Friday, April 06, 2007
Sad day for psychology...
 I've just read this news and I thought most of you might not have heard the news yet, since it happened only a few time ago. Personally, I am sad because this great specialists in our field, Paul Watzlawick, like so many others are going away, at the same time I am concerned with the carrying out of their legacy, because it is in our hands: day after day we should remember our precious duty!
This is my way of paying respects to his family, his friends, his colleagues and all our "psychological society".
Paul Watzlawick, psychology theorist STANFORD PROFESSOR IN BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES Associated Press Article Launched: 04/05/2007 01:39:04 AM PDT Paul Watzlawick, a pioneering Stanford University family therapist and communications theorist who believed people create their own suffering in the very act of trying to fix their emotional problems, has died. He was 85. Mr. Watzlawick died Saturday of a heart attack at his home in Palo Alto, according to colleagues. Born in Austria, Mr. Watzlawick gained fame for parting with Freudian psychoanalysis in favor of an approach to therapy that emphasized relationships over introspection. He trained at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland, and in 1960 joined the staff of the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto. As a scholar and a practicing therapist, Mr. Watzlawick wrote 22 books translated into 80 languages for both academic and general audiences. Emotional health, he believed, hinged on abandoning the ego and achieving well-being through effective communication with others. In popular books like "The Situation is Hopeless, but not Serious" and "Ultra-Solutions: How to Fail Most Successfully," Mr. Watzlawick playfully promotes his theory that the worst way to find happiness is to actively seek it. Mr. Watzlawick's research into the processes and principles of communication formed the foundation of the outward-looking therapeutic approach he developed with his Mental Research Institute colleagues, known as MRI Brief Therapy. Mr. Watzlawick became a licensed psychologist in 1969. He stopped seeing patients in 1998. In 1967, he became a member of the clinical faculty in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University Medical Center and was clinical professor emeritus at the time of his death. He retired from the Mental Research Institute in late 2006. Mr. Watzlawick donated his body to science and requested that no services be held. Labels: death, family, relationships, Watzlawick
Thursday, March 08, 2007
A bird named Mankind
 “The world of humanity is possessed of two wings: the male and the female. So long as these two wings are not equivalent in strength, the bird will not fly” (‘Abdu'l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace).
Woman’s emancipation and the total equality between genders, is essential for humans progress and the transformation of society. Inequality slows not only the advancement of woman, but the whole progress of all human species. And, worse, our insistence in amputate the rights of more than a half of the world’s population is not only an insulte to the dignity of our species but a cancer that destroys us from inside, leaving unbearable sequels in our familiar, social and universal tissue. And, even worse, still today, in some parts of the world, women are seen as fragile and, therefore, inferiors. Diverse cultures from yesterday and today have an approach on this issue and we, human, haven’t still understood that they all say the same! Notice that according to Hinduism (religion with manifold millennia of existence!), human population depends of the chastity and fidelity of women and, just like children they could “be unleaded, women have similarly the propensity to degradation. This is why women, just like children, need constant protection of the family” (A. C. Prabhupáda). Krishna Himself speaks of men saying they could occupy themselves with “prejudicial and horrible works destined to destroy the world” (Bhagavat-Gita), but He doesn’t say that of women … At the Jewish-Christian Theology, woman is that one who has conceded “the right of redemption by the glorification of Mary’s virginity” (Carr, A., 1997), having her origin at the “the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man” (Génesis, II:22). And, of course, we could not approach this subject without talking about the Islamic World. In Iran, for instance, a country that, unfortunately as so many others, women lack basic and simple human rights (even though we can feel some progresses), it aroused a young poet, Táhirih, that “marked [her] century (…) with heroic transcendence” Conjugated beauty, wisdom and eloquence such, that attracted multitudes of men and women, inclusively awaking the interest of the Shah of Persia himself. Abandoning the use of the veil, despite the millenary costume of her motherland (…) and partaking hot debates on mystical and spiritual themes, accumulated victories after victories against the male exponents and best representatives of the thought of her age”. It was exactly because of that that the Government arrested her, lapidated her on the streets, exiled her city to city: because she defended, feverously, the rights of her sisters, women. Finally, she was sentenced to death and, according to the testimonies of that age, she was incisive: You can kill me as soon as you like, but you cannot stop the emancipation of women!” (Araújo, W., 1994). Táhirih’s inspiration came from the Bahá’í teachings that so bravely embraced. “The Lord, peerless is He, hath made woman and man to abide with each other in the closest companionship, and to be even as a single soul” (‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Selections from the Writings). Appearing that we are encouraged to go back to that one un-sexual being, from whom the rib was taken. It is also said that “the education of girls is even more important than that of boys, for in time these girls will become mothers, and, as mothers, they will be the first teachers of the next generation” (Esslemont, J.; 1975). Showing itself adapted to the requisites of our times, we can also find on their writings: “According to the spirit of this age, women must advance and fulfill their mission in all departments of life, becoming equal to men. They must be on the same level as men and enjoy equal rights. This is my earnest prayer” (‘Abdu’l-Bahá, The Compilation of Compilations, Vol. II).
Labels: 'Abdu'l-Bahá, family, human nature, relationships, sex, world citizenship, world unity
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Can we fight our Chromosomes?
At V. Willour, P. Zandi, J. Badner, J. Steele, K. Miao, V. Lopez, D. MacKinnon, F. Mondimore, B. Schweizer, M. McInnis (2007). "Attempted Suicide in Bipolar Disorder Pedigrees: Evidence for Linkage to 2p12" in Biological Psychiatry, Volume 61, Issue 5 (pp. 725-727) one can read that there might be a genetic disposition to attempt suicide. Investigations held by the University of John Hopkins (Maryland, USA) and others seem to agree with the idea that there is a relationship between Chromosone 2 (the 2p12 area of the Chromosone) and suicide. These studies have tried to scan a pattern between bipolars with known attempts of suicide and their families, examining the data of 162 families and including 417 people with diagnosed schizoafective or bipolar ills. These findings can serve to identify people at risk of suicide, according to the main investigator Virginia Willour, but then again... Once more we seem to find deterministic ways of seeing people, forgetting that we can have our last decision, despite our biological conditionings... Or can't we? Labels: family, genetics, human nature, reasons, suicide
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Twofold life (3 of 3)
Dwelling in that fear (that most times is not even conscious), each one of us strives to know the other... in an effort that only permits us to know what the other likes to read or do, what kind of food he/she is pleased by, or the type of movies he/she prefers... without understanding that we are keeping ourselves in a superficial plan. We do not know the true interests or the aims the other wants to achieve, we do not see the way he/she interacts in family or even what the conception of family may be. Preferring not to take a risk, we maintain ourselves in the ephemeral world of pleasures and diversion!
Diversion and pleasure are a part of life, undoubtedly! But the next reflection, the third step, should really be: “which is the aim, the objective: the pleasure by pleasure, or a twofold life?”. That is because a life of total hedonism has never permitted, nor shall ever permit, reaching a twofold life filled with meaning. Pleasure should be seen as a natural reward for something that is done, and not as an aim of everything we do!
And that is probably the biggest cause of couple-conflicts... or even couple-split: the shock when trying to live a twofold life, they find out they barely know each other and live two lives of one.
I once had the opportunity of observing, in therapy, a couple with decades of matrimony, then unstructured by suspicion, envy and dispute. Being asked by the therapist: “if it is so bad, then why did you marry him?”, she lowers her tone of voice, like in complicity with the therapist, or by shame, or perhaps simply by not having a better answer, she smiles and says: “you know, sex was too good!”.
Only when we have given the next step, finding responsibility in knowing the true character of the other, and not worrying only about the pleasures of life, we shall be able to reach that state in which hell is no longer the other (paraphrasing Sartre), and we start agreeing with Gabriel Marcel when he says “others, for me, are heaven”. Only in this state of transcendence one and one no longer are two, existing only as one being, new, that lives a twofold life.
Sam Cyrous
(published in Psicologia Actual, March 2006). Labels: couples, family, fear, meaning, values
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