFO, and YOUR desire to be special made you jump at the opportunity to retreat from your adult desires and plans. Of course, we all dread the day when our kids will say to us, "Just go," but nonetheless, if they become able to say that (without having to be too forceful), we will have done our job."
On Saturday afternoon, Smartmom was in a quandary: the Oh So Feisty One had a temperature of 100.7, her head was pounding, and she said that it hurt to swallow.
There were other telltale signs that the OSFO was sick: Her eyes were glassy, she was uncharacteristically droopy, and she just wanted to sleeeeeeeeeeeep (yes, with that many e’s!).
Smartmom knew that OSFO was down for the count. But Smartmom had longstanding plans on Sunday to attend “Later the Same Evening,” an opera based on the paintings of Edward Hopper, composed by her friend John Musto at the University of Maryland more than four hours away.
That meant that she’d have to leave the house on Sunday at 9 am and wouldn’t be home before 11 pm.
Smartmom was stressing. She knew that OSFO would want her to stay home. She’d already made that perfectly clear: “You’d go to an opera rather than stay with me?”
But Hepcat was urging her to go. “We’ll be fine,” he said, and Smartmom knew it was true.
He’d be home all day Sunday. So would Teen Spirit. Even Beautiful Smile, their babysitter of 16 years, had called to say that she wanted to sit with OSFO, too.
Still, Smartmom was stressing. On first glance, it was a no-brainer. Of course a mother should stay home with her sick child. That’s part of the job description.
Smartmom has luminous childhood memories of being sick and lying on the low couch in the living room of her family’s Riverside Drive apartment watching “Father Knows Best,” “I Love Lucy,” and “Leave it to Beaver” (re-runs! Please, she’s not that old).
Her mother, Manhattan Granny, would bring Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup and cinnamon toast on a tray, fluff her pillows, and pay extra special attention to Smartmom (because her twin, Diaper Diva, was at school).
When Teen Spirit and OSFO are sick, Smartmom tries to emulate her mom. She even has a special tray that she uses to serve Progresso Chicken Noodle Soup and cinnamon toast.
Now you can understand why Smartmom couldn’t make up her mind about the opera. Her friend had already bought the $200 round-trip train tickets and a day of gab and gossip on a train with her best high school gal friends would be a gas (despite the expense of the Amtrak fare. Smartmom admits that she blanched at the cost. Why is train travel so expensive in this country? Do they want us all to drive?)
The delightful train ride and opera was countered by a different image: OSFO lying in her bed with four fluffed pillows, a tray of chicken noodle soup, but no mommy.
So for a few moments, Smartmom was back to staying in Park Slope, keeping an eye on her sick little OSFO, who seemed to take an inordinate pleasure in ringing a blue bell to summon her mother and calling “Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”
Ring. Ring. Ring. That ringing was getting on Smartmom nerves. If that OSFO has the energy to ring that thing so vigorously, she doesn’t need Smartmom to stay home from the opera. And if her throat hurts so much, why is she SCREAMING?
Besides, Smartmom loves Musto’s music and is a huge fan of Edward Hopper.
Naomi Village: In the heart of the Poconos
Smartmom didn’t know what to do and decided to take a wait-and-see approach. When OSFO popped out of bed, on Sunday morning, Smartmom decided that she was well enough for Smartmom to go. Then she took her temperature, which was still hovering around 100.
“Just go,” Hepcat counseled and Smartmom did.
When Smartmom and her friends met up at Penn Station, they found out that there was a power outage on the lines between New York and New Jersey. Every arrival and departure was delayed by more than an hour and no one seemed to know when the lines would be fixed.
Smartmom knew the decision had been made for her. Even when her friends decided to get a car and drive down to Maryland, Smartmom knew she wouldn’t be going.
By 11:15 am, Smartmom was back in the apartment on Third Street. She ran into OSFO’s room, “I’m here,” she cried feeling very heroic and maternal.
OSFO couldn’t hear her. She was wearing headphones and watching something on YouTube. When she finally looked up she seemed mildly pleased that Smartmom had returned and then went back to her YouTube video.
No matter. Smartmom was home. Exactly where she wanted to be.
“Hey, you want some cinnamon toast?”
Peter Loffredo's response:
"Smartmom! You know I'm wagging my finger at you. You almost made it - not just to the opera, but more importantly, to that goal-line of egoless parenting. I, too, have golden memories of being home sick from school and having my mom happily serve me grilled cheese sandwiches and ginger ale, while I watched those same reruns of "Father Knows Best" and "Leave It To Beaver" (We must be about the same age!). In my adult years, however, I've often wondered if those pleasant memories of being sick and getting such special attention for it contriibuted to a strain of masochism in me that I had to later confront in therapy. Indeed, many people that I've worked with in therapy have had to struggle with their own predisposition to invite suffering into their lives in the hopes of receiving the pay-off of extra attention from a parental (transferential) substitute.
I do understand your conflict, though, Smartmom. It is clear that you are a loving and dedicated mother (which is even more important than being "Smart."). By far, the hardest thing for such a parent to do in our times of off-the-scale overcompensation is nothing when it comes to our kids' rearing and well-being. But in this case, you actually had an option - delegating. Your husband was there, presumably ready, willing and able. He said "Just go!" But your own identification with OSFO, and YOUR desire to be special made you jump at the opportunity to retreat from your adult desires and plans. Of course, we all dread the day when our kids will say to us, "Just go," but nonetheless, if they become able to say that (without having to be too forceful), we will have done our job."
Having an affair good for a marriage?
An interesting article on the Timesonline website ("An Odd Turn of Affairs") poses the question above, suggesting that some marriages benefit from the shake-up caused by an affair. (http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/body_and_soul/article2882883.ece)
So, here's my weigh-in on the subject. Get rid of dogmatic words like "commitment" and "fidelity," first of all, so you can honestly look at your situation. Like most things I write about regarding relationships, intention is everything. People in a marriage can be "committed" and "faithful" for reasons that clearly crush the passion in a relationship - i.e. - fear of being alone, fear of losing financial stability, insecurity about one's physical appearance and attractiveness, etc. These are love-Eros-sex killers. However, on the other side, again, let's can the dogma. Very often, adults claiming to have "open marriages," arrangements in which extramarital sex is allowed under certain conditions (like "don't ask/don't tell" policies), more often than not have intimacy issues and similar insecurities, and as a result, their relationships are neither open nor a marriage. (If you and your partner are so open about sex, why wouldn't you want to talk about it?)
So, what is to be gleaned from the statistical "turn of affairs" in Mr. Marshall's article? Simply this - If you love someone, set them free. Let go of your vice grip on your partner. Stop clinging, get a life, actualize yourself, be interesting and attractive to yourself. What I call "spontaneous monogamy" - monogamy that develops when two people are so in love that they want to experience their sexuality like a laser, through that one person only - is the greatest, deepest, most intense experience one can have as a human adult. But forced monogamy, which most married couples contract for, is not rooted in love or lust, and basically consists of one partner saying to another: "Even if you no longer are in love with me one day, you still have to stay with me." Mmmm... how attractive is that?
Having an affair as a solution? Hardly. While it can wake a couple up to the stagnation in their marriage, and therefore can have productive results, why wait until it gets to such a messy point? Shake your marriage up now. Go for couples counselling that really challenges your emotional laziness. Stop taking all of your medications to go to sleep and get it up, stop leaning on your kids for meaning in life, stop obsessing about money. And see the new movie coming out with Jack Nicolson and Morgan Freeman and ask yourself how you would want to live if you knew you only had a little time left. You never know - you might rediscover the Eros in your marriage.
Peter Loffredo (http://fullpermissionliving.blogspot.com/)
So, here's my weigh-in on the subject. Get rid of dogmatic words like "commitment" and "fidelity," first of all, so you can honestly look at your situation. Like most things I write about regarding relationships, intention is everything. People in a marriage can be "committed" and "faithful" for reasons that clearly crush the passion in a relationship - i.e. - fear of being alone, fear of losing financial stability, insecurity about one's physical appearance and attractiveness, etc. These are love-Eros-sex killers. However, on the other side, again, let's can the dogma. Very often, adults claiming to have "open marriages," arrangements in which extramarital sex is allowed under certain conditions (like "don't ask/don't tell" policies), more often than not have intimacy issues and similar insecurities, and as a result, their relationships are neither open nor a marriage. (If you and your partner are so open about sex, why wouldn't you want to talk about it?)
So, what is to be gleaned from the statistical "turn of affairs" in Mr. Marshall's article? Simply this - If you love someone, set them free. Let go of your vice grip on your partner. Stop clinging, get a life, actualize yourself, be interesting and attractive to yourself. What I call "spontaneous monogamy" - monogamy that develops when two people are so in love that they want to experience their sexuality like a laser, through that one person only - is the greatest, deepest, most intense experience one can have as a human adult. But forced monogamy, which most married couples contract for, is not rooted in love or lust, and basically consists of one partner saying to another: "Even if you no longer are in love with me one day, you still have to stay with me." Mmmm... how attractive is that?
Having an affair as a solution? Hardly. While it can wake a couple up to the stagnation in their marriage, and therefore can have productive results, why wait until it gets to such a messy point? Shake your marriage up now. Go for couples counselling that really challenges your emotional laziness. Stop taking all of your medications to go to sleep and get it up, stop leaning on your kids for meaning in life, stop obsessing about money. And see the new movie coming out with Jack Nicolson and Morgan Freeman and ask yourself how you would want to live if you knew you only had a little time left. You never know - you might rediscover the Eros in your marriage.
Peter Loffredo (http://fullpermissionliving.blogspot.com/)
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