Ouch.
According to my informal observations, most people who are attracted to being psychotherapists like closeness, dislike separation, fear rejection, and suffer guilt readily. They tend to be self-critical, to be overly responsible, and to put other people's needs before their own. They feel more unentitled than deserving. They try to avoid feeling greed, anger and other "selfish" states of mind and become disturbed when they notice evidence of their own competitiveness or hostility. They favor defense of reversal, attempting to nourish the child in themselves vicariously by taking care of the child in their client. They identify with victims rather than with oppressors, with children rather than with parents.
Urrrg!!
I stuck around after my Dynamics of Addiction class today, hoping to get some insight into an intake I sat in on yesterday. We never got that far. In the course of conversation with other students who had stayed after, the instructor brought up Senator Craig and wondered about the what addictions this man might be dealing with.
It gave me pause for thought, because I've never really considered the addictive aspect of such behavior: the high he must be getting from the thrill of illicit behavior, the unbridled narcissism of handing a stranger your business card in such an inappropriate context, and the effects of keeping such an enormous secret. Can you imagine the mountain of shame it must take to have a U.S. Senator readily sign a guilty plea? He is 62 years old and his life has just gone straight into the toilet...er...no pun intended. Do you think he's going to head home saying, "Well, it was a good run while it lasted." Not likely.
After thinking about this aspect of recent events, I was telling myself I should feel more compassion for this man. I couldn't. There is a part of me that acknowledges that there is compassion worthy material here. The rest of me is so pissed off at the negative impact this man has on my life, it's just not going to happen. This guy has just confirmed every negative stereotype about homosexuals the moralistic wingnuts hold near and dear to their hearts: they lurk in bathrooms; they are only interested in sexual thrills; they are reckless and morally irresponsible. That doesn't even begin to touch that he is a man of influence and power and he has used that influence and power to make sure that sexual minorities remain second class citizens in this country.
So now my blood is boiling, but given the context of the discussion I have to ask myself, what would I do—what should do—if someone like him ends up in my office? Do I recuse myself because the odds of my developing a compassionate stance toward this individual are not very good? Do I suck it up, keep my mouth shut, do my best to help him (and then go take it out on my supervisor) and hope that compassion wanders in at some point in the process? Do I start out by saying, "I think you should know that I believe you to be a complete bastard, but I will do my best to assist you anyway. Where should we begin?" I'm pretty sure the third option is out, but I really don't know about the first two.
Serendipity?
Notwithstanding that some qualities are unique to a pyschoanalytically oriented approach, much of its healing potential is shared by therapists of all sorts. Although my attitude about this derives from personal experience, it is compatible with some very stringently conducted research. Analyzing the work of of Luborsky et al.(2000), Messer and Wampold (2002) observe that the current emphasis on "empirically supported treatments" is based on a discredited medical model an has contributed to an empirically unwarranted devaluation of the experiential, psychodynamic, and family therapies. They further conclude that specific, symptom-targeted strategies are effective "only insofar as they are a component of a larger healing context," and that (as we have known for a long time) more variance in outcome arises from differences among therapists than from differences among treatment approaches.
...It makes little sense to teach students how to deal effective with the easiest clients, leaving them to learn by the school of hard knocks how to work with more challenging ones—all the while suffering from vaguely defined guilt that they are breaking textbook rules.
...there are some things students need to know that are even more basic and fundamental to psychoanalytic practice than how to interpret transferences and resistances or how to understand the working-through process or when to consider ending treatment. They need to know how to maintain their own self-esteem, how to behave in a way that is both professional and natural, and how to protect their own boundaries from the incursions that their more desperate clients insist on attempting. ...I also know that beginners need specifics and are not helped by vague statements to the effect of "It all depends."
...applicants to most social work programs know better than to tell their prospective teachers that they want to be therapists instead of administrators or social activists. Large segments of the public believe that therapy is about blaming one's parents, avoiding personal responsibility, and rationalizing selfishness. Therapists are neither well organized nor temperamentally disposed to battling their disparagers. So I am trying to give moral and conceptual support to trainees who, despite all these circumstances, know that psychotherapy is the project to which they want to commit the rest of their working lives.
...Perhaps it is more accurate to to say that my vision of science encompasses clinical lore as a legitimate source of knowledge in addition to what can be learned from controlled studies. I deeply believe we need to be just as respectful toward more poetic, metaphorically expressed, experience-based clinical theory as we are toward more highly controlled research.
...Because of the American affinity for the new and revolutionary, psychoanalysis in its youth was too often uncritically embraced here; now in its maturity it is too often uncritically dismissed.
...Despite my strong feeling that we need to do lots more research on psychotherapy and to pay attention to what researches have already established, I have learned much more from passionate practitioners than from dispassionate researchers.
(my emphasis)
Oh...I like her.
Pardon me while my head explodes.
What the hell? Who puts a baby in a microwave? Obviously I am outraged that someone would do that to a helpless infant. But what is just the icing on the cake is it is okay for manifestly incompetent (for whatever reason, legitimate or otherwise) and dangerous people to parent children as long as a penis penetrates a vagina. This may be an extreme case, but incompetent parents are hardly rare. Talk to me some time about the kids I worked with while interning at County Youth Services whose parents had no business making babies.
The right can stop shoveling the bullshit about marriage being about creating a safe environment for raising children. If states asked questions like, "Do you have a mental illness that would cause you to be a danger to your spouse or offspring?" before granting a marriage license, they might have a stronger argument. But they don't. They are not trying to protect marriage. They just want to regulate sex. Tell you what. If straight folk can ever effectively manage their own sexual behavior, maybe I'll listen to their arguments about state regulation of sex acts.
Finished – Dispelling the Myths About Addiction
This is a good first book to read if you're interested in addiction issues. It gives a brief overview of the issues surrounding addiction treatment including brain chemistry, psycho-social factors, public policy and barriers to research. For the most part it didn't tell me anything I didn't already know or hadn't already concluded myself. Some of the brain chemistry stuff did go over my head. I understand basic synaptic function, but I don't know the significance of the more specific structures of the brain. I also found it interesting that with some addictive drugs it's not just about developing a tolerance. They actually rewire the brain to create dependence. Along the same lines, the chemical processes that produce intoxication are separate from the chemical process that produce addiction which are separate form the process that produce tolerance. It's amazingly complex, and that's just the biology piece.
Some interesting statistics from the book:
- The annual cost to society for all types of cancer (1990): $96.1 billion.
- The annual cost to society for alcohol abuse (1990): $98.6 billion
- The annual cost to society for substance abuse (alcohol, nicotine, illicit drugs) (1990): $256.8 billion
- The 1995 research budget for cancer: $1,215.5 million
- The 1995 research budget for substance abuse: $472.1 million
- Higher education is related to decreased drug use.
- Higher education is related to increased alcohol consumption.
- Two thirds of people over the age of 14 drink alcohol.
- Dividing the amount of alcohol produced by the number of alcohol drinkers equates to 10 gallons of whiskey per person annually.
- However, 10% of alcohol drinkers consume 50% of alcohol produced.
- 500mg percent* blood alcohol level is considered fatal, suppressing brain function enough that breathing stops.
- The record non-fatal blood alcohol level is 1500mg percent.
If you'd like to take a shot at calculating how much alcohol you drink in a year, here is a handy liquid measurement conversion calculator. Don't forget your basic alcohol equivalences: 1 12oz. can of beer = 1 5oz. glass of wine = 1 1.5oz shot of whiskey.
Just to give you an idea, a bottle of wine a week is "only" 2.1 gallons of alcohol a year.
*mg/percent is a standard measure for concentration of substances in the blood, but I don't quite understand what it means. Googling "mg percent" demonstrates its wide spread use, but I couldn't find a definition. If any of the more biologically minded out there want to enlighten me, I'd appreciate it.
Sunset over Lone Peak
Well, I survived the first year of graduate school. It was harder than I expected. Probably has something to do with the sink-or-swim philosophy of the practicum experience. I'm sorry, but I just don't feel qualified to be acting as a therapist to adolescents with some real issues in my first year of graduate school, let alone my first semester. I understand that the best way of learning direct practice is doing, but damn. A little bit of training would have been nice. Out of eight classes only two had anything to do with clinical practice. I also think there are some ethical issues involved, but apparently this is the way of many or even most MSW programs.
My supervisor and a few of the other counselors I got to know seem to think I did very well for my first year. I'm glad they think so. One told me, "You have the makings of a good therapist. You just need to build your confidence."
Well, now I know what to expect for next year, so I'm going to be doing some reading over the summer. I'll be working with substance abuse and domestic violence next year. That's not a clientèle I want to be meeting cold turkey. Some information under my belt would be nice. Confidence, remember?
What does any of this have to do with a sunset photo? Who knows. The sun going down on my first year of school? Or maybe that it's just nice to have the time to be out shooting again.
Chinese. No, my bad. South Korean.
I was chatting with a professor of Japanese descent about the nightmare at Virginia Tech. She is going to be participating on a panel discussion about the Asian perspective on the events. At first blush that sounded just a bit odd too me. I mean, does anyone really think Asians feel differently than anyone else about a deranged killer slaughtering innocents? That's not what the panel is about, though. It's more about the Asian perspective on the reactions to the killer being Asian. This quote from Margaret Cho is right on the money.
So here is the whole terrible mess of the shootings at Virginia Tech. I look at the shooter [Seung-Hui Cho's] expressionless face on the news and he looks so familiar, like he could be in my family. Just another one of us. But how can he be us when what he has done is so terrible? Here is where I can really envy white people because when white people do something that is inexplicably awful, so brutally and horribly wrong, nobody says "do you think it is because he is white?" There are no headlines calling him the "White shooter." There is no mention of race because there is no thought in anyone's mind that his race had anything to do with his crime. (Cho, 2007)
You gotta wonder how come the media reported Seung-Hui was Chinese before verifying his actual national descent. Wouldn't have anything to do with China being the last remaining communist super-power would it? Wouldn't have anything to do with an assumption that only a communist would be capable of such an atrocity, would it? South Koreans are such nice people.
What my professor wants to know is how is this going to affect the status of "model minority" that has been granted Asian Americans. Does this mean Asians will be now considered hard working, intelligent and possibly deranged?
Sad but true.
Another example of a double bind is a teacher who urges his students to participate in class but gets impatient if one of them actually interrupts with a question or comment. Then a baffling thing happens. For some strange reason that scientists have yet to decipher, students tend not to speak up in classes in which their comments are disparaged. When the professor finally does get around to asking for questions and no one responds, he gets angry. ("Students are so passive!") If any of the students have the temerity to comment on the professor's lack of receptivity, he'll probably get even angrier. Thus the students will be punished for accurately perceiving that the teacher really wants only his own ideas to be heard and admired. (This example is, of course, purely hypothetical.) (Nichols, 2007, p. 14)
I actually got a good laugh out of the last line of this paragraph in one of my text books for this semester. I had a professor exactly like that last semester. No one bothered to point out the contradiction in her request for student feedback and her behavior upon the receipt of said feedback. After the first few times she ignored raised hands until she had finished her spiel, we just gave up. We're not talking about finishing a sentence here. Sometimes 10 - 15 minutes would pass before she would ask for questions. She'd have moved on to a completely different topic and there didn't seem to be much point. Then there were the times where she was flat out wrong: trying to suggest that the superconscious is like the super-ego, for example. Not. When we told her she was incorrect, she couldn't even admit to having made a booboo, much less that she was wrong.
Fate has conspired against me, and I have her again this semester. By the time I got registered, hers was the only section left. There are twelve of us in the class. The other sections are packed. Can't imagine why. The other professors have suggested that people could transfer in to our section so that they could enjoy a smaller class size.
Call me crazy, but I just don't see that happening.
I prefer to call it sublimation.
Over the last couple of years I have noticed that my anger tends to flare up at the slightest provocation. Most often I am simply bugged by some frustrating event, such as an anomalous bug in code that is resisting discovery and extinction, or some moron on the road who has obviously disengaged brain and/or backbone before turning the ignition key, or getting caught in a tangled web of university and health insurance bureaucracy that prevented me from getting registered for this semester in a timely fashion. None of these events, however, seems threatening or insulting enough warrant the homicidal urges that seem more than willing to jump to the fore at such moments.
Sometimes I think it's just the result of my being—shall we say—emotionally constipated most of my life. Now that my emotions aren't so buried anymore, I sometimes feel like a teenager (toddler?) trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Still, one of my clients that I am seeing as part of my practicum is an adolescent boy who came in for anger management problems. We've spent time talking about anger being a secondary emotion, that there is usually something going on underneath that we are using anger to protect ourselves from. Most often what is going on is some emotion that makes us feel weak, frightened and/or powerless and anger literally is our own little Incredible Hulk that gives us the fortitude to overcome, or is at least enough of a distraction that we can remain in denial. We've also talked about how whatever set us off is sometimes just the grain of rice that tips the scale and the anger we feel is about other stuff that's out of sight, if not out of mind.
I hardly think it fair that I not be willing to submit to the same self examination that I ask of my clients. In fact, I tend to think that's what makes a good therapist: someone who is as willing to deal with his own issues as he expects his clients to be. I recently spent a fair amount of time pondering the source of these flare ups (while soaking in a hot bath). No matter where I start, I always seem to end up at religion.
Every frustration I have with respect to my current life leads, directly or indirectly, back to religion: social norms that still make it unacceptable to hold my sweetheart's hand in public, efforts to marginalize gay and lesbian Americans into second class citizens, my family's ability to accept my partner so long as we don't appear to be a couple, my frustration with the virtual impossibility of being a father to my children who only visit. I often say that I harbor no ill will toward the church (in my case the LDS church) and by extension to religion in general, but I begin to question now if that is truly the case. It seems the reality is that I'm pretty pissed off.
I still don't believe that outright hostility is the proper expression of these feelings I have. I have not seen one single instance where that has proven an adaptive response. On the contrary, in every case I can think of it has been downright dysfunctional, if for no other reason that the only person who would be harmed is me. I do also make an attempt at being a fair minded individual. I realize that the practice of religion is as diverse as the practice of culture. It is no more useful to stereotype someone as "a Mormon" than it is to stereotype someone as "black."
I end up in conversations with myself about possible explanations for behavior and policy (okay, fine, belief) that I witness. Since the Mormon tradition is the one with which I am most familiar, it is almost always the topic of discussion.
"How can someone claim to have direct access to the mind of God and be so completely wrong on this subject?"
"Maybe it isn't the right time."
"The right time? There has to be a right time to do the right thing?"
"Look at what the Episcopal church is going through. Church leaders are going to avoid that situation like the plague. You know if Gordon came out tomorrow and declared he had received a revelation about the admission of homosexuality the church would be in an uproar. There are too many people who couldn't handle it and would leave."
"So? Let 'em go. Who needs them?"
"I don't know. Maybe they're concerned about splinter groups forming. My guess is it would be the most staunchly radical folk that would leave. Look at all the grief Colorado City has caused over the years. The last thing the church leaders would want to cope with is another fundamentalist splinter group."
"I'm not conviced. Excommuincate them. Disavow any association. Just like they've been doing for decades with polygamists."
"I guess. Maybe they think it's better to keep them in the fold where they can keep an eye on them and have some measure of control."
"So the bigots are managed at the expense of gays and lesbians who want nothing more than to be accepted in their families and religion of origin. Sounds a bit like casting your pearls before swine to me."
"Well, maybe they feel some responsibility. The church wasn't all that gay friendly from about the late 50s until about 2000 or so. There is some evidence they were downright hostile. Maybe they're trying to undo what they've done."
"So what you're saying is they have their balls caught in a vice of their own making and I'm supposed to feel sorry for them."
"Ummm...."
"Yeah. Not gonna happen."
Aaaaaghh!
One of my classes this semester is on public policy. The only real assignment I have in that class is an 8-10 page policy analysis. Being a divorced dad and having seen many of my other divorced friends screwed over by their ex-wives (and because it was likely to be a topic few others in the class chose) I decided to do a policy analysis on child custody laws.
I have learned two things in the reading I've done so far. One, child custody has little to do with children and is mostly about gender politics. Two, based on the garbage produced by fathers' rights advocates, it's no wonder no one takes them seriously. Hoping for a more complete picture, I sought books authored by both sexes. The two books I have written by men—namely,Betrayal of the Child: A Father's Guide to Family Courts by Stewart Rein and Where Have All The Good Fathers Gone? by Douglas O'Brien—have left me frustrated and angry, but probably not for the reasons you might suppose.
Neither book is well documented. Both give statistics and make claims about child development with only vague citation of sources, if any. Entire quotations are often given with no obvious reference to the source. Scanning back a page or two you might find reference to one professional or another. The best you can do is assume that is the original author of the quotation, but it's even odds as to whether or not the specific source is identified or not. How the hell do they get away with this? Who edited these things? Oh, and is there some new age school of grammar I'm not aware of where punctuation always goes outside of a quotation mark?
This would be frustrating enough, but it doesn't stop there. Mr. Rein's egregious misuse of bold face, italics, full caps and scare quotes is baffling. Am I the only one who sees irony in a man having discovered a way to make writing look hysterical and emotional? Mr. O'Brien lost my respect as soon as he used the term feminazi. Oh, he dressed it up with dictionary definitions to try and give it a rational context, but I wonder if he's heard the phrase "polishing a turd." He also has a penchant for going to great lengths to come up with derisive acronyms such as FUNIFARM (Feminazi UNIfied Feelings Are Really Manipulation theory) or JUST BS (JUnk Science Theory Bashing Syndrome) (pp.15-16).
Both men raise valid points, but how can they possibly expect to be taken seriously? This kind of writing might work to incite the masses, but do these guys really think they're going to influence policy makers with this crap? Oh, and Mr. O'Brien, labeling social scientists as SS isn't going to win you any friends in that arena either. Both men characterize the writings of women on child custody as radical, hate filled attempts to disenfranchise men and set up a matriarchy. In contrast fathers' rights groups are logical and rational (O'Brien 1997, p.20).
Huh?
The one book by a female author I have read so far—The Custody Wars by Mary Ann Mason, Ph.D., J.D.—by contrast, is well reasoned, and well documented. In fact she agrees that the system is broken and has nothing to do with the best interests of the children, such language existing in most statutes notwithstanding. She does, however, make the assertion that fathers' rights advocates aren't as interested in their children as they are in maintaining their own rights and power. Gee, I can't imagine why.
O'Brian, D. (1997). Where Have All the Good Fathers Gone? Child Support and Custody. Fairbanks, AK: Skid 18 Press.
Rein, S (2001). Betrayal of the Child: A Father's Guide to Family Courts. Tobyhanna, PA: Lotus Press.