First post in 10 years

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 My first post in 10 years.

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Brian Lynch

I have been busy. And in the vein of being transparent, as social media has developed, I have adapted and frankly have been distracted now and then. Where I was not distracted was in my turning to Facebook where I started a group called Affect Psychology. Here is the link to that group:Affect Psychology Facebook

The group now has thousands of posts dedicated to exploring the human condition and how emotion motivates us.

I have come back here to revist my writing from more than a decade ago and see what I think of it and improve it where I can. 

So, far I am pleased with the content of the 20 or so essays I have reviewed. I emphasize “content” as for the mechanics I have found them lacking. I am therefore editing as I go along.

This may seem strange to explain but reading and writing ability are subjects dear to my heart as I have had lifelong difficulties with them.

When I hit upon this theme of these types of difficulties I like to pause and share what I have learned about them as much has to do with my understanding of the tenets of the psychology that is the foundation of everything written here.

What I am about to say may sound self severing or as if I am making excuses it is meant to be an exploration of a segment of human communication.

Let us first remind ourselves that reading and writing are not innate skills and they take years to learn.

In fact, when did you stop learning to read and write?  We never stop learning and you certainly never stop learning to write.

Let us realize that although the world literacy rate is about 85 percent what does that mean? Basic literacy is about writing a simple complete sentence at a 4th to 6th-grade level.

My journey is that early on I had a good amount of emotional upheaval in my life. I stuttered and was mute off and on for short periods until about 21 years of age.

In the United States, if memory serves, 7th and 8th grades are important for learning grammar. These were difficult years for me. I did not pay attention in English class and I have said for a long time you never recover from that. Add to this a tad bit of dyslexia in that I transpose many things. Give me a rule about punctuation and I will transpose it.

We live in a judgmental world. The standard mantra has always been if you can't write well you can’t think well. I point out the Mien Kemp may, at least by now, have an excellent edit but all that does is make the content that much more absurd.

I continue to be fascinated by the complexity of writing. The many levels of it.

I have managed to write two books on this material, an art book and a pamphlet. I remember working with editors, or at least trying to and began to understand the complexity of editing. I thought I was only looking for corrections in grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Of course, I was reminded that there are many components. And I found, in several cases, that the editor wanted to go beyond that to style and content.

At times people have had something to say about essentially every sentence I have written. Quite humiliating after thinking one must have learned something about writing after so many years of schooling.

So is it true if you can’t write well you can’t think well? I do not think this is so. It is not so based on what I have just said about the complexity and the many levels of writing. That is each is a skill not necessarily related to logic and often not logical. Take spelling for example. In English, it can be maddening. What does "I before e except after c.” have to do with being articulate and logical? Cannot dyslexics be brilliant?

This is never to say that excellence in the mechanics of writing and style is not always beneficial. It is to say that when we dismiss people due to judging them on technicalities we are missing out on what they are saying.

A person that changed my life immediately picked up on my initially poorly written emails. They understood the content but immediately saw the plethora of errors as a cry for help. They immediately saw what I was asking of them. “This is a test. I want to see if you pass the test by seeing through the errors to what I am saying?” They did and things, at least psychologically, only improved.

Twenty years later I still have problems with writing, as again, you never get over not paying attention in 7th and 8th grade. But it is all connected as I was not paying attention due to emotional problems in the first place. And I, as we all will have, vestiges of emotional trauma that will sneak up on us and try to sabotage us. I am finding that now going back and reading what I have edited over the last few weeks. Often I find things need more work.

I do hope my new editing improves my communication with the reader. I am helped tremendously with the new editing tools at all our disposals. And these tools only make writing more fascinating as they all have an opinion, especially on style. The reader must be the judge but so far I am pleased that I have done very little rewording and have seen almost no need to alter the information or understanding I initially had of the basic material.

I am not sure if I will continue to post here. This update is to tell the story I just told and hopefully keep interest in the already published material as so far I see none of it as out of date.

Brian Lynch, M.D.