Maggie's Farm

It always amuses me when expensive and time-consuming studies are done to demonstrate something that everybody and his grandmother knew already.

Great example: Personalities Accurately Judged by Physical Appearance Alone

Without that subliminal processing, neither actors nor con men could exist because there would be nothing to imitate.

I do not know how material poverty can be defined. I have an easier time defining poverty of spirit. Man can not live on bread alone, and material appurtenances are no measure of quality of life.

(I have mentioned before two "poor" people I have come to know well: a Maine Guide who lives with his family in an unelectrified log cabin built by his own hands and who home-schools, and a New Hampshire farmer who attends my church whose life is as spartan and spare as that of the Guide, but whose life is full of joy, accomplishment, friends, pride, and serenity - except when his equipment breaks.)

Few people get this as well as my fellow shrink Dr. Ted Dalrymple, a man who has seen it all both in the jails and government housing of England and around the world. Sympathy Deformed: Misguided compassion hurts the poor.

The examples from Africa are heartbreaking.

Given all that, I am grateful to be what I am, an American professional woman married to a Boston finance guy with money to spare. He still plays Rugby and hockey, and I never lacked for life spirit either. We lack neither the Holy sort nor the secular sort of spirit, I think, and Shame On You if you do not jump into the thick of life and grab it by the balls the ball. Our family motto is a Nike ad. I do not need much in material comforts, but I do like and desire other things, including a closer walk with Christ. There is something about having spare money that causes one to want less material stuff, at least for me.

As our Editor says, a new car is a used car after 24 hours. Thoreau would have said the same thing, but it was all hypothetical for him. He had a family business (always a good thing to have).

Dr. Arie Friedman on A Dying Profession

I think it is still appealing (as a second income) for those who find the work interesting and challenging. It will be mostly women in the US, I think, in the future, and on government pay.

No More Identity Politics; Palin Proves Old School Feminism is Dead. A quote from Lori Ziganto's piece (h/t, Linkiest):

The reason I’m happy that Palin and the “mama grizzlies” are in the forefront isn’t because they have girl parts. It is because of what they believe. It is because of the kind of people they are. It is that they are coming forward now, as freedom fighters. It is because, like it or not, it just so happens to be the women of the GOP who have the will and the fighting spirit at this time. That is what we need: leaders with spines, regardless of having breasts or not.

You see, while “Feminists/Femisogynists” were busily pant suiting themselves and trying to become men, other women were out there annihilating the glass ceiling, by raising their families and learning through actual living and perseverance. We didn’t learn by trying to be something we are not, but rather we learned by living. Most often in our wonderful small towns, none of which, in my experience are bitter.

We don’t rely on a victim mentality; we rely on ourselves and the love of our families.

Regular people living in the real world never bought the Leftist narrative that criminals are victims. Neither did shrinks, who know how much character matters. Criminality knows no socio-economic or ethnic boundaries.

This is right on the money: Were Liberals Wrong on Crime? It's a sad day when honest, hard-working people who are willing to work two tough jobs to pay their bills and support their families are made to feel like chumps, or worse.

Such good folks are the salt of the earth and the backbone of America, whatever the Manhattan radical chic set thinks of them.

Do DSM psychiatric diagnoses have any validity? Or are they superficial descriptors on the order of "Patient has a fever" or "Patient is dehydrated," but with pseudo-scientific-sounding specificity?

What’s in a name? Genetic overlap between major psychiatric disorders

Readers know that I view a DSM diagnosis as just a little bit more than an insurance form entry item, most of the time. As a highly experienced colleague says, "I've read the DSM, and I have never found a patient of mine in there."

I plan to bore our readers by reposting my series on Psychiatric Diagnosis during vacation this summer.

Broken Heart Syndrome. It's a real thing, believed to be caused by a massive adrenaline surge.

A few basic books on psychotherapy and analytic psychiatry at Dr. X. He can keep the Kohut, because I cannot understand him, or any of the "Self Psychology" stuff.

What I read this weekend (and recommend): Gyorgy Buzsaki's Rhythms of the Brain.

It is about the self-generating powers and activities of the brain. While presented as a popular science book for the layman, some familiarity with modern neuroscience would help.

I have been working on ways of talking about personality traits and relationships which avoid all psychobabble, fancy convoluted theorizing, and obscure terminology and latinate or greekified jargon. That means trying to invent better, more intuitive, metaphors. This is just a first draft to help get me thinking about what it is I really want to say -

For 40 or 50 years, Psychiatry and especially Psychoanalysis has tended to view the formation of a person - their pathology and their normality - as being founded in their relationships during development. I do not agree with that premise.

However, as a shrink I am naturally interested in peoples' relationships. It's one of the main topics I listen to, and it is one of the main arenas in which people live out their personality tendencies, for better or worse.

A patient of mine, 59 years old, was married at 21 to his high school sweetheart on their college graduation. He comes to me because he has let himself fall in love with a younger co-worker in his office, and feels torn up with the conflicts. So torn up that he cannot work or concentrate. He is an entrepreneur and has built a series of multi-million dollar businesses during his life, some successful, some not.

Naturally, I inquire about his marriage. A picture gradually forms in my mind of a relationship which is frozen in the past. Two young folks, mad about each other, created a romantic relationship template - their manner of relating and interacting at the time - which has neither changed or grown much since then except, of course, a marked cooling of the passion. Meanwhile, everything else in life has changed: raising kids, financial ups and downs, deaths of parents, new activities and new friends and relationships, etc.

The relationship model that worked at 20 didn't do much at 59, but they unwittingly clung to the original template they had formed early on.

Everybody has had the experience of seeing an old friend after many years, and thinking "Gee, we picked up just where we left off ten years ago." Or, even more commonly, "I feel a bit like a 14 year-old or a 16 year-old when I spend time with my parents."

It's neither a good nor a bad thing; it's just a fact that we have a limited number of relationship templates on hand to apply to our different sorts of relationships, and we tend to keep using the same ones.

Often, in Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis, this is termed "transference." I just call it recycling of old templates. Mental efficiency, however imperfect.

Sometimes we are forced to form new ones, regardless of our age. Getting a new sibling requires a new one (an evil and unwelcome interloper), becoming a parent requires new ones, as does becoming a grandparent or an in-law. New love relationships sometimes do, but more often tend to draw on past templates, modified a bit, and superimposed on a new relationship. Even a new house dog demands a new template (unless one imposes one of one's human templates on the relationship - as I do. I seem to use my "toddler" template for dogs.).

Sometimes we do things on purpose to create new, more mature or more satisfying templates for our arsenal, or to adjust old ones (relationship templates have wiggle room on the edges). That's one of the purposes of marriage encounter, marital therapy, psychoanalytic psychotherapy, etc. Much of what can feel sterile in relationships is our clinging to old templates - clinging for comfort and familiarity.

People usually form new relationships on their pre-existing templates, and the lack of perfect "fit" of mental template to reality is what makes for all the fun and challenge and mess. (You can generalize that metaphor to lots of things in life...most of what we do and how we do it is from an existing pattern.)

Humans stick to their patterns most of the time - creatures of habit - and usually prefer venturing outside of them (adventure) to a limited extent - just enough to keep it interesting, depending on where one falls on the timidity-recklessness spectrum.

More later about what our templates are made of...

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?"

From a genetic standpoint, why is mental illness so common?

- The wiring is very tricky. Lots of teensy tiny wires, all tangled up.

From Robin of Berkeley's The Left's Unbearable Darkness of Being:

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.

From Had Enough Therapy, Victims No More. 

- 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.

Also interesting, The F*ck Feelings Manifesto. The home of that site is here. 

- The attitude is similar to what is summed up by the AA aphorism "Feelings aren't facts."

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.

This is a basic update, not very well presented, but interesting nonetheless. Skip the introduction.

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.

Or is it like "Take my wife... please." ?

Gagdad Bob's Great God Almighty, I'm Free at Last! Now, Who Stole My Chains?! connected with a topic on which I have been reflecting lately, namely, how avidly people sometimes cling to symptoms and pathologies and, indeed, can feel lost without them.

In my field of work, we have to be careful with such things, following the lines of "If you break it, you own it," and "Primum non nocere."

Also, "Never let the perfect be the enemy of the good." Or, as I usually phrase it, "the good-enough."

I was much affected by Erich Fromm's Escape from Freedom when I was in college.

People vary in how much freedom they can handle, whether from internal or external chains. I prefer the chains I deliberately select for myself.

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:

- The Washington Post Reminds You, All Criticism of the President Is Racist

- Powerline: More Thoughts On Liberal Political Violence

- "Dozens" show up at Nevada Tea Party

 - Jammie: Frank Rich Loses Me at Kristallnacht

- Why we dream

- From a piece on psychiatric diagnosis, a quote from Carl Jung:

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

- More Mind and Brain links at Dr. X

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...

I see that George Will wrote a piece, The Basement Boys -The making of modern immaturity, which echoes the themes I mentioned in my post this week, Are men "naturally" monogamous?

Will wearily concludes:

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 charming female figure affects men like a drug.

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.

This fascinating "virtual back lot" video saddened our friend The Anchoress.

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.