The popular psychology movement in the United States consists of hundreds of self-help books, magazines, Internet blogs, TV talk shows, and radio advice/call-in programs. The movement derives from an outdated form of psychotherapy based on the superficial doctrine that how you feel is who you are. Thus we live in a "cult of feelings," where what you feel has become at least as important as what you do. (Think of all the news interviewers who shove microphones in the faces of politicians, perpetrators, and victims alike to ask the overwhelming question, "How do you feel?") Our pop culture places greater emphasis on personal feelings than personal values, on expressing how you feel rather than doing what you deeply believe is right, and on blaming (relief of guilt and shame) rather than improving. Displays of aggressive emotions -- to justify aggressive behavior, violence, or political criticism -- dominate TV and movie screens. Self-help books claim that to be "real" you have to explore all your feelings, without regard to the fact that "exploring" feelings amplifies and magnifies, i.e., distorts them, not to mention the fact that "exploring" your own feelings makes it difficult to see anyone else apart from your reaction to them. People are now entitled to express every negative feeling they have, without regard to the effects on others, just as they felt entitled to litter a few decades ago and to smoke in public a few years ago. The result is a world rife with emotional pollution that divorces the superficial experience of emotions from their deeper meaning.
No matter how many self-help books and experts on talk shows insist that your feelings are "valid" and "appropriate," they cannot feel authentically like your own so long as they are mere reactions to someone else. If we allow the meaning of our lives to be subject to the vagaries of our reactions to the subtle emotional displays of others, we cannot help but fall into the present day quagmire of emotional pollution.
To feel genuine and empowered, like a person of substance, folks need to know more than whether their emotions are "appropriate." They need to know what they mean about the self. The meaning of our emotions cannot lie in how they feel, but in what they tell us about the current fidelity to your deepest values. No matter how "appropriate" our entitlement, resentment, or anger may seem as a reaction to others, the more important question is this:
"Is my entitlement, resentment, or anger reflecting the kind of person I want to be?"
If not, I am blaming my failure to be the person I want to be on someone else.
Please forward to Dr. Epstein
Found this in some old letters...not sure I ever s
sent....this article reminded me of this subject...
Dr. Robert Epstein,
West Coast Editor
Psychology Today
Dear Dr. Epstein:
I would like to respond briefly to your excellent article “The Loose Screw Awards”, in the February issue of Psychology Today.
First, I thought you might find of interest some background on Boot Camps. In 1963, I was employed by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, in Leavenworth, Kansas, as a Classification and Parole Officer.
After a year I concluded there must be a better way to deal with our criminal problem, and fortunately, for myself (and family) I was offered a position as chief probation officer for the district courts in Topeka, Kansas.
In reflecting on the Leavenworth Penitentiary, I reasoned that a short-term, “shock” period of incarceration (a few days, to two weeks max) for the young adult offender, would be just as effective, if not more effective than the traditional long term incarceration, and at an enormous savings to the tax payer. Also, I believed then, as now, that the inmate not be made aware of an early release, as the overall objective was the effective prevention of future crime.
I wrote a paper on the “Shock Incarceration” concept, and it became law in Kansas in 1970. From there the idea spread eastward and southward, and the State of New York, I believe, still has a Shock Incarceration program on their statutes. England and Germany also adopted the Shock Incarceration concept.
In 1980, two judges in Georgia, were reflecting on their military boot camp experience, and concluded that this would be a good way to “shock” the young offender, and during much of the 1980’s the terms “boot camp” and “shock incarceration” became interchangeable terms in Corrections literature.
As is often the case, a concept will take on a life of its own, and this is a twist in the road I certainly did not agree with, and for the same reasons pointed out in your article. My original thinking was never based on “tough love” (but rather on a dose of “reality”), and to effectively and sanely address our crime problem in America. (And in the whatever it is worth, I think the “Punishment Model”, and what we are doing now, with over two million behind bars, is patently insane….see web page at www.Inclusivism.org ).
Also, while at Topeka, I worked with psychiatrists at the Menninger Foundation to set up the first court psychiatric clinic (with an office in the court house). Since we had an abundance of psychiatrists from the 4th year residency program at Menninger, to wed the fields of Law and Psychiatry, I doubt that this could be duplicated anywhere else. Perhaps most unusual, we were able to get a psychiatric evaluation on every felony offender, in addition to the pre-sentence report. There is an article in Federal Probation on the program, which dates many years ago.
All of the “loose screw” awards peeked my interest in one way or another, but an area that has bothered me over the years (I will soon be 71), regards “self-esteem”.
For many years I have corresponded with Dr. Arnold Lazarus, at Rutgers, and we almost came to blows over the subject. I believe then, as now, that high self-esteem is too often confused with arrogance in these studies….and that the study which found that persons “with high self-esteem are more likely to be violent or racist”….is nonsensical. A person with high self-esteem
is a non-sequitur re violent behavior towards others….if someone has a strong internal sense of their own self-worth…they would never wish ill on another person…..that is antithetical to having “high self-esteem”.
At any rate, at one point I asked Arnold if Hitler would be considered to have high self-esteem, and he forwarded the email over to his friend Dr. Albert Ellis, and I felt very fortunate that Dr. Ellis vindicated the definition I was asserting. When I was growing up an older brother used to say we need a “set of values”, and that is the closest term I can use to define this internal sense of self-worth which creates a sense of “high self-esteem”.
In closing, I am looking forward to “The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen”. My only concern is that some in our criminal justice system might see this as a justification for treating younger and younger persons as adults….which I find to be a very dangerous trend (the symptom of a society that has gone mad).
Best regards,
Jim Green
Jgreen5@satx.rr.com
www.Inclusivism.org