Neurofeedback Training

Feedback on Two Days of Neurofeedback (www.Zengar.com), Training at Western Pennsylvania Family Center (www.wpfc.net)

As we start this New Year I wanted to bring you some cheerful news of how neurofeedback training in the context of Bowen theory was introduced, with positive results, to several people in Pittsburgh. I was able to offer these sessions due to the interest, perseverance and work of Catherine Rakow. She was supported by Jim Smith, the current director of WPFC.  People were offered two sessions a day, or even four sessions over two days, so they could experience intensive training. Perhaps it is like increasing the time you spend at the gym or in my case, at hot yoga.  One difference, however, is at this gym you simply calm down to become mentally stronger.  By calming down one is able to better observe the difference between one’s feelings and one’s thinking.

 

Bowen wrote in the book Family Evaluation – ” The human is the first form of life that has been able to observe the feeling process with his intellect.  Thus far there are definite characteristics of those who can do this readily, and those who are a few years slower. The name of that is differentiation of self.  Everyone can do that when they are more motivated to do it for themselves rather than when they are dependent on others. There is some evidence that the human can determine the functioning of his own emotional system through the control of his own emotionality. It goes in the direction of implying that the human can control his own evolution thought the control of his own emotional system.” (Pages 385-386)

The people in the Pittsburgh group are among my earliest colleagues.  Back in the eighties I drove Dr. Bowen to conferences sponsored by the WPFC.  I’ve constantly found the people there courageous and forward thinking, perhaps influenced by the founder of the Western Pennsylvania Family Center, Paulina G. McCullough.  Among other firsts, Paulina was one of the first people to work with Murray Bowen at Georgetown University back in the sixties, and the first to start a network program in Family Systems Theory, despite Bowen himself being dubious about the chances for the network’s success.

The main goal of the neurofeedback sessions was to give people enough of an experience on the equipment to see if neurofeedback was useful to them. There are many ways to manage self and control anxiety. Neurofeedback is one more tool for people who believe in the mind-body connection. The training allows your brain to find more comfortable electrical pathways through a slight interruption in the old patterns.  When an interruption occurs, the music stops momentarily, alerting us to a change.  The change is noted and we relax, as there is nothing to fear.

Over time the training allows for increasing diversity and coherence to appear in the brain. It’s as though the software is designed to bring an individual “back to the present”, to relax and experience increasing comfort. This neurofeedback system is not diagnostic. Training is the same whether the individual’s focus is on sports performance or just relaxing.

From a family systems perspective, I believe that it is accurate to hypothesize that the brain wave patterns in a family are mutually influencing one another. This keeps the anxiety between family members highly correlated.   So when there is a change in one person that can be sustained over time, this change in one individual allows for slight changes in the way several people in the family relate to one another.

The training can produce slow changes, similar to the way one changes by working out at a gym. When one person in the family increases his or her flexibility, others in the family can be impacted.  The goal is to alter or slow down participation in the automatic way we relate to one another.   Any increase in self-focus can impact the reactivity in one’s important relationships.

After the two days we sent out the following questions to the participants, looking for some feedback about the usefulness of the two days of training. All of the participants in the neurofeedback sessions have been clinicians using Bowen Theory and/or have known about Bowen Theory for years.

QUESTIONS SENT TO PARTICIPANTS

It would be helpful to me as the organizer, and to Andrea as the coach, if you would send along some of your afterthoughts on the experience of this weekend in these areas: 
1) the experience of using neurofeedback, 
2) the lunch time discussions, 
3) any thoughts or interests for the future.  

Highlights from various participants:

1)   One reported experiencing a shifting perception of time;

2)   Another reported reorganizing an office that had been on the “perhaps I will do it later” list;

3)   An individual with PTSD reported being able to have a calm couple of days;

4)    The swelling in the hand of one individual was reduced;

5)   A mother was able to let her son talk about how he would deal with his issues without her getting involved.

6)   And Rebecca Blackwood, another participant, wrote up her experience for a blog and offered to make her thoughts available here.

Personal Blog

The day after the brainwave training, I did write a post for my private blog (for family/friends). I thought I’d pass along what I wrote. Also, I’m wondering if anyone stepped up to purchase the software/technology for Pittsburgh? I would love to do it again!

 

Yesterday, I had my first brainwave training session.   How many times in our lives do we get to do that on a Sunday afternoon?!?

 

The sessions took place at the Western Pennsylvania Family Center. Several of the people getting the brainwave training sessions gathered together for lunch yesterday and we were able to discuss questions and get more information.

 

The brainwave coach was Andrea Schara.   She came up from Washington D.C. for a couple of days.   As an aside, she also keeps an informative and inspirational blog called Ideas to Action: How Understanding Your Family System Can Change Your Life. I immediately felt comfortable around Andrea.  She said that she is 70 years old, she has a loud, contagious laugh and goodness, she knows a lot. She studied at the Georgetown Bowen Center and also worked there for many years. Bowen family systems theory is what I am studying in my supervision with Wendy, as I work toward getting the clinical license of social work.

 

So, back to the brainwave training. The equipment that Andrea used is the Zengar Neuroptimal Brain-Training Technology and software. From the Zengar website:

“Through a series of sessions with the NeurOptimal® brain training system, your brain reorganizes itself and functions more effectively. When your brain functions efficiently, you feel more integrated and whole and your body functions better. After training with NeurOptimal® many people experience less stress, greater flow, improved academic, athletic, creative and work performance as well as more confidence and joy. Many bodily complaints drop away.”

A helpful comparison that Andrea made is to picture learning how to ride a bike. Our body has a way of figuring out how to balance and keep moving as we ride a bike. It is not like we have to cognitively tell ourselves, lean right, now left, keep moving. Instead, our body knows how to wire itself to be able to ride the bike. Similarly, when our brain is being monitored and we are able to observe what is happening, our brain can begin to automatically reorganize and balance itself.   We don’t have to say, “stop thinking those thoughts, or slow down”.   We can instead utilize the technology to let our brains do this on its own. The steps that occurred in my session (again from the Zengar website):

1. Sit in a comfortable chair;
2. Trainer places sensors on me;
3. Trainer records a baseline of my brain “activity”;
4. Training session starts;
5. I totally relax, listen to music or watch a movie;
6. Training ends and Trainer may record a second baseline;
7. Trainer removes sensors;
8. Discussion.

During the session, there was new-agey kind of music playing and I also had the option to watch visual representations of what was happening in my brain during the session. She and I noticed that my left brain (logical side) was way more dominant at the beginning of the training. Eventually, the right brain became a bit more active and the two sides of my brain began to “dance”, as she called it. Absolutely fascinating.

 

I had a variety of thoughts while in the session:

“Am I doing this right?”

“Relax”

“I wonder how other people’s brainwaves compare to mine”

“Take a deep breath”

“Am I doing this right?”

 

Andrea kept pointing out that similar to Bowen theory, the goal is to become an observer, to be neutral, to be aware, not to get answers and to judge. This is difficult to do.

 

Andrea took a baseline screening before and after the session. My pre-screening indicated that I had almost no alpha and was pretty jagged. My post screening had alpha* present and was much calmer and smoother.

 

Other interesting information that I’m taking away from this experience:

·                *What is alpha? From Andrea’s Blog: “Alpha states appear to re-tune the mind by calming the body and allowing the mind to be free.” People with drug addiction often do not have alpha available.  This is one reason they are constantly seeking a substance to create a calmer state in their brains.

·                Children with Attention Deficit Disorder have slower brainwaves, which is why they often appear hyper.  They have to quickly interact with the world, to wake up, because their brains are moving too slowly. This is why they are prescribed stimulants, which strangely slows down their interactions with the world because the “drugs” speed up their brains. I hope I’m describing this correctly…I started taking notes after she had already explained this concept.

·                When we spend time with small children, we tend to sync our brainwaves with their slower moving brain waves.  This is one reason we often get tired and drained after spending time with small children.  We are slowing down towards sleep.  Interestingly, television can influence our brainwaves the same way. This may be a reason why when parents stick their kids in front of a television, they slow down.  Interesting, but also a bit scary!

·                The brainwave training session can be compared to meditation. The difference is that you are able to see a visual representation of how the electrical energy in your brain is relaxing by seeing itself.

·                During the session, I asked Andrea how other people’s brainwaves compare to mine and she wondered if I often compare myself to others.  She asked if I have an older sister, who I was always competing with and I told her, “No, but I have a twin and he and I used to compete at different things.” Big mental note on something to be aware of: How often do I compare myself to others?

·                Deep breathing, closing our eyes, and doing other grounding exercises will immediately calm down our brain.

·                I felt warm and relaxed after my hour-long session. Maybe it is my imagination, but my thoughts also seemed to have more clarity. And, I swear I slept better last night.

The brainwave technology is expensive (see Zengar.com). The closest places to get the brainwave training are Cleveland and Carlisle, PA. Currently, the software is not being used in Pittsburgh. Insurance does not covers brainwave training, which is also a downfall.  There are neurofeedback TREATMENTS that are covered by some insurance but this was training the brain not treating the brain.  But, who knows? Maybe this will become a popular form of training in the future and that would bring the cost down. It seemed pretty effective to me and I was pretty skeptical going in. Rebecca Blackwood

 

Interviews with people who knew and worked with Murray Bowen, M.D.

                                                                Murray Bowen, M.D.

Photograph taken by Andrea Schara in 1977 at the Georgetown University  Family Center

As part of my interest in learning more about the impact of Murray Bowen, M.D. and the Bowen theory on people’s lives, I have begun a series of interviews.

Below you will find two of the first interviews that I have done with individuals who  knew Dr. Murray Bowen.  Over time I will also interview those  who have found Bowen Theory a very important guiding compass, especially in view of  understanding his or her functioning.

Please note that it takes a few minutes for the audio to download in order for it to play.

I will be interested and encourage your feedback on this project.

In addition to interviewing people I will also ask, at random, for various people  to record their own personal experiences focusing on:

• The understanding and advancement and/or application of Bowen theory,
• Adding substance and color to our understanding of  Murray Bowen, the man by telling us of the perceived importance of the relationship with Bowen.
• For example, were there ways that Bowen interacted which clarified points of Bowen Theory

In the interview where I participated my job was to ask a few questions and then allow the interview to have its own life.

Beginning questions would be a version of:

When did you meet Dr. Bowen?

What in your life prompted you to study Bowen theory?

What is an example of your ability to use the theory?

What is the biggest question you have about the theory?

What comes to mind that you learned about your family?

What changes in your personal worldview comes from the theory?

The intent is to gather as many stories as possible as one way of noting the contribution of Bowen and his theory to many people lives.  Bowen himself wanted to “give Bowen Theory to the world.”

In addition this project may become a part of The Murray Bowen Archives.  They have an Oral History project which documents the advancement of Bowen family systems theory over the time period of 1946 to 1990 through interviews with colleagues, peers, students, research participants, others. The project furthers The Murray Bowen Archives Project mission to “facilitate additions to this archival material” and, through the documentation and preservation of the history, give understanding to the evolution and development of Bowen theory and to promote the study, publication, and preservation of the history of Murray Bowen’s theory.

Doug Murphy Interview

Ryuko Ishikawa k

Consulting to a Family Owned Business, Jimmy Maloney – Founder of the Williamburg Pottery Factory, Williamsburg, Va.

James E. Maloney (1912 – 2005)

A brilliant, difficult, complex man, my (paternal) Uncle Jimmy was the inspiration that led me to understand how business leaders emerge from their families and apply their knowledge to their work. – A.M.S.

My uncle Jimmy was a tall, skinny guy with glasses who never seemed to be able to wear matched socks or coordinated clothes of any kind. Who could tell he was a genius? Part country nice guy and part geek (long before that word became popular), he never used a calculator. His sharp, calculating mind was well hidden under a baseball cap and an ever-present smile. He was a charmer, calling most of his 700 employees “hoss.”

Jimmy became a leader the hard way, working through the Depression armed only with a high-school diploma. Nonetheless, he forever changed the business landscape by originating the first factory-outlet mall. Jimmy’s store, his baby, was the Williamsburg Pottery, located in Williamsburg, Virginia. By the 1960s, it was the largest U.S. importer of home goods from China, Japan and other Asian countries; by the early 1980s, Jimmy was serving up happy customers with low-cost plates, glassware, vases, statuary, silk flowers, crystal and almost anything else you can imagine to the tune of $60 million to $70 million a year.

The following is taken from the Williamsburg Pottery site:

The saga of the Williamsburg Pottery is rooted in the American enterprise system. In 1938, James E. Maloney founded the business, making eighteenth-century saltglaze reproductions to sell at low prices. As time passed, Maloney added china and glassware, discounting prices so that shoppers would return. Bargain hunters soon flocked to the place and an amazing expansion was underway. Now, the Pottery has mushroomed into 200 acres with 32 buildings and an inventory of 70,000 items gathered from all over the world.

Learning From Your Family

By the early 1990s, I had become more aware of just how exceptional Jimmy was. We tend to take our family members for granted, but how many people can build a business like Jimmy’s from a roadside stand? Not many.

Earlier, during the 1980s, I had documented the work of my boss, Murray Bowen, M.D. After Dr. Bowen’s death I thought, “Why not do something similar with my uncle and learn about business leaders?” To my way of thinking, Jimmy—a memorable character if ever there was one—was worthy of being studied, interviewed and analyzed. So in 1991 I began visiting him at least once a month—trailing around after him, talking to him and taping him at work. This time with Jimmy and his business ended after Gloria, his first wife, died in March 1993.

I am going to divide this story of Jimmy Maloney into three parts. First, my memories of him from when I was a child, with a brief overview of his family background and the world events that had shaped Jimmy and his family in earlier eras; second, the two-year period during which I conducted my interviews with Jimmy, which includes parts of a videotaped interview done during the early 1990s; and third, a discussion of Jimmy’s life and death and possible successors. I’m also including a copy of his obituary.

Memories of a Family Loyalist

Right side, white shirt Andrew, my Dad and then Jimmy next

My father, who died when I was 27, was Jimmy’s older brother. Jimmy became the replacement father figure for all four of his sibling’s children. He was the survivor. And he took no great pleasure in that. On the surface Jimmy was a business genius, but he was also a complicated man—a husband to two wives, a father of four, a grandfather, a friend to many, and a potter. My first impression of Jimmy was of a hard working, serious man. You could get his attention if you played sports or were interested in making pottery.

When we were kids, my brother and I loved to wander around Jimmy’s store, taking pleasure in the 10-cent table full of wondrous items, and a wooden money drawer with a chalk board poised ready to tally up the cash each customer was willing to spend. At the pottery, the customers were kings and queens, we kids were worker bees, and nobody minded the dirt floors that represented serious savings in overhead costs.

Central to Jimmy’s idea of how to succeed in business was to sell the goods as cheaply as possible and get more customers through word-of-mouth advertising. And he was lucky in that he had a ready supply of workers—people in the community were always looking for jobs, and they had the right attitude to work at the Pottery: Be happy and keep your customers happy.

In those early years, Jimmy was an extreme family loyalist. He loved to build unusual buildings, so when he had saved the cash, he build a round house for his family. I have no idea what was so important about the house being round, but I did see that it was home to an ever-expanding family. His mother-in-law lived there for many years. After WW II, my father lived in a separate house, right by the basketball court, with his parents. And of course there were chickens, dogs, cats and kids running everywhere. Meanwhile, my grandmother would busy herself planting whatever would grow in a wide variety of pots and then sell the pots and plants for her son at the store.

Those were simpler years where hay rides and boat trips were the rewards for hard work. We kids would pile in a truck and off we would go. One time when we went out in Jimmy’s old boat to water ski, Jimmy tossed me a big, old board to stand on and a rope to hold onto. Confused because I had never skied on a big board, I told him it was not “regulation,” He said, “If you don’t like it, get out of the water.” Keeping things simple was one of his set points: You were either in, or you were out.

Family Factors and the Historical Context

I would like to convey a thoughtful picture of Jimmy, the man, as I knew him. The challenge is that he was 30 years older than I and subject to social changes spawned in the years after 1912 that I can only imagine. The Maloney family had settled in Newport News a generation earlier. Jimmy’s mother, Cecilia Roth, left Elyria, Ohio, in her early twenties and, despite parental objections, married James L. Maloney. They raised their five children in Newport News, then moved to Washington, D.C.

Jimmy Maloney was their third child, born on April 5, 1912.

His dad, James L., was born in 1886 and his mother in 1887. More than dates, these years represent a very different era, one that saw vast social change. The following are just a few examples of those changes, allowing us momentarily to imagine what life was like for these two generations:
o September 4, 1886 – After almost 30 years of fighting, Apache leader Geronimo surrenders with his last band of warriors to General Nelson Miles at Skeleton Canyon in Arizona. This is the year Jimmy’s father was born.

o 1893 – After experimenting for several years in his leisure hours, Henry Ford completes the construction of his first automobile; in 1903 he founds the Ford Motor Company. Jimmy’s father is seven years old.

o January 6, 1912 – New Mexico is admitted as the 47th U.S. state. This is the year Jimmy is born.

o February 14, 1912 – Arizona is admitted as the 48th U.S. state.

o April 15, 1912 – The Titanic sinks 10 days after Jimmy is born.

o 1912 – Democratic presidential challenger Woodrow Wilson wins a landslide victory over Republican incumbent William Howard Taft.

o 1914 – 1918 – The First World War, also referred to as the Great War. It was supposed to be The War to End All Wars. If only—.

o 1918 – About half the states have granted women full or partial voting rights.

o June 4, 1919 – The 19th Amendment giving women the vote is passed by Congress; it is ratified on August 18, 1920.

o 1922 – The first public radio broadcasting station is opened in Pittsburgh. One of the most important inventions of the 1920s, radio not only brings the nation together, it is a whole new way for people to communicate and interact. Jimmy is 10 years old.

o 1929 – The Great Depression begins. Jimmy is 17.
I can only partially imagine the impact that Jimmy’s early family relationships had on him, and how the social forces and changes in the world he lived in shaped him. It is hard, perhaps impossible, to know his deeper values and viewpoints, formed under the influences of another era. But I can try.

Jimmy’s rise to the top was not determined by his sibling position. He was a middle son; but it’s interesting that his father (also a James) was also a middle son. Jimmy’s mother was the eldest of eight and initially thought her eldest son was going to be the family star. Jimmy surprised his mother, and a few others, by taking on that role after his older brother fell down. This brother—my father, Andrew—was gregarious and good-looking and early on showed his leadership skills. But Andrew returned from WW II unable to function. Jimmy, whose flat feet had kept him out of the war, stepped up and helped out his brother with a job and a house: Their roles had reversed.

Birth of a Family Business

Jimmy set up his outlet mall on Route 60 in 1938. The business took off slowly after WW II. But while growth was slow, it was steady and real, based on a new concept—the factory outlet. By the 1960s, the Williamsburg Pottery Factory was growing by millions of dollars each year. By the time of his death, Jimmy, his family and the greater Williamsburg community had derived great financial benefits from this determined man’s ideas.

Jimmy believed that one of his jobs was to teach his kids to work. College was for people who were not interested in making a real living. He knew he could make his children into millionaires if only they would do what he said. And indeed, they all went to work in the family business after high school. Over time, however, all of them were bought out of the business. Many of them went back to school on their own. But I am getting ahead of the story.

When I first began to think about interviewing Jimmy, my primary interest was to learn how Jimmy had accomplished so much. I was interested in how business leaders function, how they emerge from their families to become leaders. But before I approached Jimmy, I wanted to make sure his wife, Gloria, was behind my effort to pick Jimmy’s brain.

At the time, Gloria was very ill and struggling with her own issues (not the least of which was to whom she should leave her shares of the company stock). Eventually, however, she came to trust me enough (or, some might say, she was desperate enough) to say, “Why don’t you go help out your uncle. He is over at the James City Firehouse. You know, we gave them the land for the new firehouse, and he is a making speech. He would be glad to see you.”

So I did go over there, and I did ask Jimmy that day in 1991 if I could learn about his business. His response was simple: “We meet on Mondays at 7:00 a.m. in the cafeteria.” I was there.

Consulting and Videotaping – Showing Me the Business

During those Monday-morning meetings, I would listen to what was going on and then share some of my ideas with Jimmy. He would immediately make me repeat my ideas to the group, most of whom would disagree with me.

It was a clever tactic—using triangles to get on the outside and then watching as the group struggled to work together—and Jimmy was an expert at it. It was immediately clear to me that there would be no special relationship with Jimmy: I was on my own. If there was something he did not want to hear or deal with, he would refer me to the group and then step back to watch how I dealt with them. His staying on the outside pushed me in with the others, forcing me to learn how to deal with them. This left Jimmy relatively free to observe, think, and make his decisions.

During these meetings, I discovered all kinds of fascinating things—how alliances were formed, who could talk to whom. Afterwards, I would follow him around as he dropped in on people to see how they were doing their jobs. He often stopped people in the middle of their tasks and asked them to explain just what they were doing. If he didn’t like the answer, he would get mad. No surprise: The people part of a business is always hard, while the more rational aspects can be accomplished with less emotional excitement.

Jimmy was determined to write up how to run the business, in case something happened to him. Therefore, he developed a shortcut inventory system to let people know how much merchandise was left and when to reorder, how to keep inventory close to displays, how to keep the warehouse organized, how to strike the best deal for merchandise, how to transport and price it right, how to highlight the best deals in the shop, how to scope out what the competition was up to, how to get people to wrap more effectively, and—always—how to make the staff remember to be nice to the customers, especially when the staff was real busy.

For Jimmy, who was a fabulous potter, the most fun part of the business was in the pottery building. There he would experiment with glazes and stacking pottery, and contemplate all those wonderful ideas that continually popped up in his busy mind.

(He also liked to test the assorted children and grandchildren on the potter’s wheel and could decide in one minute if someone had it in them to be a potter. I did not. But I could play a mean game of basketball and that earned me a bit of respect. Anyone who came to sell Jimmy dishes or other goods during a game would have to wait—Jimmy was “playing ball with his family.”)

By the end of a day trailing behind Jimmy—observing, questioning, thinking—I would return to Gloria and, very enthused, tell her everything that had transpired. Because her illness was progressing, Gloria was unable to attend the 7 a.m. meetings or do much else in the business, and so was especially interested in what I had to say. My reports and videos also gave her a new insight into just how deeply her husband loved the business, which in turn may have shaped her decision to vote her shares of the company stock to Jimmy, rather than to her son. This was a critical decision, because Gloria’s shares would maintain Jimmy’s interest at over 51 percent.

The Courage to Ask

At that time I was a big believer in videotaping as much as possible—partly for history, partly so I could review and reflect on what had happened. From Jimmy’s point of view, video seemed like a good teaching tool, so he agreed to it. Eventually, however, I got the courage to ask Jimmy if he would talk with me one-on-one about his leadership in the family business. We set a time to meet make the video, and I was hopeful that he would answer all my questions. Silly me! The next thing you know, I’m making a training tape for potters.

The first part of this fabulous video shows Jimmy’s focus and determination and his love of the potter’s art. It also reveals the skill required to be a maker of great pottery. (To give you a clue, it would take the uninitiated about a year just to learn to throw a pot with some semblance of skill.)

While taping the pottery-making, I kept reminding my impatient self that Jimmy liked to do everything his way, and that if I waited, eventually it would be my turn. True enough, after he made about 20 pots in 30 minutes, Jimmy was ready to burst my bubble of assumptions about how he “learned” his business skills.

I wanted to document how leaders emerged through—I thought—a family tradition. And I was pretty sure Jimmy must have learned his skills from seeing how his paternal uncle Fred had run his clothing store in Elyria, Ohio. After all, Jimmy had worked with his uncle during high school. In addition, both his mother’s and father’s family had long histories of owning small businesses—a butcher, a baker, a furniture maker, a saloon, a winery and even a funeral business (but no candlestick maker). Jimmy’s paternal grandfather, yet another James, had owned a small brick company in Newport News, Virginia. Jimmy’s dad was a machinist at the Newport News Shipyard and worked with his hands. All told, I assumed there must have been some family influence there. But none of this made much sense to Jimmy.
“Well, Punkin [my family nickname], you want to put the focus on my family, but unfortunately I did not learn anything from them. My family is three-quarters Irish and one-quarter German. I am sure my genes contain some German. The Irish are great people, but they are not organizers. My Dad was a wonderful person, but he was not an organizer.

“In retrospect, I guess I learned more from B.M. Gresner [he may have been Jimmy’s first boss]. I went to work for him in the early thirties as an apprentice making bricks and pottery. He was a son of a gun. He would come out in his old Pontiac and throw his hat on the ground and say, ‘Hell’s bells it’s 5 o’clock and nothing’s done.’ But he taught you to work—such things as how you shovel in one motion. Unfortunately, he was not a good businessman. I had to leave him after several years, as he could not pay my $6 a week.” [This might have been around 1935.]

Forging Ahead

So how does the interviewer recover from disappointment and continue posing honest questions without getting thrown off by busted assumptions? I listened and laughed and tried to think, think, think. Jimmy didn’t like conversations unless they were about sports. The less time he had to spend talking, the better he liked it. And here was my chance at an in-depth conversation with him. I was determined to keep it going, even if it wasn’t going along the lines I had anticipated.
Prior to this conversation, there had been years of a tentative, superficial relationship. My own dad had really liked to talk, and after he died, Jimmy was a taciturn disappointment to me. Over scores of holiday meals I had learned to appreciate Jimmy’s constantly clever mind and unfailing energy, but was confused by his distance. We played tennis together, but Jimmy’s game was not great. He was a challenge to me on and off the court with his tricky moves. And now here I was in the middle of my first chance to talk to my uncle alone about what he was interested in, and I did not want to blow it. So I recovered and smiled when he seemed to say the “wrong” things, and was able to ask a few good questions to get him to really think. After all, I did know a bit about Jimmy.

Jimmy had always been a good observer of how people operate, for example. During WWII, Jimmy found a job working as a hired hand on a construction crew. He noticed that the supervisor had a small pad of paper and made notes on it and then told people what to do. Jimmy went out, got a small pad of paper, and became boss of a small construction crew. He was well on his way to being a leader wherever he went.
A Niche in Time
To continue with the video, Jimmy noted he had found his niche. He added that he believed that once you find a niche, it’s your job to stay there. Then he explained how it all happened: “In the beginning there was always someone who would help build the kiln, cut the firewood to burn in the kiln, and dig clay from the ground. So all we had to buy was salt.

“I first started out in Charlottesville with my friend Jonnie Venerable. We saw some nice local girls and convinced them that we had money buried and got them to help us dig the clay. Well, we married our help. These girls were sisters, so now Jonnie was my brother-in-law—and he was a very good potter.

“I saved my money, a thousand dollars, and in 1938 we moved to Lightfoot. With that money I bought some land, dug a good well, and built a good outhouse and a shop and a house. Then the war came along and shut us down.”

Jimmy explained that all the potteries were closed during the war because a form of uranium that the government needed to build a bomb was used in the pottery glazing. He read about it, he said, in an article in Life magazine. Then, he said, “the government confiscated all the copies as it told exactly how they were making the bomb!”

Jimmy went on to describe the growth of his business: “After the war ended, Colonial Williamsburg cooperated with us. We made 14 or 15 [Colonial reproduction] pieces for them, which they sold in their shops. Paul Hudson was the archeologist there for many years. Noel Hume did research for Colonial Williamsburg and he also helped us.”

One rumor about Jimmy and his business was that at some point after he started selling dishes, a cracked plate gave him the idea to go to the factories to buy seconds. Wrong. The truth, he told me, is that when someone offered to sell him a lot of chipped dishes cheap, he took a chance and put them out on the hillside for 10 cents each. They sold right away. After that, he began driving the truck around to the various factories in Pennsylvania to buy their seconds.

This was good business and it solved a problem for Jimmy: He did not want to be a slave to the five potters he employed, a dilemma he escaped by acquiring more retail goods to sell. Then in the 1950s he thought about expanding further and began importing goods from Asia. This successful growth came from networking.

Networking may not have been an official concept in Jimmy’s time, but it was a technique he used with great skill. Here’s what he had to say about it: “There is nothing like friends. I had about given up on finding good places to buy from when I saw Sid Darwin [an old friend from Williamsburg] at the Hilton in Japan. I had $400,000 to spend, and the bankers were giving me nothing but bad tips. I told Sid and he introduced me to the right people. Then we expanded to silk flowers and crystal. As we got money [from that], we built and expanded. Banks wouldn’t lend us money in those days, so we did it on a cash basis. Now things are different—now we use the capitalist system. We use the bank’s money to buy real estate. This gives us leverage. Capitalism is a great system, so why not use it? Borrow from the bank if the bank will trust you.”

Jimmy continued: “My goal was to have my fate in my own hands. I wanted to stay in my niche, and keep the good will of the devil, as good relationships make for good business.”

Jimmy listed the four principles that all his employees learn about work and relationships with customers: (1) Be nice, (2) Plan ahead, (3) Work steady and (4) Share the profits.”

By this point in the interview I was getting bold and thought I might as well get into the family problems. So I said, “Well, most of your family has taken the profits and left the business.”

Jimmy didn’t blink: “Those are all good problems,” he said, “the open-door problem. What really matters is your health. I have a lot of friends whose health has gone, and I am still here working and that’s great.”

Continuing about the influence of family, Jimmy added that in the early years, “the family was helpful in taking care of the kids while Gloria and I went out and hustled.”

On the subject of bosses, Jimmy said, “My dad was a great storyteller, but he did not want to tell people what to do.”

“I don’t mind being a boss,” I replied, “but my brothers do.”

“You have to have mean streak in you to be a boss,” Jimmy said.

“Mean or strict?” I asked. “I notice that people get good posture when you ask them what they are doing. It seems more strict than mean.”

“Maybe so,” Jimmy said. But strict or mean, “I was just dumb enough not to take a better job somewhere else. Still like to stick to my niche.
“Is there anything else Punkin? I got to run.”

“No. Thanks for your time,” I said. “I think it will be a good tape.”

And it was.

Family Conflicts

There are many people who now say that because other businesses, like Pier 1 and Wal-Mart, picked up on Jimmy’s genius ideas and grew, Jimmie’s business, too, should have grown. This question of niche versus growth was one of the big issues that led to a family split that never really healed. The details vary depending on who you talk to, but some of the facts are straightforward.

By the time business reached a peak of $60 million or $70 million in annual sales, the distant rumblings of Wal-Mart began to be heard. The children, by this time in their forties and fifties, were ready for something new. After lobbying unsuccessfully for changes, they finally went behind Jimmy’s back and, in the late 1980s, brought in a consultant from an Ivy League business school. Jimmy was furious. He promptly left, leaving the next generation in charge.

The consultant had many suggestions: clean up the area where people come to buy, build office spaces, rent their land to create more malls. However, nothing much happened to make for a different future. Eventually, the husband of one of Jimmy’s daughters sold his interest to Jimmy for several million dollars. This made Jimmy the majority stockowner, and he once again took charge of the business. All of his children were eventually bought out.

In March 1993, Jimmy’s wife, Gloria, died. Three months later, he married his second wife, Kim. He explained to his children that he needed to marry as soon as possible to take care of any possible future tax problems that his own death would create. (And he advised Kim to follow his good example and marry someone young and healthy when she became a widow.) I think Jimmy was happy with Kim. He laughed and took himself less seriously.

A Season of Change

After that chapter of my working experiences with Jimmy ended, I continued to visit him as I traveled between Washington, D.C., where I worked, and Virginia Beach. The last time I saw Jimmy was a week before he died. At that time, he was 93 and near the end of a long, slow, graceful walk toward death. He was frail and shrunken, yet the inner wizard of this man, my uncle, still raised his head and smiled at me. His death was as gentle as the day passing into the night, or so those close to him said about that day.

For family and friends, “slow” is a kind way to go because it gives everyone time to adjust to the idea of death. Death, when it comes, is no surprise. When word came on July 16, 2005, that Jimmy had died, there was sadness, but no shock. An era had simply ended.

Jimmy had always been a far-thinking man, and he had well-thought-out ideas about how he would spend his declining years. A nursing home was not part of the picture. He and Kim had picked a good staff to help with his care, and when he died at home, he was with his family. How many of us will be so fortunate?

Overall, Jimmy did an exceptionally good job of keeping his business going. If, to some extent, his family came second to his business, it’s only fair to note that the family world is a lot messier than the business world. In terms of accomplishments in the business world, he would be in the top 1 percent of people who really know how to make money. In terms of successfully handing over one’s business to the next generation, only 10 percent of families can do this into the third generation.

As to what will happen to the family and to the pottery, we’ll have to wait and see. The death of a leader like Jimmy will require at least a two-year adjustment. But there are possible family leaders waiting to emerge and fill the leadership vacuum. Who will that be? Only time will tell.

Jimmy used to say that the answer to any problem is to “just go to work.” Those interested in family work will have no problem finding lots of interesting challenges to work on. My goal is to stay focused on being a good observer, while being as authentic, low key and positive as possible. – Andrea Maloney Schara
Jimmy’s official obituary is below.

Pottery founder James “Jimmy” Maloney dies
Friends say his rags-to-riches story and great business sense personified the American Dream.

BY CAROL SCOTT
July 19 2005
JAMES CITY — James Eugene “Jimmy” Maloney, who built a multimillion dollar family dynasty from a roadside pottery stand outside Williamsburg, died Monday. He was 93. The success of the Williamsburg Pottery Factory predicted the modern “outlet mall.” The Pottery was founded in 1938 and still attracts hundreds of visitors daily – a monument to Mr. Maloney’s forward-thinking ability, said Gil Granger, former Williamsburg mayor and a longtime accountant and friend of Mr. Maloney’s.

“They called it the Bizarre Bazaar. People come here from all over America,” Granger said.

Mr. Maloney’s success came partly from his hardscrabble roots, Granger said. He was born in Newport News in 1912, the son of a shipyard worker and grandson of an Irish immigrant, and came of age during the Depression.

“He’d try to make a couple pennies on everything,” Granger said. “He wasn’t after the highest price he could get. He was after the lowest price he could get and still make a profit.”

Mr. Maloney learned the pottery trade in Jamestown and bought a half-acre of land off Route 60 for $150 in 1938. With his wife, Gloria, he began selling pottery on the side of the road.

Instead of discarding flawed pottery, he sold it more cheaply. When a truck driver wanted to get rid of a load of flawed Ohio pottery, Mr. Maloney realized he could sell other people’s discards as well.

Selling cheaply attracted customers – and more discount merchandise. He created a huge company that now sits on more than 200 acres and invested millions in overseas buying. The Pottery has 32 buildings and sells 120,000 items, according to the company.

“He is the epitome of the American Dream,” said Mike Maddocks, a senior vice president at Sun Trust bank who became friends with Mr. Maloney eight years ago. “He was a completely self-made man. He would never tire out. Everything he did, he did it until he was successful.”

Mr. Maloney’s four children – Fred, Joan, Alice and Rebecca – all have worked at the Pottery.  Family relations sometimes have been strained. In 1995, Joan Maloney was arrested for trying to blackmail her father for $6 million, police said. She later pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct. In 1997 the Pottery sued Fred Maloney, a former president of the Pottery who left in 1992, for $500,000 in dividend payments. The suit was dismissed. “Every family always has a tiff now and then,” Granger said. “When you have four children and they all have spouses, there’s always bound to grow up little differences of opinion.”

Mr. Maloney could see opportunity, said David Burris, a friend of Mr. Maloney’s and another senior vice president at Sun Trust bank.

“When the horse racetrack was first getting approved in New Kent County, Jimmy was at the table, and he said, ‘David, you know what we’re gonna do? I’m gonna grow mushrooms. You grow them in horse manure. We’ll grow the mushrooms, sell the mushrooms and charge the stables in New Kent to bring us the manure,’ ” he said.

Burris’s favorite story is this: “One morning out of the blue he pounded the table and said, ‘David, you know how they’re gonna transport stuff in the future? Straight up. We’re just gonna lift it straight up and let the Earth rotate underneath it. Everything can get where it needs to go in 24 hours.’

“I thought, well, the Earth does rotate. He thought like that routinely,” Burris said.

Maddocks calls Mr. Maloney a “slight, unassuming man” who never kept a desk – he told Maddocks, “Desks collect paper” – and who held basketball games for Pottery employees every day. “He wanted to keep moving and thinking.”

Mr. Maloney often donated money and land anonymously to charities, Williamsburg Community Hospital and the College of William and Mary, said a county administrator.

Kim, Maloney’s second wife, will remain CEO of the Pottery. The Pottery will continue running as it does now, said grandson George Wright, a general manager.

Except for Thursday, when the Pottery will be closed in memory of Mr. Maloney. A funeral service will be held at 11 a.m. Thursday at St. Bede’s Catholic Church. Internment will follow at Williamsburg Memorial Park. A reception will be held from 2 to 9 p.m. Wednesday at Nelson Funeral Home.

Copyright (c) 2005, Daily Press

Thich Nhat Hanh Helps Us Overcome Fear
Adapted from True Love, by Thich Nhat Hanh (Shambhala 2004).

“We have great fear inside ourselves. We are afraid of everything—of our death, of being alone, of change. Fear is born from our concepts regarding life, death, being, and nonbeing. If we are able to get rid of all these concepts by touching the reality within ourselves, then nonfear will be there and the greatest relief will become possible.”

Gathering Systems Knowledge: The Third Point on the Mindful Compass

The following blog is a longish chapter for my new book, Interrupting and Mindfulness: Two Keys to Living in Social Systems. 

I think it’s important to understand how our knowledge of human behavior has been erected stone by stone, life by life.  The third point on The Mindful Compass, acquiring systems knowledge, makes us less vulnerable to life’s challenges. It is one fabulous way to steady one’s self against the disinformation (gossip and bias) and the emotionality we see and hear everywhere.

One of my heroes of the information revolution, Steve Jobs died last week.  I was one of his early fans, buying my first Mac in 1986, and still love all things Apple. His story will be told in many ways, but his life, like all of ours, is bounded by time, relationship skills, and courage. There are other elements, perhaps intangible, like spirit or grace or a gift from the gods.  Like Jobs, each of us has a limited time to tell our story and deal with the forces that impinge on us, especially our assumptions and beliefs. This is a simple appreciation for his genius and the inspiration he is.

“Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.” ~ Steve Jobs

 

 

 

 

The Third Point on the Mindful Compass: Gathering Systems Knowledge

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else-by some distinction sets aside and rejects.

Francis Bacon, January, 22 1561 – April 9, 1626

 

 

A good scientist is a humble and listening scientist and not one that is sure 100 percent in what he read in the textbooks,” according to Nobel laureate Daniel Shechtman.  Schechtman never doubted his findings and considered himself merely the latest in a long line of scientists who advanced their fields by challenging the conventional wisdom and were shunned by the establishment because of it.  Robert Lee Hotz, Wall Street Journal. 2011

 

 

Investigating the Nature of Man:  A Short Overview

In the first chapter we saw how the Mindful Compass can help us see the natural process that influences us as we make our most important decisions, especially family processes impacting our near and dear.  Chapter two shows us the link between our actions and the inevitable resistance we experience, and gives us the opportunity to alter our responses and create a more positive story about our lives.  The third chapter focuses on systems knowledge, the third point on the Mindful Compass.   This chapter does two things.  First it traces the important trends in thinking in psychology from focus on the individual as the primary locus of issues and answers to a systems view of the human and the influences of the family on the human.  Second, it considers the challenges in looking at our assumptions to question our own versions of truth.

Initially I thought I should warn people not to read this chapter unless they are interested in an overview of those who have influenced the development of psychology.  But I think it’s important to understand how hard it is to develop insight into the nature of the human, particularly when an insight may be contrary to the conventional wisdom of the time.   Having an overview of the development of ideas in psychology gives us a picture of how varied the discoveries have been and how difficult it has been to carve out room for new ways of thinking.

The Development of Psychology from 1850’s to WW II : Wundt, James and Freud

 

 

 

 

Darwin published his book, On the Origin of Species, in 1859 providing compelling evidence for evolution.  He traced the evidence for evolutionary principles back to the writings of Aristotle.  It may be that Darwin influenced the thinking of William Wundt, William James, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, much as Aristotle had influenced him.  What are the roots of our thinking in psychology today?

Wilhelm Wundt, (1832- 1920) was the first person to use scientific research to consider how the mind influences the body. Wundt’s thinking was based on Darwin’s idea that we humans have a great deal in common with other forms of life.

From the standpoint of observation, then, we must regard it as a highly probable hypothesis that the beginnings of the mental life date from as far back as the beginnings of life at large. Wundt [1]

He did painstaking research observing the relationship between the body and subjective thoughts. He set about to connect the mind and body in a very scientific way. In his own words: Hence, even in the domain of natural science the aid of the experimental method becomes indispensable whenever the problem set is the analysis of transient and impermanent phenomena, and not merely the observation of persistent and relatively constant objects.

Few people now give Wundt credit for the work he did looking at the physiology of consciousness.  He highlighted the importance of people’s experiences, subjective as they are, and described how the physical body was affected by (and in turn affected) consciousness, feelings, emotions, volition, and ideas.  He believed that self-examination of the content of one’s mind could be evidence for understanding behavior.

Wundt established psychology as a separate science, exploring in his lab the nature of religious beliefs, self-identity and mental disorders. In his book, Principles of Physiological Psychology, published in 1902, he presented beautifully detailed drawings of the nervous system and explanations of how consciousness could arise.[2] He published over 490 works, becoming one of the most prolific scientists of all time.

Did his family life have something to do with the questions that puzzled him?  A few clues follow.

Wundt’s father was an Evangelical pastor. Wilhelm was an only child due to his siblings’ death from malaria. Since his youth Wundt was labeled as a daydreamer which left him alone and out casted from the other children. When Wundt’s parents heard of this they sent him to live with his aunt. Here Wilhelm began to flourish and graduated at the age of nineteen. Wundt attended medical school at Tubingen where he became interested in his uncle’s course in brain anatomy. http://www3.niu.edu/acad/psych/Millis/History/2002/wundt.htm

I mention Wundt’s family life as just one example of how early family life can set up a person to become a more independent thinker.  Wundt and his parents suffered the loss of his sibling from malaria. We do not know how that altered the relationship configuration in the family, however it appears he was isolated and it took time for his parents to notice him. Eventually they took action, sending Wundt off to live with others who must have had more time and energy to deal with him.

How often do we see that a person who has the go power to establish a different professional direction either directly suffered family losses early on or had parents who disappointed them or who themselves had early losses. Frank Sulloway took up this subject in his book, Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives.

An assumption is that early life challenge and disruptions in relationships may allow individuals to question the status quo.  All of this depends on the family and the go power of the individual, as losses can also promote great fear and the inability to grow due to increasing levels of dependency.

Many of the people I interviewed, some of whom you will meet later in the book, noted that they felt very alone and different as a child.  These factors: early loss, disappointment in parents and feeling different, may increase the opportunity for autonomy and may be prominent in the lives of those who establish a new way of thinking. I will leave it to the interested reader to investigate the early lives of the other pioneers and draw their own conclusions.

 

William James, (1842-1910)

Known as the “great explainer” of psychology, James focused on how behavior actually functioned to help people live in their environment.  He founded the Pragmatist movement. Some of his ideas exist today in outcome-based research in which any method of therapy that works will be paid for. No theory or explanation is required.

James was anxious to uncover what true beliefs amounted to in human life, what their “Cash Value” was, what consequences they led to. A belief was not a mental entity, which somehow mysteriously corresponded to an external reality if the belief were true. Beliefs were ways of acting with reference to a precarious environment, and to say they were true was to say they guided us satisfactorily in this environment. In this sense the pragmatic theory of truth applied Darwinian ideas in philosophy; it made survival the test of intellectual as well as biological fitness. If what was true was what worked, we can scientifically investigate religion’s claim to truth in the same manner. The enduring quality of religious beliefs throughout recorded history and in all cultures gave indirect support for the view that such beliefs worked. James also argued directly that such beliefs were satisfying — they enabled us to lead fuller, richer lives and were more viable than their alternatives. Religious beliefs were expedient in human existence, just as scientific beliefs were.[3]

James also developed a theory of emotions published in 1884 in the paper entitled, “What Is an Emotion?” He conceived of an emotion in terms of a sequence of events and used the story of a bear to explain his views.  He posited that we fear the bear simply because we run away from the bear.  Fear is generated by the act of running.

To some extent current research has found that muscle activity does occur before thinking and that the brain is mostly autobiographical. In other words mental reactions follow bodily actions and therefore it follows we must still the body to calm the mind.

James was open to many ideas. His reputation suffered because of his inquiries into spiritualism and psychic phenomena. We do not know if his thinking was influenced by Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection, but he did write that humans had more instincts than many other animals and that these instincts were often conflicting. His bottom line was that automatic habits, including those triggered by traumatic events, could always be overridden by new experiences.  All that was required was to wake up.

Compared to what we ought to be we are half awake.

William James

 

 

 

Sigmund Freud, (1865-1939)

We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love. S. Freud

Freud was born fourteen years after James, but he lived until 1939, giving him twenty-nine more years than James to influence society. Darwin too influenced him.  Freud’s ideas were shocking and his influence pervasive, perhaps because he conceptualized the locus of human problems in the human’s primitive nature and emotions.  Sex sells.  People find it intriguing to think sexual primitive urges are ruling our unconscious, and by association, us.

“It is the fate of all of us, perhaps, to direct our first sexual impulse towards our mother and our first hatred and our first murderous wish against our father. Our dreams convince us that that is so. King Oedipus, who slew his father Laïus and married his mother Jocasta, merely shows us the fulfillment of our own childhood wishes… Here is one in whom these primeval wishes of our childhood have been fulfilled.  While the poet, as he unravels the past, brings to light the guilt of Oedipus, he is at the same time compelling us to recognize our own inner minds, in which those same impulses, though suppressed, are still to be found.” S. Freud[4]

Freud was well aware of the Greek myths in which portrayals of our hidden instinctive wishes were easy to see and understand.  He used these stories to explain our blindness to our deepest motives that drive our actions, the unconscious.  What a leap from the way others had described the human condition.

Freud’s writings were compelling and his thesis of our everyday behavior, linked to early childhood memories, was another step in highlighting the importance of reflecting and understanding each individual’s life story.  Freud wrote up his cases, which included the lives of well-known people.  In addition Freud even analyzed fictional characters like Hamlet to help us understand our hidden selves.

“The play is built up on Hamlet’s hesitations over fulfilling the task of revenge that is assigned to him; but its text offers no reasons or motives for these hesitations and an immense variety of attempts at interpreting them have failed to produce a result. According to the view which was originated by Goethe and is still the prevailing one today, Hamlet represents the type of man whose power of direct action is paralyzed by and excessive development of his intellect.” S. Freud [5]

Freud believed the intellect was suspect and the only way to knowledge of our instinctual strivings was through free association, where the undisguised truth could emerge.  It did not matter if a person’s stories were fact or fiction.  Each patient could disguise the truth, but over time, with the help of the therapist, the threads of deeper truth would stand out from the clutter and be analyzed for the insights they offered.

Everyone is telling a story and Freud thought people could gain insight through an analysis of their dreams and through slips of their tongues and even through the jokes they told or laughed at.  More importantly he saw the way that the mere telling of one’s story could captivate and polarize an analyst.  The ego of the analyst was at risk of becoming a part of the patient’s story.  To be captivated by the patient’s story ran the risk of linking the therapist’s self with that of the patient.   Patients loved and hated the analyst as they loved and hated their parents.  Freud accurately described the danger of (and warned other analysts about) getting caught up in other people’s stories and activating the counter-transference.

Transference (the patient relating to the therapist as if he/she were a significant someone else, a father, for example) and counter-transference (the therapist relating to the patient as if he/she were a significant someone else, a mother) are now accepted as part of our popular culture. Those who have been through long years of analysis like Woody Allen, use their knowledge of transference and counter-transference to make humorous movies, demonstrating the confusion in seeing our love objects for who they really are.  Since we are a bit removed from the interactions as movie viewers, we can laugh as we see versions of ourselves exaggerated or diminished in his portrayal of human problems.

Every normal person, in fact, is only normal on the average. His ego approximates to that of the psychotic in some part or other and to a greater or lesser extent. S. Freud

Freud’s bottom line was to interpret the meaningfulness within a person’s story to enable his patient to accept the ordinariness of reality. At the same time both therapist and patient had to remain aware of the instinctual strivings for sexual pleasure or romantic adventure based on idealized feeling states. Freud encouraged us to look for the daily hero within self, not in the other, and to accept the tension of failure while striving to be realistic.

Freud and his followers saw the family as a complex web of relationships that were partly to blame for the problems of the patient. Freud believed that the family had interests other than the well being of the patient, the result of which was the sealing off of the patient and analyst from the corrosive influence of the family.   The family was assigned to social workers, creating a split that persists today.  The treatment time for Freudian analysis was three to five times a week, over three to seven years, allowing for natural maturational changes to solidify the on-going integration of perception and feeling. Freud’s method therefore could not be used for the general population. In addition his opinion that religion was a drug for the misery of the masses is evidence of the profound differences that led to, if not created, Freud’s split from Carl Jung, his once hoped for successor.

Another interesting twist is that Freud’s choice for best thinker in his group was Carl Jung.  Would he have picked him if he had known more about his family history and not just his intelligence and psychological strength?  Perhaps we can figure this out by looking at Jung’s family life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carl Jung (1875-1961)

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to a better understanding of ourselves. C. Jung

Born in 1875 in Kesswil, Switzerland, Jung was the only son of a Protestant clergyman.  Jung’s mother came from a family that believed in séances and communing with the dead.  His father was a far more traditional man. Jung could not mange the conflict between the two. After his father’s death Jung had a dream, which he told to Freud, who interpreted it as Jung’s disguised wish for his father’s death. Jung instead saw it as his need for his father as a spiritual guide.

In Jung’s autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1961), Jung explains that his father “suffered from religious doubts” himself and could offer “nothing but the same old lifeless theological answers” to his questions.  When Paul Jung died in 1896, his 21- year-old son was left without a strong father to guide him into psychological and spiritual maturity. Jung looked both inward and to the external world studying religious traditions around the world.

Jung studied biology, zoology, paleontology, and archaeology. His explorations did not stop with that.  He looked at philosophy, mythology, early Christian literature as well as religion. His interest in religion could be attributed to his heritage as well as watching the demise of his father. C. Jung[6]

Like Bowen, Jung was more focused on the health of the individual or the wholeness of the psyche. By studying word association in his patients, he saw repression at work, as did Freud.  But Freud and Jung split over the role of sexuality and the nature of the unconscious. Their relationship ended when Jung published “Psychology and the Unconscious” which argued against some of Freud’s ideas.  Jung’s focus was on understanding the symbolic meaning of the contents of the unconscious. He clarified his differences with Freud in explaining the mechanism of personality in his book Psychological Types.  A popular psychometric instrument, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), has been developed principally from Jung’s theories.

Jung’s advice to us about the nature of reality and change follows

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. There is no coming to consciousness without pain.  We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.   C. Jung

Like Freud, Jungian therapy deals with dreams and fantasies but transformation occurs when opposite tendencies are integrated to achieve wholeness. As in Bowen theory, integrating the feeling and thinking systems is key.  This requires us to understand how the fast brain (the reptilian and or limbic older parts of the brain) and the slow brain (the frontal lobes, which can inhibit the more primitive reactive parts of the brain) coordinate their actions. Current research explains how slowing down the more reactive parts of the brain and using our memory, allows us to shortcut the runaway reactivity in the lower parts of the brain, like the amygdala. At its best, the way the brain integrates information allows us to make more thoughtful decisions.

You can think about Freud and Jung as trying to unlock the unconscious through analysis, which over time promotes integrating conversations allowing people to learn to see their reality more accurately. Eventually this analytic relationship leads to more thoughtful, less reactive relationships.

People interested in Bowen Theory have found that Jung’s interest in spirituality adds to areas only beginning to be addressed in Bowen Theory.  Bowen explored his thinking about this area in his ninth concept, Towards a Systems Concept of Supernatural Phenomena.  The videotape is available at The Bowen Center for the Study of the Family.[7]

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed. C. Jung

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The Behaviorists

There are as many theories in psychology as there are people who have investigated different parts of the human and used scientific tools to make a case for their findings. After Freud appropriated the feeling life of people by interpreting their subjective reports, along came the behaviorists who stripped the human of any subjective take on life, going in an entirely different direction.  Many people working in psychological labs began to think about behavior as learning or conditioning. What mattered to these researchers was observable behavior, not the feelings or the unconscious mechanisms of the individuals.

 

Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) investigated classical conditioning. You may recall that in his famous experiments, the dog salivated when food was brought to it at the same time a bell was rung.  Eventually just ringing the bell caused the conditioned dog to salivate. Pavlov rejected introspective methods, instead seeking to restrict psychology to experimental (and observable) methods.

 

“It is clear to all that the animal organism is a highly complex system consisting of an almost infinite series of parts connected both with one another and, as a total complex, with the surrounding world, with which it is in a state of equilibrium.” “Don’t become a mere recorder of facts, but try to penetrate the mystery of their origin.” “Perfect as the wing of a bird may be, it will never enable the bird to fly if unsupported by the air. Facts are the air of science. Without them a man of science can never rise.”[8  Ivan Pavlov

 

B.F. Skinner, (1904-1990) conducted research based on his theory of operant conditioning and also rejected unconscious feelings as drivers of behavior.  He saw behavior as a natural science, like physics, in which one does not examine the inner state of the object being studied.  A few B.F. Skinner quotes below explain his thinking

“Give me a child and I'll shape him into anything.

“I did not direct my life. I didn't design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That's what life is.”

“If you're old, don't try to change yourself, change your environment.”

“Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.

“A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.”

“We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.”[9]

The behaviorists’ work has become the basis for recent behavioral cognitive therapies, including behavior modification for children and adults, and many therapeutic feedback systems like biofeedback and neurofeedback.

 

 

Bion and the Tavistock Clinic

During WW II, the military in England needed better ways to identify leaders. In addition, soldiers with war trauma needed help.  There were more people disabled by trauma than by physical injuries. Neither psychoanalysis nor behaviorism as it was then conceived, offered answers to either set of problems.

The Tavistock Clinic had taken on similar problems during WW 1.  They developed psychological treatments for shell-shocked soldiers and these methods were greatly expanded in the nineteen thirties. Wilfred Bion, one of the leaders of the Tavistock Clinic during WW II experimented with leaderless groups, eventually writing Experiences in Groups.  His observed that emotional states could disrupt any task because of feelings of dependency, or the urge to fight or flee.  The priority of the leader of any group, he suggested, was to deal with the emotional states of people in the group.

These observations began the transition in psychology and psychiatry from focusing on a two-person therapeutic relationship to observing and working in the context of group dynamics. Now researchers could see how the behavior of one impacted, not just one other person as in the transference, but was key to influencing the actions of the whole group.  A different world emerged when people could see the influence of one person on all kinds of people who needed to interact to complete a task.

The ability to problem solve and be a leader in a peer group seems to have little to do with the story one person might tell their analyst about their family life. There was little correlation between one’s neurosis and the ability to lead.  Bion saw that people assigned to groups would make the group itself into a kind of a family.  Group members would act out in defensive ways unless the leader could keep them working on the task.  Bion concluded that those who function as leaders in their families, despite their neuroses, are far more likely to become leaders in the group. The capacity for mental growth is based in an emotional experience, in the family or in a group. Leaders are not without their problems, but some individuals are far more capable than others of standing up for a way to solve problems and they are leaders.[10]

During World War II, when the death toll and scale of human misery were extreme, “leadership savvy” was the key skill that the British Army sought in its new recruits. They needed individuals who could remain calm, optimistic and solve problems. The Tavistock Clinic, using the ideas of Bion, developed a plan to find those with these attributes who could be officers and leaders for the war department.

Based on Bion’s ideas about the leaderless group, the Tavistock Clinic advised the British Army to institute use of an observer, not a trainer, to identify individuals with the skills and behavior to become leaders. A consultant (observer) would be sent to watch a group of men as they gathered. There was no plan; there were no directions, no uniforms, nothing, just a consultant with a clipboard. The consultants’ job was “not to permit themselves to insist even subliminally that the group adopt their way of proceeding.”[11] The consultant simply took notes on how the leadership emerged and whom the group would listen to. Once a thoughtful leader emerged, the group quickly became calmer and more capable of figuring out what needed to be done. Clearly the influence of relationships on individual functioning was beginning to be seen.  It was not a huge leap now to observe the emotional process in the family.

 

 

Murray Bowen

Family Systems Theory contains no ideas that have not been a part of the human experience through the centuries.  Murray Bowen, Introduction: Family Therapy in Clinical Practice

Bowen chose psychiatry due to his experiences in WW II.  He had seen more people suffering from what was then called “shell shock” than with physical wounds and thought he could make the greatest contribution in psychiatry.  He gave up his cardiac surgery residency and applied to the training program at the Menninger Clinic where he became convinced that Freud had not gone far enough to create a science of human behavior. Bowen determined that a science of human behavior had to be linked to understanding the human as a part of evolution.

Observing family members at Menninger’s as they came to visit their grown children led to his budding research interest in the ongoing relationships between family members which evolved into his keen interest in carefully observing several family members living together. Later, in 1956, he accepted a position as the head of a research unit at National Institute of Health (NIH) in Washington DC, where he was able to observe families actually living together there.  During the next four years he observed how individual members of a family (and their “helpers”, the staff) functioned in relationship to each other.  This long period of observation led to the development of Bowen’s Theory, based on the nature of the emotional system, with all its interlocking parts.

Among other discoveries, Bowen saw that when the staff avoided diagnosing individuals, and refrained from taking sides or providing “answers” to the family, growth was possible.  The nursing staff led by example.  They observed and gave feedback about what the family issues seemed to be, how they saw the family members functioning and trying to manage self in the interactions with family members.  The family members listened to the staff as the staff worked on their own issues. Eventually one person in the family, often the father, made up his mind about what he thought and what the family would do.  Bowen saw that the family could heal itself twice as fast as anyone he had seen in psychoanalysis. This was a totally new way of seeing what happened between people and led to his theory, of human behavior.

Bowen described how family members are connected to each other in the following quote.

“Emotional reactiveness in a family, or other groups that lives or works together, goes from one family member to another in a chain reaction pattern.  The total pattern is similar to electronic circuits in which each person is “wired” or connected by radio, to all the other people with whom he has relationships.  Each person then becomes a nodal point or an electronic center through which impulses pass in rapid succession . . . Each person is programmed from birth to serve a certain set of functions and each “senses” what is required or expected, more from the way the system functions around him than from verbal messages . . . Each person . . . has varying degrees of ability for handling impulses . . . and an intellectual awareness . . . for understanding the operation of the system.  There is another important set of variables that have to do with the way the family unit functions together.  Each person becomes aware of his dependence on all the other nodal points. To be remembered is that each nodal point is “wired” to the others with two-way circuitry. There are a wide variety of subtle alliances for helping each other, refusing to help, or hurting the other.  The larger unit can punish a single member, and a single member in a key position can hurt the whole unit.

The electronic model has the potential and the flexibility to accurately account for almost every item of human functioning . . . except for that which is determined by biology and reproduction and evolution.” [12]

 

 

A Playful look at Bowen and Freud’s Imaginary Relationship

It has been a short ninety-nine year journey from Wundt’s 1902 publication, Principles of Physiological Psychology, to the present.  A paradigm shift has occurred during that period, from diagnosing what’s inside an individual’s mind a la Wundt and Freud, to Bowen’s understanding of the individual as a player in a sensitive, reactive, linked and interdependent system.

A playful way to consider the differences from Freud to Bowen is to imagine Mother Earth on the couch. Of course Freud really wants to know what’s up with Mother Earth and why she is spinning the way she is. In the first session, Freud is fascinated to find out why Mother Earth has covered up so many layers of unconscious “dirt,” and why that “dirt” has made the earth spin as she does.

Freud tries to remain objective as he listens to Mother Earth’s stories about how she spins. His assumption is that if only Mother Earth would let the dirt rise to the surface through free association, she could be real with her feelings and get her affect, the emotional tone, correct about why she is spinning the way she is. She could deal with the buried unconscious dirt once she could see it and feel it. And then of course, all would be integrated and she would be able to see how to spin in a more natural and authentic way.

Freud plans to focus the sessions on allowing the dirt to be seen, and also noting how he himself reacts to Mother Earth’s dirt.   Freud will let Mother Earth know a bit about what he thinks, but not too much as her spinning self may be too weak for the whole truth.  Slowly over years, the trust will be built, the dirt uncovered and the healing process will take hold.

Right after the first session, Dr. Bowen comes into the room to consult and says to Freud, “Would you like a different view of Mother Earth’s path?  OK, so let’s see what happens when we back up and ask Mother Earth what kind of relationships she’s been in with the Sun and with Jupiter and Mars?  Think about it, didn’t she say all this trouble started when Mars jumped out of his orbit and all the relationships changed?  I would like to know how the pull of the Sun and her relationships with the other planets have influenced her path.”  Freud responds saying, “Let’s keep looking at relationships and see where we end up.”

In fact, Freud himself experienced a version of this story with his daughter Anna.  Anna had a conflict with Melanie Klein, who believed that the imagination and primitive instincts of people created their mental health issues.  Anna Freud, on the other hand, saw that children could recover from trauma without analysis if they had caring relationships with caretakers in the Hampstead orphanage.  After looking at the evidence that she brought to him, Freud said to Anna there was not yet enough evidence to show which direction was best to liberate the psyche from neurosis, the intense relationships encountered in life or psychoanalytic treatment.[13]

We find the same problem today; not enough data has been gathered in a scientific manner to demonstrate clearly what type of interventions work, Freud or Bowen’s.

The scientific method can be costly to conduct, because we must find control groups so that we can compare the differences in methods. Eventually systems research may be able to compare many variables in some kind of factor analysis.

Right now the scientific method is set to find the cause, the one variable that makes a difference.  We can see how the scientific method has led researchers to turn a blind eye to a system with its interacting variables.  It is too confusing and confounding for proper research analysis.   Once research developers are able to consider the function of multiple variables, then systems behaviors will come into view and we will have moved closer to a scientific study of the family as an emotional unit. [14]

 

We’ve come a long way baby, or have we?

It is very hard to understand we humans in an objective way. It is easier to learn more about the behavior of planets than to consider how we orbit around one another in our social systems

The well-known investigators of human behavior had not, until Bowen and others in the late 20^th century, even seen the influence of the family on the individual. Perhaps it’s far easier to see the individual, rather than to see a relationship system. We have been shaped over multiple generations to see and respond to other individuals, but how our multigenerational families influence us has not been seen or possibly the real problems is that the data does not fit into a cause and effect model.  We may not be able to make science out of human behavior but we can enlarge our viewpoint about human behavior.

What good does it do to question our beliefs, values and even our ways of making decisions?  How much do we know or need to know about human behavior?  Can others’ work give us courage to be more aware of our own journey? Who among us wants to see how relationships are impacting us or how we impact others?  Much of our current thinking has status because it’s old and it’s what we “know”.  We are attracted to what has been because it seems to work for us now and again.  We are not so sure about the “new”.

New knowledge in any field is like the new kid on the block with no status.  So it is in the field of psychology and science in general.  There is considerable resistance to changing any prevailing theory or point of view. Sometimes one of us sees something new, but we have no idea how to adequately respond.

A classic example is the reactions of some folks on September 11, 2001.  People from Europe were staying at my home at the time. They could not believe that planes had become weapons and that their flights would be canceled for weeks. They begged me to take them to the airport.  Despite my most rational and logical arguments, the emotional belief that the past was the future was firmly in place.  Driving to the airport, past the empty roads and parking lots, with no sound or sight of planes in the sky, finally they were able to see that indeed the world had changed.

There are many factors inhibiting our ability to see the so-called reality of situations. Personal traumas such as a death or a divorce can extract a toll on our ability to think well. Such pressure and anxiety diminishes our ability to perceive and think well. Besides history and trauma, there are other mechanisms in the brain that diminish our ability to see “what is” and instead to react in automatic ways.

Evolutionary pressures have designed our brain in a cobbled together way not unlike a Rube Goldberg machine.  We are hamstrung by assumptions and the status quo.  Our brain is designed to make even simple decisions activate a lot of reactive bells and whistles. The struggle to be a self in our family is ongoing, as our brains are tuned to react in a stimulus-response way to others.  Reactivity gives us little room to see complexity. The automatic response is to focus narrowly, defend self and blame others. Our brains are full of all kinds of interlocking emotions, instinctual needs and reflexes such as jealousy, aggression, hatred, competition, cooperation, and of course the overriding need to be loved. By understanding a bit about reactivity we can see again the challenge in remaining mindful.

 

The Brain and Playful Interrupting

Paul MacLean, a physician and neuroscientist, made the discovery that we humans share with reptiles our mating mechanisms and obsession with territory.  Not a pretty thought.  Since evolution also gave us language allowing us to speak and sometimes to actually communicate, we can mute our more primitive responses. Sometimes we can interrupt our old habits of thinking by being playful with one another.  Play is a by-product of raising children notes MacLean. Both play and the separation cry are responses to the new. [15] One issue is that our perception is tilted to respond to threats in defensive ways, choking off the opportunity to play.

Evolution designed our brain with bells and whistles that can go off at the perception of the slightest threat.  We fear, a snake or a bear and then our physiology changes when we see one.  We may have been taught that our aunts or stepfathers or others are somewhat like bears.  We cannot see or think well in the presence of those whom we see as a threat or when we are actually reacting to a threat.

In order to respond more playfully it helps if we can observe our reactions and thereby interrupt the programmed fear response.  For example, if we think we see a snake as we walk along, if we can pause and look carefully we can decide if it is a snake or a stick.  There is the fast brain response and the slow one.  The slow one takes more time to develop.

It takes time to know the difference between over and under-reacting.  Over-reacting is when we react to each possible stick as a snake. We can also under react, especially when it comes to threats that seem distant in time or space such as addictions to drugs or money or threats like global warming.[16]  Our brains prefer short-term pleasures and/or profits and cannot really comprehend the danger from long-term problems

Unfortunately our ability to reason things out does not exist in a separate province of the mind where emotions are banned from influencing us.  Antonio Damasio in his book, Descartes’ Error, carefully explains to us that the neurobiology of our thinking processes is deeply intertwined in our emotions, feelings and beliefs. [17]

If you say I am thinking, well, you are also feeling. As most of us know, although people think that their religious beliefs and political views are rationally based, these beliefs are grounded in deep emotional feelings.  All that we believe and think is highly influenced by our emotional system.  Our state of mind and our psychology is often run by the way our brain is organized.

We are wired differently depending on our relationships and our sensitivities. We may not feel our blood pressure rising, but we know messages are sent from the heart to the brain.  The soma of the body is linked to our mental process but not in a linear or straightforward way as Wundt noted long ago.

 

“Certainty” can blind us to “what is”

One thing that makes it so hard to see accurately, or to see what really “is”, is this stubborn belief that our views are more correct than the views of others. We do have empathy, therefore most of the time we can understand that others hold different and valid viewpoints.  But especially under pressure, we see the “right way” and are sure that the others are “wrong”. To put it bluntly, we are often over confident that our way of seeing things is the correct (and only) way.

Unfortunately it turns out, overconfidence is a burden.[18] But for survival purposes evolution handed us a brain able to make decisions with as little information and as much certainty as possible. [19] Instinct made it possible for this behavior to persist and so it does, even in our more modern social jungle. How we perceive threats and take action springs from the emotional system, which we share with all other species.  It is our primitive guidance system, springing into action as a response to stimuli.

Most species do not have the luxury to wonder about their Rube Goldberg, instinctually designed brain.  They do not pause to reflect and self regulate.  They may spring to attack whomever is near when problems arise.  They can freeze or run or just take any action when instinct requires it.  But we humans can, to some extent, self regulate.   We know now that our perception is formed by many kinds of internal mechanisms and biases and that our brains, unfortunately, do not see accurately all that is right before our eyes.  Knowing this enables us to have reasons to gather knowledge, to question what is accepted, and to be more responsible for how we participate in social systems.

 

 

Summary

In this chapter we have heard about the effort to gather knowledge about human behavior. We have looked at some of the discoveries in psychology over the past 150 years. We see that the overriding focus of psychology during this time has been on the individual, not on the relationship system. It wasn’t until the 1950s that researchers saw the family as an interactive relationship system.

It’s safe to say that there is still no consensus on who sees the big picture, or just what is driving or influencing human action and how to understand human behavior.   Given the divisions in psychology, and that various groups are backed by both beliefs and research papers, organizations and political movements, we must live with conflicting data and types of analysis that are available.  There is no tool that can consider multiple variables interacting over long periods of time as more than correlations.  We don’t know it all.  But we are simply more aware that there are different lenses through which to see human behavior.

 

 

 

References:

1) The Triune Brain in Evolution: Role of Paleocerebral Functions, Paul D. MacLean, 1990, Springer.

2) Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, 2005, Jared Dimond

3) Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives, 1996, Frank Sulloway

4)  Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, Antonio Damasio, 1994

5)Fischhoff, Slovic and Lichtenstein (1977) gave subjects a general knowledge test and then asked them how sure they were of their answer. Subjects reported being 100% sure when they were actually only 70%-80% correct.

6) Daniel Kahneman, psychologist and Nobel laureate, notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making, behavioral economics and hedonic psychology.

7) Principles of Physiological Psychology, Wilhelm Wundt (1902) 
Translated by Edward Bradford Titchener (1904)

8) Pragmatism, From the introduction to William James’s  by Bruce Kuklic

9) The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud, tr. James Strachey, Avon, N.Y. 1965. p.296.

10) Principles of Physiological Psychology, Wilhelm Wundt (1902) 
Translated by Edward Bradford Titchener (1904)

11) Jung’s Collected Works in English, Bollingen Foundation in New York and Routledge and Kegan Paul in London.

12) Experiences in Groups, W. R. Bion,  (London 1980) Introduction, pp 5-6                  13) The Shaping Of Psychiatry By War (1945) Rawlings Ress John. P 70                    14) Family Therapy in Clinical Practice (pages 420 – 421) Murray Bowen, (1977)           15) Anna Freud: A Biography, Young-Bruehl, Elizabeth, (1988).                                    16) Natural Experiments of History, 2011 Jared Diamond, James A. Robinson

17 Fischhoff, Slovic and Lichtenstein (1977) gave subjects a general knowledge test and then asked them how sure they were of their answer. Subjects reported being 100% sure when they were actually only 70%-80% correct.

Web References:

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/c/charles_darwin.html

[1]http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/wilhelm_wundt.html

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/i/ivan_pavlov.html

http://www.searchquotes.com/quotes/author/B_F_Skinner/

http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/jung.htm

http://www.thebowencenter.org/miva/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=TBC&Category_Code=BKIS

http://www.ineedmotivation.com/blog/2008/11/25-thoughtful-quotes-from-carl-jung/

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[1] http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/wilhelm_wundt.html

[2] Principles of Physiological Psychology, Wilhelm Wundt (1902) 
Translated by Edward Bradford Titchener (1904)

[3] From the introduction to William James’s Pragmatism by Bruce Kuklic

[4] Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, tr. James Strachey, Avon, N.Y. 1965. p.296.

[5] Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, tr. James Strachey, Avon, N.Y. 1965. p.298.

[6] http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/jung.htm

[7] http://www.thebowencenter.org/miva/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=TBC&Category_Code=BKIS

[8] http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/i/ivan_pavlov.html

[9] http://www.searchquotes.com/quotes/author/B_F_Skinner/

[10] W. R. Bion, Experiences in Groups (London 1980) Introduction, pp 5-6

[11]The Shaping Of Psychiatry By War (1945) Rawlings Ress John. P 70

[12] Murray Bowen, Family Therapy in Clinical Practice (pages 420 – 421)

[13] Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth (1988). Anna Freud: A Biography.

[14] Natural Experiments of History, 2011 Jared Diamond, James A. Robinson

[15] The Triune Brain in Evolution: Role of Paleocerebral Functions, Paul D. MacLean, 1990, Springer.

[16] Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, 2005, Jared Dimond

[17] Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, Antonio Damasio, 1994

[18] Fischhoff, Slovic and Lichtenstein (1977) gave subjects a general knowledge test and then asked them how sure they were of their answer. Subjects reported being 100% sure when they were actually only 70%-80% correct.

[19] Daniel Kahneman, psychologist and Nobel laureate, notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making, behavioral economics and hedonic psychology.

 

 

 

Temptations, Incentives and Self-Regulation

On a day when the stock market falls 429 points, how many people are able to self regulate?  Last week we rallied as much as today’s market fell. But who cares about self-regulating when markets are rising?  In the midst of these mood swings it helped to self regulate. One way – reading and thinking more broadly about the nature of capitalism and the complexity of the market.  Some say we, who believe in capitalism, are trying to find our place in a turbulent world. If so hopefully this book might make fishing for more knowledge a great deal more provocative.

Alfred Rappaport in his new book, Saving Capitalism From Short-Termism: How to Build Long-Term Value and Take Back Our Financial Future, takes a look at what happens when economic common sense is eroded, principles forgotten and decisions driven by incentives. I found myself cheering as Rappaport used his analytic prowess to penetrate the nature of these overlapping factors, pointing to how vulnerable we humans are to the temptation to achieve quick results in social systems. He would like to realign incentives to refocus on better outcomes for society and suggests thoughtful ways to understand and alter structural problems, which currently reward investors for short-termism.  Without deep understanding of the downside of the focus on quick results, there is little hope that a consensus can be built to alter policies and nudge people towards more rational behavior. This is not a small problem.

Recall when Alan Greenspan, an intellectual powerhouse, confessed to Congress and the American people that his model for managing the economy was broken. “Badgered by lawmakers, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan denied the nation’s economic crisis was his fault on Thursday but conceded the meltdown had revealed a flaw in a lifetime of economic thinking and left him in a ‘state of shocked disbelief’.”  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27335454/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/t/greenspan-admits-mistake-helped-crisis/#.TniYbU8eGGo.

Obviously no one has found a new model for managing the economy, but Rappaport makes a solid case for refocusing on feedback loops and the nature of our interlinked system to understand what is plaguing our ailing capitalist world. He highlights the importance of principled behavior and suggests that among other problems, short term trading has spawned a multitude of unintended consequences that are not trivial.  High frequency trading still accounts for roughly 50 percent of all transactions in the United States. The way incentives work for investing capital via the market is to drive management focus to the short term. Jobs are at stake and careers are damaged if short-term (e.g., quarterly, or even annual) results are not met. In both corporate America and on Wall Street, today’s profits matter and the long term focus on compounding capital by investing in great companies has become old fashioned.

This short-termism has crept into all of our lives during the last credit rampage. Many ordinary people found it impossible to self regulate and resist the temptation of easy money. It is not so far off to consider the current problems plaguing capitalism to be a problem of self-regulation, occurring at many levels.

The question, if Rappaport’s points are valid, is how many will be willing to alter their behavior to address the ways that businesses, boards, investors and consumers behave? And finally if they do alter their behavior, how will we the investors, know which companies are self-regulating? For even if we can find solid ways to alter the impact of short-term incentive driven behavior, we also have to consider if such a long-term focus will lead to investment successClearly, expectations and results vary from time to time and it is rare to find those with the skills needed to achieve investment success over any long-term period. Some of the problem has to do with how long it takes an economy, a company, or even a family to recover from downward spirals. The pressures and expectations for short-term results can create dysfunction in many kinds of social systems from the stock market to the family.

In addition, even if the incentives encourage thoughtful investments with companies that have incentives aligned for longer-term performance, markets will still misprice stocks providing opportunities and traps. In an earlier book, Expectations Investing, Rappaport and Michael J. Mauboussin, considered ways to explain the gap between how the stock market prices businesses and the intrinsic value for those businesses.

Investing success requires more than seeing clearly how incentives drive behavior. Rappaport also notes that luck itself may produce what might look like investment success over the short term.  He makes the case that differentiating skill from luck is crucial in measuring investment outcomes. One take away is that investors may be taking unknown risks and heading over a long term cliff when they follow the short-term and/or lucky investors.

Markets are almost impossible to predict so discovering which companies will be worthwhile investment vehicles is a challenge that few have been successful at over the long term. For example, only a small percentage of mutual funds beat their benchmarks over the long haul. These few investors find ways to identify companies that are able to return capital to investors despite the surrounding economic conditions. What is their secret? What do these investors look for? Or are they guided by principles similar to the ones that Rappaport identifies? Would it be possible to develop a computerized sorting mechanism that could identify the risks he notes along with the surrounding changes in the economy?

Rappaport’s common sense, principle-driven ideas are, as of now, left up to individuals to implement in their investing or their business. We as investors have to find ways to identify these principle driven companies and take a guess at how the pressures in society will impact investments. Is it possible that if more of these indicators were easily identifiable that we too as investors could drive change in corporate behavior?

Currently, creating this kind of change is slow. It takes a long time for one company or mutual fund at a time to see how poor the outcomes are when the incentives of their own firms or the firms they invest in, or indeed the economic conditions for the market place are signaling warnings or just going in the wrong direction. Perhaps large-scale change can take place but I would hazard a guess that it will take a significant number of people to become more aware of how short-termism is a perceptual bias leading to emotional blindness.

Rappaport’s position seems to be that those who are aware of these incentive-based traps can make more rational choices. His analysis further clarifies how the financial system has become a biased betting machine not an investing machine. Short term investors/traders reward companies for making the “accounting” look good for this quarter, often sacrificing the future by cutting research or jobs.

As John Bogle notes in his foreword to the book, “When Wall Street’s role of providing funding for the most promising projects… takes a back seat to countless waves of trading activity, we have to be concerned about whether the best interest of our society are being served.” Rappaport makes the case that the faith of investors has been betrayed and that their voices are barely heard as short term, irrational thinking sways the herd.

Capitalism will always face shortsighted traders with sharp knives. However by clarifying the measurements of financial statements, (cash flow, bonuses for managers, insider buying or selling, options and expirations, amount of debt carried forward, these and other measurements may make it possible to tie the tenure and rewards of company officers, and board members, to long term performance. Can clarifying important linkages between incentives and performance keep short-term traders from undercutting the stock price of the more solid and transparent companies?  Is it significant to focus on returning value to shareholders in the age of the quick short?

Rappaport has confidence that the problems that bedevil capitalism are not found in the cognitive limits of decision makers but rather from the use and abuse of incentives. His hope is that, “if we change incentives, in the above mentioned areas, we should expect a change in behavior.”

My concern is that we need more clarity and focus on the corporate and or Wall Street people who are willing to change towards a longer-term perspective. It is a difficult discipline for mutual fund and other financial managers and corporate leaders to shun a short-term orientation and return to a long-term focus, when short-term traders can undercut the future of their companies. As long as the short-term music continues to play, in this game of musical chairs, who will find a seat for the long term? Will understanding the feedback loops driving Mr. Market allow us to grasp a long term out look sustaining our companies and markets?

Rappaport notes that from the nineteen-twenties on, managers were enabled, by “diffuse and mostly passive investors” to maintain high degrees of autonomy, along with limited accountability. This historical trajectory, along with habit, makes it harder to self regulate and change the incentive driven relationship between investors and managers. Clearly incentive-driven behavior is based in our evolutionary roots, where we see the winner takes all strategy as highly influential in the competition for mates and resources.

People are highly influenced to win through the brain’s reward system. A study by Georgio Coricelli appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,  measured activity in the regions of the brain associated with rewards and with social reasoning while participants in the study entered  lotteries. The researchers found that the striatum, a part of the brain associated with rewards, showed higher activity when a participant beat a peer in the lottery, as opposed to when the participant won while alone. The medial prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain associated with social reasoning, was more activated as well. Those participants who won in a social setting also tended to engage in more risky and competitive behavior in subsequent lotteries. These findings suggest that the brain is equipped with the ability to detect and encode social signals, make social signals salient, and then, use these signals to optimize future

behavior.  As Coricelli explained, in private environments, losing can more easily be life-threatening. With no social support network in place, a bad gamble can spell doom. [1]

 

The gambler is driven by an automatic preference to win, despite risks, when in social groups. Of course this can lead to increasing risky behavior and poor outcomes. Will being aware of these dynamics help us to decide when to risk and when to cooperate and perhaps even let others win?

Both family and economic systems are driven by mechanisms that are out of awareness. The increasing anxiety in society, the competition for declining resources, and threats of all kinds, drive short-term behavior. To the degree that social systems, and the individuals in them and leading them, have an alerting mechanism about when they are following short-term incentive prizes, they may be able to think more clearly and function with more stability and principle-driven behavior during anxious times.

Short-term thinking leads to behavior that sabotages families too. We hear short-termism threaten to dominate in such statements as: “Why can’t I stay out with my friends,” “Everyone is doing it”, “I need a drink,” “You make me mad” and “All this is your fault.” Just as parents need to self regulate during times of great pressure so too our leaders have to understand which of their behaviors lead to failure, especially in the longer term.

Social research backs Rappaport, making the point that the wiring of the brain is what makes us vulnerable to risky behavior in social settings.  Human nature itself is tilted to reward people who take risks, the end result being big organizations and capitalism itself failing to rationally use rewards to incentivize productive behavior.

It may be that just as in a family, where one person has to separate from the anxiety-driven behavior of the group, leaders in one company after another will have to step up to demonstrate that they are willing to reorganize their accounting methods and to demonstrate more clearly to investors the power of cash flow analysis.  Perhaps investors will be more interested in looking at the accounting methods and the principles of corporate officers and board members.  And perhaps mutual funds’ investment criteria will include rigorous cash flow analysis and analysis of the extent to which the companies they invest in are led by principle-driven boards and corporate leaders.

Will changing the incentives and behaviors of corporate leaders result in more viable organizations and a more adaptable society? Will expectations for investors be on solid footing with better analytic skills devoted to the measurements? Will this allow people to make long-term investments and thereby compete with short-term traders looking to make an even faster buck?

Humans have the ability to self regulate and to some extent control emotionally driven short-term thinking and action.  But not all individuals are able to control reactivity.  Rappaport’s book notes that controlling the rush to “short termism” will give capitalism a new life.  The bottom line is that investors have to be able to see the reasons for self-regulating as they consider the role of incentives in driving behavior.  Those systems driven by short-term incentives will have a different, and less positive outcome than organizations run with a more long-term focus.

Rappaport follows the money, warning us of the long-term problems when responsibility is lost in a rush to collect the short-term (trading) incentives rather than follow the principles of sound investing.  It does take time to discover how incentives drive behavior and can corrupt both companies and people. But this is a necessary discipline for investors to undertake.

Investors who read this book will have a different take on the “tells” of mutual funds, companies, and managers plus ways to support capitalism itself.  People will want to read this book to know how to clarify their own thinking about human behavior and how they go about placing their bets on the various forms of investment vehicles while understanding the vulnerability of capitalism.

Andrea Schara

[1] “Medial Prefrontal Cortex and Striatum Mediate the Influence of Social Comparison on the Decision Process” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, viewed September 7, 2011

Read more at Suite101: Research Explains Why People Give in to Peer Pressure | Suite101.com http://bob-yirka.suite101.com/research-explains-why-people-give-in-to-peer-pressure-a387826#ixzz1XNzHl3dq

 

Observing and Learning From Stories

Experience is not what happens to a man;

It is what a man does with what happens to him.

                                                                Aldous Huxley

 

Our brains are influenced by bias.  We know how hard it is to see new things accurately because of our automatic “blinders”.  But, as it turns out, our brains have a compensating mechanism:  our brains are shaped to learn from stories. Stories are universal.  They capture our attention and teach us.  When you begin the process of building your Mindful Compass, you will use your own story to show as positively as possible, how you understand relationships, even during your childhood.  Such personal stories, thoughtfully written can influence your mental heath.[1]. (Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change by Timothy D. Wilson Sep 8, 2011).  In addition, stories help us reflect on how social systems work and may give us ideas on how we can alter our participation in them. Reflection deepens our knowledge base.

 

Listening to stories makes it possible to think for self.  You are turning things over in your own mind.  You are not doing it for anyone else. If you do it well you derive patterns from stories that help you to see and to be more aware of relationship traps and how principles are useful during difficult times.  This is completely different from someone telling you that “these are the eight steps to becoming a great leader”, which you can memorize and spout back for Monday’s test.

 

Reflection, in the moment, allows us to manage our feelings.  Let’s say you are mad because someone taunted you, but instead of feeling and then acting you reflect and consider your past.  It is easier to gain control when you see this moment is built onto many other memories. Once you recall how your sister taunted you, and that the person taunting you now is not your sister, managing your feelings becomes easier.  You have taken the time to learn from your life story.  This makes it possible for you to identify your sensitivities, strengths and values.  History is a guide to seeing when we fall into traps or are on automatic pilot.  Being mindful allows us to see the system around us, almost in slow motion. This gives us time to adjust our actions and reactions.

 

I am sure some will still ask, is this really so important? And what about when my family stories are not very accurate? Can stories really be useful in understanding social systems?  What have stories taught us over the ages?

 

First, there is a long tradition of stories in human culture.  Stories have been used through the ages to convey lessons. There is also evidence that stories are appealing and fit well with the way our brains developed.  There is a natural process of emergence, of defining a self, for each person. It is far easier to see this unfolding of one’s essence in other forms of life, as when a flower grows.  This flower grows in Maui, reminding us of the beauty of growth. But is there a way to see ourselves and to see others better to help us with the pains of growth?

 

From the Greeks to Alice

 

Let’s go back to the earliest recorded stories, the Greek myths, so we can see how stories helped people understand nature. The battles of the gods helped people understand the importance of social standing among one’s peers, to see and fear jealousy, to know about revenge and to see what happens when one decides to undertake a quest. In addition the Greeks told us stories that explained the changing seasons.

 

 

 

These fictional stories presented the Greek people with an entertaining, cognitive map that explained in a simple way why the seasons changed.  The stories may not have accurately explained the reason for the changing seasons, but they did help people calm down and prepare for changes in the weather. And they were accurate enough to give future scientists something to build on.

 

 

 

Bit by bit, science threw out the subjective part of the story and saved the testable, repeatable facts.  So now we know that every six months, winter will come.   But to feel winter, to taste fresh falling snow, to smell the clean air, to enjoy the thrill of sledding down a hill, to enjoy the warmth of a fire, that is all subjective.  Stories often take us on an enjoyable journey while we learn the facts.

 

 

 

These kinds of old stories often gave our ancestors guidelines for how to live. Be wary of false pride. Be thrifty. Take care of your neighbor. Seek wisdom. Many of these take away points are still useful.  So we know that values are transmitted in stories and still hold as important and useful over time.

 

 

 

We also learn from the characters in our more modern day stories like Alice, in her story, Alice in Wonderland.   She tells us about her journey and gives us insights into the strangeness of life.  Happily her adventure entertains, warns and does not really scare us. With Alice, we fall down the rabbit hole, meet various characters, and observe how she relates to them. She must stare down the wicked Queen to emerge as solid self and she does.  By identifying with Alice, we too are encouraged to withstand difficulty while learning, even in the midst of chaos and confusion.  Alice is a fictional character who makes us smile and gives us hope that in the search for who we are and how we can get to where we want to be, the smiling Cheshire Cat will be on our side.

 

 

 

Much of what we learn in telling out own story reduces fear and negative stories about others.  Consider that without knowledge people react negatively to even frogs, but with knowledge we learn frogs have a fascinating history and might even be good to eat.

“ Frogs are symbolic of re-creation, and keepers of the secrets of transformations. The Olmec tribes created images of a toad god of rebirth, eating its own skin. It is reborn by consuming itself, caught in a cycle of death and rebirth, like people, and like the natural world itself. In many ancient Chinese tales and legends, the toad is a trickster and a magician, a master of escapes and spells. But he is also the keeper of the real, powerful secrets of the world, such as the secret of immortality. Many legends involve a wandering wise man called Liu Hai and his three-legged toad companion Ch’an Chu. The toad knows the secret of eternal life, and for his friendship reveals the secret to the wise man. In Japan a similar legend involves the Gama-Sennin, also known as Kosensei, a wise old man with a hunched body and a warty face. Kosensei wanders the land with his toad companion, who teaches him the secret powers of herbs, including the secret of immortality.  Interestingly, many of these Asian tales refer to the secret of immortality as a fungus growing from the toad’s forehead. It has been suggested that this may be a link to the many shamanistic traditions of the Americas, where hallucinogenic compounds derived from frogs and toads are used for religious rituals of communion with the spirit world and self-transcendence.” (http://www.exploratorium.edu/frogs/folklore/folklore_2.html)

Solving problems is a big deal.  In his book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998), E.O. Wilson notes that stories can help us solve problems. His hypothesis is that the universal human disposition for art, religion and stories functions to allow the brain to cut loose from rigid programmed instinctual behaviors. He gives us the following important insight into the function of stories as the brain copes with the challenges, uncertainty and confusion that come with confronting problems. Stories work, because they are useful.

 

“The human needed to ritualize and express through magic the abundance of the environment, the power of solidarity, and other forces which mattered the most to survival and reproduction.”

Stories are an art form, allowing us to communicate all at once, many levels of knowledge. Forces are understood in a simulated reality. We infer profound knowledge from stories. Stories create mental models that enable us to see new ways to solve complex and emotionally disturbing problems.

 

Harvard professor Steven Pinker, author of The Language Instinct, Words and Rules, talks about stories as mental models. Now there is a new field, evolutionary psychology, which David Buss explores in his book, Evolution: The New Science of the Mind.  It considers how evolutionary principles shaped the mind, allowing for the adaptive function of imagination, including stories.

 

On the psychological level, an individual’s life story, as reported by Annie Murphy Paul in her book The Cult of Personality, is far more reliable than any of the many more popular personality tests. One’s life story is the best predictor  of what the future might bring for an individual. Plus, there is the stunning finding that there is a positive relationship between the coherence of one’s story and one’s psychological well-being.

 

The lives of spiritual teachers such as Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammad, Mother Theresa and others, demonstrate the importance of principles in developing one’s Mindful Compass. Look at the lives of these people and you will see that their values were matched by their actions. And the principles that are communicated in their life stories continue to be used for inspiration and guidance.

 

Family systems therapists encourage individuals to rebuild relationships within their family and thereby have a better story to tell.  Since relationship changes are possible, then of course your dreams and aspirations will change as you better understand your life story. The more resilient and flexible you are the more adaptive your Mindful Compass will be because it holds the knowledge base you are building.

 

Are Your Ready to Write Your Personal Stories:

 

A good starting point to help you see how relationships have influenced your leadership skills is to look at your relationships with five people who played significant roles in your life. (You do not have to start with your family, although you can if you want to.) Who deeply and positively influenced you? Growth does not happen in a vacuum, it happens in the middle of significant relationships within a social system.

 

Understanding how to improve your functioning in a social system does not require you to be a political scientist, but it does ask that you be more aware of the way you think about and react to the people in your work, family, recreational and other environments.

 

However, it is the nature of social systems and our brain to blind us to the wired nature of these very same social systems. But for those of you who wish to have more control over your internal guidance systems, and thus an enhanced leadership position within your group, identifying five people who have influenced you is a celebration of your individual wisdom.

 

In your relationships with these five people you may have been dealing with a difficult challenge, an opportunity, or you may simply have been negotiating your particular role or place within a system. It does not matter what the events were, only that they were important to you and caused you to change in some way.

 

After you identify these five people who have been important to you in your life, write a brief summary/story of each of the events involving them. (If you want to skip ahead a few pages, you’ll find helpful hints on how to do this and suggestions about how to get started.)

 

What you learn from your stories will show you how to state your intentions, beliefs and goals without high emotionality, making it less likely that you will be sideswiped by emotional ambushes.

 

The goal is for you to be a leader who is not limited by your past. Instead, you will be able to build on the knowledge that comes from understanding your part in the charged interactions of everyday life that occur within any wired system.

 

There’s another bonus: Leaders know that people are looking for their hot buttons. Wouldn’t it be great to have a mute on your hot buttons? You will: It’s called disciplined self-knowledge.

 

Understanding how your strengths and weaknesses developed from interacting with various people in your life is the foundation for your future growth. Remember that the periods of fruitful growth (times when you were able to advance your goals or ideas) and the times of necessary retreat (when you felt overwhelmed by the odds against you) are equally significant. Who were the important people in your life who made a significant difference at those times? Write their names in the box below. (This is, after all, your book.)

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

Every name will connect you to a story.  The story may be about something you heard or saw or something that someone said or did that affected you in a positive way that made a significant difference in your life. It may have been a parent, a teacher, a friend or even an enemy who (perhaps unwittingly) taught you to see, think or act differently. Little by little, as you tell yourself these stories, you will be describing the emotional forces that influenced you then and continue to influence you today.

 

One way to begin retracing your emergence as a leader is to pick any conflict in which you remember making a breakthrough change in your way of dealing with people. Remember, it’s not always what happened to you that is important, but how you responded that makes the difference. Whatever the experience, reflection and awareness are the keys to profiting from it.

 

If you find this task somewhat daunting, encourage yourself by remembering that once you have formulated your stories about the five important people in your life, and have seen afresh how you reacted to important others during times of challenge and growth, you will have a better idea of how you became who you are today. You will see how those individuals and your interactions with them helped shape the way you react to events now. This newly heightened knowledge of yourself will enable you to make any needed changes as you begin to rely more on your personal and proven strengths.

 

You may be thinking, “So what? I have thought about these stories and these people millions of times.” If so, consider Schopenhauer’s words: “Thus the task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen, but to think what nobody yet has thought about that which everybody sees.”

 

One example: Five Essential Elements in My Life Story

 

I have distilled the components of a life story to five essential elements, phrased as questions, to help you write your own stories, and I’ve given examples from my own life to help you get the gist.

 

1.  Was there confusion or conflict that led you into a relationship with someone who became important to you?

 

• When I was sent away to boarding school, I was at first confused but was then befriended by a nun, Sister Mary de Sales, who saw that I had the potential to be a good athlete. She came into my room one morning and said she had a dream that I was going to be the best athlete in the school. I asked her how she knew and she said she had seen me playing kickball the night before. I asked her what I had to do to become the best athlete and she told me.

 

2.  How did this relationship help you to build on your strengths (and perhaps decrease your annoyance with your own foibles)?

 

• Sister Mary de Sales actually played kickball with me. She helped me laugh at my shortcomings (especially spelling and grammar) and encouraged my strengths (athletics and humor) to persevere.

 

3. How did this person enable or encourage your desire to change for the better?

 

• Sister Mary de Sales was the faculty representative to the athletics department on campus. She came to all the games and gave me realistic feedback on my performance.

 

4. Were you able to incorporate your new behavior into a leadership position in your group?

• Sister Mary De Sales’ belief in me made it easier to go early to practice and stay late. This increased my ability to perform well on the field. Also, because she was a prominent person on campus, my peers noticed her encouragement and belief in me. This probably helped my standing and may have influenced people to elect me president of the athletic association.

 

5. Was there any negative kickback from the group or from the relationship system as a result of your new position?

 

• In this case, there was no reaction that I knew about. Some of the kids teased me about being a teacher’s pet. But overall, the risk of being teased vs. the training I received made me think being teacher’s pet was a positive thing.

Sister Mary De Sales and Andrea at my Georgetown Visitations 50th High School Reunion 2010.

 

Managing Emotional Reactivity

Although my story about Sister Mary de Sales is told without a great deal of emotionality, this relationship made a significant difference in how I was able to perform throughout my life. I saw the valuable impact that one person can have on another’s life. It is very possible that this experience enabled me to see the importance of choosing a profession, family therapy, which would allow me to have a similar influence on the lives of other people.

 

If I had chosen a more difficult relationship to use as an example, maybe with my mother, father or brothers, one that revealed adventures and disasters before the age of separation from my nuclear family, the story would very likely have contained both more emotion and more meaning.  But anyone thinking about these sorts of stories, even the simplest, most straightforward stories, needs to understand that grasping their meaning takes time. It takes time to integrate any emotional experience into a positive way of thinking.  To see the ups and downs of life as an adventure is a long-term advantage to our health. Each emotionally important story represents the tip of an iceberg of knowledge, and it takes effort to clarify the deep significance.

 

Deep Reflection on our Reactions to Life

I’ll add just one other’s person’s thoughts about stories and their significance before you start writing. Robert McKee, winner of 18 Academy Awards, writes in his book Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting that, “Experience is overrated for a writer. … For most writers, the knowledge they gain from reading and study equals or outweighs experience, especially if that experience goes unexamined. Self-knowledge is the key—life plus deep reflection on our reactions to life.” McKee encourages us to write our stories “around a perception of what is worth living for, what is worth dying for, what is foolish to pursue, the meaning of justice, truth—the essential values.”

 

So go for it!  Write your stories as best you can, and have some fun doing it. Then keep them in mind as you read the rest of this chapter.  Once you have written and thought about your stories, you can move on to the next level of challenge. Ask yourself if these vignettes are good enough to present to the people who were the players in them. Are you curious to know if these people like your memories? Do you wonder how they might react to them? Do you think they remember the events your stories depict the same way you do? Or will their memories be different? By now you probably realize that the others involved will not remember your stories just as you do, and that their feelings about them will differ from yours.

 

So perhaps you hesitate, and with good reason. Checking in with these people to find the relationship “facts” can put you in the middle of a storm as each of you sorts out divergent memories. However, despite the emotional cost, talking to the other people involved in your stories is the best way to see how factual your own memories are.  This in turn can give you valuable insight into just how much you have been or are being influenced by other people’s viewpoints. (And by now you know this is important information about how you function as a leader in any social system.)

 

This is not an easy assignment. When you go in search of the facts you will be stepping out of character, stepping off Shakespeare’s stage, so to speak, and not performing your usual, expected role. This can upset the others involved and provoke a strong response from them. When that happens you can really feel what it is like to be in a social system. Do you want to react or not?

 

If your goal is to grow, then you do not want to react by climbing back on Shakespeare’s stage and resuming your old role. Whatever responses you get to your story, be they big or small, your job is to remain as neutral and calm as possible. The goal is to try to be emotionally separate (remember East on your Mindful Compass) as you explore the dimensions of the social system you see emerging around you.

 

If you have a relationship with someone that goes back in time, you already know that there are expected ways of relating. Often a dominance order has been established. This is true in friendships as well as in family and work situations. If, in the process of telling your story and experiencing the other person’s reactions, you can keep from reacting by re-creating the old relationship dynamic, you will know at a cellular level that you have created a healthy space between yourself and others, a space from which you can observe and think and plan ahead.

 

The Love Lock

It is this new space that can help reduce the influence of automatic systems alignments, or what I like to call the force of the “Love Lock.”  Getting in step with others whom you know, love and appreciate, or perhaps even need, is automatic. It is dynamic, yet it can be dangerous because it blinds you to what is really going on.

 

Are you a leader who can maintain a detached, non anxious and objective stance while gathering information and interacting with others in a sometimes highly charged atmosphere? If so, you have an extremely valuable skill. There are many leaders who can’t do this, and who are not even interested in trying. Leaders who have trouble maintaining a separate self that is strong enough to deal with others who have differing opinions tend to create corporate “yes” cultures. Surrounded by yes-people, these leaders lose all ability to deal with dissent, which in turn makes it almost impossible for them to take in new or contradictory information. This is one way in which leaders become isolated and find themselves in serious trouble. Just recall Enron, where the lack of information that diverged from the party line weakened the system and surely helped bring it crashing down.  (And the people who were raising the warning flags were systematically ignored or “punished” for not being team players.)

 

Separating Fact and Fantasy

It can be hard to reflect about our past to say nothing of ourselves, but perhaps a new trend is developing. Perhaps understanding how we gain our strengths is going to become commonplace. It may be that all good to great leaders will know and be able to easily tell us, short versions of their stories. In fact, we can find examples of that today.

 

For example, in the July 2, 2006, issue of The New York Times, I saw a story titled “Descendent of Strong Women.” In the article, Sharon L. Allen, Chairman of Deloitte & Touche until recently, recounted the strengths in her early family relationships. Her great-grandmother was one of the first women in the Idaho State Legislature. No one expected Sharon Allen to become the Chairman of an $8 billion organization, but she knew that her nightly walks with her Dad to check out the crops on the family farm had given her first-hand knowledge of the value of attention to detail and how hard a person must work to make things turn out right. Her parents always stressed the importance of independence, saying she could do anything she set her mind to do. So there it was, an entertaining personal story of how one woman used well her family-gained strengths.

 

Stories can be a quick way to look at our degree of factual orientation. Can we find evidence supporting the so-called facts in our or others’ stories, or is the “information” suspect? In Sharon Allen’s story the fact is that she discovered a link between her life and the history of female leaders in her family. We don’t know exactly what happened on her walks with her Dad, although her current life points to something positive. But we can find out the facts of her great-grandmother’s life as a political leader.

 

We all tend to either idealize or to be overly negative about our relationships with our near and dear.] So be prepared: As you write your family stories, you may find that some of what you are writing is more fantasy than fact. This discovery is not necessarily a bad thing, however. There is nothing better that becoming more accepting of our selves and of others as we really are, something the truth can help us do. Another advantage to listening to our own and others stories is that the soft spots in our lives can translate into greater empathy. This is important because legitimate leaders have the dual challenge of being clear about who they are, while remaining open and somewhat empathetic about their own and others’ foibles.

 

The Comfort of Blinders

Most people would agree that it is our thinking that directs each of us because our thinking determines our actions, which in turn give life to our deeply held beliefs and goals. As I noted earlier, goals can become reality only in the context of a social system. Social systems are made up of complicated, entangled, wired relationships. Once you define a goal and begin taking steps to accomplish that goal in relationship to others and within social systems, you will begin to discover (whether you want to or not) just how provocatively social systems are organized.

 

For one thing, you will encounter resistance to your goals and ideas, (“South” on your Mindful Compass). I sometimes kid people, saying, “You don’t have to look at the resistance. You can put on those old-fashioned relationship blinders any time you feel like it. But if you want to learn in order to create a better future, just peek out from those blinders once in a while to see what is really going on.”

 

Blinders, as I mentioned earlier, have a purpose and an advantage. Mother Nature gave them to us not only so that we could focus exclusively on that lion about to pounce, but also so that we would not have to be constantly looking for and trying to solve relationships problems. Blinders allow us to relax and let our so-called “unconscious mind” work on problems for a while. Many of yesterday’s problems are solved in the shower. It is funny but true, that while we are preoccupied with some other, more mundane task, our brains will solve difficult problems in surprising ways. That’s just how the mind works.

 

In the best of all possible worlds, we might put on these comfortable blinders as we attend to some automatic task, and then slowly take them off to assess the swirl of relationship activity going on in our social system. You can peek out and see the people around you knocking into one another, or assess the effects on someone you just accidentally ran over.

 

In the not-so-best of all possible worlds, we keep the blinders on too long or, even worse, never take them off. People who do this are pretend leaders, blind to the activity and events happening in the swirling social system. The seriously blind say, “People do not influence me,” or “They made me do it.” The more thoughtfully aware individuals are able to take the relationship blinders off, and see both the part they play in events and just how others influence them.

 

Social Influence: To Pay Attention or Not

One of my favorite social psychologists, Robert B. Caldini, described in 1984, the weapons of influence:  reciprocation, commitment and consistency, social proof, liking, authority and scarcity.[2] He encourages us to take a stand against those who seek to influence us by tricks. So read his books.  He gives us great examples of how our “free will” is eroded by the short cuts embedded in our brain.

 

We are all subject to undue influence and have no defense against it other than awareness of the ways our brains are subject to social influence. The togetherness force is powerful, relying on many social tricks.  (Come this way Alice, everyone else is going.  Try Facebook, you will  love it.)  But these and other social blinders are necessary.  We need shorts cuts: the food is over there; the jobs are available in that building.  But people can also use short cuts, like the “let’s all do it”, leading to spontaneous riots in our cities.   These kinds of short cuts, like following the crowd, enable us to react quickly and to narrow our focus.  We can act without thinking knowing others are with us.

 

Too much information can be a serious handicap in some situations, such as when your office building’s fire alarm is clanging, or when you have to spend some serious time balancing your checkbook. In those instances, you have to look only at the problem and block everything else out. Yet these sometimes comfortable and very functional blinders can also become a burden, especially when they keep us from noticing the clues to changes occurring in the systems in which we live and work.

 

The Force Is Inside the System

Getting back to that best of all possible worlds, it’s clear that, to accomplish your goals, you need to be able to adapt and alter your “blinder” status when conditions change. (And conditions change constantly in social systems.) You also need to know about the very real forces inside social systems that can limit or enhance your ability to accomplish your goals, depending on how well you are able to respond to them. (And that, of course, has a lot to do with your blinder status.) For example, the assignment of roles in a social group appears to be a function of deep and impersonal social forces.

 

Research suggests that many such unseen relationship forces and pressures are impersonal, but that the ways in which we respond to them become personal and are hard wired into our brains. Once we perceive a threat or even a need from the group, our automatic response system kicks in. This is not necessarily a good thing, since it might mean that we respond in anger or in fear, from an emotional base rather than from a rational look at our feelings and reactions. But someone who is paying attention, who has the blinders off and is therefore more aware, might be able to control the tendency to react automatically and instead think his or her way through or around such needs, threats or other social problems.

 

The well-documented fight-or-flight response gives us clues to the automatic nature of our primitive guidance system. Most of the time, we respond and react to the forces and events around us without much thought, just as we do in a fight-or-flight situation. Only when a crisis challenges this automatic way of responding do we have to stop and look and listen, and then often, if we have no compass, just hope that we make the right decision. Then later, some of us will be able to reflect on the experience and try to learn from what went right and what went wrong.

 

There are some general characteristics of the ways our brains have been sensitized to perceive the world around us. As I said earlier, we are cause-and-effect thinkers. We have great difficulty seeing how one thing is connected to another without making the one thing (or person) the cause of the other or the cause of the problem. But once you get beyond this limited perspective (blinders off), you can enter the world of systems thinking where small moves, like the wings of a butterfly, can make big changes.

 

Resistance, and Learning from Relationships

Whenever a leader introduces a new objective or goal to the group, some degree of resistance to that objective or goal is sure to occur. Something similar happens when a leader tries to tell his or her story. It’s almost inevitable that the other people who were “players” in that story will resist, or disagree with some fact, or part of it. So telling your story becomes an exercise in communicating your viewpoint, knowing full well that there are a lot of other viewpoints out there that are just as legitimate as yours.

 

Your memory of exactly what happened during any critical life event is not going to be the same as the memories of the other people involved. There are a few exceptions. No one argues with Mother Nature when she tells the story of how relationships influenced her position in the cosmos. “That’s just the way it is,” says Mother Nature. But for the rest of us, telling our story can be a workout or a discovery of our deeper passions, or both.

 

People learn so much in relationships that it seems unbelievable that we do not focus more attention on just how this “learning” takes place. Yes, personal learning is costly in terms of risks, and being open is never easy. But having the strength to share your story with others without being invested in gaining love and approval as a consequence is a good workout. You can do it only when you see it as a way to enable yourself or others to learn.

 

Thinking about how important relationships have been to you in your role as a leader (and in becoming a leader in the first place), and reading about other leaders who describe the significant difference that relationships have made in their lives, will, hopefully, help bring this kind of personal learning into clearer focus. The goal is to show how the details of a life can reveal a person’s level of awareness about relationship influences and, to some degree, predict the person’s ability to function well in the future. Stories allow people to build on their underlying strengths and even to learn from their weaknesses.

 

We know that one key to becoming a more successful leader is to gain awareness of the automatic forces occurring within our business (or political, academic or family) systems. This awareness allows a person to make decisions based on facts, not as a reaction to something happening or to pressure from within the system. You could even say that being a thoughtful leader is about strategy versus shooting from the hip.

 

The assumption here is that social (and leadership) skills emerge and improve almost serendipitously as a person begins to understand more about his or her life and the principles underlying the various social systems we all inhabit. We can take on this adventure at the personal or intellectual level. It does not matter where you begin or how you proceed.  It only matters that both these bodies of knowledge become more integrated and useful to you.

 

It is as clear as a bright summer day, or a beautiful sunset, that those of us who aspire to do better than meagerly survive must pay close attention to how we manage self in relationship systems. Social research is also clear that the more we know about what makes social systems tick, the greater the probability that we will be happier, more effective individuals in them. Knowledge does count. But this book is not about the wise controlling the less wise. It is about becoming wise through trial-and-error learning. It embraces the notion that there is more to a successful life than the luck of the genetic draw and the circumstances of our early lives. For those of you willing to act for self by learning about how you have managed or mismanaged relationships, there is a new opportunity knocking at your door.

 

 

I am very appreciative to Judy Ball, for her editing patience and expertise.

Andrea

 

References:

1)Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change by Timothy D. Wilson (Sep 8, 2011)

2) Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting,Robert McKee

 3) The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, 2002, Malcolm Gladwell

4) Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature and Literature, 2004, Joseph Carroll (2004)

5) The Cult of Personality Testing, 2005, Annie Murphy Paul

6) The Language Instinct, 1995, Steven Pinker

7) Family Therapy in Clinical Practice, 1977, Murray Bowen, M.D.

8)Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind, 2011, David Buss

9) Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, 1999, E.O. Wilson

10) Influence:  The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert B. Cialdini, PhD,

 

I am very appreciative to Judy Ball, for her editing patience and expertise.

Andrea

References:

1) Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, 1999, E.O. Wilson

 

2) The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, 2002, Malcolm Gladwell

3) Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature and Literature, 2004, Joseph Carroll (2004)

4) The Cult of Personality Testing, 2005, Annie Murphy Paul

5) The Language Instinc, 1995, Steven Pinker

7) Family Therapy in Clinical Practice, 1977, Murray Bowen, M.D.

8) Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind,  2011, David Buss

9)  Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change by Timothy D. Wilson (Hardcover - Sep 8, 2011)

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[1] Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change by Timothy D. Wilson (Hardcover - Sep 8, 2011)

[2] Influence:  The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert B. Cialdini, PhD,

Casey Anthony and Thinking for Self in an Emotional Storm

When a blind beetle crawls over the surface of a curved branch, it doesn’t notice that the track it has covered is indeed curved. 

I was lucky enough to notice what the beetle didn’t notice.         

– Einstein, in answer to his son Eduard’s question, why he is so famous. 1922

 

 

                     Photo by Isabelle Mauboussin, one of my granddaughters, at The Zen Farm  (http://www.thezenfarm.com/Zen_Farm/Zen_Farm.html)

 

One of the most difficult problems we humans face is how to understand complex problems and who and what to believe.

The recent Casey Anthony trial is a microcosm of the fear one can encounter in standing up for self under intense pressure from others.  One of the jurors is now in hiding and many others have reported being fearful for their safety.[1]  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2013371/Casey-Anthony-juror-60-quits-work-flees-town-fear-life.html

Little mention has been made of the fear that may have been generated in the room where the jurors were sequestered. Were these people prepared to stand up for self?  (You will find a list of the jurors and a short summary about each one at the end of this blog.)

People have reported that one or two jurors were willing to stay for the duration rather than give a guilty plea.  Did these jurors understand how to manage self in the intensity of this jury trial? We can imagine the psychological challenges that any individual might have been up against in formulating and communicating his or her understanding of the guilt or innocence of Casey Anthony.  Clearly there is a real cost to standing up for one’s beliefs in a small group.

No one knows what happened in that room. There were no video cameras or microphones to record the decision making process in the jury deliberation room but there were plenty of cameras outside the courtroom.

The truth is, we have all been pressured by others to make decisions that we don’t believe are the best.  And most of us have been fearful about standing up for self with others.   Perhaps we remember some decisions we’ve made under relationship pressure that weren’t very rational and may even have compromised our ethics.  It’s also true that it is hard for us to see how we pressure others for our own brand of truth.

Questions remain: 1) Could increasing emotionality in the media and the public have leaked onto the jurors?  2) Would a short phone call by a spouse to a juror communicate the public’s outrage generating fear in the juror?  3) If the world yells “guilty” are the jurors reacting as an oppositional child might by saying “innocent?” 4) Was there intense pressure in the jury room to fold and go along with the leaders in the jury itself?

There are many factors to consider about how people make decisions under conditions of uncertainty and high emotion.  Emotional pressure reduces our ability to know our own ideas and clearly express them.  People can make us nervous.  And there are no classes given to jurors or family members about how to recognize and deal with emotional pressure.

I have been on a jury. That trial lasted for three days.  There were intense opinions in the room and I had a feeling that I should go along with the loudest person.  My fellow jurors seemed to be run over by the judgments of others. I was alone. Most of the folks on the jury wanted a quick answer to the problems and were inclined to go along with the loudest person.  As one or two took up opposite viewpoints, the experience became something like an endless bickering with your spouse.

One has to be relationship smart to figure out rational positions in an emotional environment and be willing to stand alone when criticized.  How easy is it to select a jury of relationship smart, objective and observant people? Very probably all the people on the Casey Anthony jury were subject to great emotional pressure.

It would be interesting to know the degree to which people on juries are encouraged or even allowed to express different opinions.  Unfortunately the law does not allow such studies.   However, juries are groups of people and likely to function like most human groups.   People in the aggregate are much more similar than different. (Bursts, Albert-Laszio Barabasi)

There is research about how groups react to individuals in the group taking a different position.  And individuals can experience fear when standing up for their opinion against the emotional tide in the group. As Solomon Ashe noted in his conformity experiments, it’s far easier for individuals to go along with the group. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments, Asch, S. E. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity: A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological Monographs, 70 (Whole no. 416).

In addition research has shown that when individuals are assigned to a group, differences are lost.  Individual traits brought collectively to a jury generate a mean age, gender domination and mean intelligence that predisposes a jury to its collective personality, very much as the individual voices of a choir will combine to create a recognizable (read in, predictable) collective voice. The jury personality is determined specifically by its dominant individual traits, including as a conservative composition (strict legal constructionists), or a liberal composition (social engineers).  Simply put, a conservative jury will be more likely to convict if the only letter of the law was violated.  A liberal jury will be more likely to acquit if only the letter of the law was violated. http://blogs.discovery.com/criminal_report/2011/07/my-entry.html

 

Each group has some folks who are more thoughtful and some who react and advocate for a quick agreement or who even threaten others if they do not agree with them. The maturity of the jury, as in most families or groups, is heavily influenced by the maturity of the leader. A charismatic or overbearing individual can override others’ opinions while a weak leader may create confusion and rebellion. A mature leader will promote different opinions and give time and space for people to think carefully and promote an environment that respects differences.

In order to solve problems we have to be able to analyze them rationally, based on facts.  We have to separate fact from opinion within ourselves and between ourselves and others.  This is hard to do in any small group or in any family. Opinions are seen as a display of loyalty.  Are you for me or against me? Even the facts can be manipulated and create confusion in the minds of the listeners.

Focus on loyalty, or going along with others, can increase when facts are hard to ascertain, as in the Casey Anthony case.

Dueling experts lead to confusion as when prosecution expert said the word “chloroform” was searched for on a home computer 84 times. But the defense computer expert testified that it was a MySpace account that was searched for 84 times. Another problem, Caylee died from someone suffocating her with duct tape. Even though the jury was shown photos of Caylee’s skull with some duct tape attached, the fact that a meter reader testified that he actually picked up Caylee’s skull with his meter stick, can give a moment for pause. If the alleged crime scene was tampered with, how can the jury be sure that the duct tape was held exactly in place on Caylee’s skull for months, through storms and other environmental events?

http://blogs.discovery.com/criminal_report/2011/07/aphrodite-jones-reports-casey-anthony-trial-jury-d,.html

In more mature families and groups, diverse ideas and multiple points of view or opinions are encouraged.   In the mid range (between immaturity and maturity), differences are at least tolerated and people have some ability to think differently from others and to weigh the facts.

In less mature families and when people are under great stress, there is an almost psychotic need for “the others” to be similar to self.  This focus on sameness includes many details from the way people dress to the way they feel and think. As the perceived need for in-group loyalty rises, so too does the pressure to conform. Those who are different can be shunned or abused physically or psychologically.

There has been a great deal of research about how authority figures can over influence even “normal” individuals and groups, as we see in the ground breaking work of Stanley Milgram.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

The Milgram experiments from the early 1960′s are classic (but shocking) studies that demonstrated the “sheeple-ness” of people everywhere. In the experiments — which have been replicated numerous times across multiple cultures, races and age ranges — subjects willingly engaged in administering extremely painful electric shocks to other human beings for no reason other than the fact they were ordered to do so by an apparent authority figure. These studies have long demonstrated the “do what I’m told” mentality of approximately 70 percent of the population. Only 30 percent of the study subjects refused to torture fellow human beings when so ordered.http://www.naturalnews.com/025141.html#ixzz1Ru9VLate

If people are going along with others without question, it’s likely that they have little space, time or ability to access their own ideas or the independent reality of a situation. They are rushed and given no time or space to think.  Instead they feel deeply that they must fit in with the others. It is a deep feeling orientation that aligning self with others, as though there were no differences, is safer and better.  You can be pretty sure that the faster people agree, the less room there has been for any different thought.

Despite all the psychological evidence of the difficulty people experience in taking a thoughtful stand in relationships, there is no training for perspective jurors or even those contemplating marriage about how social pressure functions to diminish fact-finding, the consideration of alternative viewpoints and thoughtful problem-solving. Jurors are told to keep their own ideas intact, but they are not informed about the nature of social pressure in groups of one’s peers about what it takes to be a “self” when pressured by others.

Therefore it is up to each of us to know the difference between agreeing with someone based on principle and “going along” in an unprincipled, no-self way that almost guarantees a feeling of relief in the short term but perhaps regret later.   But maybe you will be lucky and in your small group someone will ask, are you sure of your decision? Have you had enough time to think it through?

Murray Bowen, MD called this tendency to go along with others fusion. I sometimes call it the problem of two heads on one body. One is my head and the other is the name of the person or people who are telling me what to do.   If I follow without my own thoughts, then I have two heads.

There are many behavior clues as to the degree of fusion. The following are a few I have seen and participated in:

1)    The degree to which one person is intimidated by another

2)    The overuse use of the word WE

3)    Telling others what they should or should not do

4)    Threatening people for not agreeing with you

5)    The lack of any “I” or self directed statements

6)    Blaming others, calling them names

7)    Telling or making up gossip about another person

8)    Making people feel ashamed of their ideas or talents

9)    Thinking you know what is best for others

                    Photo by  Madeline Mauboussin one of my granddaughters - at The Zen Farm  (http://www.thezenfarm.com/Zen_Farm/Zen_Farm.html)

 

 

Another more subtle aspect of fusion is when, in a strange/funny way, person “A” actually wants the Person “B” to control the situation to reduce Person “A’s” anxiety about taking responsibility for self.  Dr. Bowen referred to this as pinning someone in the “one up” position.

Oldest children are prone to take on others’ anxiety by doing things to make others more comfortable rather than promoting responsibility in each person.  Oldest are programmed to do for others, which can result in weakness in the others. Each sibling position has a broad profile with pluses and minuses. Of course sibling position is always impacted by the sibling position of parents and perhaps grandparents.  Each family has a unique view of the functional roles assigned to children.

This struggle for a leadership position occurs among children as well as adults.  Children are not helpless.  They too develop ways of managing others as a way to cope with fear. In general, in all groups some are programmed to control others, some to find someone to control them, and a few advocate for and encourage the differences that emerge.

Such dynamics become more intense in certain lines of every family, as some move towards more mature functioning and others towards more fusion in thinking and less mature functioning.

Often in groups, it is the immature leader that tends to emerge first.   The Tavistock studies of the leaderless group by W.R Bion were the basis on which officers were selected during WWII in England.  A small group was gathered and an observer was sent in to watch. No directions were given to the group. They were looking for officers to arise. Initially the complainers arose. “How come no one is telling us what to do?  Who cares…?”   Eventually a more mature leader would arise to organize the group to look for solutions. But this leader also had to be willing to take on the complainers respectfully.  http://www.tavinstitute.org/about/our_history.php

How would we know if the leaders in the jury room in the Casey Anthony trial were mature people or manipulators? We may never know, but in a recent interview, the jury foreman raised the question about the possibility that the father may have been involved in the killing and noted this was another reason they could not find Casey guilty.  Others had opportunity and perhaps motivation, he said.  You can see his interview with Greta Van Susteren.  http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/on-the-record/index.html#/v/1047958530001/jury-foreman-on-caseys-dad-there-was-suspicion-of-him/?playlist_id=86925

 

So if any of us want to be more prepared for our next encounter in any relationship it may pay off to consider the following ways that people manipulate others:

positive reinforcement - includes praise, superficial charm, superficial sympathy (crocodile tears), excessive apologizing; money, approval, gifts; attention, facial expressions such as a forced laugh or smile; public recognition.

negative reinforcement - includes nagging, yelling, the silent treatment, intimidation, threats, swearing,emotional blackmail, the guilt trap, sulking, crying, and playing the victim.

intermittent or partial reinforcement - Partial or intermittent negative reinforcement can create an effective climate of fear and doubt. Partial or intermittent positive reinforcement can encourage the victim to persist – for example in most forms of gambling, the gambler is likely to win now and again but still lose money overall.

punishment

traumatic one-trial learning - using verbal abuse, explosive anger, or other intimidating behavior to establish dominance or superiority; even one incident of such behavior can condition or train victims to avoid upsetting, confronting or contradicting the manipulator.

People are vulnerable to manipulation due to:

the “disease to please”

addiction to earning the approval and acceptance of others

Emotophobia (fear of negative emotion)

lack of assertiveness and ability to say no

blurry sense of identity (with soft personal boundaries)

low self-reliance

external locus of control

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_manipulation

Research using mock jurors has found there are psychological techniques aimed at inducing the jury to base its decision on extralegal factors, and to influence the jury toward an illogical assessment of the evidence.[2] https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/publications/Abstract.aspx?id=111740

Facts:

During the trial of Casey Anthony, the prosecution managed to establish what people already knew:

The skeletal remains found were those of Caylee and there was duct tape sticking to her skull;

Casey lied to the police about a number of things;

Casey denied murdering her daughter;

Casey was not a person of the highest character.

If Casey’s DNA had been found on the duct tape, that might have demonstrated a connection to the prosecution’s narrative, but, alas, they found nothing of the sort. One issue is what facts might have justified a conviction?  The second issue concerns the decision-making ability within groups

Anthony Juror: “I did not say she was innocent. If you cannot prove what crime was, you can’t determine the punishment.”  http://investigation.discovery.com/blogs/criminal-report/casey_anthony_full_coverage/files/caylee_anthony_files.html

 

As time goes by we will see more information about the psychological make up of the jurors.  Even without further evidence it would seem obvious that significant reforms could be made in jury selection and preparation.

Perhaps in a far away future, jurors could be made aware of the psychological pressures that they will face in becoming a part of a small social group.   This may be even more important for juries, like the one in the Anthony trial, that are sequestered for a long period of time.  Motivated individuals could make a three generational family diagram to consider their degree of vulnerability to going along with others in their own family, and consider this information as they participate in the jury and other groups.  These and other strategies might better enable individuals to deal with the tendency to go along, or dominate others, as these actions are clearly unthinking responses to social pressure, which have negative impacts on society and on the individuals involved.

Some might object saying that if this kind of deliberate education went on in jury selection we might not be judged by a group of our peers.  No such structural change for juries is likely to happen, therefore the question remains, how can each of us access our vulnerability to going along with others vs. standing up for self by making more rational decisions?

Being able to take think for self and think well seems a lost art.  We are surrounded by others clamoring for us to follow.  Facts are twisted to please the speaker or the audience.  We are armed only with dimly understood knowledge of psychological mechanisms.  Many of us are blind to the pressure to follow the more demanding and “primitive leaders.”  Behind all the clamoring is the sense that to survive problems in these complex times we must be better at decision-making.  As public retrospection occurs in the wake of the Casey Anthony trial, this could lead to rethinking very basic issues about psychological pressure in trials, organizations and perhaps even in families.

It is not easy to know how to be a self in a social system. We know that the wiliness and courage to be open with important others, to stay in contact with difficult people and to reflect on the past without blame and shame are both necessary to grow self.

It is possible that this highly publicized trial will lead to increasing awareness about social pressure. If this happens a few more people might become more aware of the importance to the functioning of any group to have a few be willing to risk saying what they think and believe and just hold on while others react.

If even a few individuals are more thoughtful and well defined in their daily interactions, they will influence others. When a few are willing to say where they stand without blaming, shaming or trying to manipulate others, the larger system benefits.   Society will always be dependent on individuals willing to manage increasing social pressure. One by one people do learn to navigate through the social jungle.

Many Thanks to Judy Ball for her thoughtful editing again and again…..

Andrea

The Jury 

Here’s what we know about Casey Anthony’s jury:[3] http://blogs.discovery.com/criminal_report/2011/05/casey-anthony-trial-juror-profiles.html

Juror 1 — The Counselor:  White, female, age 65, married, two children.   Retired nurse and volunteer counselor.  Death penalty stance: “I value life.   I also value the criminal justice system.”  Has smelled decomposing bodies.  Capable of understanding, relating to others the scientific evidence in trial, her communication skills and education qualify her as a strong candidate for jury foreperson.

Juror 2 — The IT Worker: Black male, mid-thirties, married, two children: a daughter, 4 and son, 9.   Like defendant, Casey Anthony, juror’s mother was a single mom.  “My impression was that, ‘yes, I thought she did it.’ … If I had to return a verdict, I would say ‘not guilty’ right now.”  Death penalty stance:  Does not believe in the death penalty.  “God is the one that makes the final judgment.”

Juror 3 — The Weaver:  White, female, age 32, single, youngest of five children.  Nursing student, St. Petersburg College.  Crafty:  Hobby is weaving; works in fiber and is a member of a weavers’ guild.   Her pet dog is a rat terrier.  Said she has little knowledge of and is not following the case.  “I know my ignorance works in my favor at this point!”  Admitted she wanted to be on the jury.  On a scale of 1 to 10, she rates the death penalty at “a three or a five.” 

Juror 4 — The Church Lady:  Black female, 40s, no children, lives alone. Unknown occupation.  Plays “Farmville” on Facebook.  “Most of the time, I play my computer games”  she notes. Quiet, unassuming, does not like to judge people by what other people say about them.  

Juror 5 — The Retired Nurse’s Aid: White, female, late 50s, three children.  Has 11th grade education.  Had a driving under the influence arrest in 1998.  Lives with boyfriend, a retired plumber.  Was a juror for a criminal trial case.   Does not own a computer.  Works in yard, goes to gym.  Death penalty stance:  “I guess I believe in the death penalty.  I’d have to know a lot of facts before I really considered it.”

Juror 6 — The Chef:  White male, 33, married, two children, ages 6 and 21 months.  Sells restaurant equipment and is in Orlando on business once a week.  Has University of Florida business degree and owns a cat.  Did not want to be on the jury.  Could vote for the death penalty; “If the law dictated it, I would be able to follow it.”

Juror 7 — The Lawyer’s Daughter:  White female, 41, divorced with no children.  Once a victim of home invasion, but physically uninjured.  Works as administrative assistance in juvenile justice welfare.  She has limited knowledge of the case, maintaining that she could vote to recommend the death penalty.  “It would be — gosh — a solemn decision, but it is an option under the law.”

Juror 8 — Verizon Service Representative:  White, female, 50s, married, two sons approximately Casey Anthony’s age (mid-twenties).  Father worked in law enforcement.  She would have no problem with the death penalty if warranted, provided she had heard “all the facts.”

Juror 9 — The Logger:  White male, 53, never married.  Semi-retired; moved to Florida 4 years ago from Indiana because he was “sick of snow.”  The caregiver for a stroke sufferer; he also does odd jobs.  Watches PBS and the History Channel.  He believes Casey Anthony’s “whole story” has not come out; holds no bias, supports the death penalty, and could vote to recommend it “in the proper situation.” 

Juror 10 — Verizon Retention Specialist: White male, 57, never married, no children.  When asked what he knows about the case, he said, “I really don’t know any details …” and that he does believe “… everyone is innocent until proven guilty.”  Disclosed that his sister and her boyfriend committed a violent crime against their father.  He regards the death penalty as a “necessary option.”

Juror 11 — The Teacher:  White male, 30s, unmarried.  A high school physical education and health teacher who believes Casey Anthony is guilty, who also relates the opinion in the teachers’ lounge is that Casey is guilty.   In his profession as an educator, says he “had to learn to listen to differing opinions,” and could put aside his leanings in order to fairly judge Casey Anthony.  States the death penalty is a “necessary option.”

Juror 12 — The Publix Cook:  White female, 60s, married to Publix supermarket employee, two children and one young grandchild.  Has very little knowledge of the case, although she initially followed it.  No cable TV; “not that into” newspapers or TV.  She does not own a computer.  Rating the death penalty as ten on a scale of one to ten, she would have no problem deciding on LWOP (Life without Opportunity for Parole) or the death penalty. 

 

 

 

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Be a Self or Be Swept Away: Regulators of Behavior in Social Systems

A special thanks to my grandson, Alex Mauboussin for asking me the question: “Was it Hitler or was it the circumstances that made Hitler the person he was?” Right after he asked this Osama bin Laden died. That made it more important to think deeply about such a question. How do you talk to your children and grandchildren about what happens in families in society? Alex is a rower so he knows about the forces of nature and what it takes to pull ahead. Here is one more try at figuring out what goes on in social systems.

You must admit that the genesis of a great man depends on the long series of complex influences which has produced the race in which he appears, and the social state into which that race has slowly grown….Before he can remake his society, his society must make him.

Herbert Spencer

If society can make the man, the question becomes, how can “I” be a thoughtful, more principle driven individual in a society that just might like to make me into its image.
Is it possible that under the right conditions, any of us can be swept away by the emotions in society, becoming part of a group effort to redistribute anxiety and blame others?

Possibly our behavior is shaped more than we like to see, by the social context in which we find ourselves. Society pressures us to join the group and believe and do as the group does. This happens in families and in nations. The history of how we have been influenced can be seen. For example, consider what you felt or said in 2001 and how you reacted ten years latter to the announcement of the death of Osama bin Laden. As a society we continue to struggled to make sense of terrorists and how they mange to create a dangerous and seemingly blind following.

Curiously both Hitler and Osama’s deaths were announced on May 1st in different years of course. A coincidence, yes, but also a reminder, a warning if you will, of how societies, “allow evil”, in this case other focused, blaming leaders, to emerge in times of chaos and uncertainty. We may debate how they emerged but clearly each man led large segments of the population to join in blaming others for societal problems. The result in both cases was genocide, albeit on different scales.

Look around the world today and you will see people being swept away by anger, madness and fear. Leaders arise but whom can we trust? If it were possible to know the early warning signs of emotionally dangerous people would there be a way to take a stand in stopping these kinds of “social inflammations”?

This is difficult to do, even in small families, much less society. But by thinking about the family and how one person becomes a terrorist, or depressed, or takes on some other symptom, we might see how the other family members are sensitized to react and then look for someone to blame or someone to hurt, or even kill. We saw this unfold in California also on May first, of this year, as a ten-year boy shot and killed his neo Nazi father. 1

It is not too hard to see that a similar process happens in and between nations. Just as in a family, passions are activated by threats. A segment of the population feels “wronged” and feels entitled to take over, dominate and/or take the resourses of another country, and so begins the symptoms of war and retribution. Sometimes one nation focuses on the other as the problem, just as parents do towards a difficult child. A country (or a parent) moves in on the “offender”, reducing autonomy and attempting to “fix” them. Predictably, both children and nations rebel and war begins. Nations, like parents can also misinterpret and often project anxious fears on others. For example during the cold war the United States misperceived the economic strength and the military power of the Soviet Union.

In a mature family people make an effort not to control and dominate others. They make statements like, “I am going to do this, or this is my plan, I hope you can hear this as my action without it threatening you.” However under stress people start saying things like, “You stop doing that, you make me feel bad, it is your fault that I am not happy, well to do, safe, etc. Then there are the threats: Why don’t you do what I want you to do? If you do not do it my way I will….

How do we see what is going on in the social world? The challenge is that our perception is skewed by stress.

It becomes more difficult to have a direct perception of reality. We see reality as it becomes emotionally presented to us.

We might think about this as the problem of perception under stress. In the innocent example below we can imagine being under pressure, so we only have time or ability to see the tree. Then if we were to be able to self regulate and calm down, we could focus to see the bird in the tree clearly.

In this blog I am pointing to the use of intense emotions like fear and blame making it difficult to perceive what is going on right in front of us. Without awareness of the triggering impact of emotions, we become swept away and have no opportunity to see.

The main clue allowing us to become aware of the emotional state of people in our family or leaders in society is to consider how much people blame others. Blame is the single best barometer to determine how much are people able to take responsibility for self and how much are they other focused and pointing the finger at others as the cause, leaving self out of the equation.

When anxiety goes up in society or in families there is a togetherness-oriented, other-focused, blaming behavior, which is precisely the opposite of the effort to figure out answers for oneself. More mature people say, “What can I change about me to deal with them or to deal with this situation?”

Yes, it is very difficult to take a stand for self, but the other option is to go along with the other focus, the blaming and the reactivity. Many will go along with the popular ones, the popular viewpoint or the “authority” and NOT hold self and/or others responsible.

But for those who do not want to be folded into the emotional soup of the group they are in, one answer is to practice being more separate from emotional forces. First, one has to separate oneself from the emotional forces in one’s own family, since that is the genesis of our greatest sensitivity and vulnerability. Then we can begin the effort to take a different position for self at work and in the bigger institutions in society. One can think of this process as differentiation of self or as building an emotional backbone through the experience of being a more thoughtful, self-defined individual.

All social systems are highly regulated so one has to manage the natural resistance to change in any system if one wants to move forward with the effort to be more of an individual. There are implicit “rules” and expectations in every group that no one needs to be “aware” of. Each individual is automatically oriented to knowing what the important others are doing and what is expected of each member of the group. So if anyone is not behaving, as they “should” or as we would like, then someone in the system will prod them into behaving in the expected way for the social system. Much of the time the rules and expectations of the group are useful. But at other times the problem of blaming others appears. Hopefully, if at least one person can stop and see that there is too much pressuring of others to conform or going along with the behavior of others, then perhaps that person can be a kind of “brake” on the rest of the group, preventing it from becoming a herd that is heading for trouble

So how can we make a difference in the process that can fold us all into agreement? What do we have to know to move towards a more differentiated self? One of the first steps is to figure out what we believe are worthwhile principles? What instinctual forces might be operating on us as individuals? How can we look at our thinking and our relationships in a more objective way? How connected are we to our extended family? How do we think about the effort to change ourselves in relationships with other?

All of these are important guiding points are on our differentiation of self (D.O.S.), compass. If we notice that a social situation is too uptight or just plain wrong, and if we are more separate, then we can tease and laugh with others. And if we are good at it, we can offer other ideas and not try to force others to change. We can simply provoke, offering paradox ideas and perhaps upset the apple cart.

Some people might see playfulness as a weak response to other’s blaming reactive states. However, playfulness with purpose can create emotional space that may allow new ideas to emerge. Playfulness in the face of other’s habitual responses can help us build our own internal strength and flexibility. But differentiation requires a long-term commitment to working on self and relating to others without forcing them to behave in ways that makes us comfortable. What a paradox. Mange self to let others be free to choose. It is a hard sell but it is a worthy effort for those who can see into the future.

With these ideas about being separate and what it takes, let’s look at what happen in the world according to Osama bin Laden and Hitler, two men known for their ability to weave a togetherness oriented group around them.

Any good explanation of how Hitler or bin Laden rose to power would factor in their early experiences in their family life. Such explanation would look for ways in which the family relationships failed them and how they developed compensating belief systems, allowing them to become charismatic bullies recruiting others into an intense, negative focus resulting in genocide.

Let’s take a look at their families and consider what factors led to the reactive stance each mistook for being a self in their life. There are clues in each family history but nothing appears to be causal or helps account for how an individual becomes a killing machine due to specific pressures in his family history.

Just as a swarm of males emerge from the bee’s nest looking for the queen who has been chosen, so too do upheavals in society create the conditions in which one person emerges who can provoke and organize a segment of society. The cry for war emerges and one of the bullies who is ready to lead, emerges at the head of the pack. What are the factors we might find in the stories about Obama and Hitler that might alert us to how intense hatred is formed? If we are aware of these forces, we may be have a better understanding of how we as individuals and as a society give way to charismatic bullies.

Osama bin Laden (Multiple Sources)

Osama was the 17th son of his father, and the first son and perhaps the only child of the last and youngest of his father’s ten wives. He was one of the youngest of 53 siblings (16 brothers, 36 sisters). We do not know much of his family life, but we know that all of the Bin Laden children were required to work for the family company. Osama spent summers working on road projects. Osama lost his father when he was about 9. The family patriarch was killed in a plane crash caused by an American pilot in the Saudi province of Asir. (Five of the Sept. 11 hijackers would come from that province. His brother was later killed in a plane crash on American soil.) Osama revered the father he rarely got to see and adored his mother. As a teenager, he “would lie at her feet and caress her,” a family friend told Steve Coll, for his definitive biography “The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century.” 2

When Muhammad bin Laden died, each sibling inherited millions allowing Osama to lead a life of near-royalty. Osama — the name means “young lion” — grew up playing with Saudi princes and had his own stable of horses by age 15. Yet many say Bin Laden was a misfit. His mother, the last of his father’s four wives, was from Syria, the only wife not from Saudi Arabia. The elder Bin Laden had met her on a vacation and Osama was their only child. Within the family, she was said to be known as “the slave” and Osama “the slave child.” The world’s most threatening terrorist was also known to submit to public criticism by his mother.

Within the Saudi elite, it was rare to have both parents born outside the kingdom. In a profile of Osama bin Laden in The New Yorker, Mary Anne Weaver quoted a family friend who suggested that he had felt alienated in a culture so obsessed with lineage. “It must have been difficult for him,” the family friend said. “Osama was almost a double outsider. His paternal roots are in Yemen, and within the family his mother was a double outsider as well — she was neither Saudi nor Yemeni but Syrian.”

According to one of his brothers, Osama was the only Bin Laden child who never traveled abroad to study. A biography of Bin Laden provided to the PBS television program “Frontline” by an unidentified family friend asserted that Bin Laden had never traveled outside the Middle East. Bin Laden had been educated — and, indeed, steeped, as many Saudi children are — in Wahhabism, a puritanical, ardently anti-Western strain of Islam. Even years later, he so despised the Saudi ruling family’s coziness with Western nations that he refused to refer to Saudi Arabia by its modern name, instead calling it “the Country of the Two Holy Places.”3

By most accounts bin Laden was devout and quiet, marrying a relative, the first of his four wives, at age 17. He became involved with the Muslim Brotherhood, a group of Islamic radicals who believed that much of the Muslim world, including the leaders of Saudi Arabia, lived as infidels, in violation of the true meaning of the Koran.

Did Bin Laden find men who could offer him some kind of fathering which gave him an opportunity to feel at least “equal” to his siblings within his family? Is it possible that if bin Laden had had a father figure who provided guidance, and a willingness to take on his mother, his life might have taken a different turn?

Hitler (Quoted from The University of North Dakota internet source below)
“In the evening of April 20, 1889, Hitler was born. His crusade to rid the German people of the Jewish people may have reflected the distain he had for his own family history, just across the border from German Bavaria. His family was a lifelong source of embarrassment.

Hitler’s father, Alois, was the illegitimate son of Maria Anna Schicklgruber and her unknown mate, which may have been someone from the neighborhood or a poor millworker named Johann Georg Hiedler. It is also remotely possible Adolf Hitler’s grandfather was Jewish. Maria Schicklgruber was said to have been employed as a cook in the household of a wealthy Jewish family named Frankenberger. There is some speculation their 19 year old son got her pregnant and regularly sent her money after the birth of Alois. Adolf Hitler would never know for sure just who his grandfather was.

He did know that when his father Alois was about five years old, Maria Schicklgruber married Johann Georg Hiedler. The marriage lasted five years until her death of natural cause, at which time Alois went to live on a small farm with his uncle. At age thirteen, young Alois had enough of farm life and set out for the city of Vienna to make something of himself. He worked as a shoemaker’s apprentice then later enlisted in the Austrian civil service, becoming a junior customs official. He worked hard as a civil servant and eventually became a supervisor. By 1875 he achieved the rank of Senior Assistant Inspector, a big accomplishment for the former poor farm boy with little formal education.

After his success in the civil service, his uncle convinced him to change his last name to match his own, Hiedler, and continue the family name. However, when it came time to write the name down in the record book it was spelled as Hitler. And so in 1876 at age 39, Alois Schicklgruber became Alois Hitler.

In 1885, after numerous affairs and two other marriages ended, the widowed Alois Hitler, 48, married the pregnant Klara Pölzl, 24, the granddaughter of uncle Hiedler. Technically, because of the name change, she was his own niece and so he had to get special permission from the Catholic Church. The children from his previous marriage, Alois Hitler, Jr. and Angela, attended the wedding and lived with them afterwards. Klara Pölzl eventually gave birth to two boys and a girl, all of whom died. On April 20, 1889, her fourth child, Adolf was born healthy and was baptized a Roman Catholic. Hitler’s father was now 52 years old.

Throughout his early days, young Adolf’s mother feared losing him as well and lavished much care and affection on him. His father was busy working most of the time and also spent a lot of time on his main hobby, keeping bees. Baby Adolf had the nickname, Adi. When he was almost five, in 1893, his mother gave birth to a brother, Edmund. In 1896 came a sister, Paula.

Hitler’s father, now 58, had spent most of his life working his way up through the civil service ranks. He was used to giving orders and having them obeyed and also expected this from his children.

The oldest boy, Alois Jr., 13, bore the brunt of his father’s discontent, including harsh words and occasional beatings. A year later, at age 14, young Alois had enough of this treatment and ran away from home, never to see his father again. This put young Adolf, age 7, next in line for the same treatment.

One day, young Hitler went rummaging through his father’s book collection and came across several of a military nature, including a picture book on the War of 1870-1871 between the Germans and the French. By Hitler’s own account, this book became an obsession. He read it over and over, becoming convinced it had been a glorious event. “It was not long before the great historic struggle had become my greatest spiritual experience. From then on, I became more and more enthusiastic about everything that was in any was connected with war or, for that matter, with soldering.” – Hitler stated in his book Mein Kampf.

Adolf’s little brother Edmund, age 6, died of measles. The little boy was buried in the cemetery next to their house. From his bedroom window, Adolf could see the cemetery. Years later, neighbors recalled that young Adolf was sometimes seen at night sitting on the wall of the cemetery gazing up at the stars.

By now, young Hitler had dreams of one day becoming an artist. He wanted to go to the classical school. But his father wanted him to follow in his footsteps and become a civil servant and sent him to the technical high school in the city of Linz, in September, 1900. There were fights between young Hitler and his father over his career choice. To the traditional minded, authoritarian father, the idea of his son becoming an artist seemed utterly ridiculous.

Hitler’s father had worked as an Austrian Imperial customs agent and continually expressed loyalty to the Hapsburg Monarchy, perhaps unknowingly encouraging his rebellious young son to give his loyalty to the German Kaiser. There was also a history teacher at school, Dr. Leopold Pötsch who touched Hitler’s imagination with exciting tales of the glory of German figures such as Bismark and Frederick The Great. For young Hitler, German Nationalism quickly became an obsession.

In January 1903, Hitler’s father died suddenly of a lung hemorrhage, leaving his thirteen year old son as head of the Hitler household.

Hitler’s World War I Service
When World War I was touched off by the assassination by a Serb of the heir to the Austrian Empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Hitler’s passions against foreigners, particularly Slavs, were inflamed. He was caught up in the patriotism of the time. In October 1916, he was wounded by an enemy shell and evacuated to a Berlin area hospital.

Soon after the war Hitler was recruited to join a military intelligence unit and was assigned to keep tabs on the German Worker’s Party. At the time, it was comprised of only a handful of members. It was disorganized and had no program, but its members expressed a right-wing doctrine consonant with Hitler’s. His blossoming hatred of the Jews became part of the organization’s political platform.

The turning point of Hitler’s mesmerizing oratorical career occurred at one such meeting held on October 16, 1919. Hitler’s emotional delivery of an impromptu speech captivated his audience. Through word of mouth, donations poured into the party’s coffers, and subsequent mass meetings attracted hundreds of Germans eager to hear the young, forceful and hypnotic leader.

In July 1921 Hitler became chairman of the party. In January 1923, French and Belgian troops marched into Germany to settle a reparations dispute. Germans resented this occupation, which also had an adverse effect on the economy. Hitler’s party benefitted by the reaction to this development, and exploited it by holding mass protest rallies despite a ban on such rallies by the local police.

The Nazi party began drawing thousands of new members, many of whom were victims of hyper-inflation and found comfort in blaming the Jews for this trouble. The price of an egg, for example, had inflated to 30 million times its original price in just 10 years. Economic upheaval generally breeds political upheaval, and Germany in the 1920s was no exception. ” 4

What Happens to Extinguish Empathy?

Another way to understand how a few bad seeds can gain control over others can be seen in the book, Zero Degrees of Empathy. Simon Baron-Cohen clarifies how the lack of empathy enables some to gain power from being cruel and dehumanizing others. 5

The evidence supports the involvement of some genetics. Of course experience in both one’s family and in the social system acts to alter circuits in the brain. Terrorists obviously lack empathy for their intended targets but not necessarily for their own families or members of “their group”. They see others as objects to manipulate for personal gain and have lost the ability to self regulate the way they treat others.

This dynamic occurs in milder forms in any group at school, at work or at home. It happens whenever one person becomes a bully, even a passive bully, taking advantage of others and forcing them into submission.

People do all kinds of things that impinge on others. You can make the case that most relationship systems keep some kind of balance between doing for others and doing for self. When people feel hurt they seek revenge. Sometimes the feelings of being hurt are far below the surface but in looking at the life story of people we can find reasons that might inspire or lead them to revenge People who are empathetic may drive the system towards doing for others, whereas those who have been hurt and are resentful tilt the system towards revenge.

Regulate Self and Rebalancing the System

Just in case anyone thinks they are above revenge oriented behavior let me say that bits of revenge and lack of empathy are in all of us. Yes, even “nice people” can be coercive. You don’t have to be a Hitler or Ben Laden to have a negative effect on people. The following example was chosen for its mildness and innocence. It demonstrates how one person can lead others astray, resulting in increased anxiety in a system, where some are suffering and others are benefiting. People can blindly and innocently gain control over others in a passive, not aggressive manner.

A wife can see that her husband is doing small things to undermine her, e.g. being late to dinner, forcing her to wait for him, encouraging the children to keep on playing instead of coming to dinner thereby aligning himself with his children as allies against their mother (his wife). The mother who is able to see this dynamic, without blaming or trying to force anyone to change, can comment on the dynamic as she sees it. She can confess her temptation to “force” others to behave, and/or encourage her husband and children to have fun cooking dinner while she goes to a movie whenever they are ten minutes late.

Cruelty and the Role of Neurotransmitters

Evidence exists to demonstrate that there are events in people’s lives that blunt the ability to be empathetic in relationships. Unfortunately bullies derive satisfaction and neurotransmitter rewards for being cruel. Cruelty is rewarded by increases in the neurotransmitters regulating pleasure.

Simon Baron-Cohen point makes the point that empathy exists in the general population on a continuum. We are all vulnerable to having this capacity extinguished when families or populations undergo extreme and seemingly unrelenting stress. 6

In Every System There is Vulnerability and Resiliency

This lack of empathy and the willingness to use others to gain power is also of great concern to the armed forces. In “A Beast in the Heart of Every Fighting Man”, Luke Morgelson describes how this operates in small groups of fighting men in Afghanistan. He reports on the killing of three Afghan civilians and the state of mind of the soldiers charged in their premeditated deaths. He describes how muted one’s own values become when threats from authority and those within the group blame others and then overly influence people to follow a confused but revenge-oriented leader.

Bowen described the problem of submission to others and the lack of empathy and or the ability to observe and take responsibility for self-regulation in the following way. This was his observation of families in his research project at National Institutes of Heath in 1956-60.

The relationship was conceptualized as locked in responsiveness that required the complete submission of one for the comfort of the other, and that neither of them wanted this self-perpetuating enigma in which either could block the effort of the other to free self.

The hypothesis further stated that the patient’s life growth force had been blunted in this intense relationship and that the growth force could be freed in a specific therapeutic milieu that toned down the tugging between mother and patient. This hypothesis was designed to help the therapist understand the mother patient relationship as a natural phenomenon for which no one is blamed, even by inference.

The concept – a tension system between two people will resolve itself in the presence of a third person who can avoid emotional participation with either while still actively relating to both, is so accurate that it can be used in family psychotherapy with the less severe problem.

7

In the stories of Hitler and bin Laden, both were struggling in their youth to be accepted by family members, teachers and peers. They lived in tensions systems. They rose to power through a charismatic ability to sell to others a “blame oriented” vision in which “others” were the cause of problems. A so called “better future” was simply a false promise that bound up a great deal of anxiety, propelling people to see others as the problem. Organized blame lead to great suffering in families and between nations. Due to the intense and instinctual feeling directed process, people loss any direct perception of reality. They see it the way the leader does or the way the group does. Many were willing and still are willing, to kill those problematic “others, and see it as righteous.”

What can we gain from observing and understanding this kind of instinctual driven madness and suffering?

Perhaps reflecting on this process of “other focused blaming,” can allow us to see how automatic and easy it is to blame, even those we care about. If we can see our humanness and our vulnerability to lose self and blame others, then we will have taken the first step in personal self regulation. One person at a time can dampen down fear and blame and learn to relate to people we are mad at in a different way. When this happens there is greater respect prompted by awareness of impersonal mechanism that regulate social systems. If we can see blame for what it is, just one way to distribute anxiety, that in an of itself can create the possibility of better future for the human.

The significance of great individuals is imaginary; as a matter of fact they are only history’s slaves realizing the decree of Providence.

8

Tolstoy

Murray Bowen quoted in his chapter on Society, Crisis, and Systems Theory

Emotional reactiveness in a family, or in a group that lives or works together, goes from one family member to another in chain reaction pattern. The total pattern is similar to electronic circuits in which each person is “wired” or connected by radio, to all the other people with whom he has relationships. Each person then becomes a nodal point or an electronic center through which impulses pass in rapid succession . . .
Each person is programmed from birth to serve a certain set of functions and each “senses” what is required of them or expected, more from the way the system functions around him than from what is said . . .

There is another important set of variables that have to do with the way the family unit functions together. Each person becomes aware of his dependence on all the other nodal points. To be remembered is that each nodal point is “wired” to the others with two-way circuitry. There is a wide variety of subtle alliances for helping each other, refusing to help or hurting the other. The larger unit can punish a single member and a single member in a key position can hurt the whole unit.

Each person has varying degrees of ability for handling impulses, and an intellectual awareness for understanding the operations of the system.
The electronic model has the potential and the flexibility to accurately account for almost every item of human functioning, except that which is determined by biology and reproduction and evolution.

Murray Bowen,

Family Therapy in Clinical Practice (pages 420 421)

FOOTNOTES
1) Neo-Nazi Father Is Killed; Son, 10, Steeped in Beliefs, Is Accused
By JESSE McKINLEY http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/us/11nazi.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

A little more than 12 hours later, the police say, the boy stood near those stairs with a handgun and killed his father, Jeff Hall, as he lay on the living room couch. It was about 4 a.m. on May 1; paramedics declared Mr. Hall dead when they arrived. The police say that the killing was intentional, but that the motives behind it are still not fully understood. Mr. Hall devoted his life to the National Socialist Movement, the nation’s largest neo-Nazi party and had predicted that his political activities — in a world rife with hatred, suspicion and violence — would lead to his demise.

2) “The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century,Penguin Press, 4/1, 2008, Steve Coll

3) January 24, 2000 Dept. of National Security ,The Real Bin Laden

4) http://www2.dsu.nodak.edu/users/dmeier/Holocaust/hitler.html

5) The Science of Empathy, The Guardian: In examining brains of those lacking empathy it was found a decreased binding of neurotransmitters to one of the serotonin receptors. Neuroimaging also reveals underactivity in the orbital frontal cortex and in the temporal cortex – all parts of the empathy circuit.
A novel approach has been to follow up people who were abused as children and scan their brains. It is novel because it is prospective rather than retrospective: the emotional damage was done in childhood and the scientific question is: “What happens to their brain?” Not all of them will be Type Bs, but a significant proportion will be. Such people again have abnormalities in the empathy circuit, such as having a smaller amygdala. This is also true of women who were sexually abused, who later show less grey matter in their left medial temporal cortex, compared to non-abused women. Smaller hippocampal volume is also found in people who experienced a trauma and went on to develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). One interpretation of all this evidence is that the early negative experiences of abuse and neglect change how the brain turns out. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/mar/27/the-science-of-empathy

6) http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=brain-scans-reveal-that-r

7) Family Therapy in Clinical Practice, Murray Bowen, 1977, P 190

8) War and Peace, Tolstoy, L. 2010, Oxford, MA: Oxford University Press Bk. IX, ch.

Once again many thanks to Judy Ball for her help with editing this blog.

Andrea

Follow the Leader and/or Think for Self….

This issue dogs all regimes that have neither the rule of law nor public accountability: The authorities routinely fail to respect the dignity of ordinary citizens and run roughshod over their rights. There is no culture in which this sort of behavior is not strongly resented.

Wall Street Journal, 3/12/11 Is China Next? Francis Fukuyama

Coach Byrnes told me I was worthwhile and good and that we could win. He talked to me as if I were someone worth telling a story about, subtly enjoining me to become active in that story. My father was mostly gone by then, and now here was a man who respected me by demanding that I respect myself, and a game. I never knew if he liked me. That wasn’t so important. He saw potential in me, and I began to respect myself. That is what a good coach does. He fills you with a belief that may or may not be justified. As you make the dangerous crossing from unproven belief to actual accomplishment, from potential to reality, a good coach holds your hand so expertly that you don’t even know your hand is being held.

Wall Street Journal, 3/12/11: What a Good Coach Does By David Duchovny

Even dogs like to have a good leader. Yes, the leader spends a lot of time behind the dog, giving the dog room to roam. Meanwhile the butterfly of uncertainty looks on.

Relationships are at the center of our existence. We take clues from one another and at the extremes we can either be held hostage or inspired by one other.

We influence each other in families and in society, giving birth to patterns in relationships systems whose influence reaches beyond one or two generations.

Much of the time we can afford to be blind to the ongoing influences in these social emotional systems. Our automatic programming seems to suffice, especially when life is good and comfort dominates. There is little need for awareness or the risk inherent in change. When life is difficult, confusion and uncertainty forces us to understand difficult or even profound problems in order to adapt well to these challenges.

This week the human family watched in sorrow and fear, the unsettling news that appeared out of the blue. An earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, destroying many lives. The usual methods of communication and even of distributing food and water were disrupted. Great danger still lurks, especially in the damage to nuclear power plants. Now people have to take care of one another while the government tries to solve serious problems.

Like many people this became personal. I have a dear friend who lives in Tokyo, Ryuko Ishikawa, who is part of my extended family. When I finally heard from her I was relieved. Like many who feel connected to and act to decrease the suffering of others, we respond without thought. Automatically we reach out to those whose suffering we sense. We respond instantly to clear issues in relationship systems, such as the danger and suffering in the case of the Japanese earthquake.

The reality in Japan is far different from being asked to leave an organization, or finding out your spouse wants a divorce. These kinds of events can be felt as interpersonal earthquakes. Interpersonal emotional problems activate feelings of confusion as to what has been going on. What you missed seeing becomes as important as what you did see. No one really seems to know that is going on in Japan. Sometimes we can get too serious about not knowing, especially if only time will tell us the answer. How to be light and find humor in situations is a key to coping in these kinds of situations.

Signals from people are confusing and sometimes signs are confusing. Its good not to panic and to find away to keep your sense of humor.

Relationships problems often bug us the most. Now, if you were a cat and the other cat left you, or two cats snarled at you, you might say ho ho. Most cats figure “I do not have to worry about my next meal or my standing in the group. I am a cat, I will just curl up in a comfy bowl and gather energy for the next hunt.”

Since we are not cats, we may still struggle to see and accept that for better or worse the group is always influencing, and at times, directing our behavior. Even when we leave home, move into other relationships and get jobs, we find ways to fit into other emotional systems. Here too, seen or unseen others influence our behavior.

Most of us know that joining with others has both advantages and costs. One struggles to decide how much for me and how much for you? The very real problem is that we are always juggling how we fit into relationships systems. When problems arise, which they are bound to do, it becomes a profound challenge to hold self or other people responsible and accountable. Evidence for this is that at least half of marriages still end in divorce. The turnover rate in jobs is increasing. These are just two examples of how relationships are under stress and how distancing and cut off are ways of managing stress. In addition we see one country after another in the Middle East throwing over leaders. All of this happens, in part, due to the ways that even nations are dependent on ta majority to follow along. When a large enough number of people become dissatisfied problems are not far down the road. Leaders and followers like husbands and wives are all dependent on one another. The autocratic ruler may rule as he sees fit but no one has to follow .

It is far easier to see this interdependency in other species. Even lions look peaceful, resting as a happy couple before the hunt begins.

Life in an emotional system does not go always go smoothly. After all lions do roar and we will react.

The adherence to any social order demands a certain mangling or even at the extremes the destruction of the human spirit. And each individual has to calculate the cost and benefits to being a part of any such system.

Perhaps that’s all there is to know. But in order to be more thoughtful about the human condition, we need to understand at the most fundamental levels, the nature of social systems, the nature of the beast.

How do we see the nature of emotional systems?

First, we need to learn how to watch all that we have taken for granted. We have to be observers of our impact on, and our reactions to, others. How do override our automatic responses enough to see just what “is”? Without the ability to see, observe and think, we follow, fight, run or collapse into symptoms like a well-trained animal.

Think of a woman with children whose husband strays into an emotional affair, promising to do better if she will give him another chance. The woman thinks that other woman is like crack cocaine and I am like a flat coke. What about the woman at work who is critical of you behind closed doors and makes you wonder if you should report her?

It is easy to see this as someone’s fault, blame them and get out. It is far harder to see how useful it might be as the aggrieved wife, to tell the husband that you dreamed of having an affair and he beat you to it. No threat just joking and making a point and letting the possibility exist that the other sees and does not feel attacked. Or to the woman who is critical of her boss, to pause and ask the boss who she has been talking to that has made her be a so nice?

The idea of these kinds of comments is to loosen self up and offer a reversals that tend to reveal the part the secret part that you or I play in these interactions. Of course no one is going to be perfect at it. Sometimes you may fail to clarify the process and come across more like a lion than a house cat. But at least you understood to focus on self.

Often we can feel the energy, directing you to go along, to pretend, when they walk into the room. But if you can just think a tiny bit differently in the presence of someone who has a leash around your neck, good for you.

Perhaps there are all kinds of ways that we might change but each of us is constrained as we live and love in our old comfortable habits. What makes us to take a look at how we are connected to each other and see possibility ahead if we are to challenge and change the status quo?

Chose what has been or risk. No matter life in an emotional system does not go always go smoothly. The adherence to any social order demands a certain mangling or even at the extremes the destruction of the human spirit. And each individual has to calculate the cost and benefits to being a part of any such system.

Perhaps that’s all there is to know. But in order to be more thoughtful about the human condition, we need to understand at the most fundamental levels, the nature of social systems, the nature of the beast. You see the animals all taking sides heading for the position so they can be close to their friends and far away from others.

How do we observe the nature of emotional systems when we are in one?

First, we it helps to learn how to watch all that we have taken for granted. We can be observers of our impact on, and our reactions to, others. How do we try to override our automatic responses enough to see just what “is”, if we are able to insert a difference?

Without the ability to see, observe, think and act differently, we end up with the status quo. It becomes easy to follow along, or fight, or run, or collapse into symptoms.

It takes a great deal of experience in learning how to be more neutral and to make comments which are a kind of reversals of the emotional process. Done well these comments reveal the part “I” play in the interactions, and allows us to do something about it.

Of course no one is going to be perfect at being so different. Sometimes any of us can fail to clarify the process and come across more like a lion than a house cat.

Once you learn the importance of seeing patterns and how individuals are just part of a system that shapes everyone in it, then its far easier to focus on self.

If you can feel the energy from others in the system, directing you to go along, to pretend, or go silent when they walk into the room, and you can think just a tiny bit differently in the presence of someone who has an emotional leash around your neck, then good for you.

Think of the cat sitting up in the bowl watching and considering if he should read the books on the table to just learn a bit more about communications skills and paradox.

But for the simple price of becoming more aware, we are able in most cases, to put the brake on our automatic responses, begin to think for self and not follow the “fight, run or symptoms” path. There is little that is harder and that requires more discipline since our brain is full of self-deceiving traps. But by becoming a good observer we take the first step before we consider how, when and if to be a bit edgy and define a self to others.

When things go wrong what are you going to do? One answer, defining a self, emerges from who we are at our deepest and most aware self. It is also a profound way to deal with the pressure people automatically and sometimes innocently put on us. Usually people have little idea they are dominating or controlling others. They simply follow some urge not thinking deeply about the impact they will have. Some see the other as not doing “it” the right way and move in on them, and in some ways end up putting their head on the other ones shoulders.

Not a pretty picture if someone’s head gets cut off in the process of advising and or telling others what to do. One-way out of this is to temper your advice with some version of: “ If I were you, this is what I would do, but of course I am not you.” Or – “These are my best suggestions but they may be worthless as you are different from me, so just throw a few of them into the trash and keep any you like. The goal is to allow the other to see what you think while you allow them to take responsibility for choosing to use ideas.

People act as though others should, must or will follow them. But when and if following makes no sense, then it’s up to the individual to break out of the habitual way of relating to the push and pull of the emotional system. One way out of the pressure to conform to the other is to take a guess at the emotional process and your part in it, and go ahead and define a self and deal with the system.

The pressure to fit with the group is called togetherness. Most of the time relationship pressure is tolerable, and often useful. It can lead to cooperation. We can let go of selfish needs and cooperate, creating a far more effective system. But there are, of course, drawbacks and one of them is that the pressure to be and do for others leads to a problem, which begs to be resolved. “How much do I orient my life for you, for my job, for my country? When do ‘they’ pressure me so much that I have to say ‘no more’?

Over time every family and every group produces a range of functioning. It comes to be that there are clear distinctions between those who fit into the group and the overall direction and those who do not fit as well. When stress and anxiety go up, pressure is put on the outliers and at times differences are not well tolerated. The group seeks cohesion which may require getting rid of those who do not fit, who are identified as outliers. This is the nature of the togetherness force. It is a movement towards sameness and conformity, which paradoxically, gives rise to the opposite force, the force for a few to be more self-determined individuals.

The forces in systems are impersonal and automatic. When anxiety rises, the emotional system is rigged to focus on or pick on some members of the group. Now it becomes personal. The picking on others can become extreme in some families, organizations and nations. Yet the process itself is available for observation. The pressure can activate individuals to understand the rigged nature of the emotional system and to take a stand for self.

A togetherness process can trigger both people becoming symptomatic and some even dying or one can motivate one to respond to the pressure by taking a serious or even funny stand for self. Only by defining self as more separate from the system while continuing to relate to others can transformation occur on many unexpected levels.

Relationships in and among nations also bear witness to a similar emotional processes. We have witnessed such a transformational event, apparently sparked by one person martyring himself, provoking a transformation in the Middle East.

No social scientist or intelligence analyst predicted the specific timing or spread of the Arab uprising—the fact that it would start in Tunisia, of all places, that it would be triggered by an event like the self-immolation of a vegetable seller, or that protests would force the mighty Egyptian army to abandon Hosni Mubarak. Over the past generation, Arab societies have appeared stolidly stable. Why they suddenly exploded in 2011 is something that can be understood only in retrospect, if at all.

Wall Street Journal, 3/12/11 Is China Next? Francis Fukuyama

Most of us will never be required to make such sacrifice when squeezed by the group. But everyone can use ideas about where to stand or what to do when things go wrong in our important relationships.

Communicating Self to Others

There are two broad ways that we can define a self. One is when we see something worth doing and are willing to step up to accomplish something that is significant. The other is to deal with problems that are thrust on us.

This process of defining a self in social groups has been misunderstood and misused by those who simply are out to control others and to manipulate situations. If people say in words or deeds, “I am defining myself to you, so you can know how to do things the “right way”, we can guess it is confusion which dominates.

The key in being able to define a self is to communicate in a way to promote some kind of emotional knowledge about the system itself while creating separate space where you can stand alone. In so doing, perhaps others may also be able to define a self.

Communicating ideas about emotional process can create defensive responses. People can feel threatened if you get too close to describing the emotional process, which is, after all, just your view. Others see life differently.

By being more transparent about the system itself one person can promote the opportunity for others to see and choose an action rather than just react to the difference in the way people are relating to you. I used to challenge medical students to go home and try a slightly different way of greeting their spouse. The spouses did not like this change that occurred for no apparent reason. The students reported their spouse would say please do not do that, please be like you use to be. They began to see how little change was required to provoke a “change back to the way you were” message.

A common example happens when a “boss” (think spouse, or other important official, etc.) has made a decision forcing you to change. Although it may not feel like it, you have a choice to follow the leader or step back from the leader and take a stand based on principle and refuse to go along with a decision. Taking a stand for self activates many forces of opposition and increases the pressure on the individual willing to risk the change.

If one person can sustain the change over a long period of time, others may be activated, simply by seeing the problem in a different light. When people take stands based on principle and not just following a new leader, this leads to more maturity in the group. In this case the system itself will change. We have seen this happen in the civil rights movement and we are waiting to see if it happens in the Middle East.

Those who automatically rebel are not thinking about principles. One can always say what he or she will and or will not do x,y, or z, but the system does not learn much from actions which can be interpreted as defiant. The emotional pressure is for the group to continue to disregard even interesting or provocative differences and then writes off. These people, who take a different stance, can be seen as an oddball or a disruptor or a just pain in the neck. The problem is in the splitting into good or right minded and bad or wrong minded people. When this happens people take no responsibility for any part of the problem.

Think of the woman whose husband has strayed. All her friends might tell her to get a divorce and are most upset that she would say anything so strange as “I had been thinking about an affair and you beat me to it.” It takes a while for the understanding of the emotional nature of the situation to penetrate beyond blaming someone. Blaming decreases awareness and maintains the orientation to retain focus negatively on others.

For those interested in the history of defining a self, one can read Bowen’s chapter, “Towards the Differentiation of Self in One’s Family of Origin”, in his book. It seems like a long time ago (1978) when Bowen described the reasonably predictable nature of the emotional system. The audience, mostly mental health people, did not find his ideas easy to fit into conventional mental health service models.

In fact Bowen became famous more for his ability to describe and take action based on knowledge of emotional systems than for his ability to sell quick fixes as a psychotherapist. Bowen even changed the name of his work with others calling himself a coach rather than a therapist.

Being a systems coach

A coach is on the sidelines and sees the system at play. A knowledgeable coach then listens and gives the players tactical advice about the way the system is organized and how he or she might mange self based on his or her experience. As a family coach, one’s experience is based on work in his or her own family. There is no cure offered through transference as in psychoanalysis. Coaches are still aware of the possibility of transference and its partner, counter transference. The goal in coaching is to understand how the system plays itself out and making a decision to use self to promote better performance for self and the team, the family, the organization or even the nation.

Bowen believed he could enable people to learn to coach others in working on self in emotional systems. Just as sports coaches help people improve their abilities to do well in all kinds of challenging games, relationship coaches are able to help people do the same in their lives by seeing the system more clearly. Of course effective coaching has to do with a relationship that allows or even promotes information to be exchanged and understood. A coach can be useful to people to the degree that the coach has been able to see the emotional process and operate in an emotional field in his or her own life and relate well to the client.

A Mindful Compass for Organizations

In 1972 Bowen gave a talk to his faculty, which later became a chapter called, “Towards the Differentiation of Self in Administrative Systems”.[1] In this chapter, Bowen made an effort to demonstrate how he used the principles of defining a self not just in his family but also in his work relationships.

Bowen’s thesis was that in order to function as adults, people deny the emotional intensity of the attachments to their parents and as if to prove the point, move towards emotional distance from their parents. At the same time, some people find that work relationships are more fulfilling than family relationships, and they put more effort and energy into these work relationships. This leads to more intense relationships in the workplace where it is not only difficult to see the intensity but far more difficult to resolve it. One of the reasons this is so difficult is that people lack the motivation to deal with their family and most especially their extended family to resolve emotional problems. Instead, the nature of the work relationship, which is a version of the “original” parental relationship, is virtually hidden in plain sight.

People do not talk about problems at work in a productive way unless they are willing to be objective and begin a one-person operation to alter the part one plays in problems. Working on self requires a clear distinction between accepting responsibility to be clear about the part one plays in problems and blaming self or others for the problems. Stopgap measures that tend to focus more on blaming “the other/s” as the problem are a typical response to the relationship challenges in organizations. Such stopgap measures include extruding the “outlier” and/or trying to change others and how the organization functions by using human resources to legally articulate complaints and seek changes in more formal ways.

Since we spend so much time at work, a great deal of effort has gone into developing ways to allow people to develop emotional space at work. We are still a long way from acknowledging that people bring to work their ability to attract and solve problems, which they’ve learned in their families. If this were clear to employees then job interviewers would be saying, “Please check right here to let us know that you have resolved all you sensitivities and complaints about your parents because if you have not you are likely to blame your employees or your boss.” Being able to be mentally healthy has more to do with our ability to manage emotions and find, dare I say it, happiness.

Starting next month, the (British) government will pose the following questions and ask people to respond on a scale of zero to 10: How happy did you feel yesterday? How anxious did you feel yesterday? How satisfied are you with your life nowadays? To what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile? The important thing, he argues, it to shift “from the concept of financial prosperity to the idea of emotional prosperity.” Perhaps that’s the 21st-century indicator we need: gross emotional prosperity, or G.E.P. The Office for National Statistics, which will do the survey, has been conducting an online debate. Answers suggest Brits link happiness to bird song, knowing themselves, the environment, responsible pet ownership, contributing to society, going out into the wild and reading Socrates. [2]

This focus on the individual still misses the way that stress and anxiety can be shifted from one person to another in all hierarchical organizations. But it does focus on what an individual can do to work on some aspect of being a responsible and knowledgeable self. It appears to be far more difficult to see how relationships play out in alliance formation, how anxiety is shifted from one person to another and how both are a key to the overall health of individuals and organizations.

Developing a Mindful Compass: Short Term “Fixes” versus Long Term Change

Four principles Bowen used:[3]
1) focus on self,
2) see the part self plays in all problems,
3) provide latitude for others to develop his or her self and finally
4) have clear administrative principles such as a well drawn out contracts between parties to clarify expectations.

The process that Bowen saw in his work system was that as tension mounts, the urge to be critical of others rises. People blame one another and don’t stop and think, “Perhaps I should work on self”. The automatic ways that highly anxious emotional systems respond to increasing stress is to look for and blame someone or something as the problem. The problem does not reside in one person. But identifying one person as the problem is the way relationship systems function.

Below are three areas Bowen struggled with in his work organization:
1) Staying in contact with faculty, because he tended to get over involved with his own work and lose contact with others;
2) “I have failed to state my position, or to detriangle myself from some emotional issue between other faculty members”,[4] and
3) Being aware of personal issues in the lives of important people in the organization, such as a death, a threatening symptom or a divorce, because any of these could increase anxiety in one person that would be transmitted to the group.

Bowen noted that: In work situations, the person who works towards differentiation of self does not have to be the boss or the head of the total organization. His effort can be effective in the area in which he has administrative responsibility.[5]

Bowen made an effort to focus on individual responsibility within the group. He did not like to use the term “scapegoat” to describe the process between people in a group as it tended to avoid each person’s part in the process. If a person is “focused on” a in a negative and critical way by the boss and those who are aligned with that boss, the “focused on” person does not have to play into being in that functional slot.

Bowen’s initial insight was gained in seeing families first at Menninger and then at the National Institute of Health (NIH). We are still learning a great deal from understanding these early research projects. The main shift in thinking that Bowen brought to these observations was to change the focus from the weak symptomatic child to the relationship system that encouraged a loss of focus on the part that each person plays. Bowen was then able to see how this process in the family worked in his own administrative system both at Georgetown University and at NIH.

In this early work, Bowen identified evidence about how the emotional system functions. He observed that emotional systems use automatic mechanisms to transfer anxiety between and among individuals and that one person anywhere in the system can begin to stop these processes by refusing to go along with the focus on one person as the problem. It takes a great deal of backbone to refocus on the system, based on clarifying how the relationship system is functioning, and to take action without blaming self or others.

A new book considering the importance of the emotional system in the formation of nations and religious organizations is
The Origins of Political Order, by Francis Fukuyama of Stamford University. Two of Fukuyama’s themes are the significance of the development of the people holding their leaders accountable and the effort to separate workers from families to increase the loyalty to the state. One reviewer notes that the book is “ . . .a sweeping new overview of human social structures throughout history, taking over from where Dr. E. O. Wilson’s ambitious synthesis left off. The effort to create an impersonal state free from family and tribal allegiances, and the struggle—often violent—against wealthy elites who capture the state and block critical reforms]. Fukuyama’s multifaceted comparative approach grounds politics and government in the demands of biology, geography, war, and economics, and pays appropriately lavish attention to China.[6]

By grounding historical work in biology, historians like Francis Fukuyama move towards the behavioral sciences. This brings Bowen’s early findings into alignment with the data from social historians like Fukuyama.

The Change and The Focus: Mental Health

Meanwhile the world of mental health is doubling down on its belief that one person is the problem and must be fixed. The trend in psychiatry since the seventies is replacing talk therapy with drugs, as noted in the New York Times article entitled “Talk Therapy Doesn’t Pay So Psychiatrist Turn Instead to Drugs Therapy”. Then, like many psychiatrists, (48,0000 in the US.) he treated 50 to 60 patients in once- or twice-weekly talk-therapy sessions of 45 minutes each. Now, like many of his peers, he treats 1,200 people in mostly 15-minute visits for prescription adjustments that are sometimes months apart.[7]

As a method of short-term family therapy, Bowen Theory has not demonstrated strong research evidence for superior results, at least none that I know about. In an overview of family research, Douglas Sprenkle provided evidence that there was about a 15% differences in effectiveness no matter the type of family therapy that couples employed. [8]

Bowen Theory has not been thoroughly researched for its effectiveness as a short-term therapy but clearly Bowen intended it as a long-term, life-long approach to observing and dealing with issues in emotional systems. The fact is that it takes a long time for people to learn how to move the focus from diagnosing others to altering the part “I” play in problems so that a systems approach becomes a way of facing life.

Way back in the seventies, Bowen gave an interview to “People Magazine” (August 01, 1977, Vol. 8, No. 5) in which he laid bare the reason theory could offer people an opportunity to obtain superiors result for one’s life. Here are a few snippets.

Interviewer: How does this differ from conventional therapy?

Bowen: There, the focus of attention would be on the individual. Say you have an anxious family, and the child is shoplifting or running away from home. I’d see the problem in the parents. They can’t help it, you understand. So at first you can’t say to the parents, “Don’t do it, don’t displace your anxieties on your child.” You have to ease into it, soft-pedal your way through to them. Where the triangling process is not too severe, where the parents can focus on their own problems immediately—and not project their problems on the child—they almost forget about the child, and suddenly the child is symptom-free!

Interviewer: What is the rate of cure?

Bowen: It depends. The easy ones come from intact families, good-sized families, not spread over a wide area. It’s faster than psychoanalysis, but it’s not easy. Hell, some people have tough families, some of them are gunning for each other. There’s repulsion, name-calling, but if you can cross those barriers there’s a good payoff.

Interviewer: What if you have no family?

Bowen: I think you should pick out the person you hate most and make a good relationship with him. There’s more than one way to skin a cat—and you’ve got to find a way to get over your hate.

Interviewer: How long does treatment take?

Bowen: This is not treatment in the usual sense (I never use the word “patient”). The family members do all the work. I merely “coach” them. Some I see as often as once a month, some only once a year. My sessions run one hour and follow-up consultations ideally occur every four weeks.

Interviewer: How do you “coach” someone to work on his family?

Bowen: I first suggest they get a person-to-person relationship with each important member in the family. Try to talk personally to each other about each other without talking about third persons or inanimate objects. Most people can’t do this for more than a few minutes before anxiety develops. But in the effort long-neglected relationships are reactivated, and family members are doing the very same thing they did in the distant past. [9]

If people follow the leader (whether in their families, their organizations or their nation) in focusing on what is wrong with a person or a group, are they going along with short-term fixes? Will this approach increase long term problems related to peoples’ ability to think for self, repair relationships issues, and more importantly to analyze the nature of profound problems? This tension between short-term answers and the long term or deep problems that produce symptoms continues. A very few people may consider it important to see the linkage and address both problems.

One never knows where the next great discovery will come from but we do know both long term and short-term areas can benefit from research. Currently it appears that more research and money goes into the short-term efforts to enable people to manage symptoms. There may be answers to symptom relief other than drugs but an enormous and profitable industry has risen up to take command of symptom relief. New areas have been found which enable people to change the way the brain is functioning. Some of these are called stress reduction methods. They can enable people to alter their level of functioning and its worthwhile to keep an eye open for these techniques.

One such technique for symptom relief in which you do not even need a therapist relies on a computer to promote less fear in relationships. The Economist had an article on Therapist-free therapy in its March 5th issue. Later this month the Psychological Sciences will publish a study on cognitive-bias modification (CBM). In this method everything is done with a computer in order to reduce anxiety and the fear response when one ‘sees’ an unfriendly face. Will we continue to improve our functioning using techniques such as these without seeing relationship connections?

If a techniques enable more awareness about self, and promotes functioning while enabling people to reflect and maintain thoughtful relationships, how wonderful for us all. But if we enable one person in a family to pull up momentarily and that gives “power” to the idea that indeed one person was the problem and needed fixing, then we may have produced even more problems.

Conclusion

It’s a challenge for people to grasp the idea that individual behavior is directly related to the operation of the “relationship system” that one is part of. A focus on individual behavior alone does not require people to understand the biological bases for behavior as Darwin did.

People who find Bowen Theory fascinating, like those reading this blog, seem to aim their actions more towards the long-term and seem, for the most part, to be fascinated by nature and by making an effort to understand self rather than trying to change others.

The beautiful paradox is that by altering the part one plays in a dynamic system, others are forced to alter the way they relate in that emotional system. Paradoxically, changing self alters the way systems are organized. Those who seek to understand Bowen theory by defining a different self to the group find many options available to keep the family or administrative system open.

When anxiety increases, people react in predictable ways. They run over one another, scold, fix, and tell the other what to do. The question becomes whether one individual can step up to create a different way of being with the others that may stop people from running over one another?

One hallmark of a mature system is more individuals in the system are able to be both open about problems and willing to take responsible action directed at the part they play. Awareness of system dynamics is necessary so that there is less hidden under the table. When there is slippage or even regression, one person may arise who is able to take a stand creating more openness without blaming others about the problems.

Openness is a key enabling people others to take thoughtful action based on facts. Increasing knowledge can enable others to see the impersonal nature of the predictable way the emotional system functions. Both knowledge and strength to go it alone are crucial in understanding how to define a self to others. For better or worse our future is intimately entwined with the functioning of the emotional system of which we are, as individuals, but a small part.

Summary:
• Emotional issues/problems can create reactivity in those who sense them.
• Some individuals absorb more anxiety than others.
• Symptoms in an interconnected system appear to set some free while creating symptoms in others.
• Anyone in the group can decide to separate out a more defined self as long as they are prepared for the predictable reactions.
• If individuals can maintain a position without telling others what to do, the system will reorganize at a higher level of maturity.

Many thanks to Judy Ball for all her effort in reading, thinking and editing.

Andrea Maloney Schara

[1] Family Therapy in Clinical Practice, Murray Bowen, 1977: pages 461- 465
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/opinion/13cohen.html?hp

[3] Family Therapy in Clinical Practice, Murray Bowen, 1977, Page 463
[4] Family Therapy in Clinical Practice, Murray Bowen, 1977: page 464
[5] Family Therapy in Clinical Practice, Murray Bowen, 1977: page 464
[6] http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Political-Order-Prehuman-Revolution/dp/0374227349
[7] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/health/policy/06doctors.html
[8] Common Factors in Couple and Family Therapy, 2009, Douglas H. Sprenkle, Sean D. Davis, Jay L. Lebow
[9] “Farewell to Headshrinking—Psychiatrist Murray Bowen Digs Up Family Roots to Untangle Neuroses,” Peoples Magazine, August 01, 1977, Vol. 8, No. 5 By Eileen Brennan (http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20068437,00.html)

Reactivity, Blame and Life Regulations

The pursuit of a difficult scientific problem demands
a state of feeling similar
to that experienced by a religious person or a lover.

Albert Einstein

Can we pause to understand reactivity in the face of real or imagined threats? Would it be useful to society if we were more capable of relating differently to troubled people? Would this require us to alter some very basic responses in us rather than automatically focus on the other? Can we reexamine threatening events and the wider context in which they occur without increasing reactivity? Will it be useful to see how our social systems have similar properties to those of bacteria, bees and ants?

We react in times of turmoil, as we just witnessed in the shooting by a lone gunman in Arizona, in which Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 13 others were wounded, and six were killed. As the information became available, people thousands of miles away from the event felt threatened.

Yes, people react differently but the day of the event all were bombarded with confusion and chaos by the ever-present media. We, like ants and other information exchanging critters, reacted as we tried to understand what had happened. It took a few days but eventually President Obama emerged as an emotional leader, calming the group (country) in his speech in Tucson and pointing towards a more mature way to act.

Tragic public events will continue to happen and how we deal with them may inform us about the nature of emotional reactivity and leadership. Clearly leaders have a responsibility in role modeling for the group. If they can do it well they can make a difference in generating awareness and thoughtfulness in the herd. We turn on the TV and there is Obama talking to us. He tells us that blaming is automatic and skews our perception of events and leads to greater harm in our very social community.

People listen, and some seem to understand that his words require us to alter our part in a very deep process, which you can call “splitting”. Anxious people tend to split the world into two camps: the guilty and the innocent, the victims and perpetrators, those who try and those who fail, those who are sane and those who are insane.

People tend to automatically react and categorize others in all kinds of primitive ways when they feel threatened. Without a knowledgeable leader or a tool like the Mindful Compass, it becomes automatic to blame others and defend self. For an example of the increase in how threatened people felt immediately after the Arizona shootings, consider that just two days after the event there was a 60 % increase in gun sales in Arizona.

Gradually the media focus has shifted from the fear and tragedy, with people longing to know how to defend themselves and blaming others, to how can we understand these events? Now there is a focus on the “mentally ill” person, his very isolated family, the political rhetoric and/or gun control laws as possible conditions that may promote violence.

Thanks to recent polls and of course to what the polling questions are asking us to consider, we can look at the psyche of our society.

“Americans seem to be rejecting the blame game for the Arizona shooting. By far, the largest number thinks this tragedy could not have been prevented,” Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said of the poll, which was released Jan. 14.
The poll found the 40 percent of Americans thought that the Arizona shooting could not have been prevented. Another 23 percent blamed the “mental health system” for the crime. Only a small fraction of respondents blamed either hyperbolic political rhetoric or gun control laws, with 15 percent blaming rhetoric and 9 percent blaming gun control laws.

It seems that our brains are built to respond quickly to threats. To the questions, “Is it a stick or a snake?” we will err on the side of “seeing” the snake notes Joseph LeDoux. Michael Lewis, director of the Institute for the Study of Child Development focuses on how fear is contagious and spreads.
“We learn to become fearful through experience with the fear event, or learning from those people around us like our parents, our siblings, our colleagues,” Lewis says. “Fear has a certain contagious feature to it, so the fear in others can elicit fear in ourselves.”

The brain is rigged with evolutionary-designed shortcuts that trigger us into action. Yes, we are over “programmed” to personalize and respond to threats. This makes it extraordinarily difficult to take the time needed to think clearly about a way towards a more thoughtful future.

After listening to “experts” on talk shows discussing mental illness, I began to think that some times we act mentally ill about the mentally ill. Here are some ideas to ponder.

• Can any seriously mentally ill person presents us with the opportunity to blame them? Is this their job? It is easy for us to see that they are the problem and we are innocent?
• Could it be that when we blame others we lose our own bearings and ability to see our part in any problem? Can blaming others make us blind to the big picture and our part in it. What if we could think about “blaming” as a mild form of mental illness?
• Do we have a part in exacerbating a problem if we withdraw from the “problem person?”
• What if the problem is really about our inability to relate well to another who is expressing the anxiety and fear in the group?
• What if we decided that kicking people out of schools, incarcerating or drugging them, is not a responsible way to deal with or solve the problem?

Many of these kinds of automatic reactions are occurring everywhere in society today. The end result is that the disturbed individual is further isolated from any thoughtful human exchange. The rest of society goes about its business having isolated the problem to a person. I consider the reactivity in the social system surrounding the “crazy” individual is as problematic as the mental illness of the blamed one.

For example, people say, “I do not blame the parents. They are as confused as we are about the shooter.” The husband of Gabrielle Giffords has been asked if he would speak to the confused parents and he has said he is open to doing that. How would he use this opportunity? Would he ask them how hard was it to relate to their son or how difficult it is to ask for help? Who knows what kind of help was available? Were there other family members who were aware of the struggles and capable of lending a hand?

Most of the time the answers are no, no and no. People get isolated. Mental illness can take root and grow in these conditions. You can see emotional cut off over the generations leading to increases in serious problems in some branches of the family. You can also see the endless negative feedback loops directed towards a vulnerable individual, and the incredible difficulty of finding people interested or talented enough to relate well to those who are disturbed and want no help. To help we might just have to see things differently and not through our automatic eyes.

We are all participating in isolating others to the degree we are challenged or find it impossible to relate well to difficult or strange people. Is it possible to alter this reactive process by how we thoughtfully shape our own thinking and deal with our feelings of being threatened?

If we are aware of how automatically we react, that in itself does something about our part in these runaway negative reactions. In fact the wisdom of the crowd might return if we can pause to ask: “What part am I playing in this problem by how I think and act towards others who are not my cup of tea?” Perhaps if we can question the status quo, we will act differently and be useful to the community around those we call mentally ill.

But this change cannot occur until people realize there is a clear distinction between our automatic reactivity to people and events, and can see how important it is to find a way to tone down the anxiety and reactivity in order to develop a broader more mindful approach.

The Mindful Compass is a powerful tool that focuses on the pathways we can take to enhance the possibility of changing ourselves in relationship to others in order to get great things accomplished. The third point on the compass, West, reminds us that we need to continue to acquire knowledge about our relationships to be able to alter the way we relate and communicate to others.

West points us to those areas where great wisdom and knowledge is found. It is hard work to build a knowledge treasure chest, yet without new knowledge we are condemned to live in the past. It is hard work to gain profound knowledge about both our historical and personal past, just as it is challenging to live in the present.

How do we further our understanding of events unfolding around us? Shall we reach for out thinking hat whenever relationships problems appear? In many cases, to deeply understand conflict, distance, killing or the giving up or risking of one life for a greater good, we will have to venture further back into our evolutionary past. It is here where we will be able to understand the roots of reactivity. Here we can find reasons, if not comfort, for how evolutionary forces have shaped our automatic responses to both people and situations. It is this kind of an effort that will allow us to define ourselves as unique and separate from others while still accepting out heritage, which has been hobbled together over evolutionary time.

If we are part of a family and part of a larger community then defining ourselves and staying connected to others, some of whom will be problematic, requires us to (1) feel the threat the other poses, (2) decrease our more automatic acting and thinking and consider how can we responsibly manage our reactions in the relationship, (3) accept that as we strive to be unique, most of the time we are up against the automatic forces in nature that are coded in our brain to both react to and to fit in with and follow the herd.

Is it worth the time and effort to contemplate how our actions, both verbal and non-verbal, are the results of billions of years of evolution? I think this pathway offers greater self-knowledge and awareness, leading to greater ability to be more present in difficult relationships. If you are motivated to understand the forces in social relationships, then let’s go way back in evolutionary history and consider the behavior of very primitive life forms. These life forms demonstrate, in their cellular simplicity, the balancing act between the force to be a unique self and the urge to fit with others in the social group, the togetherness force.

Life Regulating Mechanism: Our Primitive Emotional Heritage

Our ability to communicate with others today is built on a primitive scaffolding with its genesis in life in the oceans billions of years ago. It is here where the earliest life forms required communication to adapt to changing conditions. These adaptations set the stage for the group to signal the needed change in functioning of a few in the group as necessary for the survival of the group as a whole.

The first social species, stromatolites, found in Australia, are estimated to have formed some 3.5 billion years ago. Today these bacterial cells still have to sense the outside world as they did billions of years ago, to know if there is enough nitrogen to sustain life. If there’s not enough nitrogen in the environment, the cells comminute this condition. Some of the cells, the more “vulnerable” ones to the changing conditions, then alter their functioning and their new job is to “fix” the problem by producing nitrogen. In so doing they lose the ability to reproduce. These bacterial cells function more for the colony than for “self.” Cells communicate with other cells to understand their job. It would appear that even in this primitive life form some can be related to in a way that asks a few to ‘give up’ their functioning for the good of the group. ( I got many of these ideas after listening to a talk by Laurie Lassiter, Ph.D)

Life itself, expressed in various species, must have a variety of such primitive “rules and regulations”, to sustain life. These mechanisms appeared long before humans (and their brains) evolved on the planet. Life-sustaining mechanisms are selected for because, in the simplest terms, they offer rewards (life) and punishment (death) for the behaviors that sustain or extinguish life.

Antonio Damasio a professor of Neuroscience, Psychology and Neurology explains well how the basic devices of life regulation respond to external emotional (or automatic) stimuli, like a lack of nitrogen in the environment, triggering a response.

“The extremely varied devices of life regulation available in brains but inspired by principles and goals that antedated brains and that by and large operate automatically and somewhat blindly, until they begin to know conscious minds in the form of feelings. Emotions are the dutiful executor and servants of the value principle, the most intelligent offspring yet of biological values.”

Emotions, he notes, are “complex large automated programs of actions concocted by evolution, complimented by a cognitive program that includes certain ideas and modes of cognition.”

Bowen also noted that the basic emotional forces, togetherness and individuality, regulates behavior in the human family. This dynamic leads to both automatic ways to manage anxiety plus more thoughtful ways to handle ongoing tensions. The balance between the use of these mechanisms determines how families will function under stress.

Some families and social groups require more togetherness to function and others promote more individuality. Put another way, some families, more than others, require members to become nitrogen fixers (or to give up their individuality) for the sake of the “colony.” You could think of them as anxiety absorbers. No one consciously wants them to do it but there they are doing it, and any of us can easily fall into the evolutionary rigged trap of blaming them and refusing to see the deeper process that involves all of us.

Bowen noted that symptoms often came out of triangle alignments in families and other social systems. That is, our relationships are formed and informed by the alignment of triangles. (See the reference to triangles, either on my web site or in my book, in the section on Bowen Theory.) Triangles are the most stable alignment. A two-person relationship is unstable. A three-person relationship (triangle), manages stress by forming a two against one coalition, thus stabilizing and regulating behavior in the group.

Signals between people occur automatically and often without awareness. They lead to shifts in functioning by various members of the group. Triangles can be observed in many species. In addition there are “interlocking” triangles, extending into the group at large. One coalition can allow the twosome to pick on or isolate any number of others. The basic alignment in a prominent triangle is noted and often leads to predictable side taking and polarizations in groups.

The question arises: how can we become more aware of something if we are perceptually blind to seeing it? Perhaps we have to find ways to alert us to changes in the emotional system. If we begin to think of “blame” as an early warning sign of our blindness and our tendency to see things as black and white, we will be able to figure out how triangles are working.

When we fall into the togetherness with others we just might be automatically blaming those who we perceive to be not “us”. We see ourselves as aligned with the “good” people. The blamed one has a name but also represents an impersonal process. ]

In our earlier example, the shooter in Arizona, Jared Loughner, is seen by most as the “problem,” the “nitrogen fixer.” The stress and anxiety are absorbed by this fellow, forming a psychotic black hole in his head. Talk to most anyone and they will agree that Jared is the problem. If you can resist the temptation to see the problem as lodged in one individual or group, then you might be able to find strategies or ways to relate and come to a more neutral understanding of the problem.

It is always a challenge to communicate with others when we see a problem differently than they do because we’re not in the “togetherness” but are thinking as more defined individuals. Anyone who does this quickly realizes that this approach may not win them friends or even love.

Bowen use to draw attention to the problem by saying:” Call them psychotic and now they might not be human beings.” And “How do you see the human as part of life?”

Life Regulation Mechanism in Other Social Species: Ants, Bees

Ants are a wonderful species to learn from. They are everywhere. Sometimes they make a pesky appearance at a picnic, sometimes we see them at zoos or in the rain forest and are amazed at their diversity and ability to organize as a colony. E.O Wilson deserves great credit for teaching us the importance of respecting and learning from our fellow voyagers who make life on this planet possible. Wilson represents a view that genes are correlated with behaviors. He is often placed in opposition to those who believe that culture is the predominant driver of behavior.

Some say we should appreciate ants for being ants but what can they teach us about how social relationships impact our functioning? There are, after all, clear differences between ants and humans. Perhaps knowledge about the ant social system can enable us to become a bit more objective. When we observe from a greater distance we may see the primitive emotional process more clearly.

In ant colonies the interactions influence what and where the ants work will be on any particular day. They appear to communicate to each other where the food is as well as broader information about the state of the colony and the conditions in the outside world. Ants have genetic programs but it is not clear how the genes are turned on or off by information exchanged in social relationships.

There is little evidence that genetic sequences cause all behaviors. Genetic influence is one variable in behavior. One way to think about this is that genes have to be turned on or off and the greater the numbers of genes involved in behavior sequences the more the social environment might impact the expression of at least a few of these genes. We have yet to understand or to figure out how to test for the importance of communications in altering behavior or gene expression.

We see that even ants need to exchange information with others in the colony to make sure they are adapting to the changes in the environment and doing their jobs. One day they find out their job is to patrol and the next day they figure out by the numbers of ants they interact with that it time to move out the trash. The signals to influence their behavior are communicated either through direct body contact or through the signals delivered by chemical smells or movements.

Deborah Gordon and others have shown that the way each colony communicates within itself leads to adaptive behavior measured by the life span of one colony in relationship to others colonies. According to D. Gordon’s research, ants shift functional roles through the exchange of information. Each colony has slightly different ways of communicating. This leads to difference in the survival rates for the various colonies. Clearly, ants show us a wide variety of behaviors can occur after communicating new information about the outside world and what needs to be accomplished. Now what about bees?

Bees

In the 1940s a German biologist, Karl von Frisch, decoded the waggle that worker bees perform to recruit foragers to food sources. Thomas Seeley in his book, Honeybee Democracy, explores the waggle dance used by scouts to draw attention to the best nesting sites. Seeley saw that there was a great deal of individual freedom to explore and then convince others to act.

You can think about it as bees becoming like our political figures, posturing and dancing to communicate with great energy the information then used by the group to make a decision.

As more scouts join the dance eventually a quorum is reached by the group and the bees vote by flying off to the new site. Seeley thinks this kind of bottom up decision-making process can work in all kinds of social groups. He applies these rules to manage his department of neurobiology at Cornell University.

Seeley believes, based on these observations, that groups make better decisions when leaders do not interfere and instead enable the decision-making process of the group. He wants members to be free to explore and debate options. When all possibilities have been discussed, Seeley uses secret ballets to let the group make the best decision. As a leader, his job is to facilitate rather than make decisions for the others. This is a rule that we humans find hard to follow. It is easier to see what is wrong with others, to blame them and to force them to behave in the “right” way.

There is compelling evidence that decisions are more effective when the group can signal their vote rather than have the decision made by the leader. The force to be an individual is alive and well in the bees, as the individuals vote, and the votes are counted, and then the groups decides.

Humans have the ability to access this kind of democratic response too but seem to have problems maintaining a respect for individuals once a fear response has been triggered.

Family Emotional Process, Communication and Being a Self in Difficult Times

Bowen described how we are born into functional slots, or niches, like sibling position which result in variations in how individuals function in a system. In observing families Bowen observed that each family member brings different skills and challenges into the family. Emotional programming impacts how people are aligned with one another. Each individual’s position in the family alignment impacts the functioning of the family system.

One example at the societal level was the aforementioned example of the public shooting of Gabrielle Giffords. The shooter had extreme negative emotionality, which was not addressed and was acted out in a psychotic way. The results impacted the larger society, spreading fearful responses. When the leader communicated a different direction, civility was restored to enough people to keep primitive emotions in check. Personal responsibility becames more of the focus, more significantly after Obama spoke to the nation one week after the Arizona shootings.

Obama said that the first order of business is to stop blaming others and think about how to manage ourselves. This leader reminded us to be conscious of our decision making about what we choose to do. His focus on “consciousness about personal decision-making” can and probably did diminish at least somewhat the automatic way many people participated in blaming or more primitive emotional reactions. Once the automatic reactivity or the emotional programming has been pointed out, people appear to be more aware and freer to make decisions to maximize more mature functioning.

Once we decide what we are going to do to manage our anxiety and reactivity we can still encounter resistance to our decision. A decision not to follow the pathways of fear is a change, and change is often resisted. Depending on our ability to predict and prepare for these reactions, we will either stay on course or give in to the social pressure and resume positions where we fit in with others and give up self.

There is no doubt that in times of high stress it is harder to think wisely and differently from the herd. It appears that knowledge of the primitive nature of our emotional programming can allow for more thoughtful and less reactive actions when and if we feel threatened.

By acquiring more factual knowledge and understanding the primitive emotional forces in nature, we can cool down our own reactivity. If we can hold onto our wiser more profound ways of relating to others who are having problems, if we can maintain our higher ideas, hopes, and dreams despite threats, then this decrease in behavioral reactivity can lead to improved levels of functioning in social groups.

There are many unanswered questions. How many people do we need to see the wisdom of relating differently to the vulnerable ones to see a significant change in society? Significant change might be measured by lower rates of re-hospitalization for those with serious emotional problems. There may be a tipping point as the numbers of people who are less polarized increases. This might alter the way a social system operates. Is the tendency to blame others and to cut off from them one of the early warning signs of a coming regression?

We can use metaphors to see how other life forms, like the Cyanobacteria, act on one another to find the “nitrogen fixers,” for the good of the colony. We can see that in an ant colony, when the ants are communicating well, the colony is more adept at managing changing conditions. We can see that bees use the group vote, “democracy,” to discover which scouts are pointing towards a better a direction. Is it a stretch to then to consider that “crazy” behavior in human communities is primitive emotional programming rising up to “fix” problems that live in all of us.

If we consider the above to be a reasonable description of emotional process then one hypothesis would be that if some percentage of people follow more mature pathways, then the social systems can reenergize and reorganize. We need to know more about the conditions necessary to mange primitive emotionality. But for now we can observe that when a few individuals, leaders or scouts, point towards behaviors fostering more mature behavior the group might bump along but eventually adapt well to the stressful event.

The challenge is for courageous and well defined individuals to discover good enough ways to relate to those who want to cut off from the others, those who demand a quick fix, and of course those who become carriers of social disorder. No one yet knows how many people are needed in a community to relate well to those who display signs of emotional instability. Possibly only a small percentage of such people are required to produce a tipping point, making it possible to sustain a community of divergent individuals, including those who are our most vulnerable. And the challenge for all of us is to become a more separate individual in the group while managing reactivity in all its glorious and seductive forms.

Many thanks to my editor, Judy Ball.