Something I have been wanting to say.

Brian Lynch

[This piece will be confusing to some. I hope only at first. It refers mainly to the AA movement. I often find it surprising how many people still are unfamiliar with the movement or have not even heard of the “12 steps.”  I had not reread the original version of the “Steps” for some time. I had occasion to do so. I was surprised at how much I did not like them. I originally rewrote them some 13 years ago. They became the basis for my book “Knowing Your Emotions.” 

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.”

Death of a Hired Man, Robert Frost

Of course, the format of the steps has been used for many purposes from fixing your computer to losing weight. Here I address what I see as deeply flawed presumptions concerning the needs of not only drinkers but addicts of any kind.

Many might be puzzled about this attack if they think the “movement” has great success. The fact is this is in great question. There is much evidence that it is not a success overall and I would argue that the success it has is certainly not because of humiliating members in the way mentioned here but by the interest shown in the fellowship.

Finally, as will be seen, this is not an attack on “God” or religion. As the movement acknowledges it has opened the concept up, long ago, of “higher power” to personal interpretation but here I greatly challenge that. I am, for the most part, leaving religion aside. ]

The steps ask us to “Accept the things we cannot change, change the things we can, and find, somewhere the wisdom to know the difference.” That is a paraphrase.

The statement orients as life and death do hang in the details of what can be accepted or not and or changed, in millimeters and answers are often in short supply. We have general outlines but are often short on specifics.

At least we are in a conversation and we can always say we are trying and doing better than we were no matter how miserable that is.

I claim it is certainly not all that good as we are nowhere near having the knowledge of these matters in hand as we think we might- that is where these lines fall between what can and cannot be done. But more importantly, how does one more specifically manage and accept impossible situations?

What I call for here is a radical involvement of the community for real change to take place in individuals.

It is obvious that when people have had their troubles it has been taken for granted that it is their doing. They have, throughout history been marked as “bad” and “evil.” The family is cursed with its “bad seed” and, of course, we are all “sinners.” Or "It is written." It is up to each of us as individuals to atone for our deeds through prayer, penance, and other forms of sacrifice. The idea that we might not be “responsible” for our actions is quite new in fact. That we might be able to be helped to change the way we act and do things is very, very new.

The 12-step movement of Alcoholics Anonymous asks us to admit we are powerless over alcohol and that we are “defective.” And it asks us to go into the community and “make amends” to those we have harmed.

To be sure most of what “The Steps” and their spirit is about was wonderful and needed at the time. It got people thinking and looking in the direction of community and connection. But the more I think about them the more I see them as the merest of beginnings as they :

- put the entire burden on the individual

- they recognize nothing of the community of which the person is a part and that communities role in the person's dilemma

These two statements will upset many people. They will roll their eyes and insist that everyone is “responsible” for their drug use. Yet this simply is not true. Humans are social and political animals. We are not made to live alone.

A favorite reference of mine is Micheal Gladwells' “Outliers” his best seller that starts with the chapter “Rosetto” about a town in Pennsylvania where people are very healthy despite poor health habits. They had low cardiovascular risk, cancer, and no alcoholism. The only thing you could point to is a tremendously strong community life; for example 20 social services organizations for a town of 2,500.

Drug takers and drinkers do not pop up ready-made they are traumatized one way or another and this trauma is repeated over and over again AND the means to medicate the trauma is in a milieu that allows for self-medication is extant.

Most plainly speaking people are hurt by other people. And hurt people hurt people. No matter who you are you take care of that hurt in some way. If you have been very well cared for most of your life, valued, and have learned a sense of self then through most hard times you will probably do well with no more than maybe a temper tantrum now and then. But I would say even few of us are that lucky.

What has been fascinating, over the last few years, is how it seems to be how we all have our “poison” when it comes to self-medicating. We are, as a society, becoming more open, honest, and accepting that one poison is equal to another but are not there yet. What am I saying? I am saying that food can easily be as bad as heroin depending on how much you eat. It can be worse.

 Gambling is bad but do we recognize how many ways we gamble? Do we recognize that the stock market in a major way is nothing more than gambling? Why is it and why is it not? I would say it is not because there is a long-term track record of the Dow Jones average. It is not a flip of the coin over the years; however, it is very near a flip of a coin on any given day. This is the problem, what day are you going to need your money? If you want to cash out in 18 months to retire and in 16 months there is a “Black Friday” you are out of luck. But still, of course, there are many ways to become “addicted” daily to trading.

In short, people do all kinds of things to medicate themselves. Now where is, again, this pain coming from? Again others, and this is the problem with part of treatment or at least “the movement”, and that is it does not recognize or give voice to the harm done to the individuals. Here there is no denying that there may have been done, and maybe the majority of the time, there is harm done by the user but the problem is where it all begins and where does it all end?

I deal a great deal with the concepts of shame and humiliation. What starts the whole process in the first place is shame and humiliation.

By shame, I “only” mean a feeling of unattained desire. This can be a wished-for returned greeting from a friend or a profound sense of humiliation from a dressing down at work (the desire in retrospect of wanting to be appreciated). Again I “want” something and do not get it. Or I have lost a previous state of joy.

What we feel about these ideas is that these ideas about shame and humiliation are so underappreciated that they almost go universally unnoticed/missed in our assessments. To be sure they, if considered, challenge everyone.

They ask us to consider the world from the drug user’s point of view.

From that point of view, it can be said that many might claim feelings of massive shame and humiliation throughout their lives.

And so pausing a beat I ask us to consider that we are profoundly emotional beings and that unless we understand our emotions we are very often powerless over our actions and are powerless over the world.

Yes, that is the extent of our “higher power.” We have the traditional formulations embodied in the “12 steps” but I do say that given their succinctness and emphasis on the individual it may be time to move on. I believe we end up “over-explaining” the steps. I say the “higher power” can be a tautology. What I call the “hot potato” answer. What is that? The analogy is to anger management. We tell people that have problems with their anger that they need to go to anger management class and manage their anger. Well, this is like having someone already holding a hot potato and telling them to ok continue to hold the hot potato. Ok, buddy you're doing pretty good let’s see what else you can do with the sucker! Wherever you turn you end up looking at yourself.

What has become clear is anger is not the issue at all. Anger is a consequence of a deeper hurt and confusion, if you will, shame. What has happened is the person has “wanted” something for probably a long time and has not gotten it. Often the “want” or desire has been quite reasonable. You may doubt this. First, think about yourself. But I will give you an example. I used to work in nursing homes a lot. Residents would want passes to go outside. So they would want and want, right? And often would not get the pass. I believe often unjustly, but justly or not, they would build up enormous hurt and confusion/ shame and finally, they would get angry. They would be blamed for their anger. Something they would get violent. At the time I was doing group therapy. I suppose I was expected to scold them. Of course, I didn’t. Many times what I saw was that their dose of Depakote would go up; a potent sedative.

We need to understand that it is a system that involves a community or at least a dyad, more than one person. We need to interact. We need to complete the “I want.”

I believe the “higher power” business, for the most part, is a neat sleight of hand for all of us to avoid this thought: the need to engage one another therefore throwing it back in the face of individuals. What I hear sub-rosa is that “you are weak,” “it certainly is your fault”, “you are to blame” and above all, it sends a message loud and clear of abandonment. “Be very clear about this buddy you are very alone, at least around here.” You need to stand on your own two feet and take responsibility.

So we tell people that need a connection to look to a “higher power.” Don’t ask me for help!

All this said I am not going to throw the baby out with the bath water. The movement has come to accept a broad interpretation of the “higher power” and so I am saying nothing new and would of course be wrong to speak for anyone who says they benefit from using the concept. The hope is that we transition from being victims to a more self-conscious healing adults. And here I transition from "victims" of our devices and "programs."

I must too not act blind and dumb in terms of the aspects of the movement that entail the meetings, sometimes daily meetings if a person so chooses, and the fellowship that entails the tradition of a sponsor that is available 24/7. If that is not a “dyad?” What is? But there is structure and there is philosophy. So often the philosophy dominates.

Note: I did not say fully healthy and fully conscious adult as this is not possible. I said a healing adult. Psychology at least is telling us that we are at the mercy of our affective or emotional system and always will be. Our emotions guide us. They tell us what is important. Our early experiences so inform us and they inform us subconsciously and automatically for well or ill and if ill it will take a lot of work to correct those “habits.” And sorry to say we will never completely get ahead of the task. Right, there is enough of a “higher power” for me. What is that? The cold hard fact that I can realize and accept is that I am, as we all are, works-in-progress and it takes our full attention to stay as much on course as possible and it takes at least a community of two.

Above all, we are not “defective” or morally bad. No more than anyone else.

Once thrown into life I may have done many unsavory things. No question about it. The radical science or rather the true science is about not having much or any free will from where we started as children wanting to be loved. Yes, people not wanting to grow up to be drunks or addicts to people being damaged and then in disassociated states that then do unsavory things.

How am I not to feel, deep inside, more shame and humiliation if it is suggested that I am to look to myself, only to myself, for the answer? That it is essentially my job and my job alone? That I am defective? That is what the words say, “My defects.”

I turn inward then to understand the “higher power” and by that “all” I mean- and that is a lot- it is I mean that I am not in control simply through my “ego” or my reason. If I am going to have any hope of getting through life with any modicum of joy I better learn something about synchronizing reason and emotion. This will only come through some study and self-exploration but also some community.

My version of the 12-Steps

“TWELVE STEPS TO EMOTIONAL HEALTH

1. We came to realize that we are profoundly emotional beings and that unless we understand our emotions, we are very often powerless over our own actions and the world. 

2. We came to believe that by coming to know our own powerful emotions, we may maximize peace and joy in our lives. 

3. We made a decision to start on a path of understanding how our thinking and actions are often profoundly determined by our emotions, past and present

4. We came to an understanding that only by taking a detailed emotional inventory - an inventory of our anger, fear, distress, disgust, and shame and by assessing what we are really interested in and what really makes us happy- will we truly be able to change our actions. 

5. That we have expressed to others, when appropriate, and ourselves the exact nature of our feelings, thereby gaining some power over them. 

6. By doing all of the above steps, we naturally became ready to be accepting of the world and others as it is and as they are. 

7. By the above, we came to accept ourselves as we are and to understand that we have done what we have done due to unmanageable feelings of hurt and thus, it is counterproductive and damaging to blame ourselves and others. 

8. Made a list of all persons we have harmed and made an inventory of how we felt at the time we hurt them and made amends when appropriate. 

9. We have tried to understand why we felt the way we did, thus understanding why we did what we did. We have come to understand that we feel before we think. We have worked towards understanding that others, like ourselves, have trouble controlling emotions and, thus, often what they do. 

10. We have continued to think about our basic emotions daily if possible. We have come to know each emotion in our own personal way. We have monitored ourselves for feelings of guilt, and when we do things that hurt others, we look to what we were feeling at the time, thereby avoiding feelings of guilt, understanding ourselves better, as well as making amends to those we have hurt. 

11. Sought, through the practice of a daily emotional inventory and meditation on that inventory, control over our actions and lives. 

12,. Having come to know our emotional lives, we have gained the ability to employ our interest and experience in a new type of interaction with others, one of mutual interest that will lead us to maximize joy in our lives and with others.

2009-2011

"The Good"

“The Good”

Brian Lynch

Revised

Why can we know the good, “see” the good yet not grasp it? Not “do” it? This is not the Socratic and Platonic “To know the good is to do the good.”

This question has fascinated me for a very long time. I think the Socratic statement is not at all the case.

Our history and drama are full of tragic figures who strive for “the good” only to fail.

But, now, I turn not to great literature or philosophy, but to a situation comedy of recent years that always comes to mind when I think of this situation entitled “Arrested Development.” 

This is a wealthy “dysfunctional family” with one “functional” member.

While the CEO's father sits in prison for misdeeds and the mother continues to spend corporate money via embezzlement, and siblings and extended family simply cannot function The son “keeps” getting “pulled back in” because he is the only one that is stable enough to fix things. While everyone takes potshots at him.

An example from my life that exemplifies this situation and one of my favorites is when a patient actually says, “But you’re a doctor you’re supposed to do it.” That is I was to do some virtuous thing while they could not comprehend how they might do the same.

In my mind, the “problem” is how is it, in this rather brilliant show or any situation, real or imagined, can it be that a person can “know the good but not do it?” 

Between “To Know the good is to do the good” and the shame of not being able to get to the good not realizing that although you want the good something is impeding it. In between the two lies the entire history of Western thought. 

In there lies the entire history of Christianity and its struggle to deal with sin, blame, guilt, and damnation because if you know the good you must be able to effect it. If you don't, you did it of your own free will and thus are a sinner. But we now know that it is not that easy. We can’t until we can. And so if there is a gospel it is The Gospel of community love and support. Interest in others is the impediment to their ongoing shame. 

This type of question weds reason and emotion. There they are side by side. We came up with the term “cognitive dissonance” because of these situations. Here is the situation of how can it be that we know the good but do not do it. This will naturally and subconsciously cause confusion or cognitive dissonance that will often lead us to do things against our and others' best interests.

It seems there is a quite simple, but maybe not obvious answer: we do not do the good because we do not feel worthy.

It is a frightening thought. “I am not worthy.” And it can be dangerous because this can be a shame sinkhole as there is nothing anyone can do to convince me otherwise and I can drag the whole world with me. 

A phrase others and I have used is a “black hole of shame.” Just as a “black hole in space” is so powerful it sucks in everything around it, so does the personality of a person with such shame. It tries to destroy you and make you as miserable as they are. We have all kinds of terrible names for them and if we live with them or love them, we “pity them” and see their agony and if we do not have the benefit of understating their shame then we are left to our own devices.

Of course, not all are so off the bean but still so many suffer a whole continuum of this shame dynamic that keeps them and all of us from time to time in the shadows and form participating in “The Good.” The most common mode is the “simple” and hurtful “withdrawal.” The “impolite” unanswered phone call or email after the heartfelt request.

I cannot imagine life without this understanding. I cannot imagine being as civil as I am. And yes, so, by implication I do think I have come to be able to, without, embarrassment say that I have participated in “The Good” to some extent.

 My understanding of shame in others is the only thing that keeps me sane. So I wonder how we have survived and tolerated others so much in the troughs of shame and what we have understood until now called their “evil ways.” Well, we know what we have done and said; literature and drama well document this, to say nothing of the real historical record. But it also shows that we have often been surprisingly tolerant of ourselves and others. We have been strikingly good despite the existence of so much toxic shame in our lives. At least history shows we have improved despite our ignorance. It is so because all we have done here is discovered shame. 

Shame has always been with us and so every one of us has had to live it and live the consequence of the options that pain gives us whether it had been articulated or not. Point? Well, albeit we are still not all that empathetic it seems we have been empathetic enough to give, on average, each other many breaks along the road as we recognized from early on that we are “all fellow travels to the grave.” (Dickens)

But why am I not worthy? It is mainly because I have been told so or because I have been made to feel I am nothing by some kind of abandonment. The shame and humiliation, i.e. the enormous pain and void that leaves consumes my life. Life is for others from then on. I have but one job and that is: Well, what is it? Hard to define isn’t it since I am nothing?

As the king said, though in another context, “Nothing will come of nothing?” 

Much will come of interest as it overcomes “nothing.”

Nothing makes any difference

“It's the way the people regard the theft of the apple
That makes the boy what he is. “
“Aner Clute” Edgar Lee Masters

 Nothing makes any difference except the lost love of your family and until you grieve that you can love no other including yourself.

However long I have been in the business of trying to help myself and others understand themselves and their place in the world it has taken that long to understand something about the above statement and articulate it.

Once said it made clear, to me at least, so many things. Central to this is a “tipping point” in the maturation in the family and that is was I sent off into the world stable and “vaccinated” so that I might manage the colds and flu of the emotional world or was I abandoned in any number of ways so as even to have the slightest of doubt to trip me up and make me feel that I was not loved.

The great model for this that I have in my head is the Orangutan. Generally speaking, I understand that the young are attached to their mothers for a good two years in the end this consists of just holding on but the fact is they never let go. Now at the other end of life, of course, this consists of nearly all of it, they are pretty much solitary creatures.

Now, of course, they don’t have to “think” about any of this as we do, they do not have to be nurtured or taught about parenting or how to live in the world. But I read into their ability to be these rather serene solitary adults and the fact that they were in this “external womb” for two years. That is they were indeed “vaccinated.” That is their innate emotional system (affect system) was slowly prepared, calmly prepared, in stages, for the world.

They were taught first about interest and joy, lots and lots of it; that there could be security in the world. Then they were let loose on the world holding these strong memories. They were not let loose in the world with high levels of stress hormones and nightmares full of fear, anger, shame, and distress.

My point is humans can be let loose with either and on average with a mixture and yes a minority, a minority with what might be called an orangutan’s upbringing.

So humans are different. It takes so darn long for humans to mature. We now know it is not until age 25, yes! 25 that the brain is fully integrated. If raised nurturing the child’s interest and joy the child will develop an interest in the world that will lead to a natural separation from the family that will also maintain a healthy attachment.

On the other hand, if there was never “love” here we could talk much about “love” and the difficulties around that word. It is difficult as if there is one thing I have learned is that people will defend to the death their “love” for their torturers. For those who in fact can betray them daily. We have all experienced at some level that “Crazy kinda love” of domestic violence.

And as I say this is about “Nothing makes any difference except the lost love of your family and until you grieve that you can love no other including yourself.”

But when we are told we were never wanted. We were a “mistake.” “But for us, everything would be ok.” “God never created a more evil creature.” Or we are out and out abandoned for long lengths of time. Or it may be something many cannot comprehend and say “Oh how can that be such a big deal?” And what is that? The absent father continually says he will come to take us to the movie but never shows. Or the parents that are simply “not there” ever, emotionally for us. Let me count the ways. Well, it is a big deal.

Any of these situations are not akin to the mother and child bond of the Orangutans where mutual interest flows. No, in all of these, there is a slew of impediments and so there is much shame and all the other negative feelings.

If negative feelings then the likelihood of or a “need” to, or indeed the necessity of doing something. We are physical beings so we are always doing something. So in many of these awful situations above noted, there are mostly awful solutions such as trying to runway, fighting back, drowning our sorrows, and very often blaming ourselves for the problem which we are often taught anyway from an early age. That is: “We are the mistake”, and “We are the problem.” And the essential point here is that for most of childhood, the most likely option will be to blame ourselves. It is the one place where we can put it into words and where people are putting it into words for us. “You are a mistake” and we mimic it “I am a mistake.”

Here is what has become so very clear to me once again. That is I thought many years ago now that I understood what it was to “attack oneself” but I now realize that I believe I had only scratched the surface.

Right now let us for our purpose think of that “mistake” in our terms of our, once again:

“Nothing makes any difference except the lost love of your family and until you grieve that you can love no other including yourself.”

If the reader follows and if not it is my error. The lost love, of course, is bound up in and is the act of naming you the “mistake” or picking any of the other horrors. It is the “thing” the impediment. It is THE SHAME that should be what others experience as love and what you see them experience as love. You see others hugged and kissed by their loved ones and you try and wonder what is going on in their brain because the image on their face is not the image you feel on your face under the same circumstances. You are confused and at times enraged. How can you participate in the world? How can you consort with these other aliens? Well, you cannot.

You start school and you stop. You have many jobs. You have relationships and marry but he or she tells you that they always feel that they are “outside”, second to your family, to your “crazy” family.

As one trying to help people the great insight has been how we take “to heart” the sense of “nothingness.” I put it in scare quotes because “to take to heart” is to put it as if we have a choice and it is clear to me that “Affect psychology” is showing us that it is not a choice. As a child running away is not an option, of course until much later. Running away into oneself is the default position. But why does one do that? It is probably first because one has been made to feel nothing and started to “attack self.” We can get pretty much stuck on “I am bad.” And I need to now be “good” and make do with whatever it takes to be in favor of my caretakers. But the burden is great. My entire childhood, a “normal” childhood passes me by. I do not learn how to handle my emotions in any “normal” way as I do not relate to other children normally or my siblings normally. I am often put in the position of parenting my sibling or my parents. The list of things I will do to “please” the family and myself is infamous: cutting, eating disorders, drugs, and incest.

Guilt can consume of course. If I am a mistake, if I am bad, then I must be guilty of something. But of what? Of course, there is no answer because you are not guilty of anything. How confusing? This can only cause one great feeling of shame. How as it makes you feel stupid? You feel guilty and you can’t find the answer. That is how. But again there is no answer. Then more shame.

A final thought and well-known syndrome that is you will not, you will not rise above your family, for to do so would humiliate them and shame yourself. This would be a betrayal of them and their love. How could you ever then achieve their love if you rose above their station? Of course, this does not always play out but as I say it is a well-known phenomenon and the best explanation I know of for all those Ph.D. theses for which only one copy was made of then lost.

Looking For Joy

Looking For Joy

 "Melt the clouds of sin and sadness

Drive the dark of doubt away

Giver of immortal gladness

Fill us with the light of day" From "Ode To Joy"

You finally clear security and you see a loved one and a smile breaks out on your face: Joy.

Why? We don’t much think of our emotions, or our feelings, in terms of being physical but look in the mirror or at the person that is smiling back at us. 

Our feelings do take place and are triggered in the body. What is probably counterintuitive to the reader is that the reason a smile breaks out on the face is due, more often than not, to the lack of negativity rather than something positive. Now what in the world am I talking about? 

That is you smiled because you were now in a state of relaxation from a prior state of other negative “tension” of “distress”, “anguish”, “fear” or any number of other mixed “negative” feeling having to do with travel and the anticipation of going where you where going and finally reuniting with your loved ones and experiencing “joy.”

That is reader, this joy just came and went and it won’t roll around again until a similar situation presents itself.

Never heard of such a thing? It does sound odd? I thought “joy” was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and of course what everyone wants.

Well, it does seem to be whatever one wants just ask them. The problem is the answer to what is usually formulated in terms of the pot of gold.

Psychology has not talked much about the “positive” emotions but is getting around to them. They haven’t because they have barely identified them or recognized them.

I believe therapists have been just in the dark as their charges in terms of this thing called “happiness.”

It was, at least for me, “startling” to think of joy in this new very limited way. It means actually “grieving” a wish for “nirvana” of the future; a heaven on earth so to speak. It is the ultimate “reality testing” and I suppose people don’t like it. Not a dream catcher but a dream snatcher.

To be happy you’re simply going to have to work at it.

But I mean not to be flippant but didactic. I come to this painfully as for so many that “pot of gold” is so important. It is important as they have built up a huge negative deficit of feeling due to trauma. And then this trauma can be and is replayed in memory repeatedly virtually repeating the trauma each time. The more “negative” feelings they accumulate the more the desire for that “pot of gold” or a “heaven on earth.” Of course, many simply get trapped and focused on the “negative,” wondering what “joy” could be.

Joy is not, unfortunately, “out there” as all the sages tell us it is inward. But is there something “new under the sun?” People seem to make millions, every once in a while, literally simply repackaging that sentiment, as far as I can tell, of saying “Sit on a park bench and look inward.” 

I think we can be more specific. That is joy is indeed not “out there” in a very important sense. That sense is that it is mostly the absence of negative feelings (affect).  I believe and would say that it cannot simply be this as it would quickly turn on itself. Joy would quickly turn to distress and boredom. No, the external world is important. The loved one needs to be waiting for us. We need our “bliss”, our interest, in the world as the great student of myth Joe Campbell said or “God helps us.” Without a sustaining interest to motivate what indeed are we?

That is the importance of understanding that “interest” is a unique and discreet feeling. We have never been taught this as we have been taught it about “joy”, “anger” and “fear.” But it is exactly like these feelings and I have come to see it as quite essential for joy in our lives in the long run. Over the long run, interest gives us goals to strive for.

Those goals then are our “pot of gold.” But there is a hitch this time, right? These pots of gold are not free they take work, overwhelmingly. I want the girl. I want that house. I want a career. They do not fall into our lap. For sure when we are young we daydream about it all coming easily, and even as adults we fall into such thoughts. We all might fall into the trap of dreaming of winning the lottery from time to time with or without buying a ticket and then some lose touch with reality and engage in various levels of extreme attempts to engage in a fantasy world where they achieve their “pot or pots of gold.”

For me, the real insight is the role that “punishing” feeling plays in “joy.” That there is no “Royal Road”, as they say, to joy. I am saying there are essentially two ways to look at it one is the absence of negative emotion. The getting-off-a-plane moment and the other more explicitly involve “interest.” Of course, they both involve interest. You are interested in seeing the person in the terminal.

You want the gal, house, and job. In these cases I choose the long-term “work” it will take. In the case of the airplane trip, the emotions were foisted on you. The “negative” feeling or affect where “passive” you had no choice but to experience them. You had not seen your parents in a year and you got on the plane in New York. Your father has been ill. You have had a bad year. It is a five-hour flight to L.A. Your sister will be there who you don’t get along with so it will be a mixed bag but you have a great relationship with your parents. 

Distress and a bit of fear are with you during the flight but when you talk with your seatmates you are “happy.” When you arrive you find you are quite overwhelmed with joy to see your parents once again and your distress and fear are no more.

This is fairly different than joy attained through the active pursuit of some goal. Of course, it is not a new thought that we have “to work for it” but it seems I rediscovered the linkage of interest- distress – joy. Yes, this material has ways of playing tricks on one. 

Or generically: interest – work - joy where work will entail any number of “negative” or combinations of “punishing” feelings not just “distress.”

Now, what of all those people that say that they go to work and say that they don’t know if they are working or playing? Good point. Well, all is not lost I have hedged a bit in the above saying in “most” cases. Turning to our guide in these matters, for Silvan Tomkins the essential mechanism is a decrease in our stimulation level be that of a negative feeling state or a positive feeling state. Again the operative word is “decrease” in stimulation. So if I am very excited and I go to a calmer state I will feel joy. The excitement and pleasure of sex will end in joy. I went back and found that I guess I had it right in my book:

“Tomkins sees joy as a result of calming or bringing to a conclusion the situation that caused anger, fear, distress, disgust, smell, shame, surprise, and, most importantly, interest. His basic question, after all, is what is it that we want? The answer, is not, that what we want is joy. Do we not feel joy as a state of relaxation and do we not feel that state after having felt some other emotion? I am interested in buying a car so I feel happy when I drive it to the lot. I am interested in eating dinner and am happy when I eat my favorite meal. I am very tired and am interested in going to bed and am happy when I get into bed. I am waiting to see my daughter get o_ the plane and am happy to see her.”

“Knowing Your Emotions” p 19.

“Who’ll stop the rain”

*

“Who’ll stop the rain”

“Long as I remember rains be fallen’ down.

Clouds of mystery pourin’ confusion on the ground.

Good men through the ages searchin’

for the sun and I wonder, still I wonder

who’ll stop the rain.”

Credence Clearwater Revival

Now years ago someone posted a comment on Facebook as a call to protest the release of one Michael Woodmansee.

Mr. Woodmansee is a convicted murderer. He murdered a fellow child at the age of 16. The details are of the sort that arise passions.

This piqued my interest and lead me to post the flowing comment.

If you are of the persuasion of these thoughts, then it is “preaching to the choir.” If not they will probably be quite unsettling if not enraging.

There is usually little “in-between” in these matters. The core thought that is expressed later is “The truth is we harm ourselves the more we hurt others. And that is what punishment does, it hurts others and therefore through it we harm ourselves.”

I started my original comment on Facebook  thus: “I am glad to see an open discussion on this matter.” I have been involved in these matters for a very long time. I am not in the legal profession. I am a physician so think about the human condition for a living. Long before that, I thought about what we “should” do with ourselves, which was in college. We give various names to this “Ethics” etc.

It has surprised me how my career has never quite veered from staying close to commenting on and trying to improve the understanding of what we call the “criminal mind” and the criminal justice system. My first attempt was my college thesis “Let Us Help Him Who Did So Human A Thing.” Therapists long ago took on Terence’s aphorism “Nothing that is human is foreign.” Jeffrey Dahmer, Hitler, et al, who committed unspeakable atrocities are in the end human and it falls to someone to understand them because without understanding we do not progress as humans and given the right circumstance we are all quite capable of atrocities.

Nietzsche said to understand the state of a society look to how they treat their prisoners. I have tried to come at these issues, not from a right or left or religious viewpoint. So how? From what we call science. That said, and so, it always bothered me when many a religious will supposedly promote the gospel of “vengeance be mine saith the lord” and that redemption is a personal matter and yet are on the front lines of executions.

I do not believe, at this point in history, that “punishment” has any place in the armament of human interactions. The only reason to incarcerate is to protect society from the harm others might do and in an ideal world to rehabilitate. Of course, there are all kinds of details to be worked out. How long do we incarcerate if we do not base it on a sense of “justice.”

Is this “radical?” I believe all psychological research tells us I am not, I am not radical. 

Otherwise, I believe in a “Restorative Justice” approach and reparations. Punishment cannot be used for retribution or vengeance. It is and of course, will continue to be used. It certainly will be but I see no religious moral or philosophical grounding for it.

The way I see it. Now why? It is because criminality starts and stops in the human mind. Crimes are discreet acts no matter how horrible. The truth is we harm ourselves the more we hurt others. And that is what punishment does, it hurts others, and therefore through it we harm ourselves. 

All we can do is try and heal ourselves. I have never understood what business I had yelling for the harm of another who did me no harm. Certainly, I am part of society and there is violence done to society, but again, in the end, they are discreet acts. As we know the execution of one will not bring back the deceased. I do not believe in “evil.”

Whatever took place in the mind of this 16-year-old took place due to some combination of genetics and the complex interaction of biochemistry and environment. 

I have briefly looked for some biographical data but have found nothing but that his father was retired police. This is a red flag. 

I have great respect for the police. We tell them to “take care” of the business that we want no part of. They absorb all the trauma then go home and often get addicted to prescription drugs and alcohol and beat their kids and wives and honest citizenry that they stop. I know, I hear the tales. Certainly not all, nor even the majority, but maybe it was true in the household of the accused. And it does not take much.

If the idea of murder, in any individual, seems to come out of left field like it did with Leapold and Lobe then it does. I for one ask why is it so hard to understand. Why is it so hard to understand that? People might be broken, simply broken? It is then for us to understand.

A tornado comes out of left field and destroys 300 lives and that is simple to understand and yet we are flabbergasted when billions of neurons in the brain take a momentary left turn. Natural disasters have not always been simple to understand. For most of our existence, we have explained such disasters in terms of divine intervention. And to be sure many people still do. It is the same when we desire punishment. We want some moral or divine intervention.

Do I believe in excuses? I do. I believe in explanations. I believe the mind to be fragile. To explain is to understand. So should he be released? It is a done deal is it not? I think we have a system. I think the system is going in the right direction. But there is no guarantee that it will continue in that direction or even reverse. I think it cannot be perfect. 

For sure we cannot know for sure that “good behavior” proves anything. We do know that even at 18 people are much different than at 16 and then again at 22 and even at 25. The brain is not fully integrated until 25. Almost all murders are committed before 25 years of age. I don’t think it is for me to have an opinion.

I am happy Pat Quinn signed the death penalty out of existence. 

Thanks Brian Lynch, M.D., Chicago