More about the need for power and control – and the ruling classes paranoia…

Marianne Mikko.

It stood on the Swedish Radio site that registration of bloggers is on its way in Europe – The European Union wants to control bloggers.

The parliament is voting about a draft law this fall that EU shall register and control bloggers on the net.

The Estonian European parliamentarian Marianne Mikko (belonging to the socialist group!??) the initiative taker to the law, says that if we see name and picture on the one writing this promotes the freedom of speech. She thinks the anonymity on the net is a problem. And wants that bloggers legal status shall be clarified and categorized from their opinion and agenda.

This new law has been lively discussed among bloggers on the net the last days and many are upset. One of them are Emma Marie Andersson *who blogs about politics and integrity questions.

“For most bloggers I should in fact think that anonymity is a prerequisite, because all employers for example don’t think it’s so good if one sits and writes and has opinions.”

Marianne Mikko means that the possibility replying in charge to a blogposting has to be strengthened for the sake of democracy!! One needs to be able to reply in the same manner as to articles in for example newspapers she says!! She says:

“I don’t believe in one-way-communication!”

But Emma Marie Andersson thinks the blogs rather are more open than traditional media. And now in the aftermaths of the FRA-law politicians need to really think over what one can and shall regulate she thinks. So true.

“Precisely this, with replying, is extremely strange, for this only proves that she has obviously never visited a blog./…/ The fact is that you as blogger and person discussed on a blog has more opportunities answering in a blog than in a newspaper actually.

Now people have got the taste for airing their opinions and therefore more and more people are interested in how things like these turn out. So it’s in all people’s interest trying to become friend with the Internet and realize that Internet isn’t a thing lying somewhere far away, but Internet is actually a part of the society, and it’s we, the people, who find ourselves there.”

Yes, it was this with the need for power and control… And the ruling classes paranoia??

A female Swedish blogger I appreciate a lot also writes about this new law. She writes that everything is obviously going to become controlled! Where does the boundary go? If one want to stop a blogger there are already possibilities. And now comes extra controls or demands the bloggers shall display their photos and names. Postings are already possible to report and stop. And that's fully enough. She also wonders how one shall be able to control if people use their own names or photos, and not others...

"By the way - photo??"

she writes.

"Maybe one has to be both beautiful and photogenic to be allowed to blog? And soon we have the entire control-society."

Another female Swedish blogger writes that "Perhaps it's time for the European Union to register our private diaries too..." She thinks one of the worst things is that politicians prove they don't know what they are talking about or what Internet is! And thinks this is like the pure Soviet-state! And we have a right government in Sweden!!! And it's a right wind in Europe!!! Many have written about a big-brother society!

And here an article "The Economics for Nice People" concerning incitements for people, that they are all and only economic? And selfish?? I.e. that we never do anything without expecting something in return...

* "Vissa lagar som syftar till att bekämpa kriminaliteten är ännu mera kriminella " — Friedrich Engels

“The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the force of the Crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake, the wind may blow through it; the storms may enter, the rain may enter - but the King of England cannot enter; all his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement.” — William Pitt

Really something for me???

The best mobile phone tricks – something for me??? Yippee!! One can use the mobile even as a gym-tool (a weight)!!

But how was it with being addicted? Where has Google got the idea this video could be interesting for me?? Because I got tipped at youtube about it! I can’t understand!! Or all with a youtube account get tipped about it?

I had to laugh when I watched this video! Yes,mobile phones are really useful!! :-) I have an Sony Ericsson 750i (I think)!!

More mobile tricks here!

Some personal reflections…

During a tough period I tried with a lot of ”therapies”: qigong, Feldenkrais, meditation, different relaxation-programs, mental training…

During some weekends training Feldenkrais there were physiotherapists (sjukgymnaster) also attending… They and the course-teacher (yes, they call the sessions lessons) spoke very enthusiastically about neuro linguistic programming (NLP), and how they used it in their work. And the Feldenkrais teacher spoke about a Norwegian couple in particular having courses in NLP in Sweden too, for instance on the island Öland (if I remember right), and she thought they were so great. However I got a bit suspicious, because it sounded as keeping barriers on place... I don't believe in that method... Deliberately cutting upcoming things off. If what you as whatever therapist you are "release" things in the client or patient you must be able to deal with it, and have tools dealing with it too. And these things are nothing you should "play" with as we say!!

I have a sister who is educated occupational therapist (arbetsterapeut). During her education they had a course in psychiatry I think. Or they read about how to handle (and/or avoid) psychosis. Because when you start to work with the body and release tensions, when you meditate etc. things can happen… People can start to react very powerfully? Even become psychotic (quite often become psychotic, or more often than we maybe believe)? See Reich about the bodily armour! And this seems to be a reality, so that they have to learn about these things in their education!

In my work or rather during my piano-playing education I have come in contact with the phenomenon the kinaesthetic sense. That is, how it feels doing a movement, finger or body. Being able to imagine how it feels.

In dancing for instance the pupils/students watch their teacher making a movement and at the same time make a sensory imagination of how it feels doing this movement, what’s happening.

Riding horses is the same or can or ought to be the same??

Singing is too; to find ones voice, the breathing etc.

This also makes me think of therapists working with peoples’ breathing… One of the parents to a couple of our pupils (she is mother of five or more children!!), educated from college for social workers, works as breathing-therapist. I would never go to her. I think all these tools can be dangerous used wrongly and by the wrong person, which means a person with unresolved things!! This is true for all sorts of therapies, how attractive they even may sound. See what Miller has written and said about unconscious manipulation.

Yes, many of us probably want there were quick fixes? We are maybe even in desperate need for them! The years are passing, and we live not so fulfilling or rich-containing lives (but what is a “rich life”?). We want a change, and an immediate change?

And maybe there are reasons choosing the presumptive therapist very carefully! Trying to give oneself that time, even if it feels hard and the need for help and change is very strong. Using Miller’s FAQ-list (frequently asked questions) "How to find the Right Therapist?" in our search, or creates our own questions if we are capable.

We also speak a lot (especially during higher education) about feelings and emotions and expressions… But this doesn’t mean we working with artistic things are healthier… I can immediately mention a lot of musicians and other artists with sever problems. Even during history. Which proves that just talking doesn’t really change things? But our work maybe keeps many of us working with it alive. Alive but going crazy? Or as Robert Schumann committing suicide…

Working with all these things above one has to be prepared and really capable of dealing with what’s perhaps coming up!! As in all other therapies! Having solved ones own things to that degree so one doesn’t harm the other one by ones own denial and unsolved/unprocessed things.

One can click on the labels “gurus”, “cults”, “manipulation”, “Helga’s story” etc. in the sidebar to the left…

Beethoven in fury over a dead friend (the third movement from the moonlight sonata).

Addictions in parents and other grown up authorities…

summer-view from the middle of Sweden.

[slightly edited and updated June 26]. In the news today they say that many children are worried over parent’s internet dependency (or Internet addiction).

Many children have called Bris, Children’s Rights in Society’s worried over their parents’ Internet habits. A study from 2007 shows what influence Internet has for children’s ill-health.

“They are often filled with shame, anger and sorrow, but also questions about what they shall do.”

Mothers who are caught in Internet-playing many hours a day or fathers porn-surfing (even child porn!!!) and sex-chatting. When children get to know this they get worried and don’t know how to handle it. And Bris-Children’s Right in Society has noticed this. Last year they noticed a striking increase in the number of calls and emails from (exactly) children, not knowing how they shall solve their parent’s problems. According to an investigator at Bris this discovery can be compared with when children discover that their parent’s abuse alcohol, drugs etc. because the set of problems are the same.

“It is as shameful as addiction, and they have to handle it in the same way as other forms of addictions.”

In first hand it is parent’s visits to porn-sites children are reacting most strongly at. Most of the children calling have seen their parent’s visiting porn - and even child porn Internet-sites.

They write in the article that parent’s (and other grown ups, if they are authorities of any kind for young people my addition) ought to wonder what sort of models they are to their children or other children they are authorities for. True I think... We are or can be models in many different respects...

Addition (quickly translated and written): I searched under the label addictions and there was one on “Parasiten – the Parasite…” A swift translation of parts of that blogposting:

This year a book came in Swedish written by a man Fredrik Ljung just above 30. A book about "a drug-addicted in suit", a man newly examined from school of economics and business administration (the most prestigious in Sweden in this case), with a

“well-paid job in the finance-branch, dressed in expensive suits.”

As the author once was.

He and his companion mean they could work high pressuredly and at the same time abuse drugs without anybody noticing it.

They mean that alcohol-problems are still more common in working-life, but drug-problems are increasing (earlier drug-addictions were less common, people used alcohol instead?). These two men are now treating other people with the same problems as they had.

10 % of the employees in average on a work-place have problems with alcohol and drugs they think, and those coming to them are young, just above 30 and they have an already established pill and drug-addiction. Most of them are men, but they think women are much cleverer in hiding their problems (so THAT problem, with drug abuse, is partly hidden).

Alcohol and drug problems are overrepresented in high achieving professions and in circumstances where kick-seeking people search themselves to. Pressure achieving and a feelings of insufficiency make many seeking help in alcohol and tablets, and maybe later also drugs, to handle their live (things that drove them into these works in the first place, and on wrong premises?). Most common are marijuana and amphetamine, but cocaine is also increasing.

Silently (feeling so sad and horrified again rereading this): Hiding ones problems by using drugs of all kinds… Keeping silent of shame? And if you can’t manage things you are no real man (or woman)??? The hypocrisy! Showing a façade. And that about being “a real man" again… Does women want that sort of “real men”??? Or what sort of women want such a man?

The author thinks it is important focusing on the request (demand) for drugs, and to watch so people feel better and don’t have to resort to drug use to make their lives endurable. And this should actually have started early in life, where children ought to feel they are worthy, lovable just as they are etc. Silently: how nice is a life being drugged all the time or a lot of the time actually? Being blunt (avtrubbad) most of or the whole time? Oh, this is so sad.

What is lying at the bottom? From where comes the mania being clever and achieving? The feeling one isn’t good enough if one doesn’t achieve and even achieve enormously? The feeling one has to control oneself, or rather not being weak, but showing a (false) façade of strength?

The author said he had never had any problems getting the tablet-store renewed!! No physicians refused to prescribe new, or more, tablets (he visited 20 doctors and there were never any great problems)! This also made me think… It has been a lot (or at least some) talk about being observant towards this phenomenon, i.e. that people goes to many different physicians to get medicine, especially when it comes to calming medicine, sleeping pills (But thre hasn't been any straight talk about narcotics)… But they have found in research that women and men are treated differently by doctors, and employees at for instance the Social Insurance in Sweden etc. Treated differently because of their gender - AND thus their status in society (quite ironical)?? Women with problems are treated with more contempt and less respect!?

Ljung says he succeeded keeping himself “floating,” as he says, for eight years. He started abusing alcohol systematically when he was 19 years. During these years he changed his whole acquaintance-circle, only associated with criminals (in suits??), he was heavily in debt, had two broken relations behind him and hardly any contact with his parents. In short his life was in a real mess.

Suddenly he realized the truth; he wasn’t the successful and enviable person he had struggled so hard to become.

It stands:

“Henrik is filled with contempt, both against the society and against people in his environment and this permeates [genomsyrar] his strivings in reaching the top, which is a well paid, status-filled job on a bank in London or New York.”

Oh, how fun! And really something to strive for!! Observe the irony! The principal figure in the book is ironical, arrogant, show contempt for weakness, is floating above… The reviewer of the book earlier this year characterized the principal figure with the expressions "hubris" and "self-contempt. "

Yes, what does Miller write about irony for instance? And about addiction?

This really made me think once again…

Addition June 26: Struck me about Jane Fonda's bulimia. Also see "Starving for Attention." She thought that she was so occupied with her eating that she lived like in a glass-bubble, cut off from the environment and not really their for her children (Vanessa and Troy?). And she could slightly imagine how this for them. If I remember right. Sidetrack: but it feels as she is still in denial to a high degree, and have been "taught" forgiveness by therapists...

And I recently also read about Britt Ekland (actually Eklund!!), the Swedish actress, who has problems with osteoporosis, and it struck me this can (must) be because of constant concern about the weight. And she must have done plastic surgery (the lips??) which hasn't been really successful... I have done plastic surgery too, a (really) big (and tough) operation. I was offered another one, but at that time I had accepted how I look and didn't make a second operation... And before this operation the female doctor said she didn't think this operation was necessary, but if I wanted to make it they should make it... Oh, this is a long story...

About the FRA-law, the need for power and control - and integrity violations...

a sea of meadow flowers.

The Swedish Riksdag or Parliament has voted a new law (what is called the FRA-law) through where authorities are allowed to check our emails, the text-messages we send, what sites at the internet we visit etc. and to store it. And we have a right-government and a right majority in the Riksdag…

The blogger Jenny W. writes that (a little freely):

“An important reason that this FRA-law is so horrid is that it can be used against dissidents and whip consensus forward through fright. For us who don’t see more than said diseases [everyday and everywhere] when we read the daily and evening papers and in our talk with the rank-and-file [gemene] journalist, the law comes out as a codification of the already present state of affairs than a real change of them (excuse me for not crying myself to death over the threatened protection of sources [källskydd], but it feels as if that isn’t really the obstacle for newspapers writing about ’dangerous’ things – but, fine, it’s sickly serious that the state has usurped this tool of controlling nevertheless, and of course I understand that protection of sources is important)./…/

Say something dangerous instead [she thinks the rage in the bloggosphere over this law is mostly because it is comme il faut, and for people to prove they stand on the little human being’s side], something dangerous, so it feels as if the law really can’t be imported without threatening values which usually ought to be important. Not this sort of copies' rattle against the power, so they can feel as part of the power.”

The need for power, and control from the power! See Bob Scharf’s essay “Leaders,” that

“…the more defended psychoclasses tend to lead.”

Yes, what we see in many (maybe most) politicians, and from where does the need for power come (be it on a familial level or a societal, even a global)? The power’s arrogance!!! And entire lack of feelings or empathy…

Another blogger at Motvallsbloggen writes that

“There is another reason, the more serious, to be critical to the FRA-law [than file-sharing] because it implies a great departure from democratic principles. Such as that this law is just another part of a pattern that becomes clearer and clearer. The pattern shows a strong will from the governing elites' part to control the populations in the West-world before what’s coming, namely the entire abolishing of the democracy and an even greater pressure on the populations, where it won’t feel as important in the future whether you can share files from the net or not. The FRA-law is only part of an even darker and disagreeable pattern.”

This blogger also writes that there is no real opposition today either! Not from the left either!!! True! And this is really scary...

What can this law mean? That we become careful about what we write and express without even being aware of it too?

And is this really a control-instrument against terrorism (as is said)?? Because the ones with bad intentions already have all means to hide their doings??

It’s violation of the integrity of people in general in the worst manner!!

I come to think of parents reading their children’s letters and diaries…

Yes, there ought to be reactions even from the surrounding world!??? Both on what’s happening here and what’s happening in ones own home-countries! It IS very important we try to influence the state of affairs?? By voting if nothing else!?

Once again, yes, we minimize and belittle, if not deny, that we are violated??? In a similar manner as stood in “The Prize we pay for shaming little boys”:

The reluctance of Germans to ‘know about’ what was done to them after the fighting was over reminds me of those three little monkeys: See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Speak No Evil. In my twenty years as a psychotherapist treating survivors of childhood trauma, I am familiar with this tendency of those who were once helpless to minimize the impact abuse has had on their lives. It is the same with my abused clients who trivialize the beatings of their childhood, saying they deserved to be hit, that they were very bad children. People who have been traumatized tend to normalize their traumatic situations.

It is hard for humans to accept that they were powerless to protect themselves from deliberate mistreatment. They are much more likely to take the blame for having been abused."

And that about obedience, instilling it in children, to be in advance of their supposed innate evilness... Arhur Silber has come back to the theme obedience in his Alice Miller-essays... That's what we see in too many of our politicians in our government today?

From Symphony no 5 by Mahler...

Summer reflections...

more pictures here.

Questioning and seeing things as wrong makes one less inclined to passing the same things forward. Realising that the treatment one received wasn’t deserved due to ones character.

A long time ago I had a piano-teacher who had severe problems with stage fright. So he started to study psychology on distance. He meant that bad self-confidence isn’t something inherited!

“I am that sort of person! That’s my character!”

The implications of that – which are they? There’s nothing I can do! I have to live with this! One push the responsibility away, doesn’t one? I can’t do anything! And adults between one perhaps can stand it? And help the other person overcoming this hopefully. But parent-child between how is this? Who has to take responsibility actually?

I am bad, wrong! I was and still am the guilty one for the bad treatment I received! I am to blame myself.

Oh, I get so tired.

What does this lead to??

There is a self-destructiveness I can get so furious at!!!

Totally paralyzed! Paralyzed by all guilt!

“To the ground bent!”

a mother used to say. The child(ren) felt extremely guilty!!?? Responsible! As if they should go in as counselors or therapists? And on top not add to that burdening!

I know of a girl, around 12 who had got measles. She got a slight ache in her joints (phalanxes) in connection with the disease. The girl was actually 13 because at this time we had switched from driving on the left side of the road to the right. Her mother should drive her to the nurse, and was so nervous so she almost drove in the ditch! So paralysed. So the child almost had to hold her mother’s hand, comforting and calming HER!!!

Addition in the evening: searching on the web I found this article “The Prize we pay for shaming little boys,” In this it stands for instance:

“Sulzer, in 1748, explains that humiliation of children is key to producing obedient citizens who are willing to submit to the laws and rules of reason once they are their own masters, since they are already accustomed not to act in accordance with their own will (Miller, 1990, p. 10). Dependence on authority plus the intense shaming of children produced the generation of Germans who obediently followed Hitler into the second World War and found their emotional release in carrying out its atrocities./…/

What surprised me most, though, was that the German people I have spoken with about this deliberate and immoral cruelty either do not know these facts or have only a hazy awareness of this period in German history. When I first attempted to discuss this with German colleagues and friends, I was bewildered by their reaction. These well educated and knowledgeable people knew nothing of these chapters in their own history. Generally, they expressed amazement, a hazy familiarity with the details or simply uncomfortable refusal to talk with me about what was clearly a forbidden subject./…/

The reluctance of Germans to ‘know about’ what was done to them after the fighting was over reminds me of those three little monkeys: See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Speak No Evil. In my twenty years as a psychotherapist treating survivors of childhood trauma, I am familiar with this tendency of those who were once helpless to minimize the impact abuse has had on their lives. It is the same with my abused clients who trivialize the beatings of their childhood, saying they deserved to be hit, that they were very bad children. People who have been traumatized tend to normalize their traumatic situations.

It is hard for humans to accept that they were powerless to protect themselves from deliberate mistreatment. They are much more likely to take the blame for having been abused. For example, people who have been sexually abused as children tend to blame themselves, at least unconsciously, for somehow causing the abuse by being too sexy or too bad. Part of therapy is to help them realistically assess what was done to them and to what degree they are responsible for the shame they feel. (Of course, children bear no actual responsibility for being abused.) A first step in healing, then, is to accept that you were hurt by the trauma./…/

How, Gilligan asks, can a person who does not experience any feelings himself know that others have feelings or be moved by the feelings of others./…/

Fathers' contempt for their sons produces men who believe they are worthless, who are hyper-vigilant to signs of disdain, who are defensively ready to attribute negative intent to others, and who find a quick fix for making themselves worthwhile by degrading those less powerful than themselves, such as their wives. They believe they can make themselves feel some worth by making someone else lower than themselves.

In Bierman's programme, therapeutic procedures based on Eugene Gendlin's Focusing enable the participants to work through their own remembered physical or emotional abuse. The men are encouraged to let their feelings happen, to resist telling themselves what they should feel and to stop judging their feelings. They are taught to quietly put their attention into the part of their body where they usually have their feelings. They are instructed to let go controlling and to simply follow what is happening inside. For most of us the physical sensation connected to a feeling occurs as a tight knot in the stomach, a choking in the throat or a heaviness in the chest. Bierman trains the men to pay attention to these physical body signals which provide a way into unconscious knowing (Gendlin, 1996)./…/

In the methods of schwarze pedagogik, the child never experiences hatred for the father. When it is not possible to admit and express hatred for a parent, the rage gets projected onto others. As with Ralph Bierman's battering men, those who are weak and vulnerable (the way the batterer was as a child) become targets for this pent up rage. The adult who is filled with rage and shame becomes the perpetrator making others feel the way he felt when he was helpless.

This shame/violence cycle clearly played itself out when Germans who had been traumatized in childhood took out their rage on Jews and others who reminded them of themselves when they were helpless children. They projected onto others all their own ‘bad’ qualities which they had never been able to accept in themselves. Jews became dirty, greedy schemers, plotting to overthrow the rightful authorities. Concentration camp guards had the perfect opportunity to restage their own childhood traumas. Prisoners were helpless to defend themselves or to escape.

Their captors, urged on by the state, indulged in humiliating defenseless Jews. In fact, every German's repetition compulsion seems to have found a place in the hierarchy of terror which characterized the Nazi period. Men who had once been shamed as children now had the opportunity to demand from others, the cadaver-like obedience their fathers had exacted. They, in turn, gave automatic, unthinking obedience to their masters in The Third Reich's hierarchy of terror./…/

This paper deals with shaming in the childhood of Germans. But this is not specifically a German problem. It is a problem throughout the world. It is my hope that once we better understand the underlying causes of violence, we will be able to find some solutions.

How do we protect little boys from being shamed and abused by their fathers? This is a generational problem. It is self-perpetuating. Men who have been abused and shamed by their fathers tend to shame and abuse their small boys. As a society, we must find ways of cutting into this cycle of abuse where fathers humiliate their boys and passive mothers stand by without interfering on behalf of the children. But before we will be able to do this, we will have to accept whatever we ourselves experienced as children, as well as the ways in which we act out of our own traumatic experience.”

See this with “Evilness and responsibility…”; how badly we even became treated this is no excuse for what we do, how we behave, “Evilness and violence…” and “Anger, outbursts…” And postings on the label manipulation.