Terrorism as Cowardice:Thoughts after the Boston Marathon Bombing

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, aged 26 and his brother Dzhokhar, 19, are accused of going on a violent spree. On April 15, they killed three people and wounded 260 with the pressure-cooker bombs they dropped near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The debacle ended in Tamerlan’s death and Dzhokhar’s capture in a boat parked in a driveway in Watertown, Mass.

Like many others, I am devastated by these random acts of violence perpetrated by young men, whom many could not imagine capable of committing these gruesome acts.

In brief, their lives reveal trauma, turmoil combined with extraordinary advantages to live and love in a country without war. They had the possibility to acknowledge their confusion, disappointments, hopelessness, and to learn to love themselves and others. Instead of healing their divided minds, they chose radical thinking to unify their confusion and externalize their hate and rage.

Conclusion: Sadly our culture, as expressed in the media, often glorifies violence. Violence sells.  We associate violence with power.  Too rarely do we hear the opposing message: Real power lies in the courage to acknowledge rage and transform it to constructive action-to change the world for the better.

Dear Reader, I welcome your thoughts. Jsimon145@gmail.com

Manipulation: Pros and Cons

We often associate the word “manipulation” with a negative situation in which we’re not in control, perhaps beyond our awareness. Since we like to think we’re in control,  becoming aware that we’re not creates anxiety.

However, in medical practice, the term “manipulation” is a beneficial act, used to restore a dislocated joint to its socket.

Recently I had an experience with a patient who tried to cancel his session two hours before the appointment. I urged him to come. When he showed up, he said,

 “Please insist I come even if I try to cancel again.” He was asking me to ‘manipulate’ him for his own good.

In spite of the negative implications of mind control, we try to focus our mental processes in positive ways: choosing a healthy diet, participating in an exercise program. We respect people who have “self-control.”

In a sense many successful people manipulate social situations to their advantage. They know how to act appropriately. People who don’t assess a social situation accurately may fail to be promoted or may be fired.

Some of us attempt to manipulate our minds while asleep to have good or problem-solving dreams. But we aren’t always able to rule our unconscious. I’m aware of the effect of some of my dreams on my morning mood.  After the Boston bombing on April 15, I had a nightmare and awakened in a downtrodden state of mind.

Parents manipulate their children by rewarding constructive behavior and correcting negative and destructive behavior. They are responsible for teaching children how to care for their own needs and respect the needs and rights of others. (Please refer to my post, “Some Notions of Needs,” April 15, 2013)

In other situations the lack of positive manipulation can prove disastrous. For example, a sixteen year old blames his mother for everything that goes wrong in his life. He has no interests or friends, spends hours in his room, emerging only for meals.  He refuses to go to school or attend psychotherapy sessions. If he is allowed to remain an outsider in his family and society, he may become a sociopath, manipulating others for his own purposes. This young man must, instead, be manipulated to participate in life and connect to other people.

The person with an antisocial personality disorder becomes a master of negative manipulation because he has not been appropriately manipulated as a child.

CONCLUSION: Recognizing the negative and positive avenues of manipulation increases our awareness and offers choices: to manipulate ourselves, to be manipulated, or not.

Dear Reader, I welcome your experiences on this huge and fascinating topic. Jsimon145@gmail.com

Some Notions of Needs

Volumes have been written on the subject of the needs, the specific requirements for survival of each living creature. The psychologist Abraham Maslow wrote about the Hierarchy of Needs in his seminal 1943 paper, “A Theory of Human Motivation.”

When needs are met, they are as natural and automatic as the heartbeat, respirations, and the metabolic workings of every cell in the body.

Human needs are complex in at least two major ways:

First, we may tune in and be affected by the spirit with which our needs are met in early life. Second, humans have imaginary needs beyond the real ones.  These may or may not serve us well.

In the psychotherapeutic process, the team of client and therapist approach the perceptions of our psychological needs in our relationships with our self and others.

Donald Winnicott’s concept of “good enough” is useful. If our needs for love and safety were met in a “good enough” manner, they don’t impinge on our lives in negative ways.

At first parents must meet all their baby’s needs. The parent or care-taker must balance the infant’s needs with their own. Gradually the parent teaches the child about the needs of others.

 Examining our destructive behavior later in life, we’ll often find it is based on a distortion of our needs. We turn to food, money, or stuff to substitute for what we experienced as lacking.

The hoarder, for instance, accumulates and holds on to “stuff” to substitute for feelings of love and safety he did not experience early in his life. (Please refer to my post, The Paradox of Hoarding, March 25, 2013)

The sociopath (or person with antisocial personality disorder) has not learned to care about others’ needs. (Please look back to the post “Christopher Dorner and Bonnie and Clyde,” February 25, 2013).

The person with psychosomatic problems may not have had the opportunity to recognize and express her needs. (Please refer to the case of Ms Y in the post, “Age and Change,” July 16, 2012).

Conclusion: A major goal in life is to learn to meet our real needs (and distinguish them from imaginary ones) in constructive and creative ways and to recognize the needs of others.

Dear Reader, I welcome your contribution on this complex subject. Jsimon145@gmail.com

A Blast of Blame and the Rescue of Responsibility

I’d planned to write a lengthy blog about William James (1842-1910), the thinker considered the father of American psychology. The author of Varieties of Religious Experience, he described the ”experiencing” vs. the “observing” self and was a doer-watcher of duality.

Instead, I’m going to boil the matter down to a few essentials related to the ability to stand aside and “observe” our actions in addition to simply “experiencing” them.

The art of self-observation helps us lead a rewarding life. A person who hasn’t developed the knack to stand aside and perceive the part he plays is likely experience life as a “victim” stripped of power and control.

The difference often lies in our early developmental years. If we’re blamed for doing things wrong, we spend our lives defending ourselves. We have to see ourselves “in the right.”

Because this position leaves a person guarded against another’s viewpoint, it can  damage interpersonal relationships. If we’re taught to take responsibility we develop the (ego) capacity to observe our words and actions.

For example, Mr. B. says his children are “impossible” and unkind to him. He hasn’t been able to grasp his impact on their behavior. Instead of supporting their strengths, he has inadvertently criticized and undermined them. In turn, they’ve had to build an emotional wall to protect themselves. At this point in his treatment, he is beginning to see that his comments to them contribute to the unsatisfying relationship. (Needless to say, his parents “blamed” him and did not teach him how his words impact others.)

Conclusion: A common goal of most of the psychotherapies is to transform the client into his own therapist; this involves the ability to observe and take responsibility for our words and actions, and lies at the foundation of a fulfilling life- of success in love and work.

Dear Reader, I welcome your comments. Jsimon145@gmail.com

The Art of Authenticity

At a party I met a woman who said, “This is not really who I am. This is my party self.”

I was immediately intrigued. I realized by admitting she wasn’t being authentic, paradoxically, she was acting in an authentic way.  Of course I wanted to know more about who she really is; she provided snippets and then disappeared forever, leaving me to ponder her secrets and to question the vast territory of “authenticity.”

I learned that the term authenticity extends beyond psychology to apply to existential philosophy and aesthetics. In psychology of course we understand it to mean the degree to which one is true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character despite external pressures.

An authentic self is distinct from the real or true self which refers to how connected one is to his inherent feelings and goals. (For more on the real self, please refer to my blog of November 12, 2012). By contrast, the authentic self depends on other people to determine and declare, “He is an authentic person.” Or, “Yes, this work of art is authentic.”

Authenticity is a desirable quality. An effective leader convinces others he is authentic and genuinely concerned about their needs. We don’t want to be fooled by a “phony,” a person who is not who he says he is.

We hate to be duped, fooled by a good imposter. A relatively recent example is Bernard Madoff, who appeared to be  a supremely successful financier while  masterminding a huge Ponzi scheme and defrauding thousands.

For me, “The Emperor’s New Clothes," the tale by Hans Christian Anderson, is an example of our tendency to follow the perception of the crowd.  To deviate and trust ourselves in spite of common opinion requires courage, and a grounding in the real self.

Conclusion:  Determining authenticity is an art.  We do best when we connect to the real essence- our feelings, perceptions, and knowledge of the discipline.

Dear Reader, I invite your comments: jsimon145@gmail.com