A short background to the school in Sweden today: Our school-minister (or minister of education) wants to reintroduce grades (or marks) from the first class in school here. And he wants more discipline in school... He says the school is so noisy and that Swedish kids can't compete with students in many other parts of the world. Something that isn't true. We CAN compete.
However, he is proved to be wrong in many of the things he has been claiming to make his changes authorized.
And I want to add that I dislike his politics from deep, deep in my heart. The strange thing is that he is the leader for the Liberal party here in Sweden! Aren't liberals for freedom? Do young people have to earn freedom??
Here my free translation of this interview and my earlier posting in Swedish:
Ågren says that the teacher’s profession has turned from a health-profession to a risk-profession. The cuts (in economy) during the former decade in school (and the rest of the society), termed the steel-bath, worsened the teachers’ health considerably. Today the teachers are still a roughly pressured group he judges.
Many see the school as an instance that has to solve a row of societal problems/questions (with fewer and fewer resources). Does this create a too great pressure on the teachers the interviewer wonders?
The teacher’s work is no enviable work today Ågren replies.
There are an enormous amount of people having opinions about the school. Unfortunately there is a tendency to tackle problems with separate projects – like against mobbing, drugs an so on.
We ought to see the totality and synergy effects instead he thinks. Yes, I agree!!
In a school where the students get on well and thrive, and have influence on things (the same things grown up need on their workplaces!), a good learning follows - and there a drug preventive milieu is created too, Ågren adds (he has worked with drug questions/problems).
Addition November 18:The point with health promoting work is that it walks hand in hand with a good pedagogical work. A teacher who is a good pedagogue in a subject is the healthiest teacher for the students Ågren says.
But how does one define a “good” teacher? What is a good teacher?
“…it’s good for the health to have a say in things, to have influence over ones daily work situation – how one arrange ones job. At the same time it is important with clear and unambiguous, unequivocal structures. It’s much about good living habits. More and more data point to that physical activity influences the psychic health.”
And this is true both when it comes to children as when it comes to adult people, having a say in things, having influence over ones situation and possibilities to exert influence on ones situation.
What about actual visions for what sort of society, school, yes, workplaces on the whole we want to create? See an article below by Hanna Hallin about politics and to attract young people.
Did the chicken or the egg come first when it comes to the question if one devotes oneself to physical activity? The more secure/safe and more socially well-established you are the more energy and strength you have for psychical activity?
A leader writer here actually wrote about this the other day, that this ultimately is a question of class. The one with more power over his/her life has bigger chances and possibilities to for instance escape overweight.
However, the sole responsibility is put on the individual (by the society, that is “all other people”), and of course each one of us has responsibility for ourselves, but the leader writer thinks this is even more a political problem; how the society, work as well as leisure time shall become organized, so we and our bodies feel well, psychically and physically.
My addition: all "shall" and "must" causes stress! Hm, I myself is very much well organized? Efficient? And very spontaneous and impatient! But I can see the potential stress...
The interviewer asked Gunnar Ågren about the biggest challenge for teachers today. Ågren replies that he thinks it is the increasing psychic ill health among students and the pressure tremendously many children feel.
The problem comes when the students finish the school he thinks.
Today it isn’t enough that the students work enormously hard, they feel an insecurity nevertheless for the future. This creates a too big competition in the school.
“I am convinced this is the most important cause to the increasing ill health among children and adolescents.”
he says. Do they feel that they are good enough from the beginning? That they are loved just as they are?
The interviewer asks what Ågren thinks about grade-liking opinions from the first year in school (we haven’t had grades in school from the first year for over 40 years I think, and I think we have achieved quite well despite this, when it comes to education and educated people managing quite okay and capable of competing with people from other parts of the world, if it shall be about competing, but that’s another discussion and topic!!).
“I am very hesitant,”
Ågren replies.
“There is no real evidence they should make the school better. On the contrary I can see a row of potentially negative effects. They probably contribute to demoralising certain students on a much earlier stage, so that they don’t experience the school as meaningful.”
How well said. I agree with him! No, what does our current government know what they are doing???
We ought to discuss entirely different solutions to problems in the school!! And above all become united in visions for what sort of society we want to create (if that’s possible or desirable maybe?) or at least what sort of school and maybe also what sort of other institutions for all our best, i.e., create belief in the future among all our young people – and among ALL people! Again see the article I am going to refer to below by a Hanna Hallin!
He says that they have seen that solely spreading knowledge doesn’t influence the students drinking. Objective information can in the worst case lead to that the students want to try instead of the opposite. However, this shouldn’t be taken as an argument to give up information – it’s important as a base he thinks.
But he adds that it has been shown that if the school is well structured, if it intervenes against truancy, if it has an accepted system of rules, a well thought-out policy concerning alcohol and a close cooperation with the parents – then the risk that the students drink alcohol and use drugs reduces too. They feel less tempted to break rules if they get on well in the milieu they are in.
This is valid for all people, children as adults!?
But why do people resort to drugs in the first place? Are there things we ought to inform about much more strikes me when I am writing this? About what child abuse of different kinds causes. Including informing parents about all this. Informing them already before they get children and during the pregnancy.
But why don’t we see other people's reactions in the first place? And why do we need to learn how to express emotions in a more nuanced way in the first place? Were we born this way? I don't think we were. Should we have done something so we didn’t need this education rather? And how do the so called experts deal with already harmed individuals actually? Only (trying to) relearning the harmed? How successful is this method? Do the experts want to hear the truth(s)? Quite ironically.
So fewer people needed this education? So we functioned better together in all sorts of situations and relations. In a more genuine way.
Addition November 20:Gunnar Ågren about the most important they have done in the area the school is during his time on The Institute for Public Health:
“We have done a great achievement concerning support to parents. A revolution has almost been done concerning programs directed at parents. The parents are the most important force for adolescents’ health, even if some [parents] are capitulating and say that comrades and teachers are more important.”
Can this be used as an alibi by parents I came to wonder. Quite ironically in fact. Something I have heard among colleagues with children above all. A way of resigning from ones responsibility. It feels good hearing the parents are the most important force.
But this doesn’t mean that the school and other instances don’t have a responsibility too for young people. Here it’s not about an either/or!?
Ågren further on this topic:
“You can’t have different norm-systems in the home and at school. If the parents have a false idea they shall soften the children’s’ alcohol habits by offering them alcohol, it doesn’t matter if the school says that the students shall wait till they are 18 years. The school and the parents have to have the same policy.”
Addition November 23: Evin Rubar (who made the film "Scapegoats, see below) has also made a film about the alcohol habits in Sweden, "Don't touch (take) my dram."
She came to Sweden as a 8 year old child and reacted with discomfort at her friends parents alcohol use. It looks as she wasn't used to these habits from where she came (Kurdistan?).
Rubar got the idea of making this film when she sat at a sushi-restaurant in Stockholm. A girl, seven or eight years, was there in company with a man in his forties. She was drinking Fanta (soda) to the food and he drank wine, two glasses. But the girl wanted him to drink soda too and when he ordered a whiskey after the food she asked the waiter to dilute the whiskey. He wasn't drunk at all, but it was the girl's reaction that gave Rubar the idea of making this film, recalling her early reactions too. She wanted to explore this topic and her feeling as a child more.
Recently they have also sent a TV-film here "Enraging kids", about old raising-methods that are on their way back in Sweden - and the world. Yes, it was this with Nanny-programs. I don't manage to watch them even. I dislike them intensely and from deep in my heart. Also see later posting about this.
At last about underestimating young people, and about winning votes on uniting and not dividing and ruling, apropos the American election and that the participation in the election was higher than it uses to, not least among young people if I understood this right: There was an article in a paper here with the heading "Obama's victory - a lesson for Swedish politicians"!
In which a Hanna Hallin, chair-woman for Sweden's youth-organizations (LSU), writes about the importance of being seen as a human being and citizen irrespectively from background, resources or age! Being someone to count on, who can make a difference and who deserves confidence.
A human being who can engage other human beings on their own terms, on their own arenas and with their own ideas, will probably become their new candidate. Yes, by showing real, genuine respect.
This change is possible in Sweden too, and is an exhortation to Swedish politicians.
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And also see about "The Scapegoats" about problems in the school in our third biggest city Malmö in the south of Sweden and a letter to Alice Miller about this.
What are the child’s needs? What needs does it have to get filled to develop as optimally as possible? That is to develop to a living human being. A human being capable of forming a life he/she wants that isn’t destructive or self-destructive.
The needs that didn’t get filled early in life will cause bigger or smaller problems later in life. Either for the individual itself and/or for other people, the extent or scale of problems the individual causes depends on the power he/she gets. Many exercise power on a micro level and some on a macro (addition November 17: the latter on a micro too, because usually those people also have families).
And some are so paralyzed so they direct everything towards themselves in different ways.
But it is possible to recover and heal to an extent so you can live a deeply meaningful life – I am sure. However, a big problem is the societal denial; the lack of talk about those things, I would assert or maintain! And the denial not least about how common those things probably are to different degrees! AND HOW HARMFUL they in fact are! WHAT they are actually causing. But if you have been a living dead more or less your whole life, from earliest childhood, you don’t know what you are missing or lacking either. And you don’t know what you are forwarding either! And maybe you don't want to know what you are forwarding...
If more people started to admit to those things I think this would be the only help many people would need! But not the only help for all. But it would be a help for the most harmed too. And a few are so harmed so you maybe can’t help them at all? As some of the worst serial killers and alike?
And what would real, adult needs be? How many of us really know?
And once again it also struck me that people have to be allowed to express themselves with the language and words they have: that not only the "educated" with a perfect grammar are allowed to write or express themselves!!! Is this actually contempt for weakness, i.e, contempt for the small child you once were, who didn't have the words yet of natural reasons, but needed to express feelings and emotions in some way. And in what ways?
Some of us need to search for the words really when we try to write about and investigate those things... For some (or maybe many) it's difficult to put these things in words!?? But it can be very important we try nevertheless. And why do we care about people looking down on our struggles and our imperfectness??? To be honest...
I happened to come across this text on shame and it triggered the following thoughts and reflections, loudly expressed...
A raising method is infusing guilt and shame feelings in a child to make it obedient, i.e. do as you want, or make it not behave as it does...
Just with a glance or if it is needed with tougher means, as surrounding the child with silence or even leave it and go out. Something Alice Miller was exposed to by her mom and has written about. Something that was extremely painful to recall as grown up Miller writes, and thus you need an enlightened witness to confront those memories or even to get in touch with them in the first place. Miller had forgotten how she was treated I think, but reclaimed it during therapy high up in age.
You can manipulate children and latter adults (who has unprocessed experiences of these things from childhood) by infusing shame and guilt in them. With subtle and less subtle means, openly or hidden/secretly. And this is emotional abuse. A child can't escape this, something an adult can - unless she/he isn't paralyzed by fear and shame etc. The less harmed a human being became early in life the less vulnerable to manipulation and brainwashing. So by abusing your child (physically, sexually - and emotionally/verbally) you play latter perpetrators in hand! You can really destroy your child's future by abusing it.
The writer to the linked chapter from the online book “Psychological Self-Help” (I am not sure I recommend this book as a way of healing though) writes about accepting who you really are. But the problem is to know who you actually are. And I think it isn’t enough accepting who you are. You have to understand to a certain extent why and how you became this way, not only with your head but also with your emotions. Question it and rebel against it.
If you succeed with this to a certain extent (unfortunately not easy) you won’t be at risk of forwarding it to other people whom are in your power or under you, or at people standing near you.
And the fact that this work is so difficult should be an incitement to try avoiding causing this sort of harm to small children in the first place.
And it is important to put the blame where it ought to be... Back to the first source... If you don't you will still be trapped in destructive and self destructive behavior. Who did the soul murdering in the first place?
"...even when it is about grown up people on a workplace."
We shall just do. We don’t need to understand "why" we shall or have to?
Something that is quite symptomatically at my workplace (and maybe many other workplaces): on one of our last workplace meetings we were asked to fill in a form about side work, if we have any. And some side work has to be approved of by our boss. We have done this a couple of times the last years, but nobody have made clear why. Least of all our boss(es) (ordered from above in turn, but not questioning why? Only "obeying orders"?). And all are filling this form in without asking why!? Like obedient children! Maybe they don't bother?
Because you don’t question the one in power? You just do as he/she says!? I have done too but reacted, more strongly in the beginning… And maybe my bosses don't even think in those patterns at all! They don't understand this at all? And why don't they? Something in their authoritarian background?
My next thought writing this is: is this respectful from our boss’s side? Is this to treat us with respect and as people thinking and feeling and wanting to do our best, cooperate etc.?
And we in turn, how are we supposed to treat our students? In the same manner?
“You have to just do, and you don’t need to understand why!”
Plainly!
In the local newspaper there is a series of articles about the school now. Today it was an article about how politicians from different parties see on cuts of money to the school (!!!). A recurrent theme during all my years in school for the first… I get so tired. There is no talk about what we actually do (or should do) in school. No real passion or interest or anything it feels…
Now it is opportune being quite authoritarian again! You have and shall set limits. And many teachers are so tired so they can’t even think or really question this!?
And our school minister’s policy is “keep quiet and be obedient”!! He is liberal! But aren’t liberals for freedom? For respect for the individual? Or?
There was also a leader in the newspaper this morning with the title “The offender is a woman” in which you can read about a new book pointing out or putting the focus on that women can commit as horrible crimes as men. A traditional view on women as victims, mothers and incapable of using violence. Something that isn’t rue. The leader writer (a woman) writes that the authors (two women) show that it isn’t only the men’s violence that is a problem – but also women’s violence against men, children and other women. Each one of us is obliged to realize this. We have to face the truth: the woman isn’t only a victim, but also an offender.
Reading this I came to think about the first case Jonathan Pincus writes about in his book and had to look for this book again in the piles of books here in my home. Yes, he writes about a thirteen year old girl Cynthia who stabbed a one year older girl Mona to death on a school-bus already around 1990 I think (I skimmed the text now in the morning).
Pincus writes (at page 23):
“No attention was given to the question, ‘What made thirteen-year-old Cynthia kill?’
Yes, we CAN admit that her background probably plays a role here today? But, there is a but… Can and do we want to take the truth in really, even on an emotional level, not just with our heads? And is there anyone capable of dealing with this truth and maybe prevent such things in the future?
I have actually thought about this: more and more girls are adopting the same behaviors as boys!??? And women the men’s worse sides (women in power positions for instance)!! And vice versa: men are adopting the worse sides women have (how they look for instance, so more young boys have anorexia for instance. But also see what Miller writes about anorexia in “The Body Never Lies”. I wonder a lot about the treatment those young people get, have students under such treatment here... My dance colleagues need to deal with anorexia, a problem they have become aware of the last 10-15 years? No wonder, dancing in front of mirrors!?).
PS. Just for fun: The flutist I have played with a lot you can listen to here! :-) Actually we have practiced this morning...
A kiss can be seen as a summary of the history of the human race, from the child’s breast-feeding to the erotic kiss.
Kissing each other is to offer your partner the soft and most vulnerable parts of the body without fear or anxiety.
While male and female sexual organs are totally differently shaped the lips look practically alike in men and women. The kiss is an act both parts perform with the same sort of organ, but this doesn’t mean that the kiss is lacking gender specific effects.
One has said that the kiss "sound the reveille" for an abundance of hormonal, neurological and muscular signals. Sex starts in the brain and the projection of the motor center in the brain for lips and tongue take much more space than for the sexual organs, which despite all fantasy all the same perform the same pattern like activities.
The kiss awakens sensations, give a stress hormone rise and of course influences last of all the sexual organs.
The kiss as an expression of a sexual invitation is at last an extremely complicated mechanism that is about finding the right partner. When we are kissing somebody we appreciate, this is last of all the result of a row of complicated factors. Researchers have found that we experience attraction to a partner of a succession of reasons, which are hormonal, social and generally positively fertility signaling.
Symmetry in the body and in the face is signaling a good upbringing [:-(]. Qualities we see in many film stars, something that make us experience them as attractive.
Interestingly there are factors making us not wanting to kiss certain people.
The kiss in its sexual sense is a starting signal to the foreplay. The one you are kissing maybe shall be seen in a much more complicated biological context than the meeting after the work, the partner at the dance pavilion or the making out (petting) after the school dance. When we 2007 celebrated Linnaeus it can be interesting to note that Linnaeus more than 200 years ago wondered what happened when men and women get together.
Love releases a succession of events in the central nerve system and leads to an increased release of the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin for instance. It can for instance contribute to explaining why skin contact, which in a kiss gives positive and emotional signals on a plainly physiological ground, makes us turned on.
In many cultures the kiss is something exclusively for the sexual act.
Where do you place the kiss then? The more similar rang the higher on the body you are kissing. Equals are kissing in the face, but with a greater social distance you place the kiss in a more distal direction via the hand, the foot and in the worst case on the soil the superior sovereign, bishop, pope or the beloved has treaded on.
Written to somebody I am in love with... Struggling with the English, both the spoken and the written... :-( He needs to have a lot of patience with my furious and intense efforts expressing myself, phew!!! Searching and searching for the words sometimes!
Blogging in a hurry. One commentator to this video on youtube:
“This really reminds me how PRIMITIVE human beings are. What beasts we really are. Groups of people still trying to control groups of other people. Human beings are still on that 'Dominate the people and land' mindset; perhaps more now than ever before in human history. What a disgrace humans really are. It's fucking disgusting.”
Another commentator:
”yes and all over the world, it's called the New World (dis)Order...and they view us ALL as slaves, and expendable...doesn't matter what religion, color, country, you are. there's lots more of us than them, they just use divide and conquer to further their evil agenda at the expense of the human race; their love of money and control at the expense of the true values of honesty, and morality will doom us if we don't stop being the sheeple ..wake up and take back OUR power, the power of the PEOPLE.”
”profits are privatized and the losses are socialized”!!!
Yes, that seems to be quite true!?
And at last also see the site Change.gov Barack Obama and his coworkers have created. There you can read for instance:
”Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today” – President-Elect Barack Obama.
My amateur translation to Swedish:
“Idag börjar vi det målmedvetna/enträgna arbetet att säkra att den värld vi lämnar till våra barn är en liten bit bättre än den vi bor på idag.”
Yes, are we going to see a new leader style? And can Obama manage this in this world?
Here another person in great power (and I don't think we are born evil, but made that way, very early in life):
"Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it." -Adolph Hitler
Or:
"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." -Martin Luther King Jr.
In this blog I want to explore the effects of childhood experiences on individual lives, the health (not only the emotional/psychological, but also, and not least, the bodily/somatic), the society, why people seek themselves to power positions, the effect of childhood on politics.
With the ideas that imbue Alice Miller's work and writing.
And sometimes just share things I have read and come across and I agree with and couldn't have said better myself.
I work full time with young people since many years, as teacher in music (piano pedagogue), and am interested in these things, both privately/personally and professionally.
But my time is limited to write and blog, even if it probably doesn't look so.
I will devote myself to loud thinking a lot here I think. And this blog is also a way for me to collect texts, facts, links, sites I want to save for further use maybe.
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Crisis
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I suppose some people might wonder why I'm not completely hysterical. Why
would I be hysterical? The building where I've lived for 22 years is
scheduled fo...
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Pharmaceutical marketing expert witness [image: screen2largeMM]
Dr. Peter Rost is a former Pfizer Marketing Vice President providing
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Påskuppropet mot sjukförsäkringar
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Idag var det manifestation. Mycket bra. Jag var där. Mycket bra.
Men någonting gnagde mig på vägen hem. För stämningen var mer uppgiven än
arg, och det ä...
Arbeidet med ny side er i gang!
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Nå har arbeidet med domeneregistrering og nytt design startet og jeg gleder
meg til jeg kan vise dere resultatet! Det skal bli bra å få Psykiskbloggen
over...
Click on the picture to go to Astrid Lindgren site.
Books I am referring to on this blog:
Bosch, Ingeborg: "Rediscovering the True Self"
Freyd, Jennifer J.: "Betrayal Trauma - The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse" ISBN 0-647-06806-8
Jenson, Jean: "Reclaiming Your Life" ISBN 91-46-17409-5
Kirkengen, Anna Luise: "Hvordan krenkede barn blir syke voksne" ISBN 82-15-00713-9 ("How Abused Children Become Unhealthy Adults")
Kirkengen, Anna Luise: "Inscribed bodies - Health Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse" ISBN 0-7923-7019-8
Lewis Herman, Judith: "Trauma and Recovery - From Domestic Violence to Political Terror" ISBN 086358430-6 (svensk översättning finns: ”Trauma och tillfrisknande” ISBN10: 9197263133, ISBN13: 9789197263139, Förlag: Göteborgs Psykoterapi Institut)
Miller, Alice: "Den dolda nyckeln" ISBN 91-46-15747-6 (The Untouched Key)
Miller, Alice: "Det självutplånande barnet och sökandet efter en äkta identitet" ISBN 91-7643-559-8 (The Drama of the Gifted Child)
Miller, Alice: "Du skall icke märka - variationer över paradistemat" ISBN 91-46-14374-2 (Thou Shalt Not Be Aware)
Miller, Alice: "Riv tigandets mur - sanning byggd på fakta" ISBN 91-46-16022-1 (Breaking Down the Wall of Silence)
Miller, Alice: "The Body Never Lies - The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting" ISBN 0-393-06065-9
Miller, Alice: "The Truth Will Set You Free - Overcoming Emotional Blindness and Finding Your True Adult Self" ISBN 0-465-04585-5
Miller, Alice: "Vägar i livet - sju berättelser" ISBN 91-46-17414-1 (Paths of Life - Seven Scenarios)
Pincus, Jonathan H.: "Base Instincts - What Makes Killers Kill?" ISBN 0-393-32323-4
Children baking...
Look, the joy in the children?? Enjoying what they are doing? (illustration from one of the books by Astrid Lindgren, click on the picture to go to her site).
"...of all the many forms of child abuse, emotional abuse may be the cruelest and longest-lasting of all.” "Emotional abuse is the systematic diminishment of another. It may be intentional or subconscious (or both), but it is always a course of conduct, not a single event. It is designed to reduce a child's self-concept to the point where the victim considers himself unworthy—unworthy of respect, unworthy of friendship, unworthy of the natural birthright of all children: love and protection." (Andrew Vachss)
"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom." -- "Common Sense", Thomas Paine, January 10, 1776
"Modern education is competitive, nationalistic and separative. It has trained the child to regard material values as of major importance, to believe that his nation is also of major importance and superior to other nations and peoples. The general level of world information is high but usually biased, influenced by national prejudices, serving to make us citizens of our nation but not of the world." (Albert Einstein)
"Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow men in the last fifty years... Given these and other conditions of contemporary civilization, how can one claim that the ‘normal’ man is sane?" (R.D. Laing, 1967)
"Organizations take on characteristics of the people running them./.../ There's always pressure within groups to conform, anyway. The top monkey exerts the most pressure." (Steve Thomas)
"Yet many psychiatrists and psychologists refuse to entertain the idea that society as a whole may be lacking in sanity. They hold that the problem of mental health in a society is only that of the number of 'unadjusted' individuals, and not of a possible unadjustment of the culture itself." (Erich Fromm in The Sane Society, 1955)
When a big kid hits a little kid, we call it bullying. When an adult hits another adult, we call it assault. When the adults in a family hit each other we call it battering or domestic violence. When an adult hits a child we call it discipline..
“Blindness and lack of connectedness whether truly needed or not, are ultimately tragic solutions to life. These adaptations keep us from knowing ourselves and others fully. We end up fragmented both internally and externally – impoverished spiritually and socially /…/ it seriously constrains our human potential /…/ Survivors of childhood sexual abuse and betrayal blindness have learned to cope by being disconnected internally so as to manage a minimal kind of external connection. But with adult freedom and responsibility come the potential to break silence, to use voice and language to promote internal integration, deeper external connection, and a social transformation, Through communication – integration within ourselves and connection between individuals – we can become whole; embodied, aware, vital, powerful”(Jennifer Freyd in the chapter “Removing Blinders, Becoming Connected” in her book “Betrayal Trauma…”).
“If you are very strong you have to be very kind” (Pippi Longstocking)
“In psychiatry, too, what a person says and writes can’t be divorced from who he is and how he lives.” (Thomas Szasz).
“The method of Marshall Rosenberg is very nice and may be helpful to people who have not be[been??] severely mistreated in childhood. The latter ones however must find their pent up, LEGITIMATE rage and free themselves from the lies of our moral system. As long as they don't do this, their body will continue to scream for the truth with the help of symptoms" (Alice Miller)
“To desire and strive to be of some service to the world, to aim at doing something which shall really increase the happiness and welfare and virtue of mankind - this is a choice which is possible for all of us; and surely it is a good haven to sail for" (Henry van Dyke)
“‘I have never met a man,’ said Grandma Georgina, ‘who talks so much absolute nonsense!’ ‘A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men,’ Mr Wonka said.” (Roald Dahl)
Look at his facial expression! Angrily carving… The stubborn, disobedient child... Or? How does he feel there in his joiner's workshop? (click on the picture to go to Astrid Lindgren site).
About the ACE-study:
"It's not just water under the bridge."
ACEs are surprisingly common among people of all social strata, and have far-reaching consequences. For many people, it's not possible to "just get over it".
What's an ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience i.e. "skadlig barndomserfarenhet")? Adverse Childhood Experience is growing up experiencing any of the following conditions in the household prior to age 18:
1. Recurrent physical abuse
2. Recurrent emotional abuse
3. Contact sexual abuse
4. An alcohol and/or drug abuser in the household
5. An incarcerated household member
6. Someone who is chronically depressed, mentally ill, institutionalized, or suicidal
I don't like being photographed, and don't have many photos of myself but here are some, though fairly old! Click on the picture to see two more pictures.
I was born in Umeå in Västerbotten, Sweden, and moved during childhood stepwise to Skåne in the south, and at last back to just below the middle of Sweden where I still live.
I am educated both as piano-pedagogue and church-musician and have a full time employment as piano-pedagogue. Church-music is side work.
I am interested in a lot of things and will blog about things I read, psychology, society, history, nature, my work too hopefully, and my everyday life… And both in Swedish and English.
This is a blog, with my (sometimes very) personal - and loud reflections on what I read, see, hear, react on, feel for - and not feel for and want to explore. I don't work in this field at all, but I have my reflections and thoughts nevertheless and have read fairly a lot I think, and here I reflect upon all this. I am searching myself forward. I link sites for information, if one want to know more about what I am talking/writing about and what is mentioned in the texts I am citing and referring to. And I link sites not least for my own sake. So it isn’t sure I agree with all that is linked on this blog, that's not why I link sites. I can agree with parts of what is linked, bigger or smaller, from almost everything to almost nothing.
I hope those who perhaps find my blog are reading everything here critically - including what stands in what I link.
And when it comes to therapy and all (self)help-concepts I think one shall be very careful. Maybe as a friend said it:
“Meaningful critical thinking.
Psychotherapists have been claiming that they have invented better treatment methods since Sigmund Freud in 1897. The amount of psychological distress in the world hasn’t become less. There’s money to be made from attracting more clients, whether the therapy works or not.
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