A confluence of topics dealing with mental health, substance abuse, health, public health, Social Work, education, politics, the humanities, and spirituality at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels. In short, this blog is devoted to the improvement of the quality of life of human beings in the universe.
Friday, June 14, 2019
Irrational societal fears can paralyze parents and cripple their children.
From Dr. Peter Gray's article on Psychology Today on 06/14/19
Children are designed, by nature, to spend hours per day playing with other children, independently of adults.
In such play they practice all sorts of physical and mental skills; discover and pursue their passions; and learn how to create their own activities, solve their own problems, get along with peers, and control their emotions and impulses.
Depriving children of independent play inflicts serious harm on them.
For documentation of such harm, see: The Decline of Play and Rise in Children’s Mental Disorders; As Children’s Freedom Has Declined, So Has Their Creativity; Declining Student Resilience: A Serious Problem for Colleges; and How We Deprive Children of the Physical Activity They Need.
For more click here.
Thursday, June 13, 2019
Saturday, June 1, 2019
Sunday, May 26, 2019
Psychotherapeutic humanities, Book, An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
Book Review
An American Marriage by
Tayari Jones
An American Marriage is a novel about a young black couple who get married who are from different social classes. The wife, Celestial, comes from a wealthy upper class family while Roy comes from a working class family. They both are college educated but coming from different backgrounds seem to have different values, beliefs, and preferences.
Roy gets arrested and is falsely accused of rape
and sentenced to twelve years in prison after the first year of his marriage to
Celestial.
Celestial stops visiting Roy after about three
years saying that she can’t live like she is, as a single woman, while Roy, her
husband, is incarcerated. Celestial has taken up with Andre her childhood
friend who also was Roy’s best friend and is the person who introduced Roy and
Celestial to begin with. Roy is released after five years when his case is
overturned on appeal. Roy’s homecoming to find that Celestial and Andre are
planning to marry when Celestial sues Roy for divorce brings the plot, the love
triangle between Celestial, Roy, and Andre, to a climax.
The ambivalence each character experiences about
these love relationships creates the creative tension that gives this novel its
appeal.
The subplot deals with the injustice of the
criminal justice system as it pertains to prosecuting and incarcerating black
men and the damage this does to families and the communities beyond the
injustice done to the alleged offender.
Tayari Jones is a good writer but the story is a
bit like a soap opera. The moral of the story is a muddle. Whether Roy and
Celestial would have made a go of their marriage had Roy not been incarcerated
is hard to tell. It may have dissolved anyway, but after a year of marriage the
bond was not strong enough to weather the enforced physical separation.
Celestial and Roy had talked about having
children but had put it off. Had they had children one would wonder if this
would have made a difference.
Why the novel is entitled “An American Marriage”
is not clear. What makes the marriage between Celestial and Roy “American” is
never addressed. The dynamics of the plot involve an African-American couple,
but would be similar if the couple were white, or Hispanic, or Asian.
Reading “An American Marriage” reminds me
Stewart O’Nan’s novel, “The Good Wife” which has a similar plot except the wife
is pregnant when her husband is incarcerated and she stands by him and raises
their child for 28 years.
An American Marriage gets a 6.5 on the MBH 10
point scale.
Saturday, May 25, 2019
Psychotherapeutic humanities - "You Choose" by Linda McCullough Moore
Chapter three
Where do divorces come from?
Linda
McCullough Moore writes in her story, "You Choose" in her book of
short stories, An Episode of Grace, on pages 1-2,
I
turn the wipers to fast swish and purse my lips and hunch my shoulders, as
though these nods to ritual and posture might give me better traction.
“Where
did this weather come from?” I say.
“Heaven,”
Adam says. “God. Same place as every weather.”
Adam
is six and the only member of our family who is unfailingly religious.
McCullough
Moore, Linda. An Episode of Grace . Thornapple Books.pp.1-2
Comment:
Is
Adam’s comment about the weather coming from God because he is “unfailingly
religious” or because he is still innocent and hasn’t been corrupted yet by the
socialization and conditioning of society?
Linda
McCullough Moore always seem to inject a spiritual consciousness in her writing
which makes it full of grace. The title of this book of Moore’s short stories
is entitled, “An Episode Of Grace” and here, in this first story, as the family
gets stuck in a snowstorm on their way to meeting with the children’s father so
that he, and their mother, driving the car, can share with them the news about
the death of their marriage, their intention to divorce, and breaking up the
these two young boys family as they have known it, we read about a moment of grace which the mother calls "religous.".
The
mother’s question, “Where does this weather come from?” is more than just a
question about the weather. It is a question about the purpose of their
journey, the purpose of their intended mission, the purpose of life.
Dr.
Freud taught us about the unconscious mind and that what we think we are doing
consciously often has little to do with what our deeply held
unconscious thoughts and feelings
are.
Our
will and God’s will are often two different things. The joke pointing to this
truth is “If you want to hear God laugh, tell God your plans.”
The
mother’s question, “Where does this weather come from?” can be said in many
ways such as merely a comment on the fact of the matter, or a sigh of
victimization, and perhaps with a laugh at the absurdity of the situation with
their trip being disrupted in an uncontrollable way.
Adam, at the age of six, still thinks about situations with a concrete innocence that
still believes in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. Adam
reminds me of the little about a young boy in Sunday School drawing a picture. The Sunday
School teacher asks him, “What are you drawing?”
The
little boy says, “I am drawing a picture of God.”
The
teacher says, kindly, “Well, nobody knows what God looks like.”
The
little boy says, “You will when I am done.”
The
mother chalks up Adam’s comment to religiosity. It might be better understood
in terms of his stage of cognitive, social, and emotional development. Adam is
still innocent and thinks that the weather comes from God. When he is told
about his parents’ divorce, where will he think that comes from?
To be
continued.
Friday, May 24, 2019
Psychotherapeutic humanities - "The Maid's Story" by Adam O'Fallon Price
The story in the June, 2019 issue of Harper's Magazine is "The Maid's Story" by Adam O'Fallon Price.
The story is about a hotel maid, Hannah Kohl, who is afflicted with kleptomania and steals small items from the hotel guests' rooms. Hannah steals a ruby brooch, a piece of cheap costume jewelry, from Annette Gerson who was staying for a few days on vacation with her husband and two children.
Hannah is terrified of her thefts being discovered and being fired from her job.
When Mrs. Gerson catches Hannah stealing her brooch, Mrs. Gerson enters into a scheme to blackmail Hannah into coming to her home and staying over night by offering medical care for her son, 8, suffering from polio.
As the story progresses Mrs. Gerson sexually molests Hannah and then manipulates the situation so that Hannah is fired from her job and has little choice but to move to Manhatten and become a live in nanny for Mrs. Gerson's children.
In this age of #MeToo, this is a story of sexual exploitation outside of the usual male/perpetrator - female/victim motiff. In this story a female becomes a perpetrator in a lesbian assault. What makes the story work is the class difference of a rich women preying on a poor one.
While sexual abuse makes the news and public outrage is fanned, class differences which often make the exploitation possible are overlooked. What appears to be sexual exploitation could not occur if class differences were not part of the situation.
As is so often the case from a psychotherapeutic perspective, the sex is the minor part of the offense in which domination, exploitation, and abuse of power is the root evil. Domination and subjugation robs the person of his/her right to self determination and agency.
This is how the story ends.Hannah Kohl is called into her supervisor's office and fired. She is told there is a message for her at the hotel desk to call Mrs. Gerson.
"How horrible," the woman's voice boomed in response to the news of her termination.
"Yes, I was reported."
"How horrible," she repeated. "Well, perhaps this is kismet. Mr. Gerson and I have just been discussing the need for a live-in nanny. I have so much to do, and only so much time-" she went on, but the maid was only half-listening, aware of herself as a guest watching might have aware of her: a slight woman in a sweater and long skirt and cheap brown shoes, shoulders shaking, bent over the desk in a posture of utter submission.
The story is about a hotel maid, Hannah Kohl, who is afflicted with kleptomania and steals small items from the hotel guests' rooms. Hannah steals a ruby brooch, a piece of cheap costume jewelry, from Annette Gerson who was staying for a few days on vacation with her husband and two children.
Hannah is terrified of her thefts being discovered and being fired from her job.
When Mrs. Gerson catches Hannah stealing her brooch, Mrs. Gerson enters into a scheme to blackmail Hannah into coming to her home and staying over night by offering medical care for her son, 8, suffering from polio.
As the story progresses Mrs. Gerson sexually molests Hannah and then manipulates the situation so that Hannah is fired from her job and has little choice but to move to Manhatten and become a live in nanny for Mrs. Gerson's children.
In this age of #MeToo, this is a story of sexual exploitation outside of the usual male/perpetrator - female/victim motiff. In this story a female becomes a perpetrator in a lesbian assault. What makes the story work is the class difference of a rich women preying on a poor one.
While sexual abuse makes the news and public outrage is fanned, class differences which often make the exploitation possible are overlooked. What appears to be sexual exploitation could not occur if class differences were not part of the situation.
As is so often the case from a psychotherapeutic perspective, the sex is the minor part of the offense in which domination, exploitation, and abuse of power is the root evil. Domination and subjugation robs the person of his/her right to self determination and agency.
This is how the story ends.Hannah Kohl is called into her supervisor's office and fired. She is told there is a message for her at the hotel desk to call Mrs. Gerson.
"How horrible," the woman's voice boomed in response to the news of her termination.
"Yes, I was reported."
"How horrible," she repeated. "Well, perhaps this is kismet. Mr. Gerson and I have just been discussing the need for a live-in nanny. I have so much to do, and only so much time-" she went on, but the maid was only half-listening, aware of herself as a guest watching might have aware of her: a slight woman in a sweater and long skirt and cheap brown shoes, shoulders shaking, bent over the desk in a posture of utter submission.
Thursday, May 23, 2019
Psychotherapeutic humanities - overview
Psychotherapeutic humanities
There are many activities that are involved in training psychotherapists. The main activities are academic learning about various aspects of human functioning: biologically, psychologically, sociologically, spiritually. The disciplines of study are varied and many.Aside from the academic learning comes the practice, through internships, and later through clinical supervision, which consists of discussing one’s work with a more experienced psychotherapist. Learning for a psychotherapist is ongoing and lifelong.
One of the activities that may provide the most learning is the study of the psychotherapeutic humanities, a branch of the medical humanities, which are the arts such as novels, films, plays, art, and music. The humanities have much to teach physicians, nurses, the psychotherapist, and other human service workers about human nature and life.
On Markham’s Behavioral Health we describe works of art which are helpful in our understanding of human nature and our lives. It is this understanding that contributes to the maturity and wisdom of the psychotherapist.
Over the next few weeks, material from Linda McCullough Moore’s book of short stories, An Episode of Grace will be discussed. It would be informative and enjoyable if people were to read the book and join in the discussions by commenting on the articles posted.
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