The Stories We Live By: Recent Episodes
Stories We Live By
Retelling our own life stories that are creative and hopeful rather living as victims and in despair.
When some advanced civilizations in our galalxy realized sometime around 2050 AD Earth time that our planet had gone quiet the Galactic Counsel Empowered Flog, the planet closest to Earth, to visit and provide information as to what might have happened to a civiization ready to be iinvited to join the galactic community. This is a summary of what might have gone wrong that created a series of disasters that ended both human civilization and most life on the planet.
Psychotherapist Al Glaves and I will talk about how the medical model of mental illnesses was created and how it is fed by the American Public's acceptance of its harmful and erroneous beliefs. We will speak about the factors that motivate the various "states of being" (in essence, troubled and troubling modes of behavior, expressions of thought and emotional reactions) that are ultimately diagnosed as "mental illnesses and disorders." Finally we will discuss the ways the public can protect itself from the lies of the psychiatric model and Big Pharma and still successfully participate in the process of psychotherapy.
In Part 3 of this series I will discuss the differences between a relationship with a Psychotherapist or other mental health professional that will help rather than hurt those seeking help for emotional pain, difficult relationships or problems realizing a life that is creative and emotionally fulfilling. I will describe what to expect and look for in a relationship that goes beyond the destructive moral labels of psychiaric diagnoses and is based on person to person interactions defined by mutual respect, honesty, openess and lacking in any forms of coercion and intimidation. I refer to the former as psychotherapy which pretends to be a form of medicine and the latter as psycho"therapy" which recognizes, in one way or another, that the interaction is medical in name only. I will argue that many professionals do practice psycho"therapy" inspite of defining their efforts with medical terms such a "therapy," "patient," "mental illnesses and disorders," "symptoms" and the like. store.bookbaby.com/book/psychotherapy-and-the-stories-we-live-by
A second episode dealing with the myths of mental illness and health and the various ways in which your life can be ruined. I will continue my discussion of the basic information the public requires to interact with the professionals that comprise those supposedly "diagnosing" and "treating" problems in living.
A person writes on Twitter "I had so many dreams. Had so many things I wanted to do. I was told I needed to wait for the right cocktail of meds ...so I could be balanced. Days turned into months and years. 20 years gone. Never got to start my life." In todays episode I shall describe how being drawn into the lies of the the mental health industry steals lives and what each person might learn that will allow them to avoid or escape from the traps of our current system of so-called mental health services. I will suggest ways of finding real psychological help by becoming an educated consumer of what is currently available and ultimately being your own life advocate.
store.bookbaby.com/book/psychotherapy-and-the-stories-we-live-by
Today I will discuss some of my reactions to Wilkerson's argument that race based on skin color formed the basis of a caste here in America. I will discuss the incredible, mind altering statement that "there are no black peope in Africa.'' I will discuss this from my own vantage point that had my grandparents not left Russia for America I would have most certainly died in a killing field or extermination camp because I belonged to the "Jewish Race." Here in America Judaism is a religion and my race is White. I feel certain this will be the first in a series of podcasts on this vitally important topic.
www.store.bookbaby.com/book/psychotherapy-and-the-stories-we-live-by
Today I will discuss the nature of the self and try to convince my listeners that beginning a sentence that expresses a psychological fact should not be "I am" but "I do" thereby changing the nature of our selves from nouns to verbs. This small grammatical shift allows us to recognize the enormous difference between judging ourselves and judging our actions or behaviors. Once we judge ourselves as a noun the judgment becomes a permanent attribute of our identity and self. Once we judge our behaviors we have an opportunity to change any aspect of our behavior which we (or others) feel is wrong or harmful. The change from "I am" to "I do" also allows us to challenge the psychiatric nonsense of being lablelled as mentally ill or disordered and living with the belief that our selves are permenantly defective. For example, "I am Schizophrenic" changes to "I behave schizophrenically and I can always learn to behave differently." I will also discuss the relationship of our brain's activities to our understanding of self and selves.
To learn more read my book 'Psycho"therapy" and the Stories We live By' www.store.bookbaby.com/book/psychotherapy-and-the-stories-we-live-by
I will deconstruct the concepts of race and intelligence and describe how these basically unscientific and invalid concepts have been used to divide and dehumanize human beings and justify the enslavement and murder of millions as well as convince more millions into believing that race, rather than their humanity, is the primary definition of their identities.
My guest today will be Dr Chuck Ruby, author of "Smoke and Mirrors: How You Are Being Fooled About Mental Illness" https://chuckruby.com
See my book at store.bookbaby.com/book/psychotherapy-and-the-stories-we-live-by
Are human beings the products of their genes, how they are treated by other human beings in their environments or by a combination of both? Are some human beings basically good and some basically evil? Do we have any control as to how human beings turn out and if so how can we describe that control? I do not pretend to know the answers to these questions but I will try and clarify how to approach these thorny, but very important issues. How do the answers to these questions shape the politics practised in any given family, social group or society?
For further discussion see my book at store.bookbaby.com/psychotherapy-and-the-stories-we-liveby
A critical discussion about Mary Trump's psychological insights about how her family's dynamics shaped the personalities of its members. Dr. Trump is a clincal psychologist and provides a well written, easy to read, and in my opinion an important volume on her theories concerning the rise of Donald Trump and the fall of her father, Freddy, Donald's older brother. I will frame my discussion to include the question as to why and how Donald Trump became the personal savior to millions of American Citizens.
www.bookbaby.com/book/psychotherapy-and-the-stories-we-live-by
I will present an arguement that America's current attempts to deal with "racism" and police brutality are best understood as common elements of authoritarian political structures. Authoritarianism is the dominant type of politics both in our world and the historical past. Authoritarian political structures are always hierarchical and maintained by convincing their citizens that those in the higher levels are inherently superior as human beings than those in the lower strata of society. The psychological mechanisms of control involve dehumanizing some individuals and demonizing those who would seek to rebel against their fixed position in the hierarchy. The police and the military usually represent the mechanisms to enforce compliance and punish rebellion among those dehumanized and demonized. The solution to the problems created by authoritarian heirarchies are found in democratic political structures adhering to the idea that all human beings are equal in their essential worth, have equal rights, privileges and responsibilities and that all its citizens are more human than otherwise.
These ideas are explored in my book "Psycho'therapy' and the Stories We Live By" to be found on Amazon.com, BN.com, and store.bookbaby.com/book/psychotherapy-and-the-stories-we-live-by
My Co-host is Sue Parry, retired Occupational Therapist and Mother of three grown sons who were all diagnosed "at-risk" for ADHD, Conduct Disorder and various learning disabilities when they were of school age. Her personal experiences with the mental health system left her outraged at how health care and educational professionals allowed her children and millions of others to be physically and psychologically hurt by the myths of ADHD and a host of other so-callled mental illnesses , the increasing use of powerful brain diasbling drugs and bogus therapies. Sue Parry's name appears in the acknowledgments of many books including "Talking Back To Ritalin," Naughty Boys: Anti-social Behavior, ADHD and the Role of Culture, and "A Disease Called Childhood: Why ADHD Is an Epidemic." She has testified at the National Institute of Mental Health and the FDA. We will discuss what must be done to protect our children and our democracy from this authoritarian and unscientific onslaught to the life and education of our future citizens.
I am a familiar with a young person about to start graduate studies in School Psychology which means that this individual will be emersed in much of the same theories and ideas as Clinical Psychology. I hope this individual (and all others entering the field) enjoys being a psychologist as much as I did but should be aware that the field has many serious critics of many of the basic concepts of the field of clinical and school psychology. These include the concepts of mental illnesses and disorders, the wholesale diagnosing of our population including children, the widespread use of brain altering and damaging drugs as treatments and the fact that the field often operates more like a religion than a science creating problems for anyone trying to be a critic of current ideas and procedures. It is my hope that all new students will be familar with all sides of the controversies within the field and respectful of those who promote them.
A further discussion on how confusing moral labels with medical diagnoses damages both individuals and the democracy we strive to live in. Morally judging unhappiness, confusion, a host of normal human emotions and a wide number of problems people might have adjusting to a variety of life situations dehumanizes and demonizes them and not only creates the very conditions and behaviors being termed "mental illnesses and disorders" but also undermines people's abilities to participate as citizens of a democracy.
Psycho"therapy" and The Stories We Live By is available at Amazon.com, BN.com and store.bookbaby.com/book/psychotherapy-and-the-stories-we-live-by
This will be the first in a series of podcasts that have two goals. The first is to try and convince the public to reject any and all attempts by professionals working in the mental health industry (psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and others) to accept that confusion, anxiety and unhappiness represent actual entities called mental illnesses and disorders. The second goal is to make the argument that the wholesale diagnosing of many milions of citizens as mentally ill represents an authoritarian system that not only damages them as individuals but has helped undermine our society as a democracy. These podcasts will be told in the form of my personal story based on my fifty years as a "clinical" psychologist and how I began as a true believer in the medical model of mental illness and ended as a fierce critic of this same system.
store.bookbaby.com/book/psychotherapy-and-the-stories-we-live-by
There is no real thing called intelligence that can actually be measured although people do differ in the skills that they excercise in varying situations. After years of struggling to define just what intellience might be many psychologists gave up and decided that "intelligence is whatever the test tests!" However, most professionals and laypersons continue to believe that Intelligence tests measure some actual quality of the mind and that it can predict how a person will be able to learn in many, if not all situations. Moreover, it is claimed that the test is socially unbiased and results are independent of both whoever administers the test and the conditions under which it is administered. Many lives have been damaged by the continued acceptance of these incorrect assumptions.
Psycho"therapy and the Stories We Live By
Amazon.com, BN.com
store.bookbaby.com/book/psychotherapy-and-the-stories-we-live-by
I will continue to develop ideas preresented yesterday but left unfinished when Bob Eben called in a told his life affirming story. I will discuss, love, joy, creativity as well as education, the arts and good citizenship.
It is often assumed that health, whether mental or physical, means the absence of illness. While I will not try and describe physical or medical health I will try and discuss the thorny topic of mental health. I have argued that mental illnesses are moral judgments of unwanted behaviors and have little or nothing to do with real medical ilnesses or diseases. Mental Illnesses represent a dangerous, toxic myth. In my book Psycho'therapy' and the Stories We Live By" I suggest that those of us who work in the mental health system do not ever really try and formally describe mental health as there is no economic reason to do so. (My chapter entilted "Mental Health" is the main reason I wrote this book.) I describe behaviors that might be morally wanted that might define a myth of "mental health." Of course, I then delve into some of the reasons why some behaviors are referred to as illnesses and others as health and who gets to do the defining and creating of both these myths.
store.bookbaby.com/book/psychotherapy-and-the-stories-we-live-by.
I will begin my discussion of schizophrenia with a statement from my book "Psycho'therapy' and the Stories We Live By: "One of the saddest expressions of a ruined identity are the words 'I am a schizophrenic.' To have one's total identity conflated with a fictitious disease that a person believes is incurable is tantamount to tragedy." (P.97) I will discuss the nature of the so-called symptoms of schizophrenia and then deconstruct the concept of the "psychoses" (defined as having lost touch with 'reality") of which schizophrenia is considered a prime example.
Mental Illnesses are moral judgements about a variety of often unwanted, troubled and troubling behaviors that on the surface seem to be illogical and make little or no sense that pose as medical diganoses. In my own writings and podcasts I put quotation marks around "therapy," "patient," "symptoms," and all other words that relate to how the mental health industry deals with those suffering from so called "mental illness and disorders." Reports from the so-called mental hospitals during current pandemic reveals how little these institutions have to do with actual hospitals treating the wide range of actual medical afflictions including victims of the virus. I now suggest that all those institutions supossedly "treating" "mental health" issues also be placed within quotation marks. I have long tried and failed to create new non-medical terminology to replace all of the medical terms related to psycho"therapy' and today will explore proper language to replace "hospital." I will also raise the issue as to whether or not such "hospitals" should even exist.
Szasz, Thomas. "The Myth of Mental Illness Rev Ed. New York, Harper and Row (1984)
Simon Laurence. Psycho"therapy" and Stories We Live By. Self published by BookBaby.com
store.bookbaby.com/book/psychotherapy-and-the-stories-we-live-by
My fear is that people will be convinced that their emotional reactions to the pandemic will represent some form of "mental illness" and that they will turn to Big Pharma to help them get through. Let's discuss what we are experiencing as we live in these extraordinary times. I am no longer a licensed psychotherapist after 5o years of practice and therefore I am not seeking to provide therapy or give advice; only to have meaningful discussions.
Andrew Solomon, in his article "Don't Ignore Clinical Mental Illness" points out that people who have existing, long term mental illnesses are especially at risk at having their symptoms severely increased by the pandemic and therefore in need of more therapy and medication. I will discuss the type of stories and patterns of behavior that end up being medicalized and diagnosed as mental illnesses and disorders espcially those stories that endure and those that are reactions to moments of stress and conflict. I will introduce the concept of stories that are "frozen in time" and their relationship to emotions such as anxiety, depression, guilt, shame and humilation. Finally, I will discuss how professionals might help in terms of what I refer to as psycho"therapy."
'Psycho"therapy" and the Stories We live By' in Amazon.com and store.bookbaby.com/book/psychotherapy-and-the-stories-we-live-by
Today's discussion is based on an Op-Ed article in the New York Times entitled "Don't Ignore Clinical Mental Illness" by Andrew Solomon, Professor of Clinical Psychology at Columbia University Medical Center. The author writes "Within weeks (of the pandemic) the familar symptoms of mental illness have become universal reality." I will read sections of the article and attempt to deconstruct it as a dangerous myth from a Post-Szaszian perspective. I will argue that mental illnesses do not actually exist and that anxiety and depression are normal but painful emotions that are necessary for our dealing with this and other crises. I will try and warn my listeners not to fall into a trap that might be life-long and damage the rest of their lives.
Szasz, Thomas. "The Myth Of Mental Illness." Rev. Ed. New York:Harper and Row (1984)
Simon, Laurence "Psycho'therapy' and the Stories We LIve By" Self-Published by BookBaby.com. Both available at Amazon.com and Simon at store.bookbaby.com/book/psychotherapy-and-the-stories-we-live-by.
Scott is a graduate of the University of Michigan, a musician and living in Spain as an educator. We will discuss our mutual interest in Szasz's ideas and how we both became convinced that the ideology of psychiatry is based on an unscientific, illogical and toxic set of ideas in which a moral judgment poses as a medical diagnosis.
Szasz, Thomas. 1974. "The Myth of Mental Illness, rev. ed. New York, Harper and Row
Simon, Laurence 2019 "Psycho"therapy" and the Stories We LIve By, Self Published through BookBaby.com
Both available at Amazon.com, BN.com
store.bookbaby.com/book/psychotherapy-and-the-stories-we-live-by
A discussion based on my book Psycho"therapy" and the Stories We Live By which is my attempt to seperate my idea of what the field might look like once the corrupt, illogical and toxic notions of "mental illnesses and disorders," and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disoders (DSM). I will discuss the need for new language to describe the field and what it does and speak to the need of both professionals and those who seek their help to reject the psychiatric model.
store.bookbaby.com/book/psychotherapy-and-the-stories-we-live-by
A discussion with Attorney Jim Gottstein about the release of the Zyprexa papers which revealed to the public the terrible physical effects of Zyprexa, an antipsychotic medication created and sold by pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly. The papers revealed that thousands of individuals developed diabetes, gained unusal amounts of weight and/or died and that Lilly knew, suppressed and lied about these so-called side effects of the drug. We will also discuss Jim's efforts to help those individuals diagnosed as mentally ill to fight against forced hospitalizations and treatments that violated their civil and human rights.
Jim's excellent book can be purchased at both Amazon.com and BN.com
Psychotherapy can be a form of liberation or permenant entrappment unless those seeking its help are educated consumers. These traps involve the false idea that mental illnesses are real, the failure to differentiate between judgments and descriptions, failing to understand the difference between what we are and what we do. We are might not be able to change what we are but we can always choose to change what we do. I will argue that psychotherapy at its best is a form of education rather than a treatment and that those individuals who seek to be students rather than patients can avoid the traps that are built into the so-called mental health system. More can be learned from my book Psycho"therapy" and the Stories We Live By. Find at store.bookbaby.com/book/psychotherapy-and-the-stories-we-live-by
I will share some of my thoughts both as a citizen and a psychologist concerning the difference between facts and truth and the necessity of having faith in some set of authorities if we are to understand how to best react to the events taking place in the world in which we live. I will use as my example my reactions to the televised hearing concerning the impeachment of President Trump. While I will make clear my own biases I will try and keep my discussion to a psychological analyis of the role of facts, truth and authority in making decision concerning this vital topic.
My guest tonight is Michael (Mickey) Weinberg, MSW, who has spent a lifetime organizing professionals to help those who have been labelled as "mentally ill" live better lives as well as reduce the power of institutional psychiatry and the mental health establishment to control their lives. His efforts have included a hunger strike designed to get mainstream media to focus on the fact that there is no evidence to support psychiatric claims that what is called mental illness has any biological basis whatsoever. (A documentary film of the strike can be found at http://hssm.semel.ucla.edu/wheres_evidence) Currently, Mickey will describe possible future efforts to reduce the power of the mental health industry's hold over the lives of those who have been diagnosed mentally ill.
My earlier show was ended prematurely. I will continue the discussion begun at 4:00 PM EST on August 19th at 4:00 PM EST
I will explore the current difficulties Americans now have discussing politics without becoming enraged with one another. Many individuals no longer speak to others who differ in their political affiliations including good friends and even family members. The political scene is rife with threats and even acts of violence if people dare criticize the politics and leaders of differing political parties. I will suggest that the firewall between religion and politics has been breached in our current situation and that authoritarianism and totalitarianism are rapidly replacing the democratic ideal of respectful debate of the issues. Moral truths replace factual understanding of our problems and of each other. Vast numbers of citizens no longer seek leaders but instead seek those who would save them from the realization of their deepest fears, guilt and shame. Finally, I will suggest that each of us must be able to examine what problems we hope to solve by adopting political rhetoric and strategies that dehumanize and demonize our fellow citizens as well as by blindly following leaders who foment hatred and the dehumanizing of others.
store.bookbaby.com/book/psychotherapy-and-the-stories-we-live-by
This Psychologist feels that the current wave of mass shootings are indicative of a dying society and that psychology and the whole "mental health industry" not only have contributed little to understanding our current social dilemmas but have contributed much to them. I will try and think outloud on the following: 1) Our theories fail to separate explanations from judgments; 2) examine the necessity for human beings to be both individuals as well as members of groups and society; 3) fails to adequately intergrate biology and psychology; 4) fails to integrate the roles played by politics and economics; 5) fails to develop a language of simultaneity that encompasses both individuals, the social groups that define us as individuals. Finally, I will muse on the role of science and technology that are changing every aspect of being human and ask the question "Will Alexa ever really love us?"
store.bookbaby.com/book/psychotherapy-and-the-stories-we-live-by
I offer today's broadcast to Kelli and the millions of others who mistakenly beleive that their hard to understand and painful patterns of behavior have something to do with mental illnesses, chemical imbalances, mental health and require something called treatments involving either drugs, talking or both. I will try and make clear to Kelly and the millions who believe as she does that she and they are caught in a number of traps created by language, particularly that which derives from the illogical, authoritarian and wholly unscientific language of Psychiatry, Clinical Psychology and other fields that follow mainstream Psychiatry. I will suggest, based upon what Kelly writes about how she currently lives that were she to fully avoid the language that enfolds her she would feel even more than she does at present to be "a person who belongs to the world." (Final sentence of her article.) I will suggest some books for Kelly and the millions who struggle as she does that will include Thomas Szasz' "The Myth of Mental Illness" and my own "Psycho "therapy" and The Stories We Live By"
store.bookbaby.com/book/psychotherapy-and-the-stories-we-live-by
A monster has been defined as a creature that looks human but cannot care about the pain and death it causes to human beings. Too many of our children are playing the role of monsters as they take military style weapons into schools and shoot their fellow students. The problem is that judging a child killer to be a monster or mentally ill in no way explains their actual state of mind when they pull the trigger and fire at other children. It also fails to answer how they became monsters. Moreover, how do we explain the state of mind as those of us as citizens who watch these slaughters, offer prayers and condolences and then forget the incident and do nothing to either understand or try and stop these tragedies. Are we all monsters? I will ask questions that I feel are relevant to this growing problem but wiil not be able to answer the questions I raise.
My new book might help provide answers: https://store.bookbaby.com/book/psychotherapy-and-the-stories-we-live-by
Psychiatry, Clinical Psychology and Clinical Social Work are three sad, confused orphans who all claim to treat human unhappiness and confusion referred to as mental illnesses and disorders. The term "mental illnesses" are metaphors for disturbed and disturbing behaviors, various modes of thinking and emotional expression and have nothing actually to do with real medical problems. Therefore, the brain disabling drugs psychiatrists prescribe to suffering people are neither real treatments nor actual medicines. Psychiatry's siblings talk to people about their problems and call what they do psychotherapy. Strictly speaking since the problems have nothing to do with medicine, talking is neither a treatment nor a form of therapy. All three quarellsome siblings have serious identity problems, psychiatry with its true place in real medicine. The other two sibling have no idea what words they would use to replace phony medical terms such as "patient,' "treatment," "therapist," "diagnoses," etc. and without their false medical terminology they are completely without an identity. Is there anything sadder than three ever fighting, confused siblings both homeless and without identities?
Much good often results when people seek help from psychotherapy but this has little to do with the lies and fantasies that are offered as justifications by the mental health industry for its existence and the fees charged by psychotherapists. I was recently made aware of two studies that purported to show that ordinary "housewives" and "ex-schizophrenics" had similar, if not superior results than Ph.D. psychologists in improving the lot of people seeking help for psychological distress. In today's show I will interpret the results of these findings to suggest that if we strip away the baloney of psychiatric diagnoses and most currently popular types of psychotherapy we are left with the fact that when suffering individuals are offered discussions with non-judgmental, empathic, and understanding individuals in a safe environment where what it said is totally priveleged many folks learn to better deal with their psychological problems.
A religion can be defined as any systematic set of beliefs that set forth factual and moral truths that purport to solve various human problems in living. The factual and moral beliefs of a religion, referred to as its dogma, are created by some respected and/or feared authority and are expected to be accepted on faith alone. A religion can either be secular or theistic, the latter in which the authority is some form of higher power claimed to be a single or multiple gods. Science is a relative newcomer in human history and is based on the idea that factual truths are derived from the direct observation of the world in and around us which are referred to as facts. Explanations of observed phenomena are referred to as theories rather than as dogma and held to be valid as long as they do not deny or ignore the facts upon which they are based. Unlike a religion, anyone is capable of being a scientist as long as they base their facts on observations and call their explanations theories, or educated guesses. Religions tend to be authoritairian and hierarchical while science tends to be democratic and less hierarchical. Psychotherapy presents itself to the public as being based in science but an examination of is underlying concepts and its modes of operation suggest that the field acts much more like a faith based, authoritarian religion. The medical model of psychiatry and the numerous theories supposed to treat "mental illnesses and disorders" demand that they be accepted on faith rather than observed evidence and educated guesses. The result is a professional enterprise composed of cult like groups more than of enlightend scientists that makes invisible the real values of psychotherapy and replaces it with magic and often fanciful ideas.
My conversation with Chuck Ruby, author and psychologist, will cover a range of subjects including the invention of the myth of mental illness, what constitutes abnormal behavior, morality and the myth of mental illness, social control and mental illness, strategies for escaping emotional pain, and existential emotional pain. We will finish our discussion by suggesting changes needed to be made by the mental health industry and the responsibilty of those seeking help for emotional pain.
Volunteers in Psychotherapy, Inc. (VIP) is an organization in West Hartford CT that allows people seeking psychotherapy for emotional pain to perform four hours of volunteer work at the charity or governmental agency of their choice for one hour of psychotherapy with a licensed professional. This revolutionary and common sense approach allows individuals to avoid being diagnosed as mentally ill or disordered, maintain complete privacy concerning their personal life and history and avoid the complex problems of dealing with managed care. Moreover, Dr Shulman's unique approach to helping people live better represents democracy at its best.
I will tie together my response to an interview with Peter Carruthers in Scientific American with a response by my colleague Al Galves to my response and use the dangerous and pernicious phony diagnosis PTSD as an example.
Al Galves is a psychotherapist in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He and I will discuss the myth of the chemical imbalance theory of mental illness and then he will talk about his involvement with the Psychiatric Survivor Movement. The Survivor Movement is made up of individuals who have been forcibly drugged and/or hospitalized against their will. Many have recovered from the injustice and terror of losing their civil rights and their so-called treatments that have included solitary confinement. Al Galves will present some of their stories and the varied goals of the movement which include abolishing psychiatry all together.
I have written extensively and spoken on my blogtalkradio podcasts about the myth of mental illness and the nature of mental health. The terms mental illness and mental disorders have nothing to do with real medical illness but in fact are bad names professionals call people dressed up as medical problems. I have argued that psychotherapy has nothing to do with medicine, that psychiatry is a humbug and dangerously authoritarian and unless those of us who practice psychotherapy divest ourselves of our relationship with the psychiatric medical model we will fail to live up the the promise of what our field can be. Psychotherapy is a proud product of the enlightenment, science, humanism and the rise of democracy and I believe is best understood as a noncoercive form of personal education of the self and its relationship to society. I am writing still another book on what I call psycho"therapy" and have hit a wall on my proposed chapter on "mental health." On today's broadcast I will ruminate outloud on the nature of mental health. If mental illnesses are moral judgments on how others should not live then mental health must be judgments on how others should live. How does that work and who dares to know and tell others the right and moral way to live their lives? How and why should the field of mental health and psychotherapy even exist?
Dr Jeanne Stolzer will discuss the growing mountain of evidence that psychiatric drugs are potentially dangerous to health, are addictive, often worsening the emotional difficulties for which they are prescribed, and which are implicated in acts of violence toward self and others including a number of the school shootings that have so horrified our society. We will discuss the politics inherent in convincing our society that problems in living and emotional distress are the result of undiagnosable and possibly fictitious brain diseases that condemn millions to a life on drugs and limited aspirations. Finally, we will discuss the role professionals might play in helping people who suffer emotional distress without any reference to any medical terminlology unless those terms are used metaphorically.
America has seen another mass murder, this time at a Synagogue in Pittsburgh to be added to those in schools, houses of worship or where people congregate for relaxation. The explantion for these events suggests that the gunman is a deranged, mentally ill and isolated figure and the solution to the problem is for citizens to arm themselves and for society to provide more mental health services. I suggest that the mental illness theory hides and denies the political motivation for these behaviors and prevents us from finding real solutions for them. In order to survive and thrive human beings formed tribes whose structures were almost always hierarchical and authoritarian and their politics guided and justified by demanding belief in supernatural deities superior to human beings. The rise of universal literacy, scientific inquiry, and ecnonmic expansion led to the emrgence of secular democracies. Mass murderers are motivated by authoritarian tribalism and defeated by those holding to democratic ideals. Calling them mentally ill implying inferiority only furthers the aims of authoritarian politics.
I will once again define what I call Psycho"therapy" suggesting that it is a process in which individuals examine the type of life narratives which create much of their misery without adding to their problems by becoming ensnared in the destructive narratives of the "mental health industry." Tonight I will join with the famous Psychoanalyst Karen Horney by suggesting that many aspects of a personal therapy can be achieved by individuals themselves if they understand some of the principles contained in the stories that guide their lives and the choices they make because of these principles. Such an examination includes the differences between judgments and descriptions, the nature of self and identity, and the relationship between the brain and behavior. Finally, I will suggest that an important mode of changing destructive life narratives involves continuing their personal education including reading fiction and nonfiction stories that deal with the lives of other people.
Our stories are increasingly narrow and do not communicate across larger social groups. Our stories contain fewer facts but more myths, fantasies, and outright lies. Our stories are growing shorter with fewer meaningful narratives. Our stories have fewer heroes unless they are fictional superheroes but contain more villains. Our stories are less about skills and resilience and more about victimization and trauma. Our stories are incresingly based on judgment rather than description.
In order for human beings to survive they need to develop both factual information about the world and skills to solve the problems that prevent satisfaction of their many needs. Human beings have the longest period of development of any species making parents, families, teachers and others including political leaders critically important in the development of factual information and various skills necessary for survival and sucess in complex environments. We have evolved powerful emotional bonds between caretakers and their charges, particularly between parents and children, to insure that the important survival skills and information be transmitted between the generations. These bonds tend to insure that developing individuals will trust their most important caretakers over any competing sources of information and skill development. These bonds also tend to insure that the caretakers will be loyal to their charges over the prolonged period of social, intellectual and moral development. Today's discussion concerns itself with the psychological consequences that might occur when loyalty and trust rupture between between a developing child and their most important catetakers. Much of what we, in the mental health industry falsly call mental illness and disorders, are best understood to be the intellectual and emotional consequences of failed loyalty and trust. These consequences include massive anxiety, confusion, and rage as well as the desperate struggles of individuals to find the truths and skills to orient themselves to the world indorder to survive and prosper.
The suicides of of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain has created a conversation about suicide dominated by the bullshit that suicide is a symptom of a disease called depression; that depression is a brain disease; that the mental health industry is the place for the disease to be treated; that the first line of treatment should be drugs! Depression is not a disease but a collection of beliefs and the emotions arising from those beliefs. Belief one: "I am no good and unworthy of love." Belief two: "The world is a cruel and loveless place that only creates pain." Belief three: "I am all alone in this world and am helpless to do anything about changing it." Belief four: "I have no hope for my future at all. Things are bad now and can only get worse." Put these beliefs together as an individual's view of life and you have an individual drowning in self- hatred, hatred and fear of the others in the world, despair, loneliness, helplessness, and hoplessness. Living with these belief and emotions makes suicide both probable, for themrational and positive. Help a person question any of these beliefs and change any of the emotions dramatically reduces the probablitiy of suicide.
As we slide into tribalism it is in part because we have lost faith in our democracy and this loss of faith, in part, stems from our failure to keep the promise of universal education for all of our citizens. We are abandoning public education which seeks to inform students about the history and common activities of their country. We are being bombarded with political ideologies, conspiracy theories and outright lies but not giving our citizenry the intellectual tools to develop what Postman and Weingarten called "the crap finder." We have moved from educational ideologies that suppressed individuality and demanded conformity to the idea that the creative individual is the only valid goal of education. We now see all education as job training forgetting that the liberal arts empower individuals to live rich meaningful lives.
First I will rant and rave about my beloved country's continuing descent into barbarism. As usual we will hear the usual nonsense about the need to pray for the victims and their families, adding millions of more guns into the population for folks to protect themselves, arming teachers and turning schools into fortresses and increasing the budget of the mental health industry to deal with the "crazies" and "monsters" who commit these crimes. What will not occur will be an attempt to try and understand why these atrocities are increasing and take rational steps to slow, if not end the violence, hatred and alienation permeating the very fabric of society that helps turn children into mass murderers. I will focus on a number of issues that possibly increase violence but mainly the role of Big Pharma and the Mental Health Industry in helping destroy our society.
A more detailed discussion about the process of being diagnosed as mentally ill or disordered and the long term interpersonal and intrapersonal consequences of believing that one is permenantly damaged as a human being. The difference between a medical diagnosis and a moral judgment. Good people, Bad people and People who do good and bad. The judgments of children and those of adults. The difference between a drug as a medicine and a drug as just a drug. Believing in democracy and living democratically.
To be a patient in any therapeutic relationship structured by the medical model and to be working with a mental health professional not consciously committed to democratic principles is to be enmeshed in procedures that are inherently anti-democratic and potentially reinforcing to the suffering that makes any individuals seek help in the first place. In earlier episodes I have outlined my view of psycho"therapy" as a relationship that helps individuals understand as well as own those aspects of their personal history that have contributed to the internalized judgments that create self-hatred, anxiety, hopelessness and helplessness. Most of the psychotherapists I have known are inherently democratic in their world view but by accepting and promoting the medical model of mental illness and disorder defeat their best intentions to help those with whom they work to free themselves from the intra and interpersonal authoritarian and totalitarian processes that make life unbearable for themselves and others. By understanding the difference between authoritarian and democratic thought and behavior, between psychotherapy and psycho"therapy," between being a patient and a "patient" individuals can be an active agents in creating the kind of relationship that I believe might most help them.
Another bloodbath in a school and another discussion about what to do to stop the violence. A growing group of citizens argue that it makes sense to ban military style weapons from being sold to non military personnel while those supporting the NRA and the gun lobby make the case that the solution lies with keeping guns out of the hands of the "mentally ill." None of those who sing with the latter chorus ever discuss the extreme difficulties of implementing their approach. What constitutes mental illness? Whose definition do we use? Who are the mentally healthy that should be allowed to carry assault rifles? What do we do with those diagnosed as mentally ill? How should they be treated and by whom? Those interested in a fuller discussion of the concepts of "mental illness" and "mental health" please visit my broadcast of 10/30/2017 Psycho"therapy" and "Mental Health."
We have to ask what the psychological and social cost to our society when, we as citizens, fail to stop the never ending and ever increasing violence in our society. When our children grow up fearing to go to school and watch the adults, including the politicians around them, point fingers of blame, take no responsibility and make no efforts to control the violence as they dehumanize and demonize others for the problems confronting them then these children will adapt to the threat in ways that will make civilized behavior impossible. Our culture is rapidly devolving to its authoritarian tribalistic origins.
Another discussion in my series of how psycho"therapy" represents a huge shift in human relationships both between and within people. I will discuss the rise of literacy and the concepts of universal education, the change in the arts in recent centuries, and the enormous changes brought about by the ascendency of the scientific attitude. The rise of secular arts created pathways for individual self-expression by anyone, anywhere that wishes to do so. The goal of science involves describing, explaining, predicting and controlling anything in the natural world that is of interest to anyone, anywhere on the planet or in the universe. Psycho"therapy" is an amalgam of both self-expression and a desire to describe and explain the self and the social relationships within which the self is embedded. The scientific attitude demands that we describe rather than judge when dealing with ourselves and others and that our explanations seperate the natural from the from the supernatural.
The human evolved social political default position has historically been authoritarian (demanding obedient behavior to authority) and or totalitarian (which also demands obedience in thought and emotion). For several centuries the rise of literacy, literature, universal education and science have led to relationships between authority and those that follow that include mutual respect and increased sharing of decision making in many, but certainly not all parts of the globe. The struggle for human beings to free themselves from the biologically inherited tendencies of authoritarian/totalitarian tribalism and create more democratic social interactions has been constant and ceasless at all levels of human interaction including family life, educational institutions, houses of worship, the relationships between the sexes and the larger political structures that define the tribes themselves. There is a constant struggle both between and within each individual to be both a self motivating person and a good citizen of the larger social units in which every person participates. Tonight's podcast will hopefully be the first of a series to more systematically explore the many intra and interpersonal aspects of the struggle to create and maintain democracy as the main political system defining human interactions. My starting point is based on a long lifetime as a psychologist, educator and psycho"therapist" and my motivation is created by my increasing terror that my children and grandchildren may well live in an America defined by authoritarian/totalitarian tribalism.
America faces numerous serious problems but the problems are never defined except in terms of who is to blame, personal vitriol, and stances that either appeal only to the emotions or logic that avoids discussing the actual suffering of human beings. I will suggest techniques and insights from my career as a psycho"therapist" that might help people better communicate and avoid the rage and conflict that now dominates so many political discussions.
I find politicians, especially the current crop in high office in Washington to be facinating and terrifying. I know nothing about the innner workings of the political mind as I have no contact with any of them. I assume that the best way to understand any person's life narratives is to speak with them an interview them as I would any other person I am trying to understand. To that end I have invited Senator Marco Rubio to be a guest on my show tomorrow night. I have little or no hope that he will accept my invitation so I will do what is called an empty chair interview. I have been very critical of the Senator and have emailed him numerous messages concerning his silence on the mass shootings now plaguing and destroying the civil fabric of America.I have suggested to him that he and the others in Congress who take large sums of money from the NRA have sold their souls to the "devil" and have, in part, the blood of the victims of these mass slaughters on their hands. I realize that my criticisms and moral judgments in no way explain their actions and it is to that end I will try and do my interview.
My chosen profession has been in the so-called mental health field but all that was ever discussed by those in my profession were so called mental illnesses which later in my career were redefined as mental disorders. I have long argued, along with Thomas Szasz and numerous others, that mental illnesses are metaphorical in nature and are rarely, if ever, defined in terms of real medical problems. Therefore the terms mental illness and disorders are in reality negative moral judgments of unwanted, poorly understood patterns of how individuals think, act, express emotion or otherwise adapt to the total circumstances of their lives. Mental illnesses are adaptations unwanted and deemed inferior and harmful by the individuals themselves or by families, friends or society at large. How then might we define mental health? I suggest that actually we see the so-called mentally healthy as individuals whose adaptations to life are wanted, accepted, perhaps admired and therefore represent positive moral judgments in their own eyes and the eyes of those with whom they interact. Any individual might be simultaneously judged to be mentally ill or healthy by themselves, family members or the society in which they are embedded. I will discuss the endless difficulties of my being a professional called on to help individuals morally judged to be mentally ill or disordered especially after I decided that my role was not only "reduce or eliminate their illnesses" but help them achieve "mental health" and that my professional role had little, if nothing to do with medicine!
Freud believed that therapists must undergo analytic therapy so that their own delusions and personal problems not interfere with their ability to understand and and relate to their patients. Therefore the "pathology" of the therapist can place limits on the success of the therapy. However, most therapies assume that if the environment plays a role in creating the patient's problems and preventing change it would involve the patient's family and events occurring in childhood. However, social issues can seriously impede therapeutic change and these include the political climate in which individuals live, as well issues related to gender, race and economics. We will discuss these issues tonight as well.
"Therapy" when done properly helps free people from life stories that utilize moral judgments as if they were observations and descriptions. To judge an individual (self or other) rather than understand the motives and life circumstances of that individual is to stifle any attempt at a real understanding of that individual. I am not suggesting that we should not judge the actions others or ourselves but do so after, or along side of understanding the behaviors that worry or offend us. "Therapy" creates a non-judgmental atmosphere in which two or more people, as equal human beings, try and understand why they think, feel and act as they do. The means of change involve permitting people to reflect on their life history and how they came to see themselves and others with fear and hatred rather than the type of clarity that might permit different choices in how to live and treat one's self and others. The goals of "therapy" are clearly moral in nature and express the the kind of life considered good and worthy of being lived. As such, a thoughtful psycho"therapy" makes explicit just what a good or better life the "patient" wishes to live and the therapist is willing to help him/her achieve as well as the means by which these goals are to be reached. In my value system the best life reflects democratic rather than authoritarian hierarchies based on judgments as to who is worthy and who is not. The means of therapy are drawn from science and the goals from a humanistic morality.
Psycho"therapy" usually involves a discussion between two or more individuals, one of whom is struggling with ideas and emotions that have made his of her life unbearable. The initial themes are often of three types. The first expresses self-hatred, rage against the self, hopelessness and helplessness and often begins with the words "I'm too depressed to live any longer. I want to die." The second involves themes of victimization usually at the hands of family members or other familiars such as spouses, close friends, work associates or even one's own children. These themes and stories contain rage and hatred against others or even the world in general. The last of our discussed themes express disappointment in the life the individual is living, the failure to achieve important life goals and the dreams of youth that once made life so exciting to live. These existential stories are often accompanied with rage against the self and others as well as hopelessness and helplessness. I will end today's podcast by begining a discussion of what ultimately became my goals as a psycho'therapist" which, over time, I realized had to be my own as well as the people I worked with.
I dedicate this podcast to Senator Marco Rubio of Florida who did nothing since the massacre in Orlando and will probably do nothing after the horrendous carnage in Las Vegas. Leaders are supposed to act on behalf of their followers to define and act to protect them from serious threat. Senator Rubio and the majority of his colleagues in Congress mouth pieties and prayers for the dead and their families but do not act with courage and moral rightness to prevent the killers from acquiring weapons that should only be in the hands of our military. My guess is that they are fearful for their jobs if they anger the NRA and therefore value their jobs more that the lives of those that they lead and swear to protect. They and the rest of us have blood on our hands if we do nothing to stop this slaughter and our descent into barbarism. Yesterday I watched in amazement the surreal scene as a reporter on Fox News ask a former congressman from Utah what we might do to prevent more of these horrors from happening. He stated, nothing can be done and with that the interview was ended. Really, the greatest power in the world cannot prevent its own slide into anarchy and endless bloodbaths. I think that is impossible!
I will develop a theory to help understand why Donald Trump is now President and how we can use his "playbook" to create a political movement to deal with the greatest existential crisis in human history, namely climate change, which might well include a possible 200 foot rise of sea levels within our grandchildren's lifepspan. My theory involves an understanding of how our survival as a species depended on our participation as members of a tribe with leaders, followers, and various organizations within the tribe. The job of the leaders was to define threats to the tribe and organize the means of both defence and repair if the tribe was damaged. Tribes all had warriors, intellectuals, artisans, workers and clerics needed to justify the moral actions taken by the tribes members. I will discuss why Trump has been so successful thus far and how we might be politically successful in changing the current direction being taken by the tribes now competing for power in America.
On 8/21 I did a podcast and my topic, my presentation and my discussion with a guest who called in so horrified me that I took it down. After analysing my own behavior I concluded that I was guilty of everything I hate when discussing politics (or any conflict ridden issue) including engaging in identity politics and allowing myself to enter into a pointless zero-sum debate that took me completely off the point of my show. In today's show I will discuss what I have learned as a psycho"therapist" and what I hoped that the people I worked with over my career would learn so that they became their own "therapists" and deal with conflicted situations in more reasoned and effective ways. I hope tonight to practice what I preach! We have just witnessed in Charlottesville a group of marchers carrying Swastikas and chanting slogans that Adolf Hitler would have been proud of and then watched the President of the United States suggest that many of the marchers were just fine people. While it was true that both some of the marchers and the protestors engaged in violent behavior the President gave moral equivalence to both the marchers and the protestors without partialing out the fact that only one side carried offensive flags and chanted Hitlerian solgans. I consider that the millions of individuals on both the left and the right are engaging in what is called identity politics creating divisiveness, hatred of self and others, a loss of insight into their own individual behavior, potential violence and other forms of behavior that might be termed "pathological" on both individual and collective levels. Time for some psycho"therapy":
Our species is at it again banging war drums, following the worst among us, dehumanizing and demonizing the "others." Angry, empty men lead us and insist that destroying babies and other innocents with nuclear weapons is somehow in our national and human interest. Rationality, science, our constitution and social progress are attacked as the brown shirts again march in our cities. Do any politicians love the arts?
I am preoccupied with trying to understand the election of Donald Trump. While there are many reasons for his success I will focus on what I believe to be one of the most important and that that is the role of media replacing human interactions in the creation of the sense of reality, truth, facts and life stories for many individuals. It is media that now confers upon any given individual the status of celebrity and for many it is celebrity that provides the power to define truth, reality, morality and shape human understanding of self and others.
I will define a fact, a lie and a delusion and speak about the difficulty in differentiating the three in situations where large numbers of people lie and steadfastly believe that their lies are facts and the facts of others are lies. When the President of the United States publicly endorses an individual such as Alex Jones who claims that the murder of school children in Newtown, Conn. is a lie perpetrated by the press and the parents who claim to have lost children we are in a serious crisis in relation to the individual and shared stories that we live by. Are Donald Trump and Alex Jones lying or are one or both of them delusional because they can no longer differentiate a lie from a fact. What happens to us as individuals when we can no longer believe that the facts we need for our survival are not facts but lies or delusions. What happens to a society without a shared set of facts taken as truths to bind the society together and set the common goals of the society.
The self exists as experience, as observer, actor and the recipient of the actions of other selves. How identities are defined can control what actions we take, how we are treated by others and the very perceptions at the heart of the self. We are given a name, a family, a place in our community, tribe, religion, economic class, "race" and other aspects of social status. We eventually get defined morally, by others and ourselves, as either a good person or a bad, as worthy of respect, love or even our right to continue living. As a result of our moral definitions of identity our selves might become infused with pride, self love and respect or with guilt, shame, and self hatred. We can live honestly and openly or as individuals with ruined identities whose every moment is a performance to impress others as we try and hide who we really believe we are. The totality of our identities often determines the quality of the live we end up living.
We all feel we have a self. Early philosophers posited that the soul was sort of a secularized soul that was real and ultimately would be found in the brain. New age mental health workers also argue that we all have a real self that represents the best in us and which we often ignore when we lie, cheat or otherwise behave according to some false self that we show the world when we are being defensive. Modern philosophers and many scientific experts on brain activity argue that there in no self, free will or ability to choose our behaviors claiming that these are merely illusions that can be safely ignored when trying to understand human behavior. I will present an argument that the self is not physicallyreal but it very much does exist and is necessary for what we are as creative moral human beings.
I'm finding the world I live in to be ever more technically sophisticated and just beyond my abliity to fully cope. I often feel anxious and angry when confronted with simple life problens that are now beyond my understanding and skill level. However my troubles are mainly nuisances in the periphery of my life and help is generally available for their solution. What does it feel like for the millions of individuals who experience their lives as beyond their ability to cope, earn a living, or find adequate help to solve problems whose causes and solutions are beyond their understanding? What happens when individuals start blaming and hating themselves for their inability to solve the major problems in their lives? What happens when demagogues offer these millions simple answers to their problems by directing their fears and hatreds outward and creating scapegoats to blame for their difficulties in coping? What ultimately happens to a society that turns to a strongman who fails to offer rational, effective solutions for difficult problems in living and instead create conditions for citizens be part of a mob trying to make life better through hatred and violence? I see this happening in my society and now I'm really anxious! Is there any solution to the problems being explored in this broadcast?
How do we understand the experience and behavior of a person who is physically an adult but still thinks and feels like a child? What can we expect of such an individual when given great power either through inheritance or by social situations of varying sorts? Can we describe the type of logic utilized by such people with the theories of developmental psychology? What might a man-child experience and what might happen to him or her once he assumes a position of great power and the responsibilites that go with such power? What can happen to families, social groups and whole societies if and when the behavior of a man-child becomes normative to these groups?
How do we define a monster? What is a superhero? Why are we increasingly preoccupied with fearsome monsters and superheros? What is the relationship between human beings and monsters? Are monsters ever human beings and can a human being become a monster? How does a human being who becomes a monster reclaim their humanity? What is the psychology of a monster, how does it feel to be one? What is the psychology and the dynamics of a human being who becomes monstrous?
I suggest that religious stories might involve gods, God, or be completely secular in nature. Religious stories are invested with both explanations of how the world works and how life should be lived. The religious explanations that describe, explain, predict what is are derived from the statements of various authorities and must be accepted on faith rather than personal observations and experimentation. Similarly, what should be correct behavior is also derived from authorities and must be accepted on faith without discussion or debate. In religious stories explanations and moral judgments are often confused one with the other. Conflicts arise between and within individuals whenever factual or moral truths are questioned. Doubt is forbidden and conflicts can become violent whenever doubters create doubt in others. Much of the political horror and violence that has and is wracking our world derives from those living within faith based or secular religious life stories in attempts to silence interpersonal and intrapersonal doubt. I will refer to two books tonight: Shusako Endo's novel "Silence" and a polemic by Christopher Hitchens entitled "God is not great: How religion poisons everything."
My show has always been about the stories we live by. I have discussed how they are constructed, how they are peopled, their content, and their developmental level. I have discussed scientific stories, religious stories, democratic and authoritarian stories. I have run the course talking about stories but not hearing and sharing stories. I am tired being professorial and hearing my own voice. As of next Monday I will come on the air and spend some time ruminating about this and that giving time for folks to call in. I will create a space for sharing stories at the same time each week and announce each show well in advance. So out with the old and in with the new. I hope that I will hear from you
If the title of this episode sounds like someone you might know you are probably right. One of the more overlooked emotions in psychology and the genesis of what might be termed pathological behavior is shame. Shame is a powerful, intensely painful emotion that emerges when indviduals feel that other people, particularly those important to them, hold them in contempt and disgust. Shame is one of the emotions that shapes the moral norms of a society. When we experience intense shame we try and hide, wish we were invisible and could disappear. We tend to escape shame by conforming to the social demands put upon us by fulfilling the roles that define identity. In males shame can play a very powerful role in defining what it means to be a man among other men. (I will leave for another time the role of shame in the development of women.) In our society being a man very often demands success as a sexual being and as a competitor in sports, the economic marketplace or perhaps politics! Difficulties can arise if a child is held as failing social demands to be a successful man and can do nothing to escape from constant shaming. Boys perceived by significant adults as not being smart, athletic, good looking, or successful enough might well grow up to feel intensely ashamed of their very being. Under certain circumstances such children might well spend their lives fearing any judgments or criticisms that would arouse shame and develop personalities geared to avoid shame at any cost. Such individuals might define economic success in which no amount of money is ever enough. It would not be enough to win at sports but these individuals would find it necessary to humiliate opponents. Bullying others, bragging about sexual exploits and shaming others might well be central to their identities. The search for power would be endless and exhausting.
The labels we use to define mental disorders and illnesses are nothing more than moral judgments of patterns of behavior that someone finds disturbed and/or disturbing. Like all patterns of human behavior they are the best adaptations any individuals have achieved given the total circumstances of their lives. These circumstances include the biology they inherited and the social circumstances of their lives and thus, in part, reflect the politics of those social interactions. My experience as a psycho"therapist" for the past 50+ years is that most people seeking help are the product of authoritarian and totalitarian interactions during which time they have victims of injustice and brutality, of authoritarian religions that promote inescapable guilt, self hatred and a fear of being simply human, and a failure to promote an individual capable of experiencing the full range of human emotions. These victims grow into adulthood where they take over the roles of victimizers and find that not only can they not cope with the fears of satisfying their innner desires, hopes and dreams but must also deny the shame and guilt of ruining the creativity, independence of thought and joy in the lives of everyone around them. What the good "therapist" (note the metaphorical use of this word) does is help individuals understand their victimization and learn to take responsibilty for a more creative, just and loving life. The good "therapist" finds ways to live within the corrupt authoritarian medical model created by psychology and simultaneously subvert that hideous model with the people they purport to help. The therapeutic relationship, like all relationships, has its own politcs and each of us as practioners mus choose between creating a democratic and honest relationship or continuing to be authoritarian and totalitarian with our "patients."
We will explore how people experience themselves and the world around them as a function of the indentities constructed as a result of the politics that shape them. Some will have identities defined positively that permit them to explore, create and actively shape their own lives. Others will have "spoiled" identities and experience their world with fear, timidity, and a need to have authority direct their every action. Some will basically trust those with whom they interact and express themselves open and honestly while others will assume the worst in their fellow human beings and will put on a performance that never feels quite genuine and real.
Gordan writes, "If scientific rationality and its product of truth is no longer a guide to belief and action what basis can psychiatry claim as its datum of sanity from which to measure variation and deviation? I will suggest in todays story that science and rationality can provide factual but not moral truth. Further science, rationality and the democracy that they promote are new to human civilization and constantly under attack by superstition, magical thinking and authoritarian tribalism. Finally psychiatry and the entire mental health industry justify theri exostence by a myth of mental illness which is neither scientific nor demcratic.
The self is the experience of living, the hereness in the thereness, the feeling of what happens. It is the present after the past and the present in the face of the future. Self is our experience of being the center of time and space. Self is the experience of making choices, creating our own lives and the myriad of emotions that emerge as we interact with the world around and in us. Identity is composed of all the words and ideas by which our selves are defined and recognized. In my story many animals have selves but only human beings have identities. The politics of our human relationships shapes much of our identity. In a democractic relationships we define ourselves both as individuals and as members of various groups. We experience ourselves as singularities as well as members of families, religions, communities, nations and as members of various tribes. In authoritarian relationships we are forbidden to be singularities but must first define ourselves as members of our families, religions, nationalities, and the various tribes into which we are born. In anarchies we are singularities without emebededeness in family, religion, nationalities or tribe. My story will explore the difference in the experience of self when we are loved and respected as an individual, when we must be forever obedient to our reference groups and when we are alone and isolated as individuals.
The authoritarian name calling that defined this election (and a number of earlier ones as well) did not discuss one of the chief causes of the unrest caused by unemployment and shrinking wages. Machines can do many things cheaper and neater than a human worker. "I Robot" and "The Terminator" were two (of many) apocalyptic film in which human beings give up their humanity by worshiping technology as the basis of all progess and ultimately lose their civilization to "smart" machinery. I will discuss an alternative story to the one now defining human civilization,
Authoritarian systems are hierarchicial in which those in power define themselves as morally superior to those below. When a person is addressed as "your majesty" or "your lordship" his/her skills and human qualities are removed from all discussions of the actual skills that person might or might not have to be a leader. When the supreme leader justifies his/her decisions as having been given by God all criticism ceases to exist. Those who are critical of their leadership are labled as disobedient, traitors, heretics, or in our modern society mentally ill or deranged.
Our lives may be shaped by three types of politics: Anarchy, Democracy or Authoritarian/Totalitarianism. Briefly anarchy takes place when we disagree and simply walk away from eachother. In a democracy we tend to negotiate a resolution to our conflicts. Leaders are selected through processes involving respectful debate and non-coercive elections by individuals seen as equals. An authoritarian system is hierarchical in which leaders declare themselves and use coercion to maintain power. Those who have great power see themselves as inherently superior to those below and expect their inferiors to be obedient to their wishes. In an authoritarian system behavior is to be obedient, in a totalitarian system thought and feeling must also totally conform to power's wishes.
The immediate problem for our nation is Donald Trump and his ability to stir up resentment among angry, frustrated citizens as well as provide scapegoats to be blamed for people's problems. But Donald Trump and his allies must be seen in a story with larger social and historical pespectives. The emergence of destructive politics is ever present and no country or region on Earth is ever far from the tribalism now surfacing in our land. The dangers facing us can only be stopped and prevented by drastic changes in the stories we live by and the social practices that they produce. The nature of the stories we live by and there authorship in evolution will be discussed in this and subsequent programs.
For some years now the United States has been moving from stories based on facts and observables to narratives that demand to be accepted on faith alone. Many schools have taken as truth the idea that children cannot learn unless they have high self-esteem and self esteem is dependent on the total acceptance of the child's opinions. A pitched battle is taking place concerning the educational curriculum in which proponents of the Biblical idea of creation should be taught along side scientifc theories such as Darwin's theory of evolution. Finally, the media has decided that its reporters should, in the name of being fair and balanced, should accept all statements as equal regardless they are based on opinions or observable facts no matter how false the facts or patently absurd the opinions.
When working with people in the process of psycho"therapy" the professional must avoid judging his clients in such a way as to dehumanize and/or demonize them. The professional must be aware if the client is treating the professional as some god-like, all knowing being with magical powers. Transference is the term used for the distorted perceptions of the client toward the professional and countertransference the distortions to be found in the professional's failure to understand his/her clients. The distortions preventing individuals from seeing others as simply human beings with differences can derive from the personalities of those in our families or from the cultural groups with whom we identify. Trump bridged the gap between himself and the group that ultimately supported him, Hillary and those who supported he did not. "We" lost an election because we did not bridge that cultural gap.
I am sickened and frightened about what may well transpire once Trump and his minions assume power. My way of dealing with the future is to do as many shows as possible and discuss why I think this has happned and how I believe we must deal with mitigating the damage to our lives, our democarcy and the country we all love. I feel, to quote Thomas Friedman in the NY Times "homeless in America."
David Mitchell has written a brilliantly prophetic and insightful novel about how we human beings, in our search for power, wealth and the good life, coupled with our capacity to morally justify our methods as well as deny the destructive consequences of satisfying unquenchable hungers brings about the destruction of civilization and the planet upon which we all live. I will apply my own psychological insights to various aspects of Mitchell's story and discuss some of the reasons why our hungers for power and material wealth can rarely ever be satisfied, the roles played by shame and guilt in driving our most destructive acts as well as our powerful needs to deny the moral implications of what we are now doing to undo our society and selves. I will discuss, along with Mitchell, the toxic combination of late stage Capitalism and fanatical religion driving us blindly along the path to virtual extinction. I will suggest a somewhat different ending to Mitchell's pitiless story and while I have little faith in my own story I feel it necessary to impart some hope to our collective future.
I have long been interested in the degree of hatred directed at Barack Obama and now Hillary Clinton. It is not argued that fault cannot be found with their characters, (as with any of us as human beings) or that their political principals and goals cannot arouse passionate disagreement. But the criticisms of both, especially of Hillary Clinton, is expressed with such hatred and loathing that it seems to me that it warrants some psychological exploration. I will focus my story not on the political operatives and well paid haters on the media whose motives are easier to understand but on ordinairy people who react to Obama and Clinton as if they had just kidnapped and murdered their children. I will first discuss the psychoanalytic concept of defense and transference and then provide some evidnece to justicy my story.
I relate today's story with the admission that I will lack any resemblance of objectivity and scientific neutrality in my broadcast. There is bias in any story told by human beings, including those that attempt scientific objectivity. The observable facts may be objective but the very topics of study and the ultimate goals of research represent personal interests and human morality. Objectivity exists to the degree scientists can stand outside, as it were, from the subject of their interest. I could not, in any reasonable manner, stand objective as I watched the hate filled and intellectually empty Republican Convention. I listened as members of his campaign called for the death of Hillary Clinton and as a mob chanted "lock her up." I was filled with fear and anger listening to Trump, the now Presidential Candidate and leader of what used to be the Republican Party call for "law and order" that only he could deliver! I will reprise the themes of my recently broadcast stories such as the reemergence of tribalism, the search for a warrior leader who can protect the tribe from all enemies as well as holy men who can morally justify any and all steps to purify and protect loyal and obedient members of the tribe to create a context to my discussion that goes beyond simply calling Trump and his minions names that pretend to explain what I believe to be the possible death of Democracy in my beloved country. My goal in this broadcast is to convince my listeners to take seriously Trump as a possible dictator who will seek to destroy personal liberties and institute state control over our very lives and that we must all vote our consciences and speak up loudly as citizens of an endagered Domocracy.
The characters in my story will include a white policeman who shoots a black man who has been pulled over for a broken tail light in a place called Minnesota. It also speaks of a crowd in Dallas protesting the shooting of the man in Minnesota comprised of black and white people, some of whom are citizens and others of whom are policemen. A central character in my fantasy is an ex-soldier who is black who open fire on the crowd wounding two civilians and killing five policeman and wounding six others. Like many others I find it easy to judge the behavior of my characters but very difficult to understand their behavior in these events. What stories do they all live by? What fantasies do they have about guns, especially the military style weapon the soldier used to kill the officers? How does it feel to be a policeman and approach someone in a stopped car, be they male, female, black or white? What story motivated the soldier who did all the killing? What was his fantasy about race, guns, being a soldier? I will try hard not to judge any of my characters but rather try and explain the stories they live by, those stores and fantasies they can verbalized and those they can or will not
We live by certain stories that make it inevitable that we will continue to destroy our environment and with it our food supply and the civilization that makes life worth living. These stories and myths suggest that while we are in and on our planet we are not of it. They demand that we believe that our essential selves (souls in religious terms) not only are not part of our home planet but will continue to exist after our bodies and physical environments cease to exist. Moreover, it is our right and duty to master our "Mother Earth," bring her to heel and make her serve our every earthly need. These stories are part of the myth of the male warrior who controls their female supplicants. Only by changing these top down stories can we lovingly preserve our world
Individuals and groups that morally justify the killing of innocent people live by stories that have certain commonalities. These story elements derive, in part, from our evolutionary heritage and include a strong belief in tribalism, the role of the male as warrior and protector of family and tribe, the role of females as the support of the warrior and the source of new life for the tribe. Another element in the story involves some type of holy person, shaman, witch doctor or cleric who makes clear the morality of the tribe and justifies its actions in the name of some sort of god(s) or other higher power. When the tribe is seen as always superior to all other tribes, when men must always be fearless warriors, when women must always be supportive and docile to the will of men and when various emotions are forbidden to be acted upon or are so repressed as to not even be spoken of to oneself the seeds of various individual and social pathologies are sown. We will discuss how the repression of fear in men, desires for independence in women and various aspects of sexual desire are elements involved in terrorism.
Another act of horror and barbarism in the endless history of human beings slaughtering other human beings seen as less than human and not deserving of life. We will all mourn and wait in fear for the next horror while failing to accept our collective responsibility to prevent others and ourselves from becoming monsters when we demonize and dehumanize our fellow human beings! Who will lead us to act rationally and effectively to isolate and destroy the monsters around us while resisting the pressure to become hate filled monsters ourselves. What insights into history, sociology, psychology and humanistic philosophy might we employ to save us from ourselves?
As our poltical parties ossify and become rigid, as the wealthy control information, as religious and poltical ideology dominate reasoned discourse and debate and as an individual such as Donald Trump reach for the Presidency of our country we can ask if Psychology can shed light on what is happening and what we might be able to about it. We will discuss Freud's notion that civilization is a thin veneer that overlays and tries to control the passions, fears and hatreds of individuals and groups. We will explaore Evolutionary Psychology to see how the roots of our present political dangers are literally to be found in our DNA and how present predicaments are found throughout human history. We will explore various types of stories that we live by and which of those can save us from ourselves.
Let us visualize a scene in which one of our loved ones is in military service and our armed forces are directed to commit war crimes by their commander and chief. Let us create a scene in which our loved one enters a hut and there sits a woman in her eighth month of pregnancy. Sitting near her is a three year old girl and a two year old boy. To defeat her husband, a fighter with a terrorist group, our soldier, our loved family member must now kill his family. In this story we will play out what President Trump seems to be suggesting should take place and discuss the possible consequences of his orders.
My story, will as usual involve social, psychological, economic and historical elements to explain the rise of what I call Trumpism and why as an American and a Jew I fear for my children, grandchildren and all of yours as well. I will call no one any names and will avoid all moral labels to explain what I see emerging in my beautiful, well loved democratic country. While my story has to do with everybody affected by the political upheaval now taking place before our eyes I want to center my story about those of my fellow Jews who have hated President Obama from the first day he was elected and now cheer as Trump seeks to "make America great again." For Jews (or any abused minority) to ignore history is to suffer the consequences of allowing itself to be repeated.
A young man who while driving drunk killed four people. His defense was based on the testimony of a psychologist that the man was not responsible for his actions because he suffered a mental defect or disorder. The disorder, which was given the clever name "Affluenza" had come about because the young man was not properly disciplined and had been given anything he had ever asked for by his wealthy parents. The jury apparently bought this story and the judge sentenced the man to probation and house arrest instead of sending him to prison. We will discuss this tragic-comedy as reprsenting a new low point brought about by the pseudoscience of psychiatry and the mental health industry that have confused an already seriously confused public. My story will try and untangle the scientific and moral mess all of this has brought about in our beleagured society.
Tonight we discuss climate change and the science that studies the greenhouse effect and the changes it has created and still might be bringing to our planet and our way of life. We will tell the story of how scientists all over the world measure changes in our environment and how their research is actually done, described by Dr. Weinstock who spent from 1978 until 2009 as Staff Scientist and Scientific Program Manager at Harvard University. We will confront the counter stories to climate change that charge that scientists have formed a conspiracy to push the ideas of a changing world or that there is simply not enough real evidence to demand that we take serious steps to reduce our carbon footprint. While we will speak about the environmental degradation that we now see about us but we will end on a positive note relating how much is being done to stop the dangerous processes now developing on our beautiful planet. When faced with a similar global problem of stratospheric ozone depletion, scientists carried out research that proved that fluorocarbons put into the atmosphere by mankind were destroying the ozone layer and caused the Antarctic ozone hole. Accordingly, worldwide government regulations were instituted that have already done much to reverse the ozone depletion problem. Facing the current problem of climate change, countries like Germany have gone a lomg way to creating natural, renewable sources of energy to replace both nuclear and carbon-based sources of power. Nevertheless, global cooperation and solutions are required.
Three bills backed by the National Rifle Association may very well be passed by Florida Republican legislatures and signed by Rick Scott, Governor. The first would make it much harder to convict individuals of murder if their defense is "stand your ground." The second would allow any citizen who legally owns any type pf gun, assault rifles included, to openly carry them in public. They could carry them in the mall, the theater, restaurants, any venue of their choosing. The third bill would permit students, staff and visitors to carry guns on public college campuses. Let's picture it: any sudent could carry an AK 47 into his classroom and as long as the muzzle is pointing downward he or she would be in his or her legal rights to do so. The justification of these measures is to increase safety in our society and in the case of the last measure (HB4001) allow students to fight off terrorists, rapists and other dangerous criminals. I shall spend time tonight trying to convince you that these bills are real and not the paranoid fantasy of my title. I will create scenarios that I believe will certainly happen after these laws are enacted. I will then state my hopefully paranoid belief as to why the NRA is pushing these bills. I will try and end today's story on a positive note but I will need the help of my listeners.
Tonight we will discuss the competing philosophies shaping education. In short, whose story and what factors shape educational philosophy, curriculum, and pedagogy in our schools and colleges. We will touch on the stories created by the needs and philosophies of big business, religious groups, unions, student and faculty organizations and others competing to control the stories students are to live by. We will talk about grades and gold stars and their powerful effects on the learning process. We will cover issues such as Political Correctness, both of the left and the right and how extremisms affect education. Finally, I will tell the story of what happend to education and learning after the successful Klingon invasion of Earth and the changes brought about when General Dum instituted his reforms.
Today's episode begins with a story in the news about a teacher who resigned from teaching because "I can't stand to make children cry anymore" and because she could not tolerate the idea that her own child would have to attend her school. We will discuss the plight of good teachers faced with giving endless standardized tests and the plight of children whose individualities are strangled in a life long quest for grades and degrees. We will tell the stories of Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky and other developmentalists and what we know about learning that could shape a "good" educational system. We will spend some time on the role politics plays in shaping an educational process in which classes are too large, teachers are paid wages such that they often cannot live in the communities in which they work and have to supplement their incomes outside of school and most importantly have little or nothing to say about the educational process itself. Finally, we can share stories about the love of learning and the development of creative citizens.
Each of us as individuals and as groups may decide that it is too painful or dangerous to share important parts of our story. What is unspoken cannot be examined for facts that are incorrect or assumptions that that are faulty. Serious life problems may go unsolved preventing both individuals and groups from transforming lives for the better, allowing self-destructive behaviors to continue and preventing more creative living to emerge. Individuals, families and even whole societies my feel stuck in modes of life that are unproductive, unhappy, and missing opportunities to experience joy instead of misery. Tonight's episode will explore aspects of saying the unsayable.
Today's discussion will discuss how evolution helped create our emotions which are necessary for our individual and social survival. We will discuss love, hate, liking, pride, shame, guilt, fear, boredom, anxiety and any others that come up during the podcast. We will expose the myths of "positive" and "negative" emotions and the notion that emotions can ever be illnesses or disorders "curable" by therapy and drugs euphemistically renamed "medication." Finally we will create a different story of what to do about powerful and painful emotions and how we can help ourselves when they are experienced.
People are drawn to each other for many reasons including physical and sexual attraction, surface personality, and a variety of psychological needs. Long term relationships such as marriages and friendships are often based on love where the needs of the other become as or even more important than one's own. Good long term relationships (as I judge good to be according to my own values) often mean that people like and respect each other as well as love each other, share numerous interests and provide comfort and support to the degree that they are needed and can be given. A good relationship includes a me, a you, and an us!All relationships are comprised of individuals and as such all relationships contain conflict. Good relationships allow for individuality and solve conflicts through negotiation and mutual respect. Democratic politics define the good relationship. In my long years of professional experience many relationships lose their love, joy and mutual liking and respect when conflicts are solved through authoritarian means or become anarchistic. In dictatorships the "me" and the "you" become "me", in anarchies the "us" ceases to exist. Psycho"therapy" is the process whereby democratic politics are restored or created allowing individuals to live as a "me" a "you" and and "us" without threat, victimization, demonization blame, self pity and especially blackmail. Finally, I put quotation marks around the word therapy because learning how to solve conflict has little to do with illness, healing, and medical procedures.
David Brooks, New York Times editorialist, has written an op-ed piece entitled "The Republican's Incompetence Caucus" while Dostoevsky has written one of our greatest novels, "The Brothers Karamazov" which contains within it a story entitled "The Grand Inquisitor." We will discuss Brooks' important piece, which finally critiques the Republican parties descent from an important part of the American Democratic governance to a radical anti-democratic mob which is unable to govern and is hostile to the very idea of democratic rule. "The Grand Inquisitor" helps us understand why democracy is so fragile and why human beings are so willing to give up their freedoms for miracles, mysteries and authority! The Grand Inquisitor discusses freedom, Jesus Christ, his temptations by Satan, and why human beings seek to avoid the pain of true freedom. Our story will end with a discussion of what each of us must do to preserve our precious democratic heritage.
While Psychoanalysis has evolved in many directions since being founded by Sigmund Freud, his theories, if understood metaphorically, are capable of shedding light on much human misery and our often failed attempts to find peace and happiness. Freud's thinking moved in several directions at once. First was his clinical theory which concentrated on the individual and the treatment of mental ills and suffering. Second were his speculations on society, human history and social organization. Freuds ideas contained in the notions of conscious and unconscious processes, conflict, Id, Ego and Superego, Sex and Aggression and his notion of Eros and Thanatos which emerged from his experiences in World War One can all be starting points in figuring where we are and where we are going as individuals and members of society. Finally, his concept of mental health in terms of the balance between work, love and play are well worth understanding.
The Rabbi spoke of the Iran Nuclear Deal as a very bad thing: many Jews cannot discuss this topic without hating Jews who differ with them on this contentious issue. The Pope also dealt with the politics of division and hatred in which, for example, differences of opinion on global warming and climate change leads to demonization, dehumanization and personal invective. Both spoke with humor, intelligence, and without any hint of anger, preachiness or attempts to provoke guilt. In effect, these two religious leaders created a meta-analysis of difficult topics allowing their listeners not to understand these topic but to understand how they understood these issues. The reaction to the Pope's very public speech produced relief and joy in most listeners who are weary of the rancid, life strangling personal attacks they have become used to.
A discussion of how economics, race, religion and other factors led to America's failure to prevent World Was III
Four elements could be found defining social life in most societies: Moral rules were handed down by the God(s) and were inviolate. The most powerful of the God(s) were male. Human beings lived in tribes and loyalty to the tribe superceded loyalty to the individual. The controlling individuals within the tribe were mostly male and the most admired males were those who had proved themselves as warriors. The role of women was defined by their ability to procreate and and support and obey the warrior class. The pushback against the anarchy of modernity involved recreating tribal lives that operated by those moral rules that had been historically forged in humanity's struggle to survvive and exist as evolutionary imperatives.
By the 21st century it appeared that science was seen as the ultimate source of truth, that technology was the basis of a good life, that God was dead and atheism ruled supreme, that sexual pleasure had been liberated from childbearing and family life, that women could share power with men and that all truth's were relative and open to negotiation. The individual was seen as more important than the group and it was assumed individual creativity and happiness was humankind's legitimate moral highpoint. Many of those who embraced modern society were unhappy how society had become rampantly materialistic defining success in terms of celebrity and the acquisition of expensive and sophisiticated toys. They had forgotten that for billions of the world's inhabitants modernity had destroyed a different notion of a correct and moral way of life. The pushback against modernity began to resurrect a world in which the manly man and the warrior were most admired, in which loyalty to one's tribe trumped loyalty to the individual, in which the proper role of women was found in procreation and service to the family and in which the holy truth's spoken by the tribe's god(s) demanded obedience. Those on each side of these different truths and ways of life began to demonize and dehumanize those on the other side. Fear and hatred replaced reason and understanding even in those societies that seemed committed to a modern "scientific" way of life. Increasingly all felt threatened and saw themselves as the victims of the "monstrous dehumanized" other. In those parts of the world which had never fully bought into notions of modernity rage led many to declare a holy war against the infidels. Those on all sides began to arm themselves with whatever weapons became availalble including a race for nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.
The current political scene often seems to pit liberals against conservatives with Democrats defined as liberal and Republicans cast as conservative. I suggest that the current political struggles do not reflect the traditional liberal/comnservative dialogue but are perversions and extreme versions of legitimate life stories. The extremes in these struggles reflect a tribalization of political differences which include self-glorification, demonization of opponents and demands for total loyalty to leaders and tribe. Todays discussion will suggest that liberal/conservative differences are one of emphasis, often subtle, between a focus on the environment in which we live and the qualities by which individuals live. Liberals traditionally seek social justice while conservatives seek individual moral integrity and responsibility. I will suggest that we cannot have one without the other and if we try we will produce a country that will reflect either anarchy or totalitarianism. If we psychanalyze our own emphases we can negotiate and take strong stands against the current tearing of American Democracy now taking place.
Two related stories dominate today's broadcast. The first derives from a fine movie entitled "Hanah Arendt," a philosopher who covered the Adolf Eichman trial in Israel and a New York Times article (3/2/2015) entitled "How We Learned to KIll" by Timothy Kudo, a Marine Captain and Graduate Student. Arendt coined the term "the banality of evil" and Kudo intones "In the madness of war I saw that taking a life could be banal." Today's story will continue to develop ideas begun earlier in this series and past broadcasts that help explain why killing seems so easy for our species in such massive and routine ways. I will utilize evolutionary and psychoanalytic theories as my guide.
In today's story we will continue with the metaphor of cancerous ideas spreading throughout a society and its body politic. The murder of innocents in France, Denmark and other world capitols supposedly bastions of democracy frighten me. I feel increasingly hopeless with the rise of anti-semitism and religious hated in general, the increasing deradation of women, and the general failure of political leaders and citizens to theorize as to the cause and cure of these cancers as well as suggesting ways of meeting them except by surgery provided by military activity. I despair as authoritarian regimes fail and are replaced by totalitarian demogagues demanding total obedience to their hate filled ideologies. I cringe as science, free inquiry, abstract thought, respect for facts and individual creativity are replaced by concrete thought and destructive fantasies accepted whole and literally. I watch in terror as education is demeaned and scapegoats are sought on who can be blamed for the problems created by poverty, hopelessness, social injustice, rank materialism, and our general fear of facing monumental environmental degradation. I cannot sleep nights as I have come to believe that political democracy (my beloved America in particular) the surest immunity against the spread of cancerous fantasies is in retreat and decline. I do this podcast to give myself hope and to live up to the ideals that I still believe in.
How can we understand the stories that motivate the murderous behavior of Islamic groups such as Isis, Al Queda, and Boko Haram? In my last podcast I suggested that such organizations have always been a part of the human condition and associated with many religions and nationalistic movements. Today I shall take another trip down memory lane and discuss the cancers that arose within Christianity and why Islam is now such fertile ground for the modern versions of these horrors. I will spend time discussing the rise of Hitler and the Nazis which also might cast light on why deadly cancerous ideas get organized and gain traction among large groups of people. Finally, I will begin to discuss some notions as to the factors that prevent these cancers from developing.
Like many others I am horrified by the lastest activities of those justifying the mass murder of innocents in the name of Islamic Jihad. As a psychologist I feel compelled to try and explain such behaviors believing that only understanding can lead to preventing both the atrocities themselves and fear driven, irrational responses to the perpetrators. I will employ the medical metaphor of cancer to structure my own story to explain the current wave of violence across the middle east and now "metasticizing" into Europe, the United States and other parts of the world. The philosopher Daniel Dennett suggests that many ideas and other products of human imagination refered to as "memes" can be compared to their biological counterparts, the genes. Genes that add to human adaptibility tend to spread in the population while those that fail to add to human health and adaptive success die off and disappear. Similarly ideas and inventions (Psychoanalysis and cell phones for example) expand rapidly to the degree that people who come in contact with them find them helpful in their adaptive struggles in life. Genes can become damaged and create cancers that spread and if not contained can destroy the lives of those so suffering. So too can ideas, stories and other inventions lead to the destruction of lives, whole societies, and I believe to civilization and our species itself. Just as cancer can be found all over the planet and in every historical epoch so to can cancerous stories be found. The Crusades, Nazism, malignant Communism,and hundreds of other political, religious and nationalistic movements prove that Islamic Jihad is not unique and is not merely a product of the Muslim faith but is to be understood as innate to human social functioning as is cancer to our biological existence.
Today's discussion deals with a story in the New York Times of Saturday, October 11th by Michael S. A. Graziano entitled "Are we really Conscious?" Dr. Graziano is a distinguised scientist working in Princeton University, one of America's most elite systems of higher education. Therefore, we are forced to consider that he is correct in stating that our consciousness, beliefs in self and the reality of the selves of others are illusions and ultimately "caricatures" of reality. I will describe the argument used by Dr Graziano and so many others in the fields of medicine and science that deny our basic and powerful experiences that we exist as psychological and social beings and are nought but complex machines and very smart computers. I will then discuss the deadly consequences of science's attempts to reduce human beings to nothing but sophisiticated machines and tell an different story, just as scientific and as logical, that Dr. Graziano is wrong in his assumptions. I will argue that while we would not exist psychologically without the workings of our brain and bodies we cannot and must not give into the beliefs that our selves are not as real and our bodies. What is at stake here is the story that defines our humanity and our claims that each human being is prescious and must be treated as if the soul is real.
We wonder why Robin Williams, beloved by everyone, wealthy, funny and talented would hang himself. We constantly hear ourselves and others say "But he had everything!" The official story demands that we believe that he suffered from a deadly medical disease known as depression. I offer an alternative story as to why Robin Williams killed himself along with so many others who were experiencing life as I think he was. I did not know Robin Williams but have worked professionallly with many individuals who were living out stories that I believe were similar to the one that from which Robin could not escape until he ended his life. My story suggests that suicide is a desparate attempt to become unstuck from a place defined by emotions of self-loathing, fear of others, helplessness and hopelesness. We will explore possible reasons why individuals experience such "stuckness" and feel so desperate to escape from their own life story. Finally, I will suggest that the psychiatric disgnosis of depression confirms some of an individual's worst fears about themselves and therefore can do more harm than good.
I will tell the story of my work with several individuals suffering from so-called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD. I will widen the story's focus to include the role that war has in making human life meaningful and how the way we currently deal with returning soldiers helps insure that while we pray for peace we insure the reality of the next war. I will reprise how the myth of mental illness and the role played by the mental health industry based on Psychiatry silences the voices of those veterans that are filled with fear, rage, shame, guilt and profound feelings of betrayal at the hands of the politicians that sent them to war. I will suggest that when those of us fail in our role as citizens to speak out against those who glorify war we not only insure the reality of the next war but we abandon those soldiers seeking to create new meaningful, creative and loving lives. I will argue again that anyone can be a psycho"therapist" for themselves and others if they learn how to say and to listen to that which society says is unsayable.
Continuing the story of the oppression of women begun on my episode of 9/15 and how the forces that despise and fear women prevent the full political flowering of democratic societies. We will continue the analysis of the mechanisms by which women are convinced that they are innately inferior to men and and must accept their second class status all over the world and throughout history. Finally, we can suggest how the war of the sexes might be resolved.
A video of football star Ray Rice knocking out his then fiance and now wife in an elevator has gone viral. The country is shocked and outraged by the violence of the act. But we soon learn that there have been 700 arrests of NFL football players in recent years for domestic violnce. The video makes real on a gut level what is normal and moral behavior toward women here and all over the world. We seem already to have fogotten the kidnapping of over 200 school girls in Africa and their fate to be turned into sexual slaves. We hardly know how to respond to reports from a town in Northern England where young girls have also been turned into sexual slaves and raped by older men while the police did nothing to stop or punish the perpetrators. Let's discuss some of the possible reasons that so many men can behave like zombies toward so many women and what could be done to change the current war between the sexes. I will begin with the question: Is God a Man!
Tonight we explore some of the psychological and social meaning behind a news story that tells of a nine year old girl accidently killing a shooting instructor when she lost control of the Uzi machine gun she was firing at a range in Arizona. The child was on vacation with her family when she was brought to a facility that often allows children to act out our collective fantasy to shoot deadly weapons. The range then offers helicopter trips to see the grand canyon. The story is gererally presented in the media as just another tragic accident in the normal, moral life of an American family. We will try and explain why it is normal and moral for children to fire weapons of mass destruction as part of our ongoing dehumanization and zombification. I will also retell the story of the beheading of two reporters in Iraq and the trouble in Ferguson ans why these incidents are also normal and moral. Finally, we will discuss the cliche and myth that there are "good" people and "bad" people.
In my last broadcast I tried to tie together and retell some stories in the news that were creating terrible anxiety in me. Analyzing my own attempt at self-therapy I realize that I did too much free association and not enough rational integration. I think that it would be very hard for anyone to follow and take much from my babbling. Yet, it was an exercize that was very helpful to me. Therefore, I will try again and rework my broadcast with greater integration and suggest some ways out of the horrors we read about each day such as a Christian sect in Iraq starving to death while trying to escape a group of armed religious fanatics who, if not stopped, will kill, rape and enslave every member of this group. I will use the metaphor of the google map in my newly created story as well as suggest that the empowerment of women and the growth of the arts in every educational system are keys to exiting our current human end game.
I have been working for several years in a variety of nursing homes, providing psychotherapy to people, who, in one way or another are facing the end of their lives. This has been one of the most difficult and rewarding professional and life experiences I have ever had. I have learned that the closer we get to taking our own demises seriously the more we confront a decision to either give up on life and merely exist or live as if every second is precious and should be lived to the fullest regardless of life circumstances. Tonight I will discuss some of the reasons people opt to exist while others retain their deisre to live. These factors include family support, religious beliefs, unresolved guilt, shame and other conflicts as well as the presence or absence of a deepseated belief that personal choice is always available and that we are the sole owners of our own life. I will discuss my role as a professional in dealing with people suffering existential depression and feelings of meaninglessness as they live out their final time in nursing home facilities.
I have just returned from a tour of the major cities of Poland, Hungary, Austria and The Czech Republic which included Warsaw, Budapest, Vienna and Prague. My visit to the Polish city of Cracow included a tour of the infamous concentration camps of Aushwitz and Birkenau. In each of these great cities I ate large quantities of good food, drank copious glasses of good wine while visitng magnificent castles and memorials to the tens of millions slaughtered by the Nazi's the Communists and citizens of these countries whose children go to school, get married, have babies of their own and eat and laugh in the same way as the millions of visitors who come to their homelands. The trip therefore had a surreal quality that now has me asking myself how I, and my fellow travelers could have had such a good time in places that are vast graveyards and killing fields. How do I tell a story of my adventures that can shed some light on how these horrors could have happened without uttering the nearly universal words "It's Unbelievable" and "How could this have happened" while then enjoying a fun filled evening of good food and fellowship. How can we explain Mozart, Beethoven Tchaikovsky and Dvorak along side of Hitler and Stalin. In my story this evening I will offer some suggestions of explanation that will certainly be inadequate and which will certainly not have a happy ending. I will employ some of the themes used in past broadcasts including self and group idealization, dehumanization and demonization, and victimization.
Today's story is a fantasy. It will outline what I believe is necessary to live a good and meaningful life, agreeing in part with Freud who suggested that mental health is defined by the ability to work, love and play. I suggest that we lose the notion of mental health just as we give up the notion of mental illness describing instead the elements of good living which include having honest, loving and friendly relationships, the ability to be alone without being lonely and work and play that reflect genuine creativity. Few of us live such a life because we were careless in choosing the right parents in the right place and the right time. I will fantasize on the elements of our development that might well allow us to live a good life.
The question before us is how do we create a political system that avoids victimizations as well as idealization and demonization while promoting group cohesiveness and simulataneously respecting and fostering individual expression and creativity? How do we avoid both the horrors of the past such as the holocaust and the nightmares of the present such as those taking place in Syria. I will suggest that we recognize that while commerce makes life possible, good education and the arts, including music, fine arts, dance and literature not only make life worth living but sensitize us to the beauty that can come from any and all human beings.
Meyer's historical novel details the settling of Texas while Shavit's essay describes the Zionist settling of Israel. Both books are clear eyed attempts at exploring two important historical events free of the idealizations and myths which so often frame similar discussions. I will frame my telling of these stories with a discussion of how self and group idealization, dehumanization and demonization of others with whom conflicts exist, and the wearing of the mantle of victimization to achieve moral superiority and justification of political action lead to intractable conflict, human atrocities and other serious unintended consequences. Finally, I will try to create a framework based on psycho"therapy" that lead to positive resolutions of future similar stories.
Two earler stories dealing with how we are letting the mental health industry damage our children, as well as our society and the rest of us can be found in my blog talk archives 12/3/2007 and 2/4/2008. This latest chapter is based on a story appearing in the New York Times of 12/15/2013 entitled The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder by Alan Schwarz. We will explore reporter Schwarz' story and as well as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual's description of this so called medical problem. We will see how ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder) is a myth that is helping create a nation of drug addicts, undermining our schools and families, and society at large. Finally, we tell another story to replace the psychiatric myth that suggests how to deal with "diagnosed" children with love, patience, and common sense rather than so-called "therapy" and especially dangerous drugs. Our story ends with the statement "ADHD is not something you have but a label for things that you do."
We tell stories about our work and our play but rarely think about the difference between the two. Tonight we will define work and play and discover that for some of us we are really playing when we work and working hard when we tell ourselves that we are playing. We will discuss careers that allow some of us to play while others get trapped in a life of hard work. We will explore our important relationships in the same light as well as other important life activities including sex, sports, various games and even our hobbies. Our story will, of course, deal with money, a factor that by itself can determine the difference between working and playing. Finally, we will deal with emotions such as joy and various forms of misery that reveal to us the truth of whether or not we are playing or working.
In the Old Testament story of Genesis we are told that God created the whole universe in six days. On the last day he created human beings, supposedly his ultimate creative masterpiece. Sometime later God issued his commandments for how his masterpieces should live and demanded total obedience to the creator. None of these commandments demand that human beings, supposedly made in the creator's image, go forth and be creative in their own right. Was Mel Brooks correct when he suggested, in his comic masterpiece The History of the World, Part 1 that Moses dropped a third tablet containing another five commandments? Might those, now lost commandments, have demanded that we balance the needs of the individual against the needs of the group and struggle to find ways to be the loving creative artists each of us is capable of becoming with our duty to become obedient zombies seeking the blood of our fellow artists? That is the story we explore tonight.
We are bombarded with books and movies about zombies, vampires, werewolves and other undead creatures that mindlessly seek human flesh and blood but can never be filled and satisfied. These creatures seem to be in some terrible pain but are unable to understand, master or reduce thair agony as they go about destroying everything about them and ultimately themselves as well. Why is the popular media so consumed with horror stories? Are we turning into hungry ghosts and are these stories a metaphor for what we are becoming as individuals and as a society as well. Todays story will suggest that many of us have become terrified in the face of so much mindless politics, consumerism, materialism and try and provide some insight into our possible transformation into a society of zombies. We will discuss contributions from Freud, Evolutionary Theory, Social Theory and other relelvant sources. I will especially discuss the Freudian and later Psychoanalytic concepts of early childhood trauma and the resulting emotions of fear, shame and guilt that can color an individual's whole life story.
The Life of Pi, was for me a fine movie. In it a young man survives a shipwreck and relates his story to a reporter who would like to write about it. He tell the reporter a fantastic story of his survival in a life boat shared for much of the time with a ferocious tiger. Investigators, seeking to understand why the ship went down do not believe the original story so Pi tells them an alternate story more believable than the first. We are never told which story might actually be factual but Pi asks the reporter which one he like better. The reporter answers the more fantsastical one! Herein lies the core of tonight's discussion. Does science, facts and perhaps truth have any role in the stories we live by or do we simply live by the stories we like best? Does the conflict between facts and wishful thinking have any role in today's political struggles?
Individuals throw tantsums to gain control in order to achieve a goal that seems out of reach. There are certain characteristics to tantrums whether thrown by children, adolescence or adults, even those in the congress of the United States. Common to most if not all tantrums are a poor sense of the consequences of the tantrum and how these consequences rarely achieve the goals sought by those behaving in such a manner. Another common element is the anger and rage that often motivates the tantrum and the poor judgment associaed with such motivations. Finally, are the dangers associated with a tantrum that goes unopposed and the failure to help those out of control gain control and learn a better way of dealing with self and others to achieve one's aims.
The issue of what constitutes the best framework for evaluating and treating mental health patients has occupied clinicians for decades. Of course, everyone is concerned about the patient as an individual person, but many clinicians point out the value of the medical model in patient care. This apporach raises the hackles of some - it sounds as though the patient will be exposed to medications or some form of physical therapy. But that is not what "medical model" means to most clinicians who practice it. I hope you tune in to one clinician's story about his approach to mental health diagnosis and treatment.
What does a terrorist attack in a Kenya shopping mall, a mass murder in the US Naval Shipyard and the Republican threat to allow our government to default if Obamacare is not dismantled have in common? They all involve an allegience and personal identification to the notion of a perfect god that is above and outside of the live ordinary human beings. We will discuss how the endless tragedies that mark human history and especially our times when some individuals think they are infallible, know perfectly what is right and wrong and see as enemies those who disagree with them. We will discuss the horror of life when love, compassion and forgiveness is repalced by arrogance, hatred and a desire for vengance. Finally, we will discuss the personal tragedies that occur when we fail to see ourselves as fearful, helpless and vulnerable.
This year, for the first time in many years, I am attending services during the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) and The Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur). I will discuss my odyssey as a Jew and an American and my reaction to the biblical stories and prayers that made up the services at the Reformed Temple I attended. I will discuss my local story within the context of the political and military stories being played out in Syria involving the atrocities involving the use of poison gas by Dictator Assad, the stories involving Russia and Putin, as well as those involving America, President Obama and Congress. My audience is welcome to join in with their own stories
No more long stories from yours truley. I am boring and frustrating myself and I suspect my listeners as well. It is time for us to have dialogue and share stories. Millions of people have experienced the transformation in living when, through their interaction with a "therapist" (professionally trained, a teacher, cleric, family member, friend or any other person) the story they lived by was changed. Many individuals now lead happier, more loving and creative lives when they found a balance between being a member of a group sharing common stories and a self that creates its own personal narrative. Such individuals have moved from accepting dehumanization and abuse in authoritarian families, schools, churches and society at large while at the same time renouncing their own roles in the dehumanizing of themselves and others. They have struggled successfully to live in democratic relationships in which they speak but also listen and function as better "scientists," "politicians," and "psychologists" for themselves and others. During todays episode I will provide my listeners with information on how to contact me with their desires to share the stories of their own transformation. I also invite stories about how "therapy" might be used to used to mitigate some of the social horror now increasing all over the world.
Todays' story follows from my earlier discussion on how evolution has shaped many of our desires and motives and how we are often unaware we are acting to advance our personal and group interests. Psychoanalysis also has at its heart the idea that our intentions are often outside of our awareness and that much of human misery is created when we act without knowing our true hearts desire. Good psycho"therapy," and many practiotioners pf psychoanalysis are good psycho"therapists, has at its goal helping people increase their understanding of the motivations of themselves and others. When the process of self-understanding is successful we are then more capable of being more responsible, loving, and creative citizens. In the end we live much differently when we can be our own good psycho"therapist."
It is often assumed that what is considered normal behavior is also moral and what is considered abnormal behavior is also immoral. This assumption seems based on the idea that human beings are essentially "good" and that when we see what we might consider "evil" we are seeing the unusual or the deviant. I suggest that these assumptions are defense mechanisms and represent our need to escape from our own and societal acts that might be considered evil. Our behaviors are shaped by evolution and our need to continue eating before we end up being eaten. We will discuss how our animal evolution has created our sense of morality and how our sense of morality involves protecting our kin and tribe while vanquishing all competitors.
We begin tonight's narrative with a discussion of the documentary "Gasland" which details how the modern extraction of natural gas is destroying huge amounts of the planet's fresh water supply and adding to the problem of greenhouse gasses and climate change. Evidence is presented that the energy companies, the politicians and large segments of the public continue to deny the clear and present danger of despoiling our land, air and water. Psychology has also little to say about this mass denial of what is in front of us as it continues to focus of problem of the individual and sometimes the family. We will discuss this problem beginning with Becker's two masterpieces (now denied and forgotten) "The Denial of Death" and "Escape from Evil."
Another serious problem with a mental health field based on psychiatric concepts grows from the fact that each so-called diagnosis is in fact a moral label of some aspect of the "patient's" behavior. The patient is not only defined as morally deficient but there are no concepts available to define growth that leads to a more moral and ethical human being. Just as the psychiatric model cannot define mental health in terms of intellectual, social, or creative growth so too is it unable to find a way to describe growth in maturity and in ethical or moral behavior. Implcitly, each diagnosis states that some behavior, thought pattern, or form of emotional expression "should not be" but never defines what behaviors should replace it. The psychiatric model fails to set therapeutic goals that define mental health and therefore ignores the moral issues that are always necessary in any defintion of mental health.
How does good psycho"therapy" create positive change in the stories we live by? "Therapy" is a form of personal education whose goals are simliar to all good education. Good education is therapeutic and proper therapy is educational! When educated within relationships based on respect, good discipline, and if we are lucky, love we learn to set goals, develop necessary skills, and think more maturely and critically. Tonight we will discuss the ideas of Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky and others involved in creating a theory of good education.
Today I will discuss the difference between psychotherapy which seeks to treat mental illneses and disorders and Psycho"therapy" which recognizes that metaphorical illness require metaphorical therapy. The psycho"therapist" seeks to help people understand and change life stories from those based on the faulty pretence that moral labels (such as those found in the DSM) explain rather than judge. It seeks to help suffering people to replace such judgments with genuine descriptions that produce understanding into the reasons for self-defeating actions, self-inflicted misery and unhappy relationships. Psycho'therapy" alllows people to change the stories they live by and the characters within them to ones more loving, creative, and happy.
Todays story begins with a brief discussion of "The Book of Woe: The DSM and The Death of Psychiatry" by psychologist Gary Greenberg. In it Greenberg demontrates how the same psychiatrists who developed the DSM refer to it as "bullshit" and a "noble lie." While I will discuss the book itself at a later date (hopefully with Dr. Greenberg himself) the book makes clear that psychiatry fits its own definition of a delusion: a false belief held as true in the face of all evidence that disproves it. To mental health professionals delusions are proof of the most serious forms of mental illness and disorders. We will then continue with the Freudian and Psychoanalytic interpretation of how delusions represent defence mechanisms that create alternate views of reality too painful for the deluded individuals to live by and Freud's contention that all religions are, in fact, myths and delusions! I will then discuss Freud's theory that sexual repression causes mental illness and suggest that this was Freud's delusion, accepted by a majority of psychonanalysts. Finally, I will suggest that our species lives according to myths and delusions that we are destroying ourselves and our planet by doing so. I will end by hoping that my beliefs are delusions and that I am wrong about everything I said in tonight story.
Dr. Oz, you did a fine show and a public service when you exposed the fraud and dangers of anti-depressants such as Prozac. Your story happily contained the facts that these drugs are vastly overused, potentially damaging to brain and psyche, are addictive, have many side effects including increased risk of suicide and perhaps worst of all are ineffective in a majority of people who take them. One of your guests was a psychiatrist who agreed with you on the overuse and dangers of these drugs but presented evidence in the form of two brain scans that imply that there are various forms of depression. He suggested that only a psychiatrist can diagnose which form of this true, serious medical illness exists and that he should be the one to prescribe Prozac or one of its similar competitive brands. I applauded you and your guests for suggesting that before drugs are used to try and help a depressed individual that other medical problems that can cause or mimic depression should be ruled out, that psychotherapy should be tried, and that the individual should try exercize and other life changes. But your story is still incomplete and needs to be challenged. There is no evidence that depression is a medical condition and that brain scans reveal brain problems that cause depression. Most importantly, you and you guests never discussed depression at the level of a real person, a full human being living a real life with others human beings and having a history within a human context! I have invited you to be a guest on my show and asked to be one on yours to discuss expanding the story you told but will speak about your story whether or not you honor me with your presence.
When does life feel real and worth living? When do our lives feel real but not worth living? Can our lives be made up of performances to impress or placate others that do not feel real? Is such a life worth living? Can we lose sight of what feels real and what is a performance? Do people who knowingly act for a living feel real while thay are acting? If actors do not feel real during their performances could they ever convince the rest of us that they are real? Would such unreal performaces allow us to feel anything as we watch them? Do we idolize actors because so much of our lives are performances that do not feel real and are not worth living? Might there be a relationship between living lives between real living and make believe living and acts of violence that embrace death and reject all life? Do mass murderers feel real during their acts of violence? Do human beings love war more than peace because war makes life feel more real? Do we love war because we hate so much of our day to day lives that are really performances. Can we embrace life unless it feels real and worth living? Does life feel real unless we love, feel that we matter, have dignity and create? Can life feel so unreal that we wish for death and an afterlife that we hope will be more real than our lives? Can we create stories to answer some of thes questions?
This is the most important show I have ever done! We have accepted the psychiatric story that virtually all of our children are mentally ill or disordered. Tonight we examine the section of the DSM that describes the many so-called disorders of childhood including Oppositional-Defiant Disorder, Learning Disorders, Attention-Deficit Disorder, Separation Anxiety Disorder and Reactive Attachment Disorder. The mental heath industry has successfully fostered the idea that drugs are often, if not always, the superior method of "treating" these problems and have turned our children into legions of little addicts. We have as a society convinced our children that they are failures if they are not super achievers in school and do not make the "right" college. We have successfully implanted the idea in millions of youngsters that any and all of the adults who are not their familiars are potential kidnappers, sexual perverts and otherwise dangerous to their interests and to be avoided at all costs. Increasingly our children see their society as a hostile and dangerous place to live in. Most importantly, we will examine the truth of the story now suffocating America's young and what we might do about it.
There is a growing chorus of voices from across the political spectrum to create a data base of the mentally ill in society and flag those who are the most dangerous. This data will be stored in a giant computer which can spit out the names of the dangerously disordered if they try and buy a gun. Under this plan the mental health industry, led by psychiatrists and psychologists, will be our protectors in reducing the self inflicted carnage now terrorizing society. We will discuss the futility of this desperate plan and its dangers to our fragile democracy. In the course of our examination of our story to save ourselves from ourselves we will examine the bible of psychiatry, the DSM, and how relying on this list of bad behaviors can only make things worse. We will examine simpler ways to deal with the problem.
Continuing our discussion about marriage, partnering, and long term friendships. We will discuss children: Having them, disciplining them and letting them go. How about dealing with In-laws and other close and distant relationships. Finally, we will discuss ending marriages and entering into new ones and in particular working with children under these difficult situations.
In many aspects of our lives we share stories with other human beings and no where is the sharing more intense than in long term commitments such as marriage, partnering and other similar interactions. We will analyze marriage from a number of issues common to most if not all long term commited relationships. We wii discuss love, need, sex, power and money and how they shape and are shaped by shared stories. We will look at these relationships from the lens of the "I" "You" and "Us" and how these "entities" shift and change over the course of long intimate interactions. It is important to discuss how the stories of parents and in-laws as well as the emerging stories of children effect marriages and partnerings. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we will examine the inevitable conflicts that exist in all marriages and the type of politics used to resolve these conflicts.
One of the most destructive myths created by the Mental Health Industry states that individuals who repeatedly ingest drugs, including alcohol, various stimulants and others having sedative effects and experience medical problems, behave in socially unacceptable ways or otherwise create economic or other difficulties demonstrate a type of mental illness termed addiciton. Moreover, in recent years individuals who engage in sexual activity deemed excessive or dangerous as well as those folks who gamble and lose enough money to create difficulties for themselve and family members are similarly said to be motivated by their addictions and defined as mentally ill or disordered. It is further argued, with no evidence to support these claims, that these illnesses are genetic and neurological in origins and represent lifelong problems requiring lifelong treatment. We will examine this fable along with its destructive consequences both to individuals diagnosed and society at large.
Fro the past several years I have had the profound experience of working as a psychological consultant in two nursing homes that also contain rehabilitation units. While the physical care provided residents is mostly adequate their treatment as human beings defined by selves and identities is horrendous. Part of the problem stems form the way we, as a culture, deal with old age, death and dying. The result is that all the pain, existential anxiety, depression, loss of autonomy and dignity are treated as mental disorders to be understood and managed by the psychiatric model. The results are to reduce human beings to nonpersons who feel isolated, lonely, frightened and often filled with rage and self pity. Alternate stories are suggested.
A continuation of a discussion of a Humanistic Psychology that sresses an understanding of the experience of being human and the nature of the experiences that shape us as well as the manner in which we come to identify ourselves as individual personalities living with other of our human kind. We will discuss the process of becoming a person who creates and constructs the specific story that he or she lives by. We will discuss the variety of humanexperiences and forms of identication that deny individuals personhood and leave them feeling themselves to be objects, machines, and nonpersons.
Each of us is an experiencing biological being. It feels like something to be human and these feelings are shared by all of us. At the same time each of us experiences our world in completely unique ways; experiences that cannot be shared by anyone else. What we call our selves are the totality of our shared and unique experiences. Our identities are the words we use to describe the selves that are both shared and unique. The words the define us are provided by others and created by our selves. The stories we tell and live by express the experiences that formed the self and the identities that define those selves. The quality of the lives we live are in large measure determined by the nature of our total life experiences and all of the descriptions and moral judgements that define our identities. In this episode we explore some of the experiences and identities that make life creative and joyful or filled with rage, emptiness and despair.
An article By Susan Jacoby in the New York Times about atheism entitled It is Here and It Is Now suggests, among other things, that the absence of an afterlife lends a greater, not a lesser, moral importance to our actions on earth. Tonights discussion will also include Doestoevsky's story within the Brothers Karamazov "The Grand Inquisitor." We will discuss the relationship of atheism and democracy and whether or not a real democracy and full citizenship can exist in a theistic and religious society
Mental illness and Disorders represents a myth that is destructive to individuals and our democratic society as a whole. But if there are no such actual things as mental illnesses then what are they? And if we reject the notion that we, or our loved ones, friends and others in society are not mentally ill then with what do we replace this false, degrading mythical set of concepts. Tune in and participate in a discussion about a story of human adaptation and how such a story can help explain human behavior in all of its form and variations without the degrading moral labels and judgments that now represent the field of so-called mental health. In addition, learn how to change your life story, add to your understanding of human behavior, increase the range of choices to be made in life, and if necessary find and deal with mental health professionals without being damaged by them.
In a search for an explanation for the violent slaughter of our fellow citizens and especially for the mass murder of children in their classrooms, various politicians and the gun lobby are searching for a scpaegoat. They have decided that the mentally ill are to be blamed, and that guns are otherwise harmless and in no way responsible for the slaughter that has now become the new normal. It is being proposed that those labeled mentally ill or disordered are to be forced into treatment, and if necessary hospitalized against their will. In this way, it is argued, we will all be safer and and the country can go on arming itself with an endless supply of weapons of mass destruction. The professionals working in the mental health industry can then be blamed if the carnage continues and we can all watch as American Democracy continues to die and become an authoritarian society.
Our citizens, including children are being inundated with stories of intense unremitting violence. Sadisitic villains who fit the definition of monsters torture, maim and mutilate while creating a justifications for the "good guys" to torture and slaughter the villains. There is no mercy shown by any of the characters at any time or on any level. At the same time millions of children and adults play for hours with video game steeped in violence. The line between fantasy and reality becomes blurred by constant news stories of violence and sadism here in America and overseas in such places as Syria and broad swatches of Africa and Asia. There seems no widespread counterstories as politicians and citizens alike fail to shout about rights detached from responsibilites, individual needs unrelated to the needs of the group and society at large. Our religious leaders are either silent or call for more prayer in the face of social deterioration. The Mental Health system suggests that druga are the answer.
Another mass murder of 18 children an 8 adults in a Public School. We are still schocked but getting used to what is a regular occurence. What story do we tell ourselves, and especially our children, to make sense of what can morally only be called ultimate evil. Soon enough the experts in the so-called Mental Health Field will tell us this was the work of a psychotic, very sick mind. The psychiatric created national fairy tale will once again be told and we will be even more in the dark about this monstrous event than if we didn't try to explain it at all. This show will discuss the elements of a story about a society in which these events not only make sense but are completely predictable. It is time we create a new story in which we are all involved and in which we all take responsibility for our dying culture and what might be done about it.
From the moment that we are born we are bathed in stories and from a very young age we begin our own life as story tellers. But the stories we hear, and those that we tell reflect the cognitive development of the teller and the listener. The great developmental psychologist Jean Piaget decribed four levels of development. How we interpret our world and selves are very different based on the developmental level of the stories we live by. The political stories now dominating public discourse increasingly seem to be structured around the type of logic and perception that defines early and middle childhood rather than those we might expect from adults. We will discuss the nature of these differing types of stories and the disastrous consequences taking place here in the US as well as all over the world.
From the moment that we are born we are bathed in stories and from a very young age we begin our own life as story tellers. But the stories we hear, and those that we tell reflect the cognitive development of the teller and the listener. The great developmental psychologist Jean Piaget decribed four levels of development. How we interpret our world and selves are very different based on the developmental level of the stories we live by. The political stories now dominating public discourse increasingly seem to be structured around the type of logic and perception that defines early and middle childhood rather than those we might expect from adults. We will discuss the nature of these differing types of stories and the disastrous consequences taking place here in the US as well as all over the world.
A number of recent mass killings are merely a symptom of a society increasingly shaped by an endless stream of dehumanization of its citizenry. Our political process, mass entertainment and social interactions cast people as machines, monsters, violent killers and less than human, evil others. America may well be a dying society beyond anyone's ability to save it.
I went to a juried art show today at a local museum and was struck by the wonderful, creative individuality on display. I compared my experience to that of reading the New York Times this morning with its endless articles describing murder, mayhem, injustice as armies obediently followed the orders of political monsters to mindlessly destroy all that is good and beautiful around them. How do we increase the number of creative artists and decrease the mindless mobs who instead hate and destroy. It is getting late for humanity to change course we are on but we must try.
Civilization and human survival depend upon human beings behaving reasonably toward themselves and each other. After a discussion that defines being reasonable, its development, and its struggle to survive the human capacity for superstition, it will be suggested that being reasonable is being drowned by superstition, political ideology, childish tantrums and emotional immaturity. We are in trouble!
A discussion of the nature of ideologies and how they entrap and destroy the individuals and societies that live by them. The attempt to divide the world into black and white, good and evil, perfect and damaged leads to many serious and dangerous consequences.
A further analysis of how ideologies and sacred stories destroy individuality, creativity, and democratic institutions. The question will be posed: Are you and I individuals or simply small parts of mindless, powerful forces such as markets, nations, history or political parties?
A continuation of the analysis of the destructive narratives that now dominate much of political discourse that fails to deal in facts, engage in genuine debate with opinions that differ, and focusses on narrow perspectives and world viewpoints.
A Psychological analysis of some of the stories now destroying what is left of American Democracy such as those rejecting modern science, those impugning the religion and citizenship of President Obama, and the myth that the unions must be destroyed in order to balance the budget.
America is in trouble as the dumbing down of the country and its political process gathers momentum. The discussion will include a column by Frank Rich (New York Times) and the role played by the mental health industry in the growing catastrophe for our democracy.
A second discussion about what I believe to be "good" therapy and how the elements of non-coercion, respect, uncritical listening, help those seeking help come to own and change their life stories
My personal view about the value of good psychotherapy, which is always a process in which concerned human beings try and change the stories that they live by. I put quotation marks around "therapy" to suggest the non-medical, metaphorical nature of the process that helps people deal with metaphorical illnesses.
A discussion about the universal emotion of anxiety and its important role in human adaptation. The discussion will extend to all so called mental illnesses and disorders and how they can be transformed in our personal and collective stories.
A discussion based on a New York Times Op-Ed piece entitled "Good Grief" by well known psychiatrist Allen Francis. The show will issue a challenge to Dr. Francis or any other professional working in the mental health industry to justify his position.
Our media are filled with stories about the moral transgressions of various and sundry celebrities. It would appear that these individuals are "sick" and can be redeemed through therapy and heart felt apologies. Moral judgments are passe and we are to forgive everything.
We either renew or die, grow or shrink, look forward or backward, create or destroy. A discussion of the experience of positive and negative transformation and some of the factors that determine the psychological direction we choose to take.
Individual and social crises are opportunities for change in that they reflect that what has been has become intolerable. It is at these moments that we either grow or shrivel, bring out the best or worse in ourselves and experience some form of transformation.
The hidden politics of Psychiatry, Clinical Psychology and the Drug Industry undermined American Democracy and changed independent creative citizens into passive helpless patients.
The search for perfection, permanence and obedience makes life miserable for us as individuals and now threatens life on this planet.
A discussion that begins with an article in the New York Times' "Week in Review" and ends with a different explanation of how war effects those who fight humanity's endless wars.
Once upon a time a health plan was put into law with strong provisions for "mental health." The consequences of that plan destroyed privacy and democracy in America and produced a catastrophic health crisis for all. This story tells how!
Why is the study of human history a study of unending war and not about peace? Why are those of us who seek power so often eager to start wars? Why do those of us who are led so easy to accept war? Can anything be done to change the the stories of war and peace that we currently live by?
Of all the stories humanity has created none is as powerful, life enhancing and ultimately as destructive as our collective god stories. A discussion of the psychological and sociological nature of god stories.
We must feel that we matter, that we are affirmed, needed, loved, respected, make choices and create or else we live in depression, despair, and can become dangerous to ourselves and others.
A discussion of the persistent myths and dishonesty in the field of Psychology and Psychiatry with Louis Wynne and Tracy Alexis.
A discussion about the nature of those we call geniuses and those we call mad or crazy. An analysis of the kind of stories that earn the title genius and those that get a person labeled mad.
A discussion about the fact that so many individuals in power tell the rest of us how to live and then live counter to their sermonizing. The show will include an analysis of the relationship of sex and power from the point of view of evolutionary psychology.
Discussions about selves that feel real and false, about the shaping of selves within various political and religious systems as well as the role of family size and economics in the development of self-systems
A discussion about the nature of the self and how they inevitably change and transform with maturation, trauma, and love.
A discussion of an article in the New York Times Magazine of May 12th 2009 entitled "A Long Journey in the Dark: My Life with Chronic Depression" by Daphne Merkin
Six year old foster child commits suicide while on psychiatric drugs. A discussion given context by New York Times column written by Thomas Friedman concerning the decline of our nation.
We know what we believe to be real no matter how hard we try and deny unpleasant realities. In the long run there is no peace, or even real living, until we accept what we know to be true.
A discussion of the differences between individual and societal stories based in reality and fantasy. Why "lies" are "little and white" and the "truth is so brutal."
Stories about education and how our society's future depends upon how we change our current approach to teaching the next generation.
Modern science treats us as machines. Psychiatry and psychology, which should foster humanistic stories to live by, pretend to be sciences that foster the story that human beings are robots or other types of hardware. Our spirits are dying as a result.
Continuing a far ranging discussion on the dangers and corruption of the mental health industry both currently and historically.
Robert Whitaker is the Pulitzer Prize nominated author of "Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill."
A discussion concerning the revision of the DSM, (the diagnostic statistical manual of mental illnesses).
The interview with Stella Levi has been delayed because she is experiencing medical problems. The Holocaust is discussed in the light of psychosocial stories.
How we use scapegoats to avoid taking responsibility for our own lives and how accepting the role of scapegoat can destroy creativity, joy and love.
We can own our life stories and have choices about changing our lives or mindlessly live out our life stories and repeat the same mistakes and recreate the same unhappiness.
Discussion about the difficulty in knowing when you need help and when you don't around the statement the "smoking is a treatable medical condition."
The political stories now dominating the 2008 election have much to do with how we see life and death. I fear that themes of death are getting stronger than those concerned with life.
A discussion about how we have given up our freedom to ingest anything we wish and as a consequence have given up our ability to mature and become responsible adults. Special attention will be paid to the role of psychiatry in this ongoing tragedy.
A discussion of my evolution as a psychologist including some of the economic, religious, political, and educational factors that shaped my development and current viewpoint about my field.
A discussion about the changing definition of maturity and how it has affected politics.
Continuing an important discussion on drugs, the soul, and society with a brilliant doctor and author
Dr. Jackson is one of the foremost experts on the deleterious effects of psychiaric drugs and is the author of "Rethinking Psychiatric Drugs: A Guide for Informed Consent."
What is the soul? Must it be a religious concept? How do we best develop and protect our souls?
A discussion about how our individual and collective failures to create stories that allow us to own our worst nightmares damages all of our lives and what to do about it. (Includes a discussion of Frank Rich's NY Times Op-Ed "The Patraeus-Crocker Show Gets the Hook.")
Stories about my knee operation and what it has taught me about how temporary and precious life is.
The important, often invisible psychological role that prejudice and the dehumanization of others plays in all of our lives.
Removing damaging language from your vocabulary and replacing it with insight and creativity.
How the constant "diagnosis," "observation" and "treatment" of our children is damaging them and our democracy.
A discussion about the catastrophic moral, political, economic, psychological and medical consequences of the mental health industry's war on children.
Can you love another if you don't love yourself? Can you love yourself if you have never been loved? Can you love yourself if you don't love others?
A discussion on some possible reasons why dissent, outrage, and rebellion have all but disappeared from our stories
A discussion of some of psychiatrist Thomas Szasz' ideas in detail. How to ask intelligent questions of your shrink.
A discussion with the world famous psychiatric critic and author of "The Myth of Mental Illness" as well as dozens of other important books on psychiatry. We will be joined by psychologist Louis Wynne
A discussion of "A Still, Small Voice," a column in the New York Times Op-Ed page of October 16th by David Brooks on those politicans who are bothered by losing their souls.
A discussion of the types of ideas that make us go really nuts if we start to believe that they are true. (For example, your mother really doesn't love you.)
How psychiatry, her parents, the media, and society at large murdered little Rebecca Riley. A discussion with psychiatrist Phil Sinaikin