Tom Hale -Psikoterapia zentroa

What I'm Reading

    Just finished  I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn't): Telling the Truth About Perfectionism, Inadequacy, and Power,  by Brene Brown and while the title says most of it, it doesn't tell you that Dr. Brown teaches and does research in social work at the University of Houston.   Her specialty is "shame" and in this book she talks about the nature and outcome of her work.   She also talks about what we can do to combat the effects of living in a culture that shames people for a variety of reasons, including to motivation and to control.  A great, easily-accessible book.   While her research is important, it really is more of self-help book, which is bolstered by the research.   Highly recommended.

 

    Currently reading The Art of Living According to Joe Beef: A Cookbook of Sorts, by David McMillan (chef/author), Frederic Morin (chef/author), Meredith Erickson (author), with a foreward by David Chang of NY restaurant Momofuku fame.   The restaurant in the book, however, is located in a working-class neighborhood of Montreal, and apparently is at the center of Montreal’s growing reputation as a culinary destination. Often referred to as the Paris of North America, Montreal is the second-largest French-speaking city in the world, and like France, food is at the heart of its identity.

    I'm just starting it and it's full of stories of their restaurant, many recipes of great "blue-collar" Canadien food including pea-meal bacon, favorite Canadien train trips (we're going on The Canadien this fall to Vancouver), and wonderful pictures of the restaurant,  the food, smokers-to-make, the authors, and much more.   A really fun book.

 

    Am listening to The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach.   A quirky, very modern book about baseball on the college level at a definitely not even AA school.   Very uneven, not particularly plot-driven that rather is focused on the characters in the novel.  One of the characters, Owen (think A Prayer for Owen Meany,  is struck in the head by an errant throw primarily because while he siting on the bench, he is reading a book) but survives.   Certain would not appeal to everyong, especially most American men, because of  several characters who are homosexual, but not overall a bad read.   Charming would be a good word.   My worst complaint is that it's just a little too slow in plot development.  But it's still a baseball book and made me decide to find a friend and play some catch. 

 

Practice Makes Perfect??

    I'm almost nearly finished with a new book, Guitar Zero: The New Musicians and the Science of Learning,  by Gary  Marcus, a professor of psychology and cognition at NYU.    I initially read it because I was hoping it would give me some special insight into developing a new approach to learning the guitar.   My continuing lack of success in achieving a level of accomplishment with the instrument has frustrated me for years.  What I have learned has been interesting and I realized the way we learn music can be generalized to almost anything that we attempt in life.

 

    I came to the world of music relatively late in life although I had sung in school choirs for years but hardly with any level of excellence.   I basically quit when my voice "changed" in adolescence, and although I have been obsessed with music most of my life, it was primarily as a listener.  I began seriously playing the cello as a young adult and played for years, eventually performing in my local college/community orchestra.  That experience is one of the real highlights of my life.   When my hearing began failing and I could no longer hear distinct sounds in an orchestral setting, I put it down.   Not long afterwards and still wanting to make music, I began playing the accoustic guitar which I only intended to do so by myself thinking my hearing, while still a problem, would be manageable.   It was, however still a problem, and eventually I began using hearing aides which were a blessing in all ways.    

 

    Still my music progress with the guitar compared to my growth with the cello, has been slow and I think much of the difficulty has been the result of being originally trained as a "classical musician" which did not encourage creativity and improvisation.  When I choose to play blues/rock/folk guitar, a real shift in my brain use occurred, and I've struggled.  Not many musicians today feel reading traditional musical notation is necessary.

 

    One of the major interests of Marcus in his book, since it is subtitled The Science of Learning, is the way in which people learn music cognitively and he explores this through his and other scientists' research.   The effect of age on learing is a particular interest and he shows in the research that aging people are quite intellectually capable of  learning music.   Age still will slow down some aspects of the learning, especially in tasks having some physical component - like fingering a guitar fret or picking the strings - will be effected.   But under most circumstances, the brain can adapt and continue to learn late into life.  Tom Morello learned to play the guitar in college, well past the time when one is traditionally believed to be in the so-called critical age of learning.   Starting music beyond this critical age rarely, it is believed, results in the student achieving great success;  and yet Morello has become a virtuoso in the field.  The notion of a critical age, for music, languages and sports, seems to be a bit of a myth, it seems.  Much recent research has demonstrated this in many fields.

 

    That's the good news.   Unfortunately, much of the early learning I acquired playing the cello classically does not generalize to pop music.   Brains that are trained to play classical forms appear to develop differently then brains trained to play jazz   -  and the same is true of the brains of people who play different instruments.    Some people can make the adjustment easily but most don't.  It's as if I have a default program  of sorts that I automatically return to when I pick up an instrument, and it seems to hamper my progress.

 

    The issue of innate music instincts vs. training/practice is carefully explored, as well.   Anders Ericsson of FSU is widely recognized as the leading expert on the acquisition of expertise and the notion of "ten-thousand hours" to achieve excellence is part of his research.  The idea is that learning works best when one tackles something that is just beyond his or her reach, neither too easy nor too hard; this concept of a "zone of proximal development" is what we should strive for in our practice.   It seems that continued practice does indeed rewire the brain.  Nobody really knows  whether the brains of those blesssed with genius are really different from others, but we do know that practice does help.   Clearly genius without hard work and discipline to practice, rarely amounts to much.

 

    An interesting book that, like most, is flawed.   Marcus was a student of Stephen Pinker, someone I'm not particularly fond of, but I shouldn't hold that against him.   The book is probably a longish essay that got expanded into book form but I'm glad I read it.

The State of White America

    I've been watching with some interest the reaction of critics to a new book by social scientist Charles Murray, Coming Apart: the State of White America, 1960-2010.    I haven't read the book yet since it was just published about ten days but I will probably read it in the next month.   This is a huge compliment, which means it has been bumped up through a tall pile of very good books I am slowing plowing through.

    What is the big deal  about this book?

    First, Murray (born 1943), is an American libertarian political scientist, author,columnist, and pundit currently working as a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, DC.   He is best known for his controversial book The Bell Curve, co-authored with the late Richard Herrnstein in 1994, which argued that intelligence plays a central role in American society.    They proposed in the book that intelligence is a better predictor of many factors including financial income, job performance, unwed pregnancy, and crime than one's parents' socio-economic status or education level.    Also, the book argued that those with high intelligence (the "cognitive elite") are becoming separated from the general population of those with average and below-average intelligence, and that this was a dangerous social trend.  Murray's ideas were roundly criticized by liberals, in particular, as racist and simplistic.

    Second, the new book addresses the issue of class in America at a time when many people, especially Republicans, have been claiming that raising the issue of "class" is a liberal divisive political strategy.   And now we have a conservative Republican, devoting 400 pages to the subject.   

    As you might expect, writers have been all across the political contimuum in their responses.   Charles Brooks, columnist for the NYT said, "I'll be surprised if there is another book this year that so compellingly describes the most important trends in American society''.  While Brooks is not a commentator I am particular fond of, I suspect he may be right on this.  

    It seams that Murray's basic  premise is that the "white working class is no longer a part of a virtuour silent majority; it has become increasingly alienated from the "founding virtues" of American civic life."   He goes on to say, "our nation is coming apart at the seams, not ethnic seams, but the seams of class."   

    My first response is that finally we can begin to talk about the state of the American family again without being politically incorrect. 

     This seems to be primarily a book of scholarship, not politics.  Murray has approached the topic as a work of scholarship, full of charts, footnotes and regression analyses.  He uses the data to create an imaginary white world of two classes, the new upper class, "Belmont" and a new lower class, "Fishtown".     And what he sees for America in the new, emerging social construct should make us all shiver.   The two worlds are so vastly different in so many ways, includeing income, illegitimacy rates, crime, and joblessness,  with Fishtown slowly sinking.    What are we going to do about it?

    The controversy seems essentially to be found in the response to Murray's description of this sad, new American world, and along the classic political lines.  Murray makes suggestions for change in the last chapter of the book and these are being roundly challenged.   Good.   It sounds like a conversation is breaking out.   I hope that this book stimulate a huge, non-political conversation.

    As a psychotherapist whose early training was in family systems, I have for years been concerned about many of these same issues, and the slow decline of the quality of life in working class communities has troubled me.   As health care availability has eroded for the working poor, fewer and fewer services have been utilized by them and the help necessary for them to challenge the trends being reported here were/are missing.   If we are looking at real solutions to some of these issues, adequate, affordable health care is imperative.

 

 

Is There a Test Psychological Test for .........

    "November 14th was the birthday of political satirist P(atrick) J(ake) O'Rourke (books by this author), born in Toledo, Ohio, in 1947. He's the author of 16 books, including Don't Vote, It Just Encourages the Bastards (2010).

    He said, "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences."

    And, "No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power."

    (Reprinted from the Writer's Almanac of Nov. 14, 2011.)

 

    I'm actually not a huge fan of P.J. O'Rourke for a lot of reasons, but this quote, in light of our current economic conditons, makes sense to me.   

 

"The Husband"

by Joseph Mills

He comes every day to eat lunch and sit with her in the sun room.

Sometimes he reads letters out loud from their children or friends; sometimes he reads the paper as she sleeps.

One day the staff makes her favorite cake to celebrate their anniversary,and he tells how, to buy her a ring, he worked months of overtime at the factory, so she thought he was seeing someone else.

"As if I would look at other women when I have Pearl," he says, shaking his head.

She begins to cry and tells him, "You're sweet, but I miss my husband."

He pats her hand. 

"I know," he says, "It's all right. Try some cake."

 

"The Husband" by Joseph Mills, from Love and Other Collisions. © Press, 53, 2010

 

    When I was a senior in high school, at the ripe age of 16 years, I told my Senior English Teacher that someday I wanted to be a poet.   She was kind but told me that not many people were able to make a living that way.   I still have very fond memories of Mrs. Rhoads and believe that hers was one of the best classes I ever remember taking in my high school.   And while she said it kindly, it still broke my heart.  

    I know for a long time, I stopped reading poetry because I knew I could never make the grade.   But I read it again now and have some favorite poets.  (I did a project on  The Hollow Men as a assignment that year and gave a killer reading of it in class, which no one realized.)    I am a new fan of Joe Mills, and I think I would probably tell Mrs. Rhoads that  when I grew up, I wanted to write poetry like him.   Maybe Thomas Elliot was aiming a little for the moon.   But she might have suggested that, too.

Waking Man

    I want to recommend another book.   It is Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence, by Matthew Sanford.  In his book,  Sanford addresses his response to a personal trauma, when at age 13, he and his family were in a catastrophic car accident in which his father, his older sister died and his spinal cord injury left him a parapalegic.   The story is not just of his response and recovery from the trauma but his transcendence and growth as a result of it.   It is a story of using the mind/body connection we all have into use and exploring the "mysterious distance" from it that we all have.

    I first heard of Matthew Sanford several months ago from a friend who was going to one of his workshops in Virginia Beach and encouraged me to attend.   I could not go but now having learned more of him and his work, I am kicking myself that I did not make the time for it.  His story, in many ways, is another example of the vast difference in the medical response to illness and injury between the western and eastern worlds.   (Another recent book, The Healing of America by T.R. Reid, explored the same issues but in a different way and for other reasons.)  

    Traditional western medicine encourged him in his rehab to forget and deny the real but unfeeling parts of his body and "overcome" them.    But Sanford pursued a more eastern approach and decided early on to learn from them.   In challenging himself to try something different, he was addressing these issues.

    "But what if I wanted to be whole?, he asked.

    How do we overcome an essential part of what we are?  When I resisted this particular healing story, when I actively explored the silence, a different world appeared, one with greated depth and potential."

     It is hard for me, but then not really, to believe that this book, this amazing story, has not received much greater attention then it has.   I had polio at about the same age as Sanford's accident and my rehab was much like what he describes in his book.   I spent much of my life trying not to be disabled or even believing I was rather then accepting it and seeing where it would have/could have taken me.   I cannot recommend the book highly enough.  Please visit his website and watch him tell his story in the Youtube videos that you can easily find.   Here is one of them.

 

 

The History of Marriage, Part Two

    I want to return again to Stephanie Coontz's book, Marriage: a History, because it is really such an excellent and provocative book on the subject.  

      In the concluding chapters of the book, she makes these points:

    "Once upon a time almost all men and women accepted that their lives had to be a packaged deal:  You get married and then you have kids.   Now men and women can customize their lives.  They can pick and choose whether they want to marry at all, when they want to marry, whether they want children, how many children they want, and when they want to have them.  Some males and females have become more involved parents and partners than ever before, while others now say that they are not interested in being parents or partners at all."

    She calls the process the "democratization of marriage".    The "love revolution" of the past 150 years has resulted in marriages in which people have choices, she says.   Marriage has evolved and the old notions about it being primarily an economic and patriarchal institution have faded.   I would generally agree although I think they are still promoted by some but in usually religious language.

    And the new versions that people are experimenting with have made some lives very "messy", she says.   But since the 1950's marriage has become more fair, more fulfilling then ever and has produced more happy people than any other time in history.   People now have more choices in their lifestyles and many of them are still choosing to be married - but only if it works for them.  For now, and particularly for women, they know that they can construct meaningful lives outside of marriage and not that everything in society has to be organized through and around marriage.

    I believe in order for a couple to have a democratic marriage that works, both partners would need to accept that basic premise as the working basis of all problem solving.   Certainly, when people are approaching or considering marriage, it would be wise to explore with this each other  and determine, as well as they can,  the "structure" they want the marrige to have.   Much of this was explored years ago by a group of family therapists who had the label of "Structural" family theorists.   Although not attributing it to them, Coontz is saying the same think although.   Structural family therapists looked primarily at the issue of power and how it was negotiated within the marital structure.   The therapist  had to first understand the dynamics within the marriage, then explore whether it was negotiable for them and finally help the couple to accomplish the changes they wanted.

    In so many marriages I see that are troubled, it is almost always on this issue.   If couples do not resolve the issues of power - finances, child-rearing, sex - and how it is to shared in the marriage,  decisions are often made on the basis of what leverage each individual bring to the table to gain an edge and "win" the battle; the constant conflict over power in these marriages thus destroys the trust needed for intimacy which is the real basis for resolving conflct.   In today's world, the most important leverager is ...... money, of course.   This sounds more then a little like our national political scene, doesn't it?

    It's a good book about marriage and worth the time.   And ask yourself, how is power expressed in the conflicts in my life, my family, my marriage?   Do you share well?

 

Marriage - Under Fire

    I just made a quick check of the two newspapers I turn to first every morning, the NYT and the WP, to see what new story on the shaky state of matrimony would appear, and was surprised to see that not one, not a single one, appeared, at least not in the full-size website version.   Surprising, because for weeks now, every day has had a new scandal or at least a startling update on the latest favorite scandal (Weiner, Schwatzenager, IMF) of the hour.   Our media, of which I am a frequent and regular critic,  and the public, clearly love (1) marriage scandals and (2) new tales of the evils of obesity.  (The media I refer to is not the ones we see in the check-out lines but the "legitimate" ones on our newsstands.)  Both of these subjects are ones that I professionally know fairly well. The idea of a crisis in the institution of marriage is a familiar one and has been discussed in the media, art (the "Rabbit" series by John Updike) and science for centuries.

    And so I have been fascinated by all of the attention to troubled (we now supposedly have more eligible people single then married right now, I just read) marriages, the experts who write about them and confusion that ultimately ensues from trying to make sense of it all. Fortunately, there is much good stuff out there and it gets lost unless you look carefully and know what to read.   I'll try to review some of them on this blog and give you a basic reading list of what you might want to read if you want a little more detail as well as what you also might want to avoid.   An example of one (the latter) is addressed here.

    The latest book review I read (Marriage Confidential: The Post-Romantic Age of Workhorse Wives, Royal Children, Undersexed Spouses and Rebel Couples Who Are Rewriting the Rules) by Pamela Haag appeared in the NYT on July 1, 2011.   (Doesn't this sound like an advertiser's dream title, or what?) Its thesis is that for most middle-class couples, their marriages are less then "really happy" and that their semi-happy unions are just "a product of the times"; terms like "semi-happy", "low-conflict", or "melancholy" marriages are explored.  And the person in the couple most likely to feel that way is the woman,  the author says.   Cutting to the conclusion of the article, the reviewer essentially trashes the book as thin and far-fetched - but then the title told us that from the start.   I won't be reading the book just on the title alone and this NYT review ensures that, so I can't recommend it.   

 

    But the reviewer, Katie Roiphe, a professor of journalism at NYU, gives us some other "bolder, smarter" book suggestions.   I'll mention them here and while they are scholarly they are also well-written, and funny enough for all of us to appreciate as we learn something. They include:

    1.   Against Love, by Laura Kipnis,

    2.   Vindication of Love, by Christina Nehring.

 

The Gift of Anger

    Years ago, Steve Earle wrote a song, My Old Friend the Blues, and one that I've song personally at various points in my life.   In my continuing exploration of the subject of anger, both personally and professionally, I've made a link between the two topics and it works for me.   

 

Just when every ray of hope was gone
I should have known that you would come along
I can't believe I ever doubted you
My old friend the blues
Another lonely night, a nameless town
If sleep don't take me first, you'll come around
'Cause I know I can always count on you
My old friend the blues

Lovers leave and friends will let you down
But you're the only sure thing that I've found
No matter what I do I'll never lose
My old friend the blues

Just let me hide my weary heart in you
My old friend the blues

 

    I have been reviewing some of the "anger" literature I have and a new book, The Gift of Anger, by Marcia Cannon, on the subject.    Cannon's book is actually very good.   The theme of anger and how she reframes it as a "gift" is actually a riff on an older book, by Gavin De Becker,  The Gift of Fear,  which has been a best seller for years.   De Becker's book challenged us to learn how to protect one's self by recognizing and honoring our "fear" when we arises it and using it positively. Fear is not a weakness, he says, but a gift because we intuitively, emotionally experience it and it's warning to be careful; if we recognize it as such, it can actually save our lives.  

    Unfortunately, in our culture fear is word that usually signifies weakness, not strength.   The author, Earnest Hemingway, recognized the value of fear and said he did not trust people who said they had no fear.   He said we must learn how to respond strongly and competently when we're fearful; that people without fear or who do not recognize their fear are dangerous.

    Cannon, in her book, says much the same thing but her focus is on anger.   Anger, for many of us, has become an emotion that we, if we have acted out inappropriately, become ashamed of and something that we must learn to control and purge.  (In the past, people were encouraged to express it privately and intentionally, ie. punching pillows; thankfully, no one is currently advocating this approach because of the consequences that come might come along with it, like strokes and aneurysms.)    Cannon says to recognize it as a perfectly normal, appropriate response to a perceived threat; when challenged to fight or flight, we choose anger as a logical choice.  However, if we get stuck responding to our perceived crises with anger, we may have only that one choice.   But we do have many other choices if we explore them.   More on that later.

    It is also true how some people are proud of their anger and how powerful they become when use it as a weapon in conflict or just to intimidate people.  I think it's also interesting how the language of anger evolves over time.   Not too long ago, to tell someone off was to "flame them".   Now we "blow them up". 

     For Steve Earle, his friend, "the blues", was a comforting constant at one time in his life and mine; hopefully, we've outgrown it.   I think for many people stuck in a feedback loop of unresolved anger, it now has become an old and trusted friend.   Substitute the words in the above verses and you'll see how it works.

 

 Here's Steve singing the song.

 

 

Alone Together

    In my research with the new technology, Smart Phones, Facebook, texting, and robotic devises, Sherry Turkle writes, "I find people willing to seriously consider robots not only as pets but as potential friends, confidents and even romantic partners".

 

    Dr. Turkle was the keynote speaker of the Networker Conference I attended last week and the above quote is from her new book, Alone Together.    The subtitle of the book is "Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other".  In  her research as a clinical psychologist and anthropologist and in her position as director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, she is in a unique position to explore this topic from the inside of one of the world's great centers of techdom.

 

    What was stunning to me was that at that very moment, as she opened the topic to the 3,000 attendees of the conference gathered in the grand room of the historic Omni Shoreham Hotel in DC, was that I was surrounded by professionals who, no less then 50% of them, were texting and reading e-mails, as she talked about them and this issue.   Nor did I notice any appreciable reduction in the habit as she spoke on and eventually finished to an applauding, appreciative audience.

 

    At any rate, it was a fascinating presentation and the book, which I am about 1/3 of the way through, is even more interesting.    Avatars (I confess, I really didn't know what they actually were, in spite of the movie), on-line confessional sites, Blade Runner, Eliza, AIBO, Furbies, Cog, Nursebot, Second Life, and Kismet all make much more sense to me now and I'm not just trying to understand from hearing about them in a contextual way.

 

    But the real value of Turkle's work is expressed in the title.    Throughout history, a theme of human existence is our difference and capacity for intimacy.   Man, by nature, is a social creature and the highest levels of our development have been expressed in the degree to which we are able to achieve intimacy.    As Turkle points out, "Dependence on a person is risky - it makes us subject to rejection - but it also opens us to deeply knowing another."    The danger of using robots and robotic devises to accomplish intimacy, to "companionship without demands" is that it may make life with people overwhelming.   Many people are now saying, she points out,  that they prefer to communicate with people through texting  - "you have more control" - then talking, using the telephone, Skype or even e-mails.

 

    You can watch her here on a TED presentation.