rationalization

September 25, 2022

Our Judging Selves: The Problem of Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson has not come out well in our black-and-white age. Once upon a time, we defined him as one of the courageous and eloquent founders of the U.S.A., the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, and the designer of the University of Virginia. A man who was twice President, too.

But there was another side of him, not so rosy or principled — including actions that have darkened and complicated our opinions.

He enslaved people and broke up families when selling some of them.

He was the lover of one of those kept in bondage, Sally Hemings, beginning a sexual relationship with her five years after the death of his wife.

Jefferson loved fine wines and books but left many debts owed to unhappy creditors.

The word genius is diminished when we compare several of today’s “geniuses” to this former President.

John F. Kennedy invoked his predecessor’s brilliance when he held a dinner in 1962 for the Nobel Prize winners of the Western Hemisphere:

I want to tell you how welcome you are to the White House. I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

Someone once said that Thomas Jefferson was a gentleman of 32 who could calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, and dance the minuet.

And yet, if we admire him, we live uncomfortably with his contradictions. For the most part, he did not share all our discomfort and therefore is called a hypocrite and worse. Yet, the same man wrote:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

How does this involve you and me?

One of the (shall we say) truths many believe is that the real heroes are pure or close to it. Having encountered a few thousand people in my professional and private life, I am waiting to meet someone kind, brave, knowledgeable, self-aware, generous, and every other positive quality in one body full time.

However, I will say I endured a few too many who were far lower on the evolutionary ladder: cheats, liars, bullies, molesters, bigots, and even murderers. Nor do I always rise to my standards and, occasionally, have fallen well beneath them.

We live with ourselves — at least most of us — by avoiding the shadowy parts of our behavior and rationalizing much of what others might deplore.

If we and the planet are to be civilized, we need laws, courts, and judges. But the ice is thin beneath us when our tendency toward heated finger-pointing often fuels us to vilify the part of humanity we believe is inferior to ourselves.

Nothing I can write here will persuade you to give up your self-satisfied certainty if you are one of those who feed on the rage in the world.

For the rest of you, let me remind you of a comment made by a 20th-century investigative journalist, I.F. Stone. The writer was asked how he could be sympathetic to Thomas Jefferson in light of his slaveholding.

Stone responded,

Because history is a tragedy, not a melodrama.

Think about those weighty words. The Collins English Dictionary tells us that a Greek Tragedy “is a play in which the protagonist, usually a person of importance and outstanding personal qualities, falls to disaster through the combination of a personal failing and circumstances with which he or she cannot deal.”

Oedipus and Antigone are examples.

Melodrama is a different story.

According to Kyle DeGuzman, “Melodrama is a dramatic work in which events, plot, and characters are sensationalized to elicit strong emotional reactions from the audience. In literature, theatre, and cinema, melodramas are focused on exaggerated plots rather than characterization.”

As Stone suggested, history displays various versions of our all too human failings, especially if we are trying to live “good lives.” Our hearts break at the fault line where such an individual is overcome by his weaknesses and external forces bigger than he is.

Melodrama is not a tragedy. It is an exaggeration and overstatement intended to take our emotions to extremes, even to the point of overpowering our judgment with anger and other feelings.

An ancient Greek view of Jefferson’s complex life is more likely to recognize his imperfections than any melodramatic rendering of his biography set 200 years ago in circumstances we can only imagine.

To me, he was a greatly flawed great man, though I would like to think I might have lived some of his actions differently than he did.

The truth is, however, I don’t know.

========

Below the Jefferson painting are Scales of Justice by Johnny_automatic. The latter was sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

November 28, 2021

A Question of Values: Matching Our Words and Our Deeds

When I think of the relationship between what we say and what we do, I’m led to creating three lists.

The first includes what you value. Many would include the following:

  • The people you love, including children and grandchildren.
  • Good friends.
  • The country in which one resides.
  • The survival of the planet.
  • A republican form of democracy such as the one described in the Constitution of the United States.
  • God, the highest value if your faith is strong.
  • Kindness to your fellow man.

The above list doesn’t detail every worthwhile principle. I’m assuming you’d create a different set of precepts. I might, too.

The second tabulation should enumerate the actions proving what you just stated as the guidance you use in your life. For example, if you claim to treasure your kids, draw up the best evidence of your behavior in raising them.

This catalog will be longer than the first one because of the descriptions required.

Spend more time creating the third tally than the first two. Take the role of a prosecuting attorney.

Such legal practitioners would attempt to point out the shortcomings in your view of your life. The patterns counter to the doctrines you professed in List #1 will be judged.

All the rationalizations and denials — all the forgotten misdeeds — challenge how you describe yourself by displaying a more objective reality.

If my life were subjected to such a trial, I’d say one thing alone: “Oh, no!”

Imagine someone who declared the importance of love for their kids and grandkids and preserving the world against climate change.

The prosecution might ask:

  • Why don’t you donate to not-for-profit organizations defending against floods, fires, melting glaciers, and global warming?
  • Have you volunteered to work for them?
  • How much of your money is spent on non-essential purchases better used elsewhere?
  • Why don’t you reduce your fossil-fuel footprint by using public transportation or buy an electric or hybrid vehicle instead of the full-gasoline-powered tank you drive?
  • Why do you take frequent vacations in jet airplanes, adding more carbon to the air?
  • Have you given any thought to how the next generations, the ones you love, will fare due to your inaction or action?

OK, enough. You get the idea.

None of us are pure, including me. No one is free of hypocrisy. Who among us matches every deed with his words?

All I’m saying is this: look in the mirror occasionally. Evaluate the difference between the person you believe you are and the one you really are.

I’m not suggesting you are bad, I’m not insisting you should give away all your clothes or begin a starvation diet, but we all need to do better.

You might even feel happier about yourself if you do.

=======

The top painting is Woman at the Mirror by Georges Braque. It is sourced from WikiArt.org/

July 18, 2021

Tests of Character and What We Make of Them

Life is full of challenges. Not all demand courage.

Moreover, sometimes what looks like bravery might be foolishness.

Judge for yourself.

Judge me if you wish.

Before I began the independent practice of clinical psychology, I taught at two fine East Coast universities and then spent several more years working in a small private psychiatric hospital.

The institution’s owner was a remarkable man, remarkable because of his strange combination of incompatible characteristics. Those qualities included generosity, thoughtfulness, arrogance, philanthropy,  and vindictiveness.

Let’s call him SB.

Play with the letters to see if you can come up with a nickname. Perhaps choose a vowel for his middle initial.

This gentleman’s ego could have filled a large sports arena. I learned during my tenure to reason with him alone, not in public, a place where he might lose face. Confidential discussion often persuaded him to give up some of his dubious ideas.

The boss recognized my worth and treated me well for a few years. Ah, but almost everyone found himself in his metaphorical crosshairs as time passed.

One of SB’s brainchildren was the creation of a psychology internship program based at the hospital. The head man hired a part-time director, but the American Psychological Association accreditation team rejected his scheme — his baby. They cited the lack of a full-time chief as their biggest concern.

SB was displeased.

I was occupied with other activities within the facility, but SB wanted me as the savior of the program: its new high potentate. Some confidential conversations with the overseer offered hope he’d target someone else. I preferred my then-current work responsibilities. The request remained unresolved.

The new interns arrived on an autumn day like any other, but not a day like any other in my life.

At the time, I had a 19-month old daughter. My wife and I wanted our darling to benefit from a stay-at-home mom. Therefore, I was the sole financial support of my family, a fact known by SB.

Unknown to me, “the man” used the morning and early afternoon to introduce the aforementioned three graduate students to various staff members. I later found out he pushed several people around as he walked the newbies through his domain. No one was immune. Not doctors, nurses, psychiatric aides, or housekeeping personnel.

SB was a master of bending others to his will on the days he wasn’t smiling. The chieftain demonstrated to the twenty-something trainees his status as GOD relative to mortals.

My office overlooked a river at the far end of the building, leaving me last on the trail of tears. The maestro announced himself, and the young people joined the two older ones (I was almost 34 and SB in his 50s).

After introductions, the conversation sounded like this:

Dr. Stein, what have you decided about the directorship of the internship program?

I’d prefer to speak with you about it alone.

I’d like to know your answer now.

I’d prefer to speak with you alone.

Tell me now.

The exchange continued into infinity. The overlord tried to force the issue, and I repeated myself in the same words for about 10 years, psychologically speaking.

OK, not a decade as told by the clock. Maybe a few minutes if you add the silences. Lots of time spent staring at each other.

Another entity entered the room as soon as the confrontation began. No, not my past flashing before me, but my unlived future, towering like a gray shadow from a place just over my shoulder. Every person had a shadow but the fellow in charge.

Weeks later, I asked the fledgling psychologists for their take on the episode and their estimate of its duration. They were petrified. Everyone’s sense of time stretched like taffy.

Back to my office. Once SB realized he couldn’t make me talk in their presence, he ushered them out and told me I’d better say yes if I wanted to work at HIS facility. He gave me a couple of days to think it over.

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

The result: I took over as the new director and explored plans to exit the hospital. SB and I were soured on each other. No value would come in staying. I departed several months later, invited to become the junior member of small group practice, of which I became the head within a few years.

What else was going on inside of me during the contest? I envisioned the event this way:

One person tried to get over (on top of) the opposition, defeat the other — “put him in his proper (diminished) place.” SB intended to bend another human object to his will, bring him to his knees.

The other resisted.

For years I engaged in silent self-praise for holding to some unarticulated principle.

Nope. No doctrine existed. My intransigence was about being a man. I wasn’t fighting for freedom, civil rights, saving the planet, world peace, better schools, racial equality, or any other noble pursuit.

As you must recognize, I did give in to him later offstage, not in the drama he initiated. Indeed, I knew he owned the power to fire me from the start.

Despite mindfulness of my jeopardy and awareness my wife and daughter depended on me, I didn’t roll over. The months between that day and my resignation were fraught. I put myself through a good deal of worry and unhappiness, my spouse as well.

Not so smart, then? I might even agree with this determination.

Here’s an additional complication: I felt I could not do otherwise than what I did. I reacted out of instinct. I’d have been ashamed for capitulating in front of the arriving trainees.

I’d have defined myself as a coward even though my employer had every right to reassign me to a different niche in the organization.

Both SB and I behaved with an awareness of our audience. It doubtless reduced the two antagonists’ willingness to act differently than we did.

Though I did not realize it at the time, SB’s actions motivated me to leave his employment and begin a far more fulfilling role within my profession, a necessary step toward my professional independence.

The insecurity of my status required me to be more creative, learn additional skills, reinvent myself from a vocational and personal standpoint, and enhance the economic security of my little family.

From that perspective, SB did me a favor. My superior made me uncomfortable enough to alter my career path and take more risks. I became, in my judgment, less a person who allowed fate to carve the road I traveled and more a man who forged his own way.

As I progressed, more opportunities came to me. Confidence grew, and my perception of myself evolved into that of an individual who could make a life rather than endure it or hide from it.

SB meant me no favors, but if I met him today, I might thank him.

One more thing, I was lucky, wasn’t I? A poorer outcome might have occurred.

Until such challenges appear, we don’t know ourselves. Most of us imagine what we’d do in a variety of conditions we’ve never encountered.

When we read news stories about the misfortunes of others, too many of us achieve a cheap self-satisfaction by claiming we’d have made a different choice. We assure ourselves of a wise departure before a disaster unrecognized by its soon-to-be victims.

Unlike other weaker souls, our fantasy includes unfailing defense of our principles. The poor mass who suffered or died didn’t possess our foresight, intelligence, or hard work, so we think.

On the other hand, self-awareness comes at the price of realizing the dream of heroic behavior in unlived circumstances is like a soothing massage of our self-image.

I am no hero, and I do not claim the rank of a great man. I hope you extend yourself beyond whatever evaluation you make of me.

What I’ve written has value only to the extent a single reader considers himself and reflects on whether the tale offers insight into his own life.

That much is in his hands.

=======

Each one of these images is called Face-off.

The first is by Aaron from Seattle. The Jack-o’ – lanterns Face-off is the work of William Warby.

Next comes the Face-off Situation between Evan McGrath and Ken Olimb in Tegra Arena by Calle Eklund/V-wolf.

Finally, NASA/JSC and Robert Markowitz created Face-off Robonaut. All were sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

May 3, 2020

Who Was That Masked Man? Psychological Self-protection in an Age of Masking

Stepping out of my home early Tuesday morning, I stepped into a strange world. Nature wore a mask of fog. Not me, mask free. Well, unless you believe I am a man of false faces.

We outfit ourselves with disguises. One mask fits atop another. Some use different camouflage depending on the set of friends nearby.

For the dress conscious, clothing plays its part in the costume, hiding that which we don’t want revealed. Rather like an actor’s stage makeup or Halloween for the kiddies.

The coverups take many forms. First, there are the ideas we don’t share. Next come the beliefs we don’t believe, but repeat to get-along.

Feelings and weaknesses are on display without trickery, the ones of which we are aware and those too crushing to accept.

Sometimes the concealing tarp drapes over our opinions, while secrecy extends to our plans. For example, the-intention to rob a bank.

Our face covers save us from relationship troubles, too. Remember four-months-ago when you recognized someone at a distance, a character you wished to avoid? Now you can cross to the other side of the street without hesitation or worry.

Time and circumstance have transformed the meaning of our action, changed it from a dis to distancing.

Alcohol has long been a tool like a self-protective armor plate. “Take a drink, you needn’t think,” says the bottle. “Dispense with your memories and feelings. I am your magic potion. I’ll erase your internal maelstrom – for a little while.”

Denial pursues this end, too, shrouding all our mirrors so we can’t recognize who we are, what we do. Others admit themselves to themselves but rationalize the necessity of being so.

Remember Salome? The girlish teen was Herod’s step-daughter, the child of his wife in the age of Jesus. The regent wanted the erotic young woman to dance. She did so with seven veils at the start and none at the finish.

The temptress then accepted payment for her star-turn: the head of John the Baptist on a silver platter, the better to kiss a decapitated man. The watchful Herod found the latter so disturbing he had her killed.

Removing veils can be a risky business.

Back to the present, our century encourages coverups via computer technology.

Are you uncomfortable on the phone? Want to dump someone? Turn away and send a text.

Are you bursting with unexpressed electoral anger or racism? A fake name and an itchy Twitter finger will fire the ballot bullet.

How about flirting or infidelity? The online world offers a digital dodge and a new name to hide behind.

A therapist is challenged by those patients who have never been unmasked. The sun never reaches their pale faces.

Take one mask off and you’d find another, masks on masks, layers piled up. The wearers have never seen themselves. The person underneath is a mystery.

And yet there is hope. Here is an example, a fellow I’d treated for some time.

Q: What price do you pay for the psychological protective equipment you employ?

The gentle soul lowered his head. His shoulders trembled as he wept.

A: Everything I want in life, friendship and love. I act like I’m a spy, in the shadows, on duty 24/7.

The door to recovery thus opened.

Like Tuesday’s lifting fog, a new day in my client’s life took a peek at possibility. The more we depend on masks, the less we own the joy of recognition and acceptance by another.

He discovered his disguises hid the best of him.

My advice? The next time you remove a cloth mask from your face, ask yourself this: Am I still wearing a mask?

—

Until then, donate what you can to a food bank.

The top image is Paul Hartland Carnival. Composition with Two Masks, 1934, by Lazlo Moholy-Nagy. Next comes Mask, 1919, by Marcel Janco. Finally, Lady Taking Off a Mask, 1906, by Konstantin Somov.

November 18, 2018

Thirty Things Your Therapist Couldn’t Tell You

Therapists live in a world of ideas and experience that has become their “common sense,” so familiar to them it constitutes the fabric of their being. Yet counselors hesitate to offer such knowledge at treatment’s start.

Were they to do so they’d not get the opportunity to find out who you are; and which of those considerations must be knit into the garment of treatment the two of you will share.

Beginnings are not managed best by giving you a lecture or assigning you a reading. Creation of a relationship and safety come first.

Here then are a few notions perhaps unfamiliar to you. No psychologist’s list but mine:

  1. We all edit ourselves, refine our self-presentation to suit conditions. Once we commence crossing out words, erasing opinions, using white-out on our outline, there may soon be nothing left of us. Whomever is the artificial creature created by hiding the ink-stained unsightliness, public applause for the fiction we’ve fashioned will be less satisfying than if we present truth and receive approval, at least from inside.
  2. The therapist not only discloses little about himself to avoid getting in the way of the transference. He retreats from imparting his own wisdom — an uncontestable opinion on everything. The patient must find his own. Note, I just violated that rule. Doctor/patient obligations don’t apply here. Neither are my opinions all unassailable.
  3. Counseling can make you worse.
  4. Your life won’t be ideal when you say goodbye to the clinician. Disappointment, stress, and death find everyone. Gridlock and rain foil your picnic plans. Your heart will break, desires go unfulfilled, the snow cancels your flight. But comes the day when summer marches in and hope may yet find a runway.
  5. No two will ever establish a perfect bond together, but much is possible between well-matched people who do the winning of their love over and over.
  6. Those among us who build ramparts against danger reduce the chance of growth and dazzling surprise. Injury is inescapable even in a lifetime of hiding. Homo sapiens learn to manage risk or else resemble ostriches: still vulnerable despite burying a part of their essence before they die.*
  7. Most of the planet is covered with average people. If, through natural talent or effort you can make something more of yourself, you will stand higher than your peers.
  8. Accept people whole or reject them whole. The majority change around the edges, inches at a time, if at all. Few (short of a profound course of personality remaking or a transformative life event) will alter more than moderately.
  9. No man or woman can be an expert surgeon who carves out unlikable parts of others and leaves the rest intact. Imitate the architect instead: one who recognizes a column of support, a load bearing beam essential to a building’s integrity. Remove such a part of a person you otherwise admire leaves sawdust and splinters, wreaking what made him admirable.
  10. The most heroic clients begin in pursuit of a wise man’s guidance and end by leading the way, overcoming everything.
  11. Life, not your counselor, demands metamorphosis. Each person develops adaptive styles to fit his early place and time. He comes to therapy older and off balance: like riding upon the tread of once useful tires now worn away, no longer holding the road. Without their replacement he will crash.
  12. Statis is not achievable or desirable. Each of us must adapt to a transforming world, a changing body, a different moment in history; a new set of relationships, situations, and requirements. Contentment requires “getting used to not getting used to things.” (Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain ).
  13. People are far more concerned with themselves than with you. Your embarrassing moments pass unnoticed or speed into forgetfulness. Of course, this was more true before everyone bought a camera phone.
  14. Few of us understand each other well. We peer at neighbors as if through sun glasses in the darkened room of our own experience alone. Most don’t take the time to acquire the psychological expertise to do better. In any case, we must start by understanding ourselves. People tend to believe they do — their first mistake.
  15. Therapists search for maladaptive behavior patterns patients are repeating. Repetition of your parents’ mistakes also happens. You might follow in their ill-placed footsteps to reach similar goals and befriend similar people. Beware. Their mission is not yours, no matter your genetic likeness.
  16. With each added excuse you give for your acts or utterances you betray more insecurity. Even if the excuses you give are to yourself.
  17. Silence is necessary. Quiet is the needed background for the words you wish to place in the foreground. Conversation is not a test of rapid response time. Eye contact serves better than talking too much.
  18. The more conventional you are, the more difficult to understand someone who is unconventional. The more unconventional you are the more you will be misunderstood.
  19. Words are limited. Words are also needed. Ludwig Wittgenstein described their limits this way: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” All that most matters in life is beyond verbalization. Thus, analysis of beauty and love take us only so far. Intuition comes nearest to the indescribable.
  20. The more logical you are, the harder to understand someone who is emotional. The more you believe you approximate complete rationality, the more you are wrong. The more you think humans are skin-covered computers, the more you misunderstand humanity. We often reach our decisions instinctively and emotionally. A heartbeat later reasons appear, but we credit the rationalized motives with authorship of the decisions.**
  21. Everyone prefers simple explanations. Conduct sometimes has a single cause, but much of what we do is multi-determined or overdetermined. That is, more than one factor influences our actions and attitudes. For example, you want money to live, but use it to impress. Perhaps it makes you more secure, improves your self-worth, and wins companionship, as well.
  22. Those who realize they (and their fellow-men) are not always rational own an advantage. They question superficial reasoning. This recognition is itself an important piece of knowledge.
  23. Be wary of intimate disclosure too soon — in or out of session. You might frighten someone away. Or be terrified by the naked feelings and thoughts you released . Reinvention involving affective expression is best done gradually.
  24. “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” (Friedrich Nietzche).
  25. On the other hand, ” To see something as a whole one must have two eyes, one of love and one of hate.” (Nietzche again).
  26. Living in the moment is dangerous, not living in the moment is torturous. Outside of the moment you will be lost too often in self-made agony: swallowed by regret, wrapped with trepidation, or worried what others think. Within a joyous instant, by contrast, self-consciousness disappears, clocks dissolve, and everything else falls away. Ego is abandoned to the eternity of an episode transcending time. The concern here, however, is that your alert system is also discarded, leaving you exposed.
  27. Master meditators suggest the solution to life distress is not to judge the circumstances (piling pain on pain), but accepting your condition as it is. Yet they spend lots of time meditating as opposed to existing in the arena, don’t they?
  28. The species to which we belong can rationalize anything. Consider your friends. Eyeball yourself in the mirror. Even if you have been tested and think you passed, remember who scored the exam: you did.
  29. Be an enemy of routine. Give the now everything you have, lest the slicing second-hand of the clock wastes you and your time.
  30. Move toward something, not just away. Be for something, not against everything.

One more. Look up. At architectural wonders, at the powder blue sky. Down at all the small creatures and growing things. Watch the passing beauties of a world in motion. Do not allow your sophistication to impede perception. Hold fast to childlike wonder. Accept joy where it is given.

The chestnut by the eaves
In magnificent bloom
Passes unnoticed
By men of the world.***

Moral: do not allow the chestnut “in magnificent bloom” to go “unnoticed.”

—–

The top photo (untitled) is the work of the author, 2018.

*Ostriches have gotten a bad rap. They do not bury their heads in the sand to avoid danger or for any other reason. Asphyxiation would be the result. Rather, they dig underground using their head to fashion a nest for their eggs. Beyond this, they also stick their heads into the nest to turn the eggs.

** See Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion.

*** Haiku from Narrow Road to the Deep North by Matsuo Bashō, 1694.

March 15, 2018

Why We Lose Objectivity about the People We Love

Once drawn to others – in politics, love, or friendship – our ability to evaluate them realistically disappears. I’m guessing you recognize it more clearly in acquaintances than in yourself. One contributing factor is called the “halo effect.” We are susceptible to a tiny number of attractive traits positively transforming our overall opinion of a person.

You and I are not as logical as we think, especially when emotion bumps logic off the road, a regular part of its job. One might still note flaws in the other – and set them aside or rationalize them. This can produce strange contradictions. Here is a personal story as a telling example.

If I were to put the life of Leo Fabian in a few words, I’d be forced to call him a failed, irresponsible, alcoholic man. He caused lots of pain in his life, especially to his children and wife.

The contradiction? I knew all this and I loved him. He was my maternal grandfather.

Grandpa was born in Romania in 1892 and came to this country in 1912. Long before the movie, Titanic, he claimed that he traveled from Eastern Europe to England, and then proceeded to miss that very vessel. The next one, of course, didn’t hit an iceberg and his best days began soon after he read the Statue of Liberty’s welcome. My grandfather started a successful business as a house painter and owned an automobile before most others. A wife and four children later, his care-free days fell off the rails in the worldwide, decade long economic train wreck that began in 1929. Though he lived almost 35 more years, the best part of his life vanished in time.

My mother remembered the terror of bill collectors pounding their door and high school days when she had only enough money to buy a candy bar for lunch. At some point Leo couldn’t take the unhappy apartment anymore, the nagging mate and fighting offspring. He left for Winnipeg, Canada. Grandpa had relatives there, beating a solo path out of town. Solo, I repeat.

My intrepid grandmother Esther packed everyone up and tracked him down. The Fabian children lived and went to school up north for a while, a band of dispossessed refugees: not wanted by their dad, not missed by their country, creating regret only in the empty-handed bill collectors. After a time in the Canadian school system they would return worse for the wear of dislocation. No offense to Canada.

Their father’s incapacity and addiction marked them all. To cite particular scars, Uncle Sam – hardly two digits of age – had the grizzly responsibility of pulling his dad out of bars when drink had the best of him; and taking care of my grandmother when Leo was incapable of providing either food or shelter.

Up close I witnessed ugliness, too, but of a different kind. I worked after school for my uncle’s downtown Chicago business. I beheld 6’4″ Uncle Sam – my favorite relative, almost like a father to me – interact with his dad. Grandpa was by now his son’s full-time employee.

I recognized something askew as soon as I got an underage work permit and started the job: Uncle Sam called his father by his first name in public; never dad, always Leo. I couldn’t imagine myself doing this with my father or any relative other than a cousin. Was Sam trying to hide himself from the embarrassment of being this man’s offspring? But the knowledge was public, I soon discovered. Worse was to come.

Nothing in the office predicted catastrophe. The day was sunny, everyone working, chatting, listening to the White Sox game radio broadcast. But grandpa came to work hung-over a bit, enough to be inadequate to the tasks assigned. When he screwed up, Sam Fabian told off Leo Fabian. In front of all the others he employed, perhaps seven of us. All the rest kept their heads down and went about their work. The radio broadcaster, Bob Elson, paid no attention.

I alone watched it all, heard it all. Watched Sam enlarge and lengthen and tower over 6′ tall Grandpa. Watched my uncle holler and Leo shrink. Watched one man flogged by ropes of words alone, lashed-together letters all but peeling his skin. I never again looked at either one the same way. Though the repeat performances were few, even a few were too many. Sam had cause, but not license to tap his lifetime storage tank of anger to humiliate his dad.

My love for my grandfather predated this crap. He would be funny, charming, full of life and bigger than life; cutting a lean, wicked-smiling, still-handsome figure. Leo Fabian could charm the socks off anyone if you didn’t know all the rest. He spoke at least a little of multiple languages and must have been the life of every party. Grandpa was proud of me, kind to me, affectionate with me, and never said a bad word to anyone.

I remember a full-day spent with him in 1956, the nine-year-old version of myself, from the elevated train ride downtown to the movie Trapeze; starring Burt Lancaster, Gina Lollobrigida, and Tony Curtis. Complete with my grandfather’s warning that he might fall asleep on the way back (he did) and his reminder to wake him so we could get off at the Kedzie Avenue stop on the Ravenswood line.

My final memory came a few years later. He was now in his early 70s dying of stomach cancer. I visited his hospital bed with mom. He perked up as soon as I entered. He couldn’t hug me hard enough and, like him, I knew the moment was a goodbye.

Most of us automatically rationalize our beliefs and inconsistencies. Take politics and religion. Research says we come to conclusions too fast to arrive at such opinions through careful analysis. Instinct and emotion drive the decision and we then generate a rationale soon after. Even so, we believe the reasons came first.

Humans desperately want to view people as completely integrated, whole and predictable: all virtuous or all bad. I’ve met a few who came close to the former category, to the good. I’m blessed in that way.

Still, blind certainty like “My dad can beat up your dad” and “My mom is smarter than your mom” is black and white and commonplace. We usually see what we want to. Oskar Schindler, the famous savior of Jews during the Holocaust, was also a philandering husband who abandoned his wife; admirable and iniquitous both. Many are more like he, perhaps with less drama, less extremity at either end, living on a smaller scale.

Life is simpler, I think, if we do not absorb the complexity of human nature and instead draw the peopled world in broad strokes lacking troublesome detail. We need trust and comradeship, love and security, more than we need truth.

We form our opinion of ourselves with no greater insight. The Stoics say no one knows himself until he is tested, yet many think they would be heroic in the absence of the test. Even a failed moral trial can be given a pass by a subdued conscience. We are almost all conscience-tamers some of the time, without the whip and chair used by lion tamers at the circus. Unlike the beasts, the conscience tends to submit so quietly we don’t hear a thing. Fortunately, most of us don’t do it often.

I’ve never tried to rationalize my love for Grandpa. Yet I saw plenty of daily evidence of the wreckage my grandparents wrought on mom; and on Uncle Sam when I worked for him.

So, there you have it. My granddad was an irresponsible, alcoholic man who abandoned his family and (with an assist from an economic calamity) did enormous harm to his children. That’s on the one side, my love for him on the other.

They are both true.

Go figure.

—

The top photo is called Taking Care of the Heart by Enver Rahmanov

 

January 20, 2018

What Does It Mean to be “Psychologically Minded?”

A good observer of the human condition notices some fellow creatures who don’t get it. Several are obtuse. Many can be described as too logical. Others naïve or unworldly. More than a few don’t think through what they do and why, dismissing opinions different from their own. Their certainty of everything betrays their awareness of nothing. Large numbers can’t recognize the obvious ingredients in their complicated emotional stew.

They don’t even hear the stewpot boiling over.

I’d characterize such folks as lacking a certain “psychological mindedness.” Though this is not my own term of art, it is a phrase without a single definition understood and accepted in the field of mental health. Still, I’ll try to describe one possible understanding of such a state of mind and why it might be useful to us. If you are psychologically minded, several of these qualities will be characteristic of you:

  • All your decisions are not understood by you. Mystery resides in everyone. We are each some combination of genetic programming, the formative influence of our parents, education, experience, and choice. Emotion and reason both play their part. Should you be so unwise as to claim understanding of all your motives, you are mistaken.
  • Illogic troubles your thought process and you know you aren’t alone. You don’t insist your every idea is structured like an architectural work of art, nor hold others to this standard. Were logic alone in charge, you’d be a robot. We arrive at some of our most vehement opinions intuitively and only then find justifying reasons with blinding speed, a process invisible to the internal eye.
  • You are aware mom and dad were imperfect and don’t dismiss their effect on you, for good or ill, probably both.
  • You don’t believe your achievements are the singular product of your special genius and effort. We are interdependent, all of us: impacted by the color of our skin, the economic and social circumstances of our birth, the presence or absence of societal and political unrest, the power of love and loneliness; and by a helping or dismissive hand, not to mention the accident of our appearance. You are on board with John Donne’s poetic truth, “No man is an island, entire of itself.” As my friend, Life in a Bind, suggests, “you think about yourself in the world from a slightly more distanced stance than others do, and with a longer lens stretching back into the past.”
  • You know grieving takes its own time and is best done with one or more faithful witnesses, not by the toughness required for bullet-biting; or burying sadness in perpetuity. Others are not advised by you to “get over it.”
  • Unfairness, you think to yourself, can be subjective and therefore a matter of perspective.
  • To a degree you know the danger of being hostage to the opinion of others.
  • You don’t “blame the victim” by asserting you’d have been smarter in a difficult situation: made a better choice, demonstrated more resilience, or maintained a higher moral standard. Without experience in the same circumstance, in truth, you cannot predict what you’d have done.

  • You recognize your lack of “all the answers.” You are humble in the face of the things you don’t understand and accept the need to learn more. You grasp at least a bit of the human necessity for continual transformation as you age and face unexpected situations requiring new solutions.
  • You don’t reflexively condemn others when something goes wrong, instead demonstrating occasional willingness to look into the mirror. Nor do you make automatic assignment of blame to yourself, realizing, at least, the cost of doing so, even if you cannot yet stop.
  • Once in a while you ask, “Why did I do that” or “Why did I say that?”
  • To paraphrase Life in a Bind again, psychological mindedness permits insight into mind traps: the alteration of perception when gripped by defenses like projection. What feels real emotionally may not be true.
  • To your dismay, you are cognizant of the human capacity to rationalize almost anything, murder included. Perhaps it has dawned on you that you too rationalize. You regret another painful truth: even wonderful and wonderfully talented people possess a dark side.
  • While some challenges are uncomfortable to face, you believe avoidance of a direct glance or assertive action might be a costly life strategy.
  • You are a part-time observer of yourself, not obsessed with yourself. You are neither totally inward-focused, unable to get out of your own head; or totally outward-focused – mindlessly “in the moment” – never reckoning with who you are. You agree with Socrates (“The unexamined life is not worth living”), but not so far as to spend all your time in examination, avoiding action and risk. If you cannot yet venture forth, your realize you must find a way.
  • You either play or wish to learn how to play.
  • Self-righteousness is something you avoid.
  • You understand that openness is double-edged: the pursuit of intimacy means guaranteed risk in search of potential reward. You opt for openness, at least in theory.
  • From time to time you think about your default tendencies. Perhaps you are inclined to approach or avoid, argue or make peace, court danger or play it safe, etc. On occasion you even think your strengths (and the penchant to overplay them) are your weaknesses.

If you recognize several of these qualities in yourself, you are a good psychotherapy candidate, assuming you muster the courage to gamble something great for something good. Your psychological mindedness is now and again misunderstood by friends who do not view the world with the nuance you do.

Keep going and growing. The world then becomes a bit more explicable and your understanding of yourself enlarged. The planet will take on colors never noticed on the black-and-white globe you used to inhabit. Your perspective may also attract new acquaintances.

Some will think you unnecessarily troubled, others conclude you are wise.

No free lunch.

Choose.

—

The image of The Human Mind comes from Wikimedia Commons via Flicker. No author is identified. The second Wikimedia photo is a Psychic Apparition. It comes from the collection of Tyne & Wear Archives and Museums, from a series called Psychic Photography From a New Angle.

November 4, 2017

Halloween and the Road to Temptation

Seen Around Lincoln Center - Day 2 - Spring 2012 Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week

I was recently asked about the craziest thing I ever did. My answer? “Therapists aren’t known for being crazy.” Truth is, I couldn’t come up with much, but will acknowledge near-craziness a few times.

You might not think Halloween would provide the opportunity. Perhaps, then, you never went “trick-or-treating” for UNICEF. I did with my buddy Steve Henikoff in seventh grade, age 12.

The adventure began with an earnest and philanthropic gesture. Or only an excuse to go out on Halloween without the embarrassment of being too old for costumes. We heard about the possibility of a higher Halloween calling than accumulating piles of candy and looking like original sin.

UNICEF is the United Nations Children’s Fund, originally created as the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund in 1946 to offer urgently needed healthcare and food to kids in countries turned inside out in World War II. An estimable enterprise still today.

Well, we wanted to do something fun. Noble, too? As noble as lower middle-class 12-year-old boys were capable of at the time. We sent away for the proper identifying materials and began a house-to-house pilgrimage as civilians. Never having done this before, we didn’t predict what kind of response might come from the adults who answered the door with candy in their hands. Well, except for “Get off my lawn!” old guys.

The UNICEF Halloween campaign started quietly in 1950, and was unknown to lots of the folks we met. Some people didn’t believe our explanation and challenged our honesty, despite our fresh-faced innocence. Others gave us coins. So it went, for as many hours as we stayed out. I remember the weather being a bit damp, but we didn’t quit because of rain or cold. My dad worked for the U.S. Post Office, so I knew what it meant to make the appointed rounds regardless of conditions.

Our charitable haul for the evening came to about $12. By today’s valuation we had 100 greenbacks. Think of giving two 12-year-olds with empty pockets $100. My younger brothers Ed and Jack were getting 10-cents for putting a just-ejected tooth under the pillow at night in those days. Thanks to the decades old ravages of the Great Depression on my folks, money remained a hard, heavy matter for them, much like the change we carried.

Temptation, friends, on a day devoted to child’s play, had paid me and Steve a visit.

These two young boys, cloistered in a safe neighborhood, watched over by decent parents, found themselves at a crossroads of sorts.

No one would know if we kept the money or held-back a high percentage and gave a small amount to UNICEF. In a certain sense, no one cared. The only consequence would be internal. What might we think of ourselves?

No one lives a temptation-free life. Money is an ever-present lure for some people, even those who have plenty. Lying comes in handy, as TV dramas demonstrate along with the shameless, fallen state of professional and governmental ethics. Sex? What can I say? The more illicit, the more inviting. But Steve and I didn’t grasp our adult future. Life was real, not abstract, we weren’t old enough to get sexy with anyone, and the coins were speaking to us.

The two buddies conversed briefly. Very briefly. It wasn’t in our DNA to do anything but what we did. In a certain sense, there was no choice. We were just being ourselves.

The dimes and quarters and nickels – every cent – went to UNICEF and those needy kids.

In another life what might have happened? What if I had 100 lives? I can’t say I wouldn’t visit so-called iniquity more often in at least one of them, just for the joy ride, the pitch-black thrill. We don’t get the chance, do we, unless reincarnation is real? Then, we are told, the wages of becoming your evil twin aren’t pleasant.

We usually keep our dark side in the shade, not acknowledging how much we’ve already lived there, making our self-image more virtuous than we deserve.

You say you don’t?

Then you are tormented.

But, imagine a slightly older version of yours truly on that ancient Halloween night and a same-aged Heidi Klum as my trick-or-treat date, encouraging me to keep the money and holding me tight. Ah, the flesh is weak.

Would Heidi then, like Socrates, have been accused of “corrupting the youth” of Talman Avenue, West Rogers Park, Chicago? Socrates faced a jury of a few hundred Athenian citizens, all men. Acquittal before such an audience would have been the only possible verdict for the “trick or treat” hottie. As for me, so long as Heidi was nearby, I’d have been – shall we say – preoccupied; categorizing the theft as an anomaly, rationalizing as needed. We do it all the time, the better to live with ourselves.

Hey, I was a young teenage male. Give me a break. Remember, it didn’t happen.

Temptation can often be avoided – at the risk of overregulating your life. Think USA VP Mike Pence, who won’t go to dinner with a woman unless his wife is beside him with a gun trained on his privates, thus simultaneously guaranteeing his fidelity and supporting the National Rifle Association.

Others resist if they can. Resisting temptation is a bit like trying to stand straight-up and recite the Boy Scout Oath at the top of a perfect toboggan run on a cold winter’s day with the wind at your back. You are – whether you realize it or not – about to slide a long, slippery, perhaps injurious distance.

Life is probably more fun and more fraught if you don’t avoid or resist all the time and don’t think too much about who you are. When is creative risk-taking the road to a bad end? When is the straight-and-narrow the slow lane to a muted life?

If one evaluates one’s choices, much depends on when we take the measure: at the point the gambler wins his pot of gold or after he loses big-time? In youth, middle-age, or the end-of-the-line?

Still, when the tolling bell reminds us to change our lives, I don’t think it is encouraging a future in bank robbery.

I guess I was lucky never to meet Heidi Klum as a teen, who was born after Steve and I labored our single night for UNICEF.

Or, maybe, the luck would have been in meeting her.

There is always someone or something, in the domain where you are most vulnerable, that can make you want to do something crazy and enticing: becoming other than your usual self. A kind of moral Achilles heel or an invitation to freedom, depending on how you imagine it and the elasticity of your virtue.

Wanting and doing, however, are different things.

If imagination were action, we’d all be in jail.

—

The top two images come from UNICEF. Heidi Klum, pictured in the first one, was the 2011 Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF Ambassador.

February 19, 2017

“It All Just Amounts to What You Tell Yourself”

512px-dust_bowl_oklahoma

Great literature transports you into the lives of others to inform you about your own. Take The Grapes of Wrath. I’ll offer you a single scene to illustrate how we rationalize our actions. Tom Joad, the story’s hero, reframes cowardice into practicality, moves from fight to flight, and converts hesitation into wisdom; all with the help of a man who has already rationalized his own diminished life. We rationalize because we must — in order to live comfortably with our motives and our choices.

John Steinbeck’s novel is set in the Dust Bowl era of 1930s Oklahoma. Newly available machines allowed rapid and widespread plowing and cultivation of the native grass: an act of misguided surgery. The grass was essential to bind the earth to the land. When drought came, not only were conditions insufferable, but crops died for lack of moisture. The ground became unmoored and simply blew away. In some areas this “worst hard time” persisted for eight years. Dust storms blackened the sky. The fine dark particles invaded farm houses, killed animals, and impaired breathing. Visibility might be reduced to a few feet on a given day. The dust-occluded air produced occasional darkness as far away as New York City.

Tom Joad is a young man just released on parole after four years in McAlester prison. He killed a neighbor who attacked him in a bar fight. Tom and two acquaintances are on the land once occupied by his family. The Joads were evicted in a bank foreclosure. The men notice a police car coming to investigate.

Muley, one of the acquaintances, is an older man who experienced the merciless attitude of the bankers, their agents, and the law enforcement officers in evicting most everyone in the area while Tom was in prison. He and Tom talk about the vehicle heading in their direction:

TOM: We ain’t doin’ no harm. We’ll jus’ set here. We ain’t doin, nothin’.

MULEY: We’re doin’ somepin jus’ bein’ here. We’re tresspassin’. We can’t stay. They been tryin’ to catch me for two months. Now you look. If that’s a car comin’ we go out in the cotton an’ lay down.

TOM: What’s come over you, Muley. You was’nt never no run-an’-hide fella. You was mean.

Muley agrees with Tom that he is not the same man he was. Changing conditions changed him. He knows Tom’s nature is to fight, especially on the land Tom grew up on. Muley also reminds Tom of his parole. Any “trouble” and he will be sent back to prison.

TOM: You’re talkin’ sense. Ever’ word you say is sense. But, Jesus, I hate to get pushed around! I lots rather take a sock at Willy.

MULEY: He got a gun. … He’ll use it cause he’s a deputy. Then he either got to kill you or you got to get his gun away an’ kill him. Come on Tommy. You can easy tell yourself you’re foolin’ them lyin’ out (in the cotton) like that. An’ it all just amounts to what you tell yourself.”

Landscape

Indeed. Tom follows Muley’s advice to hide from the police rather than confront anyone.

As with other (mostly unconscious) life strategies, the way we explain our behavior to ourselves can help or harm. Some of us automatically rationalize so many choices we lose touch with who we are and how we hurt ourselves and our fellow man. Others reflexively come to unnecessary and unflattering conclusions about their deeds. They blame themselves and interpret events in a self-deprecating fashion. In effect, each of us has our own internal “make-up” artist. He is the part of us who tries to put a “good face” on the reasons we do what we do, the better to look at ourselves in a friendly mirror: one not too revealing of uncomfortable defects.

Think of a situation in which you fail to achieve your goal. Many explanations are available:

  • I’m a loser. (Here you’ve taken a single disappointment and indicted your entire being and character).
  • It was his fault. He was unfair. (In this example, right or not, someone else is blamed).
  • This is a temporary set-back.
  • Perhaps I need to approach situations like this in a different way. (Possible adaptation and learning enters the picture with this explanation).
  • I did the best I could. (Defeat is acknowledged, but there is also a self-comforting understanding of the event).
  • “Every knock is a boost.” (This was one of my dad’s expressions. He re-interpreted his defeats as exercises in strengthening his character).

Many other examples might be offered. Cognitive-behavior therapists try to help patients reframe their beliefs and assumptions about themselves and the world. They hope to free clients from self-damaging “self-talk.” CBT counselors encourage a reality-based, but adaptive way of approaching the task of thinking about and explaining our behavior to ourselves.

You and I are left with the question implied by Muley in his conversation with Tom: what do we tell ourselves?

I hope you give it some thought.

—

The top photo is called, Dust Bowl, Oklahoma. It shows a “father and sons walking in the face of a Dust Bowl storm in Cimarron County, OK,” April 1936. The picture was taken by Arthur Rothstein. The second image is Dust Storm Near Beaver, Oklahoma; July, 14, 1935. Both are sourced from Wikimedia Commons. If the Dust Bowl is of interest, you might want to watch The Grapes of Wrath, the 1940 movie adaptation of the Steinbeck novel. Henry Fonda stars as Tom Joad. The film is widely considered one of the 100 greatest American films. The Worst Hard Time: The Untold of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl is a terrific oral history of the period written by Timothy Egan. Finally, don’t miss Ken Burns’s documentary, The Dust Bowl.

October 9, 2016

Are You a Good Judge of Character?

512px-are_you_playing_square-_-_nara_-_513626

Just as most people with cars will tell you they are better than average drivers, I suspect most of us believe we are pretty good at knowing others: estimating their worth, determining their reliability, pegging their level of integrity.

Not so fast. Some of those confident in their capacity to size-up friends and strangers are poor at it, in my estimation. Here are a few of their (and our) possible errors:

  • Believing people are motivated in the identical way we are. This amounts to the expectation that you can judge another’s intentions and actions by asking the question, “What would I do in his shoes?”
  • The tendency to discard important evidence about personality. I wish I had a million dollars for every time a female patient uttered, “Oh, he wouldn’t do that to ME.” The action they referred to was a betrayal, almost always sexual. The man, of course, had already revealed a history of infidelity. Call this willful blindness by the unlucky lady.
  • Sticking with a wrong opinion. Some of us are slow to revise a long-standing error. Even if our original measure of an individual is right, we are in danger of failing to register subtle changes morphing him into something less honorable. One might also miss the ripening of a condemned personality into someone sweeter. It is as if, once done labeling, we are free to put our brains asleep. Richard Posner, a public intellectual and judge, rightly asks the question, “If we sentence a 21-year-old man to life in prison, are we still punishing the same man when he is 71?”
  • The difficulty of thinking psychologically, Part I. Most of us base our understanding on surface impressions. A plausible explanation of a person’s behavior “makes sense.” Freud knew better. Actions can be determined by multiple motivations. Many of those are unconscious. A quick acceptance of a single reason to explain the world risks simplifying the complex.
  • The difficulty of thinking psychologically, Part II. In observing others we tend to assume a personality is something objective, like pulse or blood pressure or height. Might it be more accurate to think of mental makeup as a creation of our perception, a combination of what we encounter in the other and how we interpret what we encounter? To a significant extent we translate our experience of a man, his words and actions, filling in the many blanks with our history of similar persons and a few educated guesses. Much is lost in translation. This is usually done without careful study, no training, by instinct. How else might you account for the neighbor of an ax-murderer telling the TV reporter he appeared to be a good guy?
  • We tend to believe the best of members of our in-group and those we are attracted to.
  • We tend to believe the worst of those we dislike, members of an out-group, and people against whom we compete. They become stereotypes.
  • The influence of the opinions communicated by friends, relatives, and co-workers. Research demonstrates we are influenced by group opinions even if asked to estimate which of several straight lines is the longest, discounting what our senses tell us if the rest of those present offer different answers. We do not form judgments in a vacuum. Millions of advertising dollars are spent on attempts to modify thought and action — yours and mine.

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  • We believe people will behave in the same way regardless of the situation. Few of us observe even our best friends in a variety of circumstances. We don’t watch them preparing their tax forms, at work, or facing a moral dilemma.  Courage is in short supply. Not everyone can resist taking a surreptitious unfair advantage. Self-interest is a powerful motivator and easily rationalized. Evidence for this opinion is to be found in the large number of political candidates who throw in their lot with a yahoo-like scoundrel and justify it by loyalty to their party.
  • Expecting others to be consistent and whole, all good or all bad. Again, public office-seekers provide the example. They are flawed, as are we. Yet there is the tendency to understand people globally, as undifferentiated and organically whole: honest or dishonest, virtuous or criminal, black or white. The best person on earth has secrets, has made mistakes, and will make more. No man deserves a halo, but many benefit from a halo effect or are harmed by its opposite.
  • Our limited perspective. We experience everyone from a unique view point: through our eyes and our buzzing brains. The reason pollsters sample large groups is because any one person doesn’t reflect everyone’s opinion. We bring to our understanding of life a very particular set of experiences and beliefs that shade and transform all we think and observe.
  • A tendency to judge others more harshly than ourselves. “I wouldn’t have done what he did” is easy enough to say (and thus condemn) because we are not in the identical situation as the one being judged. “He should have known she was no good” is an opinion lacking knowledge of all the history, emotion, and experience which might explain a failure to “know.” Meanwhile, automatic psychological defenses blind us to our own foibles.
  • The shifting perspective created by aging. How can a 20-year-old fully understand a 40-year-old? How can a sixty-year-old understand a 20-year-old? Not only do these people have the advantage or disadvantage of years, but of times. Life today is not what it was in the ’50s or ’60s or ’90s. Time machines cannot take you forward and back with appropriate adjustments of your age.
  • Transference. Transference is not limited to the counselor’s consulting room. It is like a mistaken identity. While we might have feelings for the therapist derived from our relationship to a parent, we can also react this way to a stranger or friend, a lover or a boss. They too may remind us unconsciously of some other past human contact and reproduce many of the sensations and emotions evoked by the original person.
  • The intentionally misleading quality of public faces. Humans try to make themselves “presentable,” just as a gift, an award, or an object of art is better looking when dusted off, retouched, and nicely framed — now suitable for viewing. X-ray vision through and beyond the public face is unavailable, Superman excepted.
  • The influence of our off-kilter emotions. Here is an example of how feelings can distort our estimation of another. An insecure person prone to injury by a word or a look is more likely to believe the other harbors a negative attitude toward him, thus overestimating his neighbor’s dark side.

Though subject to the foibles just described, I nonetheless possess considerable experience (personal and professional) in trying to understand others. If I am better than most in making those judgments, I am far from perfect. To whatever extent I can demonstrate success, it is because I benefited from large data sets for thousands of patients with whom I spent many hours. They offered information often not provided to those closest to them. I received instruction in the manner of asking questions, analyzing the answers, administering and interpreting psychological tests, formal education, and supervision. And still I am not perfect.

We do our best, therapists or not, to hone the observational knife to the point of precise dissection of another personality. Or we do it casually — all too confident — and don’t look back. No one, however, gets a complete grasp of the social world. To do that we would have to be both inside the other and outside of him, combining the perspectives of those who know him best and those who are more distant — like a baseball game viewed from different angles by multiple cameras.

A 24/7 off-the-field videographer might help too, making his visual record during all the hours before and after the contest, even when our subject is asleep. We would also need to speak with our subject’s lover, children, business partners, garbage man, and valet, if he has one. Not to mention the person who does his laundry.

And there is the rub, my friend. Not even your therapist wishes to know everything about you.

—

Are YOU Playing Square? is a World War II poster of the Office for Emergency Management (Office of War Information). It requires a bit of explanation. During World War II the US government created rationing  and price controls on certain commodities. This was done to ensure that the people at home faced no shortages, while the armed forces were themselves well-supplied. Nonetheless, a black market existed in which one could get more than one’s proper share of a rationed commodity by paying an inflated price. Thus, “playing (fair) and square” meant respecting the rules, not participating in the black market. The poster is meant to suggest that cheating undermined the war effort and thereby endangered the soldier pictured. The second image of Wisdom is the work of Matt Lawler. Both of these pictures were sourced from Wikimedia Commons.