Diary by a Mad Man

Learner therapist (14)……Distorted, not disordered, selves

2012-02-05T10:59:00.000+11:00

Learner therapist (14)……Distorted, not disordered, selves
Torrey Orton
Feb 5, 2012

Most everyday therapy is work on distorted capabilities, not mental disorders.

I think of my patients as learners with a wheel off their practice vehicle(s). A few of them think of themselves as "having" ADHD, Asperger's, OCD, BPD (used to be Bi-Polar Disorder, or is that another?), PTSD… an array of afflictions which have a grip on them like the flu, cancer, and such. These self-perceptions are encouraged by the medicalization of mental health issues. Such issues are, in fact, uniformly multi-modal, multi-dimensional – in brief, multi-causal, if we dare to speak of their precipitating, predisposing and maintaining conditions.

We in the mental health sector, and some in the medical, uses the concept of biopsychosocial (often with additives like spiritual and cultural) to describe the domain of the afflictions we engage professionally. In other words, they are not simply "mental" issues, nor physical. They involve a life world – a life style, if that feels more comfortably you – not just loose cogs or a rusted neural joints. And, as is increasingly recognised in various high profile specialisations (addictions, particularly), successful treatment is a social as much as a personal event (think weight, depression, anxiety, eating 'disorders' and so on, too).

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual delight
So, how did we get here? Here is Gary Greenberg on the DSM, diagnosis and disorders:

… "And as any psychiatrist involved in the making of the D.S.M. will freely tell
you, the disorders listed in the book are not "real diseases," at least not like measles or hepatitis. Instead, they are useful constructs that capture the ways that people commonly suffer. The manual, they go on, was primarily written to give physicians, schooled in the language of disease, a way to recognize similarities and differences among their patients and to talk to one another about them. And it has been fairly successful at that." …

That is, the constructs (PTSD, BPD, OCD…) attempt to describe symptoms systematically, not their sources, causes, underlying structures, etc. For instance, chronic panic is reasonably visible and audible; we feel the other's panic immediately as a reverberation or resonance in our own bodies. This is the leading edge of empathy in action.

Deep traumas are not so accessible. They are implied by the panic if you know that they must be there, which you should if you know that panic is an appropriate response to a perceived death threat which the patient cannot easily report as the trigger of the most recent episode. That is, it is personal historical material, etc. The trigger is the form of our experience of that historical material – it is a symptom with an anchor in the chronic damage. We (pretty much all of us; not just therapists!), of course, have a sense of others who are damaged deeply, usually from non-verbal markers (the "symptoms") which we do not usually engage directly with those others.

Medicalization by bookkeeping
Symptoms define a 'disease' entity, which then can be subject to micro-analysis for costing purposes so that expenses can be managed, forecast and so on. Psychological services for mental health are increasingly being brought under the medical umbrella which distorts them in three directions: first, medical style item number servicing; second, manualised treatments (CBT); and, third, specialised treatment providers (clinical psychologists).

We can much more usefully think of mental health issues as distortions of the person, of the normal functioning of a person…with patterns arrayed around the emotion system which provides our daily self-regulatory input and output. These centre on expressions of pain (fear, sadness, etc.) and pleasure (happiness, joy, etc.) in a more or less discrete bi-polarity derived from their approximations to perceived life or death challenges of our presents and pasts…

That we have six to eight discrete core emotions (anger, sadness, joy, despair, love, confusion, etc. ) underpinned by a smaller number of organic status indicators (hunger, pain, desire, pleasure, numbness, , etc.) makes seeking an issue's source a viable enterprise. Patients' issues are all emotionally tagged. They show up for therapy because feelings tell them to. Their passage to a more viable personal world will be marked by changes in their actions and feelings about them, or letting feelings direct their actions for the first time – in other words, a reduction in perceived and actual (incongruence) self-distortion.

For a patient's global self-appreciation the thought that they have distorted life processes rather than an affliction, a disorder, is often helpful. It brings normalcy into the diagnostic picture from early on and helps them identify the necessary and useful functionalities they have, even though distorted. 'Disorder' sounds like a permanent injury, a lost limb. Distortion is a reparable injury; disorder a potential life sentence.

PS – it's funny how things come in bunches. Today I sighted a Guardian article on just this subject – distortion by disorders.- five months before the Greenberg article above. Like abortion/euthanasia spikes, they seem to come in waves, maybe annually? Anyone have a feel for the patterns???

Non-violent counter-protest training and practicum

2012-01-14T18:46:00.000+11:00

Non-violent counter-protest training and practicum
January 14, 2012
Help: Professional / Personal Development Opportunity

Non-violent counter-protest training and practicum

Our need: Nine or ten counter-protestors to support constraining the harassment behaviours of Helpers of God's Precious Infants 6 mornings a week at The Fertility Control Clinic from 7:30 – 9:30am on Wellington Parade, East Melbourne, Vic

The task: to document harassment of arriving patients, while also inhibiting it in a non-harassing way.

The context: see here for detailed description. In brief:

The Fertility Control Clinic's front gate is a frontline of the struggle over life and death rights in Melbourne. There a group of Catholic protestors meet six days a week at 7:30am to protest patients' moral rights to a legal service authorised by elected representatives of the people of Victoria three years ago. Their protest expresses their unflagging commitment to expunging this parliamentary offence against the revealed word of gods.

The challenge: to engage with the protestors at a personal level to understand their perspectives and establish relationships, and at a social level as legally misbehaving harassers of vulnerable patients; to increase your understanding and competence at dealing with your own embarrassment / shame about taking personal action in public; the protestors have been provided a rationale and action focus for our work.

Benefits for you: increased awareness of own anger triggers, control over your automatic responses and directing them into appropriate, non-violent action to reduce patient harassment; knowing you are providing a support service much appreciated by patients and clinic staff clarification of own views of life and death issues.

The commitment: one session a week for about three months in the first instance

Even if in doubt, but interested, follow Torrey up by phone or comment on this letter at the blog below. Contact is not a commitment, either way.

Hopefully,

Torrey Orton and Charles Brass
Friends of the Fertility Control Clinic
11 Wertheim St
Richmond, Vic., 3121
Australia
Mob. +61 (0) 419 362 349
Skype - torreyo
http://www.diarybyamadman.blogspot.com/

The patient experience…one’s evidence

2012-01-12T18:00:00.000+11:00

The patient experience…one's evidence
Torrey Orton
Jan. 12, 2012

A bit more than 21 grams…??¹

From another frontline much like the Fertility Control Clinic one, but more common – the medical frontline where the vast bulk of the patient experience is provided by body movers (orderlies, …) and nurses and food service staff and cleaners…with registered medical practitioners ranging from interns thru registrars to fully fledged doctors and the pack leading consultants far in the distance, and often hard to see even when present (they're moving so fast) and smiling so hard …

…it seemed they all went to the same faux intimacy training programs down to the modulation of lips and expression brightness with smoothly patterned discourses of their respective domains. 'Hi, I'm X and I'll be doing Y for you for the next …hours…minutes"… I was rendered "Torrey" by fiat and minded the presumption, since I know my barber better than I will ever know any of them.

Sure the dependency's different: my barber might on a bad day nick an ear (which he hasn't in 36 years), while the more present life vs. deathness of a faulty organ creates an intimacy which is too close and at the same time massively distant, especially when the actors in the hospital drama had almost no time to know me in any other than the piece of meat sense I had experienced with my first hospitalisation 10 years ago (a pacemaker precipitating one).

"Occluded" IVs
Actually every one moved fast all the time, leaving me with a sense of being in the hands of a system with somewhat less than the optimum capacity to function safely…it felt like it wouldn't be hard for an error to arise. For example, I was on a drip from 4 hours after arrival until an hour before departure five days later…sometimes two different intravenous infusions in tandem… especially post-operative². The drip monitor signalled persistently under two conditions: one, I had "occluded" the flow at the point of its entry to my body – the cannula – by moving the arm which held it (this time in the crook of my left elbow which meant occlusions abounded for days and nights due to spontaneous arm movements).

In the process of trying to rearrange my troublesome cannulations three efforts by three different nurses failed, largely due, it seemed to me, being overtired, stressed or both. One stopped after three tries saying she'd lost her "mojo". One pretender to the role arrived saying he'd try but call another if he failed. He never started because I told him to go away if he wasn't sure of himself. I guess he was offended; I was already irritated. My release from the irritation (not anger nor pain nor anything like that; I'm relatively impervious to the pricks that presage a cannulation) came from a 60 year old who did it in 32 seconds (the others were under 35, years that is, at a guess). My reverse ageism?

The second condition
But cannulations were more than an irritant. The possibility of a mix up in the drip lines were another matter. Heavy antibiotics prefaced the op by one day and succeeded it for three days. These were sent by IV, in tandem with the permanent fluid input. BUT, the two were chemically incompatible, requiring the shared mainline to be "flushed" with a chemically neutral solution preventing contamination of the one by the other, both before the antibiotic and after. In the flashlight reduced darkness of middle night I had the impression that shift nurses were not always on top of these delicacies, though the fact I'm writing this three weeks after the fact suggests I needn't have worried, but how was I to know then?

Memorables
These sorts of things are the memorables of my "patient experience" because they occupied my waking and sleeping days for the duration, interrupted by workable, and better, nurse and supporters efforts to minimise their effects. They happened in one of the best private hospitals in Melbourne which I've used before for related matters. My impression of contextual stress was not an artefact of my degraded physical defences.

I spent 4 hours waiting for a first assessment in emergency after entry triage, followed by nearly a whole day on an emergency gurney before transfer to a regular bed. This was not special treatment for me; they were full to the eyebrows. As a full fee private patient I did not get a sole occupancy private room until after the operation, another day plus later. These are system redundancy problems – ones which preoccupations with profit and profitability have removed from the vocabulary and practice of organisational competence in many of our core systems, hospitals among the most important (shortage of retail service staff really doesn't matter in the bigger scheme; it's an irritant without a serious consequence).

Such things do not matter to me a great deal; the double I shared for a day before the op worked fine, though the other guy was having a hard time in recovery from a knee reconstruction. He and I passed on my way out of Intensive Care: he arriving for more serious pain management I guessed and I departing with infection controlled and pacemaker³ unimpeded by the op electricals.

I think there was another move in there but my recollections of the pre-post op period are a little fuzzy. These are, of course, my perceptions. I am a reasonably skilled observer of behaviour, with allowances for memory fudges arising from the tiredness of the gallbladder infection I was carrying and being treated for pre-operatively. I am agile at talking to all kinds of people in all sorts of personal states about how they are finding their life at the moment. Some staff were self-immunized from that level of communication but many were accessible to observations about their apparent pressured work, explicitly confirming my impressions above.

1-As the first major loss of a body part (teeth excluded) in my medical history, my gallbladder excision on Dec. 16^th, '11 roused a wonder as to how much I'd lost, prompted a bit by the notion that a soul was a measurable 21 grams of something. Chasing down the bladder weight query went nowhere, though bilious content volume and dimension, on the average, were readily available. Midst the mild disappointment I realised that I'd already compromised the materiality of my spiritual equation by acquiring a pacemaker 9 years ago after a similarly unprovoked attack by nature on my being.
Three weeks later I got the lab assessment of the offending organ. It was rated as "gangrenous" and a day or so off bursting when the op was done.

2- The op itself was a marvel of keyhole work which, among other things, left me fully operational 10 days later and almost undetectably unwounded at three weeks post-op, plus nil internal wound pain. It took about 1.5 hours, extenuated some by the offending bladder having been "the worst we've seen in years" – made their day, so to speak, the backup surgeon opined the morning after. This led to additional infusions focussed on killing possible bugs which might have escaped from the ravaged bladder before the heavy hitters got to it with their extraction tools.

3- One risk associated with the keyhole surgery was that the electrical aspects of the process might disorient the pacemaker's little brain (it didn't). Had it done so, no worries anyway, perhaps. The techy at my most recent end of pacemaker battery life check-up said in reply to my wonder about a power down, "If it stopped now, it wouldn't make any difference to your life." How was I to know?

Learning to act right (25)… What’s harassment and why it must stop.

2012-01-04T17:55:00.000+11:00

Learning to act right (25)… What's harassment and why it must stop.

Torrey Orton
Jan. 4, 2012

A message to HGPI* "helpers"

The Fertility Control Clinic is the everyday frontline of the lifer-choicer confrontation in Melbourne. We sit clearly on the choicer side for a number of reasons, and with a view that it's easier to inflame than it is to understand. So far we have succeeded in not inflaming a volatile setting.

We both retain a strong belief that clinic clients are being unreasonably accosted, and still want to see whether some sort of intervention might be created to address this situation. The objective in general will be to reduce perceived harassment to zero.

You are seen as harassing by many patients and by us. We know you act better when we're around, so the harassment must be even more than we see. We think the Bible encourages supporting the weak and you are harassing the very vulnerable. We also think you as a group do not understand why you are seen as harassing, and not only by us. Here's why, in two parts:

Part 1 - The idea that patients arrive already stressed so you are not aggravating it reflects a basic misunderstanding of stress. It is VERY clear that stress is cumulative, both through multiple stressors at one time and/or sustained stressor(s) over longer periods. A highly stressed person requires slight additional stress to push them over their personal limit. Anything anyone does which increases the stress of already stressed people who cannot defend themselves is understood in law as harassment. Patients are understood in anyone's church to be unusually vulnerable.

Part 2 - Harassing behaviour in the FCC context is any continued offering to patients and their families who have refused an initial offer by HGPI members. Continued offering means following the patients beyond the point of first contact and refusal towards the FCC gate and saying things like "You'll be a good mother / father." "Don't harm your beautiful baby", etc.

We would like you to understand this, and here's how we propose to try:

1- This document specifies a publically understood meaning of harassment (Part 2 above)

2- It also assumes a standard conception of stress as cumulative (Part 1 above)

3- We will present it to you and discuss the meanings of 1 and 2 for clarity

4- Then, we will begin to document violations of those 2 understandings and confront you in various ways with the evidence

5- In the process of step 4, our way of confronting you may elicit feelings of guilt and shame and anger from you, which is what harassment elicits from some patients.

6- We will do all of this in ways which do not add to patient stress.

Regards
Your pro-life pro-choicers,
Torrey Orton and Charles Brass
Friends of the Fertility Control Clinic

*HGPI = Helping God's Precious Infants

Appreciation (41) … I thought this was beyond me

2011-12-07T15:55:00.000+11:00

Appreciation (41) … I thought this was beyond me
Torrey Orton
Dec. 7, 2011

Ungloved, two-handed catch

The waitress leaned across the small three-seater to recover a finished starters plate. On the way back she tipped my half full, long-stemmed glass of fine Hunter rose towards me from the middle of the table. I can't remember how my hands got to catching it in mid-fall as if it were a cricket ball being gloved by a wicket keeper. I didn't drop the catch but a few drops splashed the table between Jane and me without threatening cuffs or shirt fronts in their flight to the table cloth.

I was, till that moment, mostly renowned for doing the glass tipping myself and having to sop up large wine puddles across tables and floors at home, not counting those glasses – short stemmed and long - smashed irretrievably in the sink : around 1 every two months or so. There's something invigorating about finding a natural skill that had seemed lost forever, though I can't actually remember how my hands got from where they were on the table to the appropriate catching position. Reflexes improve momentarily; short term memory slides even further?? Compensation before capitulation.

Appreciation (40) …Old man’s prayer

2011-11-28T15:16:00.000+11:00

Appreciation (40) …Old man's prayer*
Torrey Orton
Nov. 28, 2011

In sight and out of mind at the FCC

Saturday was the monthly prayer vigil against abortion day at the clinic. On our side were a measly 8 or so holding a large banner and chanting moderate offenses at the 100+ followers of Helpers of God's Precious Infants massed across Wellington Parade. I was there to show support (until sunk by a persistent downpour which left me swimming in my shoes) and collect potential players for an enlarged weekday presence in the face of the Helpers.

I was involved in collecting the last name and email when an old guy approached from the back seeking my attention. I turned enough to say I'd come talk to him when I finished. And so I did 3 minutes later, noting that I was approaching a guy short of my height and even shorter of my weight, but longer in days. He was clothed in an almost twin of one of my sports jackets (Germanic hounds-toothy sort of thing to compliment tans and such), trilby hat and wire-rimmed glasses of faintly 80's and a hand hold on a string of rosary beads.

As I came up he started to ask if it was OK for him to pray here. I said fine with me but I couldn't authorise him; he'd have to ask the others…and he volunteered to pray for me, too, as well as the souls in the clinic. I thanked him for the offer. Probably it was my fairly lurid red waterproof, relative towering over the herd on our side and my fairly clear age advance on the rest, too, which drew him to me.

Anyway, he started up walking back and forth in the neutral zone between the roadside white line and the clinic gate soundlessly working through the beads. Of our side, holding the banner and chanting, no one noticed and no one interrupted him. And there we were, infiltrated in broad daylight. As far as I know, prayer doesn't gain or lose power as a function of distance from its objects.

The real story here is power: that there's this power vacuum just waiting for users to appear with enough daring to claim it for themselves, as Charles and I originally did. The proof of its opportunity walked up and down until I left 15 minutes later – in sight and out of mind. The unsqueaky wheel needs no foil.

* A 'prayer' in Fertility Control Clinic security-speak is a pro-life protestor who only prays, as distinguished from protestors who pray and harass patients in moments of prayerful lapses.

Learning to act right (23)… tipping points – anger and action

2011-11-16T21:25:00.000+11:00

Learning to act right (23)… tipping points – anger and action
Torrey Orton
Nov.16, 2011

A moment in the FCC defence frontline…

I lost it…my temper that is! About 8:30 last Wednesday morning I looked down the footpath towards the city just in time to see a couple coming along, the woman crying uncontrollably; her partner just behind her and a protestor ( "Purple Shirt" as she was called in TheAGE four days later) looking the woman in the face, seeing her crying and gesturing her away, and continuing to follow her towards the clinic gate with the standard "Save your little baby; you'll be a good mother" mantra beating on her back. As she almost always does to every patient. A perfect example of harassment of a visibly vulnerable patient.

The keyword is harassment – a perception of being persistently, repeatedly, verbally and visually attacked by another. I harassed back, stepping up to her (all 191cm/105kg to her pudgy 155cm) and pointing out as I came from 3 metres away "that is harassment; she was crying all the way and you saw her and continued anyway…" I can't remember how it ended but the whole sequence from go to no was 15 seconds. I became aware that I had been sucked in by her offense…enraged briefly, close to physical assault… and almost as the awareness arrived I was turning back from the protestor to see her colleague approaching…

In talking to the protest leader, David Forster, seconds after the event (which had drawn him towards me as if he were going to defend the harasser from me) I pointed out that she had harassed the patient and knew it, knew that the patient was already crying, had said no and been followed up by her partner in doing so. He started to run the Helpers of God's Precious Infants party line on the evil things done behind the clinic walls (which justifies their offer of "help" over any other consideration) until I interrupted with these facts. David accepts that this is harassment, knowing as he does that another male protestor has clearly drawn back from patients who arrive in tears. I also wondered to him: "Isn't harassing the weak unchristian?" to which he nodded assent with the scrunched look of a logically forced agreement.

Charles thought the elapsed time between my seeing the harassment and taking action was a couple of minutes…I thought a few seconds. Charles and the guard, Edward, had seen the same scene unfold, the guard more fully because he had noticed them coming before they got to the protestor…that the woman waited for her husband to catch up and was already crying, he having been completing a mobile call. TheAGE columnist Suzy Freeman-Greene's version appears here. It was built out of her own perceptions, and some of our three, gathered at the moment described.

I am surprised to re-learn (assuming I ever did really learn this) how unreliable my perception of live events can be, how open to multiple interpretations; how filled with material lacunae such that a report of the event would be more holes than whole. My contribution sprang from my interpretation of harassment, amplified by my lifetime revulsion at any bullying, but especially of the weak. I was perhaps able to pull back from my spring by a borderline awareness that I was about to bully the bully ("Purple Shirt") and so earn a placeholder status in my own ethical bestiary.

How easy it is for my reason to fly off in a rage where my righteousness rules the moment to moment equation of time seeking justification in worthy action. I'm speaking only of myself in this accusation. If it fits, feel free to join it.

Preface to a counter protest – observations on power and perception in public places

2011-11-07T21:43:00.000+11:00

Preface to a counter protest – observations on power and perception in public places
Torrey Orton
Nov.7, 2011

The FCC protest site is a miniature power vacuum which allows and facilitates our access. It's almost as if we did not have to intervene as such…just show up. Which is what we did… to be received with slight apprehension / wonder by the occupiers of the two lane pathway. We had no authorisation other than our interest in the daily dramas played out there. We did, though, have an encouragement from a senior FCC staffer as a jumping off point for our fronting up the first day four months ago now.

We came to do a job we did not know, which did not exist and, for whatever it turns out to be, we could easily be blamed and quite likely not congratulated (it seemed at the time). The only certainty still is we will not be paid. We really did not know what we were doing. We did know we wanted to do something to reduce patient harassment by protestors. We created the job somewhat by a default to our personal role preferences – me somewhat more combative and Charles somewhat more consultative.
The human scale of this theatre made our entrance moderately and manageably threatening to the others and us*. We talked to people immediately person to person, face-to-face (unmediated by banners and territories). Our starting place was wonder about what is going on there…how they all see the daily drama. We could see it but not interpret it without their perspectives and meanings. The personal entry level allowed close examination of all their behaviours to test the polarised interpretations (of each's perfidy in the other's eyes, of course) which leapt out first.

We started from a clear position that we side with the FCC. This became more explicit as I tended to spend all my time with the guards and Charles all his with the protestors, especially the one most open to our interest in understanding their experience. I have a workable relationship with him but not as deeply founded on hearing his views or putting mine. I did test with him the potential impact of a shaming threat I was considering if necessary to balance the patient harassment equation on the Wellington Parade footpath stage. Its potential impact was big enough.A few regular passers-by (local inhabitants mostly) inquired who I was in the play, or more sharply, what I was – 'lifer' protestor or 'choicer' FCC patient rights supporter. I eventually ported a small badge saying: "Pro-child, Pro-family, Pro-choice" on a white background. Another badge - "My Body, My choice" against a half green, half blue background - captures my personal concern about euthanasia but isn't so clearly relevant to Wellington Parade. It rests for another day.

Seeing patent harassment from both points of view is an essential achievement for our intervention. It cannot be read from a book or even watched in a video of a harassment event. It takes at least a minimum of two different and independent viewpoints to establish a video fact, as it does a judicially respectable one, and hence a successfully prosecutable one. Further, the most important meaning, that of the patients, has to be inferred much of the time. To enquire directly as they pass through the two lane pathway would only intensify whatever negative pressure they already feel from being watched / harassed.Harassment by protestors and guards of each other across the same pathway is driven by unrequited righteousness on both sides. The "lifers" have the Word in their hearts, justifying anything that comes to mind in seeming contradiction to their perceptions of its meanings. The security services have historical injuries of the Word's church school renditions from which they are still recovering and the daily animosity of the protestors…injuries easily re-primed by the "Lifers" persistent patter ("Please save your little baby", "You'll be a good mother", etc.).

All this becomes more instructive when contrasted with two recent massed protest events – (1) the monthly Saturday appearances of large numbers and varieties of prayer protestors who set up across Wellington Parade for an hour from 10:30 to 11:30am approx. and (2) the Victorian Parliament steps launch of the 40 days of protest against abortion on Oct. 14, 2011. Such events are dominated by loud voices and large posters / banners. They are totally speaking at, not with, events. The boundaries on the launch day were marked by "scuffles". On the monthlies they are policed across 20 meters of streetscape by two bunches of Vic Police, one assigned to each side of the street. Little crosses the street but air and hard looks.The more recent ejection of Occupy Melbourne protestors shows how quickly things in larger scales can move from dominance to violence, even though early violence inducing initiatives may be the products of very small numbers of protestors and police provoking each other.

We, Charles and I, are a small force in numbers and proven persistence – the real denomination of interpersonal power and engine of virtue. The protestors' forces are both larger in the street and proportionally massive in the background (members of active "lifer" organisations, catholic and otherwise). And, their persistence quotient is seriously impressive (18 years at this site for one leading player, who is also present five mornings a week minimum). So, unless we can achieve a systemic shift in the rules of the daily theatre we will be worn down by their moral dominance in effort. They will still be here in a year, or five. I haven't got that long.If we were to move to active intervention against the protestors – turning the threatened threat to their self-esteem into an action program which made it so uncomfortable for them they would retreat – it would be fun but hard to do without causing as much new trouble as the old it was meant to punish. Patients would be in danger of being harassed by our anti-harassment campaign. Not a good look or touch!

*While at the same time much less threatening to me; I have a distinct aversion to potential shaming, and a thin skin for deflecting anything I can construe as an allegation deserving my shame; on reflection here, however, I think my aversion is more to being posted on the other side of an imaginary fence of inclusion…but then being on the inside is shameful in some things, such as being in the community of "lifer" protestors. Being a lone member of a non-existent group alerts my aversive side just fine.

Learning to act right (22)… Threatening to threaten – making sanctions clear

2011-10-31T13:27:00.000+11:00

Learning to act right (22)… Threatening to threaten – making sanctions clear
Torrey Orton
Oct. 31, 2011

A reader wondered how I could "threaten to threaten"* someone – in that case, threaten a protestor that I might seriously threaten him and his accomplices for their harassment of patients. That is, that I would take aggressive action to injure them in some way (not physically). The actual objective would be to shame them in the theatre of their choice for shaming others. A brief discussion about the situation with a verbally facile buddy delivered a string of punch lines, advertising hording material and such in 3 minutes, so I know it's doable.

"Threaten to threaten" goes like this:

Decide, preferably with the other, what our mutual expectations are for a specific activity.
Establish to myself that potentially serious shortfalls in their performance seem to be happening
Formulate appropriate step(s) I might take to sanction them for breaking our agreement(s)
Invite them to discuss how we are doing with our mutual undertakings
Have this discussion in private; if necessary, out of sight and hearing of others with an interest but not a stake in your relationship
Make clear that what I am about to say is a threat to threaten more seriously at a later time if things do not change in the specific matters of concern to me.
Conditionally offer an actual threat I might use ( if you / then I type of formulation)
Note their non-verbal reaction to the threat – are they shocked, etc.
Check it is clear to the them
Check their perception of the appropriateness, intensity, focus, etc. of the threat.
Invite them to consider changing their performance….Consider changing my threat.

The next step would be an announcement that the threat is about to be executed, if they fail to respond appropriately. Then, do it.

People often wonder why others don't take them seriously in everyday life interchanges, especially in pursuit or defence of their own interests. All too often this, on examination, is because they have not been clear about their expectations / needs with those others. Being clear is not easy, especially under pressure. Both sender and receiver, to use an old, simplistic but resiliently tenacious image, are likely to have their communication machinery befuddled.

There are at least four virtues of the "threaten to threaten" tactic:

One, the ethical part of this is not dropping a surprise punishment on someone which they might have escaped if they knew one was coming for certain behaviour(s). This virtue is the private version of the management principal that leaders are morally obliged to warn their staff of dangers arising for them from contextual factors they could not know or guess by themselves – an impending buyout, default, bankruptcy, catastrophic technology or market developments, etc.

Two, the threatened threat may elicit the other's perception of our needs, our shared circumstances, or their needs, which may change the understanding of the total context. In other words a challenging event may increase our understanding of the realities we are in, if we engage it in a challenging way, out of the heart of our needs.

Three, threatening to threaten shows that we can act with effective restraint in strong ways without blowing things up irreparably, that we can act with strength and focus in appropriately modulated ways. Perceived self-control may increase the potential for negotiating difficult matters. Threatening to threaten demonstrates such control, as do other tactics like self-disclosure, and self-rebuke.

Four, the first three above may deepen and humanise the relationship in question.

*I learned this tactic 20 years ago on the negotiation training ground of Effective Negotiation Services. The basic influencing idea is do not threaten if you do not mean it. A fake threat is worse than no threat, especially when it establishes your bottom line or walk away position so the other party knows that an end game is approaching and can better gauge their need to win at all costs. If your 'Don't tread on me' point turns out to be posturing, expect to be counter-postured into even greater losses.

Preface to a counter protest – Defence of the FCC

2011-10-19T15:29:00.006+11:00

Preface to a counter protest – Defence of the FCC
Torrey Orton
Oct. 19, 2011

The purpose of this paper is to establish the context for design of an intervention to change the outcomes for participants in the processes which occur here. It arises from our – Charles Brass and my - participant-observer experience at the FCC since early July this year.

The Fertility Control Clinic's front gate is a frontline of the struggle over life and death rights in Melbourne. There a group of Catholic protestors meet six days a week at 7:30am to protest patients' moral rights to a legal service authorised by elected representatives of the people of Victoria three years ago. Their protest expresses their unflagging commitment to expunging this parliamentary offence against the revealed word of gods.

Our goal is to improve the FCC patient experience by reducing the negative effects of the protestors' manner and methods. To do so we have to take into account all the players, direct and indirect, in the theatre of the public patient experience. Anything we do which increases patient stress is not a viable strategy. By chance, so far, the net effect of our presence has been an unintended positive for patients. Our presence appears to constrain protestors' harassing behaviour. We did not set out to do that at the start. We do now.

There is a set of regular players in this drama – the protestors, the security guards and large numbers of local residents and locally officed workers who pass through the frontline the five work days the FCC is open. The sixth is quieter.

The theatre of protest – a gauntlet to run

The typical 'facts' are simple. This is what you might see repeated perhaps twenty times a day:

The set: a two way black top with one lane access in the middle; one verge marked with a white line the other corralled by a 6 foot stone wall; midway is a recessed gateway with Fertility Control Clinic advised in large letters.

Onto this set six days a week between 7:30 and 10am a pregnant woman, with partner or family member(s) accompanying, walks along the footpath on Wellington Parade, East Melbourne, to the gated entrance of the Fertility Control Clinic. If she is coming for an abortion, she may be filled with conflicting feelings amongst which anxiety, shame and guilt may predominate. She may also have been told to expect watchers in wait for her – the 'pro-life' protestors whose aim is the reversal of the recently (2008) legalised practice of abortion in Victoria, and so they will explicitly and openly disapprove of her walk.

As she approaches, the protestors first appear standing on the curb side of the footpath. A couple, both men, have display boards dangling from their shoulders like spruikers for a year 8 sex-education class… 3D plastic portrayals of early stages in foetal growth and screen prints of ultrasound scans. A security guard, whom she perhaps has not even noticed, signals to her that she does not have to talk to the protestors.

Next, the patient encounters an 'offer' of help, often from a female protestor, to see her experience in the light of the only Catholic option – birth. She accepts it by stopping to talk or refuses by walking on by, sometimes with a verbal clarification on the way. Some protestors push their offer beyond the patient's refusal, to the point of attempting a verbal assault unless physically blocked. The patient's last message from the uninvited outside world may be "Don't kill your little baby…" as she's entering the inner world of the Clinic. Its door is always locked. Only a guard can admit her.

The 'set' – an emotional portrait

I have been a watcher, too, standing with the security guard for the Clinic, watching the watchers and at times explicitly protesting their protest by physically blocking their access to arriving patients who made it clear they did not want to hear from the protestors. The mood of this setting is just below the physical violence threshold. The guards and protestors have faced each other across the footpath for months (and years in some cases). Each day is a stream of boredom¹ with sharp irruptions of rough water as a patient comes into view and a dance of offer and protection as in the theatre above is stepped out. The boredom produces a slow build of inexpressible energy which even the protestors occasionally fall victim to in moments of baiting the guards. For protestors and guards this is an experience of waiting with fear and anticipation. Fear roused by possible conflict runs from slight discomfort to irritability thru frustration on into anger and occasional rage. It is expressed in a running background struggle between protestors and security for judicial ascendancy: who can prove who is harassing who? Who can catch who fudging local short term parking rules?

Anticipation adds an edge of fight to the fear's possible flight - a situation poised for action; players waiting to take up their roles; the boredom of no patients being present holds them in suspension. This edgy experience fills about 2 of the 2 ½ hours each morning. The ½ hour of action is approximately 20 X 1 minute flurries, each event having its own specific, unique dramatic energy as the dance of entry plays out.The protestors and the guards both see the other as more powerful than themselves, and so threatening. The guards have physical and legal power on their side, though they have very limited right to use the physical – much less so than in other security contexts like night spots. The protestors have persistence, baiting and the niggling stretching of the notional behavioural limits of public protest on theirs. Both spend time trying to catch the other out in derelictions of roles. Hence the role of cameras in the daily drama, especially at moments of patient arrivals.

Patients walk into this set already tuned to potential assault from without by the assault from within of their own feelings. Refusing a protestor's offer is culturally more difficult for some than others, as it is psychologically more difficult for some than others. The simplest evidence for the acceptance which is not an acceptance is the number of protestor handouts given by patients to the guard as he accompanies them to the locked front door for which only he has the key. The guard's slow ritual shredding of the handouts in the protestors' faces completes the loop of patient refusal.Behind the scenes…

All of the regular players – protestors, guards, local residents and locally officed workers - are aware that this clinic is the symbolic centre of resistance to the Catholic, and other (religious) fundamentalist, "pro-life" protestors. It is not a political playground. A guard died here 10 years ago at the hands of a madman², armed in part with the beliefs offered by the protestors to arriving patients. The protestor's case against the FCC sits, in part, on a thorough misunderstanding of what professional counselling's role is in clinics like the FCC. As has been explained to me first hand, that role is first to help generally with patient understanding of their fertility issues and second to help sort through the personal implications of a pregnancy, checking that all implications and options have been taken into account, including proceeding to normal birth.

It is professionally unethical to promote a particular patient conclusion as much as to hide a medically understood, socially viable and legal option. Those charged with the welfare of patients do neither³, if they can. There is no complaint book suggesting the FCC's counsellors have compromised their role. Fulfilment of that role does not include any assumption of what the right resolution is for any patient, other than that patients' unintentional ignorance of factors and options may produce sub-optimal resolutions.

Reality photo shoots??

Think of yourself being paraded by fate before an avowedly prejudiced audience which seems likely to judge you as falling short in some painful regard – an audience which will record your shame and give it a life by reciting it as end of day stories to their families and friends. And, they'll have a photo record of it, too!! Welcome to celebrity health in the name of the lord.There is always a hidden camera in the dress of one protestor capturing the daily comings and goings. This occurs in other protested sites in Australia and the US. That the cameras are hidden means they are ashamed of their actions because there is no legal reason to hide them. They know it is an unwarranted intrusion. Private photographs of anyone are just that until they are made public at which point pay-for-use and defamation concerns arise immediately. They know this, too. We've discussed this explicitly with the protestors.

The bigger picture

We guess that for protestors the patients are both individuals making their personal way through life challenges and symbols of mistaken pathways at the same time – that is, representations of big ideas, not people. I know that some protestors label patients, and us⁴, as evil. In their symbolic form for protestors, patients are bigger than their own reality and so open to any influence process, and righteously so in the minds of protestors. They, the protestors, would not present any assaultive materials if they wanted to maximise low-emotion responses from patients. High emotion responses express automatic defensive reactions, likely to elicit an automatic rejection of the protestors' offer – the reaction of someone feeling punished by unreachable others.

Because they are confused about their aims – helping the patients vs. helping the church achieve its mission of repealing the law – they assault as often as they solicit. One could say that any offer by a "protestor" under such circumstances is always a potential assault.

Larger struggles of this sort surround us in increasing numbers and depths. They take tangible shape in the human scale of face-to-face settings like the Clinic entrance on Wellington Street. That's just fine. However, this protest is executed through invasions of patient privacy in the open space between their transport to the Clinic and its front gate. They feel harassed, and 14 once-a-week participant observations by both of us support this claim. These are palpable harassments of visual, verbal and physical sorts. Research makes this observation more than a passing or stereotyped perception of ours⁵.

Onto this stage patients appear solo or in couples, in widely ranging states of disarray from the wholly contained to open crying. The core cast of protestors (in bunches of five or more) and guards (always only one at a time) can see them coming 100 meters away. The guards almost never mistake a patient for an in-transit local. The protestors, though more experienced than the guards (some being on deck at this site for 18 years) often propose their offers mistakenly. And if rebuffed by an actual patient, they are too likely to persist with a plea like "please save your little baby…" and follow them to the gate (unless blocked by the guard) repeating the plea over and over. At the same time, in the background, a visual assault is on offer. We know from the guards and patient reports that protestor actions are more invasive in our absence.

Disapproval and disenabling are the weapons of moral intimidation. The disapproval is obvious. The disenabling, more veiled. The agent of disablement is shame, with a backdrop of guilt. Shame is the public face of guilt and the passage from transport to clinic aggravates its power. Patients arrive in a context in which they are at best amateurs and are confronted by a working practice, an established order of things whose role players are thoroughly at ease with their purposes and moves, though not with each other!

Vulnerability and intimidation – the harassment equation

This makes the very presence of the protestors – physical, visual, and verbal – potentially invasive. It is especially so for those patients most affected by the experience of unwanted pregnancy. They are the most vulnerable and the least able to defend their vulnerability. In my most recent conversation with the most articulate and sympathetic of the protestors, there was no recognition of the immense power imbalance that patient vulnerability gives to the protestors, perhaps because they are so often unheard themselves.

They are aware that harassment is a matter of perception, but not that some perceptions of harassment have ethical priority over others. Clearly in counselling, patients' perceptions of their own vulnerability always comes first at the beginning of any work. This is also the medical rule. How else can we find out what they think/feel is wrong?I know the protestors are open to moral intimidation because I have quietly threatened to threaten them morally twice and the reaction was faster than the twitch of an eye offended by a wandering mote. So, they should appreciate their effects on patients, but the powerful seldom do appreciate their effects except as benefits to themselves. When I aim an openly held camera at them they shy away, while training a hidden one on me. Shame is a wondrous thing.

We are in the early stages of negotiating an agreement between all the players. Whatever form an agreed result might take, it will have to respond to the factors above. Keep posted.

1-boredom is a high energy state expressing one's frustration with a context with no accessible action opportunities, no way to focus an interest into anything.

2- see Dr. Susie Allanson's Murder on his mind (2006); Wilkinson.

3-declaration of interest: I am an AHPRA registered psychotherapist with a broad caseload of biopsychosocial disorders in which degrees of danger to patient viability are common; they are in danger from others or themselves.

4- "Fear the lord…" - In one of my more effective patient shielding efforts recently I earned the attention of a candle wielding, female, septuagenarian protestor's ire : "Fear the lord" she said drawing a roar out of her 4'10' body. I asked her later what she meant and she said (roughly) "…because it's written in black and white, thou shalt not kill and what you are doing is evil and the lord will come and take you away, snip, snip, just like that (with a snip of her fingers as if pinching off a wayward stem)."

5- see Hilary Taylor's Parliamentary Intern Report "Accessing Abortion – Improving the safety of access to abortion services in Victoria", June 2011.

Appreciation (38) …Poppy died today

2011-10-04T16:14:00.002+11:00

Appreciation (38) …Poppy died today

Torrey Orton

Oct. 4, 2011

There's an absence here today

I keep expecting to see him in his usual haunts – before the dining room radiator, on our bed, beside the pond in a corner outside Jane's study. I have never known, or just forgotten, the absence of a presence in this way. It began early yesterday when I looked in the early half-light for him near the radiator and couldn't see him. He had shrunk it seemed, though on closer view was laid out in a relaxed, balanced array - head to the heater and back legs and tail fanning away from it on his two ply sleeping pad. And lifeless, already stiffening by 6AM.

Or is it the presence of absence that's happening? He howled his way into death earlier that night, already having lost much of his locomotion when his back legs failed under him as they had been threatening to do for a couple of months. He had woken about 2am and struggled around a bit and we went to see him and then left again and ½ hour later he set off one, the last it turned out, of his trademark howlings. This mimics with convincing similarity the roar of a lion, even to the pose of the head thrust forward and down a bit which gives throat to the sound - ouaagh, repeated on a rising crescendo of pace and volume, to tail off in a couple of fading breaths. Altogether, about 8 calls.

This performance was almost always elicited by emptiness, by rooms in which he found himself unexpectedly (?) alone. Audible in the street, neighbours say. This was his last alone, throated with the fullness of his late ageing self. Just to write it brings tears for me. Such a roar! He also beset the garden at times after meals as if some latent memory of a long not present competitor arose to take the meal off him.

We finally buried him the next day a few feet away and just as far down as his predecessor Moon's resting place in the enclosure outside the bathroom - like her, wrapped in plastic and topped with a rose and a sprinkle of white wine and tears. Later will come the azalea above.

Before that had already come the clean-up, especially of bowls. He had three flash water bowls of distinguished design: one outside the back door, two inside - one by the eating space in the kitchen and the other near the heater in the dining room. They supported his mild struggle with failing kidneys over the last two years. He, however, sought often the pleasure of more natural containers – pot plant saucers' remnant traces or the pond's more prodigious offerings – passing by the flash without a nod.

He was just 18 and been with us 12 years or so, after a neighbour offered him …his many other virtues can be found here.

Here's potted Poppy in his youth, always a good fit for a tight spot.

Learner therapist (13)……Needs and wants, revisited

2011-09-12T21:12:00.000+10:00

Learner therapist (13)……Needs and wants, revisited
Torrey Orton
Sept. 12, 2011

"…and if you try sometimes you get what you need"

It's commonly thought that needs and wants are a pair of related concepts, with wants in the role of supplicant to needs while seeking to become their surrogates. The pair is a basic unit of therapeutic assessment, in particular for all manner of relationship issues. Often I encourage patients to list the wants and needs they have of significant others in their lives – usually the relatively more powerful and distorting others at home, work or play. This exercise normally includes their perceptions of the other(s)' wants/needs of them, as well.

This is the starting place for reshaping the world to their own designs, lack of which leaves it shaped intractably by the powerful, and the social arrays around them. The outcome of the exercise, if seriously pursued, is always a focus on a few critical needs and possible pathways to them. This is the playground of little steps. The challenge, according to the Stones' famous ditty is: "you can't always get what you want, and if you try sometimes you get what you need".

Here's where wants come in developmentally. While being discretionary, they are also usually very specific, concrete and time-limited in their operation (even if repeated over long spans). People can list wants more easily than needs. So, as for the Stones, our wants are signposts of our possible needs. Following the posts may bring us to our needs as we currently understand them.

Wants are seen to be more discretionary; needs more necessary. Needs more solid; wants more fleeting, evanescent (though more concrete, strangely – wherein lies both their essential contribution to our need fulfilment and their potential for misleading us about the very needs we seek to fulfil). Certainly in couples therapy, for instance, a bunch of wants are expressions of needs. They are instruments of the directions needs propose to us, and often they elicit subject matters of resonant disputability.

Our needs have a fundamental reality and truthfulness about them. This is why people know eventually when some offered need fulfilment (a want) is wrong; not merely inappropriate, wrong. Being inappropriate is a matter of misconceiving a need, often an under-developed one; being wrong is a fake, manipulative, oppressive fulfilment like the binge sex and drugs and rock 'n roll micro-culture can be. Such self-knowledge, or the pursuit of a glimmer of it, is what brings people into developmental activities like therapy, study, etc. They are seeking need fulfilment by learning to negotiate their wants with themselves and others.If we have a framework for the needs which may compose a life for any human, we are therapeutically on better grounds than threshing around in the swarm of wants which modernity proposes as the answer to the question 'what does it all mean?' Acquire enough fulfilled wants and that's a life! Maybe even a brand.
Following is one such framework. There are others. I offer some signposting wants which may attach to each.

Elements of well-being (basic human needs)

*From: The Treatment of Sex Offenders: Risk Management and Good Lives.

Tony Ward, University of Melbourne, Claire A Stewart, Deakin University, 2005

Without specified needs we cannot decide how we are doing and what trade-offs are required to improve well-being. One approach to defining basic needs is this:

Needs	Wants specifications of needs
1) Life (including healthy living and functioning)	Adequate sleep, food, exercise
2) Knowledge	Knowing that…Knowing how to….knowing why…etc.
3) Excellence in play and work (including mastery experiences)	Play an instrument, a sport; Practice a profession, trade, art, hobby…
4) Excellence in agency (i.e., autonomy and self-directedness)	Cooperative activities; enlisting others in our activities
5) Inner peace (i.e., freedom from emotional turmoil and stress)	Meditation, martial arts,
6) Friendship (including intimate, romantic and family relationships)	Appropriate care, affection, connectedness….
7) Community	Authentic membership, identification, …
8) Spirituality (in the broad sense of finding meaning & purpose in life)	Relevant belief, imagery, contemplation….
9) Happiness	In my view this is not a need; it is one outcome of well-being
10) Creativity	Opportunities to invent at whatever level or domain of life activity (also a doubtful need)

Learning to act right (20)… Law without order!

2011-08-30T20:45:00.000+10:00

Learning to act right (20)… Law without order!
Torrey Orton
August 30, 2011

Tram Traffic Travesty
I'm a persistent user and preferrer of public transport since I've lived in a large city (40 years). Since my own first seniors moment (2003) of passing out and getting pace-made for life, I've been attentive to the regulation of tram/car relationships on my regular journey routes. The road safety rule (#163) is embarrassingly clear – when driving a vehicle do not ever pass a stopped tram whose doors are open and warning lights are blinking. Realising that a heart stoppage (itself not remotely dangerous; just a pause in the beat) can occur at any time, even with a pacemaker, primes me to attention on descending from trams.

I haven't counted the number of times some fool roars thru a clearly marked tram stop even though all the required warning lights are blinking and doors are open on the tram. Pretty much instant mush if I stumble. I guess once or twice a month I see this and I only ride two days a week max and have been doing so for 10 years. It's a mistake I've almost made myself once or twice.

One clear morning recently (130811 to be precise, 10:20am) I was myself second car back from a tram stopping on Bridge Road, Richmond (my normal get on / off tram stop just near home) and close enough to see a grey BMW 4door 4WD wagon with multiple exhausts power up to sneak thru the stopping tram, missing the call by meters as the doors opened and first passengers started to get out.

I was able to follow a kilometre up Burwood Road into Hawthorn and by Power Street, a kilometre away, had come up within easy sight of the Victorian plates (Y.. 1.. – would I be invading their privacy if I published the whole plate number here?) and then turned off into the Renaissance car park to make the notes underpinning this plaint. With a mild burst of vengeful inspiration I thought, "I've got this one for sure." Now how to haul it in? I tried Vic Roads and Yarra Trams and got a neutral brush off to the local cop shop. 'We cannot prosecute anyone' their reps said (not even your ticket protectors can? I'm wondering now). Only the police can do that.

So I fronted at my local police a few days later. Guess what? They can't prosecute on the basis of my first hand witness with dated event notes back up either. Only if one of their divisionals happens to be sitting there at the moment and is facing the right way and isn't distracted with a sanger and a cuppa.

The best the young officer could offer was to take my particulars and put them on the maybe to be noted list of divisional assignments, leading then maybe to a divisional van ambling thru the tram stop occasionally to collect very occasional and totally unpredictable tram stop malefactors.

Nuts. What happened to citizen arrests or complaints??? Help me out here, pls.

Back to the Anger (3) – where does a homeless anger go to rest??

2011-08-26T10:01:00.000+10:00

Back to the Anger (3) – where does a homeless anger go to rest??
Torrey Orton
August 26, 2011

A year ago just about now I was worrying my engagement with my anger. It's better engaged now than then. One part of that story is yet to be written tales of searching over the last two months for ways to interrupt Catholic anti-abortionists' harassment of patients at the foundational abortion provider in Melbourne. There are a lot of angry people on that stage and I am not trying to add to them, but the atmosphere is penetrating. My just being there reportedly reduces the harassment, while the anger just perks along in the undergrowth.

There's a short, nicely written, psychological treatment of anger here. It makes sense in every respect except the one I'm concerned about now – namely, that there are times and places when there is nothing we can do about the sources of our anger; when our anger's natural home is inaccessible, and so irremediable. We psychs can't tell us what to do in that case, other than "cognitive restructuring", relaxation, meditation, acceptance and such; that is, suck it in. The article mentioned above tells us that to do so may be unsustainable, if the threatening forces continue. But this is the fate of many people these days (though perhaps no more so than throughout human history).

…a homeless anger
Here's one of these people, a long term friend and colleague who has not found a job in more than a year, and not for lack of trying. He's basically too old (late 50's) for the real job market. The imaginary one would suit him fine, but it doesn't hire or pay. He's basically too competent for younger managers and bureaucrats to stand. He's not a natural to anger; too little so in my view, but then there's taste, sensitivity, temperament….and he is angry now. Deeply, richly, almost unbearably. And like many other placid folks, he doesn't like to talk about his anger.

Systemically forced indifference
But, he's seriously tired of being interviewed by recruiters 30-40 years his junior who often don't know the tasks they are recruiting for, can't speak openly/transparently/honestly (choose your forward moving spin) about which type of process they are involved in (e.g. making up apparent candidate numbers for already filled positions advertised by legal or political requirement, etc.), and are seem more concerned with meeting their performance target numbers than people.

He's not surprised by this because he knows the recruiting trade and its demands on practitioners, but as a present object of the trade its shortcomings are a repeated caustic abrasion of his self-respect. And, yes, he's complained, suggested, proposed – all manner of efforts to improve their "customer service". It seems impervious to improvement. The players (recruiters) themselves are mostly powerless to influence the market dynamics driving them and their organisations, though one calls him for advice about system improvement options.

Unsystematic but persistent failure
But, he's seriously tired, also, of being the second cab off the job candidate rank he usually heads at first glance. There's a river's worth of D words for the effect: depressing and degrading and demeaning and degenerating and….. thankyou but no-thankyou calls from the less able or incompetent are teeth-grindingly outrageous.

And the government funded, not-for-profit, intermediaries facilitating his attempts in exchange for the dole are but another cog. Same coat of pretence to perform cut from the same material of personal and organisational incompetence. This is the arena of long term unemployment. My friend is still a vital statistic in the rate reported to us almost daily in proof of how well Australia is doing compared to our Anglo relatives. And, he knows that he is not statistically unusual: older = unemployable by dint of no 'economic' need for his services. Being a statistical mean is neither reassuring nor redeeming; it just provides a middle of the road place to be run over by fate.

Exposure of what to who?

Exposure therapy is the "evidence-based" treatment of choice to reduce fear of bad personal fates of many kinds. Exposure is a standard treatment for traumatic events which assault the self with recurrent images (recalls) and effects (anxiety symptoms). It is reliably effective. But it is less reliable if there is no visible cause (someone declaring you unsuitable for employment by right of disability, for instance, or being disabled in an objectively ascertainable way – loss of limbs, brain function, etc.; age cannot be mentioned of course, so it's not addressable). With such losses a start can be made on a life which embraces the loss as the from-this-point-forth condition of one's humanity. That is exposure to oneself. But/and, who would he "expose" himself to so that the fear of his daily deepening fate would be reduced?

Lacking an identifiable source of an apparent but unacknowledged disability (being over some age barrier beyond which is housed 'old') the threat cannot be reduced and the anger continues to be reinforced daily. So, too, with no job today, yesterday and likely tomorrow, day after day. This brings him close to existential despair – the expectation that there is no hope. For some this may produce resignation, for others outrage. Death is the imagined outcome of both, differing only in who is imagined dying: oneself or the nameless, faceless others. He said that it is "a struggle to believe" that continued efforts to job seek can make a difference, the moments of believing just fending off the pull of depressions expression of expected and unavoidable failure.

This is not a mental health disorder, it's a biopsychosocial one!! In other words it's down to the individual but the individual is not responsible for it, except to deal with it. A year ago I proposed here that,

"Disregard makes investment in emotions unrewarding to their owners, but it doesn't reduce their energising sources. Often it intensifies them, or the owners' perception of them, which does just as well for outrage production."

I was wrong in the long term. For some, at some times, under some personal conditions the weight of others' disregard generates one's own self-disregard in return. Unfortunately this is not terribly instructive to the others whose regard is needed. They do not feel the absence of ones regard for them or oneself. It doesn't show up in normal metrics of governance and well-being. Living nothingness. No home.

So this is his fate so far – to be refused a place to deploy his existing capabilities, through no fault of his own, by nameless two-faced forces speaking from one mouth 'you should work to be whole' and out of the other 'consume to be complete'. No home.

Rectifications (27) – “An education evolution”

2011-08-17T15:56:00.000+10:00

Rectifications (27) – "An education evolution"
Torrey Orton
August 17, 2011

"From the Vice-Chancellor" it was headed,

and titled "An Education Evolution"

in a 10 page advert with TheAGE of 15/08/2011.

I thought the days of rectifications were over until this one reached out and grabbed me by my righteous spinraker cojones. How could an educated man spruiking an educational (?) institution speak of "an education evolution". Well, mainly because his audience does use the word in that flaccid, pandering way – they, too, not knowing that an evolution is something arrived at in hindsight, not foresight. Foresight (and its assistant, intention) produce actions which, if they are lucky, may become evolutions, but not in our lifetimes – unless you are of the meme = gene brigade, and even that requires some years for memal maturity.

If you are leader of an institution (Melbourne University) which mostly talks about the training and skills it is selling, it may not be a wonder that such simplicities are ignored because no longer known. I guess they are just examples of unknown knowns. (I've often wondered what they were for the man (Donald Rumsfeld) who made them a part of public discourse in 2003 at no personal expense, but a great deal for the people of Iraq).

So I guess the VC is seeking, if he intends it, to coat his training in glimmering cloth. If he'd said, for example, ' An Educational Emerging' (or the weaker, Emergence) this would have been more than acceptable, since novelty of potential substance has to come out of somewhere, otherwise it's a known known already!

The appearance of 'changing' and 'transformative' in his discourse of 'evolution' is also a known known because they are part of the suite of spinisms which pass for social, political and educational analysis in our times. Even banks do it – transform, change and evolve that is. Just watch their self-promotions. Not surprisingly individuals describe themselves in this language, too.

For an alternative discourse, see the article by Raymond Gaita in the 17/08/11 Australian
Higher Education – "Loving the truth is not enough." Gaita notes that the public discussion of educational meaning and purposes has been subverted by the discourse of consumer corporate speak, as has our world. The concepts which underlie an education have not been available to common use for decades. Woe is us. Of such are futile rants made.

Learner therapist (5)…Quiet violences

2011-08-15T08:38:00.000+10:00

Learner therapist (5)…Quiet violences
Torrey Orton
August 15, 2011

Following are some patient experiences of their persistent, consistent and seemingly untouchable disregard by those closest to them. They are the solid foundations of the anxiety / depression in their presently distorted relationship worlds. These feelings are both typical and totally particular at once. They easily elicit a self-denying doubt - "I've had everything I could expect. What have I got to complain about?" – compared to imagined others' terrible childhoods.

These patients are medicated, and/or in long term dynamic or interpersonal therapy with histories of short-term CBT inefficacy, and/or with associated relationship struggles at work, home and play. They usually have two or three anxiety/depression symptoms at once, with one or another more prominent depending on total stress and injury salient stress in varying measures. Their disorders have been traceably with them for decades. The complete family social systems which supported the incidents / perceptions below are alive and well to this day, continuing to carry and sustain the psychological bugs which infect these people.

The speech reported is a close paraphrasing of their actual words. So, for example:

She said: All I want is when I call up mum that she listen to my concerns of the moment; what happens is I call and she suddenly gives me over to Dad who doesn't engage about anything… (this has gone on for her whole remembered life).

He said: When I told my parents at age 6 my grandmother had introduced me to a man in her house who sexually abused me a number of times, they 'took care of it' and it never happened again…nor was it ever spoken of, even to this day (32 years later).

She (39, alcoholic, twice married, 2 own children, four other of second partner) said: They (her parents) never say 'I love you' to me (breaking out in her quiet version of wracked with tears late in the first session) and brush off my efforts to reduce drinking.

He said: For the last few years, living in our house has always been seeing the others but never doing anything with them – we even eat separately. Otherwise, Dad is always away and Mum's always cleaning noisily and intrusively…

She said, starting to cry uncontrollably: I remember being sent away for two months to summer camp aged 5 so my returned run-away 12 year old sister could "have space" as recommended by a social worker returning her…with the understanding for years after that I should "behave" or get into rouble from father for I knew not what; the reason for the runaway was never discussed…so the boundaries of expected behaviour were never clear, just implicit.

He said: (shaking with inner turmoil) I just remembered myself going down the hall of the hospital 30 years ago to see the back specialist in terror about the outcome (I was put in a body brace for 6 months) and mother (who was with me) not asking how I felt, and me feeling I couldn't say because she and father were unable to run the family themselves and I - aged just 14 at the time, eldest child - was carrying the load, down to doing the shopping, cooking and so on.

These are quiet violences of the family intimacy sort*, which often provide foundations for self-harm and suicidal thinking and action, mitigated by alcohol or binge drugs of delightful escape. To a person, those above say at one time or another: what have I got to complain about (compared to people in physically or socially violent lives, or the poor in Calcutta, etc.)? I don't want to blame anyone for my shortcomings - the litany of over-responsibility for lives which has also allowed them to be among the successful (that is the surviving, "high functioning" jobholding, family rearing sorts). Though anyway, I'm worthless, not good enough, can't get it right, hopeless….which makes me try harder to be perfect (a very useful inspiration for many kinds of public life success (jobs, etc.)).

These are not the violences we normally think of when talking PTSD. Their effects may appear in forms like OCD, social phobia, panic…and self-harming, with and without thoughts, or unsuccessful acts, of suicide. They are the kind from which arise baseless fantasies of being "annihilated" by the absence of others, by nothingness…a good starting point for re-visiting the Existentialists. No Exit comes to mind.

And, too, they are sources of apparently baseless, barely perceptible, angers, small outbursts of rage with no accessible origins – the very rages we find at the social level on the road, in the retail, at the home. Their power lies in the presence of the past in the present. People's current lives repeat in degrees and domains, the damages of childhoods sustained in the present relationships which produced them in the first place.

Even if the family members have changed, the parents have lost their power, the truth of the damaging histories cannot be validated because they are on the family's undiscussables list. So the struggle of the past reappears as sibling differences on what's discussable. Talk about resilience! And about systemic maintenance of contexts for paranoid processes! Enough to make one think themselves crazy, just a bit.

* "The WRCH also presents a typology of violence that, while not uniformly accepted, can be a useful way to understand the contexts in which violence occurs and the interactions between types of violence. This typology distinguishes four modes in which violence may be inflicted: physical; sexual; and psychological attack; and deprivation. It further divides the general definition of violence into three sub-types according to the victim-perpetrator relationship.

Self-directed violence refers to violence in which the perpetrator and the victim are the same individual and is subdivided into self-abuse and suicide.
Interpersonal violence refers to violence between individuals, and is subdivided into family and intimate partner violence and community violence. The former category includes child maltreatment; intimate partner violence; and elder abuse, while the latter is broken down into acquaintance and stranger violence and includes youth violence; assault by strangers; violence related to property crimes; and violence in workplaces and other institutions.
Collective violence refers to violence committed by larger groups of individuals and can be subdivided into social, political and economic violence."

I've lost the link to this quote so can't source it, but seems worth including for the framework. The emphasis is supplied.

Learner therapist (11) … Touches for life

2011-07-30T15:02:00.000+10:00

Learner therapist (11) … Touches for life
Torrey Orton
July 30, 2011

Get a grip on yourselves before the roof blows off.

Non-verbal communication is recognised as much in its excess (hitting, slapping…) as its shortage (touch-free upbringings, non-contact sports….) in everyday life. More ordinary levels like handshakes and arm touches are the unconsciously applied media of daily interactions, from intimate to instrumental. Their therapeutic potential may be unnoticed. I offer three recent experiences for your appreciation.

M and A have explosively volatile struggles around their respective needs for care, powered by very different but equally searing injuries to self. These struggles have improved countably over three months of work (weekly) from daily 2-3 hour storms to weekly ones; from standing at the edge of the abyss of relationship implosion to enjoying each other much of the time. But still the volatility remains. The injuries will never fade away, especially his – he has a congenitally weak lower back. She only has interpersonally catastrophic parents, so far.

The signalling of their needs is still not fine enough and they turn any single glitch into another in the running sores of their past failures, still in often uncontrollable emotional flashes. Fine enough is what? It's a capacity to catch an emerging need default to disappointment when it's only a difference in the prevailing atmosphere of their joint life. Need defaults are moments like this:

Typically, he's having a bad back day, which means unpredictable pain grasping an apprehensive attitude (because always on edge for the unpredictable) and she's having a bad recall (which means direct experience of parental abandonments). He needs stillness; she needs a hug. Two into one don't go. He tenses and she pushes her need. She feels abandoned and he feels crowded. The great disappointment blast off.

Creating a fine enough treatment looks like:

This day they show up in therapy (session 12) with an increasing sense of achievement and a reminder of the distance to go – the blast off above, just a day before. In a guided revisit, they experience their respective hurts under control and agree that her hug is unreasonable for his pain. So then what? I ask her what would help her need for reassurance. She knows immediately and precisely: a held hand would do just fine.

I ask her to move a seat closer to him, within easy hand reach, and show him where to offer his hand. She places hers palm down just above her knee. He slides his under hers and she says "No". Through his shock he figures out the slide is a slip (but not what slip; it's the sexual one). She lifts hers and places his on top. Success. Abandonment defeated with visceral relief. Guilt at being unable to respond to her need fended off appropriately.

I think I may have primed this result by telling them a story of another couple (F and D) in their age range who were sitting in these seats a week before, separated by a similar need gap. It was crossed by the guy taking action to respond to her pain about their relationship arising from conflicted feelings about his responses to it earlier – that she often needed space and he needed closeness at the same moment. This typically happens at the end of the work day.

He initiated the same seat change spontaneously and grabbed her ambivalently available hand from a slightly cringed position in her chair. This allowed exploring just how close was too close, and considering how their attachment styles differed around a critical mutual reassurance behaviour. Joint distance regulation was tested live, and controllably, as they adjusted the hand holding to achieve optimum need fulfilment at the moment: giving help for him and acknowledging her distance for her in the same act.

These events seem to come in pairs and triplets, or just surges. A day later, a twenty years older couple (C and P) appeared, struggling with increasing success with rages driven largely by him and facilitated by her chronic passivity. His rage driver is an undiscoverable family history – an absent father of a one night's burst pregnancy untraceable by his mother, plus years of deception about his adoption heritage. At 17 he finally caught his otherwise caring adopters messing up their version of his life, an exposure he had long felt coming.

It leaves him hugely vulnerable to rushes of anxiety at perceived performance failures of his, or others in regard to him – a threat of not getting to anything on time will do it. This one was on the way to see me together, with her driving to pre-empt such a rage, but the tactic failing on the road. So,

...they had one of the blow-ups they so fear, but constrained enough by their joint therapeutic work to so reduce it that he just fumed in the passenger's seat about being late, maybe! Like the others above, these two had had a major explosion (first for some weeks) earlier that week.

Trouble is, the fuming is contagiously electric and bad memory inducing for her – will this be another rage or just a low grade trash fire?? So, she reached out to pat his head and he ducked away into a foetal sulk, with emanations of fury growth. They wondered what she could have done differently. It took us some while to come up with the insight that her intuitive touch had been conceptually right, only practically clumsy.

A head touch is not benign, but three others are: the shoulder, upper arm and forearm touches. These are almost universally recognised as OK touches, even between sexes/genders. Most others are sexual, domineering, or both.

The touch is essential to break the rage cycle once it has started. Words just feed it. The touch allows another level of consciousness to be accessed, wherein the path to freedom of the moment's disruptive passion.

Learner therapist (9) …”Finding my starter button”

2011-07-24T21:14:00.000+10:00

Learner therapist (9) …"Finding my starter button"
Torrey Orton
July 24, 2011

B., 32, is struggling to step into his realistic, clearly focussed, and preferred work life. He has a track record of work and initiative in the field (food service), a plan for exploring a start-up enterprise, down to possible funding, and most recently a partner prospect of long acquaintance. What he doesn't have is a "starter button". Motivation for the last year or so has been negative – escaping a clearly unsatisfying present job, at which he is also underperforming (though his employer doesn't seem to mind because no pressure is explicitly put on B to do more or differently or better, or…anyway, actually a great situation for a career change – paid exploration time!).

But not negative everywhere. In the last six months he's discovered running and pursues it with sturdy and rewarding attention, to the point of prepping for a half marathon now. No trouble starting his engine for the morning chug around the neighbourhood. He knows he'll feel good doing it and enjoy the challenge of sharpening his times while trimming his steps to reliable sustainability. And so he knows what it means (thought/feeling/action) to be motivated, and is so about some things! His wife and child are among important others.

On the edge of his stasis lies a gambling penchant with a smoking habit attached, now under control, more or less. He recognises this cluster is a displacement of energies which could drive a new life direction and his shortage of accepted alpha aspiration for a male of his social, ethnic and religious identifications. As well, there's a family history of weak father performance in the provider role, which B reflects in his unfound "starter button". He doesn't believe he can succeed at leading a venture alone.

Some months into this exploration, along came the right business partner prospect – a friend of long standing, appropriate openness and relevant life background, interests, experience and resources. Then up jumped a new challenge. What is B expecting the partner to lead in the enterprise and what will/can he lead himself? He doesn't know, nor had he thought of the question, but can feel the relevance.

The background discussion is 'what is motivation and how can it be grown, urged, prodded…in short, increased?' Also in short, motivation is the outcome of a shapely purpose, plus attractive incentives. We know that incentives can act as a purpose, or be confused for one, because need for them (money, status, position, etc.) is confused with purpose arising from deep within – an intrinsic motivation driver. Motivation is enhanced or compromised by competence: actual, imagined and aspirational – which in turn are sustained or demeaned by hope. B. suffers from a motivation hope deficit.

So, to start again, how does B improve his shortfall in leadership competence? By replacing it with confidence in shared leadership – the everyday business solution except where compulsive micro-managers are in the seat. Two parallel leadership relationships bear on his future: the business partner and the life partner ones. While both of these people support his vocational initiative, their stakes differ; His life partner's stake includes management of the household economy, it also affects her personal vocational future(s) (they agree she should go back to work in some way). The business partner's stakes principally centre on business management issues and the household side of his own domestic economy, too.

For B, clarifying his life partner's needs is the starting place to setting some personal goals. But that cannot be done without clarifying his needs. We're talking here about real things like amount of time away from home, expected low income period for the start-up and fall back options for the venture. In parallel run her only slightly spoken vocational aspirations, motherhood self-images, and such.

Both share a habit which blocks exploratory discussions directly affecting them: the wish to do no harm to the other. This is held with something approaching the energy of medical professionals, but not the same professional obligation. The ethical one is almost as powerful. As a result they cannot enter into potentially disputable grounds – those which harbour uncertainty about life critical matters like the family economy above, for instance. And the perceived relationship of doing nothing is still too slight. Doing no harm prevents doing good.

Keep posted.

Learning to act right (19)… When being needy is good for others!

2011-07-17T10:29:00.002+10:00

Learning to act right (19)… When being needy is good for others!
Torrey Orton
July 17, 2011

S. is a fixer and a guilt artist, with shame toppings if possible. Fixing things for others, preferably without much recognition, is his primary means of justifying his otherwise (in his view) unworthy self. The joy of fixing a lot is never enough, however, to compensate the wrongs he has done in the process of trying to right things…even worse when the fix itself fails, too, as it did recently. You may recognise yourselves in this caricature somewhere.

So what to do when we are unwell, injured, beset by bad karma – especially the ones which challenge others' empathy or compassion, the ones in the extremes of life like prospectively terminal illnesses / injuries, committing or being victims of incarcerateable offenses, betrayals real or imagined, etc.? If we are reasonably well befriended, some of them will rush to palliate or placate the injuries.

Others will duck and run or just not be seen when they realise they've never experienced your bad luck before or it's their own bad dream. In either case, about then helplessness sets in. What can I do for you, they may ask, and you may say, literally, nothing, thinking what right do I have to ask for help, especially if I'm partly the author of my own condition?

But the friend needs your help to feel worthy themselves!! A fixer's catch 22: need to help my helpless friends, but not to help myself if helping them means helping them to help me!! In my most recent encounter with this dilemma I think I convinced the fixer, S. above, to accept that he had to bear the taint of a little help sticking to him from the virtuous action of his helping others know what to do so they did not feel helpless. There was additional pain for him, but not enough to compensate for the self-indulgence, of identifying what he really needs help with/for!

Of, course, sometimes the friends are helpless and that's for sure. They cannot undo the damage you have suffered, or you theirs. Then the fixer's in real trouble because the only solace for friends' helplessness is that painful truth. Herein's another story – the virtue of painful truths expounded rather than withheld. Doubly difficult for the fixer, but way too hard for many leaders.

I digress.

My 50th boarding school reunion bio

2011-06-29T21:41:00.000+10:00

SINACCORD

11 Wertheim St., Richmond, Victoria, 3121, Australia

Tel. (+613) 9428-7462 FAX (+613) 9427-8174 Mobile +61 419 362 349 E Mail - torreyo@ozemail.com.au

June 29, 2011

This is what I submitted as background info in me for attendees at our 50^th reunion May 12-14, 2011. I thought I'd post it because it captures a certain present self-assessment and history that isn't covered by topical posts but probably affects them in more and less subliminal ways. The pic's a bit out of date, so I dropped it…

Taft School Class of '61 Bio for Torrey Orton

I am leading a life I have mostly chosen, missing some things on the way that being less devoted to choosing would have given me. Much of it has been composed of things I never thought of, nor knew of, at Taft - living in Melbourne (35yrs), Beijing (2yrs), Shanghai (1.5yrs) and Paris (1.5yrs) for starters. Some has been planned like becoming a psychotherapist and organisation consultant in my 50's. As a result of meeting Jane by chance on a hot July, 1970 NYC afternoon, I started learning deeply that there are other worlds than the American one(s), whence an eventual change of citizenship couched in the Melbourne body of my life.

Much of this life has been an exploration of different worlds, inner and outer, prefigured by a helping professions orientation which was emerging at Williams and confirmed in 5 years of HS teaching, and alternative school and commune building in New Haven, moderated by 2 years of a Yale philosophy Masters over 1965-72. In the following 40 years I only once slipped outside the helping life to run a bank IT systems project 1989-91 – but even then it was an HR system.

The bank was merged-over by a neighbour and I got an unexpected redundancy package jump start into consulting, which was where I meant to go next anyway. My consulting has always had an organisational focus and in intercultural flavour, with a personal development infrastructure (I started a small psychotherapy practice in tandem with consulting). This combination produced my second biggest adult learning experience – partnering and coaching a Chinese partner in a start-up in Shanghai from 1998 til now. The third was living in Beijing in 1981-83. The fourth is a toss-up between fulltime therapist and part-time blogger for the last two years...taking both seriously, but not enough to step up or out a quantum jump. Maybe it's time to go back to aikido.

Jane has been accompanying me and being accompanied by me since that July afternoon in International House at Columbia Univ. The commitment to things Chinese has always been her lead. My following there has acquired its own momentum and valences, while adding my therapeutic and organisational tones to hers. She stepped into the retiring time of life 2 years ago by launching a career-topping innovation in Chinese language teacher education, with about every complexity I can think of!

My first biggest learning will probably be what emerges from here on. One theme is rehabilitation of public life, which I have blogged for two years with special interest in ethics and public discourses about difficult issues – climate, science, thinking while in danger. Another is living in reach of mountains and water, which will be in 3 month French chunks since we both seem likely to work til we drop, more or less. If I could give up worrying about the world it would be simpler; I cannot.

The great unknown is resilience. I've just been reminded this month (January '11) that I'm as prone as any to surprise attacks on the body personal – this time acute pancreatitis. 8 years ago a slow heart beat dropped me in a street. The beat has been picked up by a pacemaker since then. Along the way I enjoy more aspects of life than ever – many only accessible through the windows of age!

January 30, 2011

www.diarybyamadman.blogspot.com

More, or less, travel funnies…(4)

2011-06-26T10:34:00.000+10:00

More, or less, travel funnies…(4)
Torrey Orton
June 26, 2011

Fire, fire…

Walking around Bourg en Bresse in eastern France early the first morning of our five days there, having found a copy of the International Herald Tribune after a bit of a search, along the way noticing some fire trucks in fighting positions up a street which I avoided…and then wandering around the neighbouring streets until I came out a street away, out of their sight and into a strange smell – a wood fire at 7:30am before the wood-fired pizza joints opened…and suddenly realising it was 200+ year old wood burning…give or take a few years.

Spring

One repeatedly shared moment across a month's travel was spring constantly sprung on us at every turn, with backwards steps spread among the flow towards summer. Looming out of the memories are two visions: one of greens of infinite shadings but not yet the full ones of high summer, and, two, dogwoods in bloom showing off in the edges and depths of woods as flights of light in the surrounding green darknesses. From this picture you can get a sense of their suspension, unsupported by visible limbs. That's how they look where I grew up. Not the massed and florid specimens you will find if you Google 'dogwoods in flower'.In nature they illuminate their surrounds. This is how they appear in New England wilds, sprinkled across a wood, not massed.

The illumination strikes but the greenness dominates as the context for all things natural. And this is the story of the US ascension over Europe (the little bits we saw) in greenification. The northeast is increasingly covered with forest, growing in the relegated farmlands fallowed by refrigerated transport and short crowing seasons typical of continental climates. On the roads we saw chipmunks, squirrels, deer, turkeys, foxes, Canada geese just wandering around having a munch of this and that. But for the chipmunks and squirrels, these are animals I never saw in my 1950's youth in a small country town with lots of its own woods. Judging by the complaints of locals, and relatives, the deer and geese are taking over everyone's flower and vegie patches, as well as littering the freeway bounds like roos do some country roads in Oz – markers of the domain of the car.

In Europe the Alpine wild strawberries are still to be found – unfortunately we missed the ripening season by a week or two. The feeling for me in France – the Bourg-en-Bresse region above, as well as the Chamonix of Mont Blanc – was controlled exploitation with occasional spurts of wildness (4900 metres comes to mind). By contrast, the northeast of the US was more real wildness than I grew up with…a sense of nature taking the land back, swamping cultivation in goose droppings (the close relatives of those who brought down the AA flight into the Hudson two years ago).

My central plains and westcoast associates will remind me that northeast is not USA, and they might be pleased if it did fade back into its prepilgrim-invasion aboriginality. Cultural resentment notwithstanding, as they fear that fundamental American truth came from the east, a new truth may be on its way, revealed to them in the forced reintroduction of predator species in the face of bovine resistances. After all, the great American west was once the east, settled with a gun, etc., hiding its terrible past in the applied gentility of its age. But I regress.

Sprang

Fast forward to arriving at 11pm from Geneva with 30 minutes to spare between flights in Helsinki to be told the departure for HK was postponed uncertainly and indefinitely with next news at 1:15am.

As we waited for the next news cycle at 2:15am, already two hours plus beyond scheduled departure time, attempting a recuperative snooze on unoccupied bench seats, every three minutes a two-beep alarm went off – loud enough to hear and soft enough to be unworthy of complaint, and anyway not stoppable because coming seemingly from nowhere. Only an hour and half later of interrupted snoozes, more promises of eventual take off and beeps did I discover the source 25 meters away from us - a little electrified,two seat (2 year old size seats) car flashing lights in beat with the beeps and followed by a saccharine solicitation – "would you like to take a ride?"

I could have just pulled the plug on it but it was too late. The first call for boarding (now 4:15am) was echoing thru the waiting hall.

As we were taxiing for take-off the flaps, or something similar growled, with undiscernible purpose signalling the potential disaster our wait should have forestalled, sounding and feeling like a trap door opening and closing with a clank that made us wonder if the repairs had been made to the wrong parts of the plane. Lift-off was ponderous and climb slow…and here I am!

Sprung

9 days later I bumped into a dead ringer for the offending vehicle in the walkway to our local supermarket – not having noticed it sitting there for years probably until now – with a Wiggles logo on it and a similar supplication to jump in for a ride. At least I wasn't trying to sleep.

This is the last of these words.

“The worst class ever…”

2011-06-01T03:41:00.000+10:00

"The worst class ever…"

Torrey Orton

May 31, 2011 Memorial Day

Taft School Class of 1961 50^th Reunion – 12-14 May, 2011

A Straight's View

We were the worst class ever we were told by the Headmaster at our graduation in 1961, or so I repeatedly heard from my classmates. I don't remember that moment 50 years ago. Nor did I remember a host of other events that came up in passing comments or explicit explorations by my classmates – even if I was centrally involved. Apparently, as JM regaled the diners on our first night, I was "killed" by a night time assault by HH in a 1959 precursor to Nightmare on Elm Street. Couldn't find the slightest trace of my death, then or now. So, maybe I should leave this summary effort to others with better neuronal qualifications.

Taft and me now

But, I can't. I have to write this for me on the way to creating my two continent 'home'. Some of that home is in the hands of you classmates of '61 who co-own my life from 1956 to 1961. I have to write to make sense of my now through the thens which underlie it. Taft was a home and I have to know it and them to know me. And anyway, I just have to understand. It's what I do. By fate's hand, my present home is also in the middle of a world historical event, I think.

What will be told here is mainly the story of my reunion. This better ring some bells for others of you, too, otherwise it's all in my mind (which is possible enough!). I'll try to structure the story through the main events – meals and associated functions. There are some themes which cross the whole domain, so they may be treated as such. People will be named by their initials. Fictionalising the real people who make the story what it is for me would seriously demean the reality. Initialising them should preserve privacy to the community of believers who can identify their owners.

Deciding what is really American is an important part of this reflection, so some of my choice of content will reflect what I think is really American, what is typical. That may be a matter of dispute for sure.

Paul C and us - The 50^th Reunion Dinner

Continuing with the theme of what can I say with some confidence to be true, I think KG noted that the kids at Taft now seem happy. This was on the bus on the way to the first event – the Thursday reunion dinner. He was contrasting their state with ours in our times. He brought into view the theme for the night – sadness, anger, disappointment – which I later characterised as "depressed affect" in the present group.

The intensity of speakers' feelings revealed a range of still present hurts which I had not noticed enough in their time to remember now. They were not my hurts at the time, which were strong enough to make it easy to say I hated the place for a few decades after leaving in '61 and to assure the Alumni office I would not be contributing ever and to stop sending me encouragements to do so. Some of the hurt – JH, JS and John S – arose from treatment by the school authorities (symbolised and sometimes personally fronted by Paul C) which branded them as misfits, defectives of some sorts. Their misfit was that their learning styles (kinaesthetic, tangible, etc.) and activity preferences (making and doing rather than observing and contemplating) and natural temperamental exuberance (throwing snowballs at plough drivers from open dorm windows, looking out to celebrate hits and getting caught forthwith!) did not fit the school mission: to produce college entrants on the way to professional or service (teaching, religion) careers housed behind white picket fences. How many of our classmates who got "lost" or chose not to return were also injured in the same regime?

The treatment reflected, in turn, institutional assumptions about human potential which still dominate schooling and professional entry. A further turn is that the era of our passage thru Taft was the leading edge of a decline of traditional authorities and boundaries, an edge which overflowed with the multi-dimensional socio-political movements of the '60's. These institutional assumptions fed on our parents' history of Depression scarcity (or its threat) and the titillating rush of post-war recovery. Our parents, too, contributed for some of us to denials of real vocational preferences like 'if you choose Yale Art you pay; if you choose Penn business, I pay' as RL explained part of his early life course to me. 50 years later he's got his art studio.

Historical footnote: Some of us wondered what was happening in our times at Taft that warranted or encouraged the negative attitude which was emblematic* of those times. Was it some shift in the foundations of modernity (or last seismic shuffles of pre-modern structures), perhaps? Here are some '50's precursors with potentially high impact items in bold:

Art – Pollock, Smith, and predecessors back to Picasso

Music – Jazz, blues, R and R and predecessors back to the atonal, etc.

Theater – The Sandbox; Death of a Salesman and back to Becket….

Novel / poetry – Catcher in the Rye; On the Road; Lord of the flies; Lady Chatterley's Lover…Ginsberg's Howl

Social – Brown vs. Board of Education, Rosa Parks' Montgomery bus ride, Little Rock High School integration

Political – McCarthyism; Freedom rides (first in the May of '61); Fear of the bomb (Mutual Assured Destruction, and such)

And, we could acknowledge that post-modernity was previewed variously by Heraclitus, Zeno, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Spinoza, Whitman, Einstein (relativity), Heisenberg (uncertainty), Berg, Cage, and the movement towards various personal freedoms (to be at the table, on the bus, in the school, on the job) which were denied / blocked for large parts of humanity by traditional thought and structures; and in tandem was the rise of new enemies: USSR and PRC, with boundary skirmishes starting from Korea and sliding into Vietnam under our noses as we left school.

*one of my brothers mentioned a week later that every second word out of my mouth in those days was 'duh', now rendered memorably in Homer's 'doh'. He was Taft '65; my brother, that is.

Undiscussables

All human organisations have undiscussables. These are sometimes fundamental assumptions like an organisation's justification for its existence or parts of its history which conflict with that purpose. They may be undiscussable because we cannot retrieve them easily from the depths of personal and collective consciousnesses. In addition, however, the undiscussable may be pieces of organisation history which compromise its justification and are undiscussed because we are implicated in the compromising. Such matters are often actively suppressed by organisation members.

Undiscussables ramble around in the foreground and background of life, appearing in moments like the Thursday dinner and then reappearing in voluntary, but personally compelling expressions like R, J and B's respective post-reunion emails about PC. I hope this access to each other (and indirectly to all the '61ers because the total email list has been used to carry the expression) will grow an understanding of our era, both what we shared and experienced differently!

Talking to HDL after the reunion raised another level of need at play in the PC discussion: that we all need a map for life, and suffer when there's none available or those on offer are felt to be corrupted – wrong guideposts, mismeasured distances, undisclosed dangers…you know what I mean. His wife recalled that her older brother had similar 'attitude' problems in his prep school times (close to ours) and that she heard similar reports of many schools like ours. We were living in mapless times led by people who had only worn options to offer. The new leaders were often to look like no map at all, and that's part of the story of our lives since them.

For me an undiscussed event is around a now "lost" classmate – JC – who got disappeared in a flash of bureaucratic excess driven by now inconceivably narrow values (about drink and smoke, and not even dope). He doesn't appear in our public class records, but maybe lives in some minds because a couple of people told me bits of the story on the side. My own involvement is conflicted. At the time, I made it clear that I believed covert alcohol consumption should have been left where it was found – hidden among the co-drinkers. On the other hand, I believed that once exposed to the school's policing system, processes had to follow their course. I did not, I now can see, have the guts to confront the system's being based on a hypocrisy, even though a legal one (we were "under age" for drinking)!! With this issue we were engulfed in one of the longest standing contradictions of our culture – the boundary between legitimate and illegitimate intoxicants. This was a bit beyond my competence!! But…. it cost JC a price I still do not know.

Ethico-theological footnote: I wonder who decided I was the one for policing Sunday church attendance for 1960-61? I dropped into the stone church Friday morning on a wander around town for old times' sake, finding my seat in the balcony still available. From there I had ticked three hundred forty (??) boxes for attendance records every Sunday of the year.

At least one of our since "lost" classmates benefitted from sleights of my recording hand. I do not recall feeling the slightest compunction about this dereliction since the duty was merely formal and never audited. So, the missing member's benefit from my derelictions were never in public view, though how not is another wonder. In a similar vein (wonder at not being caught), I smoked in my monitorial suite, Level 4 Old Building, on out of hockey season evenings, using the ashtray facility of the steel frame bunks for butts. The floor master was a smoker, too, thus immune from detecting fellow travellers. As for the lower-mids surrounding us…thus were the young given their first training in institutionalised hypocrisies. Who compromised Taft values more seriously – JC or me? I vote for me.

Friday lunch at the golf club

One of the great things in life is when a group's conversation steps up to a different level of openness and vulnerability. This happened at lunch Friday at the table I was at with NP, BC, JBS, JH, and spouses, as appropriate. Obsessiveness was the subject and personal vulnerability the currency of participation. Somehow, S talking about husband JH's predilection for order elicited an unscripted opening by N about his own ADHD and the work of his foundation to support kids in developmental straits. Discussion flowed around the table from that start.

I imagine this kind and degree of openness would be very unlikely in a table of people who had met by chance on a cruise ship or walk in the park. Having history can block, but also open. For me the reunion was a quick opening to a wide variety of topics at significant depths. Whatever my relationships with individuals, having history of some kind with all of them allowed talking interesting / serious matters quickly. And, where there was unfinished business of various kinds it all progressed more quickly, often because I did not know there was unfinished business on others' parts with me!

A walk in the woods

Also contributing, as almost always, to fulfilling talk were activities like the walk in some woods near Washington, Conn (home of The Gunnery, if you remember) with NP and BC. This had been organised in advance to ensure some real exercise amid the reunion celebrations. It also allowed some more richly fledged discussion of matters raised earlier.

The old guard dinner Friday night

Some people came and went that night, visiting solely for that event. I missed them in detail, noticing them in passing. The same can also be said for the whole reunion. About this time I was beginning to get personal detail overload and re-explanation download. And my attention was directed towards what was coming next – this: saying goodbye with awareness that so much was yet to be said and done, and never could be within the time available formally. I was starting to rush conversations…

Proselyte's progress…KB and me

Talking of unfinished business, there was a promised engagement with KB which was announced to each other almost at first sight on the first bus Thursday evening. It took numerous re-enforcements and promises of continuing commitment to talk before we got to the after dinner bar bash Friday eve. Amidst a swarm of existing conversations we pushed aside the distractions and headed into our main act, which had been foreshadowed by KB's religious moments at the public lectern.

There followed an hour and a half nose-to-nose engagement around matters of faith and its possibilities to unfold with/for me – a question I am open to entertaining, but not driven to answering. There was a moment of feeling the engagement to be more than an entertainment, which led me to suggest some continuing virtual exploration. Three challenges of faith remained at the end for me as they had been from the start: that the Christian focus is individual profession more than collective; that Christianity is one of the religions of the Book with no greater or lesser claim than the other two on personal credibility; and, that expression of Christianity's message, like Judaism and Islam, is often perverted by the distortions of creating and, more impacting, sustaining its organisational forms – the denominations. These three are mutually reinforcing.

This was a classically American experience for me, offering direct access to a most distinctive American characteristic – religion and religiosity – with which I have never been comfortable, nor successfully completely indifferent. My failure to achieve confident indifference has repeatedly been fed by acquaintance with stunning personal models of faith like KB over my life course.

For me the main glory of this event was its basis in a mutual recognition more than 50 years ago of hidden talents, even though at the time we (KB and I) could not have seemed, to others and ourselves, to be on more different paths. These differences are the drivers of our actual paths (leaving matters of fate aside), yet are underpinned with a similar sense of truth or value or something like that. I am seeing now that this sense of truth exists with a number of other class members, though some were not visible to me in the past, notably NP and SM. I take this as a remark about me missing their capacities.

A class observed

Having tried Friday unsuccessfully, I pre-engineered a class visit for Saturday AM, which we actually got to near the right time. It was Upper-mid AP English with a focus on Whitman. Three thoughts: I wish someone had taught me poetry that way 54 years ago. It would have advanced my feeble grip of the form by a decade. Second, the class process was wonderfully flexible by offering space for individual contributions and reflection in balanced amounts and distribution across a small group. Third, the kids contributed freely and easily in about the worst setting imaginable: a bunch of short-term visitors ranging from age 8 to 68 hanging around their ears. Plus, I learned a fine point about the third line of the first stanza of Whitman's "I sing myself". What more can be wanted?

One counter-point: two or three times the teacher appended cautions to the room about not judging anything…as if a judgment were a moral failing…all the while expressing judgments himself implicitly in his directing students towards various aspects of Whitman (and correctly so, as far as I could tell; he both provided direction when pathways were fading in the process and when points of fact were abused).

Saturday lunch, after a walk to the quad

Publically joining the Old Guard

It's funny to be admitted to something I never aspired to join. I do not think of myself as old (more than once a day), though I do think of myself as guarding many things and people. Being formally admitted to the Old Guard by Wally MacMullen highlighted this conflicted condition. Guardians take care of things and people, and many guardians are not old. So, the 'old guard' is a special state reflecting our all carrying into age the guardianship of others and being recognised for this human service. While on the surface we are being recognised for surviving and showing up, more importantly we symbolise the worths that are to be guarded – nothing personal, of course!!

This reflection invites another – the guardian monitor me working in various ways like watching out for a little lower-mid who looked a bit like my brother who was to arrive at Taft the year after I left and I would not be there to watch out for him (he made out fine after thrashing a resentful types seeking to revenge his dislike of me on him) as I had not been for most of his growing up ever.

JS, and me

He was startling and striking from the first moment of the first night – a man realised in his release from life duties honourably sustained for decades (the family store) until able to step into the true shoes of his self: competitor and teacher/coach. I should have known all those years ago when his mother and mine somehow connected at a Mother's Day hockey game in'60 – a most unlikely pairing driven by mutual recognition. I'm sure I did not provide as much recognition to JS then and I am pleased I could amend for that somewhat now. Reunion is both of the old and the new.

JH the boundless

Finally, JH the boundless…I can express my extreme pleasure at being even in the vicinity of JH, but I am not sure why he is such a source for me. Well, I am sure: It is his mindless rambunctious lovingness, so unsuited to an IT design predilection he could (and can) no more change than he can his rambunctiousness; he who alone among us comes back to the place of his youthful humiliation with a gift which can only be made from one who has paid a high price for its acquisition. Aw shucks…I can't say it anywhere near so well as he did so long ago …Shucks!! And my thanks.

Closing openings

For me the reunion was confirmation that we belong to the first (?) generation of the unretired rather than our predecessors, the "undead". Many of us are still growing in different ways, some visible in encounters above. So, overall, a sense of only just having started conversations, with so long to go that will never, except in a few cases, be continued or completed. Sadness for that and gladness that I know this, which I did not before reunion. It complicates my life by anchoring my present as foreigner (in Australia) in my past as local (in USA), neither wholly resolvable.

Undiscussables revisited – challenging opportunities

When I started writing this three weeks ago, what comes next I sketched shortly after starting. The questions just emerged seeming to suggest the last step of my explorations – a collection of guideline directions for continued living. I had not yet formulated my undiscussables discussion, but since they are all part of one consciousness, I am seldom surprised by what emerges, only its order, colours and weights vary.

Challenges arising from reflecting on who / what we are:

What to "out" and what not to? This is the whistle-blower question, critical to open doors into spaces which otherwise are relegated to dreams and/or recriminations.
Telling illuminating stories to the young (and still young old) – this is the offering of lived lives requirement.
Who did we forget? Did we forget some because they were too hard to remember in their time? What would we have to do to ourselves to open ourselves to what was previously forgettable, and how could we test our openness??
What of ourselves did we lose on the way from then to now? We only became ourselves by both doing certain things and not doing others; some we could never have done for lack of interest or talent; others were not open to us for reasons of fate or active refusal by greater powers, though talent and interest were available; others had to be let go but still could be recovered to some extent…like my putting some time into learning to sing (which I'm considering).
What's the price of the losses and who's paying it? (the forgotten?) My analyst once suggested I had dues to pay to receive benefits I am seeking. If I figure that one out I'll post it. Something to do with seeking forgiveness and offering it to others??
How can we learn the answers given the frailties of our grasps on our pasts, the demands of our commitments in the present and the growing limitations of our energies for understanding? Perhaps the hardest challenge to turn into an opportunity since it seems we are surrounded by unavoidable constraints guaranteed to increase with time! How can the prospect of weakness be a strength?

For once I am going to say these are challenges that should be framed as opportunities precisely because they are so easily heard only in their confronting configurations. Maybe not so worst after all….

My warmest regards,

Straights

More travel funnies…(3)

2011-05-23T11:17:00.000+10:00

More travel funnies…(3)
Torrey Orton
May 22, 2011

Habits for peace

It's rained something around 5 inches (120+mm) in the New York - New Jersey area in the last week or so. Every dip that can gather water is awash and the lowlands are flooding… but not news worthily. Net effect for us is to have worn our wet weather gear more often than a month in Melbourne. Each day is threatening, especially in the afternoon.

As so often, facts do not inhibit personal or organisational habits. Yesterday we were in Princeton New Jersey to watch some junior lacrosse being played by Noah, a niece's 11 year old. Nice day, first over 23C (75F approx.) since we arrived on east coast two weeks ago, sunny with slightly massing clouds….We headed back to the car and passed a university club's lawns being decisively (volume) and thoroughly (carefully set spray patterns) watered by ground staff. What to think?? Must have been on the work schedule. Always a good idea to follow the schedule. It is management's principal expression of both power and competence, the backdrop to premonitions of worker disregard, disrespect and disobedience.

Whenever a worker's acting dumb, there's probably a dumb reason. Just keepin' the peace.

Sign free zone

The Heritage Hotel in Southbury, Connecticut presents itself as a leading locale for spas and golf and all round luxe in the region. It's also the one which lost our reservation (they found it, too, after a few days stumbling!). Anyway, we had survived our first return to driving on the right in 15 years or so by arriving on the outskirts of the very well-advertised town of Southbury looking for signals of the Heritage. Finding it took another 30 minutes, a search exacerbated by my driving timidity for sure. But, there were no signs if you came from the south as we did that day. The first sign, which was too late to obey unless you knew it was there beforehand, only came into view around a corner of a four lane junction – the kind I was still a bit delicate about negotiating. Had to turn around after passing through the stop lights the sign was guarding to get to use its direction.

Pennies from..??

I imagine to modernise the currency would be seen as a part of the world socialist conspiracy to undermine American values. Otherwise why do they still have one cent pieces – and one dollar bills for that matter – in common use?? I've been collecting pennies in dribbles for two weeks.

The undermining aspect would be the implicit recognition the buck's hardly worth a bang anymore. It is promising for Australia's place in a world of failing advanced economies that we acknowledged that two decades ago. A decade later we got signed up for real advanced economy status with a GST, which might be seen now as a symptom of incipient socialism had it not been introduced by a conservative government. The fact that Swedish rounding was the mathematics of choice might have been an excuse if others were lacking for an indictment. The case would have been closed if it were known that New Zealand had been first by three years in this rush to rational self-management.

Penny wise, round foolish? This wouldn't have rated so much ink but for another fact: Americans are still wedded to the pathetic, though empirically reliable, pricing policy of trying to make any whole number look smaller by dithering with decimals. But, then so are we. Hence, Swedish rounding is a terrific late capitalist creation. Too bad about the name.

And then there is this screamer!

Note seen on front door of neighbouring house:

"I've gone; the house is locked. The key is

under the log, top left on the wood pile"

True story; unimpeachable sources; impeccable credentials; direct personal experience. Only in the USA??!!

More travel funnies…(2)

2011-05-20T00:48:00.000+10:00

More travel funnies…(2)
Torrey Orton
May 19, 2011

"...the only white people on the train"

This is a race joke. It was told on himself by a 70 year old anglo friend who was on a New York City subway with his 13 year old son a few weeks back. He looked down the carriage and thought 'we're the only white people on the train'. Something stopped him saying it just in time. He remembered that he was the only white guy on the train. His son is a product of his second marriage. His mother is Sri Lankan; he's clearly not a white guy.

His father's not without deep experience in matters of race, having spent a number of years as a teacher in Harlem schools and as a curriculum consultant in many others in the late '60's where he was often the only white guy on the train. In between, I guess he forgot what he is. How anyone can do that you may wonder. He did, too. I still am.

"The last time I saw you…"

This is a sex joke masquerading as 'just between you 'n me, for your ears only' boy talk. Talk about giving it all away in a paroxysm of paranoia! C was on the door for new arrivals at the reunion. He had also been particularly solicitous of our travel comfort, accommodation arrangements and general well-being. He was not a guy I knew at all well in the day. I do a bit more now.

Having overseen our hotel registration from a distance, he rushed out to join us on the way back to our car (for luggage transfers) whispering (as he often did),

"I saw you play hockey once in Buffalo." (Western New York, near Niagara Falls).

Me: "When was that?"

He: "A few years after leaving school".

Me: "Oh yeah, against Yale in 1964. We got killed 13 to 3. I don't remember seeing you there."

He: "I just don't want you mentioning it to my wife. I was there with another girl."

Me: "Sure thing. No worries."

Of course carrying such a secret was difficult; it always lurked in the wings looking for a chance to sneak out. Two days of reunioning provided regular opportunities for sharing back. I was eased in my self-management by the fact the secret totally lacked salience for me, though gaining small traction from my wonder at the marvels of guilt and its persistent need for self-exposure. I can only hope his sharing it with us reduced the burden for him. It was big enough for him not to have heard that I never noticed him that day in '64. Perhaps the clang of the puck in our goal distracted my attention. Certainly paying attention did little to stop the clanging. Maybe I should have been there for C after all??

Tar pit triumph

In LA I saw a tar pit at last, fulfilling an unrecalled childhood (mid-primary age) dream arising from one of those enduring standalone impressions of a sabre-tooth tiger risen from the pits decades ago, with mastodons and ground sloths in the background. This was a totally unmediated perceptual success. Seen one, seen 'em all. I hadn't the slightest need to see a dozen more, which were easily at hand in the La Brea display ground. The need fulfilment was probably assisted by the smell-o-vision nature of the experience – I smelled the pit before I saw it. Primary sense trumps secondary. Not funny; just nice.

Streets of New Haven

We went back to the place of our first married year (and my first 7 years of adult life!) New Haven, CN for a few hours after the reunion. We knew it was likely to be disappointing because we had been there a few times over the last 20 years – another rust belt city bereft of manufacturing and host to long term urban poverties.

The story is this: the streets in, through and around the Yale University environs are clean and well-paved. Those in the areas to the north, west and east, largely black inhabited, were potholed from end to end. These holes were suspension clatteringly and control compromisingly pervasive. The south is Long Island Sound. Only a few fish pass there.

Not funny at all.

Appreciation (37) …learning to see, again

2011-05-18T23:39:00.000+10:00

Appreciation (37) …learning to see, again
Torrey Orton
May 18, 2011

Closed mind, open heart – a wonder about travel blindness(es)

Walking around LA a week ago, and driving a bit, too, I couldn't see much of wonder but a jumble of visuals of mildly disappointing grades. After a few hours my distress resolved into a recurring view of faux New England houses spread around varieties of Mission Revival. Mission Revival fit the environs. The faux did not for me. They reached out like an ugly stick in my eyes.

The faux had a number of features. There were the inappropriate window sizes and styles, as if they had been borrowed from a different genre. Their scale was wrong to my eye. Then there was the fault of interbreeding: colonial mixed with ranch – two regenerations from the post-war era. Again a travesty of proportions signalling a bungle, arising perhaps from architects mixing pages from two standard issue design playbooks. In a related, later discussion with the architect of my two friends, he mentioned a similar construct as the design process of another local travesty (in his view, which I shared).

I was in the in the hands of two aficionados of local architecture, hence cautious with airing my disappointments. Rather, I managed to enquire about what I was seeing – its sources, ages, and social implications. After a few more hours my automatic rejection of the offending mis-proportions retreated almost unnoticed from the front of my awareness. It then became easier to explore with them. What's going on with me and this?

A Kimberley experience.

A few years ago I spent two weeks driving and camping around the Kimberley. I had looked forward to the experience with a mountains-and-seas anticipation - that is, my normal expectation of pleasurable visuals which has applied to every trip in my adult life: local, interstate or international. I had forgotten those formative visual experiences like learning to love the Australian bush which opened me to previously unknowable things in the world. It's hard to spontaneously like the Australian bush from a Massachusetts bush background – almost no congruencies other than being bush.

The upshot of the first few days in the Kimberley was a lingering disappointment with its failure to be alps – Australian or European! Now, I had no excuse for this. I have travelled fairly broadly and sometimes deeply in Australia for 35 years at this point. I have done so with enjoyment from my first exposure to the flat lands between Melbourne and Geelong in 1971 (my closest priors being a few glimpses of the Connecticut River valley in the 1950's and a day driving in Ohio in 1967) and can champion the deserted regions with energy and commitment to newbie travellers down under.

So, in some sense I had lost contact with this openness in myself…amazing failing, even more so because I did not even know I had lost it!! I still cannot follow how this happened, but happen it did. I underwent a covert regression or created it somehow. As I am writing I begin to see how, maybe! I brought to the Kimberley an unintentional biased eye – the one that announces itself with an act of disapproval of its field of vision.

Maybe it worked this way. My experience of the European Alps over 35 years, but more intensely in the time before the Kimberley, had coloured my expectations about great visual and physical experiences. A moment ago I was about to write it had coloured my preferences in such experiences, but that is not what it was; it was my anticipations blending into my expectations: I was looking forward to more Alps because I was only getting a taste for them, and wanted more, but did not quite know that then. The Kimberley, by choice at that time, fell across the pathways to that acquisition. It required special organising of many others to do the Kimberley as we thought best to do it, and the others turned out to sometimes be an unexpected experience in their own right. Another disturbing distraction.

Like the LA experience, the Kimberley emerged from the overlay of my inappropriate anticipations and expectations as one of the most memorable of my travel experiences, marked by my continuing desire to return for another run under the cold night skies and warm day ones of early winter there. Maybe it will be on our grey nomad agenda one day.

So what?

This has been a long detour from faux colonials falsely accused. The explanation of my visceral resistance to what reality was presenting is adequate; the pathway to less resistance is not so clear; its implications are worrying for learning…or, just a naturally occurring stage/phase in learning?

More travel funnies…

2011-05-12T11:34:00.000+10:00

More travel funnies…
Torrey Orton
May 11, 2011

We're off to my 50^th boarding school reunion, a family reunion and a France reunion for a month, with various interludes and postludes along the way. I start with preludes.

"No record of reservation…"
Travel funnies started before the travel this time with the news by email that our reservation for the reunion had never been received by the Heritage Hotel…a discovery thanks to a query from classmates about the state of our accommodation and such since the school had no record of them (not that they should have since I'd never sent them and no one had asked for them!). I was rabid about the news, driven by the fact I was awake at 3am to receive it and had dopily turned on the email.

I fired off a note of complaint to the school's event manager with my reservation number and date of approval (Feb 10, '11). …. And somewhat later set off for a morning's therapy at 7am by train and tram, whence another unfunny chapter opened unexpectedly, disappointingly and totally unnecessarily.

Back to the trams…where months ago I noticed that I often entertained myself with pre-work exercise in segments marked out by the train/tram route on the way there. There was a theoretical hitch at that time: that I occasionally almost got it wrong - "The almost is the lurking awareness that I could still mess up, or be messed up, by misjudgement plus fate" I noted at the time. Wait or walk, I wondered again this morning.

Well, this time, already angered by the accommodation screw up a few hours earlier, I walked and waited in vain. Arriving at one tram stop, I had five minutes to go to the next scheduled tram and was caught midway by an early arrival passing me by, stopping at the next stop and waiting for two minutes for its schedule to catch up with it, and then moving off just as I caught up with it!! This sequence was repeated two more times as my pre-work walk turned into a 40 minute, 3 kilometre quickstep to the clinic, arriving 12 minutes late. Fortunately, the expected client was s serial lateness offender and bore the wait well (forewarned by SMS of course). Still, I was smoking, but only wisps showed.

(The accommodation bungle was recovered three days later, or so I was promised by email.)

LA International Airport…incoming
There's a song which celebrates the West Coast entry to the US. Well, it was an undeserving entry this time. Apart from an eventual 1 hour wait in an incoherent and disorderly queuing system, we got a standing room only wait in the plane on arrival due to congestion in the entry hall. We were told there were a thousand just-arriveds standing in our way. I should have known we were really in for trouble when I sighted a sign saying something like: With our 140 years of customer service we know paying attention to customer needs counts! I read this as a line from the mouth of LA Tourism thinking they really have reached heights of self mockery. A few metres further up the passage I saw the words were an HSBC bank self-promotion, but then…

Joining their last members (maybe 500 folks or so) 15 minutes later, we started our passage in a hall with no toilets other than a pastel sign promising renovations of the previously available offerings were well under way…and this after 13 hours in the air.

The entry hall was itself quite new, with numbered ranks of passport control stations spread in a 150 meter array before us. Trouble was, they were less than half staffed, though they were armed with a terrific set of terrorist detection tools – both iris cameras and handprint capture machines. There was not even a hand-lettered sign telling us which line was for foreigners and which for returning natives, though there was a quite well-designed one for diplomatic and special business travellers, of course.

LA …outgoing
A day later we got the AA treatment (no, not that AA; the American Airlines AA) on the way to our next stage. The boarding routine was a marvel of self-contradiction which seemed to work. There were stringent carryon bag limits clearly posted around the departure halls with explicit threats that oversized ones would be thrown into the hold (delicately by their experienced staff waiting hopefully below the plane to receive renegade bags from watchful cabin staff).

The warnings were enough to make me slightly antsy about the somewhat oversized backpack I was carrying. No need to worry. Others were carrying material for a beach party. Due to my abiding never-be-late phobia, we had arrived early and due to Jane's possessing a higher grade of Frequent Flyer, we boarded in the first rush scoring empty overheads for the effort. What came next was a scramble by the masses to grab space which was close to the unconscious meaning of unseemly…not quite pushing old ladies out of the way but an outbreak felt imminent.

Coaching from the sidelines was the chief speaker for the cabin staff - running through the outsized bag routine as a request for civil compliance rather than an order. She backed up the civility theme by encouraging the scramblers to "help each other" with the short, weak and maybe old as worthy targets for help (if they couldn't lift their overweight bags, couldn't get them to fit the compartments (quite a few), or just couldn't find space, though passing the weight and size reg's). After 20 minutes wrestling bags, jockeying for position and "helping" the place was cleared for take-off. Lots of bags disappeared under seats in front, to the point of leaving little foot space, but then whose fault was that.

Was I seeing another instance of a self-regulating system at work?? The last I remember was the response to the US Airways flight #5149 which crashed without loss of anything material but itself in the Hudson River in January '09 (just where we were heading!). Cameras monitoring the area of the crash (by chance) caught ferries and other boats turning to save passengers before formal rescue could have been organised. Local players had chosen to disregard their SOP's, city, state and federal regulations with probable risk to their licenses and captain's bars to do the obviously right thing. Perhaps an example of "giving forward", as my niece described an effort of hers to make a difference in some family matter. More another time.

Fly well, fly high.

Appreciation (36) …out of Africa?

2011-05-04T21:20:00.000+10:00

Appreciation (36) …out of Africa?
Torrey Orton
May 4, 2011

"Ask him when he came out of Africa?", she said quietly.

We were in the fourth day of four in a leadership program for journalists. The group of 9 held six women and three men from seven countries/regions: Indonesia, Fiji, Vanuatu, Irian Jaya(Papua) province of Indonesia, PNG, Timor Leste and Solomon Islands. They spoke 15 or twenty languages between them and no one language was competently held across the whole group. Individuals often had 5 or six, including English, pidgin, family or clan languages and a national language. So there was a constant play of interpreting throughout the learning activities. I was the only non-islander English speaker in the group. I was also 30 years older than everyone but Jason, who was about 50. Jason held down the darker end of the colour spectrum for which I anchored the lighter, with everyone else spread out in between* - the ethnic Indonesians closest to me, the Papuan next and the others following to Jason.

Our program included five segments, in this order, on personality, stress management, culture and leadership, negotiation and conflict management, and mentoring/networking, all with an orientation to the leadership demands of being a journalist in their respective contexts. The culture segment opened the door on a range of shared histories among us, and the overall shared history of European colonialism. In the process of exploring the cultures in the room I pointed out that we all come out of Africa. This was news to everyone.

At some later point in our excursion through negotiation and conflict management I mentioned to the group that there is published research evidence about the out-of- Africa claim and I had the book – Spencer Wells' The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey. Jason jumped at it, along with another – Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies – which explains cultural success in geographic terms, as well as the unintended depredations of Christian colonialism (germs, mostly).

On reflection, I have to admit that saying I come out of Africa has a very low face-value truthfulness about it. A case of the mind's eye getting it wrong to any unbiased observer. I just don't look anyone's 'black' or tan or Asian, or…Italian. The research shows (love that frame!) that my relatives are traceable to a female origin out of Africa quite a while ago. But it is demonstrably obvious that I'm not black or tan or anything other than fading lily whiteish. And it is even more incontrovertibly clear that I didn't come out of Africa in any comprehensibly practical sense. Talk about an inner truth?! The genes shape us but the appearances make us.

And so the quietest group member, and occupier of a prime position in the darker range, Fijian Dorothy said, pointing at the leader with no clothes running the training – me:

"Ask him when he came out of Africa?" she posed quietly.

And three of us – Diana, Jason and I - broke into unstoppable laughter, with tears, which lasted three or four minutes, reigniting as they do with recollections or repetitions of the cue line "Ask him…" I've since repeated it enough to drain the trigger of its tickle.

*I recalled as I was entering the culture segment of our work that I had first encountered the colour conundrum 45 years ago as a beginner high school teacher in New Haven, CN, USA. This was particularly the first time of my really being a minority person for a bit. Years later in China it was daily for two years – a more shaping experience. At that US time I devised a simple experiment. In English classes with a majority of blacks and an ethnic multitude of whites, I offered an exploration of the substance of the terms 'white' and 'black'.

We (including me) lined up in a horseshoe (so everyone could see everyone else) whose gradation from darkest to lightest, and back, was agreed by all. The result always was that some self-identified 'black' kids actually were over the line into 'white' and vice-versa, as agreed among the participants in any particular line-up. (This kind of perception is the empirical origin of the current identification 'mixed', which is established in the identity stats of the UK census and an ongoing subject of discussion in the US). The kids had little trouble agreeing on the fade from light to dark and vice-versa, yet clung energetically to the soundness of their practical judgment that the difference was black and white clear!! Black hung with black and white with white. Therein the dilemma of the difference which is not, but is!

This dilemma is played out in both light and dark communities as they privilege the other in their beauty gradings – for some purposes. The lights approve tannedness among themselves (even fake tan!), but get queasy with permanently tanned members of their 'community' (maybe they've got a bit of dark the lights suppose) and the darks approve with envy the lights of theirs while at the same time reserving true darkness membership to the darkest (nearest to Africa??). What a human mess. Was 'mixed' cooked up to bridge the unbridgeable distinctions without creating a discriminatory difference??

Learner therapist (7) …Listening for talent

2011-04-29T09:20:00.000+10:00

Learner therapist (7) …Listening for talent
Torrey Orton
April 29, 2011

This is only a taster for a longer trip. Hopefully there's enough indications of the trip purpose and process to warm others up for a later journey.

Not everyone speaks well. They have to struggle for words or thoughts. Things just seem to come to others. Here's one words don't come to in his first session:

By 40 minutes into it I didn't think that we had anything to work on. He was a litany of falteringly expressed sadness, aimlessness and hopelessness, presented almost as if they were a state, not a need. There was nothing for me to hold – that was his state, until I heard his language. I was listening for the strength (agency) which brought him into therapy. For someone claiming no discernible talent his presentation was peppered lightly with very particular vocabulary – not at all that of the truck driver he claimed truly to be. I had noted the words as he rambled around his self-described misfit history, but not noticed them for the talent they exposed. I confirmed my notice by pointing out that he had such language and he both recoiled at the idea he had anything and brightened up with the notice in one move. It wasn't clear to me that he had verbal talent. He had capability, and so maybe talent not just training.

It has turned out that he has quite a verbal talent. Everyone has some talent, some quite a lot and some quite a few – the Renaissancers among us. They often, especially those showing up for therapy, do not know or trust their talent. It may have been a cause, or collateral effect, of the injuries which brought them to therapy. Sometimes they show up as a loss of talent, as here:

At a social event I met a lifelong male painter, now 63, who was visibly flat and poured it out smoothly. He had lost his painting muse or mojo or animus and so was wandering around for the first time in his life with nothing to do. For a talented person whose gift was clear and commanded what to do, every day was given by the gift. He literally had lost his way, his inner light which showed him the path. That light had shown brightly since early primary school when a teacher recognised it by saying, "You should be a painter."Now he was lightless for the first time. I saw him again a few weeks later and he was still befuddled by his self-abandonment (it must have been himself, he thought; no one else stole his light from him).all that of the truck driver he claimed to be.h ng to grab for me until I heard his language. For someone presenbting tent ho

Whether he was a good painter or not is irrelevant to the matter of his talent. That 'good' is for discussion another time under the heading of competences or capabilities. The world is full of possible painters, fishers, writers, fixers, fighters, builders…. Few are great, but many are satisfied if they know and live their talent(s). There's room for many levels of the many talents.

Finding ones talent(s) can be a grounding experience, providing for the first time in our lives a source of truth which is reliably ours. It is no guarantee that a way will be made for our talents to enter the world, but knowing that they come from within is heartening and self-defining. Basic life standards are self-sourced and the associated motivation is self-validating. Just exercising the talent(s) creates further motivation.

There may be many ways to bring the talent into the world, allowing exploration and exercise of it even under conditions of low potential success – where a person's existing life commitments to partners, children, parents, siblings prohibit a fulltime engagement with the emerging talent. Equally restricting may be the low wattage of the talent – visible, palpable but not powerful to be a life on its own, yet still providing inner based illumination. We all have a complete suite of the talents necessary for life, just differently arrayed and enabled. The array and enabling are congenital; their growth and enactment are circumstantial (the domain of nurture and effort).

What the range of talents is can be taken from one or another of the emerging systems of well-being, all of which depend on defining the domains, directions and intensities of action which create well-being. Getting the items and their mixes right is essential, since well-being is specific. I like the "Elements of well-being" because they were created by the authors in an effort to provide a new approach to treatment of sex offenders, a notoriously difficult group.

Elements of well-being (basic human needs)

*From: The Treatment of Sex Offenders: Risk Management and Good Lives.

Tony Ward, University of Melbourne, Claire A Stewart, Deakin University

1) Life (including healthy living and functioning) 2) Knowledge 3) Excellence in play and work (including mastery experiences) 4) Excellence in agency (i.e., autonomy and self-directedness) 5) Inner peace (i.e., freedom from emotional turmoil and stress) 6) Friendship (including intimate, romantic and family relationships) 7) Community 8) Spirituality (in the broad sense of finding meaning & purpose in life) 9) Happiness 10) Creativity

And, by the way, if you want to think about what the generic therapeutic task is from a biopsychosocial (cultural) viewpoint – this is it: a multidimensional well-being one. Elaborating that perspective is a task for another day. Well-being constructs like that above are starters. They are also the basis for work on things like vocation (below), since the kinds of vocations there are must reflect the needs we strive to fulfil through work.

This set of archetypal vocations was built with Hamid Homayouni 5 years ago in the birthing phase of a 'what do you want to be when you grow up?' company which never grew up. However, many patients have found the constructs helpful for their efforts to build a picture of their vocational potential. The archetypes are described in ordinary language and everyday behaviours.

Helper

Are you…compassionate, attentive to others' needs, a 'fixer'?

Do you like to…offer help, give suggestions, 'fix' things for others?

Are you good at… listening to others, putting your own thoughts in their terms, seeing how others really are, suggesting options for action…?

Builder

Are you… physical, careful, 'results oriented', a 'tool man' (or woman)?

Do you like to…complete a piece of work, have something to show for your efforts?

Are you good at…making things with your hands, planning steps of development, using tools?

Protector

Are you…cautious, attuned to possible dangers / threats, physically and emotionally robust, action-oriented?

Do you like to…be in dangerous situations, test your strength against others, use weapons, wear uniforms?

Are you good at…containing conflicts, dealing with anger, checking threats, using your body as an instrument?

Entertainer /artist

Are you…flamboyant, emotional, and imaginative?

Do you like to…tell stories, draw pictures, make videos?

Are you good at…performing, working under public pressure, taking on different roles and styles?

Maintainer

Are you…orderly, systematic, obsessive about detail?

Do you like to…keep things in order, clean things, know how things work, take them apart to see how they tick?

Are you good at…keeping things running, making repairs, figuring out what's wrong with things?

Believer / visionary

Are you…'off in the clouds' at times, certain where you stand, looking for the answers to the final questions?

Do you like to… wonder about 'the meaning of life, engage others in questions of meaning?

Are you good at…seeing the larger picture, talking about 'the meaning of life'…?

Thinker / investigator

Are you…introverted, abstract, logical, pattern seeking, 'deep', insightful?

Do you like to… get things clear, understand rather than act, find your way through confusion and unclarity, put the truth first …?

Are you good at…seeing patterns in things, making systematic pictures of things, making sense of puzzles / dilemmas ….?

Creator / entrepreneur

Are you…a starter, sensitive to new things, early adopter of technologies / ideas?

Do you like to…be the first to do things, be recognised for innovation?

Are you good at…expressing, creating visual / musical works, starting up from nothing?

Coordinator / leader

Are you…someone who steps forward first, takes the lead in social / political things?

Do you like to…negotiate shared tasks and resources, talk to people about what they want / need?

Are you good at…keeping a group together around shared tasks?

Appreciation (35) … A poem a day…

2011-04-18T08:34:00.000+10:00

Appreciation (35) … A poem a day…
Torrey Orton
April 18, 2011

I never much liked poetry…not enough to continue reading after university until many years later…the last 6 or 8 in fact. Les Murray shifted that a bit as I took seriously that he speaks for aspects of this wide brown, lately green, land which are important. So I undertook to read, and have read, everything of his in print… part of my self-australianisation, akin to learning successfully to like bush and dry and flat and gummy, and ever since starting 38 years ago seeing new bits for the first time here and there now and then.

As I'm writing this I also notice that I did not read poetry (except to complete requirements) because it was hard to read. Compared to philosophy of any kind (exception: symbolic logic, but then that's not reading is it?), poetry requires attention of the short but deep variety – one not natural to me who does long and deep effortlessly. I did not know to make the effort, which says something about how I was taught poetry – as a must do, a formal compliance presumed to be valuable.

The last past they got right. Because I read it under academic duress, I 'learned' it so to speak. I know about some poetry, as I do some music, without ever getting into it until recently, and still now with more a long view than the immediate one. And once again, an education is shown to be unpredictably worthwhile. In that education I read a canon or two because, in spite of my lack of natural inclination to the mode, it was given to be done by people and a system I respected and whose standards I was brought up earlier to aspire to.

Somewhere in graduate school I learned poetry was music, though I knew that from Plato's complaint about the insidious nature of poetry long before without hearing it. Somehow I heard the music a bit. Like many musics, poetry is varied and less or more accessible to different personal attunements and cultural conditionings. Mine was more Gerard Manley Hopkins than Wordsworth. I have a simple, engineering ear. And I never wanted to make music, so never learned to read it. Same thing with poetry? I did write one poem in 1971 and it seems that was enough.

So I bought Frederick Seidel's Poems 1959-2009 due to a long view review in the New York Review of Books a year ago where claims were made for his grip on America (hear a Murray-like attraction here again? Yup). And I've started reading them in a new way compared to my Murray experience - grazing them at first, not striving to get inside yet tasting enough to think I could later do so. From the graze I cannot immediately embrace Seidel like Murray but he seems also less local than I expected; he's more cosmopolitan?

In the end of this wander maybe I just don't have a very poetic inclination, or too much of the engineering one crowded it out. Having grown up in a musically competent household, I never caught the tunemakers bug which my siblings did. Genetic defect, cultural or ???

Learner therapist (4) a breath of life?

2011-04-07T15:55:00.000+10:00

Learner therapist (4) a breath of life?
Torrey Orton
April 7, 2011

In my search for patients' agency, and the author within who drives them (if other things don't get there first), I'm increasingly noticing little signals of activity. This is a matter of small sounds and slight expressions. These may grow into loud sounds and gross expressions as modelled for us all with indelible memorability by Homer Simpson.* Among the hardest things to say for the injured are words of self-approval or words disapproval of family sources of their injuries. I suspect such words are what are coming into hearing/view through the little breaths below.

I offer these signals as enticement to others to share their bits in the hope that we can develop a taxonomy of little expressions to join the forces of little steps. The point here, as there, is to enhance patients' awareness of ways in which and times at which they are taking small steps towards their emerging selves. It is our responsibility to provide such help, since they are often blind to their own agency and ignorant of the myriad forms it can take.

Small breaths…

For instance, "phuuh" is a sound I cannot spell. Yet it reaches me these days like a declaration of dry despair, usually arising out of the flatlands of a psycho-spiritual plateau, often mid-session midway through a therapy engagement. It is a quiet, almost inaudible expression barely strong enough to be heard, more seen than heard in the slightly pursed lips of a patient. Or myself, too, I'm noticing these days. The sound occurs often in synch with a slight movement of the head away from the line of eye to eye engagement, the kind of movement which also signals an emerging insight or feeling.

Apathetic

Irritated

Further along this spectrum lies a dry spitting sound - "pffft" - which ejects a thought or feeling mildly but certainly. It often has a comment hidden in it. The speaker seems not to quite embrace it, but the thought is out enough that it cannot be restrained. The "pffft" is more about getting the fact that they have a thought out than making that thought visible.

Disturbed

Another grade along is the wet, spat ejection….a slight swear.

Annoyed

"Doh" or "doah" – derisive mimicry of dopey other(s), which, depending on the tone of speaking, may be cuttingly abrasive (an aggression) or just a twitch of the rhetorical tail (a slight gotcha).

Angered

"pfauuugh" is towards the other end of the exhalatory spectrum, a clear rush of derisive disapproval, amazement that another does not share one's own insight, sensitivity, …..or one missed it oneself!!

Enraged

These can all be applied recursively – directed at oneself as well as others. I'm not sure of my classification of expressions by feeling levels, but there's something systemic about them in the anger spectrum. Kassinove and Tafrate's "Anger Thermometer" has 10 grades of anger marked by ten vocabulary steps. These are more distinctions than I know how to use, but some psychs feel comfortable enough to publish them so facility with the distinctions may be useful.

*By the way, 50 years ago when in boarding school, an expression indistinguishable from Homer's "doh" was a popular reproach to another teenage dope's intellectual or behavioural vacuity of the moment. No one escaped the title! How did it transit all those decades?? Is this just another item in the records of the eternal return?? If the latter, then 'doh' arises from a deep cultural meme or, as the neuropsychs might have it, hard-wiring.

Learner therapist (3) What’s a person…

2011-03-27T10:29:00.000+11:00

Learner therapist (3) What's a person…
Torrey Orton
March 27, 2011

… an agent, with potential authority?

What are we trying to help patients 'fix' or to repair in themselves? For me it is essentially their agency, their ability to act or to influence their worlds. Psychic injuries, like physical ones, inhibit our power, render us weak where we could, or used to be, strong. The help we need is to restart our motivation (value) and improve our action competence(s) (behavioural repertoires). Notice I've slid from patients to 'us'. We are them, but they are usually not us, when in the room. For what follows, we are them, too.

This is a vignette to hang a theory of agency on. The theoretical connections are made through numbers in parentheses – eg (6) – which refer to examples of agency in the first paragraph after the vignette.

D

One day alcoholic D, about 40, walked in with his whole self on show. His hands were fairly damp for the first time in a while. He asked for tissues to dry them (6) as he noted the fact in passing. It was the first time in 16 months work that he had been fully present, though not for lack of trying. That he could be present was always on display (7) in his ambivalence about being here. He could talk about that easily, and did so every session (1). "I really don't have anything to say today" he would announce on arrival, while always being almost unclothed his defences were so slight.

He has a lot to defend – a lifetime's actual and threatened violence from a still living alcoholic father. One thing in particular: the fiercely vivid memory of repeatedly over his primary years having to lie silently in bed in feigned sleep to avoid his just-home-from-the- pub father's attention, consciously effacing himself by containing his terror from the senses of his terrorist. He has the finest detectors of non-verbal expressions I have ever met, attached to a capacity (2) to precisely test those perceptions.

...a glass of whiskey

But that day he arrived in such ambivalence that he had skolled a glass of whiskey from a local provider on the way over. His conflicted feelings (anger and hope, riding on the energy of interest) had bounced him back and forth in the bus on the way here, just as they do every day for him. But in the room they were visibly so as he shifted in the chair, giving and withdrawing eye-to-eye contact like a chimp in a cage. What he had to say this day, after briefly having nothing as usual, is that he was here with his fears blazing and his hopes leading (8). This is the motivation that brought him into the room.

We stepped from his present into its origins through the gateway of D's defences, a set of behaviours which mark his coming to the end of bearable exposure of his pain. These gestures all happening together – breathing out, shaping up to fight or fly (in the shoulders), scrunching up his face – lead to a visible / audible stop signal (4) from D, if I haven't already got their implication. When I use his name, D, it always elicits this expressive set, as if I called out from the end of his bed to waken him into the expected paternal violence. It is this set of behaviours which expressed his being in that life space while in the room and how he controlled his exposure to it.

Control the terrorist father within…

We worked on that space to reduce its terror. I explained that this was a normal approach for engaging traumas of many kinds. Through it he could learn the threat was no longer present in its embodied way, and that he could control the feelings. As we finished a few minutes exposure, he queried, "You've done this before haven't you?"(5) And, he was ready to consider starting (3) the reconciliation trip through which he might get final control over the terrorist father in him. We had approached it 6 months ago but it had seemed way over his horizon then. Now it's in view; feels possible and desirable (1).

When I'm working with D, I have an implicit model of a person in the near background of my approach. I listen and look for certain indicators of how he is. (1) Can he say what they want, (2) interrupt to clarify a meaning, (3) propose a direction for discussion (at the beginning or in the middle of a session), (4) request changes of time or place for sessions, (5) offer feedback on how it's going for him, (6) notice what his body tells him about how he is, (7) how he presents overall, or (8) have an inner sense of truth or direction which tells him what's right and not (often expressed as feeling unfairly done by), etc.…? These are access points to his growth potential, present motivation(s) and levels of need(s). They apply to everyone.

…anyone can grow

When I first had the idea of presenting my underlying therapy assumption it seemed easy because it is so obvious to me, revisited daily in my conduct of therapy. The foundations extend back to my past as a teacher, trainer, coach where my assumption always was, and remains in every new encounter in therapy, that anyone can grow if they are compos mentis.

This is not a value statement. It's one about our nature (to which our nurture may or may not add!). The value aspect arises in making the choice to apply this assumption to everyone I encounter, professionally or personally. This is our professional responsibility.

I have worked with this assumption in the US, France, China, Singapore and Australia. You probably have your own version of favourite indicators and there's probably a thousand books proposing various right or correct answers to 'What is a person?' For me, my version allows me to approach EVERY patient from the same foundation – that they all have an identifiable set of needs, core functions and basic necessities for effective living in their world(s). I find the details of their needs, functions and basic necessities arguable, but a lack of them is the boundary between human and android. At another time a full underlying theory of a person may be usefully added to my entry assumption.

Appreciation (34) … Just do it!

2011-03-06T21:19:00.000+11:00

Appreciation (34) … Just do it!
Torrey Orton
March 6, 2011

'Just do it!' should be a candidate for a Rectification. It reeks of modern mantras commanding effortless deployments of will for transformations of shoes, souls, or real estate perhaps. But this appreciation came to me in the flush of a therapeutic intuition.

Many years ago the impossible – reversal of a 90% public opposition to seatbelts – occurred in 6 months or less (the user survey did not identify at what point in the six months respondents' opposition to the innovation had ceased). It occurred by force (legislation). Six months later the numbers were almost reversed. 'Just do it' version 1, a seamless habit change, but a very small and doable one with almost zero post-adoption costs for drivers. Easy to do, and easy to police.

Then there's the Nike version arising out of the mindless careerism of the 80's – 90's driven by the silly but attractive proposition that everyone and every organisation should be "world class". A principal capacity for arrival in that class was action and that, in turn, was a mere matter of personal will. 'Just do it' Version 2. Implication: if you don't have the will you don't deserve the fill. Moral arm twisting and a competitive edge.

The version I want to bring into view arises from another developmental proposition altogether – though it can easily appear as just another version 1 or 2 above. This is the 'doing it' required for an experience one's never had. This extends across the full range of human activities from eating to loving. For me a recent one was taking up morning floor exercises when in partial recovery from pancreatitis.*

I was still feeling achy and dog tired much of the time, and this started from the beginning of the day. I wasn't improving my sleep either. Probably some connection between the two facts: low sleep and low feelings. So I decided to take up the sleep improvement program's first recommendation – learnt to relax, and practise it daily for 20 minutes. While at it, I thought I'd throw in a few stretches I'd learned in yoga 35 years ago, and then also a few tone builders for my weakened gut core. Some leg lifts, bicycling, arches, and various hip flexors. Altogether about 25 minutes.

No surprise to those on top of rehabilitation, but I got such a seriously clear lift in overall good feeling that I was looking forward to doing it again the next day. I've been at it daily ever since, on the back of the same daily reinforcement, which is now an inducement to persistence. It's an internal push rather than an external pull.

It struck me that there must be many variations on this theme of taking action to discover a need or want. Cuisines offer obvious (once discovered) taste titillations hiding behind the screen of olfactory repulsion – eg., durian, chou doufu, some wines and cheeses. Music provides similarly distinctive, and equally offensive to the uninitiated, variety – the modern atonal, Beijing opera, Middle Eastern rhythm and melodies. Visual arts are a storehouse of visions which have to be learned to be appreciated, or even seen in some cases – Cubism, Abstract Expressionism, etc.

Different degrees and kinds of actions are required to enter these worlds because they initially resist entry or even obscure the possibility of it. So it may be helpful to find a person's relevant previous experience(s) to build a first effort on. Relying on chance won't do. Explicit encouragement is required since the unknown cannot be chosen until it is known. A look at a durian does not invite a bite. A first hearing of a Beijing opera is a jangle. First sight of Blue Poles may be a downer.

Whatever the approach to taking action, the moment of action has to be faced. Having a purpose other than that which the action explicitly seeks can help cross the hurdle into a new experience. For some, just trying something new is enough. For others, the action's explicit objective could be to acquire a skill, a sensitivity, knowledge, etc. The implicit objective might be to validate their own sense of direction. Support is often essential to find an inner source of motivation so 'Just doing it' can be its own reward.

*A not to be recommended event which left me 10kgs lighter (which could have taken months of training to achieve but only a week of nil-by-mouth in hospital). The standard recovery period is 3-6 weeks, of which I am now into the eight week, restarting moderated work 3 weeks ago (therapy) and developing new self-management regimes in eating (no alcohol which I don't miss at all and one latte on clinic therapy days) and morning relaxation and exercise practices with daily consistency, so far!

Learner therapist (2) – Are you culturally competent?

2011-02-27T12:12:00.000+11:00

Learner therapist (2) – Are you culturally competent?
Torrey Orton
Feb.27, 2010

The same but different dilemma
I am a little apprehensive about writing this. The area of cultures and cultural differences is fraught with cross-currents of moral and political and social and personal energies in contest with each other. Any generalisation about cultures is an opportunity for claims of prejudice or factual doubt or moral obtuseness…. I want to acknowledge I'm inviting you into this territory because it is real territory seen from many perspectives in our culture and our world, hence conflicted. It is also inescapable, except in denial.

Cultures present therapists with a very prominent dilemma (which applies across the health sector) – we are all the same (human) and all different (individuals). The therapeutic challenge (amplified by medicalisation of our trade) is to integrate patient uniqueness with generic formulations and manual-driven treatments.

Unremarkably, I have had clients from places I scarcely know more of than their rough place on a map (and I don't' mean country Victoria!). While I speak some Chinese (lived there total of 3.5 years) and more French (lived there 1+ year), my Croatian, Hungarian, Booran, Farsi, Cantonese, Greek…and on and on… are limited to the English versions of what they each call their languages and ethnicities.

One of my best and bilingual (English / German) friends spent years saying "yes, but there's really no fundamental difference is there?" Only after 5 years back and forth did I succeed in bridging what I never imagined would be a resilient rift. My teaching failure, for sure. Most of the differences that matter are invisible. Most of us cannot talk clearly about our cultures except through stories which assume their contextual meanings - just what foreigners lack.

Why do cultural differences matter for therapy?
As therapists we engage with all manner of ages, genders, socio-economic, religious and professional backgrounds about all manner of complaints, issues and concerns, and recognise shared patterns among them (our eventual formulations) and offer them structured treatments (evidence-based therapies). They all speak English, so what's to worry about?

Well, here's a few things to worry about: basic ideas and beliefs may be misrepresented in translation or an inflexible second language – love in a personal choice culture and in a family choice culture may be quite different; getting fine points of client meaning, especially emerging ones, is difficult enough when a smile does not mean anxiety; there's too much to learn to really understand another culture – I barely understand my own!

Different therapies?
Finally, to admit a difference of conceptualisation of therapy into is to saddle myself with a potentially unbridgeable incompetence. For example, a non-judgmental, non-advisory relationship is not what is expected in many cultures; just the reverse. In such cultures, one consults a wise (by experience or profession) person for advice and insight, not facilitation. Of course it is understood the advice may be disregarded, but not getting any is dereliction of perceived professional duty.

So, what difference(s) matter?
In three ways, culture is critical to who we are. It determines (1) our first concepts and practices of family; (2) it provides core meaning systems (religion, values, assumptions, etc.); and (3) it models appropriate practices for relating to close (family) and distant (public, others) people, plus a host of everyday matters like what's right to eat, how to do so, and what to do with the results. These foundations survive into second and third generations, or further for some cultures, of displaced peoples - immigrants of various origins (trauma or economic; forced or chosen). These three areas are also principal domains of most therapeutic work.

For example, in some cultures the structure and meaning of family, and therefore individuality, is not comprehensible from within an Anglo/ western cultural frame – the assumptions and practices which underlie psychology here. In China,

"The relationship between family and family members can be likened to the relationships between a body and body parts. For example, I feel itchy on my leg and my hand comes to help by scratching it. Does my leg have to say, "Thank you, hand." Does my hand reply, "You are welcome." No, neither one does so. Why, because they are supposed to help each other as they belong to a single unit. Though parts can be distinguished, they do not function independent of the body. The mutual relationship between parents and children are understood by Chinese in the same way.

And that's why in a Chinese family, when parents do something for their children or vice versa, you hardly hear something like thank you and you are welcome. From the perspective of the Confucius tradition, the family as a unit of intelligence is fundamental and irreducible when children are young. Any attempt to further reduce a family to a collection of individuals violates the integrity and meaning of the family unit."

Chen Jie-qi, AERA, 2006, San Francisco - How MI Theory fits into traditional and modern China, pg 3

On the other hand, a Booran family in the borderlands of Ethiopia and Kenya is entwined with its clan and village in myriad ways. For example, a council of elder women oversees the treatment of married women and can authorise a divorce for mistreatment by husbands. Among other things, this judgment forces the return of the woman's bride gift cattle from the husband…possibly a more than 50-50 split. Being a child involves being under the constant care of all adults in the village, who share the responsibility for child-raising outside the home. Everyone is an uncle or aunt, grandmother or grandfather.

What do our cultures do for us?
We tend to think our culture is good. It must be, otherwise we would not be good, which apart from our psychological injuries, we tend to think we are. If we do not, we can see ourselves to be good by identifying with our culture of origin. Mostly we don't think about this, so it is out of our awareness.

Automatically we judge other cultures by our standards. So does pretty much everyone else, with a few exceptions who I hope will become more numerous. But even they will have moments of deciding that their own culture is best. Having a culture is like having a family – even if it's bad for us we give it a break at our cost, and sometimes the cost of others of different cultures.

In the public domain this plays out in the form of persistent expectations, if not demands, that the rest of the world follow our path to human improvement. For instance, follow the commentary about China in which the assumption they have to become democratic, and free-marketers, too, is often not even stated as the ground of critiques being made of their pathway for the last 30 years.

What does being in a minority do to minorities?
In contexts where one culture is presumed to be right (like national cultures tend to do of themselves), minority culture members are subjected to three pressures: one, to delete characteristics which are unsettling to majority culture members, like speaking their own language in public; two, to keep to themselves the fact that this is painful and feels unjust to them.

As well, third, they know that much of what they carry as their culture of origin cannot be explained to people who can't see further than their own next footy game, school fete, meat pie, etc.….Their attention span isn't long enough. Even members of the majority culture can't get their foreign experiences listened to when they come home from some time in other peoples' cultures, an experience in which some may be in the minority in a clear way for the first time in their lives.

Culturally literate therapists?
So, what should be done to increase the numbers of the culturally literate? A few pathways:

Try the story Meat for a shock to the assumption that we are all the same. Similar effects can be found in a variety of science fiction works (eg. Isaac Asimov – I Robot, Robert A. Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land, William Gibson: Neuromancer

as well as utopias and dystopias. Then, add the factoid that the divorce rate in China exceeded the marriage rate by 10+% last year, proving at once that things change while remaining consistent.

If you have little experience of foreignness it can be had at home by experiments like walking into a pub you aren't sure you 'belong' in. A seriously country town can provide this quite well (if you are not and never have been a farmer). You should get that odd-one out feeling. Failing to find a pub to test, recall a moment of adult embarrassment or shame for a related feeling – misfit isolation.

Education agencies should include a cultural perspectives course as a requirement for graduate psychs of all varieties, but especially those in front line heath care provision. These courses should include a non-negotiable behavioural segment challenging participants' mono-cultural perspectives.

Join the Psychology and Cultures Interest Group of the APS and get on the mailing list from Multicultural Mental Health Australia.

Finally, ask questions when you feel an assumption coming on.

And, delight in difference.

Learner therapist - a proposition

2011-02-14T10:56:00.001+11:00

Learner therapist - a proposition
Torrey Orton
Feb.14, 2011

Dear PsychologyMelbournePartners colleagues and others,

I want to talk to other therapists more than I can now. There are some opportunities at a clinic I share with 10+ other interestingly different psychs. I also share with them very restricted times of exposure to each other (scheduling) and small windows of engagement (diary again).From the two kinds of structured sharing events we have monthly – staff meetings and a couples therapy group – I have never failed to get useful prompts to my own perspectives and access to tools of our trade.

And, more important for me, this group in various configurations shows a consistent development in openness. Members both offer unsolicited, critical self revelations and respond supportively to others' revelations, while keeping the task(s) of the moment in view. For me, this group capacity is essential to engaging challenging therapy issues and cases.

But, it's still not enough, partly because I'm finding myself home to a bunch of somewhat developed insights and tools which need assessment of their real potential in the view of fellow practitioners. The other problem is limited access, so find a way to expand the group!! Now there's a problem. By what means should I try to do this? I know what a blog cannot do without massive efforts. There are a lot of activities competing for therapists' attention, including many mandated ones fulfilling professional development requirements whose attractiveness is compelling if not always entrancing.

In earlier lives of mine I've set about somewhat similar objectives by network building – looking up people I knew who 'should' have an interest in what I was proposing: an experimental school, a commune, a protest about some public issue, an alternative to a moribund union. This was actually community building since it was based in a small city where most of the players knew each other, or of each other, or could get a personal connection in two degrees to each other. That was then. A TV, telephone, radio and newspaper community.

I'm imagining potential participants in this exploration will be therapists who want more engaged, challenging peer reflection, who want more challenging perspectives on the purposes, processes and contexts of therapy, and who are computer comfortable but prefer face-to-face work…
For me writing is part of learning. As I build a picture of what I'm trying to understand, the process itself contributes new understanding. As well, written learning makes understanding open to critique, a necessary step for getting outside of myself!

So, I'll start with a few trial articles: my general objective is to identify and break through the black and white, either/or, and digital thinking patterns which abound in our trade. These areas of practice tend to summon up exclusive responses to proposed therapeutic interventions. In some cases I will be commending new competences as mandatory for effective therapeutic practice - e.g. intercultural competence and knowledge. Possible topics include:

Power in recovery from anxiety/depression – learning to convert anger into relevant power in appropriate relationships
Cause and patient injuries – a blame free world is a cause-free world; post-modern dilemmas
The world we are in as a background facilitator of injury – see eco-anxiety for instance.
Culture difference and therapeutic competence – a minimum requirement for a multi-cultural country
Commercialisation and bureaucratisation constraints and facilitation effects on practice - the Medicare 'service' conundrum
Couple conflict and shared 'facts' – finding things to agree on in areas of dispute
Competing therapeutic paradigms?? How do therapies relate to each other?
What research is really worthy of report? How to tell evidence from research.
The biopsychosocialcultural perspective in practice
Where do you stand on the boundaries of life – IVF, abortion, euthanasia, suicide??

I'll be inviting feedback from PMP colleagues in the following areas:

Interest of the topic itself?
Accessibility / clarity of the writing?
Suggestions re: topic/style improvements, extensions
Others who might be interested in such matters??
Venues for exploring / presenting such matters??

The invitation will be personal and declinable; if declined I will appreciate a few words of explanation since these may also help identify different approaches I might use to finding and connecting with therapists. If accepted, I expect the feedback process will take 10-20 mins. by phone; no writing required.

Appreciation (33) … Frogal fugue

2011-02-09T07:50:00.000+11:00

Appreciation (33) … Frogal fugue
Torrey Orton
Feb.9, 2010

What four different frog families and three different crickets (?) sound like in celebration of the refilling of their water hole.

We've just had 100-150 mm of rain in the last three days in Melbourne…remnants of cyclone Anthony which dumped a small ocean on Queensland three weeks ago (that flood). Under the right conditions these things peter out over central Australia. Their warm, damp leftovers may get sucked down south by a weather system gliding out of the Indian Ocean 3000 ks. away from here. It's clearly visible on national weather maps, the one system sliding along the edge of the other. What doesn't show immediately is what the slider picks up – water!

And this was our first real walk in four weeks due to my recovery from a week incarcerated for acute pancreatitis*. As we started out a small rain shower kicked off and we stepped under some path bordering trees to get out the wet weathers. In the midst of covering up I felt a pinch on my ankle, looked down and spotted a bull ant having a nibble through my walking sock and a small troop of its colleagues wandering up my shoes to get in on the fun. Turned out we had setup the changeover to wets on an ant mound hidden under track gravel. Bitey, indeed!! No harm but the withdrawal took some doing. They stick as well as bite.

Towards the end of our ramble (slight incline over 1500 meters or so) we began to hear a somewhat mechanical noise ahead of us, guessing that the neighbouring quarry was being pumped out after the rain. Another 150 meters and the real sound became very clear to our left in an old fire fighting pond refilled by the rains. It was the frogal fugue…a low thunder of different frogs and crickets and who knows what celebrating the possibility of a late season mating melee. We are quite used to a small version in our garden, the remnant players of an original gene pool established there 25 years ago by a neighbour's child. But they all play the same come hither tune, in near perfect timing. And there's seldom more than 3-4 players.

This was something different – thundering almost, and so many notes played in different volumes and keys; an orchestra in olive drab variations. The attached file will give as good a rendition of the experience as a mobile's note facility can produce. Jack up the volume a bit til you feel slightly overwhelmed and you'll have the feel of it.

Enjoy…we did.

Nuts!!! - I've just discovered audio files cannot be uploaded to the blog!!! If you want one, email and I'll send it by return!!! Worth the effort for us both.

*A not-to-be-recommended event which left me 10kgs lighter (which could have taken months of training to achieve but only a week of nil-by-mouth in hospital). The standard recovery period is 3-6 weeks, of which I am now into the fifth week, restarting moderated work today (therapy) and developing new self-management regimes in eating (no coffee or alcohol, neither of which I miss at all; smaller meals, etc.) and morning relaxation and exercise practices with daily consistency, so far!

2011-01-30T14:13:00.000+11:00

Rectifications (25) – Inculcate, inculcation?
Torrey Orton– Jan 30, 2011

"Supporters of private school education argue that it inculcates students with values."

Chris Middendorp, The AGE 070111

I haven't had an opportunity for a literate rant for a while, and 'inculcate' gives it to me. It's one of those impermeable words which seem to signify or indicate a lot but cannot be parsed or scanned for concrete meaning. I inculcated them with…? Like 'instil', it suggests beating something into others by droning repetition, backed with implicit threats, occasionally explicated in some unavoidable way for the threatened.* A school, sports club or company will do fine, and as usual public politics provides the model for all non-physical violences with its occasionally revealed backdrop of more vigorous pursuits of branch leaderships.

Middendorp immediately debunks this assumed virtue of private schools with a reminder of the "antics" of their students at end of terms. Or, just partying. Since it's schools we're talking about, probably the inculcating takes place thru religious education classes, or even more advanced ethics for the entitled. The mantra obligations to 'give back' to 'make a difference' that they implicitly will not be making in their real adult lives make it clear that giving for a difference other than their own always comes second, or as a ploy for another first order (self-interested) advantage. In the US, this is formalised as entry requirements for the 'better' universities – x number of hours in community service. I wonder what kinds of giving that produces. It's no longer a gift; it's an obligation whose honouring dishonours the purpose it espouses.

Coming from households populated by the present role holders in leading industries and professions, or aspirants thereunto, and which can afford the annual fees, the kids will know what's the real world and what a religious or secular ethical proposition means in that context. Pro-forma moral positioning is not to be confused with the commercial-in-confidence rules of private sector and, increasingly, public sector life, the deniability of public actions, or if not deniable, the escape acts of leaders of many hues – sporting, commercial, political, spiritual.

What may be important to learn in schools is what the to-be-inculcated mantra of the times are so that appropriate deferences can be made to them when constructing spin for pollies, leaders and/or oneself. This is much easier now that we have two sources present at all times – the implicit value systems of public behaviour and it's school yard practice sessions, and the explicit values teaching stuff of positive psychology, anti-bullying principles, and the vision-mission-and-values statements which every up-to-date organisation must have these days.

I look forward to the school which checks ethics learning using the following test: two questions, (1) what values should graduates of this school display in public (and examples of that actually occurring)? and, (2) what values are the real values that are displayed by our graduates and some examples of those displays? The evidence base for the test should be easy to assemble, but dismaying to share with the world. And the marking could be done in discussion groups of 8-10 students.

This process would also give these emerging adults a taste of the organisational life most are headed for. This often demands active embracing of 'values' with a concurrent agreement not to discuss the realities of the contexts in which they are to be expressed. So, it may be more inoculated than inculcated they'll be getting, if not a belting of some sort for failing to recognise the difference between espoused values and those in practice wherever they are. Publishing the results in the school's annual report under a heading like "Proceedings with our values" could be fun and more attractive than the My School website.

*Let's have a look at the definitions.
tr.v., -cat·ed, -cat·ing, -cates.

To impress (something) upon the mind of another by frequent instruction or repetition; instil: inculcating sound principles.
To teach (others) by frequent instruction or repetition; indoctrinate: inculcate the young with a sense of duty.
Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/inculcate#ixzz1AKfuvakt

Recognising little steps…of interest!!

2011-01-07T16:31:00.000+11:00

Recognising little steps…of interest!!
Torrey Orton – January 7, 2011

If you don't recognise the step you've just taken,

you won't know where you've come from,

where you are, or

where you've got to….

T. O. in talking to Ian, 301110

Of all the wonders of therapy, the ways of learning are the grandest and most marvellous. They are also often invisible to the client at the start of their development / recovery. Part of their obscurity to the actor's eye lies in their size – they are little steps, in little ways about large matters for them. We are not accustomed to seeing the detail of our behaviour except when we are learning something for the first time. Then attention to detail is absolutely required because we are, in a sense, making it up as we are doing it.

In addition, habitual behaviour depends on precisely not looking at the detail of its production; it functions automatically to free us up to pay attention to more demanding, non-routine matters. In that respect we are intentionally, but unconsciously, blind in that area at that moment. Hence the jolting shock of discovering that the terrain we were crossing has a suddenly more demanding character – a hole that could not have been seen until we were on the edge of it, and missed then because we were looking down the track.

Rough surface
The stumble tells us, if not a fall which is more damaging. I've had a couple of these driving lately where a "rough surface" sign should have been and wasn't, and a dented wheel rim was almost the price. The whack /thump of the plunge into a 10cm hole was followed half a second too late by my "oh shit…" appreciation of its arrival. For a therapy client such holes are just what their defences are arrayed to prevent: having certain kinds of feelings which are attached to certain life experiences – the triggers of their anxiety or depression. The learning needed for recovery is through pathways inhabited by their feared experiences so as to disarm those experiences, and eventually pre-empt them.

This in turn requires not merely learning kinds of actions, but at the same time learning that they can act in certain circumstances. A simple example is that of a very low self-esteeming depressed person who winces if complimented and never in their own hearing utters a word of self-approval for anything. They may act self-approvingly occasionally – like by starting therapy or sustaining appropriate exercise or health regimes or performing competently at work. But the evidence of their action has to be pointed out to them, and then it may take a while (weeks or months) to be accepted as such.

A tool box
So noticing that change is occurring is often not easy. Focus on effective action(s) is hesitant, interrupted by recurrent holes in their paths. Sustenance along the way may be an offering of small steps and picking up new ones from a therapist's tool box. It assumes there is a knowable set of domains of human needs / functions that are capable of development. There are six compartments in it, at the moment: mental competences – intellectual and emotional; physical competences – perceptual and performative; moral competences – evaluating and enacting; cultural competences – role flexibility and integration; spiritual competences – vision and celebration; and political competences – initiative and inclusion.

These obviously overlap. Development of mental competences will often have components of the other 5 competences built in or implied by the mental. The political and moral are interdependent. Competences do not occur in a pure, isolated form. Rather they will appear as the aspect of a moment of life which is pivotal for the client's development needs at that time. Or, it will appear as the aspect which circumstances both demand and provide as opportunity for their development.

For therapy clients, and millions of would be self-improvers, there is only one question. Can I actually change who/what I am now in any respect (assuming I know who or what, other than I am, I want to be and that becoming that is not merely a purchase away)? The failure rate of aspirational (diet fads, makeovers of various sorts, exercise regimes) and inspirational (spiritual, semi-religious and wholly religious regimens) is well known, though the latter are more promising than the former. These are the hunting grounds of shonks. That they survive regulatory regimes and constant warnings ensures us that the felt need to change is great (whatever its provenance).

The following is a prompt for self-recognition. These can be used to structure and prompt self-reflection. Here are the six of them (the tools in the box) in some detail.

Mental competences – intellectual and emotional:

A little meditation step for beginners – noticing that you did not do the exercise you committed to doing; thinking about doing the exercise you decided to do daily, even though you did not do it!!
Seeing something well-known differently, as did this contributor to the "Learning to act right" series, can open doorways of perception and action which revolutionise a struggle for personal effectiveness.
Noticing a major change of mood which happened quietly – e.g. discovering that he was not anxious about getting to an appointment on time, though the normal conditions for being anxious were all there!!

Physical competences – perceptual and performative:

Not doing my aikido practices for a long break (3 months) and then returning to find that I could remember all of them (21 moves) and more importantly I could see/feel parts of them which I had not noticed before, and so could improve them for the first time.
Feeling that an unknown hill has been topped in a performance activity – sport, art, craft or technology.

Moral competences – evaluating and enacting:

Suddenly seeing that a feeling of revulsion at another's behaviour arose from one's own conflicted values about that behaviour – that one thought at the same time that the behaviour was wrong and that the other had a right to their own values!! See Trusting judgment for an example in detail.
Recognising that one's injuries cost pain and produced strengths, which others do not have because they have never faced the same challenges.

Cultural competences – role flexibility and integration (eg. gender):

Realising that one had tried a new food, music, painting without first doubting it…had experienced it in itself, as itself, etc.
Seeing the world thru another culture's eyes – e.g. gender roles – and acting to meet or join that world.

Spiritual competences – vision and celebration:

People with religious upbringings which they have rejected, or been rejected from, often benefit from revisiting it by attending a service, a function (confession, baptism) or just the music.
Noticing that his professional practice had ceased to be onerous and become what he looked forward to, almost from the finish of the previous practice session.

Political competences – initiative and inclusion:

Writing a letter about a personally salient issue.
Speaking up in public about a group issue, at work or socially.
Inviting others to participate in a public process, at work or socially.

Search for interest
What's going on here is a search for interest(s), for the feeling of interest which is the core feeling* among the many striving for our attention. Little steps can often be identified by asking, 'What's my interest at the moment, what's in my actions now that is driving them??' But then you have to notice a step to ask the question. Certainly we can do that, but maybe we can do it quicker and with greater certainty. We know that the steps are moments of desired change. Even missteps can be useful signs of development, since the acknowledgment of them indicates there is a value or standard in the background which is evaluating our actions. Back to the discussion with Ian:

If you don't recognise the step you've just taken,

you won't know where you've come from,

where you are, or

where you've got to….

*"The emotion of interest is continually present in the normal mind under normal conditions, and it is the central motivation for engagement in creative and constructive endeavors and for the sense of well-being. Interest and its interaction with other emotions account for selective attention, which in turn influences all other mental processes."

Emotion Theory and Research: Highlights, Unanswered Questions, and Emerging Issues

Carroll E. Izard , Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2009. 60:1–25

Emphasis supplied.

A New Year’s Message - Aspirations for a divided world

2011-01-03T22:17:00.003+11:00

A New Year's Message - Aspirations for a divided world
Torrey Orton – January 3, 2011

"…, plus c'est la meme chose."

Recently I ran into an IT consultant I had worked with in a bank years ago. From a quick hello, we stepped forward into the past. "How's consulting?" I asked. "Same as 20 years ago", he said. "They're making the same mistakes. IT doesn't understand user needs and users don't understand IT's needs." Since long before CP Snow's The Two Cultures it has ever been so.

He and I, and others, at that time worked to bridge that gap by running a system-building process with conscious intent to surface two-way communication blocks. I had been hired part way into it to front the eventual user helpdesk. We imagined that a defence against misunderstanding, and its siblings distrust, disrespect and dysfunction, could be created by engaging the different perspectives and their stakeholders early. The gap between the working practices of the players was deep enough to be unbridgeable by monthly management committee meetings or the daily drudge of the analysts disclosing the target business practices with enough confidence to warrant encoding them. Forces beyond our control short-circuited the effort. Fantasies are the yeast of imagination not the bread of its results.

Irrational merge-over

The bank in question did not survive its own financial incompetence 20 years ago. Recent memory is populated with more present evidence that they were merely instances of normal bubbles which pop in the national economic firmament, the product of what are now known as the irrational exuberance of capitalism, not the warning they might have been.

The merge-over* winner's own similar IT development project replaced ours, only to fail a year later to the tune of $90 million of that year's dollars. Hopefully some others since then have devised better strategies and finer tools. Legacy systems and system incompetence…for people, history is a source and a drag at once. But not for all peoples in the same way(s) at the same time.

Fast forward twenty years to find George Megalogenis' Quarterly Essay conclusion:

"What makes me pessimistic about the nation's politics now is the character of many of the people in it. The crew that delivered us such a silly campaign have to behave like adults to make the hung parliament work. They will need to overcome a generational instinct for instant gratification." (Trivial Pursuits, pg. 80, QE 40 2010)

Hung parliaments (and the close-call ones like the Victorian Liberal win a month ago) are a little less startling than normal ones these days. They are also promising because the clear lack of voter clarity is clarifying about where we and some others (UK, Iraq…) really are – namely, stuck. Stuckness, for shrinks, is a classic symptom of unresolved, and momentarily unresolvable, conflicts within persons, families and groups. For others, politicians for instance, it's the material of fear (of the uncertainty unavoidably present in the body politic) and loathing (of the pretensions of those who are seen to be uncertainty's cause – lesser political forces like Greens and independents). While being stuck is also a necessary precursor to solutions for difficult problems, it can turn into being mired. Political intransigence is a potent muck.

A sustainable response?

I find it easier to entertain aspirations for people rather than humanity in our collective forms - our cultures. Maybe this is proper in a deeply evolutionary sense, though merely an introverted preference in my personal one. The sustainable responses to present challenges may come from individual variations more than group ones?? Along the way many will not be adaptive or adapting.

In this view, the excessive late-capitalist focus on personal choice at the cost of all other levels and actions may be the 'right' emphasis in the natural tension between groups and the needs of their members. Our group and culture boundaries and meanings are breaking down faster than new ones being built, and that will likely be the case in the new powers of the east because their modernising is scientific like ours was and science eats traditional cultures, without consuming them. Sorting out the eaters from the eaten is usually violent, openly or implicitly.

While messages of wonder about the state and future(s) the "the West" increase, counterpoints from and about "the East" arise as well to remind us that the pathways of history are marked by cultures' living carcases, upon some of which their successors grow like the saplings of forest giants in California do on their parents' remains. Strangely, the rising and declining cultures (eastern and western) both identify themselves with their historical origins, all the more intensely as the pressures and strains of their respective stages of development torsion their psychosociospiritual innards.

So, engage

Rather than careening off into a revisit of the state of the world, I realise as a result of the difficulty of writing this so far – 3 weeks of stumbling around – that my aspiration for a divided world (which it has ever been so – nothing special about today's divisions other than their being the ones I'm experiencing now) is to be engaged myself in at least four dimensions:

My ageing and the possibility of a useless surviving (where unnecessary resource consumption meets loss of control of the choice to consume);

My need for an integrated professional practice in a context of dis-integrating forces moving persistently to decompose practice into specializations;

My enjoyment of therapy's endless opportunity for marvel at the different ways of being human;

and,

My conflictedly engaged relation with the world, reflected in my various sub-optimal patterns mingled with my flowing ones.

There are many enjoyments yet to be had along the way. They are not subjects of self-dispute, only perhaps of indulgent imbalances or over-consumptions.

* merge-over – a term coined at the time by us to describe what in public discussion by leaders was just a merger, even though it was clear we would never emerge whole from the exercise, and many would fall along the way as branches were "rationalised", as they liked to say.

Learning to act right (18)… Gay promiscuous paranoids?

2010-12-06T21:42:00.000+11:00

Learning to act right (18)… Gay promiscuous paranoids?
Torrey Orton
December 6, 2010

Another surprise - from a request for a comment on the article Promiscuous Paranoids comes a learning experience for me and the writer. This response, like that of "sounding a bit stupid", gives me hope that the task of capturing ethical learnings may be more engaging for people than I have imagined. If engaged, the writing comes fluently and persuasively. I hope you enjoy this contribution.

I am aware that it may arouse a flurry or storm of discussion about some of the reported facts. The author is clear this is his experience. The 'facts' we may have in hand at any moment of decision-making might have been improved by a wide review of the available evidence for most of us. That we seldom can make such a review in the conduct of everyday life is not grounds for disregarding our decision processes, or others'.

Regarding the "Promiscuous Paranoids" post, you asked me for my comments, particularly as to how your post relates, if at all, to the "gay world". Clearly I can only comment from my own experiences and so I'm not sure how representative of the general gay public this contribution will be. From my understanding of your article/post (and I could be way off), your experience with (straight) men who would be considered to engage in binge sex and then fall into a committed relationship is that they may become highly paranoid and jealous that their girlfriends are getting it on with every other straight guy who shows the slightest bit of physical attraction toward her - his perception is based on him transferring his own previous binge sex behaviour onto his girlfriend and on to other men. Further, this paranoia adds a high degree of uncertainty to the relationship as the male is constantly thinking that his female partner is cheating.

From my own experience and my experience with my gay friends, binge sex is the norm amongst gay males, especially those in their late teens to late twenties. It is accepted as a "rite of passage" to sleep with as many other males as possible and it is not abnormal for a gay male in his mid twenties to have had sexual encounters with over 150 different men (be they gay, bi, "straight", and/or married). I myself have had sex/fooled around with approximately 175-200 different men. Such a number would seem obscenely high to straight males and females, particularly of the older generation, and indeed I see it as quite high myself, although I do not see it as "abnormally high", at least for a gay male in his mid to late twenties.

The acceptance of binge sex amongst the gay male population is evident even in gay male relationships which are "open relationships" - i.e. the male partners have agreed that having sex with other males outside of the relationship and/or and bringing in a third or fourth male partner for threesomes or group sex is fine. The reasons for the partners agreeing to an open relationship are often varied however two of the main reasons are as follows: Firstly, as sex is viewed quite casually amongst the gay male community, little importance is attached to having sex outside of the relationship, and secondly, because gay males are so sexually charged, one of the main reasons for a committed couple breaking up is due to the infidelity of one of the partners - an open relationship therefore eliminates that potential break up cause.

Often partners in an open relationship attach rules to when it is permissible to have sex with a person outside of the relationship - for example, if one of the partners is away for work it may be permitted for one or both to seek a sexual partner. Another example is where one of the partners in the relationship is HIV+ and does not want to transfer the virus on to the other partner. I know of one such couple. The partner with HIV is so fearful of passing the virus on to his partner that the pair do not have any sexual contact whatsoever and he allows his partner to have sex with other men. Of course this raises a range of issues, including low-self esteem on the part of the HIV+ partner and whether or not the couple can truly be happy without any form of sexual contact with each other, but those issues are not within the scope of my comment now. Rather it serves to highlight the range of circumstances and rules which a couple may attach to a gay couples "open" relationship.

Now, how does this high level of binge sex amongst gay males relate, if at all, to your post regarding binge sex in straight males? In the times that I have been in a relationship, and I really only consider myself to have had two relationships, the issue of binge sex was one which had to be addressed at one time or another in each relationship. During my first relationship I myself cheated on my partner with another male (and another female). It was during my "coming out" phase and I was still scoping to see whether I was or was not gay. However I accept that that is not an excuse for my infidelity and needless to say that despite much effort, the relationship did not succeed.

During my second relationship, my partner was aware of my previous infidelity and was constantly suspicious of whether I had remained faithful to him. Despite my assurances to him, he always remained somewhat insecure and to this day, even though the relationship ended over two years ago and he has a new partner, he still questions me. I know that I was always faithful to him - having cheated once before I am aware of the damage that can be done by infidelity and have vowed never to do it again. However as a result of the binge sex mentality, and my actions in my previous relationship, my former partner still has doubts. On a side note, my former partner is now in an "open" relationship - he lives interstate from his boyfriend (for now anyway) and they two have various rules as to when sex outside the relationship is and is not permitted.

Accordingly, while I myself never had doubts about my partners and their fidelity to me in my previous relationships, they were constantly questioning me about my fidelity toward them. The effect of that on me was that I felt that they did not trust me and it led to intense feelings of frustration on my part, especially in my second relationship as I knew I had remained faithful.

However, that is not to suggest that I have never experienced the "promiscuous paranoia" explained in your article - indeed I have. However, rather than occurring in the context of a committed relationship, my "promiscuous paranoia" has occurred, time and time again, in the context of dating - i.e the initial stage of a potential relationship in which neither of the men have committed solely to each other. As in the straight context, I transfer my own binge-sex behaviour onto all other men, including the guy I am dating. Consequently, I automatically think he is having sex with every male he comes across who shows the slightest of interest toward him. Not only am I therefore paranoid that he is having sex with a number of other men, but it makes the "courtship" process even more complicated - I feel that I have to work extra hard to retain the interest of the guy and to have him settle on me as a partner, and discard all the other potential partners he is "clearly" having sex with.

Even if the guy I am dating is not having sex with anyone (and I believe him), I usually still feel incredibly jealous at his previous sexual encounters, even though the number of my own previous sexual encounters towers way above his (his actual or stated number). The jealousy is usually so intense and unbearable that I either sabotage the developing relationship or simply stop seeing the guy altogether. The sense of insecurity created by the "promiscuous paranoia" is extreme, making it very difficult to form positive and lasting relationships.

My point is this: the scenario of the "promiscuous paranoid" which you describe in relation to the "straight" community is also directly applicable to the "gay" male community. However it is even more heightened. The practice of binge sex is readily accepted amongst the gay male community and therefore the level of binge sex is higher. Levels of paranoia amongst gay males who are in committed relationships are also higher and to that extent more destructive. Gay males (including myself) sabotage their own relationships to prevent the inevitable "cheating" which will occur (or in the mind of the paranoid individual, has already occurred). Their ability to remain in a committed long-term relationship is damaged, and in my case, highly under-developed. Self-esteem and self-worth issues therefore ensue. It is my belief that it is at least in part because of this "promiscuous paranoia", that gay males have "mastered" the "open relationship", as discussed above, developing an extensive range of rules and principles in which sex with a person outside the relationship is permissible.

Having recently become aware of my under-developed relationship skills and the negative impact that binge sex has been having on me, I am actively working to develop normal, positive relationships, not (entirely) based on sex. I am challenging my impulsive thought processes that would have normally led to me becoming highly jealous and even vindictive upon hearing of potential relationship partners and their previous sexual partners and am seeking to understand why it is that I am having such impulsive thoughts, rather than focusing on the thoughts themselves. Inevitably the issues surround my own personal insecurities and my perception that I am, in some way, "un-lovable".

Further, I have embarked upon a self-imposed "sex free" period - if only for a few weeks or months. Taking sex out of the equation is forcing me to meet new people and begin to develop relationships the old fashioned way - simply by meeting up for coffee and talking. Even if there is no spark and nothing develops with the person I'm meeting, it's still forcing me to go out and meet new people. Given my personal insecurities, that can only be a positive thing.

In essence, I have become acutely aware of the negative effects which promiscuous paranoia has had on me and my ability to form relationships and I am now seeking to rectify that. It will no doubt be a difficult process and I'm sure I will have re-lapses into binge sex, if only due to the culture of binge sex within the gay community to which I belong. However, I realise that it is an incredibly important and necessary exercise if I am to ever have positive and long-lasting relationships.

See Trusting Judgment for a related learning experience.

Appreciation (32) … Wild strawberries – the taste, not a movie

2010-11-30T21:25:00.000+11:00

Appreciation (32) … Wild strawberries – the taste, not a movie
Torrey Orton
Nov.30, 2010

It is a story I've told dozens of times: the taste of wild strawberries on an early summer mountainside… in the Massif des Bauges, south-eastern France, June 2005. What I didn't tell includes…

... that there was a dog from the neighbourhood (local dairy farm on the mountain side where we parked before the walk) which accompanied us almost to the top of our climb, then turned back and went home… 4 hours later seen hanging out in the parking lot at the farm...

… that there were four of us walking together for the first time, learning the pacing of our different styles, only one of us in reasonable shape (the other guy who tended to jog up the mountains effortlessly)...

…that it was early summer - the trees fully leafed, brooks still running strong with snow melt (not Cauterets strong, but for our first alpinish event in 10 years and from Melbourne, strong)…

…that I saw these slight red spots along the dirt roadside amidst otherwise lighter shades of green, hanging in the way strawberries hung when I picked them as a 10 year old for local producers in Lunenburg but this a trace of memory not consciously searching, nor on looking close did they appear at all like commercial berries, but there was enough lookalike to pull me down from looking forward, to stop me ambling along, to pull slightly aside the greenery which already seemed strawberryish…

…and, that they tasted like no strawberry I had ever known (nor since as well, having searched the slopes of three other alpinish ranges vainly since then to find their relatives - French, Spanish or Italian: rien, zilch, diddlysquat, etc.!). They had an almost vinous depth – no nose, but distinctive middle and finish. They were so slight (1/10 the size of a commercial strawberry) that there was almost no body; rather, they melted than crunched or squished.

Occasionally I have an apricot from our tree here that is precisely ripe and at an appropriate temperature which brings an acute taste and slight nose, reminding me of real fruit from those 55 years ago which were fresh. I did not know they were all manmade to some extent. Wild apples were hard to find in Massachusetts in the 1950's. Wild meant grows outside the house??

Strawberries anyone.

Appreciation (31) … Walk or wait?

2010-11-26T20:59:00.000+11:00

Appreciation (31) … Walk or wait?
Torrey Orton
Nov. 26, 2010

Time was when the best way to summon a train, bus, tram or cab was to light a cigarette. Pretty much turned the corner within seconds of striking the light. Nowadays, 25 years on, the story is cleaner and more irritating. It's just a question of when to walk and when to wait between trams. I never minded the lost smokes all those years. But the threat of a lost walk or a lost punctuality is mildly gut shaking.

I'm a work walker. I believe I do myself goods by walking as much of my work routes as can be fit into the train / tram schedule which bridges them. But these do not mesh with the smoothness of high class gearing. Their rather more grindy operation, slightly unsynched it seems, signals their respective owners persistent proudly proclaimed unmet performance objectives. And I regress…

I do need to be at work on time (clients await). I leave home an hour before shutters up. Because of the just noted asynchronous public transports, I often walk a few tram stops. I know how long it takes and I can do two stops in the normal waiting time – about 8 minutes. That's easy. Uneasy is the non-arrival of the scheduled tram which opens a gateway to walk another stop, if I dare. If I dare wrongly, there's a prospect of another 8 minute wait as the scheduled tram ambles past catching me between stops*.

So what? Well, so I do not get the longer walk I usually take towards the end of the route (about 1 km. of quick-paced passage through the salubrious inner city streets of Albert Park). This walk sets me up for the day by providing a slight sweat and leaving me at the keydrop** with 10 minutes to settle down. If I do not have the walk I'm not well balanced, which leads to increased stress in therapy management. I know that will matter both towards the end of the day (an energy gulf) and during the day as my finer senses of process and detail are dulled.

This whole thing seems simple, and is simple if I drop my various other personal performance objectives embedded in the above narrative (my scripts for managing my day). It condenses a clear stressor into a clearly bounded area (6:50am – 7:50am), with almost guaranteed release. The almost is the lurking awareness that I could still mess up, or be messed up, by misjudgement plus fate.

Wait or walk?

*the loss leader of such events was the 7:26am arriving at 7:35am, closely followed by the next one, the real 7:35am. The wrap-up: I was ten minutes late and two trams down, so had my 1km walk at 1.5 km distance from the clinic; Result: just got there before 8am client. Plus, I lost X% of the training effect of the 1km thru apprehension about missing 8am.

**this is the café we leave clinic keys in overnight to allow the earliest arriving therapist to open office.

Rectifications (24) – Mental disease / illness??

2010-11-22T22:15:00.000+11:00

Rectifications (24) – Mental disease / illness??
Torrey Orton– Nov 22, 2010

What to call a mental problem? There are good names for many of them – anguish, ecstasy, obsession, compulsion, anxiety, outrage, and so on, moving forwards. These are found in the heart of psychological / psychiatric description (with greco-latinate equivalents – e.g. anhedonia - for the more medically deterministic mentalities of the DSM series). They are also found in the heart of human languages. They are the material which occupies the arts…in fact, occupies pretty much everything except the natural sciences and scientistic technologies – engineering, medicine, etc.

These problems of course are the stuff of a life, not "mental problems". Sometimes they can get a bit big. Major life changes, by choice or fate, tend to be associated with these normal problems. A good grief lasts quite a while and can be incapacitating for weeks. So can a rabid infatuation! It is the difference between being depressed and having depression. We are in the grip of the latter and are affected by the former.

'Disease' suggests a medical condition, something to be treated with a pill or a patch. A broken body is not a diseased or sick one, or even an ill one. It is injured, impaired. Some diseased bodies require breaking (surgery) on their way to repair, but the breaking is not a disease. Mental health problems can produce physical symptoms of great intensity.Or, the reverse, bodily disorders can reflect or constitute mental problems. This is because the state of the mind is also physical and behavioural. We are thinkingfeelingacting beings. So is our cat, only somewhat less imaginatively than we.

Mental health matters are injuries to the mind/body, which is probably part of why we have a naming problem. Naming has become embroiled in a marketing problem posing as an awarenessproblem. The awareness problem – about the reality, normality and ubiquity of mental health issues – has been attached to our existing awareness of mostly troubling, inconvenient, not terrifying health problems. This has been to normalise the mental ones, which so scare us they remain the sometime content of myths and demonologies and movies.

The marketing problem is the public campaign by McGorry and others to increase government financial commitment to early intervention in youth mental health issues. How far there is to go in public understanding can be seen in a recent AFR BOSS (Nov. 2010, pg. 65-66) article called "Mind Games" which misquotes McGorry, misrepresents the nature of acute conditions like bi-polar and schizophrenia, and prints a recommendation from psychiatrist Ben Teoh that "any employee displaying evidence of mental illness be referred to a psychiatrist for immediate assessment." If these conditions are difficult I wonder how anyone in the average workplace can pick them or confront them. If lawyers, doctors and dentists can't, then can HR or the CEO????

The larger proportion of Medicare funded mental health treatments are in the non-psychotic, non-acute mental health domains. It is our apprehension about falling into the psychotic which accompanies the very idea of mental health problems. Many of my anxiously depressed clients are relieved to have me confirm that they are certainly not crazy, though their acutely anxious and depressed periods feel crazy, feel threatening to their sanity. Try on OCD episode, a suicidal ideation or a public panic attack for a taste.

Piggybacking the mental on the medical encourages a pre-existing tendency to see it as amenable to physical treatments alone – pills or patches. The current evidence about effective treatment of mental problems is clear: medication alone can never resolve them. It is a useful and, in acute stages, essential part of effective treatment. The reason is that mental problems are biopsychosocial events, not merely biological ones, including the apparently "chemical imbalance" ones. See Lyn Bender's recent article for another take on this discussion, and a vigorously disappointed reader (the 4^th comment) on therapy.

Both the Australian and American psychological associations actively promote biopsychosocial thinking and use it to evaluate and drive research, yet it has barely made it out of the professional policy box in which it has been installed for 10 years. And to think in this way stretches the competence of most allied health care practitioners well out of shape. We have neither the breadth of knowledge nor conceptual potential to use it.

The socio part of the construct is an often acknowledged component of mental health but inconsistently included in research or therapeutic action frames because the 'target' of the action is the individual. Their troubles are really social – they involve families (of origin and choice), playmates (the binge drinkdrugsex scene or footy squad, for instance) and workmates (bullies and their facilitating social systems of workplace control) and the authorisations of commercial culture (to booze, sexualise, and commercialise).

So, what can we call "mental" problems which is true and not banal? How about emotional issues, challenges, hurdles…well, in fact these are true, and banal due to their humanity. Sometimes that humanity overwhelms us, and always it is attached to other "issues" which we try to engage dryly, unexcitedly, numerically. The tide of heartless sciences is ebbing, but the names for biopsychosocial ones have yet to emerge. I wish I could do better.

Learning to act right (16)… “sounding a bit stupid”

2010-11-15T20:59:00.000+11:00

Learning to act right (16)… "sounding a bit stupid"

Torrey Orton
Nov 15, 2010

If you've only got a hammer everything looks like a nail, and if it doesn't you treat it as one! Some ethical matters are invisible to us until we see them right. Without right seeing, right action is improbable. With right seeing right action is only possible. Sources of learning to see things rightly, as they are, unvarnished by preconception and prejudice, has been the heart of epistemology since Plato looked out of his cave and saw the light. In ethics, as much as science or art, the problem is that we can't easily see what we don't already know. This is not only a theoretical problem.

A good sign that someone is seeing anew, differently, as if for the first time, is the feeling of "sounding a bit stupid", as with my colleague below. So he earned an unexpected, and unintended, place in these annals and accepted the offer of a shift of domain with grace… a sign of potential for seeing anew. He was responding to an earlier post of mine on euthanasia and included the thinking breakthrough which opened the door to my views.

Hi, I think I run the risk of sounding a bit stupid with this, but here goes:

A few years ago I liked to play a game on my blackberry called "brickbreaker". It's a small version of a paddle/ball game. My high scores were typically around 8 to 10,000 points, and I never finished the series of challenges in the game.

Then one day, at Oslo airport, I started to think about what the purpose of the game was. For me, I was looking for the stripped back heart of the problem, a Zen approach if you like. What I realised was that the most basic aim of the game was to ensure I hit the ball with the paddle as often as possible; not to earn points, or to hit "bricks". In fact, those things were distractions. They almost took away from the game.

From that point I simply focused on that one aim, and, surprise surprise, I discovered that not only was the game a series of challenges that created a loop (ie, once a player finished level 33, the game went back to level 1 with the score intact) but that the high score was, in fact, without limit. From a high score of, at best, 10,000 points, I went on to give up and retire on 1,450,000, having worked through the series of challenges hundreds of times.

All through thinking about the game differently.

And that's what I love about your approach. When you strip back everything, why should choosing to end a life with dignity be a crime? Suicide is a crime, as is attempted suicide, I think. You take away religion and government, strip it right back, but you include personal responsibility to friends and family. It's such a clear assessment of the problem. The clearest I've read, and that's why I hope more people read it.

But you can't beat city hall, and you CERTAINLY can't beat God and those that believe in him/her. They have suckered us into believing that choosing death is wrong. But can they explain why it's wrong? It's an extension, in the Catholic Church at least, of the every sperm is sacred routine. If you ask why, it always comes back to God, and if god doesn't exist, they have a HUGE credibility problem.

There's a great scene in the old US series called Kung Fu, with David Carradine, where he is walking with a companion and they see a man about to jump off a bridge to his death. Caine's companion says "Shouldn't we save him" and Caine says "How can you know what he's experiencing, how can you say that death may not be the best thing for him" or words to that effect.

Any anti euthanas-ist who has ever taken a pain killer should be ashamed of themselves.

Learning to act right (17)… Matters of love

2010-11-08T17:22:00.000+11:00

Learning to act right (17)… Matters of love

Torrey Orton
Nov 8, 2010

Matters of love provide daily opportunities for practicing ethical behaviour. Intimate relationships are among our most desired and needed life foundations. In and through them we achieve or seek a large range of other needs. Wherever modernity passes, these relationships are endangered by powerful internal and external forces.

So, 1/2 marriages will have the experience of total relationship breakdown and starting over again (or not – also a decision). This involves, among other things, a delicate dance of hope and pragmatism played out to the music of our needs asserted and acknowledged, engaged and resisted – all for a good reason: no one other can wholly meet our needs. That doesn't stop us hoping they will! This hope is fuelled by the process of negotiating the unequal quantities of dominance and submission required to construct a workable whole for both parties – this thing called an intimate relationship.

The story below catches many of the conflicting needs that pave the way to relationship development and sustainability, or not. It is the effort that offers the learning for us. The honesty of the description provides the material.

Learning to do the right thing: Matters of love
I met my husband when I went to university at the age of 17. With all the enthusiasm of the young we had sex, fell in love, lived together, got engaged and at 22 I was married. This was a marriage based on sex and good food. We had nothing else in common and at the age of 27 with a 2 year old and a 6 week old baby I found myself a single mother. For the past 25 years my life has consisted of work, study and raising children. Early in my single life I had thought I could find love but I was bitter, angry, and distrustful - not attractive features.

So at 52 I fell in love. I had known this man for a number of years through my work. We met on occasion for breakfast and to talk work and usually ended up talking of all manner of things. Though the relationship had always been professional the rapport was comfortable. Then he asked me to dinner. His invitation and insistence told me this was more than a professional rendezvous. The dinner went for 4½
hours. When I think back to that night all I can remember is him and me, I have no recollection of anything else in the restaurant. The conversation was easy and varied and none work related. Here was an intelligent, attractive man who was interested in me at all levels.

I knew he was married, but I let myself believe his marriage was over and that all he needed to do was "sort out the logistics". How SMS and e-mail has changed the face of romance. What in the past took weeks of furtive phone calls and dates to say seems to be said in days. Things that you would never say out loud can be typed and sent with ease. It was exciting and sexually arousing in a way that I had never experienced.

Then the relationship moved to the physical. How nervous do you think I was? The last time I had a lover I was in my early 40s and though fit and healthy things are not where they used to be. I know love is just a cocktail of hormones that combine to make you form an attachment, but I will always remember how caring and considerate he was of me. I don't believe any man has treated me with such respect or tenderness.

Through all the excitement of the past weeks sitting heavily in the back of my mind has been his wife. When I separated, my husband had had an affair with his secretary and for years I have been able to say "he left me for the secretary"; he was the wrong doer, which gave me a sense of righteousness. In fact, we divorced because we had a bad marriage that made neither of us happy. We communicated on the most basic level, had differing values and life expectations. We used sex as a bargaining tool. My life is richer and happier for not being married to my ex- husband and my children more enlightened and happy people.

I find a man I feel worthy to love and who I think could love me and he is married. I have never wanted to be the other woman, partly because of my own experience but also I believe women shouldn't do that to other women. I could continue to have an illicit affair ignoring the consequences to his family, and my own dignity to satisfy a lost need for intimacy but I know it is not right. I don't want to be the cause of his wife's heartache and I want a relationship that is open, honest and conducted in the open light of day. I want him make the right decision about his marriage because he is unhappy, not because of me. I have been conflicted because I am 52, and it has taken me 25 years to fall in love again; will I miss an opportunity that may never occur for me again and end up a lonely old cat woman. Is it right to do what I know is wrong in the pursuit of intimacy long forgotten. I know it is not.

Here is the rub! I fall in love with a man battling the same dilemma. He wants to do the right thing and while I struggle with my own impasse, he has the courage to articulate what is right thing to do and I know he is right. So he is going to sort out his "shit", whatever that means. I don't know what I am expected to do. Will I wait? Does he want me to wait? Will I try to find love on the internet now I have experienced it and will I lose this desperate feeling knowing the right decision has been made?

Today I wish I could be unethical with ease but I know I won't respect myself. Any relationship we may have had will be doomed if it starts this way. That doesn't make me feel any better.

Note – the author remarked that it had taken about 40 minutes to write this story once she allowed herself to see she had a live ethical learning in her heart. The search for a topic had gone on for weeks til that moment.

Learning to act right (15)… Performance management up close

2010-11-03T21:21:00.004+11:00

Learning to act right (15)… Performance management up close
Torrey Orton
Nov 3, 2010

Mick's Case – unavoidably conflicted retrenchment

It's easy these days to find stories of corporate malfeasance on large and small scales. So the world of business, which some think is outside the realm of ethics, is one rife with ethical challenges and short on ethical exemplars. The following is one candidate for exemplar status. Its power resides partly in the persistence of the main agent, Mick, and partly in the unavoidable complexity of the situation – performance management.

One meaning of an 'unavoidable complexity' is that there is no exit without carrying some of the dirt on you, as much inside as out. One reason there are few public examples is that ethical people tend also to be self-deprecating and so their stories remain only in the hearts and minds of those directly affected. Is it unethical to promote one's ethicality?! How could others learn from them?

Context - based on discussion June, 2003

In 2003 Mick was opening a new franchise in an established retail / wholesale field. He had six months to reach break-even, and with an upward trend in place towards profitability. The current figures were promising. If successful, the franchisor would hand him a number of other opportunities on a platter. If unsuccessful, he would lose money, face and a future. He had been recently retrenched from corporate life himself and did not want to return to it. This was a very small business. That means all and every aspect is directly managed by the owner(s), especially difficult people issues like the following. No HR department, legal staff, salaries clerks, etc.

The small initial staff was handpicked for sales competence. One of them, Jean, was a mid-40's woman with background in the industry and track record in retail. However, over the first 6 weeks of operation, she had become less and less effective in converting prospects to sales. She paid too much attention to details of customers' product selection, disregarded prospects with much greater sales potential and was unpredictable in work attendance. Other staff, especially Mick's number two Jim, were beginning to remark Jean's short-comings, including her impact on sales. Mick was feeling the heat of both his own perceptions of her and Jim's emerging perceptions of his management competence. Jim had some stake in the outcome because equity participation for him was just around the corner of their passing the start-up test.

Jean appeared to have some personal issues which affected her work. Her children were in Perth and she was palpably uncertain and anxious in her dealings with people at work – staff and customers. Mick sensed she was in a fragile state. However, so was the business. Mick himself had recent experience of "Stalinist" management in large enterprises and very much saw himself as an opponent of that style. It was a very painful situation for him to appear "Stalinist", especially to himself.

Action

Nevertheless, Mick felt he had to let Jean go. A replacement had been found and was scheduled to start Saturday. Mick decided to retrench Jean on Friday. This was in keeping with the 3 month trial period of her employment contract. The payout was generous from the contract's viewpoint. His approach was to hand Jean her retrenchment notification and benefits at the close of business that day. He acknowledged her contribution so far and pointed out the reasons for retrenchment and expressed his concern at having to take this action.

Mick is troubled, still. First, he is aware that any retrenchment is violent for the retrenched. Second, he wonders if this one may not have been extremely violent from Jean's viewpoint considering her overall fragility - maybe a last straw kind of situation? Third, he wondered about his own contribution to this situation: did he make a hiring mistake in the first instance which exposed her to challenges she couldn't meet in her current condition? And, fourth, he didn't want to see himself as someone who does violence to others, though he knows that the viability of the business required it at that time.

July 25, 2010 email from Mick about my treatment of his work above

You give me too much credit. The replacement was organized in the background. I also had to balance up the supplier angle as they had a hand in finding Jean. And, yes, we did let her go. She was NOT up to the task. She should not have been there in the first place and the longer the situation went on the more it reflected on the total organization. I would like to think she was treated as well as could be done; but Torrey it was still a brutal act. Such acts occur when you take the time to "look and respect" staff. Whether or not they can do the job is an overlay on top of this.

As an addendum we had another one in the last 12 months. Greg – mid 50's, working in a small goods factory after he had been retrenched from a shipping company some years ago. His current employer was relocating to the other side of the city. He was looking for another job and he was recommended to us by a supplier (who we later found out had a relationship with Greg's daughter).

We sent Greg on a course – investment $4K. He appeared slow so we gave him more time. We spent time in explaining things we had gone over a number of times previously. He was not up to it so we set a deadline of 3 weeks and if no progress was made he would leave. After 3 weeks he had to leave. His performance was noted by customers and staff. I spoke to him at lunchtime and he left with a cheque straight away.

I later found out that that very morning he had refinanced his house. Knowing this, would we have done anything differently? NO.

Appreciation (30) … Water days

2010-11-02T17:42:00.000+11:00

Appreciation (30) … Water days

Torrey Orton

Nov. 2, 2010

A different Australian nature, a wet one. We did waterfalls two days ago, as many as we could get into a 6 hour driving window – Lal Lal, Sailors and Trentham – spurred by a 3 inch rainfall in our backyard and a BOM-enhanced confidence that the outer plains and hills got up to 5 inches. The Lal Lal in the link and that below are seriously different. My pic is 311010 a day after the big drop. Trentham was like this by higher by 10 metres and ½ again the water volume. Lal Lal swished, Trentham thundered, Sailors burbled from two distinct rivulets coming over the same cliff edge. Interestingly to me, the pic does not capture how muddy the water actually was, as many in the link do not either. Probably trashy photog work by me. I am not alone. Turn your screen on end for the next minute.

The drive, totalling 300ks, was pocked for me by incessant glimpses to one side of the road and the other looking for water. It took a while to realise what was happening. I needed to see water in the fields and woods, knowing that it must be there and that it could be ten years again before I would see it (and, I now realise while writing, that ten years may not be there for me to do so). I yearned for it – the sight of water on land. I don't know that I've viscerally yearned before, but the word is right though I've never spoken or written it. I must have learned it in others' speech and writing.

Ten years of drought has meant very little water on land. What appeared sank so quickly out of sight it often did not even bring stream beds back to a watery life even for a few days. We've walked a dozen stream/river beds of sand and rock, looked for a slight run-off in dry creeks. I've often thought I was fully habituated to the great Australian dry and flat. Yesterday tells me I'm not I've just been hankering slyly for the rolling and the wet. My perception of being in the rolling wet yesterday was enhanced measurably by the amount of introduced greens along the way – exotic trees and food crops which a spring in northern hemisphere always produces. Trentham / Daylesford/Lal Lal are rolling and presently wet.

This yearning comes in company with my many wonders about things past and struggles at the moment about how much of the future to devote to them – to focussing them, refining them, rediscovering them. My water worries must be an edge of this need arising from my long pleasure in places, especially the natural ones or the nature in places not so natural like the trees of Paris or Beijing. There is something unfinished – missed? – there in my old places. Next year US and Europe – the first looking back seeking to tie off something(s)? … the second a back (to France) as a step towards futures spent there in part.

Or perhaps my flow is deeper than that.

Learning to act right (13)… Promiscuous paranoids

2010-10-27T21:23:00.000+11:00

Learning to act right (13)… Promiscuous paranoids
Torrey Orton
October 27, 2010

Among some men in the 20 to 40 age range there's an unexpected result of being in the binge drinking / drugs and sex scene. It only arises when they part the scene for a more constant form of relationship…sometimes their first real love. They appear on my therapeutic doorstep with obsessive fantasies that their new girlfriend is having it off with any guy they say hello to or, more particularly, any guy they were once close to. This is aggravated if the girlfriend has a history somewhat like their own – one of apparently disinterested sex in one of the principle social forms recognised as 'normal': one nighters and friends with privileges, or its more honest moniker - fuckbuddies.

Their presenting "mental health problem" is hyper-vigilant jealousy with anger punctuations which threaten relationship health, or their partner's. In other words, they are on the verge of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in their minds. The driver, as usual with OCD, is an apparently inescapable dilemma or conflict which attacks the individual's self-concept.

The binge sex dilemma looks roughly like this: the guy develops obsessive imagery / thoughts about the partner's probability of being seduced (or re-seduced!) by another guy; this is accompanied sometimes by acute self-denigration about being unlikely to be able to compete with the imagined seducer's attractions; the guy also imagines that his partner is in fact positively disposed to seduction if given the slightest encouragement by the irresistible seducer.

Treatment is simple except for the hidden dilemma within the picture above. Exposure and CBT work fine, but do not touch the dilemma which is lodged in the male self-image. The guy knows that all guys are roughly like him, at least in his general social network (pubs, clubs, etc., on weekend nights). Anyone female is fair game and may consider him to be fair game in turn. But the male self-image says the women are sluts and guys are players, or hotties, or choose your self-approbation of preference and enter here.

This valuing system means that any girlfriends who come out of the binge social system are players, too, which leaves the guys at best on an equal moral footing with the gals. But that's not what they really think, despite sexual equity in the binge play space. This part of the treatment requires confronting at least the present equality of indulgence across genders*. It's a hard burnishing of a tarnished esteem. Not a few clients have choked on the way, though all have come through so far.

If the girlfriend does not originate in the scene, then she may find herself treated like a prospective player because that is boyfriend's default position on women (underneath the sexual equity cover). Girlfriend, meanwhile, cannot easily be told boyfriend is/was a player with a dance card the length of a wishfully extendable appendage.

I guess that various aspects of this valuing and behavioural world contribute to the rampant uncertainty and diffidence about relationships which pass before me daily in therapy. This is expressed through conflicting needs: one, for certainty that a relationship will be inviolable and one for certainty that escape is always possible with minimum damage (itself usually expressed as financial – the only certain entity in the relationship universe because it is totally abstract and so can harbour any meaning allocated to it!). Listening to would-be and actual couples struggle to denominate their contributions to the joint exercise of a shared future is often pathetic. When did finance ever reduce paranoia?

I think this works similarly for gay as straight men, with appropriate gender distinctions in their partners. See this post for an example.

*none of this means that equity and equality in sex are achieved without various infractions of good taste, respect, or activities in the violence domain, since being players does not grant a free pass to civility. To an extent it prohibits real civility, and respect is out of the question, for both self and others.

“Mentally competent” and “asking for death” – can I rationally choose death?

2010-10-20T20:27:00.000+11:00

"Mentally competent" and "asking for death" – can I rationally choose death?
Torrey Orton
October 20, 2010

Decisionmaking and death – irritated reflections on Ahmed, Gray and others.

"balance-sheet" suicide and "rational" suicide – way stations in the argument about how a choice to die can be justifiable. This argument hangs partly on an undiscussed dispute about what a 'rational' decision is. It swings back and forth because rational thinking is persistently misunderstood as affect free thinking. The standard model is reflected in Ahmed's (TheAGE, Oct 7, '10) discussion, which leaves him stuck and indecisive.

Stuck
I've been stuck for two weeks in this misunderstanding, too, which from my present perspective is no problem because I cannot influence it. I am clear myself where I stand on my own access to effective self-destruction. The details matter some. Nigel Gray's in THE AUSTRALIAN, Oct 6, 2010 alternatives, for example, are quite attractive to my needs to pre-empt an unfortunate death. But a well refined approach to what a good argument for my euthanasia should be will not increase my access to it. That portal is blocked now by a few others' (lifer kooks and gutless pollies) beliefs that I should not have it. By the way, by their default to inaction, the gutless pollies of course cast themselves as supporters of the kook believers. The pollies are a very special class of banal believers – swaying in the intemperate breezes of the various kooks (individual and institutional) for fear of losing something. That fear costs them their integrity and legitimacy, and the rest of us our representation.

Two rationalist fantasies
There are two rationalist fantasies employed in the euthanasia debate: both to the detriment of my rights.

1- that we can and should be able to make rational decisions about our deaths, unclouded by irrational affect; and,

2-that we can only make irrational decisions about euthanasia, because all reason on matters of death is always clouded by 'mental problems' about being close to death – feeling down about being ill, fearing our decline and tormenting ourselves with our pathetic state(s); that is, we are mentally ill if dying, and so unable to decide.

The emotional factors are not understood within the range of normal human emotions. So, the depression, sadness, etc., felt by the dying and the-in-danger-of-dying are treated as pathological rather than normal responses to perceived (and objectively real) dangers. Ahmed acknowledges this implicitly by referring to dialysis research where personal control emerged as a key determinant of patient depression and connecting it to related Oregon findings about euthanasia choosers and oncologists' observations of cancer patients. He then confuses his discussion by calling this mix of feelings and needs "personality factors". While his personal position on patient decision-making is never made explicit, it is suggested by his use of the term "saved" in discussing suicide by aged, near terminal patients.

Rational decisions = ?
What do we know about decision-making by everyday humans (not rats or undergraduates, please)? Simply, that rational or logical decisions mainly exist in digital systems like ICT, positivist economics and its social science affiliates, and the foundations of classical physics and chemistry. The latter have been withdrawing from the fantasy that a number is a discrete item, that data are clearly discernible from each other, since Einstein. And data clear or foggy do not, it is generally agreed, have feelings or thoughts except perhaps in some delicate metaphysics (electrons feel their neighbours and scurry off to a safe place at a nano-distance; planetary attraction is a species of elective affinity?).

Behavioural economics is the belated acknowledgement that Adam Smith was right about economy – it's not the numbers that matter, except to bankers and even not to them when they consider their "quality time". There's a place in human development where an increase in quantities of livelihood produce no gain in quality of living. Many of us are there now.

Judgment = intuition
Decision-making is making judgments. These are integrating intuitions, summarising whole experiences into actions. They do not follow iterative, additive pathways except in expostfacto reconstructions of the sort used in "evidence-based" medicine and its allied affiliates. Try mapping the decision steps in a serious life issue on a decision mapping system like this: http://www.austhinkconsulting.com/ . You will still end up with a judgment which cannot be rationally explained except by reference to supposedly non-rational, emotive factors. Judgments express values in relation to important facts. Important facts are the valued ones.

Individual rights only available fully to a group
If our rights were pure universal truths they would just be. When they are contested, as with euthanasia, abortion and just war, for example, their limited claims are made apparent in the act of their dispute. If they were pure and universal they would be substrate, assumptions, of our life processes. The pointy end of the rights stick these days is individual rights. The upshot of the contest in matters socio-economic, so far, is that a few get to monster the many in the name of the many's right to choices they cannot make.

Nigel Gray argues for euthanasia from a personal choice perspective. He stretches his case just as egregiously as he claims the pro-lifers do theirs, but maybe not for the same effect. He proposes a pure right of individual choice on the basis that "..this is one's own business, no one else's." He certainly has a right to think this, but that does not constitute a right to die with no consideration for the effects on others. It's an irritated right with which I sympathise but cannot honour as any more rational than those who say I do not have it (because it belongs to God for instance.)

Putting my hand up for certainty
A string of ways of dying from self inflicted euthanasia to physician assisted euthanasias – the actually occurring choice-based deaths - sit inside the over-arching fact that (so far) we will all die if we live. Euthanasia already exists de facto in physician assisted deaths, either by legally mandated turning off life-support or providing assured decline into death with family-agreed terminal palliations (morphine comas). This is where the individual choice wheels meet the highway of life – namely, with a hand-up if you want it, and sometimes if you do not. I could do with a bit more certainty in my hands.

Appreciation (29) … Ant flurries, or termites?

2010-10-05T16:28:00.000+11:00

Appreciation (29) … Ant flurries, or termites?
Torrey Orton
Oct 5, 2010

We were walking the local hills on the first real day of spring. That is, the first day two plus layers were not required on top by the effects of wind-chill at 15 degrees C or less (which is what we've had at sea level for three months straight). An hour and a half into the ramble, we were on the home stretch of a circle route around what passes for a water course with falls here. It had two virtues: it was 50 minutes from home and there was audible and visible water in it. And, we had not been there for 10 years or so, having given ourselves over to more highly invested (in time and distance) wanders to find ramble-worthy spots. Particularly lately, there are quite a few with major water and falls*.

As we were coming down a modest decline I noticed to the left of the path a small flurry of fluttering things which on first look I thought were spring seeds in dispersal flight. They were rising on a slight breeze – not enough to sustain the visible activity. But the numbers were constant and dense enough to seem, in some long unexercised memory of things past, a snowlike event.

A silly perception in fact since the temperature was 23C. Less silly in their mimicking the wandering rise and fall of big-flake snow in quiet winter air. The storm effect was intensified be a mid afternoon sun highlighting the individuals in its 45 degree rays.

So, I looked more around than up and spotted 10 meters off the track a termite-looking mound on which the storm seemed to centre. Only getting closer did I see the newly winged ones walking up the brownish, one meter mound from its base. They were slowly unlimbering their wings as they climbed, ending with a preparatory flap or two before jumping off on their one-way ticket wedding flights. It was one of those wonders of nature so far from my understanding that I'm still not sure who they were - ants or termites – partly because I did not know to look for the distinguishing differences!

* A week earlier we had visited one of the rivers burned out by the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires. Many of these once camping and walking areas are still closed to public use, though one can now drive down the access roads. Along one such we saw one of our favourite cascades on the Murrindindi River running in full flow from the recent rains. But it was unveiled. Where for a couple decades of regular walking in near rainforest conditions along that part of the river yielded varying intensities of rushing waters over tumbled rock surfaces, we now found bare rocks and remnant trunks, everything open to the eye made prying by fire. A new falls, with a waiting period of 20-30 years to get back to 'normal' is probably beyond our allocated time….so we will learn to like the unveiled.

6 Views of death (3) – ‘Normal’ ends of life: the self-extermination challenge.

2010-10-01T21:22:00.004+10:00

6 Views of death (3) – 'Normal' ends of life: the self-extermination challenge.

Torrey Orton

Oct.1, 2010

My life / death view: I am sure I have a right to live and die in as much as I can choose to do so. I did not choose to be born, but choose everyday to stay alive. I'm aware that I may not get to choose when to die, but I certainly will die. The same cannot be said for my birth; it was not certain. Like my birth, my death will be in the hands of others in some respects, the least of which, from my point of view, will be cleaning up afterwards, just as it was for my birth.

I deal three days a week with younger people (20's to 40's) who think /feel their lives are not worth living for various amounts of time, with regular recurrences and typical shared origins in excruciatingly inescapable traumas. Also typically, they have self-administered palliative problems (addictions) and often have irregular employments, housing and similar signs of fragmented lives. Quite a few sustain professional presences of great sophistication and substantial achievement. I have no trouble believing it's too soon for them to go. How successful I am in conveying that conviction into self-affirmation is a session by session challenge.

…unlucky not to die well.

As for myself, on the other hand, I am quite sure I want to have the choice of dying when I see fit. That means dying before my natural time, possibly. That I may die as I write will do fine as my time, should it be so. It's a ponderous decline into multiple incapacities, worst of all a mental decline, which I will choose to avoid if I can. Given diagnoses of certain kinds, I would initiate a process of self-extermination, I hope. That 'hope' expresses my awareness that I may not be strong enough, which I may get a chance to test, if I'm unlucky not to die well. Next to a lingering death, a failed effort at pre-empting it is my greatest fear. I'd like some certainty in my own hands. Either this will be legal – e.g. running a car into an immovable object – or, at the moment, illegal by amassing a sufficient quantity of appropriate medications.

I do not have the time to read much of what's written in the so-called 'debate' about euthanasia. I don't really care about much of the detail, or to make arguments in detail which I am intellectually competent to do. I have patients to care for and other things to think. Not to write at all on this is dangerous and part of me knows that the fools in the religions and the politics of late capitalism and post-modernity are likely to lock away pre-emptive opportunities I am as certain I deserve as they are I do not. That's the making of rages, and even the fools I just mentioned must know these are growing day by day, just maybe not in the minds of people like me.

Natural right to choose…

I know I have a natural right to self-extermination, but not a legal one here in Australia. There are those who would say I have no natural right, either, but they do not check their assumptions about the sources of right, being stuck in a system of presumptive answers which is historical, not 'natural'. This system is the Abrahamic religions of the Book. I really do not mind their believing what comes with allegiance to The Book, including endless to-the-death struggles about whose version is correct, true or The Word. I am amazed that a profoundly clear truth, like that the religions propose, should produce so much distress for believers, but not amazed enough to want to help them out by adding myself to one of their ranks. How could I choose?

"But our right to choose is important and is too often deliberately forgotten or conveniently ignored by those who evangelise around "the right to life"...." .Geoff Gallop, in The AGE 28092010.

The Australian politics of life-death are this: a few (about 20 %) of the electorate in Australia are prepared to fight (to the death?) to preserve the right of every conception to come to term and every adult to be constrained from dying on their own terms, assisted or not. The latest pro-euthanasia figures are 76% in favour. The 20%ers get a larger electoral influence because the field of voters is finely poised between the major parties and small factors shift small margins in the most finely poised electorates. Electorally correct and ethically unfair

Fundamentalist convictions

So what part of the anti-euthanasia arguments are just tactics to cover fundamentalist convictions? Such tactics might be expressions of moral outrage, pseudo-scientific or "evidence-based" facts and ad hominem assaults demonstrating other non-believers' attitudes descend from character faults or notional immoralities.… Where such tactics do not work there are only implacable demands or refusals on offer.

An example of apparent evidence-based arguments is Dr. Ruth Gawler in TheAGE, Letters 29/9/2010. In a self-described backflip on euthanasia, she notes that cancer patients "initially … are often confused in their thinking." She doesn't say anything about what happens to the initially confused after some work. Competent cancer treatment like the Gawlers provide must help clarity, among other things. Viz- people who start confused do not have to remain that way.

She adds to her evidence against euthanasia that population issues make getting clear about good reasons for dying unlikely. This is an argument carried by her professional status, not any clarity of fact or causal connection.

Because we can do it…

Underlying the pro-life argument is a scientistic lie – that unnatural efforts must be made to preserve lives – at the beginning or the end of the life span, and in some cases before it (IVF) because we can do it scientifically. I don't think this is what the gods recommended in their times. Once again there was a sad letter pleading for families to let their elders die when ready and to do the legal homework to minimize useless resuscitations. (TheAGE 29/9/10).

This reflection yields another: that there may be a need to achieve something for my life in / thru my death, a clarifying of the moral ground…which invites a recollection of possible causes for choosing to end life, eg.: (1) to save the life of another; (2) to prevent a useless decline into a terminal outcome; (3) as a weapon of struggle (martyrdom); (4) to save precious resources for others (cousin of #1, but with no specific other(s) in mind or view).

Two self-destructions

Finally, let's notice a matter of origins. There are two self-destructions: the Greek one and the Roman one. Euthanasia, the good death, is Greek; suicide, the bad death, is Latin, as are its familiars matricide, fratricide and patricide. But a death by one's own hand is self (sui) killing (cide), whatever the labeling. Some deaths we choose to label nicely and others not. The choice is a discrimination between those with an acceptable rationale and those without one (in the eyes of some others). I don't know that the Greeks and Romans differed that much on matters of life and death. The choice is moral, not factual of course, leaving aside the problem of determining if a death is by accident or intent.

A song comes along with this thought – "Suicide is painless.." and reminds me of the absurdity of life and death, except when we can give meaning to it. Generally the meaning achieved by making our own choices exceeds that by following others' choices for us. Perhaps the worst situation is that where making meaning seems impossible but action is required which only produces absurdity. There's a literature around this dilemma. Yossarian, where are you? Slaughter House 5, Catch 22, Mash...

Appreciation (28) … taking care and giving care challenges

2010-09-27T08:35:00.000+10:00

Appreciation (28) … taking care and giving care challenges
Torrey Orton
Sept.27, 2010

To my co-workers in psychotherapy:

I noticed recently that caring is an important core part of therapy…not because I had not been being caring. The research on therapeutic effectiveness shows a 30% contribution from the therapeutic relationship alone, regardless of therapeutic paradigm or technique(s). The core of effective relationship is perceived care, arising from relevant therapist attention, interest, etc. 'Relevant' means felt by clients as directed accurately towards their needs at the moment.

Certainly I vary / waiver in my caring at times, but underneath all is unconditional positive regard as I understand it. My patients should feel, not always at the same moment, that I am caring about them and taking care of them. They need both to be taken care of adequately. If my care taking is not felt as caring, as specific to them and personal, it will not work in therapy.

If you have not been in therapy, you may have experienced care-taking from personal trainers, nurses, doctors, and other health providers which felt careless in the personal regard sense – as emerging from an automaton, or worse, someone who really doesn't like being with you. The effect may be to make you doubt the technical quality of the service provided, and that may inhibit its effectiveness, even if declared to be 'best practice', best of class, or similar marketised appreciations.

Unmarked detour: I did not expect to come to the following observation here but this is how writing goes. It is already noticed in Australia that the increase in non-native English speakers in aged care and some standard nursing is leading to a decline in perceived care because some care givers cannot communicate adequately with their patients. Similar is sometimes noted in general practice, and certainly the written competence of some NESB* medical practitioners is well below local high school graduation level.

This is not to impugn the intentions of care-givers. Rather it is to highlight that care – given and received – is expressed and expected differently in different cultures. Learning these differences and being able to produce them naturally is often a more than one generation's efforts away from an immigrant. The first level of that learning is linguistic, but not sufficient by itself. Many NESB immigrant groups in Australia have long had aged care facilities for own community patients for this reason.

Back on the road again. Herein lies a primary psychotherapeutic boundary issue – that taking care and caring seem inextricably intertwined. Taking care is analytically separable from the personal connection of caring / being cared for, but for the patient it is not. Nor is it separable for therapists, though efforts to do so by adopting certain distancing attitudes to patients suggest it can be. Care taking feels like it is caring, lacking which it feels mechanical (you're giving me a treatment rather than treating me) or experimental (you are using me / seeing me as an object of study). Even behavioural interventions for eating disorders, panic, phobias, etc., require a caring relationship to be effective because patient motivation is the key variable in interventions aimed to bring certain behaviours like binges under control.

People in treatment for such visibly behavioural troubles are there precisely because their self-control has fallen into the hands of a destructive habit. Habits are behavioural recipes for achieving aims without thought. They systematically solve recurrent problems with systemically repeatable solutions. They embody recurrent motivations (energy to achieve needs / wants). Motivation, in turn, stands on the back of self-confidence, self-worth, self-efficacy – all products of appropriate developmental challenges and relevant, timely appreciation by others, parents first among them. The therapist's task is to rehabilitate the injured selves. The first step is care for the patients. Doing so both suggests more or less explicitly that the patient is worth rehabilitating and that they have some of what's required already in them – their worthiness!

The danger of care, however, is its personal character and the potential for it to feel or be extended outside the therapy space and time. The boundaries for constraining care to the spacetime of therapy may constrain it out of reach for some clients…that such boundaries are needed is certain, but how they should be configured is a case by case, and often moment by moment, therapeutic task. Their importance is reflected in the articulation of professional guidelines for boundary construction and typical dangers of shoddy construction. Breaching some of these is a matter for de-registration. Case by case, moment by moment caretaking is delicate work.

Linguistic note: we speak of care givers and caretakers as if they were the same thing, though 'caretaker' has a more manorial, landed sense to it, while in ordinary usage 'care givers' are workers in respite or aged care country. How did those two usually opposed verbs come to signify the same action? Perhaps, the 'take' suggests a focus on the worker, an attitude necessary to effective care giving; the 'give' focuses on the receiver – the patient or client.

*NESB – non-english-speaking background

Perceptions and truth(s)

2010-09-23T21:53:00.000+10:00

Perceptions and truth(s)
Torrey Orton
Sept. 23, 2010

I am struck these days by the various ways we can be deceived in our grasp of the world, and ourselves. This is apart from the consciously deceptive intent of our public world(s) and the conscious intent to create perceptions which our various artists demonstrate for us. There is also the unconscious distortion of our perceptions which arises from our premonitions of them in the form of 'previews' in the media, the reports of others about them, the interactions between the two and so on.

For instance of the later, there was the Millau Viaduc in my mind from quite a lot of exposures at a distance, among them the BBC series of great modern constructions, a web page full of site clips and photos, some local (regional French) tourist encouragements – all contributors to a sense I knew what I was going to see. Almost all were taken from the level of the bridge or above. Our approach to the reality was from the level of the river Tarn 250 meters below the road way. Grand enough at that, but not the hanging in air glory that the previews supported. I was not stunned, shocked, shaken, uplifted….but thought I should have been, which added to the letdown. It did not occur to me that 90 minutes spent beforehand in the Roquefort cheese caverns 25 Ks down the road might have constrained my expectations to things just in front of me.

The reverse of this was my first sight of The Nightwatch through a small door on an oblique angle to the picture in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam 40 years ago… a view which amplified the commanding stature of the work, and which in turn was intensified by its unconscious comparison with two existing images in my mind: (1) that of the picture from an art history slide show screened in a format close to that of the real thing and (2) its micro version in the text book of the same course. Then I felt visually completed, fulfilled in an expectation I did not know I had until reality rewarded it with fact.Yet another access to the perils of perception is the very common experience of seeing something which at a certain moment looks like something it certainly is not. The rooster on the road is a web-honoured example of this, including its own self-test against variable perceptions.

Extending the avian theme, I saw a rosella of unlikely hues on the ground overlooking the Loddon River at Glen Lyon, Vic. a few days ago. This bird turned out to be a lichen infested rock declining in similarity to my first impression with every step closer to it. My focus of course was much more intent than the first glance which created the perception. My search for continuing likenesses to support that first glance moved with the insistence that self- justification demands. And, too, it was a very unlikely spot to find a solo rosella in the open, as my wife implicitly noted by immediately debunking my perception. I gave in two steps later, losing in the doing a hope that I had seen something normal in a very unusual way. Trouble is, it was wholly unusual and firmly no way. My point here, in case I lose it in short term memory glitches, is that it is very easy to see what we want / need where it is not. For my painter friends this is a good thing, for their work is to create what we can't see in what is there. Even a gathering of others may work against the clarification of the imagined when too much group membership is at stake in a threatened group perception. The research and experience on this tally fully for once.

So what is the effect of a world in which two kinds of realities are confused by misrepresentation? First the intimate is made public and then the public is made banal. Public intimacy is the content of "reality" TV …public banality is the censoring of human (and animal these days) realities like death, injury and other matters attracting notices of too dangerous to be seen without forewarning. Listen to police reporting road trauma, family violence, drunk violence, etc. Intention is the source of this misrepresentation – the intention to obscure our world and our worlds from each other. Among The effects are an untraceable paranoia, low grade fears that we are being got at…but by who? Obsessive vigilance sets in, with an air of preparation for battles. We know from the "fog of war" that persistent uncertainty in a context of potential threat is destabilising to selves and groups. The needs which are assailed by this dynamic are those for intimacy (love, care, etc.), affiliation (belonging, membership) and their facilitating ones (appreciation, acknowledgment, etc,).

The question is: is the misrepresentation intentional or consequential, or some of both? It really does not matter, except that apparently unintentional misrepresentation (deception) is an aggravated assault because it is unaccountable. The consequence is a sense of being either the authors of our own paranoia, or, as can be seen in exaggerated forms in cults and conspiracy theories (both which are massively facilitated by the Web), victims of veiled dangers. This effect is prominently on display in the US in the phantasies about Obama's origins believed by 20+% of the population, paralleled by the beliefs about alien visitors kept secret by the government, and the origin of 9/11 in the CIA, etc. Not surprising the Tea Party plays so well, hatched in a fog which we '60ers associate with another kind of tea.And, they tend to multiply and mutually reinforce. They are also untouchable by empirical truth, having emotional truths (the threats) already occupying the relevant brainspace.

Woe are we, for these are the marginals. Woe are they because their leaders pre(a)y on and feed their paranoias. Under present conditions, the difference
between 'we' and 'they' becomes daily thinner.

Appreciation (27) … Learning to paint by painting

2010-09-13T21:39:00.000+10:00

Appreciation (27) … Learning to paint by painting
Torrey Orton
Sept. 13, 2010

A client who is finding his way out of depression with a paintbrush was talking about his emerging experience of learning to hold the brush correctly. Though a graphic designer by trade, he's only recently started painting seriously. It's a gift he first glimpsed around age 5, but various things kept it out of the field of his life's play. Recently in a gulf between employments, he bought a painter's kit and started in.

He works at it three hours a day. Along the way he's learning the craft by doing. Brush wielding turns out to be a critical technical foundation. As he's learned to hold the brush ever further along handle, his view of the emerging picture has developed too. Grasping the handle just behind the brush, as if taking up a pencil, pulls the eye and body down into the picture. To see the point of application, to see the perception he was creating, he had to look around the brush tip.

I was sharing this progress with another painting client, who's further down the technique path. She noted that the shift from close to more distant application involved two other moves: standing while painting and painting from the shoulder not the wrist…demonstrating as she spoke with a solid but refined flourish of an imaginary brush …much as a conductor in a delicate slow movement in a classic.

….all of which put me in mind of my own painting career – for two summers between university years as an industrial painter, of schools at the time. . and what it took to learn to paint, especially "cutting in" or edging the boundaries of a surface; if attempted with too much precision, more slips occurred; a certain flourish lightly deployed cut the best edge, sweeping lightly in from the open spaces of the surface to the boundaries and then away again with each brush load. Most satisfying, even on recollection. There was a definite flow in the process, though we lacked the concept then. Or, rather, a flow was just what wasn't wanted in a painted surface, then or now!

By the way, this was edging in pre-masking tape times (late 1950's). Similar, but less delicate, flourishes were useful in coating the concrete block walls which made up the bulk of the paintable spaces with a 6cm bristle brush 15cm long and 4cm wide. Brush work was superior to rollers because the standard union contract of the time required them – brushing took longer. The technical argument was that brushing gave better filling of the rough surfaces. Compressed air spray guns were limited to painting obscure surfaces like the 15 meter high roof of the gym with aluminium based paint…. But I regress.

My emerging painter noted in passing that he can feel in the flow of his brush stroke that it is achieving the "look" he was seeking, that at once the body realises his unrevealed perception of the image he is producing. This has something to do with what is recently applauded as the muscle memory. The applause is only partially warranted since it takes the concerted effort of all muscles to train a few in a specific way, in other words a consciousness not just a body, arm or eyelids, among the subcomponents.

It has more to do with the relationship between perception and intention. Of this, more next week.

Back to the Anger (2)

2010-08-30T21:14:00.000+10:00

Back to the Anger (2)
Torrey Orton
August 30, 2010

Anger is back on my emotional menu, more by its absence than its presence. Maybe I have slipped into a higher state of fundamentally being angry (in the here that, being here kind of way). But it feels more like a slip back into apathy, indifference, ambivalence, abstraction, depression? For some weeks now I've been struggling to write. This would be OK if it were a struggle, but it's not. It's a muddle. I'm in a muddle with me and my world, wondering if the feelings are mine projected or prompted and sustained by the world around me.

I have felt this coming, in much the way that HH was saying of himself recently: feeling short of energy, mixed motivation, apathetic to some extent, though not to the point of inactivity. Aikido practice disappeared into the space of French/Spanish things two months ago – I travelled for the first time in three years without a jo. It had been slowing for a couple of months, attrited by a solo training regime which needed the spark of submission to reinvigorate itself. I haven't forgotten aikido, but the inner push flags in the cool of Melbourne dawns. Don't ask about the warmth of winter arvos.

What's actually arrived? One thing is inexpressibly fierce thoughts about our leaders of many stripes and competences in many places. These thoughts have stopped me even as I write. So powerful is the commandment against thinking them that the prospect of public shame for doing so inhibits my language, and so my fingers (with which I write these days, not the 'pen' I would have written just now). After a couple days' pause in the space between fullstop and 'A', I can say these are thoughts of retributive justice. Trouble is, I'm untested at violences of the bodyful sorts and quail in the face of bodily threats unless provided in controlled environments like ice hockey or aikido, in which cases I love violence.

What's behind this arrival? Nothing new, but the gathered load of years of obsessive anger, which CB reminded me today was long gathering hair rather than action.

A year and some ago I proposed that

I was wrong in the long term. For some, at some times, under some personal conditions the weight of others' disregard generates one's own disregard in return. Unfortunately this is not terribly instructive to the others. They do not feel the absence of ones regard for them or oneself.

Back to the anger.

Here Michael Leunig surmised a few weeks ago:

Perhaps we are witnessing a historic moment when our politicians are ceasing to advocate our intelligent concerns and are beginning to openly represent our madness.

Maybe that's not why I started aikido training (self-training) for the first time in three months today. Maybe it has been mostly me and only somewhat 'them' that I have slipped into torpid laxities – TV, eating/drinking in compulsive ways – which I've always had a taste for but they are both more and less powerful these recent days. Watched more often but for total less time.

In honour of my honouring a monthly performance target for 17 months, I'm posting this in the last days of August, way behind on my notional monthly target, yet still keeping myself in the game. Will I lift it or leave it?