Helping the patient make sense of themselves (these are the 40-somethings who say "I got this diagnosis and I'm so relieved") and to untangle twisted knots of emotion, lies, mis-direction and denial, are what television and movies would have us think are the basic tasks of psychotherapy. But the story-construction is only part of it, even though it may be so much that both patient and therapist fall down in exhaustion when it is done.
The other part is giving the patient a life that works and keeps the dark thoughts at bay. "Managing" the dysfunctional behaviours and thoughts is not quite enough: it is better to displace them. It's at this stage that I think the psychotherapists fall: it's not enough to feel no pain (though that may be enough for a while), we need to feel good as well. (Martin Seligman recognised this, and became a self-help guru as a result.)
Psychotherapists fail at this because they have the wrong data. Day after day, people pass through their offices telling them that they are upset because X and Y or they they would feel better if only W and Z, and unsurprisingly, the therapists conclude that they would be out of business if everyone felt / had W, X, Y and Z, because they would also be happy. So they tell people that they need W, X, Y and Z.
Whereas what their patients need to be is the kind of person to whom other people respond with W, X, Y and Z. They need to be loveable people, and then they will be loved. They need to give off "I'm a great person to hang out with" vibes, and then people will hang out with them. And of course, that's exactly the kinds of person the patient is not because (see story they have constructed with their therapist), and how to be that kind of person is exactly what they want the therapist to tell them. However, that falls under the heading of "self-help" and that's not what therapists think they do. It's what therapists think Dale Carnegie did.
It is much more effective to change what one does on a daily basis so the dysfunctional behaviours have few opportunities to get appear. These techniques are well-known in the self-improvement community: hit the gym / swimming pool / running track / dojo (according to taste); dump the users, losers and abusers; early to rise so you have to go early to bed; cut down on the booze and fast food, and drop the drugs; listen to upbeat music; read non-fiction and/or learn some saleable skills; and so on. Holidays on one's own work for some people, not so much for others. (Talking briefly to strangers about something harmless is a ninja move: you will come across as open and friendly, and they will feel bad because they thought you were some creepy weirdo, but then you weren't.) The trick is not to do things that you know you're only doing so that you don't do something worse - this is where some re-framing can be useful.
Whatever one chooses, it has to be something that can be done with or without another person. That endless search for "intimate relationships" and "like-minded people" depends on finding someone else - and if you're over thirty, the chances are she / he is already in a committed relationship ("the good ones are always already taken"). The therapist who implies that the client will never be truly happy until they find that elusive "intimate relationship" and those mythical "like-minded people" is not doing the client any favours.
Self-improvement is easier for people who are not in domestic relationships. After thirty-five that's only fifteen per cent of the (UK) population. Everyone else has to get better despite their live-in partner: partners cannot be assumed to support the changes we want to make, though it's nice if they do. To the extent the domesticated cannot work the full self-improvement program, they are stuck with "managing", and so with being their own hazard.
Showing posts with label Psychology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Psychology. Show all posts
Tuesday, 20 May 2025
Friday, 16 May 2025
The Problems of High-Functioning People - Classification
(In the Wrestling Pigs post, I said that psychology as a therapeutic practice had been hi-jacked by an unholy trinity of the pharmaceutical industry, the budgetary constraints of the NHS, and a tendency to manipulative middle-class, liberal-feminist values, to the point where the appalling propaganda of the Lockdowns was considered to be a triumph of the art. Nothing so corrupt is worthy of philosophical analysis. However, my inner philosopher rebelled. This and the next post discuss some issues facing so-called "high-functioning" individuals, not the poor sods who are stuck on regimens of disgusting psychiatric drugs, and for people who can afford private therapy, not the poor sods being fobbed off with ten sessions of CBT to tick boxes and manage budgets.)
All of us have to deal with the insults and upsets of everyday life, from getting a bad cold to being laid off from work for no fault of one's own, from the kitchen misplacing our order to getting a parking fine, and from the irritation of not being able to find our keys to grieving for the loss of a loved one. Everyone reacts and recovers differently to these: some people can bear a grudge for a lifetime, and others seem to shrug off almost anything in a day.
These experiences are "everyday" because they can and do happen to everyone, involve no shame or guilt and so can be publicly admitted, the event is not usually directed at us because of who we are, have no significant lasting effects, the temporary effects are understood and allowed for by almost everyone.
Some people need to deal with the after-effects of an experience that leaves a permanent negative effect, or an effect which is not understood or allowed for by others, and which may have been directed at us because of some aspect of our character, and have likely resulted in possibly undeserved shame or guilt. Amongst the obvious ones are divorce, being laid off from work for no fault of one's own, or being bullied, abused, or stalked. There is the litany of faults of family and upbringing, or having a singular and shocking experience, or a consistent pattern of treatment which, taken individually may be bearable, but over a longer period is harmful.
Some people also need to deal with maladaptations and kinks. A maladaptation is a behaviour that "made sense at the time" to cope with a particular situation, but has been applied outside that situation or carried on past its time. The behaviour must have been reasonable and effective - given the resources available to the person at the time. A kink is a preference or ability that leads to behaviour that is uncommon, some of which may be socially unacceptable or otherwise dysfunctional, and the most obvious example are the addictions. (A trivial example is: just because you can crack your fingers, doesn't mean you should.)
The purpose of psychotherapeutic explanation is not to provide an explanation of why the patient is experiencing distress or reduced functioning. The truth is too complicated and rarely delivers the emotional satisfaction needed. Instead, it is to provide a story that helps the patient make sense of themselves, and especially to remove feelings that were put there by other people. (Too often that story is about mothers, as if fathers played no roles in their children's upbringing, and not often enough does it look at schools, peer groups, and the books, movies, stories, art and so on, the patient was exposed to.) If that story continues to make the patient make sense to themselves, then it is good enough.
Helping the patient make sense of themselves (these are the 40-somethings who say "I got this diagnosis and I'm so relieved") and to untangle twisted knots of emotion, lies, mis-direction and denial, are what television and movies would have us think are the basic tasks of psychotherapy. But the story-construction is only part of it, even though it may be so much that both patient and therapist fall down in exhaustion when it is done.
All of us have to deal with the insults and upsets of everyday life, from getting a bad cold to being laid off from work for no fault of one's own, from the kitchen misplacing our order to getting a parking fine, and from the irritation of not being able to find our keys to grieving for the loss of a loved one. Everyone reacts and recovers differently to these: some people can bear a grudge for a lifetime, and others seem to shrug off almost anything in a day.
These experiences are "everyday" because they can and do happen to everyone, involve no shame or guilt and so can be publicly admitted, the event is not usually directed at us because of who we are, have no significant lasting effects, the temporary effects are understood and allowed for by almost everyone.
Some people need to deal with the after-effects of an experience that leaves a permanent negative effect, or an effect which is not understood or allowed for by others, and which may have been directed at us because of some aspect of our character, and have likely resulted in possibly undeserved shame or guilt. Amongst the obvious ones are divorce, being laid off from work for no fault of one's own, or being bullied, abused, or stalked. There is the litany of faults of family and upbringing, or having a singular and shocking experience, or a consistent pattern of treatment which, taken individually may be bearable, but over a longer period is harmful.
Some people also need to deal with maladaptations and kinks. A maladaptation is a behaviour that "made sense at the time" to cope with a particular situation, but has been applied outside that situation or carried on past its time. The behaviour must have been reasonable and effective - given the resources available to the person at the time. A kink is a preference or ability that leads to behaviour that is uncommon, some of which may be socially unacceptable or otherwise dysfunctional, and the most obvious example are the addictions. (A trivial example is: just because you can crack your fingers, doesn't mean you should.)
The purpose of psychotherapeutic explanation is not to provide an explanation of why the patient is experiencing distress or reduced functioning. The truth is too complicated and rarely delivers the emotional satisfaction needed. Instead, it is to provide a story that helps the patient make sense of themselves, and especially to remove feelings that were put there by other people. (Too often that story is about mothers, as if fathers played no roles in their children's upbringing, and not often enough does it look at schools, peer groups, and the books, movies, stories, art and so on, the patient was exposed to.) If that story continues to make the patient make sense to themselves, then it is good enough.
Helping the patient make sense of themselves (these are the 40-somethings who say "I got this diagnosis and I'm so relieved") and to untangle twisted knots of emotion, lies, mis-direction and denial, are what television and movies would have us think are the basic tasks of psychotherapy. But the story-construction is only part of it, even though it may be so much that both patient and therapist fall down in exhaustion when it is done.
Tuesday, 13 May 2025
Living On The Fringe With Suzy Creemcheese
In case your Valley Girl decoder is a bit slow, here's the transcription:
Hello, teenage America,As a result of never having the experience of being part of a group (other than the group of people who don’t fit into groups, which doesn’t count) Suzy has the manner of those-who-never-belonged. This is recognised at an intuitive level by those-who-are-acceptable, so later in life she will not be invited to join any of the scenes ("there's always a scene, and it's always by invitation only") and so will have the feeling that real life is going on out there, and she will only ever be on the fringes of it.
My name is Suzy Creemcheese,
I'm Suzy Creemcheese because I've never worn fake eyelashes in my whole life
And I never made it on surfing set
And I never made it on beatnik set
And I couldn't cut the groupie set either
And, um...
Actually I really f****d up in Europe.
Now that I've done it all over and nobody else will accept me
I've come home to my Mothers
Fringe is where the Suzies of the world end up. Rock 'n roll is one such fringe, and far more nerdy than most people realise. Being the bookish girl, the movie buff, the guy who spends his spare time on bus journeys and train trips, the street photographer... these are other fringes. Some of the people doing those things can do those things with others, and there are clubs and associations as well - sometimes guarded by gatekeepers that make the school in-crowd look welcoming. Fringe people can even be married - you know, that quiet couple who keep to themselves.
If belonging-to-a-group is not what Suzy can do well, or at all, it's silly if not counter-productive, to base her future on trying to do it. Since the best defence is good offence, what Suzy needs are activities that keep her busy, solvent, fit, healthy, entertained and informed, and provide her with reasons to have self-respect.
Living on the fringe means dealing with higher-than-normal chances of disappointment, bitterness, depression, isolation and substance abuse. It means adopting the public mask of a normally-socialised person, who somehow always has a prior commitment when anything social is offered, especially at work. Choose the wrong behaviours and one can qualify for the diagnosis of a Schizoid Personality style, and if it hurts and hinders, the Disorder.
Suzy has to figure out how to manage her life so she does not fall into self-pity, anger, emptiness, bitterness, low morale, delusional fantasies, drunken stupors, drug use, retail therapy, and binge-watching TV series, or, for that matter, going from one therapist to the next, and from one social setting and one activity to the next, looking for that elusive feeling of belonging.
Living on the fringe means developing a life-style that works with or without others. Reading, movies, swimming, running, learning to play a musical instrument, solo competitive sports, training in the gym, learning to cook and source ingredients, painting, horse-riding, attending concerts and plays, photography, developing software, tending the garden... all sorts of things. Some of these are difficult to do within a normal domestic relationship, and almost impossible with children. Get a taste for any of them, and partners will need to be chosen to fit in with the interest, rather than interests fitting in with the partner.
Friday, 9 May 2025
Copes, Adaptations and Being Your Own Hazard
A couple of posts ago, I said I would subject you to thoughts on category theory, rather than witter on about psychology any more. I have been reading and thinking about category theory, but the psychology stuff wouldn't quite leave me alone. So bear with me through the next batch of posts. There's a theme.
A cope is what I do because the world around me sucks. A adaptation is what I do because I suck.
A cope does not change the suck in the world, but it attempts to change my behaviour or attitude, so I don't mind, or am less affected by, the suck. It is inherently sub-optimal.
Using "mindfulness" to cope with the stresses at work, instead of finding a new employer.
Buying own-brand because prices have gone up and your salary hasn't, is a cope.
Reading on the commute is a cope. See? I'm not really wasting my time.
An adaptation is something I do to modify my behaviour or attitudes so I don't do something dumb, offensive, pointless and expensive, harmful, or illegal, that I seem to be more-than-normally liable to doing.
Abstinence and one-day-at-a-time is an adaptation.
Things we do to get round problems with our bodies are adaptations. I have a hiatus hernia so I take Lanzoprosole. Using a wheelchair if you don't have lower limb use. Or wearing glasses. Or people with Type 2 Diabetes who manage their diet and exercise to keep their sugars in bounds. S**t happens, and we need to adapt.
Changes we make to live in a different culture than the one we grew up in are adaptations.
Eating fresh food, not drinking too much, staying away from drugs, and not buying things you don't need with money you don't have to impress people you don't care about... those are neither copes nor adaptations. It's sensible behaviour. Even if some people need to be reminded to do them.
Some people wind up managing what they do around one or more adaptations.
Recovering addicts or alcoholics. Or people with Autism or ADHD, who need to mask. Or people who watched the wrong video, found they had a kink they never previously knew about, and now have to live with the fact it's never going to be satisfied IRL. Or people who have to do certain exercises every day. Or people who need to play up-beat music on their way to work to manage their mood. Or people who are really awful judges of character, who need to be very careful about who to spend time with.
Having to keep up one or more adaptations, is similar to always needing to watch where you're going and who's around when you leave the house to go anywhere. (Realty check: paying attention when crossing a road is okay; needing to watch out for strange people lurking in shop doorways when walking home at night means you should change neighbourhoods.) Maybe we will see something that triggers us, or maybe we will stop keeping our digs clean and turning up to work on time.
The delightful thing about this, is that one is effectively on guard against a part of oneself. A little part of us is now the enemy. Nobody puts it like that, but it's one reason people who might benefit from a character adaptation resist it: they would rather stay flawed and whole.
A cope is what I do because the world around me sucks. A adaptation is what I do because I suck.
A cope does not change the suck in the world, but it attempts to change my behaviour or attitude, so I don't mind, or am less affected by, the suck. It is inherently sub-optimal.
Using "mindfulness" to cope with the stresses at work, instead of finding a new employer.
Buying own-brand because prices have gone up and your salary hasn't, is a cope.
Reading on the commute is a cope. See? I'm not really wasting my time.
An adaptation is something I do to modify my behaviour or attitudes so I don't do something dumb, offensive, pointless and expensive, harmful, or illegal, that I seem to be more-than-normally liable to doing.
Abstinence and one-day-at-a-time is an adaptation.
Things we do to get round problems with our bodies are adaptations. I have a hiatus hernia so I take Lanzoprosole. Using a wheelchair if you don't have lower limb use. Or wearing glasses. Or people with Type 2 Diabetes who manage their diet and exercise to keep their sugars in bounds. S**t happens, and we need to adapt.
Changes we make to live in a different culture than the one we grew up in are adaptations.
Eating fresh food, not drinking too much, staying away from drugs, and not buying things you don't need with money you don't have to impress people you don't care about... those are neither copes nor adaptations. It's sensible behaviour. Even if some people need to be reminded to do them.
Some people wind up managing what they do around one or more adaptations.
Recovering addicts or alcoholics. Or people with Autism or ADHD, who need to mask. Or people who watched the wrong video, found they had a kink they never previously knew about, and now have to live with the fact it's never going to be satisfied IRL. Or people who have to do certain exercises every day. Or people who need to play up-beat music on their way to work to manage their mood. Or people who are really awful judges of character, who need to be very careful about who to spend time with.
Having to keep up one or more adaptations, is similar to always needing to watch where you're going and who's around when you leave the house to go anywhere. (Realty check: paying attention when crossing a road is okay; needing to watch out for strange people lurking in shop doorways when walking home at night means you should change neighbourhoods.) Maybe we will see something that triggers us, or maybe we will stop keeping our digs clean and turning up to work on time.
The delightful thing about this, is that one is effectively on guard against a part of oneself. A little part of us is now the enemy. Nobody puts it like that, but it's one reason people who might benefit from a character adaptation resist it: they would rather stay flawed and whole.
Tuesday, 22 April 2025
The Philosophy of Psychology, or, Wrestling With A Pig
Attentive readers will have noticed that I've been playing catch-up again. Every now and then I get waylaid by something I can't resolve within the timetable of this blog. I've been looking for another longer-term project, with psychology or category theory as candidates. What? I'm a philosopher - I contain multi-disciplinary multitudes. Let's talk about psychology.
There is a perfectly reputable, if unexciting, study of the way the brain / mind works; how perception works and can occasionally mislead; and related subjects. Degrees in that subject tend to be B.Sc's and the studies don't make for best-selling pop-psych.
The psychology we are looking for is sometimes called moral psychology, the study of emotions, feelings, behaviour towards ourselves and others, thought-processes and other such stuff that can be discussed sensibly without knowing the difference between a ganglion and a neurone. Degrees in that subject tend to be B.A's.
Moral psychology used to be a stock-in-trade for any reputable Enlightenment philosopher, who would use it to make often mordant and worldly observations about their fellow man, society and economy, disguised as descriptions of emotions and personality traits. Sometimes this was to show that the vast array of human behaviour and emotion could be reduced to two or three basic traits, emotions or principles. David Hume did this in his Treatise of Human Nature;, as did Adam Smith in his Theory of the Moral Sentiments.
Moral psychology is for the philosophically-inclined. The way people ordinarily understand each other's behaviour and characters is called folk-psychology. It starts with identifying kinds of behaviours (counting the expression of emotions and thoughts as 'behaviour'), continues by grouping those behaviours into a "personal quality", and if those actions, emotions and thoughts are observed to be "done-once, done-often", ascribes a dispositional "personality trait", "character trait" or "quality" to the person. Folk-psychology is sometimes subtle, always contextual and culture-bound, and of course, independent of any theory of the container of those traits and qualities, be it mind, soul, spirit or something else.
Folk-psychology is always directed at action. Its aim is not "understanding all to forgive all", nor is it to understand motives or reasons. It is a grab-bag of concepts to describe us, and of tricks to influence, persuade, re-educate, convert, and indoctrinate us. The aim is to make us act, think or feel in a manner useful to someone else. It is also to identify people who might turn out to be odd, disruptive or obstructive, to the point that we would not choose them as colleagues, neighbours or friends - so we can avoid them before they become a nuisance. Folk-psychology is what we need to choose and develop alliances, friendships, social networks, sports teams, military units, political parties and so on, and it is what we need to avoid users, losers and abusers, wastrels, hopeless cases, traitors, freeloaders and so on.
Hegel was the last of the great systematisers of moral psychology, linking it with politics and law at one end, psychiatry in the middle, and folk-psychology at the other. After that, the philosophers stopped doing moral psychology, and instead specialised in sociology, economics, psychiatry, or "philosophy of mind". As a result, folk-psychology took over as the theoretical foundation of all psychology.
Today, the vast majority of what passes for "psychology" on the shelves of bookshops, in hospitals and therapy rooms, in novels, films and plays, and even in psychiatry and the DSM / ICD classifications, is variations on and justifications of folk-psychology, peppered with pseudo-technical terminology, salted with politics, seasoned with religion, law and morality, and poured like gravy over people and behaviour. The aims of academic psychology are now those of folk-psychology: producing conceptual tools for influencing the people we need to-do with, and identifying the people to avoid.
That is what the books are about; that is what the tests are used for; that is how it used by Governments, militaries, schools, and businesses. The "normies" use conventional psychiatry and psychotherapy to make an industry out of "treating" the fringe people; and recently in response, the fringe people have created mental health activism. Some even use it against themselves via a third-party when they go to psychotherapy.
In practice, psychiatrists have been suborned by the pharmaceutical industry, the insurers and State health services, and are pill-pushers: the patient gets fifteen minutes for free if the taxpayer is paying, or an hour or more for £800 or so for a private consultation. The result is still a pill. In the same way, psychotherapists "deliver" a short course of CBT-based treatment if the taxpayer is paying, while psychodynamic therapists will settle in for three days a week for forty-four weeks over three or four years at £150 or so an hour, with variations in between. These are features, not bugs.
A theory that gains a wide reception in the profession usually meets a number of conditions. It fits the prevailing mores of the largely white, middle-class, feminist-y, liberal-ish, and majority female, members of the profession. It can be used by businesses to gee-up their employees when times get hard and HR is cutting heads. It can be used to give the appearance that a vast military organisation cares about the morale of its troops, as it sends them into yet another asymmetric war where the enemy might be a twelve year-old boy with a bomb. It might describe a new symptom, disorder or condition that expands the market for psychotherapeutic services. It can be used by Governments to scare their populations into compliance with unjustified and disastrous public health policies.
There is a perfectly reputable, if unexciting, study of the way the brain / mind works; how perception works and can occasionally mislead; and related subjects. Degrees in that subject tend to be B.Sc's and the studies don't make for best-selling pop-psych.
The psychology we are looking for is sometimes called moral psychology, the study of emotions, feelings, behaviour towards ourselves and others, thought-processes and other such stuff that can be discussed sensibly without knowing the difference between a ganglion and a neurone. Degrees in that subject tend to be B.A's.
Moral psychology used to be a stock-in-trade for any reputable Enlightenment philosopher, who would use it to make often mordant and worldly observations about their fellow man, society and economy, disguised as descriptions of emotions and personality traits. Sometimes this was to show that the vast array of human behaviour and emotion could be reduced to two or three basic traits, emotions or principles. David Hume did this in his Treatise of Human Nature;, as did Adam Smith in his Theory of the Moral Sentiments.
Moral psychology is for the philosophically-inclined. The way people ordinarily understand each other's behaviour and characters is called folk-psychology. It starts with identifying kinds of behaviours (counting the expression of emotions and thoughts as 'behaviour'), continues by grouping those behaviours into a "personal quality", and if those actions, emotions and thoughts are observed to be "done-once, done-often", ascribes a dispositional "personality trait", "character trait" or "quality" to the person. Folk-psychology is sometimes subtle, always contextual and culture-bound, and of course, independent of any theory of the container of those traits and qualities, be it mind, soul, spirit or something else.
Folk-psychology is always directed at action. Its aim is not "understanding all to forgive all", nor is it to understand motives or reasons. It is a grab-bag of concepts to describe us, and of tricks to influence, persuade, re-educate, convert, and indoctrinate us. The aim is to make us act, think or feel in a manner useful to someone else. It is also to identify people who might turn out to be odd, disruptive or obstructive, to the point that we would not choose them as colleagues, neighbours or friends - so we can avoid them before they become a nuisance. Folk-psychology is what we need to choose and develop alliances, friendships, social networks, sports teams, military units, political parties and so on, and it is what we need to avoid users, losers and abusers, wastrels, hopeless cases, traitors, freeloaders and so on.
Hegel was the last of the great systematisers of moral psychology, linking it with politics and law at one end, psychiatry in the middle, and folk-psychology at the other. After that, the philosophers stopped doing moral psychology, and instead specialised in sociology, economics, psychiatry, or "philosophy of mind". As a result, folk-psychology took over as the theoretical foundation of all psychology.
Today, the vast majority of what passes for "psychology" on the shelves of bookshops, in hospitals and therapy rooms, in novels, films and plays, and even in psychiatry and the DSM / ICD classifications, is variations on and justifications of folk-psychology, peppered with pseudo-technical terminology, salted with politics, seasoned with religion, law and morality, and poured like gravy over people and behaviour. The aims of academic psychology are now those of folk-psychology: producing conceptual tools for influencing the people we need to-do with, and identifying the people to avoid.
That is what the books are about; that is what the tests are used for; that is how it used by Governments, militaries, schools, and businesses. The "normies" use conventional psychiatry and psychotherapy to make an industry out of "treating" the fringe people; and recently in response, the fringe people have created mental health activism. Some even use it against themselves via a third-party when they go to psychotherapy.
In practice, psychiatrists have been suborned by the pharmaceutical industry, the insurers and State health services, and are pill-pushers: the patient gets fifteen minutes for free if the taxpayer is paying, or an hour or more for £800 or so for a private consultation. The result is still a pill. In the same way, psychotherapists "deliver" a short course of CBT-based treatment if the taxpayer is paying, while psychodynamic therapists will settle in for three days a week for forty-four weeks over three or four years at £150 or so an hour, with variations in between. These are features, not bugs.
A theory that gains a wide reception in the profession usually meets a number of conditions. It fits the prevailing mores of the largely white, middle-class, feminist-y, liberal-ish, and majority female, members of the profession. It can be used by businesses to gee-up their employees when times get hard and HR is cutting heads. It can be used to give the appearance that a vast military organisation cares about the morale of its troops, as it sends them into yet another asymmetric war where the enemy might be a twelve year-old boy with a bomb. It might describe a new symptom, disorder or condition that expands the market for psychotherapeutic services. It can be used by Governments to scare their populations into compliance with unjustified and disastrous public health policies.
These abuses are not failures of professional ethics, but actual professional success-stories.
This line of thought could be, and probably has been, expanded into a paperback polemic. Those can be fun to read, but writing them has always struck me as being like mud-wrestling with a pig: you both get muddy, and the pig enjoys it. I don't enjoy mud-wrestling.
So I'm going to have some fun discussing category theory (or something else) instead.
This line of thought could be, and probably has been, expanded into a paperback polemic. Those can be fun to read, but writing them has always struck me as being like mud-wrestling with a pig: you both get muddy, and the pig enjoys it. I don't enjoy mud-wrestling.
So I'm going to have some fun discussing category theory (or something else) instead.
Tuesday, 16 July 2024
Moral Injury
Apparently this is a thing. It was identified by an activist on behalf of US Army vets. He said it was: betrayal of 'what's right' in a high-stakes situation by someone who holds power. Puts the blame squarely on management. I heard about it during this YT video.
One day someone will do a study of the sad career of this concept, and psychologists and their kind will hang their heads in shame.
A more recent definition is “the inability to contextualize or justify personal actions or the actions of others and the unsuccessful accommodation of these . . . experiences into pre-existing moral schemas”. This polysyllabic neo-gibberish appears to put the blame squarely on the injured person, since it is their “failure to contextualise other people’s actions into pre-existing moral schemas” - in other words, management didn’t do anything wrong, you just don’t understand why what they did was right.
Any idea that can be so easily turned on its head has something wrong with it. The mistake (which I have just recognised after many abandoned words) is to go in search of what’s wrong and try to explain or rectify it. Because it won’t affect the underlying insight.
Which is that some people can be severely shaken and lose faith in the institutions within which they are working, when they see some ghastly event happen as a result of yet one more incomprehensibly dumb management decision.
They can also lose faith and respect for themselves for going along with that decision, for fear of a Court Martial, the sack, a poor performance review, and otherwise having their career screwed. The relevant phrase comes from a Sunday Times journalist after Rupert Murdoch bought it: it is an unpleasant experience to discover that the size of one’s soul is just less than the size of one’s mortgage.
Even civilian life can inflict sufficient insults, disappointments, refusals, rejections, broken promises, incomprehensible bureaucratic decisions, below-inflation pay rises, increased prices for decreased quality and quantity, zero-hours contracts, redundancies, offshoring, increased taxes for policies no-one agrees with, long waiting lists, cancelled operations, unavailable GPs, LTN schemes appearing out of thin air… to reduce even the strongest to despair and self-doubt.
The concern is that this will affect the functioning of our society and economy. Trust feels like something nice and warm that we should have in our leaders and institutions. But we don’t, because that’s not how it works.
We just need to know that the law or institutional practice says that if we competently follow our leader’s instructions, we are absolved of any liability, if anything goes wrong as a result. Which is why we should always get everything in writing. The deal is that we will not question their dumb and self-serving decisions, and they will protect us from the consequences of following those dumb and self-serving decisions.
It’s when that deal is broken that all hell breaks loose amongst the ranks. Management that goes looking for low-level scapegoats is tarred and feathered in the press, should the story get that far. And management finds out that “staff goodwill” is a real thing, especially when it vanishes.
Most of what is covered by “moral injury” (front-line warfare and NHS treatment of whistleblowers excepted) is what used to be considered a “welcome the real world” moment, in which one’s delusions and were rudely broken, and one’s un-informed expectations were properly informed. It was regarded as a moment in which one added additional adult maturity to one’s character. People who could not handle the disappointment or shock were regarded as a little short of moral fortitude. Back in the day, women who couldn’t handle the shock were offered a move to (name some gentler place off the serious career track here). Men just sucked it up.
“Moral injury” suggests that our delusions and unrealistic expectations are in fact precious possessions, and their loss in the face of reality is to be regarded as a blow to the integrity of our character from which we may never recover. The truth is no longer learning, but injury.
We are supposed to be shocked as our delusions are dispersed, and then build the character needed to carry on doing good work despite being in a world we now know is far-from-perfect. Being cynical is not good enough, and nor is running away in shock.
It may be that the only way to do good work is to do the same job somewhere else. Nothing wrong with that: there’s no obligation to stay in a dysfunctional institution run by a**holes. Apply for a job elsewhere, and speak so well of the place you’re leaving that everyone wonders why you are leaving. Except they will know, and appreciate your willingness to play the game.
(Edited 24/7) It may be you are not cut out for nursing / surgery / sales / customer service / (enter some other activity here). That’s how it used to be said. Nothing wrong with that. Find another occupation, preferably that you don’t have high-flown illusions about. Yes, sometimes management or the enemy do something so egregious that not to react to it would be inhuman, and to regard it as an opportunity for growth would be obscene. Then we could talk about “injury”. But that happens to very few people outside a war zone, or the NHS.
One day someone will do a study of the sad career of this concept, and psychologists and their kind will hang their heads in shame.
A more recent definition is “the inability to contextualize or justify personal actions or the actions of others and the unsuccessful accommodation of these . . . experiences into pre-existing moral schemas”. This polysyllabic neo-gibberish appears to put the blame squarely on the injured person, since it is their “failure to contextualise other people’s actions into pre-existing moral schemas” - in other words, management didn’t do anything wrong, you just don’t understand why what they did was right.
Any idea that can be so easily turned on its head has something wrong with it. The mistake (which I have just recognised after many abandoned words) is to go in search of what’s wrong and try to explain or rectify it. Because it won’t affect the underlying insight.
Which is that some people can be severely shaken and lose faith in the institutions within which they are working, when they see some ghastly event happen as a result of yet one more incomprehensibly dumb management decision.
They can also lose faith and respect for themselves for going along with that decision, for fear of a Court Martial, the sack, a poor performance review, and otherwise having their career screwed. The relevant phrase comes from a Sunday Times journalist after Rupert Murdoch bought it: it is an unpleasant experience to discover that the size of one’s soul is just less than the size of one’s mortgage.
Even civilian life can inflict sufficient insults, disappointments, refusals, rejections, broken promises, incomprehensible bureaucratic decisions, below-inflation pay rises, increased prices for decreased quality and quantity, zero-hours contracts, redundancies, offshoring, increased taxes for policies no-one agrees with, long waiting lists, cancelled operations, unavailable GPs, LTN schemes appearing out of thin air… to reduce even the strongest to despair and self-doubt.
The concern is that this will affect the functioning of our society and economy. Trust feels like something nice and warm that we should have in our leaders and institutions. But we don’t, because that’s not how it works.
We just need to know that the law or institutional practice says that if we competently follow our leader’s instructions, we are absolved of any liability, if anything goes wrong as a result. Which is why we should always get everything in writing. The deal is that we will not question their dumb and self-serving decisions, and they will protect us from the consequences of following those dumb and self-serving decisions.
It’s when that deal is broken that all hell breaks loose amongst the ranks. Management that goes looking for low-level scapegoats is tarred and feathered in the press, should the story get that far. And management finds out that “staff goodwill” is a real thing, especially when it vanishes.
Most of what is covered by “moral injury” (front-line warfare and NHS treatment of whistleblowers excepted) is what used to be considered a “welcome the real world” moment, in which one’s delusions and were rudely broken, and one’s un-informed expectations were properly informed. It was regarded as a moment in which one added additional adult maturity to one’s character. People who could not handle the disappointment or shock were regarded as a little short of moral fortitude. Back in the day, women who couldn’t handle the shock were offered a move to (name some gentler place off the serious career track here). Men just sucked it up.
“Moral injury” suggests that our delusions and unrealistic expectations are in fact precious possessions, and their loss in the face of reality is to be regarded as a blow to the integrity of our character from which we may never recover. The truth is no longer learning, but injury.
We are supposed to be shocked as our delusions are dispersed, and then build the character needed to carry on doing good work despite being in a world we now know is far-from-perfect. Being cynical is not good enough, and nor is running away in shock.
It may be that the only way to do good work is to do the same job somewhere else. Nothing wrong with that: there’s no obligation to stay in a dysfunctional institution run by a**holes. Apply for a job elsewhere, and speak so well of the place you’re leaving that everyone wonders why you are leaving. Except they will know, and appreciate your willingness to play the game.
(Edited 24/7) It may be you are not cut out for nursing / surgery / sales / customer service / (enter some other activity here). That’s how it used to be said. Nothing wrong with that. Find another occupation, preferably that you don’t have high-flown illusions about. Yes, sometimes management or the enemy do something so egregious that not to react to it would be inhuman, and to regard it as an opportunity for growth would be obscene. Then we could talk about “injury”. But that happens to very few people outside a war zone, or the NHS.
Tuesday, 9 July 2024
Sleep Hygiene Is Not For Regular People
There needs to be a name for a piece of advice, given as part of a programme, that almost everyone would not be able to follow, and so, when they complain that the programme “doesn’t work”, the guru can say “Did you do the thing I put in there that I know almost nobody every does?” and you say “No, because almost nobody can” and the guru says “Well, that’s the most important part of the programme”.
In the self-improvement / recovery business, that thing is usually “sleep hygiene”. This says we should go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, and get at least five full circadian cycles of sleep, waking up from shallow sleep. Everyone’s circadian cycle is different in length, and the default number is 90 minutes.
Now think this through. You have to go to work. Starts at (say) 09:00, but it’s best to get there around 08:30 so you get a seat in the open-plan office. Say it’s an hour’s commute. So that’s 07:30. An hour for dressing, breakfast, showering and the like, 06:30 wake-up time. Seven and a half hours’ sleep plus dozing-off time, means getting into bed at 22:30 the previous evening. That means you’re winding down - no exciting TV or we-need-to-talk conversations - around 22:00. You left work at 17:30, were on the gym floor at 18:00, exercised and showered and on your way home at 19:15, arriving home at 20:15, leaving you 105 minutes to deal with life at home. Maybe you caught a movie at 18:30, which stopped at 20:30, so you were home at 21:30-ish, and straight into your wind-down routine. Weekends? You’re up at 06:30 while the rest of the world doesn’t even get started until about 10:00.
What you didn’t do was go to the theatre at 19:30, because that’s letting you out at 21:15 or so, adds fifteen minutes to the commute, so you’re home at 22:30, and oops! Nope.
Sleep hygiene is often incorporated into self-improvement and recovery programmes. Not because sleeping consistently is good for you (though it is), but because of all the things you stop doing in order to sleep consistently. No more late nights. No more parties. No theatre, ballet, concerts, gigs, or Above and Beyond all-dayer’s. No drinks after work. No chasing after potential partners of your preference. No weekend city breaks (what is the point of going to any major European city if you’re not going to party?).
It’s a terrific way for people who want to minimise their contact with the rest of the human race to do just that. I’d love to join you, but pumpkin time comes early for me.
Usually those same recovery programmes will suggest that one spend more time with friends, family and “like-minded people”. Rub that tummy while patting the head of your sleep hygiene.
Also, try sleep hygiene when you have young children. Or you have to deal with your partner’s snoring / restless leg / need to start sharing when you get to bed.
Nah. Sleep hygiene for regular people with actual lives is, well, aspirational.
We’re not supposed to practice sleep hygiene, anymore than we’re supposed to abstain from alcohol and sex. Abstaining from any of those is for people like me who would be far worse off if we indulged. Sleep hygiene, like sobriety, is either a productivity hack (for e.g. athletes) or for messed-up people who need to avoid screwing-up. It’s not for regular people.
Real people are supposed to get tipsy and laid from time to time, and they are supposed to be short of sleep now and again.
What they are not supposed to be is permanently sleep-deprived, running on six or less hours of sleep a day. That has all sorts of horrible effects on our short-term functioning. But sleep hygiene does not, take it from me, have all sorts of beneficial effects on short-term functioning: one does not feel better, one just doesn’t feel worse.
So given the unrealistic demands it makes, why is it included in self-improvement or recovery advice?
So the gurus can blame you for not following the programme when you tell them it isn’t working.
In the self-improvement / recovery business, that thing is usually “sleep hygiene”. This says we should go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, and get at least five full circadian cycles of sleep, waking up from shallow sleep. Everyone’s circadian cycle is different in length, and the default number is 90 minutes.
Now think this through. You have to go to work. Starts at (say) 09:00, but it’s best to get there around 08:30 so you get a seat in the open-plan office. Say it’s an hour’s commute. So that’s 07:30. An hour for dressing, breakfast, showering and the like, 06:30 wake-up time. Seven and a half hours’ sleep plus dozing-off time, means getting into bed at 22:30 the previous evening. That means you’re winding down - no exciting TV or we-need-to-talk conversations - around 22:00. You left work at 17:30, were on the gym floor at 18:00, exercised and showered and on your way home at 19:15, arriving home at 20:15, leaving you 105 minutes to deal with life at home. Maybe you caught a movie at 18:30, which stopped at 20:30, so you were home at 21:30-ish, and straight into your wind-down routine. Weekends? You’re up at 06:30 while the rest of the world doesn’t even get started until about 10:00.
What you didn’t do was go to the theatre at 19:30, because that’s letting you out at 21:15 or so, adds fifteen minutes to the commute, so you’re home at 22:30, and oops! Nope.
Sleep hygiene is often incorporated into self-improvement and recovery programmes. Not because sleeping consistently is good for you (though it is), but because of all the things you stop doing in order to sleep consistently. No more late nights. No more parties. No theatre, ballet, concerts, gigs, or Above and Beyond all-dayer’s. No drinks after work. No chasing after potential partners of your preference. No weekend city breaks (what is the point of going to any major European city if you’re not going to party?).
It’s a terrific way for people who want to minimise their contact with the rest of the human race to do just that. I’d love to join you, but pumpkin time comes early for me.
Usually those same recovery programmes will suggest that one spend more time with friends, family and “like-minded people”. Rub that tummy while patting the head of your sleep hygiene.
Also, try sleep hygiene when you have young children. Or you have to deal with your partner’s snoring / restless leg / need to start sharing when you get to bed.
Nah. Sleep hygiene for regular people with actual lives is, well, aspirational.
We’re not supposed to practice sleep hygiene, anymore than we’re supposed to abstain from alcohol and sex. Abstaining from any of those is for people like me who would be far worse off if we indulged. Sleep hygiene, like sobriety, is either a productivity hack (for e.g. athletes) or for messed-up people who need to avoid screwing-up. It’s not for regular people.
Real people are supposed to get tipsy and laid from time to time, and they are supposed to be short of sleep now and again.
What they are not supposed to be is permanently sleep-deprived, running on six or less hours of sleep a day. That has all sorts of horrible effects on our short-term functioning. But sleep hygiene does not, take it from me, have all sorts of beneficial effects on short-term functioning: one does not feel better, one just doesn’t feel worse.
So given the unrealistic demands it makes, why is it included in self-improvement or recovery advice?
So the gurus can blame you for not following the programme when you tell them it isn’t working.
Friday, 31 May 2024
Relationships as Identity (or Not)
If there’s one thing everyone in the psychology business agrees on, it’s that people really benefit from being in relationships. We are happier, feel more connected, feel that our lives have more purpose and direction, we are healthier, less stressed and more relaxed.
(That is not a factual statement, and isn’t meant to be. It is aspirational, a statement about what the consequences of relationships should be. A relationship that doesn’t have some of those consequences is “un-healthy” or “toxic”, “abusive”, “exploitative”, and other words meaning“bad”.)
Writing this, it struck me that the Big-Name philosophers don’t write much about relationships. They focus on the individual (morality) and the institutions that govern individuals (politics). They might have talked about one’s “relations with other people”, but that was about how well one dealt with, got along with, and otherwise had-to-with others. One could be arrogant in one’s relations, or too meek, or well-judged, or many other qualities.
The current idea is a tangle of different things: it refers to a kind of informal implicit contract: I expect this and that from you, and you expect this and that from me; it refers to how we behave with others; it can also refer to the possibilities for the future, and the lost opportunities in the past; the history of how and when we met, treated each other, and felt about it at the time and afterwards; it is the current condition of our dealings and feelings; it may also have institutional or social significance, such as being part of the feudal hierarchy of an organisation, or “significant others”, or “sworn enemies”. “Relationships” make up a large chunk of our biographies, and hence in some sense, our so-far realised selves.
This idea emerges with the development of a line in psychology that defines an individual’s identity as much or more by their relationships, than their personal qualities and abilities - and this makes sense, as after all, many of our personal qualities refer to our behaviour around other people. However it often turns into the implicit claim that people with very few relationships are not fully people, but rather just a collection of ingredients waiting to be made into a person by mixing and baking them in the heat of “relationships”. (There is no doubt that children do not develop into functioning adults unless they have parents, teachers, and peers, but after reaching adulthood that ends. Adults without much interpersonal contact may become eccentric - or do other people avoid them because they are already slightly eccentric?)
If there is a definition of an “ordinary person”, it is one for whom their relationships form the principal part of their biography and identity.
One may be “un-ordinary” in many ways, perhaps by having a goal or skill to which one is dedicated, and which one’s relationships either enable, or are subordinate. Athletes, performing artists, research mathematicians, entrepreneurs, politicians, and similar, are good examples. They may also have partners, children and an extended family life, but they fit around the central purpose (especially in providing excuses for getting out of unwanted purpose-related engagements). That’s where their identity comes from. If those people use therapists at all, they will use therapists who specialise in whichever type of un-ordinary they are.
Faced with a generalist, ideological psycho-therapist used to dealing with ordinary people, the un-ordinary person should apologise for being an introvert. This is a Magic Word that therapists must respect. They will usually adapt their “go out and meet more people, and join a local club or association” advice accordingly.
(That is not a factual statement, and isn’t meant to be. It is aspirational, a statement about what the consequences of relationships should be. A relationship that doesn’t have some of those consequences is “un-healthy” or “toxic”, “abusive”, “exploitative”, and other words meaning“bad”.)
Writing this, it struck me that the Big-Name philosophers don’t write much about relationships. They focus on the individual (morality) and the institutions that govern individuals (politics). They might have talked about one’s “relations with other people”, but that was about how well one dealt with, got along with, and otherwise had-to-with others. One could be arrogant in one’s relations, or too meek, or well-judged, or many other qualities.
The current idea is a tangle of different things: it refers to a kind of informal implicit contract: I expect this and that from you, and you expect this and that from me; it refers to how we behave with others; it can also refer to the possibilities for the future, and the lost opportunities in the past; the history of how and when we met, treated each other, and felt about it at the time and afterwards; it is the current condition of our dealings and feelings; it may also have institutional or social significance, such as being part of the feudal hierarchy of an organisation, or “significant others”, or “sworn enemies”. “Relationships” make up a large chunk of our biographies, and hence in some sense, our so-far realised selves.
This idea emerges with the development of a line in psychology that defines an individual’s identity as much or more by their relationships, than their personal qualities and abilities - and this makes sense, as after all, many of our personal qualities refer to our behaviour around other people. However it often turns into the implicit claim that people with very few relationships are not fully people, but rather just a collection of ingredients waiting to be made into a person by mixing and baking them in the heat of “relationships”. (There is no doubt that children do not develop into functioning adults unless they have parents, teachers, and peers, but after reaching adulthood that ends. Adults without much interpersonal contact may become eccentric - or do other people avoid them because they are already slightly eccentric?)
If there is a definition of an “ordinary person”, it is one for whom their relationships form the principal part of their biography and identity.
One may be “un-ordinary” in many ways, perhaps by having a goal or skill to which one is dedicated, and which one’s relationships either enable, or are subordinate. Athletes, performing artists, research mathematicians, entrepreneurs, politicians, and similar, are good examples. They may also have partners, children and an extended family life, but they fit around the central purpose (especially in providing excuses for getting out of unwanted purpose-related engagements). That’s where their identity comes from. If those people use therapists at all, they will use therapists who specialise in whichever type of un-ordinary they are.
Faced with a generalist, ideological psycho-therapist used to dealing with ordinary people, the un-ordinary person should apologise for being an introvert. This is a Magic Word that therapists must respect. They will usually adapt their “go out and meet more people, and join a local club or association” advice accordingly.
Tuesday, 28 May 2024
It Is About The Nail
A lot of work goes into theories of how the patient / client came to have their problem. The answer is invariably something that happened in the past, and therefore cannot be changed.(1) It’s the same with a viral infection: does it really matter where or from whom you got it? What matters is whether there’s an available affordable antidote or if you have to sweat it out.
Here’s a simpler approach.
You’re doing something DoublePlusUnGood. The next time you get an urge to do it - don’t. Even if it means you have to stand under a cold shower, run a mile, or bang your head against the wall. You’re allowed to do anything (except self-harm) you need to do to stop yourself doing it. You can give the bathroom a thorough clean, or finally sand down and varnish those shelves. Whatever it takes.
Start by removing yourself from as many of the temptations as you can. Alcoholics stop going into pubs, bars and off-licenses, and stay away from the booze shelves in the supermarket. If you only ever see Eddie and Frank to have a drink, stop seeing Eddie and Frank. Nobody said this was easy. Other people with other addictions can take relevant pre-emptive avoiding action.
You’re going to think about doing whatever it is. That’s okay. This isn’t about the chaos inside your head - yet - it’s about what you do.
Just don’t do it.
Rinse, repeat, until it becomes easier.
It’s AA in disguise, of course. What the Floundering Fathers recognised was that giving up drinking (or enter your vice here) for ever was too much to contemplate. Not having the next drink is way, way, easier. So is focusing on what you need to do today, and not worrying about tomorrow or yesterday.
That’s the advice that the addict / screw-up needs to get them started. Happiness and all those other good things will follow as a consequence, once the noise in their heads has quietened down, and they have some confidence that they can get through a bad patch without giving way to the wrong temptation.
However, addicts have Meetings. Meetings don’t always work for everyone, and nobody knows how they work for the people they work for. There’s just something about being in a group of people being honest about whatever is The Problem. You’re not alone. It can be done, because others are doing it.
Meetings are for things one wants to stop doing.
The idea doesn’t work for things that one wants to start doing. Underearners Anonymous is the closest to that, and I’ve been to those meetings. It helped me, but I’m not sure it helped many of the other people. The reference book is pretty good though.
I think psycho-therapy can be useful in helping the client understand what may be getting in the way of doing the things they need to do to achieve the things they want to achieve. In the end, it comes down to a programme of practical action, and that’s either the Steps or it’s some kind of self-improvement (take a class, go to the gym, say “hi” to one girl a day, whatever). It’s not the essentially reflective and exploratory process of psycho-therapy.
Because, in the end, it is about the nail.
(1) However, knowing what that historical something is will help you see its consequences as put there by someone else and so that can be removed or ignored in the future.
Here’s a simpler approach.
You’re doing something DoublePlusUnGood. The next time you get an urge to do it - don’t. Even if it means you have to stand under a cold shower, run a mile, or bang your head against the wall. You’re allowed to do anything (except self-harm) you need to do to stop yourself doing it. You can give the bathroom a thorough clean, or finally sand down and varnish those shelves. Whatever it takes.
Start by removing yourself from as many of the temptations as you can. Alcoholics stop going into pubs, bars and off-licenses, and stay away from the booze shelves in the supermarket. If you only ever see Eddie and Frank to have a drink, stop seeing Eddie and Frank. Nobody said this was easy. Other people with other addictions can take relevant pre-emptive avoiding action.
You’re going to think about doing whatever it is. That’s okay. This isn’t about the chaos inside your head - yet - it’s about what you do.
Just don’t do it.
Rinse, repeat, until it becomes easier.
It’s AA in disguise, of course. What the Floundering Fathers recognised was that giving up drinking (or enter your vice here) for ever was too much to contemplate. Not having the next drink is way, way, easier. So is focusing on what you need to do today, and not worrying about tomorrow or yesterday.
That’s the advice that the addict / screw-up needs to get them started. Happiness and all those other good things will follow as a consequence, once the noise in their heads has quietened down, and they have some confidence that they can get through a bad patch without giving way to the wrong temptation.
However, addicts have Meetings. Meetings don’t always work for everyone, and nobody knows how they work for the people they work for. There’s just something about being in a group of people being honest about whatever is The Problem. You’re not alone. It can be done, because others are doing it.
Meetings are for things one wants to stop doing.
The idea doesn’t work for things that one wants to start doing. Underearners Anonymous is the closest to that, and I’ve been to those meetings. It helped me, but I’m not sure it helped many of the other people. The reference book is pretty good though.
I think psycho-therapy can be useful in helping the client understand what may be getting in the way of doing the things they need to do to achieve the things they want to achieve. In the end, it comes down to a programme of practical action, and that’s either the Steps or it’s some kind of self-improvement (take a class, go to the gym, say “hi” to one girl a day, whatever). It’s not the essentially reflective and exploratory process of psycho-therapy.
Because, in the end, it is about the nail.
(1) However, knowing what that historical something is will help you see its consequences as put there by someone else and so that can be removed or ignored in the future.
Tuesday, 21 May 2024
As With The Body, So With The Mind
As medicine is to the body, so psychology is supposed to be to the mind or soul.
Doctors and surgeons are in the business of fixing stuff that is obviously and identifiably wrong or broken: broken bones, lumps in the brain, wounds from accidents or fights, really bad cases of food poisoning, malaria, the pox, chlamydia (the STD of preference for straight people), cleft palate… something that can be identified and treated in some way.
At the other end of the spectrum are the physical trainers and dieticians working with (say) a movie star or a Olympic team, or cosmetic surgeons. The aim is to improve something that is already okay and provides a foundation for that improvement.
It’s the in-between that’s awkward. People who aren’t actually sick, but who keep getting colds and infections. People who aren’t actually obese, but who can’t sustain much physical effort. People who have poor diets or can’t get enough exercise. There’s nothing broken and they aren’t suffering from the effects of a virus or bacteria, but they aren’t exactly shining examples of the potential of the human body either. Doctors can’t help because there’s nothing much wrong, and the trainers can’t help because there’s not enough right either.
As with the body, so with the mind.
Psychiatrists are in the business of fixing stuff that is obviously so wrong that the patient is experiencing distress and impaired functioning in their everyday life over an expended period, usually at least six months and often more than a year. That’s a general condition for a psychiatric disorder in the DSM-5. Look at the symptom lists and you will realise that to get a DSM-grade diagnosis, you’re in a bad way. There are symptoms which on their own would have people backing away from the patient slowly and politely and blocking their calls - and DSM diagoses usually require three of more of these. Psychiatrists are also doctors, can prescribe, and insurance companies will often stump up on their signature. Their medical training leads them to want to deal with conditions where there is obviously and identifiably something wrong.
At the other end are of the spectrum are life coaches, dating coaches, PR coaches, dieticians, beauticians, and physical trainers, who work with the (usually) well-off and high(er) functioning middle- and upper-classes. The aim is to improve something that is already working reasonably well.
It’s the in-between that’s awkward. The people who aren’t quite distressed, but don’t feel happy either. They are holding down a job suitable for their abilities, paying the bills, eating reasonably, not getting blitzed every night, and otherwise taking care of everyday maintenance… but they might not be having much fun either. They aren’t scared of talking to people, but it’s not their favourite thing to do. They don’t think they are awful, but there’s a nagging voice in residence somewhere in their head. Or maybe they are just oblivious and wonder why they only ever meet people once. They may get hugs, but not from the person they really want to be hugged by - just someone who will do.
These people are the market for psycho-therapy. They need to be working or have access to money because they will need to pay the therapist themselves - the insurance companies only pay for psychiatrists - and maybe they could get some therapy on the NHS. If they could get to see a GP, and the GP didn’t just write for some low-grade prescription anti-depressants.
What are psycho-therapists supposed to do with these people? Find something wrong and try to fix it? Give the patient what amounts to a self-improvement programme of exercise, dietary change, sleep routines, removing negative thinking and all that jazz? If the patient comes in with a specific problem, the chances are that what they need is a specific solution, and specific is self-improvement.
At first they seemed to follow Freud’s example, and sit quiet while the client talked, or not. The few techniques they used were close to, if not outright, hacks, from so-called “active listening” to suggesting people wrote with their other hand, as it let one’s creativity flow more easily. Some would head for childhood, to find fault there (and be rude about the client’s parents in the process), and some would look for patterns of behaviour that needed changing. Some would interact with the client and some would stay quiet. And some use the “models” from so-called “positive psychology”.
Doctors and surgeons are in the business of fixing stuff that is obviously and identifiably wrong or broken: broken bones, lumps in the brain, wounds from accidents or fights, really bad cases of food poisoning, malaria, the pox, chlamydia (the STD of preference for straight people), cleft palate… something that can be identified and treated in some way.
At the other end of the spectrum are the physical trainers and dieticians working with (say) a movie star or a Olympic team, or cosmetic surgeons. The aim is to improve something that is already okay and provides a foundation for that improvement.
It’s the in-between that’s awkward. People who aren’t actually sick, but who keep getting colds and infections. People who aren’t actually obese, but who can’t sustain much physical effort. People who have poor diets or can’t get enough exercise. There’s nothing broken and they aren’t suffering from the effects of a virus or bacteria, but they aren’t exactly shining examples of the potential of the human body either. Doctors can’t help because there’s nothing much wrong, and the trainers can’t help because there’s not enough right either.
As with the body, so with the mind.
Psychiatrists are in the business of fixing stuff that is obviously so wrong that the patient is experiencing distress and impaired functioning in their everyday life over an expended period, usually at least six months and often more than a year. That’s a general condition for a psychiatric disorder in the DSM-5. Look at the symptom lists and you will realise that to get a DSM-grade diagnosis, you’re in a bad way. There are symptoms which on their own would have people backing away from the patient slowly and politely and blocking their calls - and DSM diagoses usually require three of more of these. Psychiatrists are also doctors, can prescribe, and insurance companies will often stump up on their signature. Their medical training leads them to want to deal with conditions where there is obviously and identifiably something wrong.
At the other end are of the spectrum are life coaches, dating coaches, PR coaches, dieticians, beauticians, and physical trainers, who work with the (usually) well-off and high(er) functioning middle- and upper-classes. The aim is to improve something that is already working reasonably well.
It’s the in-between that’s awkward. The people who aren’t quite distressed, but don’t feel happy either. They are holding down a job suitable for their abilities, paying the bills, eating reasonably, not getting blitzed every night, and otherwise taking care of everyday maintenance… but they might not be having much fun either. They aren’t scared of talking to people, but it’s not their favourite thing to do. They don’t think they are awful, but there’s a nagging voice in residence somewhere in their head. Or maybe they are just oblivious and wonder why they only ever meet people once. They may get hugs, but not from the person they really want to be hugged by - just someone who will do.
These people are the market for psycho-therapy. They need to be working or have access to money because they will need to pay the therapist themselves - the insurance companies only pay for psychiatrists - and maybe they could get some therapy on the NHS. If they could get to see a GP, and the GP didn’t just write for some low-grade prescription anti-depressants.
What are psycho-therapists supposed to do with these people? Find something wrong and try to fix it? Give the patient what amounts to a self-improvement programme of exercise, dietary change, sleep routines, removing negative thinking and all that jazz? If the patient comes in with a specific problem, the chances are that what they need is a specific solution, and specific is self-improvement.
At first they seemed to follow Freud’s example, and sit quiet while the client talked, or not. The few techniques they used were close to, if not outright, hacks, from so-called “active listening” to suggesting people wrote with their other hand, as it let one’s creativity flow more easily. Some would head for childhood, to find fault there (and be rude about the client’s parents in the process), and some would look for patterns of behaviour that needed changing. Some would interact with the client and some would stay quiet. And some use the “models” from so-called “positive psychology”.
Friday, 17 May 2024
Psychology as Pre-Science
The first time I read Gaston Bachelard’s The Making of the Scientific Mind, I didn’t really understand what I was reading. Same the second time. I mean, I understood the words, but I didn’t get the message. I was expecting to read a story about the change between pre-scientific to scientific ways of thinking. Since Bachelard’s subject is chemistry and life sciences, that transition isn’t as stark as it is in physics.
The book is full of extensive quotes from authors, now unknown as scientists, but famous at the time for writing about phenomena in the real world. Bachelard’s point is that they do so in a shallow way, often using analogies with familiar objects and their properties - the number of things claimed to be analogous to sponges is quite remarkable. These old-style “explanations” read fluently, and no doubt at the time, plausibly. Now, of course, it reads as grammatical gibberish.
It feels like reading a lot of contemporary psychology.
Those seventeenth-century authors made experiments as well. Hundreds of them, but all of them by today’s standards slightly mad, or trivial, having nothing to do with the fundamentals of the relevant science. We’re talking about experiments to prove which combination of coloured tights generates more static electricity. As if that might be significant in itself, rather than, as we would see it, a consequence of more fundamental laws of chemistry and the properties of the dyes and materials.
That feels a lot like contemporary psychology.
People have been making remarks about human behaviour and emotions since before Plato thought that laughter was a way of showing oneself superior to the person one was laughing at. Hume’s famous book is called A Treatise on Human Nature - it’s an extended rant about how devious and rotten people are, interspersed with some more conventional philosophising about the various aspects of the psyche (Reason, Passions, Understanding, and so on). Some of what Hume and others said was perspicacious, some more relevant to their times than ours, and some of it just wrong.
Psychology has many birthdates, and the publication of William James’ two-volume book on Psychology is as good as any other. It’s an odd book, with chapters on how the sense organs work, and a much more famous one exhorting us to the formation of habits as a way to simplify our lives. Descriptive anatomy right alongside old-school moralising. Psychologists have never gave up the combination. Even the ones who look as though they are doing “real science” by investigating the way the brain works, cannot resist the temptation to write pop-science pot-boilers about how their work proves we have no free will or that consciousness is an illusion.
In the next few posts, I’m going to wander around this subject.
The book is full of extensive quotes from authors, now unknown as scientists, but famous at the time for writing about phenomena in the real world. Bachelard’s point is that they do so in a shallow way, often using analogies with familiar objects and their properties - the number of things claimed to be analogous to sponges is quite remarkable. These old-style “explanations” read fluently, and no doubt at the time, plausibly. Now, of course, it reads as grammatical gibberish.
It feels like reading a lot of contemporary psychology.
Those seventeenth-century authors made experiments as well. Hundreds of them, but all of them by today’s standards slightly mad, or trivial, having nothing to do with the fundamentals of the relevant science. We’re talking about experiments to prove which combination of coloured tights generates more static electricity. As if that might be significant in itself, rather than, as we would see it, a consequence of more fundamental laws of chemistry and the properties of the dyes and materials.
That feels a lot like contemporary psychology.
People have been making remarks about human behaviour and emotions since before Plato thought that laughter was a way of showing oneself superior to the person one was laughing at. Hume’s famous book is called A Treatise on Human Nature - it’s an extended rant about how devious and rotten people are, interspersed with some more conventional philosophising about the various aspects of the psyche (Reason, Passions, Understanding, and so on). Some of what Hume and others said was perspicacious, some more relevant to their times than ours, and some of it just wrong.
Psychology has many birthdates, and the publication of William James’ two-volume book on Psychology is as good as any other. It’s an odd book, with chapters on how the sense organs work, and a much more famous one exhorting us to the formation of habits as a way to simplify our lives. Descriptive anatomy right alongside old-school moralising. Psychologists have never gave up the combination. Even the ones who look as though they are doing “real science” by investigating the way the brain works, cannot resist the temptation to write pop-science pot-boilers about how their work proves we have no free will or that consciousness is an illusion.
In the next few posts, I’m going to wander around this subject.
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