No, this isn’t a post about Medicare for All (which is a great goal, but a problematic 2020 campaign platform, in my humble opinion). But this post is about you, if you have Medicare and are seeking psychotherapy, and me, in my quest to be able to provide you with services.Continue Reading Medicare Progress
Is there an “Addictive Personality”…?
Among counseling students and faculty, there is a fun exercise that consists of naming the diagnostic categories for the characters from “Winnie-the-Pooh.”
Tigger has ADHD, Eeyore has dysthymic disorder, and Piglet has generalized anxiety disorder. But Winnie-the-Pooh himself seems to have all the hallmarks of an addictive personality. He just needs a “little something” (or, in the original books, “A little smackerel of something,” which is even more of a drug-like reference) in order to make him feel; better. And his nightmares are of creatures who steal his honey, that is, cut off his supply of his drug of choice. Continue Reading Is there an “Addictive Personality”…?
Masculinity – Healthy and Toxic: Our Society’s Challenge
After last week’s mass shootings, people have been busy pointing fingers, and “white supremacy” has become a point of contention. We’re even hearing that the far right is attempting to co-opt the term as a badge of honor, the way they did with the label, “deplorables.” But a thoughtful essay in the New York Times by Julie Bosman, Kate Taylor, and Tim Arango draws a different line to connect the dots: hatred toward women. And, I would argue that the underlying factor that connects misogynistic acts of violence and those fueled by racist or white supremacist rage lies in our society’s flawed conception of what it means to be a man. And that’s why blaming these acts on “mental illness” is not only a grave disservice to those who contend with actual mental health problems, but also fails to acknowledge the truth that violence is baked into our society as part of our constructs of gender and masculinity.
90 years ago, Alfred Adler wrote about “…the arch evil of our culture, the excessive pre-eminence of manliness.” His concept of “masculine protest” is usually taught in introductory psychology courses as something that women “had” when they expressed their dissatisfaction with the ways women are treated in society. But Adler’s ideas about masculine protest also included the idea that men are influenced by our culture’s distorted values about what it means to be a man, and that many men who feel inadequate about themselves equate masculinity with power, domination, and control. And, like children, when their desire for power is frustrated, a few of them seek revenge.Continue Reading Masculinity – Healthy and Toxic: Our Society’s Challenge
Thanksgiving – “Grateful for” and “Grateful to”
At this time of year, we tend to think of what we’re thankful for in terms of the basic human needs – the ones that lie along the bottom three tiers of Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.Those are survival, safety, and belonging.
Our images of Thanksgiving center around harvest, food, gathering together, and celebrating togetherness. The image of the Pilgrim colonists and the Wampanoag people, who helped them survive their early days in what is now the United States, has been indelibly etched into our minds through years of school pageants, paintings, and greeting cards. Continue Reading Thanksgiving – “Grateful for” and “Grateful to”
No, We’re Not “Divided” – Some of Us Are Simply Lost from Social Reality
One of the basic tenets of Alfred Adler’s theory is that most social realities are fictions – and they are either socially useful fictions, or else socially useless (harmful) ones. This “psychology of ‘as-if,’” which Adler adopted from the philosopher Hans Vaihinger, is similar to the post-modern or social constructivist way of thinking, and says that common-sense (or consensual) reality is usually the healthiest basis for an individual’s construction of social reality. The closer to common-sense thinking we remain, the healthier our beliefs tend to be. An over-reliance on “private logic,” in Adler’s view, is a mark of pathology.Continue Reading No, We’re Not “Divided” – Some of Us Are Simply Lost from Social Reality
Adlerian Interpretation of the Twelve Steps
Earlier this year, I gave a talk at Adler University for their “Transformative Empowerment” conference put on by the Center for Adlerian Practice and Scholarship. As part of my talk, I created a document that recasts the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous in Adlerian terms.
For a number of years, I have discussed both the strengths and the limitations of the Twelve Step approach. Many prople find the many references to “God as we understand Him” off-putting. Others don’t like the powerlessness inherent in the First Step and beyond.
In fact, at a conference focused on “Transformative Empowement,” I thought it would be very helpful to illustrate how an Adlerian frame of reference could turn the Twelve Steps into a series of actions geared toward transformative empowerment. Continue Reading Adlerian Interpretation of the Twelve Steps
Sin and Injury: When Sorry Is Not Enough
With the recent spate of revelations about sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and sexual assault being reported in the media, many people of conscience wonder exactly what the aggressors owe the people who were the targets of their hurtful behavior. There are a lot of components to the hurt that people may have suffered, but the most devastating effects are the destruction of their sense of self-confidence and safety, the shame, the guilt (always undeserved), and the damage to their reputation and social support systems. Simply keeping a secret like a sexual assault is destructive, but when added to shame, guilt, fear, and traumatic disruption of a life, it can be crippling.
Let’s Try Saying “Americans” Instead of “America” – A Lesson from Canadians
On the fourth of my trips to Adler’s Vancouver campus last fall, I came before the Canadian border officer, as I had each time before. I was ready for the questions about why I was coming to Canada, and gave the same explanation as previously – that I had been asked to teach a class at our Vancouver campus which was being done primarily by videoconference but required a certain number of in-person sessions to be taught. This time, the officer looked at me with a look of slightly injured pride and asked, “Couldn’t they get a Canadian to do that?”
I have been reminded of that question in the past week as I have read about the response of Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, to the sudden restrictions on travel and immigration imposed by the Trump administration, and in response to the horrific killings of six people at a mosque in Quebec. Each time, he has referred to “Canadians” rather than to “Canada,” in his responses:
To those fleeing persecution, terror and war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength…
Diversity is our strength, and religious tolerance is a value that we, as Canadians, hold dear. Muslim-Canadians are an important part of our national fabric, and these senseless acts have no place in our communities, cities and country.
While Trudeau has garnered praise as an individual leader for his responses, they struck me as very Canadian responses nonetheless. They are also very Adlerian responses, because Alfred Adler and Rudolf Dreikurs emphasized people working together and feeling a part of a community, rather than people trusting to a nationalistic, ethnic, religious, or cultural identity. As Eva Dreikurs Ferguson put it:
Because Adler considered that each human is part of a social community, our sense of self is a function of our social identity. The primary need of all human beings is to feel belonging, to have a place, in the social community. In the infant, that community is the family. As the person moves into an increasingly larger sphere, the social community to which he or she seeks to feel belonging is increasingly broad. The ultimate social community to which an adult seeks to belong is the human species as a whole, as part of an enlarged sense of one’s own humanness. (Dreikurs Ferguson, 1984, p.4).
My experience with Canadians has supported the notion that they take responsibility as people for the society they create, and for its values. They are pragmatic – like when they decided that using pennies was inefficient, and decided to round each cash transaction to the nearest nickel; or when they decided that people can use whatever language they like to conduct business but that they won’t require anyone else to learn that language. They do what works, while respecting people in the process. These are the characteristics they have in mind when they proudly refer to themselves as Canadians.
The attitude carries over even into provincial identity, as in the case of one 94-year old woman riding the SeaBus ferry when I rode it – who introduced herself as “a proud British Columbian!”
Americans, by contrast, look to the entity they have created as “America” to define their values, and to measure and judge the values of others. We talk about “Liberty” and other “American ideals,” but we easily level the charge of being “Un-American” or “Un-patriotic” against those with whom we may disagree. I don’t often hear people describing themselves as “a proud American,” much less “a proud Illinoisan.” We spend a great deal of mental energy and public discourse deciding what “America” means and how we shall treat those who disrespect this nation and its symbols. That is what gives us the peculiar recent scene of an American physically assaulting other Americans who were burning the American flag in constitutionally-protected protest, and being hailed as a “hero” for doing so. This is reminiscent of the story of Barbara Frietchie in Whittier’s poem: “’Shoot, if you must, this old gray head / But spare your country’s flag,’ she said.” We tend as a nation to treat our symbols as being more valuable than our people. That may well be part of what people have in mind when they use the term “ugly American.” We tend to believe that we are “exceptional” just because we were born in the USA. And that makes us exceptionally conceited, in the eyes of many others in the world.
This focus on “America,” at the expense of a focus on “Americans,” is what gives us intolerance masquerading as pride, cruelty masquerading as strength, and slogans masquerading as policy. “Make America great again” and “America first” reflect nothing of our values, actions, or beliefs as Americans. They reflect a poorly defined nationalistic identity (often a white Christian heterosexual national identity) that is seen as the be-all and the end-all – as the source, rather than the goal, of our pride and our efforts. And which, incidentally, is quite vulnerable to being hijacked to serve purposes of power, exclusion, and spite. The hashtag “#MAGA” is too often appended to online expressions of hate, resentment, distrust, disparagement, and distortion.
I think we need to spend more time thinking about what we, as Americans, stand for and believe, and less time talking about what is “good for America” or “true to America.” Those ways of thinking have given us the McCarthy inquisitions and blacklists, wars, suffering, and death. And now those ways of thinking threaten to give the rest of the world a very negative image of our people as a nationalistic, jingoistic, judging, selfish, superiority-seeking group of human beings.
We should not need a giant green statue – weeping or not – to define our attitude toward newcomers to our land. America is what Americans believe, say, and do. “America First” and “America Strong” are meaningless without considering what Americans believe, do and say. We need to look within ourselves, and examine our values toward other human beings – toward our neighbors – whether down the street or across the globe.
Reference:
Dreikurs Ferguson, E. (1984). Adlerian theory: An introduction. Chicago: Adler University.
Ethics, Truth, and Our Political World of 2016
It’s hard to say anything calming or therapeutic since the election in November. Many people are feeling vindicated and many others are feeling betrayed, fearful, and even traumatized. But a major factor in the anxiety many of us are feeling is the sense that we cannot believe what we hear any longer. We’re subjected to outright lies and conspiracy theories (for example, everything said by websites like that of Alex Jones) and to seriously biased and self-serving interpretations of real events that are used to spin a weaponized narrative (for example, things said by Mitch McConnell on the right and Noam Chomsky on the left).
But a more insidious form of distortion comes when our news sources treat all these things as simply points of controversy, without commenting on their credibility. This finally boiled over when the New York Times finally began putting the word “falsely” in its headlines about some of Donald Trump’s statements.
This essay by a therapist on John Grohol’s PsychCentral blog makes some excellent points about truth from a human relations point of view.
It’s disheartening for me to be teaching future counselors about the ethical principles on which all helping professions are based, and seeing those principles trashed and trampled in the public and political arenas.
Those principles include fidelity (taking your responsibilities to others seriously), integrity (always trying to be honest and true), and nonmalificence (thinking in advance about how your actions might harm people). Shouldn’t people who want the public’s trust as political leaders be as concerned about these principles as doctors and therapists are? After all, a therapist or physician can only harm one person at a time, while reckless political leaders can cause the deaths of thousands or millions of innocent people.
But ethics has lost all meaning in the political sphere, except perhaps as a weapon to harm your opponent when you can catch them in a violation of a rule. This is not ethics; it’s the exercise of authority. And those of us who are familiar with Kohlberg’s stages of moral development will realize that ethics by investigation and punishment, while it may be necessary, only calls for the immature form of moral reasoning that depends on fear of consequences, and never reaches the mature concern for the welfare of others that should mark adult moral reasoning.
The essay also makes me think of my Adlerian orientation, because being truthful with each other is a cornerstone of Alfred Adler’s “ironclad logic of social living.” And one that we ignore at our peril as a civilization (and indeed, as a species).
In addition to the purposes of lying spelled out in the essay, Rudolf Dreikurs said that children lie in order to gain power over others. If I can mislead others, I have an advantage over them. And that seems to me to be the central goal of political falsehoods… It lets power-hungry people manipulate the rest of us to gain power and control. That, in itself, is an antisocial goal. We need to get a handle on this, and make a commitment as a society to share a consensual reality even when we disagree on the best course of action. But even our disagreements (for example, whether to lower or raise taxes, and on whom, and in what ways) should be judged and resolved by looking at evidence, data, and historical results, not by hammering away at our favored ideological points (such as the “feeling” that taxes, or the parties who favor action on them, are good or bad per se).
Encouragement, Pain, and Survival
In May, I presented at the North American Society of Adlerian Psychology’s annual conference in Minnesota, along with colleagues from Adler University’s Chicago Campus. Our panel discussion was on encouragement, and we spoke about the different ways we have experienced encouragement in our lives and tried to pass it along to others.
In my discussion, I used the metaphor of a “big switch” that I consciously imagined as a way to “switch off” self-doubt. I credited my teachers and mentors (including the late Dr. Bina Rosenberg, who was my personal therapist as well as a beloved colleague and a noted Adlerian who worked with Rudolf Dreikurs) with providing the encouragement that I had needed to overcome self-doubt.
An audience member remarked at the end of our panel discussion that the “big self-doubt switch” was an appealing metaphor that she planned to keep in mind as she goes about her work as a therapist. I joked that I pictured it as one of those big, steampunk-looking knife switches like you would see in Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory, and pantomimed throwing that kind of switch.
Also in the audience was Debbie Joffe Ellis, a notable psychotherapist whose late husband was Dr. Albert Ellis, the originator of Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy. I hoped that she had taken something from our discussion, as well, and felt a bit special to have her as an attendee for our little presentation.
Today I saw that Debbie had posted a blog entry on the Psychology Today blog, with the title, “Reducing the Pain: Focusing on What Is Good, Including and Despite Tragic Events.” In it, she described three events that had shaken her significantly – witnessing the aftermath of a plane crashing into the Hudson River on May 27, receiving an abusive e-mail message from someone over a business matter, and spending the holiday weekend alone while thinking of those who have passed away. In each case, she emphasized the choice that she had – whether to feel crushed and beaten down, or to remind herself of what she does have and appreciate those things. On the holiday weekend, that included the friends she has to whom she could reach out.
That last part resonated with me, because I had used the trip to Minneapolis to visit a dear friend and his wife, whom I had not seen in many years. Although we had many valid reasons for not seeing each other, I realized that a big one I had never acknowledged was that same self-doubt. Maybe he would think I wasn’t as good a friend as I’d thought. Maybe our lives had been split for too long. Maybe … Well, may be it was just more of that self-doubt. Rudolf Dreikurs always spoke of “the courage to be imperfect.” So maybe I needed the courage to say I still wanted to reconnect and feel close to my friend (and his wife, whom I’d never met). Even though I’d done a much less than perfect job of keeping up the friendship.
So overall, I hope that my thoughts at the conference, and Debbie Ellis’s thoughts afterward, share a common thread. We need to make the choice to accept the events in life in positive ways. We need to be conscious of our strengths and positives, and we need to choose to focus on those -rather than on the frightening, discouraging, or disappointing things that happen.It’s advice I’ve always tried to give others, but as Debbie and the other audience members helped me see, we all need to make the choice to do the same thing ourselves in our daily lives.