Appreciation (34) … Just do it!

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?

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

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

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!

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.

1. To impress (something) upon the mind of another by frequent instruction or repetition; instil: inculcating sound principles.
2. 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!!

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

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.