On melancholia, lack of rebellion - not speaking the truth (lying) deforms the man...

Karin Johannisson, professor in History of Ideas at the University of Uppsala, spoke in an interview on the Swedish TV the other night apropos her last book on melancholia that she thinks the lack of rebellion is striking in today's society. Yes, where’s the wrath?

Is it strange if people are depressed (melancholy), exhausted, burnout if they have to keep quiet, if they aren’t allowed to rebel or protest at the state of affairs?

The Swedish author Henning Mankell spoke in the morning-sofa on his last book about Kurt Wallander, also in an interview on Swedish TV, about the 60-year old man as distant or reserved (his home site). And apropos politicians that

”Not speaking the truth [lying] deforms the man.”

Karin Johannisson has also contributed to an anthology with the title (in my amateur translation from Swedish) ”The Power of Diagnosis: On Knowledge, Money and Suffering.”

About this book you can read:

The psychological suffering is extensive in the millennium shift Sweden. Burnout, stress related tiredness syndromes, depression, self damaging behavior, overweight, anorexia, Asperger syndrome and ADHD are only some of the names.

The stronger the medicalization, and making human beings psychological and social problems psychiatric, the more the biomedicine is given the preferential right of interpretation when those conditions occurs and makes so that those explanations (biomedical) are seldom called in question.

In the book researchers and clinical practicians meet around controversial questions concerning psychological suffering and the treatment that is offered.

“Is burnout a disease? How do new forms of psychological suffering arise [and from where does psychoilogocal suffering come?]? What’s normal respective divergent behavior? Has the space for what’s normal become narrower? How is a diagnosis created? Is ADHD a scientific diagnosis? Is there an oscillation movement between putting emphasis on inheritance respective milieu as causes for psychological suffering? Is medicine (pills) cheaper than psychotherapy? Is it the money that governs the creation of new knowledge? What sort of conditions favor researcher-cheating and how are the researchers’ integrity preserved?”

The editor Gunilla Hallerstedt sketches in the introduction the last decades’ changes in the society, the new forms of psychological suffering and ways of talking about them.

Karin Johannisson asserts that the diagnosis’ is working as a comment to the society, a limit for what’s seen as normal, reasonable and acceptable.

A head for a psychotherapy unity in Stockholm, Sigmund Soback, asks what sort of help all those sick, as those who became outburnt, depressed and severely stressed during the years 1998-2003, get, numbers that increased five times those years (among people under 35 years these numbers have increased nine times. Are people, and especially young people, weaker today?).

And what does evidence based treatment on the psychotherapy field mean?

According to Eva Kärfve, associate professor in sociology at the University of Lund, the biological outlook on man has been dominating for many centuries; the explanation to characteristics and peculiarities has been “inheritance by blood.” How does this come through in the view on divergences and when diagnosing?

Aant Elzinga, professor emeritus in Philosophy of Science, is reflecting from the other contributions in the book and shows how the world of science, entrepreneurs and politics are enmeshed in each other.

Yes, who writes the history? Who has the power to do this? And what does this power want to create? From where do those ideas in the power come? Is their outlook on man and society "right"?

Diagnosis...

Came to think about diagnosis, and was curious on what the Dutch therapist Ingeborg Bosch has written about this in her book "Rediscovering The True Self", so I looked in it (the revised version). Want to make a first posting about this, maybe catching this up with more postings.

But for the first she writes:

“We are adults with a divided consciousness. We don't have a child living inside us that can be healed, loved, reassured etc. We can only heal the effects of the past by allowing ourselves to feel the old pain while we are aware of the present reality.

Conceiving ourselves as being divided into 'me and my child' stimulates disintegration, instead of leading to the integration necessary to heal.

Moreover loving, reassuring, listening to and respecting etc. our 'inner-child' just fuels our False Hope [i.e. fuels a defense that we can get something today we needed then but didn't get then, something that was so painful then that we had to defend ourselves against and deny to survive] (page 242-243).”

In Swedish:

“Vi är vuxna med delade medvetanden. Vi har inget barn som lever inuti oss som kan helas, älskas, lugnas osv. Vi kan bara hela effekterna av det förflutna genom att tillåta oss att känna den gamla smärtan medan vi är medvetna om den nuvarande verkligheten.

Att tänka, föreställa oss som delade i 'jag och mitt barn' stimulerar motsatsen till integrering , istället för att leda till den integration [förening till ett helt] som är nödvändig för att helas [enligt bland andra Bosch].

Dessutom, att älska, lugna, lyssna till och respektera osv. vårt 'inre barn' understödjer bara vårt falska hopp [dvs. ett försvar att vi ska få något vi inte fick då, som vi dock hade behövt då, men som var så smärtsamt att vi måste förneka det och försvara oss emot].”

Bosch writes about “Obsessive-compulsive disorders” (OCD):

“These disorders reveal a False Hope strategy: 'If only I can do this or that in such and such a way, I can ward off the danger'. Of course the danger could never be warded off, since what we are afraid of has already happened. We just haven't admitted it and felt the pain and fear.

Research shows that people who suffer from obsessive compulsive behavior, have the lowest rates of suicide when compared to those officially diagnosed as suffering from other 'mental diseases', especially depression.

This would be in line with the hypothesis that Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (a DSM-IV diagnostic label) is an extreme form of False Hope, which implies that it serves as a very efficient buffer against experiencing the Primary Defense.

The Primary Defense, as we have seen, can often be equated to what is called 'depression', which has the highest correlation rate to suicide (page 245-246).”

In Swedish on "Tvångssyndrom":

“Dessa störningar röjer en falskt hopp strategi 'Om jag bara kan göra det här eller det där på det eller det sättet kan jag hålla faran på avstånd.'

Naturligtvis kan faran aldrig hållas på avstånd, eftersom det vi är rädda för redan har hänt. Vi har bara inte erkänt den och känt smärtan och rädslan.

Forskning visar att människor som lider av tvångssyndrom har den lägsta frekvensen av självmord jämfört med dem som officiellt är diagnostiserade som lidande av andra 'mentala störningar', särskilt depression.

Detta skulle kunna vara i linje med hypotesen att tvångssyndrom (en DSM-IV diagnostisk beteckning) är en extrem form av falskt hopp, vilket betyder att den tjänar som en väldigt effektiv buffert mot att uppleva det ursprungliga försvaret [att klandra sig själv, kort uttryckt].”

Psychology and society…

Ole Jacob Madsen.

[Updated February 4 in the end of this blogposting]. This posting was quickly translated (from Norwegian) and written in the middle of a lot of work.

“Psychologists are lacking self-knowledge (self-understanding). The psychology profession is lacking capacity to see its own political impact and has overseen the growth of the therapeutic culture.”

The author of the article linked above (Ole Jacob Madsen, psychologist coming with the book "Psychology and Society" fall 2009) writes that the last years the psychologists in Norway (as a group or union) have been operating with the strategic goal of getting the psychology out to people, at the same time as the profession shall become stronger represented in the society’s development and planning than it has been. A striving to become a central actor in the society and a political pusher, with a broad perspective.

But “The Era of Psychology” and “the Therapy Society” are sociological ideas that aren’t new in intellectual milieus. No, nothing of this is actually new though he tries to point out, in my understanding and interpretation (of a text in Norwegian, quite academic too).

The analysis of the psychology’s increased influence in the Western Culture contains interesting questions. Has human development with focus on treatment of illness only been amicable (good)?

Is psychology the answer to individuals’ problems, or is the illness a symptom on a greater cultural crisis?

The British professor in sociology Nikolas Rose has shown how psychological norms, values, pictures of ideas (or conceptions) and techniques have formed how different societal authorities are thinking about peoples’ illnesses, normality and pathology. The psychology becomes active in most areas of modern life with developing independent fields of subjectivity in accordance with the society’s needs for regulating this independence.

Yes, the profession has too often run the power’s errands, the power’s needs for steering people!!! (And once again: the most defended tend to lead!)

But yes, this science HAS contributed with good things too, and the author points to those too.

For instance see the well-known study “the Hawthorne experiment” in USA (the Hawthorne effect); the feeling of being seen on a workplace increases the productivity. This was the start point for the Human Relation movement.

The critical voices against the psychology’s increased influence, especially in the US, and later in the rest of the Western world, is focusing on that the clinical psychology preferably presents individual solutions to problems that rather are social (societal?) and political. Thus there are good arguments to understand the psychology in an ideological perspective, such as the real ground why people are suffering.

Yes, psychology can really become misused, by the power!? As all science can become!?

The author writes that the subject the nineteenth decade gave birth to and its neoliberal project has by many become described as (the creation of) a corporate-self, forced to administer itself as an achievement. The psychologist in this culture gets a central place, among a lot of new expert profession groups, helping people to self steering.

Yes, you have only yourself to blame!? You have to pull yourself together, get a grip on yourself!

From 1940 and forward the psychology profession and the number of psychological illnesses grew (and is still growing?). Individual critics maintain that many (new) illnesses are strangely sharp, followed by a wish about power on the one hand and by a narrow view or thoughtlessness on the other hand.

However, this sort of criticism isn’t gaining the relational of the state of things between psychology and society the author thinks, because psychological language answers to needs in the society.

The psychology’s legality became increased during the decade after WWII in the US, because federal authorities need an allied to defend its presence in the inmates’ life and living. Earlier one stimulated the lust of reading in the inmates with scaring with the evil; the way to damnation went through the Bible. But the institutionalized religion lost its power with time, and became exchanged or compensated by typical therapeutic motives where the danger now is becoming bullied or having bad self confidence, becoming tools against illiteracy. (???? I didn’t really catch this! Need to read this again and more thoroughly?)

Comparative historical studies are though at risk of becoming reactionary idealizations of past times, but there are interesting religion-sociology applications. They point to the unsound that existential guilt no longer is placed outside the human being. Or that a self-disciplined system like the therapeutic can represent the authoritarian patriarchy, because it is only rights and not duties that are promoted, something that creates an imbalance between the individual’s and the society’s needs.

Of course psychotherapy can be healing for individuals, but from a system perspective you can speculate if the well-meant help just as well is at risk of becoming a part of easy won political solutions, where the individual becomes garbage can for the society’s unsolved conflicts.

What does the profession itself say? Relatively little. The answer to the society’s conflicts is always more psychology. The psychology’s self-understanding as underrepresented in the society is standing in contrast to the general knowledge and the profession’s description of the therapeutic culture.

The author writes about the (psychology) profession’s lack of history (lack of awareness about its history rather?), when exposed to critical reflection, but with a shameless eager to offer its services.

If the psychology’s character in itself isn’t worthy critics, then its limited apparatus for understanding itself is alarming.

Addition February 4: As a thought it was a leader today with the title ”More Wallraffing in the Psychiatric care” where you can read in the beginning something in this style:

”Why does it never seem to become any order in the psychiatry? For centuries the mental hospitals were often shocking fields of experiments for different [pseudo] scientific and therapeutic ideas, from swings to cold baths, over lobotomy to a blind faith (superstition) on different miraculous (wonder making) psychoactive drugs.”

Read about Günter Wallraff here. There you can read:

"His investigative methods have led to the creation of the Swedish verb 'wallraffa', meaning 'to expose misconduct from the inside by assuming a role', which has been officially included in word list of the Swedish Academy."

Mental health abuse...

Video on the Thud Experiment Proof.

More of the same…

children (not mine) bathing till they had blue lips! :-)

A Norwegian blogger writes about “more of the same.” I want to translate the last two paragraphs (here done a little freely):

“The Swedish psychiatrist and feminist Kerstin Aldén has said that where the patient’s narrative contains enlightenments and statements which challenge the psychiatric treatment personnel’s conception or idea about reality this awaken resistance and one questions the one who has pronounced her/himself. Diagnosis also reinforce taboos, by locking out what one in different time doesn’t want to define as problems. That psychiatric diagnosis can be politic repression ought to be known through history [she mentions Drapetomania or runaway syndrome here and refers to a Norwegian article with the heading 'When the means become holy…' Also see Citizens Commission on Human Rights]./…/

The diagnosis can make the patient’s relation to her (or his) own reactions alien, and make her seeing herself with the eyes of the one treating her – in the same way as she has identified herself with what the perpetrator said. The consequence of the diagnosis can become revictimization. As the essence in the trauma is extreme impotence (powerlessness) and isolation, the diagnosis can become more of the same: being exposed to other people’s power of definition and exclusion from the fellowship.”

Compassion for people struggling to come to terms...

[Updated during the day]. Here some silent reflections. Who and what is worth our condemnation?

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And once again see this article: Against Biologic Psychiatry by David Kaiser, M.D.

“If one uncritically cling to old methods' alleged infallibility and blames the client for failures, you inevitably land in the same fairways (waters) as the sect-guru, who also promises entire liberation. Such promises only produce self-destructive dependence which stands in the way for the individual’s liberation.” (Alice Miller in “Paths of Life” in my amateur translation from the Swedish edition of this book).

And also read this blogposting, which was so wise, about being in control and check and needing external validation…

The blogger (a man) writes in the end:

“The actual point of me being like this is that I’m supposed to be a good servant of civilisation. Otherwise known as being a good professional. I’m supposed to be good at sacrificing everything that’s important to me as a person so that I can serve the machine better - and I’m supposed to do it without trying to rebel. Here again my father’s influence; even though I was often cautious in social situations I didn’t lack the thoughtfulness to question my role in society or the courage to leave it so I guess I wasn’t properly broken in either - they broke me at the emotional and body level but they didn’t get my mind.

The weird thing, which I just realised today, is that I make these decisions in my mind and then set about implementing them like a good professional, which is to say with total disregard for my own needs.”

Something struck me: is it different when a woman (girl) needs validation though? Was it more different earlier?

Addition after lunch: Oh, this music is difficult listening to… I listened to it when I ate lunch.

Almost eight years ago I played on a concert during a master-class (for pianists and singers) in a beautiful old church in the north of Sweden, where one of the people in the audience was one of the flutists in the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (he was teacher for the flutists in a parallel master class). I felt very uncomfortable in this whole situation and during this whole occasion and wished I was invisible and I felt very out of place (malplacerad), but I probably wasn't even if I thought so then. On top I have problems with stage fright and shaky hands. Don’t thinking I am good enough. The typical extremely sensitive “artist”, sensing, feeling, taking in (which of course doesn’t exclude insensitivity, but on the other hand a psychiatrist and psychotherapist once said that he thought I saw very clearly).

I had tried the Grand earlier during the day and thought it was great. At that time there was so much in my life, and so much had happened the previous six years, so my body was extremely tense, so tense so one of the teachers noticed it. Something I didn't really realize. I got surprised when he said it during a lesson, because I complained over problems I had, which I hadn't had before.

When I started to play (accompanying an opera-singer in a romance by Schubert or Brahms, I don’t remember, a singer whom I didn’t feel comfortable with at all) I got a shock. The keys were suddenly heavy like lead! (and the other pianists said the same afterwards, that the keys were so heavy *). So it was like chopping wood really. I played and played and wished I could disappear.

But the piano-teacher (professor in piano here in Sweden) thought the singer and I matched each other. She was really colourful, red-haired and daring to “play out”, and sang really well. A mature singer, both seen to voice and expression, who also had finished her studies since some years (in her midst 30s?). And he also said I played so well… Despite I don’t work as pianist, but have a lot of pupils and students (and thus limited time practicing really), and by then had worked as piano-teachers for 22 years…

And I am the only one in my family working with music. The only one who has too, noone has in the generations before me either. And noone among my cousins or uncles and aunts have had either. So in a way I am very lonely in this.

But my dad took singing-lessons in Stockholm for an opera-singer, Augustin Kock **, when he studied to agronomist in Uppsala. And dad also played violin during his childhood (which is a little surprising) and later in the orchestra at the gymnasium where he was student.

Mom didn’t have any such opportunities when she grew up.

All my siblings have played instruments, but they didn’t continue with it. As a rebellion towards mom and dad?

But I had never thought of having this as my living, but doing something else; in nature science or as architect.

* I wonder if the accompanist to the flutists wanted heavier keys for some reason? And the piano-technician had changed them to suit him? He didn't want to play so loud to the flutists? I don't know.
** he died 1956.

In the evening: watch how people lived in the north of Sweden more than 6000 years ago!


And maybe 200 years back from another open air museum.

Perfectionism…

Georgio Grossi.

[Updated during the day]. In the Swedish magazine ”MåBra” (”FeelWell” there was an article with the title ”The more roles you play – the higher the demands.”

There it stood that wanting to be clever isn’t wrong. But always being the cleverest can break the best.

Stop comparing yourself with others so you get spared from unnecessary demands! It stood in the article.

You shall be an engaged parent, creative colleague and lover, in good physical shape and with the makeup on the right place. We shall develop and become better, smarter and quicker on everything we do. Suddenly the whole existence has become a race and the cleverest wins! But the question is if the most clever is the most happy? Or if the cleverest is the most exhausted?

“If you try to fill all those roles you never get a relaxed moment”

the psychologist and stress researcher at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm Giorgio Grossi says, working at a stress clinic sorting under the University?

With all the tasks we have taken on ourselves; as "women in the career," lover, friend etc. a carousel of demands follows of a sort we have never seen before.

At last we have to have everything in check, from fond wall papers and share market to the man’s erogenous zones it stood in the article.

“Wanting to be clever isn’t wrong, but it can become a problem when one feels forced to be perfect in all areas of life!”

Grossi says.

He means that we are competing in being clever of two reasons. One is the fear “being wrong” and getting critics for that. The other is the kick one gets of achieving!! It’s enough hearing

“Oh God, how have you succeeded with all this??”

for us to continue our chase of confirmation kicks. The praise is worth the stress, in short term.

But in long term the trap of high demands are a risk of stifling us because we never get the opportunity for relaxation - and recovery.

Fifty ears ago we had much less to compare ourselves with. You compared yourself with your neighbour. But today we compare ourselves with many more people. There is always anyone smarter, kinder, and faster. And on we chase to become better and we don’t stop until we get a mental break down.

What are we striving and chasing for?

To be good enough?

Getting love? For this you have to be perfect?? And nothing less? The most perfect of the perfect?

And we are told:

“But stop that!!”

Easy like that.

“It’s nothing wrong with being clever!”

And the next moment

“You don’t have to be so clever!!!”

How do we actually come to terms with these things? Many of these hard working women (and men) aren't "stupid" people (and what is "stupid" and "not stupid" The most intelligent can be the most stupid - emotionally? Entirely insensitive?)?? Just by telling us what to do and what to stop with? Quite ironically: I don’t think so! I think many of us should need to understand this on a deeper level, and get loved despite we are like this.

Not be rejected because we don’t have those things better in check – and are so weak??

But by whom are we rejected? Are they worth our time and energy - at all? Do they help us with their attitude? And what is THEIR attitude actually about? Is it actually about contempt for weakness, looking down on people struggling and striving enormously?

And one of Ås' Master Suppression techniques wasn’t it “Damned If You Do And Damned If You Don’t”, double bind or double punishment?

It stands about it that:

“It is strange that the double bind is such an effective master suppression technique. It is manifestly illogical and unjust! But centuries of making women and female culture invisible and ridiculing either or both, do make even the strictest logician go soft. Meantime, women exposed to this master suppression technique, become stressed out when they try without much success to avoid attracting criticism from either side.

The double bind is extremely unpleasant for the constant guilty conscience and feelings of inadequacy it often brings. To avoid such unpleasantness, a woman can abstain from getting politically involved or from having children. She can accept an inferior position at work, and she can try her utmost to adapt to and balance the conflicting demands made on her.

It is important to learn to recognize this fourth master-suppression technique. Women, like men, are needed everywhere: at work, in politics, and with their children. And women must have the right and opportunity to combine different types of involvement without physical and mental burnout.”

PS. And (young) men are adopting the bad female sides concerning occupation with the outer approach I can think (That one reacts at this does it have to mean one is moralising though? Are we allowed to react and wonder and question?).

Of some reason I googled on Britt Ekland and read she has problems with osteoporosis!! She has been overly careful with her weight?

More young women are not feeling well today. The pressure is bigger than ever? Earlier there were no burn-outs or psychological break downs (more hidden earlier?). Are young people weaker today? Spoiled because they have been too protected and not hardened enough. As a Swedish psychiatrist (!!!!) David Eberhard thinks. He wrote a book three years ago called "I trygghetnarkomanernas land" or "In the land of the safety addicted"!! He means that we in Sweden have exaggerated needs on safety, that we have been too protected by the state!!! See an upset blogposting about this here titled "The cynic psychiatry boss".

And yesterday a female colleague whispered quite angrily and ironically that they had said on a one-day course in friskvård (how to care about health) according to two other female colleagues attending this course that the ones lacking ability to say no are (more and more?) labeled with suffering from personality disorder (personlighetsstörning). How convenient!!! Is this an expression of power abuse. And are so called "experts" walking in the leading strings of the power more than ever again??

Are demands and permissions similar for all people on a work-place, in society? Or in the family? We had a studying day (a day where the teachers are educated or just talk a lot!!) yesterday at work, and when I sat there I started to wonder over these things. A bit startled, or how I shall express it.

I thought there for myself: think if one should measure the time men and women are talking and compare this with the subjective experience of how much they talk, what would this show?

You aren't allowed to be long-winded, neither in speech nor in written text!!

When and were and how are you allowed to speak up? And who are actually listened to?

What about giving voice?

Addition after a shower: It's the one suffering who is at fault?? Genes? And/or he/she shouldn't be so sensitive!! But in another occasion she/he can be accused for being totally insensitive!!! You shall be but not be!! In the latest news here today it stands about War veterans (from Afghanistan and Iraq) in US suffering from PTSD commit suicide to a high (an even higher) degree (than before)! Googled on this and found this in English.

But some people claim that soldiers from the WWI didn't suffer from PSTD! So there must be some weakness in soldiers later!!!! Or? How was it actually with the older soldiers? Is it Judith Lewis Herman who writes about this in her book "Trauma and Recovery?"