5/31/2008

Not loved…

I am going to visit this place, Dalhalla, this evening.

Madeleine Åsbrink in her bok "Starting Anew" at page 18:

“I was frightened to death being unloved, despised and rejected by all people, afraid of becoming totally alone.”

So she had, all her life, tried to adapt and to earn love? Being the clever, managing, and achieving. Was the eldest of three siblings?

She had to learn to say “no”. The response from her environment ranged from a clear lack of approval to acceptation of her and her boundaries. When others responded with sour looks or icing silence she at first started to question herself. She thought it was maybe wrong of her to say no and show what she stood for (did she actually know what she stood for?).

She started to choose what people she wanted to have around her in her life, who liked her for the one she was and is, and for the one she wanted to be.

This quickly led her further to a big and complicated territory for her, namely relations. Who was she in her relations? She discovered that she was the big, strong, driving, initiative-taking, responsible-taking – an one who gave.

She longed for something else, and started the journey towards mutual, reciprocal, warm and near relations. Many of her old relations disappeared during this journey, while others became deepened and new people came into her life too.

The relation with her husband came to a crisis of course. But he had started a parallel journey, and they worked things out with a lot of struggles and efforts, because she had feelings for him still. During this journey the responsibility has been put on the right places she thinks, each one of them take responsibility for their own words, actions, feelings and needs. The trust and relation had to be rebuilt again.

They have both realized that a near relation doesn’t come of itself, but is borne in a conscious work and daily efforts. Both must want to and contribute to hundred percent for a relation to blossom.

She sees herself around and thinks there aren’t many models, but in most cases it is one who wants more than the other in a relation. This makes nearness impossible, a nearness we all are longing for, but as many of us are unconsciously afraid of. Due to early experiences…

Actually Åsbrink writes about her early experiences and in the literature list Alice Miller’s “The Drama” is mentioned.

5/30/2008

Life lies…

Summer, sun and vacation. Time to be yourself. A little more true, genuine. A little more naked. If it wasn’t for the life lie. The mask * you never take or cast off.

The gape between dream and reality.

In an article in the magazine “Amos” a woman in therapy realized she lived in a life-lie.

”This means that I lived in a reality which didn’t make me happy, but a reality I chose to keep firmly to, because it felt safe.”

But I wonder silently; how did she get help in dealing with this? Only the talk-way?

We have different destinies but many of us have something in common – the self-deception.

The life-lie is something we resort to because we can’t stand the truth.

“A boy living with parents who don’t manage to take care of him can’t say: ‘I live in a hell.’ Even if that’s exactly what he does. Because there is no escape from this situation. Instead he has to create a picture of the reality so he can stand it. Therefore he thinks: ’It’s me it’s something wrong with.’ This isn’t nice, but it’s a solution.”

But what was a way to handle an unbearable situation or a method in meeting the inevitable challenges in life at first is transformed by time to its opposite.

With time, sooner or less, people start to wonder over what life they are living and maybe even if they are living a true, genuine life. Often it has started as agony, diffuse or even unconscious. Somewhere you start to have presentiments (in the best cases I would add), but the head doesn’t want to know. One can start to dream intensely (literally?).

The life lie makes something with us. It steals life. But longing (unconscious, as a diffuse drive, emotion) to live genuinely, authentically will sooner or later catch us up. It can be a tragedy if these come late in life, or even very late. I read about false dementia in people having to deal with truths late in life, brain-tests (scanning?) shows there is nothing organically wrong with them.

A man, Mustafa Can, says that it has been an tremendous relief to pierce or perforate the myth. The truth makes it easier to live. But the way to that point wasn’t easy? He and his parents came as immigrants to Sweden 30 years ago from Kurdistan. Until his mother died the family myth was that they should return to Kurdistan. So they never really settled here in Sweden. Tried to combat the feeling that this was their country and new home. But when his mother died and they took her dead body to Kurdistan to bury her there, he realized that they should never return to Kurdistan, only maybe when they were dead. A life-crisis for him? And he wrote a book over this, as a way in processing?

At the same time he thinks that it’s good he knows how it is to live with a life-lie. The strong dream’s backside is that it’s holding the reality away from us. In the worse cases, and in too many cases, until things are too late.

Mustafa Can says that the mechanisms in the life-lie of the individual and a dictatorship are the same.

“Both are totalitarian. Both want to eliminate all that challenges the vision. Both refuse to acknowledge the facts about what life contains.”

Are these sorts of dreams lacking in contact with the reality? But one HAS seen (even if one wasn’t consciously aware?), the life-lie needs knowledge, but one didn’t like what one saw; that one shouldn’t return, that the choice(s) one has/have done was wrong - or right (one can deny such things too? Not being satisfied with what one has, dreaming and longing for something that isn’t in reach?), and one should be more careful with what one had etc.. Therefore one keep ones eyes closed, keep ones ears shut and is hoping everything shall be okay.

The drama “The Wild Duck” by Henrik Ibsen is referred to, in which the family-father Hjalmar Ekdahl realizes that his life and marriage is built on a lie. The truth-speaker Gregers Werle mercilessly reveals everything to him. One could believe that what Werle did should suite today’s people educated in settlements much better than that time’s? Isn’t it what we have learned: Talk about it and come to terms! Came to think of Bergman's "Scenes from a marriage" (from 1973/74 already!).

But on the opening night recently for "The Wild Duck" here in Stockholm one could hear whisperings from the stalls:

"Oh no! Stop! Can’t he stop?”

The life with the lie felt so much better. Can’t everything remain as it was?

But I don’t believe in help a la Dr Phil…

And of course the more we have invested in this lie the more difficult to deal with the truth. Think if all our choices in the life-lie’s name has been in vain, even downright wrong? The more the life-lie starts to falter the greater the efforts to “keep it on its legs.”

A life-lie can many times be about things that were never realized, things one didn’t do. But how come? Yes, because one has put something into ones head that this was no idea and that it didn’t matter. Even if one wanted and thought it mattered - and even mattered a lot.

Many don’t want to get the life-lies nearer, realize how and what one has done and is doing. One is afraid of that realizing them would mean that the life would become turned up-side-down. That one has to change job, divorce, move. But that’s not sure; it doesn’t have to lead to any of these things.

One should probably stop, take a break now and then and ask oneself:

“Do I want this? Why am I doing this?”

They also wrote about different life-lies:

  • About the family: our micro cosmos, a closed system where we are allotted different roles. If we start to play another role better suiting who we are and have developed to with time, then this threatens the other’s masks. That’s the reason why the power of the family-lie is so strong.
  • About oneself: for instance the belief that I am untalented, unworthy, bad. The lie that one is untalented can help one not to risk becoming disappointed or confronted with ones own power. And the confrontation with ones good sides can probably be extremely painful too? Realizing what one has missed during time? So you can stay in the belief you aren’t worthy too, to avoid the pain in realizing the truth.
  • About what makes life worth living - the lie as a life-style: self-deceptions can also be collective. About having a nice home, a glamorous job, and yearly journeys to exotic places. Things that are so common so we don’t event think of them and don’t’ question them. Even if time and relations is actually what we want.
  • About the relation: We love each over everything else, more than anything else. Sometimes we don’t dare to acknowledge that the relation has died, but create a silent agreement about our life together. For instance constantly swearing each other love…

They also write that life-lies represses everything that doesn’t fit and is drawn to circumstances selling quick solutions – commercially, ideologically or spiritually. One is easily drawn into sects or even cults? One has to watch this. And say no to milieus having room only for one view.

See Miller on “Deception Kills Love.” And Ingmar Bergman and Käbi Laretei on masks.

* The Nordiska Museum in Stockholm has an exhibition now on masks, on their home site it stands about masks:

“A mask can frighten away evil spirits and provide protection against cuts and blows or the gaze of other people. A mask can hide your true identity or create a new one.

Throughout the ages, masks have been used in every imaginable context, from lavish court festivities to rural yuletide pranks and whenever facial protection is needed. The masks most commonly seen today are the Santa masks that come out on Christmas Eve and the horror masks worn at Halloween. Forty or so masks dating from the 17th century until the present day are on show."

Addition May 31: At the Swedish site of Nordiska muséet it stands about masks:

”’Masken hemlighåller identiteter och uppsåt.
Sociala förväntningar sätts ur spel.
Ordningar rubbas - nya möjligheter skapas.
Vad som helst kan hända.
Just därför har människor tillverkat och
burit masker i årtusenden.’


Masker har använts i alla tider och i olika sammanhang: vid hovens fester, vid julupptåg på landsbygden eller som skydd. De vanligaste nutida maskerna är julaftonens tomtemask och skräckmasker vid Halloween.

En mask kan skrämma bort onda makter, skydda mot hugg och slag eller mot andras blickar. En mask kan dölja vem man är eller skapa en annan identitet.

Ett 40-tal masker ur Nordiska museets samlingar visas. Det är skyddsmasker, fångmasker, maskeradmasker, dödsmasker och traditionsmasker gjorda av bland annat näver, koppar, järn, gips, plast och tyg. En mask är gjord av en damstrumpa med hål för ögon och mun och en maskeradmask tros ha använts av Gustav III. Den är av vinröd sammet och täckt av guldbroderier. Maskerna är från olika epoker - de tidigaste är från 1600-talet och den senaste från idag.

En mask
... kan skrämma bort onda makter.
... kan skydda mot hugg och slag eller mot andras blickar.
... kan dölja vem man är eller skapa en annan identitet.
... kan ingjuta mod att testa nya gränser.
... kan göra en person modigare och farligare än annars.
... kan ge känslan av att slippa ansvara för sina handlingar.
... kan vara ett straff.
... kan bevara minnet av en död person.”

Parent’s rights contra children’s…

[Udated June 5 and 6 in the end] In a review over the new book ”Skapelsekonspirationen – Fundamentalisternas angrepp på utvecklingsläran” or ”The Conspiracy of Creation – the Fundamentalists’ attack on the Doctrine of Evolution” by Per Kornhall (picture on him above) it stood that the author points out a somersault in the legislation in Sweden, namely; in it it stands about parent’s rights to educate their children in whatever spirit they feel is right, but this isn’t put up against children’s rights to learn to think freely and make their own opinions. The author means that the children (in religious schools, especially very fundamentalist ones) get democracy deficits or losses; they don’t get equivalent education and not the same possibilities as other children.

He thinks the society should see more to the children’s rights and he want to defend the secular society. The British writer George Jacob Holyoake (1817-1906) coined the term "secularism."

Kornhall himself about his book:

”A book about the Christian fundamentalists attack on the theory of evolution and the open secular society.”

Thought this was interesting, and wanted to safe these text and thoughts here.

When I searched on the author and his book I found that he belonged to the religious sect Livets ord for 17 years. Left it 2000. Here his own words about why he thinks this church is a sect (in Swedish). Livets ord started their first primary and secondary (?) school 1985 and five years later a gymnasium. So earlier pupils and students are now grown up... The Livet ord home site. Here about it in wikipedia (in English). Livets ord is the Swedish based church of Word of life.

Here another interview with him in which it stands that Kornhall called himself creationist earlier. Here his blog (both these sites are in Swedish).

My grandmother grew up in a laestadian family with 16 children born on 21 years near the Arctic Circle. She freed herself fairly a lot, or they weren't extremely strict raised, but I think she was marked by her upbringing and what she experienced during it, probably things of many different kinds. She was extremely self-occupied and now as grown up I have wondered over her behavior and what it actually was a sign of: a constant anxiety making her restless. All of a sudden she went from the dinner-table to her bed, when all others sat there eating, which s one of many things.

She forwarded this. But I think people see me as very calm and down to earth (hmmm, see that test about being practician!).

She was 60 years when I was born, her first grandchild. It's a pity I can't interview her any more. I was 31 when she died and hadn't read Miller at that time. I would have wanted to ask her a lot of things. And I wonder if she had answered my questions, if they had been honest and straight forward? I am sure she experienced both physical and emotional abuse, and I wonder about sexual. The physical and emotional abuse they probably didn't see as abuse, but for the children's own good. They were forced to ask forgiveness, even if there was nothing to ask forgiveness about. One thing of many probably...

I have a former friend who joined Livets ord too... I think she had difficulties with herself and was a seeking soul... That's so sad.

George Jacob Holyoake

Addition June 5: I got a tip about the film ”The Clash Between Faith and Reason.” And yesterday evening I watched the documentary "Friends of God" by Alexandra Pelosi. Read here and here about it.

Addition June 6: Was tipped about this film Jesus camp too today.

Addition June 7: But I came across a blog where the blog-owner wrote about evolution in a way that made me feel very uncomfortable, so I don't mean to advocate evolutionism either I want to underline.

5/29/2008

Not so high demands…

The Swedish artist and author, Ulf Lundell writes in his last book “Vädermannen” or “The Weather Man” that young women don’t put so high demands according to the book- reviewer Yukiko Duke. He has had love-relations with many younger women. The last and present is 33 years younger. Lundell is born 1949.

His home site (in Swedish).

PS.
On the balcony I read in the book "Morality for beautiful girls" (the Swedish edition) about RTO - The really terrible orchestra in which Alexander McCall Smith is one of the musicians (bassoon or fagott in Swedish), as his wife (flutist I think). A visit to his official home site is recommended!

Addition May 30: Does he prefer women not putting so high demands? I can't help wonder "why?"

5/28/2008

Acting out…

from rehearsal yesterday with two of my students. Is it the anger's angel on the altar-piece, commanding: fall down?

I am thinking further on what I see around me in society, not least among politicians, and the politicians in our current government in particular. Wonder what is driving them? How they can resonate as they do. And of course: why do they need power? Why have they chosen political work? What are their actual intentions and motives, both the conscious and unconscious? Yes, what are their drives?

And I for instance found something Miller has written at page 168-169 in the Swedish edition of ”Paths of Life” about acting out ones hatred on scapegoats. She writes that it’s impossible for a child to consciously experience the abuse (physical, sexual and emotional) without aware witnesses. The knowledge about what it has been exposed to (or the meaning of it: this was no love, but hate and rejection) has to become suppressed. But what happened doesn’t disappear even if it is dispatched to the unconscious. The unconscious memories drive the human being once and again to reproduce the suppressed scenes to liberate her/himself from the agony the early abuse has left in the body.

But not even this gives him/her liberation. Once and again he becomes perpetrator and finds new victims. So long as he projects the hatred and fear on scapegoats one can’t master these feelings. Not until one realizes the true cause(s) and understands the natural reaction on injuries the blind, on innocent projected hatred can get dissolved. Its function, to hide the truth, is no longer necessary. And she also writes on another place that you can’t dissolve things symbolically either. If one could, all we with artistic and creative works would be liberated from neurosis (my free interpretation of Miller), but we are certainly not. But it’s possible our work helps many of us to survive.

Miller writes that perpetrators of sexual abuse are no longer at risk re-enacting their traumas (committing sexual abuse) in a destructive way if they get help and opportunity in therapy to process what they have been through. Where do they get this help I wonder? Does that sort of help exist? Or it is still very rare? Because people still try to invent a lot of other explanations, than abuse from parents and other caretakers and to what degree they actually occur and what is actually harmful? One ascribes or attributes the causes and roots to for instance sexual abuse other things than early childhood abuse in many, many cases still? There is still a lot of denial about those things, both in people in general as in professionals. People deny that these things are ALWAYS, with no exception, a question of mistreatment, from the mildest forms to the most severe? There are small islands of awareness and knowledge only in the world.

Miller also writes that so long as the anger against a parent remains unconscious and denied, it cannot get dissolved. It can only be pushed over onto scapegoats, on the own children (if one has any) or supposed enemies. Masked as ideology (as for instance in politics and political parties) the anger transformed to hate can become especially dangerous.

What I originally was searching for this time was ideas about he child’s evilness because earlier today I skimmed “Paths of Life” in the middle of doing other things and read those words somewhere and put them on my mind.

Yes, she writes about this at page 186 in the Swedish edition, something in the style: punishment is built on the assumption that the child is acting with an evil intention (I can see the horrified adult watching the child! But what is he/she actually seeing?? An evil child? A monster? But what is this “evil” or “monster” about?)

She writes on the next page (187) that the latter adult will miss a compass of experiences (achieved through consciously experiencing things and not having to suppress things) which would help her/him to orientate in the life and the being. Therefore he will bow for authorities and play master over the weaker; all in accordance with what he/she has experienced as a child with his/her educators. I came to think of an older acquaintance in my parents age, blindly admiring all people with a position, never questioning them or capable of seeing them as human beings as all other human beings. I wonder what ort of father (and mother) she and her six siblings had. She is the child in the midst? With three before her and three after her? I still get very surprised when I am confronted with this in her, can’t understand how one can be SO uncritical and seeing up to THAT degree, and that this person does.

Practician…

The letter
(which one of our students is going to sing in the church at the concert tomorrow evening).

According to a test on what blog type you are the result for me was that I am a practician! I was moderately flattered by his.

I have been out for a bike-ride before lunch, sneezing and coughing, recovering from a cold.
Yesterday I watched a TV-programme (I had a TV-evening yesterday!) about a new book on Ingmar Bergman. The author, Michael Timm (in my age I guess), said about Bergman, with whom he had developed a fairly close friendship, that he was lively, changeable, energetic, quick, very curious, after an interview on half an hour Bergman got tired and started to ask the interviewer a lot of questions instead of the opposite.

I also came to think of how extremely organized Bergman was. He was always extremely well prepared in his work. He had a fixed schedule every day for his writing at Fårö; for his walks, when he visited his cinema and watched films each evening and so on. He needed to keep his demons (or “dämoner” as he called them in Swedish) in check.

And he avoided psycho therapy (but what sort would he have gotten then?) because I guess he believed that his neurosis was the prerequisite for his creativity, that he would loose it if he came to terms with them. As I think many creative people thought then (and maybe still think too often). But what was he actually afraid of? The truth lay just under the surface and he was aware of it, on an unconscious or subconscious level, and was in touch with the panic connected with it?

During the tax-affair (round 1975) he got a psychic breakdown and landed on a psychiatric clinic and was heavily medicated, so he walked there like a zombie. But he decided to quit all medication, and did that abruptly too, and met all the anxieties. He has described this in one of his books. And left Sweden with his wife Ingrid (by the way the author of the new book on Bergman thinks Bergman had had women who could measure up to him actually, and contribute to his work. Know that he and the pianist-wife Käbi Laretei inspired each other a lot, but they had a mutual respectful fear or each other? And Bergman later said that they played roles to each other, didn’t dare to meet as real, genuine human beings, meetings between two genuine , true selves, or how one shall express it).

Yes, maybe one has to be organized with artistic works struck me. Boundaries are more important there than in many other works and occupations? We need limits, in our work. And all artists aren’t bohemians, as maybe many thinks? Because for the first you need a lot of discipline to come where you have come! To develop the skill you have developed. And for this you can’t be too bohemian? If you aren’t lucky having someone a housekeeper and mommy?

k. – the spontaneous! Not always weighing the words, hmmm… Spontaneously expressing things, thoughts etc. Behind a certain amount of shyness. Not having a censurer - and having one. Blushing red sometimes (or rather often): but what did I say? And how? How childish! How stupid! How stupid, childish ideas!

Also struck me the other day about an older friend who has known me for long, who said she thought that people maybe could react on my quick thinking… That they didn’t really keep up with it. I don’t know if this was so good telling me however.

Yes, only a word or expression can trigger a lot of thoughts and feelings. And when I write I can start in one end and end in an entirely different, with a million sidetracks?

And after having worked with young people for so many years my language has also got coloured by that sort of language? When I studied pedagogy once (beside full time work) I expressed myself differently, adapted a bit to that language? The same when I was student at a tutor-education at the Royal College of music in Stockholm (5 years ago, 7, 5 international academic points).

No, now I need to practice for 2, 5 - 3 hours. And it would be nice getting time on the balcony with a cup of tea with honey (need that for my cold). Have thought of taking the bike to town and the pharmacy to buy something for my nose, Renaissance I had thought of.

5/27/2008

More on cold glances not only from bureaucrats but also from politicians and too many people in general today…

There was a reply in the paper today, to the leader I blogged about in the posting "The cold glance of the bureaucrat..."

Some loud thinking triggered by further thoughts AND this reply now (I will probably blog about this later, both in Swedish and in English): What these politicians and bureaucrats suffer from is empathy deficits? And lack of empathy comes from the upbringing, with no doubt (with this not said I am entirely free from this myself, but I try to work on it). But this is only an explanation and no excuse for their behaviour. Now they are taking revenge for what they suffered, things they are denying the severity in, so maybe they aren’t really aware of what they are actually doing, and that is still no excuse for what the are doing, saying and how they are behaving (that about responsibility). And many are probably honouring the way they were raised and think this was "for their own good”, they needed it.

Now with power using the same means (and needing power, needing to exercise power, with all means trying to avoid all, childish, feelings of power and helplessness); authoritarian, totalitarian, looking down on people lacking in discipline (too many politicians honouring strict, rigid discipline – a backlash really, neoconservative, neoauthoritarian), believing people need to become disciplined, not spoiled, need to learn how life actually is; how hard, tough it is etc. Yes, I think the psycho-historian is right who said:

"...the more defended psychoclasses tend to lead"

And the needed work is too bothersome and laborious, the easier way is striving for power, for being the leader, on different levels; from a family-level to the highest political. Miller is right when she writes:

"It is the UNFELT, avoided and denied pain, stored up in our bodies, that drive us to repeat what have been done to."

The more power we get the more sever the consequences of an unprocessed and unfelt past for the environment. Power can be a way to avoid the truth. An effective way with severe and serious consequences.

And the ones voting for those politicians can’t see things through either, but votes for something they are familiar with, and thus feel comfortable with (how bad this even is for them in the end). They too believe in the necessity in educating people (in many cases in a humiliating manner; as humiliated as they themselves became once probably). And nobody wants to know the actual roots for things.

See Pincus on Societal approval: now it is opportune saying things that weren’t really possible saying earlier?

And it looks as if empathy can be a factor in exhaustion and burnout according to findings in stress-research (Währborg for instance).

Chewing the same things once and again - but so what? ("You stupid, k!!" the primary defence in me?).

Miller also writes something in the style that people want to claim that the problems with the youth is due to too slack (loose) upbringing, but adds that if people would want to inform themselves they will get to know that

"..it is exactly those most punished, the ones most maltreated or most severely neglected children whom find joy in destroying, and whom later glorifies the violence [violence in all forms; from the most obvious to the most subtle; as advocating more discipline in school for instance and advocating we shall avoid spoiling children and young people (but what is actually 'spoiling children'?), from physical to emotional disciplining (with for instance the wall of silence for to punish the child, and manipulate it to a desire behaviour, not listen to it, not explain to it why you are punishing it either, quite authoritarian! As our current school-minister), and maybe also sexual (though much rarer hopefully, or by manipulating this too in young people in different ways), my a little free translation and interpretation of Miller's text taken from page 188 in the Swedish edition of 'Paths of Life')."

5/25/2008

Too bothersome and laborious…

On our way back to work after the lunch on Friday I took some photos in a hurry on pictures with old Volvos, hanging on the walls in the stairs to the restaurant where we ate our lunch, here is one of these pictures.


[Addition in the end May 26]. On Thursday and Friday I had a lot to do with one of our bosses, a man y, the "lower" of our two bosses (boss no 2!! :-)). We two only sat in a jury listening to candidates to a special course for our cleverest pupils, aged 13-20.

We spoke a lot with each other and with the pupils. y and I ate lunch on Friday too. We had a lunch-break for more than an hour on Friday, so we had time associating a lot!

There was a lot to process for me of all different kinds, both on a personal and general level, my reactions, what y said to the pupils, what they said, how they reacted, what their teachers (my colleagues) said etc. (typically female thoughts? Or?).

All of a sudden I got a very vague Aha-experience, something I am still trying to put words on.

I’ll start trying to do this in this posting (had to write a second posting today, let’s see if there comes a third too? :-))

On the balcony I wrote the following (in Swedish) with pen and paper:

“[It's] more comfortable shambling along (lulla på) in the same old ruts (hjulspår) [than changing the state of affairs]? Sometimes the profits and gains with this are outweighing everything else [or feel outweighing, easier than the hard and tough struggle and fight - and less scary?]? Men are maybe more forced giving up something quite comfortable (generally)? Changes feels like being forced doing something feeling too bothersome and laborious (besvärligt, mödosamt, jobbigt)? While many women don’t have any choices? They are forced doing the hard and bothersome work?

The profits in a [true, genuine] meeting with another human being (through a meeting with oneself) with all what comes along with that, all what that means, is – too much? [for many women too!] Something many men see as ‘changing oneself down’ as we say (byta ner sig)?”

A change to something that feels worse? Even if they on the other hand honour changes. But there are "changes and changes", and who define what changes actually are, and that they are against (at least a certain sort of) changes is covered up (and many of us probably don't see this either, because we aren't used to question these things, many are probably totally blind to this too, and I think I can be too to a high degree, even if I think I got a glimpse of something now)? The benefits with the old behaviour overweight. So of course they aren’t so interested, but cling to how it has always been? And defend that too, forcefully? With this not said that y is the worse example on men against changing oneself!! He isn't, but nevertheless... (I wonder what he would feel and think if he read this??:-))

They feel they will loose more than they will gain? And it struck me – they will loose many comfortable things??? So small wonder they aren’t so interested – in general?

At least not in this generation? But honestly I am not sure this is true only for that generation… Sad to say.

But there are probably men whom have no choices but doing the hard work too?



Cats are musical? :-)

Addition May 26:
Miller writes in a reply to a reader's letter about
"...many professionals who are still stuck in the traditional way of thinking."
Yes, these things ARE bothersome and laborious? Everything in us “rises up against” this? After a while we don’t want to know about it any more? Want to push it away, ignore and minimize it? Are some more prone to this too? Denial turns on? As Judith Lewis Herman actually writes about the history around trauma? See for instance the chapter “A Forgotten History” in her book "Trauma and Recovery - From Domestic Violence to Political Terror":
“The study of psychological trauma has a curious history – one of episodic amnesia. Periods of active investigation have alternated with periods of oblivion [a defence reaction? Denial of the longterm consequences of what we were exposed to and how in fact common these things are? Why a person like Miller is less mentioned today, and why her last books haven't been translated to Swedish for instance? And the denial also expressed itself when Sweden's therapist hesitated on banning corporal punishment fearing abuse would express itself in other manners, and maybe get more hidden? See earlier posting on this here. Denial from their part too!]. Repeatedly in the past century, similar lines of inquiry have been taken up and abruptly abandoned, only to be discovered much later. Classic documents of fifty or one hundred years ago often read like contemporary works. Though this field has in fact an abundant and rich tradition, it has been periodically forgotten and must be periodically reclaimed.”

---

“Studiet av psykologiskt trauma har en besynnerlig historia – en av tillfällig amnesi. Perioder av aktivt utforskande har alternerat med perioder av glömska [en försvarsreaktion? Ett förnekande av de långsiktiga konsekvenserna av det vi blev utsatta för och hur vanliga dessa saker faktiska är. Varför en person som Miller är mycket mindre nämnd idag och varför hennes sista böcker inte har översatts till svenska. Och förnekandet uttrycktes också då Sveriges psykoterapeuter tvekade inför förbud mot aga därför att de var rädda att misshandel/övergrepp skulle ta sig andra uttryck och kanske bli mer dolda. Se tidigare inlägg här om detta. Förnekandet hos dem uttrycktes på detta sätt??]. Under det gångna århundradet har liknande undersökningstankegångar tagits upp och abrupt blivit övergivna, bara för att upptäckas långt senare. Femtio till hundra år gamla klassiska dokument kan ofta läsas som samtida arbeten. Trots att detta område faktiskt har en överflödig och rik tradition, har det periodiskt glömts och har periodiskt måst återerövras.”

More on responsibility…

a young Ingmar Bergman in the archipelago of Stockholm.

Madeleine Åsbrink writes in her book (see earlier postings, here and here) how she made her and her husband move from Stockholm (a small town compared to the really big cities in the world! :-)) to a part of Sweden where it was cheaper living, where they maybe could experience some calm and peace - at the country-side. She was a high-achieving individual, had worked for many years already as engineer (college, a 4-year education?). More or less aware of it she wanted to change her life. She had already started seeking, by reading books on "spiritual" topics.

But her husband wasn’t satisfied in their new home (he hadn't communicated this either?), their relation slowly got worse. She writes that there was no safety, tenderness or nearness in their relation. She didn’t question it but continued struggling. Later she understood that she hadn’t experienced much of this in the family where she grew up, so she had no frames of reference and nothing to compare with in this respect. She, as we say “gillade läget” or “approved of, or ‘liked’, her position,” and continued struggling.

She thinks she had no good model for how a family-life or relation should (or could) be, even though she felt somewhere that this was wrong. She started to think on divorce.

One night when she laid their cogitating (grubblande) over her relation she got a thought and without reflecting over it and its meaning she suddenly heard herself saying:

“You behave like an egoistic pig, one could believe you have another (woman)!”

Her husband didn’t say a word. She got silent too. And the world stopped. Then all of a sudden she realized the truth there in the bed. She was right. Her husband had an affair with another woman.

She writes that at that moment she lost herself. She let herself down. She let her son down. She wasn’t armed for this quite simply. She had an enormous outer strength, but not the inner which had been needed to handle this message better than she did.

She thought it was her fault that her husband had got in love with another woman (and also followed that feeling by having a love-affair with her) and let both her and their son down. She shut her feelings off and now her life became about unraveling what SHE had done. Her husband blamed her and they found a lousy therapist taking side with her husband and saying that it wasn’t strange her husband had got tired on her and all her nagging, as if that should justify treachery (svek) and unfaithfulness (infidelity) she writes.

When she calls her mom to tell her what had happened she starts by saying that now her mother will be disappointed with her. Afterwards she wonders how her mom could become disappointed on her for something her husband had done! At that point she hadn’t realized yet that it’s impossible to take responsibility for another human being (and her/his actions, what/she says and does?), that the only real responsibility as each of us have is for ourself. And now she thought that it was this sole responsibility she didn’t take then.

To unravel what she had done they decided to move back to Stockholm.

In parallel with full time work and now two kids she started to retrain herself to Rosen therapist (writing this I have to add that by mentioning it I don't advocate Rosen-therapy though; can't this therapy be manipulative too, depending on who's performing it? There are reasons being careful when one seeks help! How attractive the therapy even looks or sounds).

She clenches her teeth and works on. Of course she ends up in a breakdown, with a total exhaustion. And has to work herself up from the bottom really.

She blamed herself. Her husband blamed her. And their therapist blamed her.

On my bike ride yesterday afternoon I came to think of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman who has written in one of his books that when he saw his pregnant wife and her eyes filled with sorrow and despair (pregnant with their fourth child, or third and fourth child, a twin-couple?) there in their double-bed when he had come home an evening or night telling her that he had a new woman, he decided to skip all guilt feelings. They were so (too) painful?? And Ingmar Bergman wanted to have his women for himself, not share them with any kids, neither own nor his women’s… His mother had held her kids very tight, instilling guilt and shame in them I get the impression after having read her diary and what others have narrated. As their father, the Lutheran priest did (see earlier postings on Ingmar Bergman here and here), who also beat his kids bloody and threatened them with the hell (and probably was burn-out a couple of times, he in turn with extremely high demands on himself, not being good enough to his parents in law either. Phew!!).

I have grown up with a mom thinking our female way of reacting, (over)sensitively, is worse than men’s power and capacity (in general) to let things run off them (as water on a goose) as we say. But if we as girls/women behaved in this way, how would that have been met? Would the environment have seen through their fingers with that? Men/boys were (and still are?) allowed this to many parents and grown ups between too? So we are taught very early to be overly responsible or the opposite? Or the latter adult reacts against those high demands (as Bergman did)? And it is true that men also take too much responsibility generally or in some circumstances! But when a woman does we are not allowing it in the same manner?

Men are a (the) superior sex, that's what I grew up with (or both looked up AND down on to be honest)? Women and girls are less worth as human beings (in all however). No wonder all ones struggles? And believes one isn't worth a nickel... (hopefully this is A LITTLE better). Having to work much too hard to earn the right living and existing, having food on the table, somewhere to live, an own car etc. etc. Yes, there ARE grains of truth in these feelings, that I feel so is no joke honestly (and maybe sad to say)! Striving to be good enough.

The Dutch therapist Ingeborg Bosch talks about a defence she calls the Primary defence, which is about blaming oneself. She thinks we all use this, but all don’t admit to it, neither to themselves nor to the environment (some are more in denial about this? Some deny they have any such feelings both to themselves AND to the environment). Women tend to be more prone admitting to it, men less.

Bosch writes somewhere that this tendency in some, more or less obvious can be very convenient for the environment. If someone is prone to blaming her/himself. And the environment can at the same time react with contempt over this person:

“Do you always have to…!!!”

When we react in that way we don’t want to admit to ourselves our own low self esteem? How we are blaming ourselves? We don’t want to admit to our own vulnerability? Don’t want to get in touch with feelings of powerlessness and helplessness underneath? Not get in touch with suppressed feelings from early, when we WERE power and helpless?

To come back to Åsbrink above. Her decision to go to technical college wasn’t her wish, but her father’s she realized. But she was very clever and efficient in that work and very much appreciated in her work. Earned A LOT OF money.

But she paid a high price for her struggles to live up to demands and get loved.

Her husband wanted to develop to, and also entered therapy of some kind, and with a ot of struggles and efforts they managed staying married in a much better marriage. But the path there was hard and tough she writes. Very, very tough in fact.

Hmmm, men are often (or was even more before) treated as they were kids and not grown up men? With no capacity taking responsibility??

“You know how he is…!! But he loves you anyway!”

Oh yeah, that’s what “love” is??? A pure lie? Even though the mom was "convinced" there was "love"? What she in turn had learned about love and had to believe in? Passing these confused and confusing ideas further to her kids (and probably not begrudging her kids other experiences either to be honest).

No wonder kids grow up confused about what love and this and that is (quite ironically)…

The responsibility lies entirely on ones shoulders? Don’t both (and all) parts have responsibility? And the same responsibility too? Shouldn’t both?

But if nothing (or very little) happens, shall one continue beating ones head bloody? In a false hope changing something tat isn’t possible to change? Re-enacting something that wasn’t possible to achieve then – the too painful realization that love didn’t exist (or the degree to what it didn’t exist)?

On my other blog I have blogged about "Charity and gratitude..." (in Swedish). Yes, what one grew up with? Being grateful, bowing ones head, being ashamed, feeling lousy etc.?

5/24/2008

The cold glance of the bureaucrat…

Maximilian Carl Emil Weber (21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German political economist and sociologist who was considered one of the founders of the modern study of sociology and public administration.

[Updated May 25 in the end]. The Swedish leader-writer Göran Greider wrote a leader today with the title ”Byråkratens kyliga blick” or “The cold glance of the bureaucrat.”

During the week it seems as there has been a row of programmes on radio about disabled people and their lives and life-experiences. Radio commentators have followed disabled people in the society, young disabled women have told about sexual abuse and mobbing and subtle actions of violence from the environment.

To Greider this comes as no surprise. During the former decade he worked with different disability organizations. Then, fifteen years ago, the old charity thoughts started to come back: instead of social rights – once again it was more and more about relying on idealistic forces and relatives. The last forty years many disability organizations have managed to cast off a lot of the yoke of charity. Now those achievements were about to get lost. And the problem went deeper than that: even the public welfare was – and is – in depth coined by inherited charity-thoughts he thinks, i.e., the view that the one receiving support shall feel grateful and preferably not be noisy when the gifts are falling over them. The core of the philanthropic thought was there and it is a very hard thought: those who need help have to do their full share and show their gratitude, if not they aren’t worth of help. Now the view on poor, unemployed and all sorts of exposed people is hardening. “The National Board of Health and Welfare” and Social Insurance in Sweden walk hand in hand with neoconservative social-politicians and those actors are more and more building an elite that is floating above the problems and seem to know best what sort of needs people have.

Greider thinks one can’t regulate what sort of help a disabled person needs on a bureaucratic level. The most banal things in everyday life can appear different dependent on if ones arms, eyes or ears doesn’t function.

He thinks that “Social Insurances in Sweden doesn’t have to interpret the law as they are doing now – but the authorities choose to do that. Why? He wonders. However, he hardly thinks it’s out of evilness. It’s rather so that the obvious glance from above is what makes it difficult to see people as individuals. He thinks the directors of “Social Insurances in Sweden” have shown that they have become a part of the power-establishment who don’t understand the problems lower in the society then where they themselves are. They have lost contact with the grassroots. A sort of authoritarianism and totalitarianism? Beating their breasts?

The bureaucrat’s cold glance is directed towards the society. And Greider thinks we have to dare to meet it and not give way for it.

There was a letter to the editor in a local newspaper today where it stood:

Sounds nasty.

The right alliance’s Reinfeldt [our current prime-minister] has difficulties winning peoples’ hearts.

Maybe the Swedish people need to do as Maud Olofsson [leader of one of the parties, centerpartiet, in the alliance leading Sweden now] said. Separate heart from brain. Ugh, that sounds nasty.”

Both the heart and brain is saying that what they are doing now is wrong – and VERY WRONG??

The Swedish physician Christina Doctare said in her book "Brain-stress" that the future's leaders need both IQ and EQ and jolly good broadband between those two, and spiritual dimension on top I think she added.

All sort of helpers (employees everywhere, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, psychologists, physicians, teachers too etc. etc. etc.) are walking in the leading-strings of the power? Run the power's errands!! See former posting on "John Read and Models of Madness..."

PS. Doctare actually writes (I looked in the book) something in the style:

“The future’s leadership, on all societal levels, will be about people with well integrated brain halves and jolly good broad-bands between them. Persons having IQ, EQ and a spiritual dimension. It says itself that a certain amount of maturity is required and a great amount of integrity and civil courage./…/

Leadership is about seeing both power and authorities as tools in obtaining goals formulated together, not as goals in themselves or as tools for ones own self-glorifying and nourishment for a stuck-up ego."

And also read the reader’s letter on Miller’s web “Interview with child advocate Andrew Vachss.”

See former posting with those videos. And former postings on backward psycho classes.

PPS. Miller summarizes it quite well when she says, apropos Oprah Winfrey in the talk with Andrew Vachss, where Vachss “confronts Oprah with her belief that anger resulting from an abusive childhood is a bad thing that one needs to overcome, and that the way to ‘healing’ is through forgiveness. And he thoroughly questions it" (as it stood in the reader’s letter). As we are learned so often in therapy; to feel but not to feel:

“Feeling and understanding the causes of our old pain does not mean that the pain and the anger will stay with us forever. Quite the opposite is true. The felt anger and pain disappear with time and enable us to love our children [therapists are afraid we shall get stuck in he old pain and anger. But if clients do - why? See below*]. It is the UNFELT, avoided and denied pain, stored up in our bodies, that drive us to repeat what have been done to [and which gives us all sorts of troubles, and it is help with feeling this pain we need?].

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”Att känna och förstå orsakerna till vår gamla smärta betyder inte att smärtan och vreden kommer att stanna hos oss för evigt. Snarare tvärtom. Den kända vreden [den vrede vi medvetet upplevt] försvinner med tiden och gör oss förmögna att älska våra barn [och oss själva och andra vuxna. Men många terapeuter är rädda att vi ska fastna i detta!? Något som är absolut förbjudet? Och jag har ju mina tankar om varför en klient 'fastnar'...*]. Det är den INTE KÄNDA smärtan, den smärta vi undvikit och förnekat, som lagrats i våra kroppar, som driver oss att upprepa det som gjordes mot oss [och som ger oss allehanda problem].”

Addition May 25: Struck me on my bike to the grocery store before lunch: And the more power we have the more important feeling and understanding the causes of our pain are. The more important it is that we don’t have unfelt, avoided and denied pain stored up in our bodies, driving us to repeat what was done to us.

I am thinking of the power parents, leaders (the greater and higher up the more), therapists and all sort of helpers have. In these circumstances awareness about ones own self is more important than ever for all around and under. The more serious the effects of the past from the childhood of the one in power can become; what he has experienced and endured and not been able to process – something we have certainly seen through history and still continue seeing.

And there can be pains we don’t even are in contact with? Pain we have never consciously felt. Pain that is so denied.

*“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)."

5/23/2008

John Read and Models of Madness...


[Slightly updated May 24]. The blog ”Do nothing day” wrote in a blogposting about an “Interesting radio-programme on madness and science” which was about schizophrenia and the professor in psychology (?) at the University of Auckland, John Read.

From the introductory chapter to the book "Models of Madness: Psychological, Social and Biological Approaches to Schizophrenia" (Brunner-Routledge, 2004) or Galenskapens gåta - Psykologiska, sociala och biologiska modeller för schizofreni” ISBN: 9789187852435 edited by John Read, Loren R. Mosher and Richard P. Bentall it you can read (translated to Swedish):

“De flesta lekmän, många professionella och de flesta som kallas ‘schizofrena’ inser att psykiska problem har sitt ursprung i livserfarenheter. Bara en mäktig yrkesgren, den biologiskt inriktade psykiatrin, insisterar på att överbetona biologi och genetik. Den har en makt som hör ihop med stödet från läkemedelsindustrin.

Utöver att Galenskapens Gåta ger alternativ — och övertygande bevis som stöder dessa alternativ — går den igenom de historiska, ekonomiska och politiska förhållanden som givit denna förenklade biologiska ideologi en så skadlig dominans. Vi gör det för att inte svikta i den kamp som väntar alla, som vill föra psykosvården in på en humanare och mer effektiv väg. För att övervinna hindren krävs att alla deltar — personal i den psykiska hälsovården (inklusive psykiatrer), de som brukar kallas ‘schizofrena’, deras närstående, forskare, sjukvårdsadministratörer och politiker. För vår del har vi sammanställt de forskningsresultat som kan användas i denna kamp, för dem vars sinne är öppet för den ganska enkla tanken att förtvivlan oftast orsakats av andra människor, och att det är människor som kan avhjälpa den bäst och inte kemikalier.


Vårt bidrag består delvis av en uppdatering av bevis, delvis av ett återuppväckande av glömda eller tabubelagda resultat, och delvis av en introduktion av nyare synsätt, tex att förstå den roll barndomstrauman spelar. Det är också en rak, frimodig uppfordran till medvetenhet. Alla berörda borde göra något, efter sina möjligheter, för att få slut på denna galenskap.”
Taken from here. Here an article about the book in Swedish. Silently thinking: labeling and diagnosing another human being is a power-tool. And used by the power it can cause a lot of harm, and has caused a lot of harm... Used as a justification for quite abusive measures, in both medical, psychiatric treatment as in politics. And used to cover things up. Addition May 24: the Swedish leader-writer Göran Greider in fact writes about things paralleling this in the leader
"The cold glance of the bureaucrat," about how disabled people are treated. When I return from work I will blog about this I think... Words came for me when I read this leader such as: humiliation, lousy politics, gratefulness, human worth... Übermensch-ideals, almost fascistic ideas...

And here you can read (parts of?) the book. There it you can read
:

Chapter 1

'Schizophrenia' is not an illness

John Read, Loren R. Mosher and Richard P. Bentall

'Schizophrenia is a chronic, severe, and disabling brain disease'. In June 2003, this was the opening statement of the US government agency, the National Insititute for Mental Health, on its public information website about the topic of our book. Such an opinion can be found in most 'educational' material, from Psychiatric textbooks to drug company sponsored pamphlets. We disagree.

The heightened sensitivity, unusual experiences, distress, despair, confusion and disorganization that are currently labelled 'schizophrenic' are not symptoms of a medical illness. The notion that 'mental illness is an illness like any other', promulgated by biological psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry, is not supported by research and is extremely damaging to those with this most stigmatizing of psychiatric labels. The 'medical model' of schizophrenia has dominated efforts to understand and assist distressed and distressing people for far too long. It is responsible for unwarranted and destructive pessimism about the chances of 'recovery' and has ignored-or even actively discouraged discussion of-what is actually going on in these people's lives, in their families and in the societies in which they live. Simplistic and reductionistic genetic and biological theories have led, despite the high risks involved and the paucity of sound research proving effectiveness, to the lobotimizing, electroshocking or drugging of millions of people.

The research we have gathered together in this book supports our belief that our efforts to understand and assist people experiencing the 'symptoms of schizophrenia' will benefit greatly from a fundamental shift away from unsubstantiated bio-genetic ideologies and technologies to a more down-to-earth focus on asking people what has happened and what they need.

We have not attempted an even-handed, 'objective' approach. What is required, after a hundred years or more of the dominance of an approach that is unsupported scientifically and unhelpful in practice, is a balancing stance rather than a balanced one. The traditional viewpoint is omnipresent in textbooks, research journals and the media. Other views have had difficulty being heard [because of the denial in general, in society and individuals?].

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Kapitel 1.

Schizofreni är inte en sjukdom.

’Schizofreni är en kronisk, allvarlig/svår och handikappande hjärnsjukdom’ detta var det inledande påståendet från the US government agency, the National Insititute for Mental Health, på dess allmänna informationswebbsida i juni 2003 angående ämnet för vår bok. En sådan åsikt kan man hitta i det mesta ’undervisningsmaterialet,’ från psykiatriska läroböcker till broschyrer sponsrade av läkemedelsbolag. Vi håller inte med.

Den ökade känsligheten, ovanliga erfarenheter, nödläge, förvirring och desorganisation som för närvarande etiketterats/diagnostiserats som schizofreni är inte symtom på en medicinsk sjukdom. Idén att ’mental sjukdom är en sjukdom som alla andra’, kungjord av biologisk psykiatri och läkemedelsindustrin, får inte stöd av forskning och är extremt skadande för dem som får denna den mest stigmatiserande av psykiatriska etiketter/diagnoser. Den ’medicinska modellen’ för schizofreni har alltför länge dominerat ansträngningarna att förstå och hjälpa plågade och plågande personer. Den är ansvarig för obefogad och destruktiv pessimism om chanserna för ’återhämtning’ och har ignorerat – eller till och med aktivt avskräckt/slagit ned diskussioner om – vad som egentligen pågår i dessa personers liv, i deras familjer och i samhället i vilket de lever. Förenklade och reduktionistiska genetiska och biologiska teorier har, trots de höga riskerna och den knappa tillgången på sund forskning som bevisar effektiviteten, lett till lobotomering, elektrochocker och drogandet av miljontals människor.

Den forskning som vi har samlat i denna bok stöder vår tro att våra ansträngningar att förstå och hjälpa människor som upplever ‘schizofrenisymtom’ skulle tjäna enormt på ett fundamentalt skifte bort från obekräftade biogenetiska ideologier och teknologier till ett mer jordnära fokus genom att fråga människor om vad som hände och vad de behöver.

Vi har inte försökt [oss på att hålla] ett opartiskt, objektivt angreppssätt. Vad som erfordras är en balanserande snarare än en balanserad hållning efter hundra år eller mer av dominans från ett angreppssätt som inte är vetenskapligt stöttat och vilket inte hjälper i praktiken. Det traditionella synsättet är allestädes närvarande i läroböcker, forskningsjournaler och media. Andra synsätt har haft svårighet att göra sig hörda [p.g.a. det allmänna förnekandet? Och kraftfulla ekonomiska intressen; från t.ex. läkemedelsbolagen]