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.

 

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

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

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?

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??

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.