When am I Ready?

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When patients ask me when they will be ready to terminate their therapy, I will reply, “When you yourself are able to be a good therapist.” This reply is often most usefully made in group therapy, where patients of course do practice psychotherapy on each other and where their failures to successfully assume the role of psychotherapists can be pointed out to them.

Many patients do not like this reply, and some will actually say, “That’s too much work. To do that means that I would have to think all the time in my relationships with people. I don’t want to think that much. I don’t want to work that hard. I just want to enjoy myself.”

Patients often respond similarly when I point out to them that all human interactions are opportunities either to learn or to teach (to give or relieve theory), and when they neither learn nor teach in an interaction they are passing up an opportunity.

Most people are quite correct when they say they do not want to achieve such a lofty goal or work so hard in life. The majority of patients, even in the hands of the most skilled and loving therapists will terminate their therapy at some point far short of complete fulfilling their potential. They may have traveled a short or even a goodly distance along the journey of spiritual growth, but the whole journey is not for them. It is or seems to be too difficult. They are content to be ordinary men and women and do not strive to be God.

M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

How to build healthy habits

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Habits take a long time to create, but they form faster when we do them more often, so start with something reasonable that is really easy to do. You are more likely to stick with an exercise habit if you do some small exercise — jumping jacks, a yoga pose, a brisk walk — every day, rather than trying to get to the gym three days a week. Once the daily exercise becomes a habit, you can explore new, more intense forms of exercise.

Tara Parker-Pope writing in the New York Times

 

Most problems feel better when they’re on the outside

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Adolescents, just like adults, may find the best relief from simply articulating their worries and concerns. Indeed, it’s an aphorism among psychologists that most problems feel better when they’re on the outside rather than on the inside, and this holds true whether the difficulties are big or small.

Adults can help create the space teenagers need to do this, so long as we remember to listen without interrupting and hold back from adding our own thoughts to the pile.

Much of what bothers teenagers cannot be solved. We can’t fix their broken hearts, prevent their social dramas, or do anything about the fact that they have three huge tests scheduled for the same day. But having a problem is not nearly so bad as feeling utterly alone with it.  

Lisa Damour writing in the New York Times

The Neutral Zone

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Anyone who has ever remodeled a house knows a good deal about personal transitions because such an undertaking replicates the three-part transition process. It starts by making an ending and destroying what used to be. Then there is the time when it isn’t the old way any more, but not yet the new way, either. Some dismantling is still going on, but so is some new building. It is very confusing time, and it is a good idea to have made temporary arrangements for dealing with this interim (“neutral zone”) state of affairs--whether it is temporary housing or a time of modified activities and reduced expectations to make the old housing work. And as the contractors always warn you, remodeling always takes more time and money than new construction. Good advice in regard to transition, too.

William Bridges, Transitions

What are they hiding?

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When people speak in vague generalities.. and use a lot of abstract terms like “justice”, “morality”, “liberty” and so no, without really ever explaining the specifics of what they are talking about, they are almost always hiding something.

Meanwhile, people who use cutesy, colloquial language, brimming with clichés and slang, may be trying to distract you from the thinness of their ideas, trying to win you over not by the soundness of their arguments but by making you feel chummy and warm toward them. And people who use pretentious, flowery language, crammed with clever metaphors, are often more interested in the sound of their own voices than in reaching the audience with a genuine thought. In general, you must pay attention to the forms in which people express themselves; never take their content at face value.

Robert Greene, The 33 Strategies of War

Owning the Failure, too

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We humans are the victims of an asymmetry in the perceptions of random events. We attribute our successes to our skills, and our failures to external events outside our control, namely to randomness. We feel responsible for the good stuff but not for the bad. This causes us to think that we are better than other at whatever we do for a living. 

The Black Swain, Nassim Taleb

Cultural Relativism

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Recognizing the importance of our social environment in generating customs and beliefs, many people suppose that ethical relativism is the correct metaethical theory. Furthermore, they are drawn to it for its liberal philosophical stance. It seems to be an enlightened response to the sin of ethnocentricity, and it seems to entail or strongly imply an attitude of tolerance toward other cultures. 

Tolerance is certainly a virtue, but is this a good argument for it? I think not. If morality is relative to each culture, then if the culture in question does not have a principle of tolerance, its members have no obligation to be tolerant. 

Not only do relativists fail to offer a basis for criticizing those who are intolerant, they cannot rationally criticize anyone who espouses what they might regard as a heinous principle. Relativists cannot morally criticize anyone outside their own culture. Adolf Hitler’s genocidal actions, as long as they are culturally accepted, are as morally legitimate as Mother Teresa’s work of mercy. 

There are other disturbing consequences of ethical relativism. It seems to entail that reformers are always (morally) wrong since they go against the tide of cultural standards. William Wilberforce was wrong in the eighteenth Century to oppose slavery, the British were immoral in opposing the burning of widows in India. 

There is an even more basic problem with the notion that morality is dependent on cultural acceptance for its validity. The problem is that of culture or society is notoriously difficult to define. This is especially true in a pluralistic society like our own where the notion seems to be vague with unclear boundaries. 

One person may belong to several societies (subcultures).. if Mary is a US citizen and a member of the Roman Catholic church, she is wrong if she chooses to have an abortion and not-wrong if she acts against the teaching of the church on abortion. 

This moral Babel.. has lost its action-guiding function. 

Louis Pojman, Ethical Theory

Unlearning

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When you discover the fatal love letter or get the news that you’ve been fired, it’s pointless to talk about old realities and new ones. But later, it is important to reflect on these things, for with realities as with identities and connections, the old must be cleared away before the new can grow. The mind is a vessel that must be emptied if new wine is to be put in.

This process is hard to take in more than just a natural, personal sense; it goes against the grain of our culture, which tends to view growth as an additive process. We did not have to unlearn the first grade to go on to the second, for example, forget Sunday school when we joined the church.

The entire termination process violates our too-seldom examined idea that development means gain and has nothing to do with less.

William Bridges, Transitions