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psychogram #22

30/11/2015

 

Give thanks—or else

26/11/2015

 
PictureThe first Thanksgiving in 1621, when the noble, peace-loving pilgrims fed and befriended the grateful locals. Then they started killing them.
​So it’s Thanksgiving Day in America, an annual tradition that dates back to 1621, a day for family, gratitude and generosity. A day of eating a big roast (all that tryptophan will make you sleepy—a whole nation sedated). A day of watching the big NFL games on TV (team sports are a safe proxy for aggression and violence—a whole nation pacified). And above all, a day to give thanks (a whole nation made grateful).

There is an idea from the positive-thinking end of psychology that regularly expressing gratitude makes you happy. Some people make every day a day of thanksgiving. There’s a lot to be said for that. You can spend your energies on the half of the glass that’s empty, or you can be energised by the half that’s full. As Victor Frankl wrote in his book on surviving the Holocaust, Man’s Search for Meaning: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances.”

It’s one thing for you to choose your attitude—to accentuate the positive in your life, for example, or to give thanks. But it’s quite another for someone else to demand it. Not even your psychotherapist, or Bing Crosby, and certainly not your government, have the right to that. To eliminate the negative, even if that were possible, would be to deny the reality of your situation, your feelings, and an important part of you.

On a national level, positive thinking decrees carry a kind of totalitarian message of the continue-flogging-until-morale-improves variety. There’s something slightly creepy about Bhutan’s state-mandated “happiness” initiative, or the United Nations’ “International Day of Happiness.”

To Native Americans, Thanksgiving is a travesty—it should be a day of mourning. University of Texas professor Robert Jensen argues for turning it into a National Day of Atonement to acknowledge the genocide of America’s indigenous people. Not a day devoted to celebrating colonialism. Ben Norton recently summarized the double standard of powerful nations in Salon (“This is why they hate us”). Western governments will make stirring speeches about freedom and democracy at home, then hope no one notices when they prop up appalling dictators, fund terrorists and destroy democratically elected governments overseas. As president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s is alleged to have said about the brutal Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza: “He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.” Along similar lines, American scholar Noam Chomsky's novel idea for how his nation could reduce the level of terrorism around the world was: “Stop participating in it.”

Anyway...if you want to feel grateful today, good for you. If you want to feel other things as well, or instead, that’s OK, too. What you feel is what you feel, and when other people demand that you feel something different, you often do: irritated.

French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan noted that even when we offer an innocent, well-meaning “Enjoy!” to someone as they set off for a night out, or an adventurous holiday, it can sound like a kind of command. Such an imperative, or implied duty, denies the value of other responses, and of other, less rose-tinted and perhaps sometimes richer experiences of life.

“Have a nice day.” Or don’t.

​Whenever a hapless waiter or cashier would utter those words to the late Sir Peter Ustinov, he would turn and reply: “Thank you, but I have other plans.”
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psychogram #21

24/11/2015

 
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Sometimes a cake is just a cake

16/11/2015

 
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​An important ending warrants cake. And at a meeting of therapists, what better than a cake bearing Sigmund Freud’s face?

How very Freudian. The father of psychoanalysis would likely regard biting into his face as a highly Oedipal act. He might note our obedience to the pleasure principle: we get cake, we eat too much, then the reality principle sets in—we feel gross and our super-ego makes us feel guilty. He would chuckle at our cake-related repetition compulsion. He'd probably say the whole thing was all about sex.

What actually did Freud have to say about cake? A quick online search of The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud reveals a handful of mentions. A retelling of an interpretation of a cake-related dream. An analysis of an irritating, unfunny joke involving cake. A 1909 letter to Ferenczi offering “most cordial thanks for the very splendid holiday cake.”
​
And this little tale, courtesy of one of Freud’s closest chums, Dr. Hanns Sachs:
​“Our maid is particularly fond of a certain kind of cake. There is no possible doubt of this, as it is the only thing that she always makes well. One Sunday she brought in this particular cake, put it down on the sideboard, removed the plates and cutlery of the previous course and stacked them on the tray on which she had brought in the cake; she then put the cake back on the top of this pile instead of on the table, and disappeared with it into the kitchen. Our first idea was that she had noticed something that ought to be put right about the cake, but when she failed to appear again my wife rang and asked: ‘Betty, what has happened to the cake?’ ‘How do you mean?’ replied the maid, not understanding. We had first to point out to her that she had taken the cake away with her again. She had put it on the pile of dishes, carried it out and put it away ‘without noticing’.

“Next day, as we were about to eat what remained of this cake, my wife noticed that there was just as much as we had left the day before—in other words, that the maid had rejected her own share of her favourite dish. When asked why she had not eaten any of the cake she replied in some embarrassment that she had not wanted any.

“The infantile attitude is very clear on both occasions: first the childish insatiability which did not want to share the object of her wishes with anyone, followed by the equally childish defiant reaction: ‘If you grudge it me, keep it for yourselves; I don't want anything at all now’.”

psychogram #20

15/11/2015

 
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psychogram #19

9/11/2015

 
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Loneliness among young women

8/11/2015

 
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I've written about loneliness before. Britain is the loneliness capital of Europe. Five million Brits have no friends. Nearly 30 percent of households in the U.K. now consist of one person. This has been called the “Age of Loneliness.” We’ve become an alien-nation, isolated from each other—and our own selves. The cup of human kindness is empty.
​

The December issue of Marie Claire has an article about loneliness—including some quotes and thoughts from me—in which writer Anna Moore makes the case that it is young women who are feeling the awful ache of isolation the most. “We associate this condition with the housebound elderly," she writes, “yet, in fact, the younger you are, the more likely you are to feel lonely—53 percent of the 18-34 age group compared to 32 percent of those over 55, according to the Mental Health Foundation. And, though women may seem so much better at friendships and intimacy, we're actually more likely to feel lonely than men are."

Are you lonesome tonight? You can read my 3-point plan for overcoming loneliness on the Harley Therapy site here: How to Overcome Loneliness.

The 3 steps in brief are: 

1. Get to know your loneliness; 
2. Get to know you;
3. Get to know other people.

You don't have to go through the process alone. To find a therapist click here or to enquire about an appointment with me, leave a message at 0207-724-3075 or email me at: help@johnbartontherapy.com.

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The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved”
— Mother Teresa

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If you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company” 
―Jean-Paul Sartre

psychogram #18

2/11/2015

 
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    John Barton is a counsellor, psychotherapist, blogger and writer with a private practice in Marylebone, Central London. To contact, click here.

DR JOHN BARTON IS A PSYCHOTHERAPIST, BLOGGER AND WRITER WITH A PRIVATE PRACTICE IN MARYLEBONE, CENTRAL LONDON
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