A surprising outcome

 I am 90 years old and have been a psychotherapist for over 60 years. For most of that time I have treated   people who have come to a Community Mental Health Center for treatment. They are financially poor and struggling to survive in a  world that has little use or place for them. While I don't share their financial problems, I am now struggling to find a value and meaning for me in what I do.

In recent years, more and more I find that new patients are not interested in psychotherapy. They want, even demand medication and emotional support. They want the world they are in to change and make it more possible for them to have a comfortable life. They have little or no interest in therapies that would help them feel better about themselves or that would show them how to continue growing up. 

When  prospective patients are admitted, they want something easy and short. When they are referred for psychotherapy, they come for a few sessions, rarely more than 4 or 5, and then they stop coming other than to get medication and apply for whatever financial assistance might be availabled.

Let me be perfectly clear about this. There is nothing wrong with what they want. The world they live in has little in common with the world I came from. But the world they come from is totally unlike my world. There is an increasing disconnect between the middle- and upper classes and the poor.  There seems to be no easy way for people to change their worlds from poverty to middle/upper class.

I and other psychotherapists are part of that disconnect. The bottom socioeconomic classes have little or no understanding of mental health or illness. They come into my office with absolutely no idea as to what could happen. They are not accustomed to talking about personal issues with others face-to-face, even their parents.  They rely on smart-phone contacts, video games, social websites. They are accustomed to quick and effortless results, and TV ads have lead them to expect medications to solve their problems.

Their values are different from those of other generations, which is to be expected.  They don't know what is possible or even desirable. The idea of being in psychotherapy just to help them develop longer range values, such as growth and emotional maturity, does not occur. They understand wanting "to feel better".  They may not understand the value of greater honesty and kindness in relationships because they have not seen that demonstrated in their families, which of course is not their fault.

Most of them think that individual "counseling" is simply understanding and comforting. Two or three individual sessions and they are "done", they "feel better". Most of them need help with basic life problems, such as jobs, transportation, even a bed to sleep on. This socioeconomic class of people have few survival skills beyond the most basic. Even safe shelter and regular meals are hard for them to manage, and social workers (at least where I work) are far more helpful and useful to them than the therapists. 

From a more personal standpoint I have watched my hard-earned skills lose their importance or relevance. I have less and less value for the most poor. When they do make an appointment with me, they almost never return for more than 2 or 3 sessions.

Of course, initially I did what I was taught to do in these circumstances.  I looked at the "common factor" in these cases, which, of course, was me. I sought consultation, learned some "brief therapies", discussed it in staff meetings, only to find out that all the other therapists were having the same problem.  The difference was that other staff had not often (or even "ever") had patients who wanted intensive individual therapy. For them, the drop out rate had been the same "bad rate" from the beginnings of their practice.  The administration seemed to be pleased by the rapid "cure" (or drop-out rate). As far as they were concerned, rapid early termination of therapy was a desirable outcome.

So eventually it occurred to me that my goals and values were hopelessly out of date. Why did I not like the dropouts? That seems to be considered a success, not a failure, as I was taught. In fact, it seemed to me a big disappointment and a failure. I again did as I had been trained to do. I asked myself what were my needs and why was I paddling a canoe when most other therapists had speedboats?

I enjoy (perhaps too much) the attempt to make better and more honest connections with my patients. I value the effort to get past the cliches they trot out and enjoy the moments when we make genuine and honest contact. For a brief time the patient and I share the same world, before we drop back into the cliches and lies we rely on in "social settings". 

A few patients return. For them, therapy is a place in which honesty and kindness is valued, and they see themselves growing as human beings. The same applies to me.  Honesty and kindness are important growth factors for the therapist as well as for the client. I believe I have grown with my patients over the years, and I don't resent the time that has been spent attempting to help them. It has helped me as well.

 

What's the matter with "Guilt"?

 It's not uncommon for people to seek help from a therapist to alleviate the guilt that results from something(s) they have done which they do not approve. They see therapy as resembling confession to the priest and expect to be given a punishment commensurate with their "crime",  Somehow they have come to the belief that causing themselves pain (or allowing others to cause it) wipes out their slate and they will be guilt-free.

The notion that you can reduce your guilt through suffering is clearly absurd.  Whatever harm you have done to yourself or others "proves" that you deserve suffering. More suffering is better than less, and the history of religions is witness to that belief. The focus is on the reduction of the feeling itself, not on attempting to repair the damage done to self or others.

Somehow the guilty person believes that suffering and self-blame is enough to undo the bad behavior.  Is the world a better place as a result of your pain?  Exactly how does this take place?  If you take the time and trouble to consider this belief, its absurdity becomes obvious. The bad behavior is ignored. Only the relief from guilt matters. 

Guilt is the recognition that you have done something damaging to your world, combined with the belief that if you can manage to feel badly enough, your guilt will go away.This belief is clearly self-serving. You have done damage. How exactly does your personal pain take that damage away?

Following this line of thought results in the recognition that your interest is not in making the world a better place, but in a magical belief that there is somewhere a cosmic accountant who keeps track of the good and the bad that we do, and that we can bribe him/her/it with a gift of additional misery to clean our record.  Seeking help in therapy to get rid of therapy is exactly the same reasoning: a magical cleansing.

What the guilty person has not done is recognize and take responsibility for what he has done, and try his best to do enough good that the bad is countered. If you break something, fix it.  If you can't fix it, do enough good that you have more than made up for it.

If you follow this rule, you will leave the world better than you found it. Punishing yourself does not typically result in benefiting you. And it certainly does not help the people affected by your behavior. 

 And shame and guilt are not illnesses.  They are both learned and built in, and they serve a useful and valuable purpose:  to encourage people to adhere to the rules of their tribe. Don't expect your insurance company to reimburse you for feeling guilty or ashamed of bad behaviors.

What's the matter with 'Shame'?

Lately I've seen some advertisements for workshops purporting to be in the service of banishing shame from people's lives.  The reasoning seems to be something like "If it feels bad, it must be bad".  I think this is a gross simplification, perhaps to help people or perhaps to provide a salable product. I propose to take a deeper look at shame and how it functions.  

Firstly, shame is a phenomenon that only exists in group settings.  If you were hopelessly alone on an island in the middle of an ocean, would shame be relevant to your experience?  Would you blush if you were nude in the open?  Would remembering some social gaffe you perpetrated earlier in your life embarrass you?  Probably not.  If you were giving a lecture to a hundred people and discovered that your fly was unzipped (assuming only for the moment that you are male) or loudly farted, would you be humiliated?

Shame appears when the unacceptable behavior is known to other people in your group.  To feel shame you would have to have done something others in your group would find unacceptable.  When you are a young adolescent, for instance, wearing the "wrong thing" can be catastophically shameful.  If nobody notices you would not be embarrassed.

Shame is experienced when we deviate too far from the norms of our group.  Partially it includes fear, fear of rejection in the form of being laughed at or jeered.  It is an emotion that operates to push our behavior back within the range of acceptance of our group.  It encourages conformity to our particular group norms.  Deviating from the norms of a group to which we do not belong is not shaming.  Something in us tells us that being excluded from our group is awful-bad-dangerous.  We are urged to change our behavior to fit in.  Think of The Scarlet Letter, for instance.

What happens in a world in which there is no shame?  There is nothing to encourage conformity.  There are few prohibited behaviors, and we can do pretty much what we want.  But do we want to live in a shameless society?  We would be confronted with behavior that is now strictly prohibited.  We would live in a world in which little is forbidden other than those things we prohibit by law.  Our behaviors would be wildly divergent. Breaking the law would still have consequences, but shame would not be among them.

It would be a lot like it is now, only more so, wouldn't it?  I leave you to decide if this is a good thing.

Guns

Making it legal to possess weapons that are either automatic (or can be made so) is absurd to the point of laughability, if it were not so tragic.  How can anyone defend the use of an automatic weapon for hunting?  How many bullets are needed to kill a deer?  And 30-shot magazines?  Are people actually shooting down entire herds?  But the guns are not root causes of the problem, although they make it easier to do more damage.

Why do we not give people the right to own other kinds of weapons capable of large-scale destruction?  Hand-grenades?  Flame-throwers?  Bazookas? (Although I have to admit that many times when driving on the highway I would love to have a roof-mounted bazooka.) 

There are only two reasons for defending the power for civilians to own automatic weapons:  to provide us the power to defend ourselves against a totalitarian government, e.g. to rebel, and to have the emotional satisfaction of owning a powerful weapon, which of course is most satisfying to the least powerful.  It is, in fact, the least empowered people, such as adolescents or adolescent-minded adults, who want the automatic weapons.

However, I think there is a deeper and more basic cause, and it is a cause that can't be addressed with simplistic solutions.  We are, as a nation, fascinated by guns and are in love with violence, in particular fantasies of "revenge" and "fighting back".  We are apparently terrified of being powerless, and concomitantly we are in love with the idea of personally having the power to hurt those who might hurt us.  We love movies and television about people who are victimized fighting back and victimizing others.

We have to be "ready" all the time.  We don't need the guns, but we want them desperately because of our fear of powerlessness.  Our culture is largely about violence.  Look at our tv shows, our books and comic books, our movies.  What percentage of them are violent?  As a nation, we won't give up our fantasies about having weapons of mass destruction, even if we kill each other to exercise the fantasy.

Children learn solutions to problems by watching adults.  What they see is that we kill people who cause problems for us.  They see other solutions as well, but the most dramatically satisfying and frequently observed are those in which we use weapons to blow apart our opponents.  Our movies, books and televisions have always relied on violence as a dramatic solution, but over the past 20 years or so the violence depicted is increasingly gory and detailed.  So violence becomes a solution, and one which they increasingly have the power to evoke.  This is especially convincing to them when they watch their parents treat each other with violence.  How do you deal with a frustrating person?  You kill them, and as many of them as possible.

I don't see any easy way to deal with this issue.  No law that can be passed (and we probably won't even do that) will solve the problem.  I have to admit reluctantly that I enjoy the same movies and the same television series.  I also note that after all the bad guys are killed, nobody seems to care.  The bodies disappear somewhere.  Nobody suffers.  Nobody mourns the loss of the dead.  The "heroes" of the shows don't regret the killings, apparently.  Death is basically trivialized.

Why would we think our kids would have any more respect for life and death than the heroes we give them to model themselves after?

The Problem With Buddhist Philosophy

I want to be clear and avoid unnecessary offense to those who might be bothered by a critical discussion of some aspects of a particular religion.  I am not concerned about the religious aspects of Buddhism.  As far as I am personally concerned, all belief systems that are based on supernatural events are equally absurd, but there's nothing to debate about that.  Absurd is absurd.  I am interested in the practical outcomes of living by some specific philosophy in this world.

Philosophies about how one should live are frequently embedded in religious belief systems, and it's hard to consider the ethos of a religion without being influenced by the mythos.  I am here interested only in the applications of the Buddhist philosophy and its impact on individual and community life.  I will say it again:  this is not about religion.

Buddhist philosophy, like Confucianism or Christian philosophy, is about how an individual might live in this world to achieve a better or happier life.  As such, it can be evaluated apart from its religious aspects in terms of how useful, effective, or practical it might be, and how much its practice results in a happier life for the practitioner.

Buddhism prescribes behaviors, attitudes and beliefs that are intended to create a better life (in this world) for the practitioner.  The individual is taught how to adjust their attitudes in such a way as to result in less pain and conflict.  A person practicing Buddhist philosophy learns to adjust himself to his environment and social situation.  He learns to accept what happens, to let go of desires and "false goals", to live at peace with his environment without conflict or struggle.

Such an approach works well.  Much of human unhappiness is related to our tendency to hold on to things, to refuse to let go of bad feelings, of envy and resentment.  Learning to let go of our past is an important and difficult task, but one that promotes freedom and joy in the present.

Buddhist practitioners adjust to their environment.  What they do NOT do is adjust their environment to themselves.  They accept what is, and make no attempt to change it or improve it.  And while this is certainly beneficial to the practitioner, it creates a community which is basically passive, which accepts the status quo and adjusts to it. Buddhist communities and governments are stable and essentially passive.  They are rarely involved in scientific exploration or technological advancement.

Of course individual Buddhists may not fit the above description, but that doesn't change the overall flavor of their communities.  Just look at countries that profess Buddhism in this century.  They are much the same as they have been for thousands of years.

Is learning to be at peace with one's life, even if it is unhealthy, uncomfortable or unsafe, a good thing?  On the other hand, philosophies that lead to constant change, improvement in individual conditions, at the cost of unrest and violence at times may or may not be good.  Sometimes individual comfort/happiness conflicts with community improvement.  Sometimes miserably unhappy individuals have given rise to  amazing and beneficial changes.  Sometimes happy and content individuals have played their fiddles while Rome burns.

Which is better?

How "belief systems" are born and developed

Looking around at the world, full of conflicts and wars, incompatible and irrational belief systems, it is important to look at the processes by means of which all belief systems are created.  How, living in the same world, did we come to have such widely discrepant belief systems, totally incompatible with one another and all believed to be totally right?  How did individuals grow up with such peculiar beliefs about themselves and the people around them?

We seem to have the inborn trait of curiosity and speculation about how the world works.  We want to know what influences what, what controls what.  We want to predict and control the future.  Where this trait arises is open to speculation.  How we use it is fairly clear.  Humans make theories about causation.

Two factors are important.  The first factor is the post-hoc fallacy.  This fallacy stipulates that when thing B happens directly after thing A, thing A "caused" thing B.  This is a fallacy because it is not always and invariably true.  However, it is true a lot of the time, and leads to our first discoveries of the laws of the universe.  Eating the fruit of a strange plant, followed by miserable illness, leads us not to eat that fruit again.  We don't know for sure that the plant was poisonous, but logical certainty is not as important as avoiding taking the chance.

The key phrase here is "not sure".  We form theories of connection or causality.  We think "A may have caused B".  Eating the fruit MAY have caused our illness.  How do we know?  We try it out, or at least observe carefully.  We look for evidence that our theory is valid.  It is important to our survival that we try to understand how things work and make guesses (theories) as to what might hurt us.  We have to accept probabilities, that is, relative proof rather than absolute. We have to look at the data coming in and allow it to strengthen or weaken our theories.

The second factor is called (by us psychologists) confirmation bias.  This bias tells us that when we think X theory may be true, we pay selective attention to  evidence supporting X.  We do NOT look systematically for evidence disproving X, at least not until the birth of scientific thought.  And even scientists trained in collecting data don't think scientifically most of the time.

For instance, someone who believes they are "unlucky" will selectively attend to "evidence" of unluck and selectively ignore evidence of luck. The "unlucky" person accumulates data over time that "proves" his theory about luck to be correct for him.  Someone who believes they are unlovable will collect rejections, and even invite them, believing rejection to be inevitable.  It is easy to see how religious and political beliefs are supported.

These two factors are sufficient to give rise to thousands, millions, of conflicting ideas and beliefs, many of which are so strongly held that people will kill to defend them.  Our beliefs tell us what to look for, what to believe, how to behave.  They define our civilizations, our religions, and our politics. They define which groups are "good", and which "bad".

In children the process is easier to observe than it is in adults, but adults function in pretty much the same way.  Suppose we are given a theory, such as: step on a crack and you'll have bad luck all day.  We then begin paying selective attention to cracks.  We try stepping on one or two, and then observing the following events, which by means of the post-hoc fallacy, we believe to be directly connected to the crack-stepping behavior.  A number of things happen, as they always do on any given day.  However, because of confirmation bias, we notice particularly the events that "confirm" our theory about cracks.  We discount or minimize those events that do not confirm it.  For at least a few days, while we are paying attention, the theory seems to be more and more true.  We do accept negative evidence, but it takes a lot more of it to disprove the theory than positive evidence to confirm it.

When events occur that have special emotional meaning to us, we try to find a theory that accounts for them.  We wonder what we did or observed that might have "caused" the event to happen.  We form a theory.  When we are young, our standards for a good theory are loose.  (Hopefully they get tighter as we mature).  A small child once asked me if her mother had died because the child had "bad thoughts".  The child is not capable of seeing the weakness of the connection between the child's thoughts and the mother's accidental death.  So all of our theories seem worth investigating, at least while we are young and not appropriately skeptical.

Many events can give rise to theory formation, but events with a lot of emotion attached are primary stimuli for theory formation. Theory: If I don't take a raincoat to work it will rain. Event:  If I don't take a raincoat and it does rain, the theory is supported. Event: If I don't take a raincoat and it does not rain, that doesn't count. So theories mostly find support and rarely find disproof.  They get stronger over the years as we collect more "supportive evidence" and continue to discount negative evidence.  

This pattern results in our changing beliefs about ourselves as we grow older.  Something happens to get our attention and we form a theory of connection.  We accumulate support for that theory, but not disconfirmation.  Suppose some event happens that causes us to form a theory about ourselves.  As an example, imagine getting a bad grade on a test in the first grade.  We might begin to form a theory, such as: "Maybe I'm stupid".  We then begin to look for evidence, but we pay most attention to the evidence that supports our belief in being stupid.  From then on we accumulate more evidence and become more convinced that we're "stupid".  

Religions get formed in the same way.  In the dawn of time, a loving parent falls to his knees and prays to the heavens for the return to health of his child.  The child recovers.  The parent forms a theory:  praying to the heavens results in blessings.  He tells his friends what happened.  They all begin collecting evidence that supports the theory and discounts the negative evidence.  When a parent prays for their child and the child dies, the parent discounts the negative evidence by forming a new theory:  one must have to pray in a specific way for it to work, and he must have got it wrong.  The future evidence is heavily weighted in favor of support of the future theory(s).

Some of the theories formed may be valid, others not so much.  But they continue anyway as if they were confirmed.   We still throw rice at weddings, even when we are not strongly in favor of immediate fertility.   A problem is that theories can never be absolutely proven or disproven.  There is always the possibility of getting more evidence.  We may find connections between event A and B that we didn't know before.  So our world is more and more full of divergent and supported (but not proven) beliefs.

We believe we are right.  We forget that "belief" is not proof.  We do not really question our beliefs unless something happens that forces us to reconsider.  That takes a lot of force.  For instance, many people believe the universe is "fair".  A cursory reading of the newspaper should be enough to cause doubts about that theory.  However, in order to keep the theory intact, people develop new "theories" as to why the universe appears unfair:  the people to whom bad things happen "must have deserved it" or "there must be some higher purpose we don't understand" or any number of theories designed to allow the old theory to continue in the absence of supportive evidence.

To overcome our own confirmation bias requires conscious attention and respect for new data, a conscious willingness to question your beliefs and an equal willingness to consider and evaluate new data on its merits.  For instance, to overcome your belief in being unlovable, you have to be willing to consider data that supports your being lovable. By challenging beliefs, you can become more aware of contradictory data, and vice-versa.  Perhaps you can't entirely eliminate beliefs that have accumulated "support" over the years, but you can weaken them over time.  (A central tenet of CBT).

I always value comments.

Brainless politics

Here we are again, heading for an election that has some real importance in our future.  The candidates, such as they are, have clearly decided that voters will vote on the basis of which candidate can generate the most emotional environment.  In the debates and the speeches, it's clear that the goal is to emotionally activate voters, to get them excited and angry, to get them suspicious and thoughtless.

The whole operation reminds me of a basic trick in stage magic.  You get the audience to watch the wrong hand, while the unwatched hand pulls the trick off.  In politics the illusion engendered is not sleight-of-hand, it's emotional discombobulation.  Excited and angry voters don't think.  They react.  They are not weighing policies and considering outcomes, they are choosing a personal champion with whom they identify, and whom they trust to be bigger, meaner, louder and more aggressive than their opponent.

Where is the thoughtful consideration of policies?  Economic plans?  Foreign relations?  Immigration policies?  Social security assets?

Of course you know the answer.  There is none.  None at all.  The political parties have read you and the rest of us correctly.  We don't understand all these policy thingies, but we know who we like and who we hate.  Thoughtful voters are not really predictable nor are they easily controlled, if they can be controlled at all.  Emotional voters are a piece of cake, easily manipulated with colorful language and over-the-top speeches. Emotional voters can be whipped into a frenzy and have the illusion that their vote is based on good thinking and good values.

What a laugh.  We don't really care about those things.  We like to be excited, to take part in a real soap-opera battle based on bad language, racial and sexual slurs, incitement to violence and distrust of the only political process in the history of the world that has ever even briefly been successful.

Don't vote your heart.  Vote with your mind.  If you don't know the policies of a candidate, don't vote for them.  How hard is that?

Leaves versus boats

There are two ways to look at how you live your life.  Both have  strengths and both have drawbacks.  As a psychotherapist, I always lean to the side of having more choices, but that's because of the life style I have chosen.  If you have not made a conscious and deliberate choice (yet) about your style of life, then you have chosen the one with fewer choices.

The latter approach (with fewer choices) I call the "leaves on the stream" style.  It is by far the most common life-style.  In it we simply respond to the circumstances that present themselves, like leaves floating  on a slow-moving stream.  The leaves go around the obstacles with little hindrance (most of the time) and float all the  way to the ocean, where they disappear into the boundless blue water.  Such a person doesn't make active choices about direction, but only responds to those problems that present themselves.  "Leaf" people (most of us) make temporary choices and handle problems with as little effort as possible.  They become the product of the choices that fall to them, and so they are living examples of how "temporary choices" can become our lives.

Leaf people study whatever their school offers them.   They get jobs and do them, some times very well.  They may or may not like what they  do, but doing what they might like is either not available or not possible.  They cope with the problems life presents to them, doing what they need to do to keep floating.  They marry, have children, grow old and die without a lot of  thought as to whether there were (or are) other possibilities.  In many or most cases their culture may not allow for alternatives or choice-making.  Circumstances can cause people to have few or no choice, and as a result they just have to keep plugging along, trying to find  as much satisfaction and pleasure in their lives as they can. There's a certain nobility in just keeping on, doing the job, handling the problems and not giving up.  The world depends a great deal on such people.

I call the other style "boats on the ocean".  People navigate the streams, setting courses and goals, and going there.  Choices are made on the basis of how well or how poorly they fit the chosen directions.  Lives are measured by how closely People approach their goals.  They don't become anything "by accident".  They will give up immediate pleasures and ease for the sake of long-range goals.  They focus part of their energy on solving problems that have not yet occurred.  Of course unexpected obstacles pop up, and they have to deal with them, but they return to their course as soon as possible.

Things change for  both groups in middle age.  The "leaf" style of person expects to have fewer problems and obstacles, because they expect life to get less demanding. They look forward to "taking it easy" and drifting comfortably into old age.  Sometimes they are uneasy about what they "might have missed" or what might have happened "if".  Sometimes they begin to feel that life has passed them by, that life has lived them and they have not lived it.  They may wonder who they have become, and may have little sense of uniqueness or individuality.   Sometimes their pervasive sense of aimlessness leads to boredom and tedious and depressing self-evaluation.  Their battle cry is "What's it all about, anyway?"  Sometimes they revert to their 20s in a futile attempt to start over, which results in the "middle-age crisis" accompanied by red sports cars and a new spouse.  This only delays the inevitable.

The people in the "boat" category do very well if their goals were directions rather than specific accomplishments. Reaching a "goal" is a stopping point, and the directions as to where to proceed (if anywhere) after reaching it are not usually easy or available.  Having gone as far as you can go, you may find yourself in the same situation as the "leaf" people in middle age.  Having moved in your chosen direction, however, does not limit you to an arrival point.\ Directions are open-ended by their nature and not self-limiting.

It seems to me that  the "boat" style has  fewer built-in problems, but overall both life styles  can be quite comfortable for many years.  It's not the long fall that gets us, it's the sudden stop.

How psychoanalysis lost its way

Freud invented psychoanalysis as a way of exploring the processes of the mind.  The 'analysis' part of the title refers to his hope of finding patterns in apparently random  thoughts, patterns that would reveal a logic governing mental processes.  It was an experimental process.  It was not aimed at 'curing' anything or anyone.

The procedure was very simple.  One simply said everything that came into one's mind, without censorship, editing or correction.  The 'analyst' simply listened and hoped to find a logic that governed the process of human thought.  Freud wanted to explore what had never been explored before.  He had no real idea as to what he would find.

But as with many experimental processes, patterns could be discerned.  More properly, the analyst began finding ways of putting together the processes of thought in ways that sounded logical.  Freud began hypothesizing various 'causes', forces within the person that without his knowledge dictated the order and content of his thoughts.  Having apparently found such patterns, he began to find more and more cognitive events that could be fit within the patterns.  The old process of confirmatory bias began to operate.

When he looked at the mental processes of the depressed or dissatisfied person he found himself looking for 'causes'.  What caused people to be so dissatisfied with themselves?  Were they hiding secrets from themselves?  If so, how could that even happen?  The idea of having a secret hidden from one's own self was almost absurd.  Why would we do that?

Freud began making guesses, some inspired, others not so much.  A person might keep a secret from himself because it contradicted what he wanted to think of himself.  For instance, a person who prided himself on his honesty might prefer to 'forget' an instance in which he was clearly dishonest.  Secrets might be kept to protect the self=image or concept.  Perhaps keeping secrets from oneself contributed to someone's unhappiness.  So telling the truth might be a road leading to greater comfort and self-acceptance.  There's still some validity in this conjecture, but comfort and self-acceptance are not the criteria for curing mental disorders, like depression and anxiety.  Not having depression or inappropriate anxiety are.

At this point Freud and his increasing army of followers left the road of pure investigation and began to consider their methods potentially curative.  Not a science, now.  A treatment.  New theories and hypotheses abounded around a wide variety of symptoms.  The underlying concept was that understanding would lead to freedom and health.  Now psychoanalysis was not only a treatment but a series of methods and concepts that were aimed at a 'cure' of some sort.

There is some truth in this concept, apparently.  For some, it works.  For some, analysis becomes an endless exploration aimed at understanding everything, but changing nothing.  Knowing how and why you are harming yourself is useless without a change in behavior.  But of course there is nothing in psychoanalytic thought that suggests that behavior is important.   Some enthusiasts spent years and thousands of dollars in understanding themselves, with no detectable difference.  A jerk who understands why he is a jerk is still a jerk until he changes how he behaves.

The Secret

The "secret" has been previously pubished in a variety of forms.  Each, in its heyday. had many adherents.  Each has subsequently disappeared into the miasma of  miracle cures, and has eventually been  replaced by a newer and presumably upgraded version.  For instance, "the Power of Positive Thinking" was a best-seller a few decades back.  The newer "Secret" has nothing new.

Points to consider:  Firstly, if this book (or all its predecessors) are to be considered as some sort of scientific proposal, it is missing enough sandwiches to spoil the picnic.  The article in Wikipedia states that a principle of the "theory" is that  positive thinking sends out "vibrations" in some form to which the universe responds.  A few questions arise:  What are "vibrations"?  Vibrations of what?  At what speed do these vibrations travel?  Even at the speed of light a relatively small amount of the universe would be included in your lifetime.  So one has to assume that these vibrations affect your immediate environment, social and physical.  If this theory were true, how would it fit into all the knowledge that we have about how the universe functions?

What power feeds these vibrations?  Your brain?  Can these vibrations be detected or is this only a metaphor which is to be taken seriously? 

Secondly, what receives these vibrations?  Does money or gold or good luck have a set of receptors?  Does gold bullion or the stock market listen to your  personal wants and arrange itself so that you are supplied?  And why would it do this?

In genuine science, a proposal has to meet several criteria to be considered seriously:  It must be plausible, which is to say, it should not disagree with theories known to be valid, and second, it must be testable, which is to say, falsifiable.  A theory must be  clear enough that an experiment can be devised which will demonstrate the validity or lack of validity of the theory. How many people reading this book have ever heard of "Occam's Razor"?

A proposal that depends only on the testimony of satisfied customers is essentially identical with a proposal to sell  you snake oil  or some swampland in Arizona.   Market schemes and political positions are also examples.  They depend on the willingness to suspend disbelief.  Personal experience is the worst and least valid form of evidence, which is why eye-witness testimony is considered the weakest of evidence.  There is always someone who claims (and may even believe) that they have had an experience which validates an unusual belief,  such as those people  who believe that they have been abducted by aliens in a flying saucer.  They also seem to believe they have been  anally probed, but that's probably just a coincidence.

More importantly, people with a strong belief tend to encounter evidence that supports their belief.  Psychologists (like me) call this "confirmation  bias".  When we have a belief not only do we tend to notice events that support our belief but we tend to discount or ignore evidence that disputes our belief.  This is at least one of the reasons that ALL religions find evidence to support their beliefs.  People can believe in a benevolent universe or all-loving god while watching children being killed by horrible diseases or fires.  That "must have just been an exception".

Richard Wiseman (whom you should look up and read) devised a series of common-sense experiments  to illuminate this factor.  In his experiments (and I'm simplifying and summarizing) he divided experimental subjects (i.e.humans) into two groups, one group believing they are "lucky" and the other believing they are "not lucky."  He arranged for a confederate to drop money near where they were seated.  The "lucky" subjects were far more likely to find the dropped money than the "unlucky" subjects, thus proving to both groups that their preconceptions were correct.

We attend  to what  supports our assumptions.  We disbelieve or ignore that which does not. This "evidence" does not prove we were right.  In  Wiseman's studies, exactly the same amount and kind of luck were present for each subject.  Yet each subject experienced proof that they were right. 
So those people who read "The  Secret" and believed it also found evidence that they were right, and the  universe rearranged itself  to meet their desires.  This undoubtedly was convincing to them.  That, however, does not make it true.

I am pretty sure that the authors of this book expected to make some money from it.   And I'm  sure they did. So does that make their  theory valid?

Social media and relationships

As we have allowed more and more of our previously "private" lives become public, we are  more and more vulnerable.  Not only are our "secrets" becoming known, we are more open to attacks by others which can be highly personal.

It's much easier to be cruel when we don't have to face directly the object of our cruelty.  "Trolling" has become much more common, and people  say things  on websites that they would never say face to face.  It's easier to believe whatever we want to believe about someone when we don't have all the information.

Typed information is more abstract than face to face contact.  We don't have facial expressions  and voice tones;  we don't have the immediate feedback that comes from a direct reaction to something we have said or done.  It's easier to harm others when we don't actually see them being harmed.  A number of psychological experiments have confirmed this idea.

The cruelty of war becomes easier when we don't actually see those we hurt.  Over the years our weapons have allowed us to be at a greater and greater distance, physically and psychologically, from our victims.  They become "targets" or "casualties".  We dehumanize our victims.  Could we have dropped the bomb on Hiroshima if we had seen all the faces of those we killed, knew their histories, how much their mothers loved them, how their partner's hearts were broken?

Now we see the same behaviors on small scale on  the internet.  We attack, we try to hurt, we urge people  to kill themselves, we encourage damaging behaviors... it's all "out there", it's not real, they are just targets in a video game.

Positive relationships conducted via computer are equally biased and distorted.  Fantasies about others, positive and negative, flourish best in the absence of specific information.  Anybody can be flawless and wonderful if they choose to be so, and if the person to whom they are providing information chooses to believe them.  Fantasies don't like reality.  Nobody belches or passes gas in a fantasy.

People  even decide to  get married based on a series of internet conversations.  People  choosing to believe what they are told via computer are easy marks, both financially and emotionally.  Not only is a sucker born every minute, as  Barnum  allegedly said, someone is out there to take advantage of the sucker.

I myself am going to be a multimillionaire soon.  I have to make my bank account open to this Prince from Nigeria and he's going to give me millions of dollars.  I can hardly wait. 

Love or like

The best predictor for longevity in marriage is not romantic love.  The best predictors are liking and respect.  Marriages based on liking and mutual respect tend to wear well. Over time, with respect and like "romantic" affection increases.  Many years ago, marriages were frequently based on convenience and reliability.  Many were arranged by families or "matchmakers". Many couples met for the first time on their wedding day.  Western cultures, as a whole, did not see "love" as a necessary requirement.  It is only with the dawn of fiction in literature and other media that "love" was even a desirable emotion; more often it was seen as leading to disaster.

Attachment is a naturally-occurring phenomenon.  When couples are in close proximity over a period of time, and when feelings are discussed and treated with respect, attachment and mutual affection grow naturally.  This is sometimes referred to as the "Stockholm syndrome", but it simply refers to this basic fact of human nature.  We naturally become attached to others when we share feelings, goals and respect.

So if a marriage is based on respect and liking, affection grows naturally.

However, movies, tv and fiction have emphasized the importance of "romantic" love.  Such love is dramatic, fierce and passionate.  It makes a better story and better movie.  Unfortunately, being based on fiction, it does not last. In a movie or book it only has to last a few hours. But real life is different.  Fantasies don't survive real life.  The bubble pops, usually sooner rather than later.

 The current divorce rate is evidence of that.  Romantically-based marriages only last if over time another basis is found, one based on respect and liking, and the honest sharing of feelings, good and bad.  Romance may get us into a marriage and keep us there for   few months or a few years, but it alone will not and cannot keep us in a  marriage. We need the Stockholm syndrome.

We expect too much from marriage.  Earlier in history the marriage partnership was based on expediency, usefulness, even help in surviving.  How the partners felt about each other was no more important than in any other business partnership.  Business partners did not need to hold hands or cling together in the moonlight to the sound of violins.  They needed to trust each other, to respect each other and value the other person as a person, which meant that how the other felt was important and deserved respect.  Usually affection between the partners  grew over time, although it is true that sometimes it did not.

People are now encouraged to believe that their marriage should be permanently exciting and emotionally fulfilling, with all (or essentially all) of their needs being met by their partner and their relationship.  This is a huge burden of expectation and demand.  None of us can meet every need or fulfill every dream for our partner, and our marriages should not stand or fail based on fulfilling this impossible expectation.  Hopefully what we do gain from a healthy relationship  is far more  satisfying than our ability to mutually act out one another's romantic fantasies.

Love, like every other emotion, comes and goes.  It never remains constant, except in fiction.  In real life we love one another more at one time than another, and it is rarely a symmetrical emotion.  The Stockholm syndrome insures it will return if we continue to respect and communicate with one another.  Commitment should not be a decision based on the sand of emotion.  It should be based on the rock of respect. 

A possible solution to our drug problem

Not only do we spend a great deal of money on drugs, but a lot more is spent as a result of the huge amount of petty crime carried out in order to pay for drug usage.  Most of the money spent directly on drugs leaves the United States, and ultimately improves the standard of living for people in other countries at the cost of our own.

What if the government  took over the drug business?  Suppose that the US government bought directly from the drug manufacturers at their price, and distributed the drugs in the US to whoever wanted them for free and without legal consequences?  Drug kiosks could provide marijuana, cocaine, crack, heroin, opiates to anyone of age who wanted them.  The money would come from the huge amounts allocated now to fight drug importation and use.  And it would come from the reduction in prison costs and rehabilitation costs and reduction in drug police
.
Since there is no cost there is no profit.  The gangs that control, distribute and sell  drugs  would go out of business.  The crime that supports drug habits would stop since it would be unnecessary.  There would be no motivation to encourage drug use or to  expand a drug market since there would be no drug market.

What would be the consequences?  Some people would probably overdose and die.  Many of them would eventually in any case, but there might well be an increase.  Fewer  people would die of contaminated or adulterated drugs since they would be pure.  Fewer people would die in gang wars over turf, which is always a war of the marketplace to some degree.  Fewer law enforcement people would be killed and fewer employed.

Whether or not drug usage would ultimately stop is not an answerable question.  People have always sought substances that provide certain experiences and sensations,  and there is no reason to think that easy access would change that.  But they would be healthier in the process and not at all  likely to descend into crime to support what would be a free product.

Would a drug craze sweep the nation, that is, more than it already has? In fact people already have nearly unfettered access to drugs now.  Does anyone doubt that they could obtain any drug they were interested in within the next few hours?  Free controlled access would only mean that there would be some ability to limit sales to the very young, but there is no way to prevent sharing of drugs once out of the drug kiosk, and there is no way to prevent inappropriate sharing, just as  happens now with alcohol, marijuana, and ... wait.   That happens now.

The problem would be that we are supporting drug manufacturing organizations in other countries.  Of course, we are now.  But it is possible that competition for our huge business would drive costs down over time.  Perhaps eventually drug manufacture would be no more of a major business that the manufacture of tennis shoes.  More money would stay in the US.  We would have a little more say about the quality of product.

There really is no way to predict a long-range outcome.  But what we see before us now is not very favorable, and seems to be getting worse.  What problems do you see with this proposal

Belonging to groups

Psychologists rarely talk about the importance of "belonging" to a group, or that there is apparently a critical period in us primates that strongly motivates us to start finding a group to belong to.  We all know  this period because we have been through it and so has every adolescent in the world.  As  parents we recognize its occurrence when suddenly our children find what others think of them as hugely more important that our opinion or acceptance. We remember the dangers  of  humiliation even while recognizing the triviality of the issues that lead to acceptance or rejection. We are aware that adolescents will make totally irrational and even dangerous choices in the process of learning to belong.

This age appears to begin in early adolescence and continues through the early adult years, although the most important for later healthy development occurs between 11 and 18.  Adolescents form groups and struggle to  learn and comply with the rules that govern membership.  They watch intently for the signal behaviors, attire, mannerisms, attitudes and values that  characterize their group.  They know that wearing the "wrong" color or type of clothing can result in humiliation. They find that even talking or spending time with someone in another group can result in  ostracism.

Initially the group seems to  be fairly large, perhaps all the children they know, but as time passes the size of the key groups, i.e. the group or groups they most want to join, becomes smaller and the boundaries become more specific and clear.  Later still the importance of belonging to a small  and specific group decreases.  The "critical period for belonging" in which skills for belonging must be  learned is largely over by the time we are  in the middle 20s.

Adolescents will accept  a physical beating to join a group.  Some will commit suicide if they are not accepted. They will frequently try to join a variety of groups, some  of which are potentially or actively harmful, in order to be a member somewhere.  It's  as if they feel they do not have an identity without belonging to something, and they identify to each other with  their various memberships.  In early adolescence they have fairly simple groups, such as the geeks, the "soshes", the athletes, the dopers, the brains, etc.  Later they develop more complex groups, such as  fraternities, military groups, groups oriented around educational goals, church or religious groups. Even later are various "adult" groups, such as Rotary or political groups.

Those who are not successful in being accepted during this phase of their life seem frequently to be permanently marked by their failure.  They tend to think of themselves as "loners" and live more isolated lives. They are rarely (if ever) comfortable with belonging and are always prepared to be rejected. Some accept their alienation and become comfortable with it.  Others seem to carry a burden of resentment and bitterness which can result at striking out at other groups.

There seems to be an ancient part of our brain that demands we learn how to belong to our tribe.  It tells us that exclusion or rejection from the group can result in death.  The fear of humiliation (i.e. rejection by your identified  group) is one of the most powerful motivations for humans.

Recently on television I watched an episode of"Blue Bloods".  In this particular show the adolescent daughter is driving her friends (her  social  group) when the police stop them and find a package of cocaine in the car, in an amount that would result in a felony conviction with permanent life changes for all of them.  No one admits to the ownership of the drugs, so they are all charged.  None of them will expose the one of their group who actually owned the cocaine, because that would be "snitching", which is cause for ejection from the  group and humiliation.

They are actually prepared to accept a felony conviction rather than "snitching", even though they know whose drugs they were.  The person who owned the drugs will allow all of them  to go to  jail rather than take the blame, but they don't really consider that.  He is in their group.  That is where their loyalty lies. The adolescent daughter will have to give up her plans to have professional career or be accepted in a prestigious college; her life goals will be destroyed.

In the episode she never came to terms with the importance of putting her own life ahead of the momentary membership in a temporary (but important to her) group.  Instead this issue is bypassed cleverly.  The daughter then goes to her mother and says "I don't ever want to disappoint you", and thus re-establishes her primary loyalty to the family group.

It's hard to find any literature, movie or play of  any kind that does not have a central concern about group membership and the conflicts between how people belong or move in and out of groups. It's surprising to me how little awareness we bring to this central issue.  It has also occurred to me that the reason I notice it so keenly is due to my own failure to become an accepted group member during my adolescence.  I can look from the outside at how all these groups function more readily because I do not  experience myself as actually in them.

My Super-Powers!

Super-powers are not limited to comic strip characters.  We all probably have them, but don't recognize what a gift they are.

At my advanced age (which I probably ought to write in Roman numerals for appropriateness) I have found I have 2 such powers, and they are mighty  powers that contribute greatly to my comfort and happiness.
The first is Ignore-ance.  This is the power to simply not attend or recognize undesirable objects, people or thoughts.  Actually I haven't found any thoughts I want to Ignore. Yet.  So when someone gives me unpleasant and/or unwanted advice or directions, I simply use my superpower to negate their very existence.  I was doing ok before the unwanted events, and I will probably continue to do ok.  Ignore-ance can be blissful, especially in comparison to the effect really unpleasant news can have on you.

For instance, I never watch the local news any more.  It's all bad, crude, mean-spirited, stupid and violent.  I don't need it.  If it comes on, I use my superpower.  My life is doing just fine without knowing some idiot in a slum put his mother in a woodchipper. I don't need that news.

And that leads me to my second super-power, that of Indifference.  This is the power of not caring at all, not giving a damn.  Refusing to sob when I see a hurt puppy.  Refusing to go sleepless until all the trees in the rainforest are replanted and healthy.  Refusing to get excited over anything politicians say.  (They don't mean it anyway).  I am now considering which charities I want to use my superpower on.  Actually, I'm trying to think if there are any I don't want to use it on.

You can see that Ignore-ance and Indifference are great powers, and when combined even more so.  I can think of some family members (or former family members) that I will mentally obliterate as if they had never existed.   I hope to be able to not know about entire countries and maybe even continents.  I hope to live as if they don't exist.  Yeah, yeah, I know.  Some of them, the stupider ones, might even invade us.  Ho hum.  After they have been destroyed they will fall under my superpowers even more readily.

Give some thought to what superpowers you might already have!  Don't be wasting your time thinking about the impossible.  If you could fly the government would make you tattoo numbers on your butt for easier recognition.  Not a good thought.  And it's cold up there.  No, stick to the things you could actually have. It's even better if others don't know you have them.  Then they can be, like, secret weapons! 

So. good luck to you.  And don't be a pain or you will cease to exist, at least in my world.

Free will and addiction

The issue of whether or not human beings are able to exercise free will is as old as philosophy itself.  Are we simply the product of the various impulses and hormonal floods and conditioned responses?  Or are we capable of making decisions that are independent of our early experiences and that are truly an expression of free will?

It is quite possible, even likely, according to recent psychological experiments, that we only have the illusion of free will.  It is possible that our bodies and brains make decisions before our conscious awareness even weighs in.  Some studies have found that our choices are made several seconds before our conscious awareness is even involved.

But one answer to this problem continues to arise:  the consequences of believing that we do not have free will, of believing that we do what we do as a result of the operation of psychological and neurochemical operations about which we have no say, are quite  unacceptable.  Such an outcome means that as individuals we are not responsible for our actions.  It means that we are only able to carry out mechanistically determined choices. It means that as individuals we "can't help ourselves", that we are not accountable, that we have no choice but to act as we do, and that therefore punishment or consequences are equally useless in governing human behavior, which under this rubric is simply not governable. 

People who claim to be addicts of one kind or another are claiming that their errant, illegal or inappropriate behaviors are not their responsibility.  They are asserting that they do not have the capacity to make choices other than the ones they make, to do drugs, to commit crimes, even to engage in sexual activities of various kinds.  To someone attempting to hold them answerable and accountable for their "addictive behaviors" they respond "I can't help it", which is the philosophical equivalent of "The devil made me do it." 

Even when others, including the law, their spouses or their victims (in some cases the same things) do hold them accountable, in their minds they are the victims of forces over which they believe they have no control.  Thus, they are also blameless victims, no matter the cost to others.  The hormones, the impulses, the fates themselves have determined the outcomes, and the "addict" is just another victim. 

It is useful to notice the circularity of the above argument, which can be summarized easily in the following statement:  "An irresistible impulse is an impulse one chooses not to resist".  How do you know an impulse was the result of an irresistible addiction? Because you didn't resist it.  Could you have resisted it? If you claim you could not, you claim it because you did not.  Have you ever had an impulse belonging to your addiction that you did resist?  Then you can resist it.  You can't have it both ways.  If the impulse is irresistible, there is nothing to resist and no point in trying.  If it can be resisted, then resist it.

With such logic you can do anything you like, claim that you didn't like it but couldn't  help it, and reap the benefits (such as they are) of being an irresponsible child who is at the same time immune from consequences and punishment.  The world in which "addicts" live is uncivilized, animalistic, brutal and exploitive.  How can it be otherwise? They "can't help it".

This is an unworkable model for a civilized world.  Quite apart from whether or not  addiction is a valid concept, a world in which people are not considered to be in control of and accountable for their actions is not one in which we would choose to live.  The proof of the above statement is easily tested by simply observing and evaluating the world in which addicts live.

It is because their irresponsible, impulse-ridden and animalistic world has to exist in the same world as that of the rest of us that the conflict between us exists.  Those of us who are responsible and answerable for our behaviors have to deal with those who do not, and the results for both groups is what amounts to war.  The citizens have to protect themselves against the lawless, but no less do the lawless have to protect themselves against us.

The only way for coexistence to occur is for physical separation.  The addicted and their suppliers need a place of their own that has limited intersection with ours.  They need some things civilization can supply and the humanitarian principles that characterize civilization requires we help them with those things, such as medicine and food.  There is nothing they can easily give us in return,  but their absence improves the situation for both groups and probably saves money for the civilized to boot. 

Let's give them an island.

Christmas and Birthdays Are Not For Everyone

Let's be clear first.  I am not referring to the quasi-religious aspects of Christmas.  I am referring to the custom of compulsory gift-giving on both the above-named occasions (Christmas and birthdays).  This custom has clearly far exceeded in importance any religious observances  long ago.  The real celebrators are the merchants.  We already knew that.

But apart from the apparent need to create Christmas bonuses for store employees, what importance does gift-giving really have for adults?  (We leave kids out of this discussion because they are supposed to be greedy and self-centered.)  Perhaps when we are young and starting out gifts can be helpful.  It's hard to understand why we need an excuse to give such gifts.  People we know and love will appreciate the gifts but waiting and giving one day a year seems a little constricted.

There comes a time when gifts become more of an obligation than a pleasure.  We eventually have everything we really need, or else the wherewithal to get them, and waiting until December 25 is absurd when we need to buy a new toaster now.  Giving gifts is equally tedious, not because we don't love the recipients (or at least should), but because choosing the gifts becomes an exercise in shopping for things  we are told  to get.  We become an extension of the gift catalogues and shopping advertisements.  We don't buy out of love so much as because they have ordered through us what they want or need.  This is about as personal as online shopping.

Birthdays are much the same.  Past a certain age the actual count of years is pretty meaningless.  Here we are, vertical and above-ground. We shouldn't need to be informed of our age. It's not for the birthday boy or girl.  It's to tell us we matter to them.  But why wait to tell us we are important?  The odds continually increase against us completing the year.  We would like to be told on occasion that we're important to those we love, and preferably on a more regular basis, and not with presents or a ceremony but with a hug and an extra smile, and a laugh at the old jokes that you have heard before.

Now for the old people in particular (and you know damn well who you are). What can you get us old ones that we don't have?  If we wanted it we would already have it.  We get to the age where getting rid of objects that require attention and maintenance is preferable.  We have accumulated "stuff" for years, and now it is increasingly burdensome and needs to go away, not accumulate more.  Maybe a night out together for dinner, or an invite over to see the grandkids, and a lot more often than one damn time a year.  Even items are ok as long as they are perishable.

Don't try to buy us off with a "funny" card pointing out how old we have become, or with a present that we have no use for.  Why make a point of how many years we have been on this earth?  We already know how long that has been.  Reminding us is more a downer than an upper.  Who thought we would make it this long?  But the time for appreciation of the love and support we can give you is now.  Tomorrow comes faster every day.

The dangers of absolute rightness

The art of politics is compromise.  Compromise makes adjustments so that the maximum amount of benefit accrues to the maximum number of people.  At least, that is the ideal use of compromise.

Religion does not value nor even tolerate compromise.  When someone or some group believes they have been given instructions from some form of divinity, how can they even consider compromising?  For that reason all religions have splintered into smaller groups from time to time, as various members get a different set of instructions which cannot be reconciled with the previous ones.  There is no “sort of” in “revealed truth”.

Obviously religions, as a general domain, do not value compromise;  in fact, they see it as sinful because it finds changes in the inerrant word of God(s).

When political compromise is useful, religion can block it.  When the political leaders value religion strongly, they become less and less willing to compromise.  Instead of compromise, one side must win, and that side, by definition, will have been the “correct” side.  According to the winners, at least.  

The mixture of religious thinking with political pragmatism results in wars and terrible tragedies, all in the name of unprovable beliefs.

 

Religious thinking is not restricted to deism or theology.  It is based on the quality of absolute rightness.  History teaches us that there are political beliefs that are identical in structure to religious beliefs with the exception that deism is not a necessary quality for absolute rightness.  The early days of fascism come to mind, as does the Soviet regime in the middle of the last century.  Many other examples come to mind.  No state based on absolute values can be a healthy nor happy state, and the people in it will have neither. 

The problem is not religion, per se, though that is a prime and clear example of absolutist thinking.  It is the absolutist thinking itself that is the disorder.  Unless the absolute value includes human life and the quality of that life we could expect to be trampled and crushed between absolute "rights" that do not value us as human beings.

When several states are absolutist, conflicts become inevitable, and since the absolute values do not include human life or happiness, they war with each other, and their people suffer and suffer terribly.

But how can there be compromise with absolute rightness?  We know the answer and we know the cost.  But we tolerate such thinking, because, of course, it is right.

Depression and free time

When people are fairly depressed, they have no energy.  They would say they have no "motivation", which only means there is nothing they actually want to do.  In spite of that feeling, they can continue to do things that they don't particularly want to do; such as jobs or tasks of various kinds, even going to the dentist or other relatively unpleasant task. They "feel paralyzed", that they "can do nothing", but that's simply not true.  Many people use the word "motivation" to denote some positive feeling toward action. When you're depressed, there are few positive feelings.   However, it is  possible to have purely intellectual motivation, a form that does not depend on how you feel but rather how you think.

The very worst thing for depressed people is to have nothing to do.  We instinctively want to lie down in a quiet and relatively dark place and hibernate when we're depressed.  But that gives us lots of time, time to think about things.  Usually the things we think about when we're depressed are pretty negative, which further increases our depression and inertia.  We disapprove of our own inertia and "laziness", which makes us feel more worthless. We get caught in a vicious circle with plenty of time to deepen the spiral.

To fight  the depression with activity is counter-intuitive.  There is a great deal of experimental evidence that supports the idea that activity of any kind, including exercise, will gradually improve the depression over a several month-long period.  In fact, the improvement is about as fast as the improvement one expects from an anti-depressant medication, but the long-range effects of exercise are clearly a lot better.  It's just that the hardest part, that of actually starting exercising, comes at the very time when the depressed person least feels like exercising.  Of course, that's where medication comes in: a short-range "jump-start" to get going with.  And it's easier to take a pill than to work out.

Having nothing to do but think while you're depressed is really the pits. So how do depressed people get started?  Well, mostly they don't.  To exercise while depressed is like going to the dentist to have a tooth drilled.  To do that we have to understand that "motivation" is neither available or necessary;  it's a luxury which depressed people have to do without for a while.  It does come back eventually, but it takes at least several months for that to begin.  For some of us (including me) exercise always has to be done without emotional motivation.  But so many things are never going to be based on "wanting to".  The world is full of unpleasant and distasteful tasks. Actually we're used to doing things we don't want to do.  Saying we "aren't motivated" is like going back to be an adolescent rebel again.

I have also noticed how many depressed patients I see who lead empty and fun-free lives, and did so for years prior to their depression.  How easy is it to get up to face a day with nothing pleasurable in it?  Why wouldn't we think "What's the use?"  It doesn't occur to us that arranging pleasurable events and experiences on an everyday basis is necessary for mental health.  Taking an anti-depressant does not provide a substitute for an interesting or enjoyable life.

"Motivation" is an award earned only by play.

Letting Go

Some ideas that seem useless when you are young get more relevant as you age.  An idea of that sort  is  "letting go".

We hold on to our "stuff", things we have accumulated over our lives.  At the time we get these things we think they are important and necessary.  As time  passes, however, we find taking care of all our stuff gets  more and more difficult and tedious.  At the same time we begin to recognize how little of it we actually use or need. 

Some times we see this even in the short run, such as after birthdays or Christmas.  Even the new car that seemed the epitome of our dreams becomes a thing to get rid of and a pain to take care of.  We see it more clearly when we move from one house to another.  Getting rid of stuff...  what a nightmare!

Our relatives (even the ones we love) die and we must let  them  go. Our friends for a lifetime die as well.  As we age, and if we live long enough, we will lose all the  long-term friends.  Letting them go becomes a frequent and painful job, but we have to learn to do it.

When someone dies with whom we have a difficult or conflictful relationship, letting go is more problematic.  We feel there is "unfinished business".  We experience the burden of the things left unsaid and the questions left unanswered.  Learning to let this go as well is much more difficult and sometimes we simply don't know how to do that.  (This is one of the things psychotherapists spend a lot of time doing).

Finally we have to let go of negative feelings on a daily basis.  We carry anger and resentment far too long,  hurting ourselves but not the person who is the target of our anger.  We carry anxiety about unlikely catastrophes to the point we can't manage the crises of everyday life.  We carry sadness in our hearts for relationships that are long over.  We hate saying "goodbye".

Old age seems to be the time for me and others of my age to focus on the skill of "letting go",  I have to do a lot of it, it seems.  In fact, I would say that the most important skill for the aged is the skill of letting things go, of accepting your losses, and also accepting the peculiar freedom that results.