We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
People who value money are not the successes on Wall Street or in finance. The real successes are the people who don't value money. Yes, the money-grubbers and the money-counters and money-hoarders are necessary and often do OK and buy nice cars and have money for retirement and second and third homes, but I think the real successes on Wall Street are the ones who want to build things and to make things happen, build businesses, try new ideas, take big risks, fail a few times, and can say 'the heck with my money.' I think that is success on Wall Street. The builders and the dice-rollers who aren't into money and just like to do things.
A patient of mine, a retired Wall Streeter, who has gone back to work to raise a hedge fund with a friend for which the company profits will go towards starting small businesses in Africa and Haiti. Retirement did not suit him.
I was asked two questions at dinner last night, both on the "Feelings aren't facts" theme.
1. "Do people with strong insecurities and feelings of inadequacy tend to be people with plenty of inadequacies - or not?" A good question.
My reply: "Some people who feel inadequate are quite "sufficient," and some are wise to doubt themselves and their life skills. Bear in mind, though, that every human has his share of inadequacies and shortcomings. Some people magnify their own for neurotic reasons and some deny their own for neurotic reasons. The best thing is to be realistic about our strengths and weaknesses, and to get to work on the weaknesses - if we want to."
2. "Do people with strong self confidence tend to be people for whom it is justified, or not?"
My reply: "Could be either. However, I tend to be a little wary of those who project noticeably strong general self-confidence. But plenty of people learn how to give the appearance of strong self confidence when they need to, to fake it; a game face is a good thing, when needed. Also, strong confidence in a specific area in which it is merited is one of the finer things in life."
Then I finally said, "So tell me, what are you and your kids up to this summer?"
My clients are astonished when I tell them that life is not supposed to be easy, and that we carve out our characters and our souls from the hard times. Further, suffering is the great uniter: It has the potential to connect us to people all over the world. Pain reminds us that everyone is, at times, pierced by grief, loneliness, and sorrow.
- If you are over 18 and haven't learned that life is tragic, you may have a learning problem.
- Most of our problems are of our own creation - often unwittingly. That was just one of Freud's insights - borrowed from the ancient Greeks, of course.
Nature/nurture is always a fun topic. Why aren't identical twins identical mentally and emotionally? It's only around 50%. Or, does parenting make any difference at all in who the adult turns out to be? Probably not too much, barring massive trauma.
Well, it is all complicated, and getting more complicated as we learn more about how the brain develops. The noise matters. A degree of messiness is built-in.
In the end, however, I do not think will-power is built-in. It is a choice, a daily choice.
The psychoanalyst Alice Miller has died. She was not an MD. I blame her popular writings - all on the one theme of the evil of parents - for fueling the "victimization" and "trauma" crazes in pop psychology of the late 20th Century.
You can term people who take one idea to explain everything as monomaniacs but, to try to be charitable to the recently dead, I would term it hopelessly if not crazily reductionistic.
In the human soul, easy answers and simple explanations of things never do any good. Her sorts of explanations got their traction by absolving people of their own decisions and choices by blaming others, thus further denigrating the powers and potentials of the human soul.
A patient recently told me that she had been invited to join a neighborhood wife-swapping club about six months after she and her husband moved into a middle-class Boston suburb. The invitation came quietly, at a lady's coffee.
She replied that she was flattered, but thought it probably wasn't a good idea for her marriage. In fact, it made her so uncomfortable that she decided to move away.
I thought it sounded quite retro, 1970s, like Ice Storm. Key Parties and all that. I had not been aware that these things were still happening. I restrained myself from asking her whether the neighborhood husbands were hot, and from asking whether it might better be described as husband-swapping.
In truth, why would anyone choose to go into this profession today? Why would any sane man continue to practice medicine in this environment? Why, indeed, do I continue in this insanity?
How much of what shapes our lives is luck and serendipity? Most of us have met our spouse by chance, and many even have their jobs or even their careers by stumbling onto something.
On Maggie's Farm, we like to view life optimistically as an endless conveyor belt of opportunities, but with few of them passing by more than once. Thus do we necessarily accumulate regrets over time.
But what is luck made of? What is Fate made of? In part (and only in part), it is made of these ingredients:
"Character is destiny." - Sigmund Freud
"Chance favors the prepared mind." - Louis Pasteur
"You make your own luck." - Ernest Hemingway
"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have." -Thomas Jefferson
"I've found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often." - Brian Tracy
"Suit up, show up, and shut up." - AA aphorism, and the closely related Woody Allen quote: "Eighty percent of success is showing up."
This topic came to mind as I reflected on our corny but deeply true QQQs on persistence. Persistence tends to work because it works on a statistical basis. If a fellow hits on enough gals in the pub, he'll eventually get lucky.
Of course, knowing when to fold 'em is part of wisdom too. Sometimes sunny optimism is plain stupid.
In the wake of Obamacare, the MSM has been busy this week reinventing a partisan myth - the myth that Conservatives and "regular Americans" are violent, white, chronically angry, racist, homophobic, greedy, selfish, mouth-breathing troglodytes.
Shrinks know all about myth creation, because most peoples' life stories are personal myths. These political myths, however, are deliberately constructed, mass ad hominen smears on millions - including me. I do not mind non-violent political anger at all, but I do mind smears.
Just a few posts on the recent propaganda I noticed today:
It is generally assumed in medical circles that the examination of a patient should lead to the diagnosis of his illness, so far as this is possible at all, and that with the establishment of the diagnosis an important decision has been arrived at as regards prognosis and therapy. Psychotherapy forms a startling exception to this rule: the diagnosis is a highly irrelevant affair since, apart from affixing a more or less lucky label to a neurotic condition, nothing is gained by it, least of all as regards prognosis and therapy. - C.G. Jung
Indeed, experience is the best teacher. If one avoids experience, one learns nothing. I once had a middleweight patient who sparred twice with Gerry Cooney. The first time, Gerry went easy on him. When he went back to Cooney's gym in Jersey six months later, he told him to give him his best shots. Gerry promptly knocked him out unintentionally, just testing him. Concussion. The old guy can still throw a left hook. Was highly apologetic at the hospital. They have been best of friends ever since. Boxing is one of the Manly Arts.
Gerry Cooney is one of the good guys.
Ed: George Bellows' Stag at Sharkey's (thanks, dear readers). Bellows chose a career in painting over a career in pro baseball, following his heart for better or worse:
The magical biological and psychological chemical attractions to which we humans are heir is one of the more complicating, exciting, bewildering, and painful parts of life. Desire.
Sexual and romantic tension between two people is powerful stuff indeed. Without it, there would be very little music.
The French, like the cave-men did, routinely give in and just get the thing over and done with. Magic gives way to reality fast, in relationships that last longer than a few hours or weeks.
I wonder how our readers deal with this part of life, but I am not trying to collect Lenten confessions...
Last November, when Tiger Woods's misadventures became public, his agent said: "Let's please give the kid a break." The kid was then 33. He is now 34 but, no doubt, still a kid. The puerile anthem of a current Pepsi commercial is drearily prophetic: "Forever young."
Alas, Will makes the common error of associating years with psychological maturity and strength of character. I have known plenty of mature 18 year-olds - even 16 year-olds, and plenty of infantile 75 year-olds.
A dinner partner asked me "Are men naturally monogamous?" on Saturday. What a silly question. "Of course they aren't."
Men are obviously programmed to want to have a good time spreading their DNA around willy nilly, as it were, but, at the same time, normal men are capable of forming these strange things we call "relationships," of forming sturdy and deep attachments, of developing strong character restraints, and of living by moral codes and committments to others.
We often refer to those latter things as core aspects of "manliness" in our culture: loyalty, honor, dependability, reliability, responsibility, self-control, providing support and family defence and all that. Otherwise, a guy is just a teenager. The combination of the former and the latter is part of the male challenge. (Females have their own set of life dilemmas.)
Still, these "naturally" questions I get always raise the basic problem: How does one discuss "natural" for a naturally culture-building and society-building animal like man? The discussion always becomes circular.
Freud was not the first person to address the topic, but he did his best.
It didn't sadden me, but rather impressed me with the use of graphics software. How do they perform this theatrical magic?
When I consider it, our lives are packed with incoming lies and virtual realities: the news, stories and fiction writing, advertising, photoshopped photos, politicians' statements, theater, legal "theories," activist's anecdotes, fantasies and imagination, memories, dreams (and the tales our patients tell us about their lives).
Mr. Plato had plenty of thoughts on the subject of human perception of reality, and he was darn well aware of the human distorting component too.
Some good blogger (I forget who) recently commented that she (I think a she) was sick of the term "narrative." I sympathise, but I am not sick of it yet. I find it useful. The overused term "authentic" is the one I am sick of.
I have not yet entered a pomo solipsistic world in which reality is a pure mental construction or, worse yet, a pure social construction (see the wonderful Berger and Luckmann). Reality does exist: Just hit your thumb with a hammer or stub your toe on something in the dark to be reminded of that. Many of us, fortunately, do not distort things very much to ourselves, or to others.
However, I do live in a world in which meaning is indeed a human construction, both personally and socially.
A "narrative" is an effort, conscious or unconscious, to ascribe meaning: designed to deceive, to manipulate, to entertain, to seduce, to support one's wishes or self respect, to indulge, to self-justify or to rationalize or serve some other defensive purpose, etc. - or just to try to make sense out of the stuff that seems to happen - more or less regardless of its objective validity. Every song, picture, poem, film, and book is a "narrative" too. Like any blog post. "I" am a narrative, I guess, and right now, presenting a narrative about narratives.
One of the many interesting things about being a shrink is to contemplate a person's "narrative," whether it is just a report of something that happened, or a life story. When somebody is engaged in an exploratory, depth treatment, these narratives change over time - which is why we never take them at face value. We assume a narrative meets some present want, or need, or fantasy. Our always-challenging and endlessly-interesting job is to probe the meaning of the narratives we see or hear in the work of untangling what ails a person's heart and soul.
One of our luxuries as people in the psychoanalytic psychotherapy field is the reliable consistency of the human personality "structure" (another term I hate - shrinks often use fancy latinate terms and complex conceptualizations for ordinary things): like a jigsaw puzzle, there is always a picture of something in there somewhere. Another is the luxury of not worrying too much about the literal truthfulness of things (unless dealing with undiagnosed sociopaths).
I could go on and on about this, but that's enough for now.
...good psychiatrists do not rely too heavily on the DSM when they care for patients. There is simply no substitute for observing the patient, listening to his story, and fine-tuning his treatments—psychological and pharmacological—as needed.
The framers of the DSM III knew this well. They cautioned against manual users taking too literally the sharp boundaries drawn between disorders and between disorder and mental health. "This version," they wrote in the preface, "is only one still frame in the ongoing process of attempting to better understand mental disorders." Thirty years later, despite undeniable progress in brain science, we are saying much the same thing.
Well said, Dr. Satel.
Ed. Addendum: Louis Menand, with wonderful clarity, looks at the tendency to pathologize everything into a "disorder" inThe New Yorker. Every human has his own difficulties, weaknesses, pains, sorrows, limitations, fears, heartaches, struggles. No one can catalogue and categorize them all. Simply trying to understand one person is a heck of a challenge.
Claire's knee—and the consternation it arouses in the diplomat—is a painstakingly constructed symbol of rationalisation gone amok. It gives us something by which to measure the diplomat's drift from reason. It also underlines the odd humour of the "Moral Tales": in Rohmer's world, faces are symmetrical, bodies proportional, and words are perfectly measured. Everyone is beautiful, and everything is in its right place. Everything, that is, except the intentions of his heroes.
The trailer for Claire's Knee (1970) - in French - sorry, but you can get the gist of it:
People don’t actually “grow apart” in relationships. They simply stop taking care of each other. They stop waking up and looking at their spouse with gratitude and awe. They stop finding ways to make that person happy that they are married to each other. They stop behaving as though they love that person with their last breath. They basically stop being the kind of person they themselves would want to come home to.
And then I find myself thinking "Who the heck would want to come home to face themselves?"
This is about a Brit neurosis. How naive can they be? Will they fall for any con? Do they refuse to accept the fact that there are tricksy, dishonest people out in the world? Via Betsy:
Then at the weekend another howler was exposed. The IPCC 2007 report claimed that global warming was leading to an increase in extreme weather, such as hurricanes and floods. Like its claims about the glaciers, this was also based on an unpublished report which had not been subject to scientific scrutiny -- indeed several experts warned the IPCC not to rely on it.
The author, who didn't actually finish his work until a year after the IPCC had used his research, has now repudiated what he sees has its misuse of his work.
His conclusion: "There is insufficient evidence to claim a statistical link between global warming and catastrophe loss."
Yet it was because of this -- now unproved -- link that the British government signed up to a $100 billion transfer from rich to poor countries to help them cope with a supposed increase in floods and hurricanes.
In the media’s view, everything must be over-determined by circumstance — or the mistakes of the Bush administration — so that acts of terror become like acts of God, both in their causes and in the limited and ad hoc way they demand to be dealt with. Insofar as questions of war and peace arise, it is only by way of demonstrating that war must be thought of as a struggle to understand the other side — the unspoken assumption being that there is always a way to get the enemy to stop fighting by understanding and sympathizing with him and without having to defeat him in battle — as the old, unmentionable honor culture would once have insisted. Got that?
PC makes some hatreds privileged and deserving of "understanding," and others not so.
Gagdad Bob's 
From 
How much of what shapes our lives is luck and serendipity? Most of us have met our spouse by chance, and many even have their jobs or even their careers by stumbling onto something.
The magical biological and psychological chemical attractions to which we humans are heir is one of the more complicating, exciting, bewildering, and painful parts of life. Desire. 
A charming female figure 
WSJ: