Category Archives: psychology

A Few More Thoughts About My Ignorance

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After confessing my “ignorance” yesterday, I must qualify this declaration to some degree.  I know a lot of “stuff” as the result of being, in some sense, only an “observer” in life and not an “experiencer.”  Just as my sweet-heart Emily Dickinson quipped over her version of this character flaw, “Life is over there…on a shelf.”  I have read voraciously in my life, having discovered in my first days in elementary school that words offered so much to my frightened and lonely soul.  I have a modest library today, though impressive in its character; but each volume has passed the “smell test” and found lodging in my heart.

Yes, I am one damn smart “son of a gun!”  I was so smart that my daddy called me, “Son”…to use an old joke from the 60’s! Recently I decided that all of this wisdom and erudition was so valuable that I put it all in a paper bag, took it down to McDonalds, and tried to buy a Senior cup of coffee.  “Oh yes,” they said, “we’ll take the bag of your verbosity…but the coffee will still cost you a dollar!” I took my cup of coffee, turned to find a table where I would open my copy of G. W. F. Hegel’s “On Art, Religion, and Philosophy: Introduction to the Realm of Absolute Spirit.”  But as I made my turn, I could not help but notice that the cashier took that paper bag of my brilliance and dropped it into a trash can! Facetiousness and self-deprecation aside, I recognize that I am intelligent and erudite.  But as noted yesterday, all of this leaves me profoundly “ignorant” in a very important respect; for words are but “pointers”;  or as the Buddhists have told us, “The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.”  The great Catholic scholar and author, Thomas Aquinas, in his early fifties after having gone through a mystical experience didn’t write another thing the rest of his life, noting, “It was all straw.”

This vein of wisdom began to seep into my heart in my mid-thirties, burrowing gently but determinedly into my thick skull when the pain of alienation was setting in and poetry began to find a place in my heart.  This “still small voice” was at first a simple murmur but in the past three decades it has become a loud voice, providing the view point through which I approach my world, seeing metaphor where I had before only seen “fact.”  Yes, “the letter kills, but the spirit maketh alive.”  I close with the words of the brilliant Irish poet, William Butler Yeats who sums it up for me, “Throughout all the lying days of my youth, I waved my leaves and flowers in the sun.  Now may I wither into the Truth.”

“Palimpsest: The Deceitful Portrait” by Conrad Aiken

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I chat via phone with a very gifted writer from New York City who lived here in Taos, New Mexico until about two years ago. This “confab” that we have bi-weekly is one of the most spiritually invigorating experiences I have in my life. She is writing an essay now on eidetic memory which brought to my tangentially-oriented mind the word “palimpsest.” And this, in turn, brought that same “tangentially-oriented” mind to the poet who introduced me to that term decades ago when I discovered the poet, Conrad Aiken.

A biographical note is in order. Aiken was born to a 1889 to a respected Savannah, Georgia physician and eye surgeon and his wife, the daughter of a prominent Massachusetts Unitarian minister. When he was eleven years of age, one morning he heard two gun shots ring out in his home and discovered that his father had shot his mother and then himself.. You can imagine the terror that gripped him. I share this anecdote because of a note that W.H. Auden made in a poem about William Butler Yeats, “Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.” For that murder-suicide to have happened, you can only imagine the madness the reigned in Conrad’s household and certainly “hurt” Conrad into poetry also.

Here I wish to share a bit of an Aiken poem, followed by a link to the entire poem. It begins with how we “walk through many lives” and carry a bit of each of them with us as we constellate an identity. With the resulting synthesis we “see but the small bright circle of our consciousness, beyond which lies the dark this powerful poem, Aiken explores the intricacies of identity, the art of subterfuge inherent in daily life, the sadness, the narcissism, the disappointment, and the courage we find to carry on before the taunting of despair:

And, as it is with this, so too with all things.
The pages of our lives are blurred palimpsest:
New lines are wreathed on old lines half-erased,
And those on older still; and so forever.
The old shines through the new, and colors it.
What’s new? What’s old? All things have double meanings,—
All things return. I write a line with passion
(Or touch a woman’s hand, or plumb a doctrine)
Only to find the same thing, done before,—
Only to know the same thing comes to-morrow. . . .

If this poem speaks to you in the least, I encourage you to follow the link provided as it is a deeply moving poem from the heart of a poet full of very intense emotion with consummate skill is conveying his heart’s sentiments.

http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/conrad_aiken/poems/441

Watch the Republicans Continue To “Guzzle the Kool-aid”

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With Trump’s 2nd Impeachment trial before us, we are going to see a real time playing out of the prophetic skit by Saturday Night Live in 2013, “Mr Belvedere’s Fan Club,” starring Tom Hanks. I have blogged in the past about a reverie of someone lost in the lunacy of a man who believes the moon is made out of cheese. In that reverie, I make the point that anyone who believes anything….regardless of how crazy it is…if he believes it fully, as in “beyond the pale”, there is no getting through to him. I dealt with this in my clinical practice in a psychiatric hospital and we diagnosed these patients, “psychotic.” For psychosis is the term for one who is cut off from any external reference, being wholly intoxicated with his private field of reference. Put an individual like that in a group of like-minded souls, and one will find a political party led by people like Kevin McCarthy, Lindsey Graham, Jim Jordan, Matthew Gaetz, and technically led even yet, Donald J. Trump.

I grew up in a mind-set like this. Oh, in fairness to those good souls, metastasis had not set in. It took a Trump to bring that poison to fruition. But there was a smugness that I grew up in, a smugness which is simply an essential dimension of tribal coherence. The smugness rarely metastasize to the point we are witnessing in my country, a process the analysis of which is beyond the pale of this exploration. “Smugness” even has a place but it ever finds a Trump, “Katy, bar the door!!

Tomorrow we will witness well-educated men and women passionately oppose conviction of Trump in this trial. To argue with them about their enthrallment would be a foolish endeavor. They have “drank the kool-aid” which is a grim image to remind us of what can ensue when one gives into unquestioned unconscious biases, to override the brain’s capacity for metacognition. It is kind of like some of my past clinical patients who were in the grip of suicidal ideation; these patients had lost hope and were relentlessly driven by the the “only” hope they could imagine, jumping over the cliff. It was the greatest challenge of my clinical practice, trying to offer hope to those in the grip of hopelessness.

W. R. Rodgers and Rumi On Language

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Language is my forte.  To a fault, in some sense, “too much of a good thing” at times.  But I’ve learned that words can be hollow, merely formulaic to manipulate people into mirroring my performance-art of an inauthentic life.  The W. R. Rodgers poem excerpt I shared yesterday so elegantly described how language can decay and even die, becoming what is called a “dead language.”  And Rodgers singled out politicians in the cited poem, accusing them of falsifying language to accomplish selfish ends: 

Words are “now they are the life-like skins and screens 

Stretched skillfully on frames and formulae, 

To terrify or tame, cynical shows 

Meant only to deter or draw men on, 

The tricks and tags of every demagogue, 

Mere scarecrow proverbs, rhetorical decoys, 

Face-savers, salves, facades, the shields and shells 

Of shored decay behind which cave minds sleep 

And sprawl like gangsters behind bodyguards.” 

(PLEASE NOTE, AM HAVING TROUBLE WITH EDITOR; COULD NOT ITALICIZE ABOVE QUOTE)

This morning I discovered relevant wisdom from the 13th century Persian mystic Rumi who emphasized the importance of living a dual life, abiding in and respecting the “false” world that Rodgers had in mind and another where authentic moments are available here and there.  He described this “in-between” residence as a “small market between towns.”  He presents a solitude that one will find there, which the mystics and many artists are very familiar 

A small market between towns 

There’s a town where the soul is fed, where love hears truth and thrives, and another town that produces lies that degrade and starve love. Your voice is a small market set up between the two towns. Goods arrive from both directions, flimsy, fake items and honestly made, wholehearted tools and wares. Some travelers immediately know which is which. Some voices open a shop and spend sixty years cheating customers, gossiping when they leave, and flattering women to get their attention. Others weary of the marketplace altogether and rarely go there. 

Rumi 
Version by Coleman Barks, in “The Soul of Rumi” 
HarperCollins, 2001 

A Lamentation of Reality’s Intransigence

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Today I am going to continue my “assault” on reality, the quotes necessary because “reality” is impregnable to the attack of one simple bloke like myself.  What makes it so invincible is its subtlety; it can’t be seen with the naked eye.  Its premises are commonplaces, most of which a society cannot be left without.  But so many can be lived without and a society is better off when they are given the light of day. One simple example from my youth in the American South involves racism—television shows were “white”; NFL quarterbacks were “white”; and miscegenation was verboten.

This “reality” that I am here kicking around ordinarily has the capacity to slowly evolve, to adapt to circumstances even against the down drag of inertia.  But in certain moments of history, there is tremendous “down drag” as the evolution appears too drastic and frightening to much of the population.  This leads to the socio-cultural ferment that we are currently witnessing in the United States, and even in the world.  This has led to civil war in the past.

We can’t escape the unconscious dimension of life which shapes reality.  Oh, well, we can simply assume that it does not exist and passionately insist that we know exactly what are doing.  But we don’t.  There is always more to the picture which is a frightening notion to most people. It is so frightening that people will cling desperately to their certainties and usually will find a leader who will be their champion.

If you are curious about this tenuous nature of reality, you might find the following book of interest, “The Social Construction of Reality” by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman.

Specious Reality Gets a “Reality Check” Here and There

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My focus here recently has been reality, as in “reality.”  My emphasis is the vulnerability that “reality” faces, as it is something other than the basic assumptions that we take for granted.  Here, I am putting on the table something that cannot actually be put “on the table.”  For “reality” is subtle to the point that we can never fully grasp it with our feeble, pea-sized brain but only with a discerning heart that can understand these subtleties, or at least understand that they can only be inferred.  In this effort I make it very complicated…because it is complicated, infinitely so…but it can be simply presented by borrowing from the Apostle Paul, “We see through a glass darkly.”

It is this “darkliness” that is imperiled with the term I employed days ago, “the judgement of God.”  Psychologist Carl Jung used the word “einfall” to describe this irruption into our consciousness, an intrusion which often rattles our cage beyond our comfort zone.  Another term I’d like to introduce here is the “black swan” popularized several years ago by Nassim Nicholas Tasseb with his book, “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.”  Tasseb uses the aberration of a swan being black rather than white to introduce the shock of cognitive dissonance, the “catastrophe” of realizing that things are not as we see them.  According to Wikipedia, Tasseb’s metaphor “lies in its analogy to the fragility of any system of thought.  A set of conclusions is potentially undone once any of its fundamental postulates is disproved.”

Our world is now being shaken to the core, with many “fundamental postulates” jeopardized.  Any country worth its salt will have leaders who will avoid blaming anyone, will focus on the problem as it applies to its own people, and offer a well thought out strategy for this perilous moment in history.  The image of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, confined to a wheelchair, calmly guiding us through the Great Depression and into the 2nd World War came to my mind.  What courage, fortitude, and faith.  He knew it was not all about him.

Reality, God, and Boundaries

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The “judgement of god” is to me a literary construct, thus amenable to a personal application rather to a rhetorical one.  In my youth, as a fledgling Baptist preacher, it was sermon fodder, stem-winder material, for an “hell-fire-and-damnation” sermon in which I could hold forth about the impending judgement of God.  I put myself in this position because this “judgement of God” was heavily upon myself and one of the most effective ways of dealing with the gut-wrenching exposure of this experience is to attempt to deflect it to other people.

For, from a literary and more personal perspective, this “judgement of God” is when reality sets in and stings us with the realization that, “Uh oh!  I’ve been found out!”  In that moment we are naked and vulnerable to varying degrees and it is an humbling moment.  It is a moment when the ego harnesses all of its resources and almost always it will aim these resources in the form of projection upon someone else.  That is the reason that my fragile teen-age identity needed the position of “Baptist preacher.”

Biblical terminology like this “judgement” and even “God” are terms I’m a bit hesitant to use; for the Bible and its terminology are highly suspicious given the history of Christianity and its present day expression.  However, now having the ability to de-contextualize the Bible from how it was presented to me in my youth as well as “de-contextualizing” even myself from my youth, I have a deeper appreciation for it as Holy Writ.  Yes, I would even deign to describe it as the work of the “Holy Spirit” expressed through ancient humankind and if approached with a degree of humility has value for this present moment.

With this in mind, this “Reality Check” is upon us and “heavily” or “grievously” so.  I am going to take this approach for a few days as I apply it to issues that are present in our world today.  “Reality” is speaking to us as a species just as it is speaking to each of us personally…at least it is to me “personally.”  Limits are painful to the ego which always sees itself as without any, especially for those of us who have lived our lives in the illusion of certainty, and its twin–piety.

 

The Coronavirus Has Beset Our Political System and Culture

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Michael Bloomberg has the best possibility of beating Trump in November, the only one with the wherewithal, financially and tenacity, to defeat the coronavirus that has beset our political system…and entire culture..  But, given the “free-press” which is itself a “tyrant” of sort, the myriad down-sides of Bloomberg are coming to the light.  I’m going to predict what will happen here:  while the Republicans saw Trump’s evil exposed to the light of day even before his nomination, an exposure which continued to take place during the campaign, and is still underway during his administration, the GOP has, and will, “stand by their man.”  They have been, and are, determined.

The Democrats need a similar resolve and can have that without allowing the coronavirus to attack their own willfulness.  And with Bloomberg, this might involve accepting into their fold a man with a sullied background who with his own “willfulness” can “slay the giant” of Trumpism.  By doing so, this would require a bit of humility to admit into their fold a man who has less than solid Democratic sentiments in his background.  The Democrats might then have to recognize, “Hmm, maybe we have our own dark dimension of willfulness which is why we failed to consider a huge segment of the American population in recent decades, a decision which made this segment conclude that their best bet was Trump.”  The Democrats need a “strongman” at this moment in history and I have no concern that they would then assume a supine position before him as has the GOP down with Trump.  They will bring back to our political life, “checks and balances.”

Here, I am posing as a political commentator.  But my concern here is not so much politics as the dynamic that is in play in our political system and culture.  This is a struggle with diversity, including the realization that there are two ways of looking at the world and that these “two ways” can learn to live with each other. The ego, collectively and individually, always wants to eradicate other ways of looking at the world.  I am a Democrat because I believe they best represent the offer an “inclusiveness” to our country rather than an “ex-clusiveness.”  There is room for all of us, but only if we have the courage to respect those that represent our “other,” those that we tend to dismiss as “them.”

As so often, the wisdom of W.H. Auden sums this up, “We wage the war we are.”

The “Wounded Healer” and Its Pitfalls

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A couple of friends today introduced me to the work of a “wounded healer” that I had not run across, Marsha Linehan.  Linehan is a noted mental health professional, a professor of psychology, psychiatry, and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington who suffered severe mental health issues of her own earlier in her life.  Her turn around was the result of a mystical religious experience which, to cynics can admittedly be credited to “mental illness.”  I am not one of those critics.

The “wounded healer” is one who is not a detached “caring soul” who is offering an aloof “care” to someone who is suffering.  The “wounded healer” is one who has, and is, suffering her/himself and does not draw the distinction between “me and thee” that the aloof, detached care givers offer.  To those who are ensconced in the aloof, detached comfort zone…their mind and heart teeming with clinical lore…this patient or client is a “thing”.  Absent is the awareness of the relationship, the consciousness and experience that “there go I but by the grace of God.”  The wounded healer has seen, experienced, and owned his/her pain and can offer an empathy that those without that woundedness can offer.

However, the pitfall of the wounded healer is the inability to set boundaries.  If that person cannot recognize that even with that powerful empathy there is not simultaneously a distinction between “me and thee” he he/she will be sucked into a morass of self-indulgence in which he/she and the patient is done great harm.  You might want to check out the following link:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evil-deeds/201112/linehan-and-jung-wounded-healers

 

Ego Integrity, Shame, and Politics

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At a family get together decades ago, one of my young nephews got into some mischief, did something “wrong,” and his mother challenged him sternly, “Billy, why did you do that?”  I’ll never forget the look on the face of that five year old boy.  His eyes glared with guilt and fear, he looked away, he stammered and then announced, “No!”  His guilt was obvious to all; some of us smiled, remembering our youth when we had been there in Billy’s shoes.  Years later In my clinical practice I was presented one morning with a six year old boy with impulse control issues (adhd) who had been rescued from an abusive family by his kindly grandparents.  Sammy, as I’ll call this young tyke, eagerly greeted game playing as part of his treatment plan.  This strategy was invaluable for a patient with these issues, providing an opportunity to teach respect for rules of simple board games, as well as patience.  His moments of frustration and anger could then be explored in relation to behavior in school and family life.  Sammy had very little control over his impulses, not able to accept having made a bad move and insisting that got to have a “do-over.”  He even threw the board one time in frustration as I emphasized a simple rule.  Often he would simply lie though it was obvious that he had cheated.

Both of these young lads had not reached the developmental stage of being able to admit having made a mistake, having been “wrong”, which is a basic skill in participating in the human race.  The social body functions only if certain basic rules of organization, structure, civility, decorum, and respect for others can be adhered to.  In each of these instances, they were off to a poor start in accomplishing this goal.

“Ego integrity” can handle critical feedback from others though it often still hurts deeply.  I remember the impeachments of Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.  Each of them were deeply humiliated, and tried to lie their way out of it, but ultimately had to accept their fate and admit they had erred.  In Nixon’s case, he had to accept the great humiliation of being forced to resign from office.  Each of us have an ego and our ego is designed to attempt to save face; this is how the ego is designed.  But when one has developmentally matured enough, his ego can have the integrity to accept the shame of humbly admitting, “I was wrong.  I made a mistake.”  In some contexts this might even be framed as, “I have sinned.”

When one lacks this ego integrity, and is is extremely immature and overwhelmed with shame and humiliation, the individual will go to any extreme to save face, even resorting to violence.  This violence can be overt but also subtle, i.e. taking political form, and having a devastating or catastrophic impact on the social body. This individual cannot back down.