Unhate now, Dr. Ablow

Celebrity psychiatrist and Fox News commentator Keith Ablow apparently has a problem with spreading a pro-compassion message. He has himself all stirred up by a recent ad campaign from Benetton.

Through their UnHate Foundation, Benetton is asking us all to "stop hating, if you [are] hating. Unhate is a message that invites us to consider that hate and love are not as far away from each other as we think. Actually, the two opposing sentiments are often in a delicate and unstable balance. Our campaign promotes a shift in the balance: don't hate. Unhate."

Let's look at the campaign.

In what seems to be a bit of a gay panic, Ablow writes "the only psychological interpretation of such ads that makes sense to me as a psychiatrist is that the corporate leaders at Benetton literally believe that homosexual sex between world leaders--or at least homosexuality as an orientation--would lead to world peace."

You watched the video, right? There were some same sex kisses going on--the one that tickled me most were the two women lovers, dressed in a way suggesting they were Muslim, stealing an intimate moment to kiss. Beautiful. Transformative. A message that inspires me to be more than I am.

Where do you suppose Ablow is coming from in his critique? Let's read more.

"They have tipped their collective hands as a company and indicted marital fidelity, faith and heterosexuality, labeling them the real sources of hatred and suffering around the globe. In the collective mind of Benetton, if religious leaders and political figures would just have sex with one another all would be well.

Ablow has really gone off the reservation here. There is a lot in his argument that is just poppycock. Men kissing, in and of itself, is not homoerotic. Men kiss all the time. Women do, too. I'll be returning home for the holidays soon: I'll be giving my father a kiss. There isn't a speck of homoerotic interest there. When I am reunited with close friends--male or female--I'll give them a kiss. I won't be disrobing and bedding them on the spot. A kiss isn't always about sex. A kiss, often times, is about love. It is about compassion. It is about caring for a friend so much that you wish to enter their space and touch lips to  lips (or lips to cheek) and share an intimate moment of the beauty that is human connection.

I'm not exactly sure where Ablow is getting into the motif that marital fidelity, heterosexuality, and faith are the sources of hate. Do you see this in the video? The images of world leaders kissing are shocking, yes, but do you see these images the same away as the celebrity psychiatrist does?

I don't. I see Ablow offering up a hateful spectacle he puts out in the world veiled under the guise of psychiatry. I see Ablow pandering his unexamined viewpoints to the world. I also see Ablow engaging in an awful lot of cognitive distortions. Check out this list and see if you can name the distorted styles of thought employed in the Fox opinion piece.

In his gay panic, Ablow is busy seeing homoerotic imagery hiding in every dark corner, leaping out at him from every closet door, and destroying the universe. I'm no sure he really bothered to investigate the campaign, explore his own reactions to the imagery used, and reflect upon how his responses reflect pieces of his world view and pieces of his own internalized system of homonegativty and heteronormativity.

I have this to say: Get a grip, Ablow. Get a grip. This spectacle of small minded hate is an embarrassment to your profession. You are on the wrong side of what humanity is about. You are peddling fear, hate, and small mindedness. You encourage us to be less than what we can be.

You forget, Dr. Ablow, that connection, love, and compassion, transforms that which what we are into a thing of beauty and peace.

Ablow closes his Fox news celebrity psychiatry opinion with this: "If you are heterosexual, if you are a leader who believes your position demands decorum, if you are a person of substance who believes you should be valued for your mind, not just your sexuality, if you think that countries and religion deserve respect, not ridicule, you were attacked today by Benetton. You felt it. And you shouldn't be talked out of your outrage."

Ablow has a larger message. It is rooted in his world view. He uses his platform as a celebrity psychiatrist to push his personal agenda--an agenda that is apart from his profession of psychiatry--and apart from the larger group of healing professionals around this country.

It seems that this celebrity psychiatrist is saying here that gay and lesbian people do not deserve respect or decorum. Do you hear that in his words? Do you hear how in his words he robs people--all people--of the transformative power of compassion? Do you hear how in Ablow's words he creates a world of us versus them? Do you see how he treats those he considers "other"?

I hear it in his words. Those words don't belong in the field of psychiatry. They don't belong in the field of psychology, either. How must it feel to sit in the office with Ablow, expose your inner world--your fears of being different or unloved--and have him respond with a system that further turns you into the category of the other.

Shame on him.

I'm reminded tonight of the words of a psychologist who deeply influenced my work. In a letter to her patients shortly before her death, Irene Stiver wrote:

"It has become even clearer to me that love is what it's all about. Not only at this time, but throughout our relationship, I have felt your love and deep caring for me. In turn, I hope that you feel my love for you. My hope is that you will hold onto this love and build on it in your life. Thank you for the privilege of being part of your life." 

Do you see outrage here, or do you see love? 

Choose love.

Patient Suicide: Part Four -- What's a life worth?

This is part of an ongoing story about a patient suicide. Click here for Patient Suicide Part One: The Phone Call, here for Patient Suicide Part Two: 30 Minutes to Think, here for Patient Suicide Part Three: Fully Present, here for Patient Suicide Part Four: What's a Life Worth, here for Patient Suicide Part Five: Treat People Like They Matter, here for Patient Suicide Part Six--Leftovers, here for Patient Suicide: Part Seven--Training Monkeys/Herding Cats, and here for Patient Suicide: Part Eight--On Scarves and Lessons Learned

I made several calls after I received the phone call telling me that a patient had killed herself. The one that stands out in my mind this evening was the call I had with my attorney. She's what one might called detail-oriented. She also has a laser sharp focus. I suppose these are two very useful qualities in an attorney. Despite having had prior conversations with her, I found myself taken aback by her sharp focus when I spoke to her the morning after my patient killed herself.

My attorney asked me a few pointed questions about my patient. I gave some clinical history and some information about her treatment.

"Look Jason, I'm going to say this directly to you," my attorney said. "This is likely going to be difficult for you to hear. We as psychologists (my attorney is a JD/Ph.D.) are trained to think we can do something about suicide. We are trained to think that we can predict it, we can prevent it, and we can save people. We help many people, but we can't help everyone. We cannot be ultimately responsible for the lives or deaths of our patients. We can only be responsible to not commit malpractice"

My attorney went on to quote some statistics. I felt like I should take notes. Mostly though, I was just numb.

"This is going to sound strange to you, and you might even think I am being cold."

I could have used  a better warning of what was about to be said. Really. You will be shocked.

"Attorneys look at the relative worth of a person when making a decision about whether to take on a malpractice case against a psychologist. Young children have value. Someone who is the primary earner in a family has value. Someone who is active in their community has value. Someone who has people who depend on them has value."

I wanted to make this conversation stop. I knew what was coming and I didn't want to hear it. I knew my attorney was doing what attorneys do: evaluating risk, evaluating the law, justice is blind and blah blah blah. My feelings had no place here.

"From this perspective, your client's life wasn't worth very much. She probably knew that too. That was probably part of her pain, part of the destruction left behind by her illness."

This phone call clearly needed to end. I heard what I needed to hear. I did what needed to be done. I sought out consultation. Consultation received. Stop talking. Go away now.

I needed to hang up so I didn't find a way to crawl through the phone and rage against my attorney. Misplaced anger, really. I wanted to rage against myself. I still do, sometimes. If I could have just found the right thing to say maybe she wouldn't have died. If I paid closer attention perhaps I would have detected some sort of warning sign. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

Many have told me that it is not my fault. It's a nice thing to say. Honestly. I know you all mean well. It's not really helpful. When you say that you really are just making yourself feel better. The same goes when I'm told that it's natural to feel rage and be angry at the client. Respectfully I say, screw off. I say it respectfully because I know that none of us are ever really taught how to be present with another person's pain. Really, I think that none of us are ever really taught how to be fully present at all.

This business about presence is important--so don't screw off just yet.

Mostly now I'm just plain sad. I miss her, too.

What haunts me most is when I think about the actual moment of her death. I'm sad she was alone. I'm sad to think how afraid she might have been. Sometimes I have a clear picture in my mind of the terror and panic in her eyes. Her desperation for deliverance from her pain mixed with the terror of her own impending demise. I know that look well as she would frequently find herself in that crucible of pain when sitting with me in my office.

Most of all, however, I'm sad thinking that she left this world thinking she didn't matter and that she was a failure in life. It wasn't my patient that failed life. She was already here. She already had life. That's the easy part. Life failed her. We all failed my patient. We've created a society where we don't value people for their presence here on this planet. We raise our children to think their value is in what they do or what they provide. We increasingly treat each other as serviceable others: we see others as objects to use for our satisfaction.

That's crazy. I think we all need to cut that out. Immediately.

We forget that the greatest mystery--the greatest gift--is the mere fact that we are present here in the universe for our few short moments of life. The important this is that we show up, we are present, and we exist.


My patient was once worth something. She was once alive. She was once present. Fully present. Now, of course, she is gone. In that empty hollowed out space she left behind in my heart I have learned this to be true: we matter because we are. That is the miracle  That is the mystery. The rest is just crap we create to make it difficult (if not impossible) to see the beauty in our presence.

The weekend she killed herself she sent me an e-mail. Perhaps it was a day or two before her suicide, perhaps it was just a few moments before her final act. I will never really know.

I am not a bad or horrible person - I totally realize that. Just suffer a lifetime of mental illness that makes life difficult for me and those around me.

I'd like to think that in these last few moments of life, my now dead patient was finally able to show up and be alive. I'd like to think that she died alive, present, and in possession of the knowledge that she mattered because she was.

The unbearable tragedy is that if I am right, her life was but a moment. We can do better. We owe it to ourselves. Don't you think?

Krista Tippett: Reconnecting with compassion

• "Compassion is kind. Compassion is curious. Compassion can express itself in the simple act of presence. It is linked to practical virtues like generosity and hospitality and just being there -- just showing up."
• "In the beginning of the creation, something happened, and the original light of the universe was shattered into countless pieces. It lodged as shards inside every aspect of creation. The highest human calling is to look for this light, to point at it when we see it, to gather it up, and in so doing to repair the world."

Compassion Round Up

From the Greater Good Science Center, based at the University of California-Berkeley, which studies the psychology, sociology, and neuroscience of well-being, and teaches skills that foster a thriving, resilient, and compassionate society.

Life is full of wonderful experiences. But it has its hard parts as well, such as physical and mental discomfort, ranging from subtle to agonizing. This is the realm of suf­fering, broadly defined. 

When someone you care about suffers, you naturally have compassion—the wish that a being not suffer, usually with a feeling of sympathetic concern. For example, if your child falls and hurts himself, you want him to be out of pain; if you hear that a friend is in the hospital, or out of work, or going through a divorce, you feel for her and hope that everything will be all right. Compassion is in your nature—it’s an important part of the neural and psychologi­cal systems we evolved to nurture children, bond with mates, and hold together the village it takes to raise a child. Read more....

From thepeoplesvoice.org--News & Viewpoints: environmental, political, and social justice issues

Are Millennials – at least the thousands chanting, “We want Joe” – missing a sensitivity chip? The answer, I’m afraid, is mixed. Paterno is part of “us.” The now-young men at the center of this tragedy, on the other hand, are presumed to be outsiders. The Millennials who are more outraged about the treatment of their beloved coach than the alleged victims of Jerry Sandusky are displaying compassion deficit disorder. Compassion deficit disorder means exactly what it says and it is part of our larger contemporary context, which is plagued by the Oppression Olympics, a term that describes what prevents us from recognizing our common ground and, worse, obscures common sense responses to outrageous violations of the public’s trust. Read more...

Story of a Hero: Janusz Korczak

Janusz Korczak "believed that each and every child deserves love and respect, and such treatment by educators has the potential to change the world. Tragically, Korczak's life was cut short during the Holocaust. In 1942, two hundred of his orphans were sent from the Warsaw Ghetto to die at Treblinka. In one of the most heroic and compassionate acts of modern times, Korczak voluntarily chose to accompany his children to the death camp. He didn't want them to be alone, without him."


Poppo, K. (2006). A Pedagogy of Compassion: Janusz Korczak and the Care of the Child. Encounter: Education for Meaning and Social Justice, 4, pg 32-39. 

On opening doors and therapeutic intervention

I've never given much thought about opening doors. It's just something I do. Perhaps it's the Midwestern boy in me: I was taught it was polite to open the door for another. When I was in college, before the days of remote locks in cars, I remember taking pride in unlocking and opening the passenger side door for whomever I was with. I always got such a smile from a friend--or a date--when I took the time to walk to the car door, unlock in, open it up, and gently close the door after my passenger settled into the seat.

I suppose no one really does that any more. A new generation of teenagers going on dates with their young loves won't have the opportunity for the gentle generous act of holding the car door open. 

I remember my first year of graduate school. New York City in 1992. Just barely 20 years old on my first day of classes, I stood outside the crowded CUNY building holding the door open. Silly me. First one person walked through, then another, and another, and another, and another... I might have spent the whole year standing outside holding the door open if I hadn't perfected the art of opening the door, letting one person through, and whisking myself through the door behind them. I just couldn't give up the tradition of holding the door open. I did, however, need to be smart about it.

So it wasn't a surprise when I became a therapist and opened and closed the door for my patients. I never considered not doing it (door opening, such a habit, wasn't a thing I considered even thinking about). For years I opened and door countless times a day for patients without thought. 

Finally during my practicum in the 2000-20001 academic year the door was mentioned. In fact, during that year Glenda Russell, my clinical supervisor, made mention of the door twice. In talking about an upcoming final appointment with a patient Glenda asked how I normally ended my time with a patient. I responded that I'll  tell my patient to call me if they need me, walk to the door, open it up, and then close it behind them. Glenda had asked me what it might be like to have a discussion about the final session and maybe invite the client to open the door themselves and walk out on their own. An interesting thought. 

Several months later Glenda talked about how sometimes she will gently, yet firmly, close her door when a patient who needs a little help with boundaries walks out. "It gently delivers the message that the appointment was over it and it is time to leave."

I noticed that when I walked out of her office that day she gently, yet firmly, closed the door behind me.

I remember years later being mystified by Debora Carmichael, one of my post-doctoral supervisors. We sat in two dark red Windsor chairs. When our supervision ended she would say goodbye and just sort of shut off. She would stay in her chair and look down. I was totally befuddled. It took my awhile before I finally figured out when she did that I was supposed to get up, open the door, and walk out. 

I thought that was strange. Who doesn't open up the door? Deb clearly must not be from the Midwest. I figured it was cultural.

None of this is really my point.

I've been opening and closing my door now for years--decades actually. Things area little different now. I have a dog. I'll send her out into the waiting room to retrieve my patients. She likes doing it, my patients like when she does it, and it is such a playful way for me to say hello. I still open and close the door. Maggie just gives me a little help.

I open and close my door with reason and intention. I want to greet my patients. I want to express care for them by the simple, gentle, and kind act of opening and closing the door. I want to express care for them by walking them to the door and seeing them off into the outside world.

That is my thing, and I do it with reason and intention. It never occurred to me that I would do something different. At least doing something differently didn't occur to me until this past week.

I've felt vaguely uncomfortable for several months now as I walk a particular patient to the door. The feeling was so vague I didn't notice it at first. I figured I was tired and clumsy as her bag gently brushed me. I thought maybe she was tired as she stumbled a bit and pressed against the wall opposite of me. I'd like to say that I spent time thinking about those things and came to insight. That's not really what happened. It was all very unconscious. 

This week what I've apparently been unconsciously thinking about burst to the surface. I realized that I felt uncomfortable as my patient walked out the door. I could think of no reason why I should be. I'm not uncomfortable at the end of appointments. Nothing this patient does makes me feel uncomfortable. Clearly there is something else going on here.

I did what any good therapist does: I used my experience to illuminate a conversation.

"Before you leave, I wanted to talk with you about how you leave. It always seems vaguely uncomfortable to me. I'm wondering if you feel uncomfortable too?"

With somewhat wide eyes (incredulous that I'm talking about the door?) my patient responded. "Yes."

I took a leap of faith and said what I thought here experience might be: I wanted to provide a little scaffolding to help her understand her experience (or give her some scaffolding to tell me I'm off my rocker). "Might it be that I get a little too close to your physical space when I open the door? It's a small space. I'm wondering if maybe you don't feel safe."

"Yes," she said. "I don't."

We talked more and came to the conclusion that she would open and close the door herself now.

This was a small interaction. Just a moment or two of time. I could have easily missed it: we miss these moments all the time in therapy and in life. When we can capture them and harness the energy of the moment for long enough we can illuminate important parts of our experience. The intervention arises from the moment. The intervention arises from the interaction between myself and my patient. Change comes from what is alive and real in the office. Change comes from closely observing what is alive in the moment and wondering together what it might mean.

I'm a Wellesley Girl: Part I

That's right. I'm a Wellesley girl.

I recently had a short exchange with the Public Conversations Project on Twitter. I had commented on a tweet about the Open Circle Program saying that my brief work with that program was an unexpected and influential agent of change in my doctoral work. They asked me to say more about that influence. I'd be happy to, but in order to do so we need to rewind a few years. The work I did with Open Circle was neither the first or last association I had with Wellesley College, the Wellesley Centers for Women, and the Stone Center.

The 2000-2001 academic year was my second year of doctoral work. I survived through the various vicissitudes of relocating to New England from the Midwest, leaving an already active career in psychotherapy, learning how to be a student, navigating my way through a particularly challenging cohort of doctoral students, finding a mentor and advisor, and completing my first training practicum.

The prior year I got my nose knocked out of joint looking for a practicum. I figured this was going to be easy. I'd earned a masters degree two years prior, worked as a psychotherapist for the two years before starting my doctoral program, and worked for nearly five years before that in a variety of mental health related roles.

I also had never interviewed for something that I wasn't later offered.

You know how this story is going to end, right?

I interviewed at just about every college counseling center that was within a commutable distance. I was turned down for every single one of them! I was horrified, demoralized, and also just plain pissed off. I finally did secure a practicum. It was a good one--in fact it was an excellent one.

I digress.

So I went about my search for my second training practicum in the same arrogant way (tempered, a bit, with the previous years' experience). Of course I'll get a practicum. How could I night, right?

Yes. You know how this is going to turn out. Everyone turned me down again. What the heck?

All wasn't lost. I really had my hopes set on doing my training that year at the Stone Center Counseling Service at Wellesley College. Not a problem at all, right. A man, working at a women's college, in a counseling center staffed by women that had never had a male psychology trainee (or from my knowledge, a male trainee of any sort). This is a wise thing to set my hopes on, right?

Who would have thought they would take me on. They did. My life changed. I was the first male psychology trainee, ever. In my training year another man, Stephen, became the first male social work student trainee, ever. They figured they would put us together so we each could have someone to talk with.

So just exactly what so was special about being a man at Wellesley College? It was subtle, it was profound, and it was totally unanticipated. For the first time in my life I discovered myself completely surrounded by people who were different than me. For the first time in my life I found myself a minority. I was a white man surrounded by a sea of women from around the world.

In that sea I found myself. Peggy McIntosh showed my my invisible knapsack of white male privilege and power and safely helped  me unpack it (really now, could it be all that invisible when there were only two men carrying them around?). Unpacking that knapsack didn't hurt. It was freeing. I found my power and started to learn how to spend it wisely.

In that sea I found my courage. Judy Jordan, who always seems to find a pencil tucked in her pulled up hair, consistently noticed my courage. She showed me that it is an act of courage to sit with every patient. It is an act of courage to pay close attention to everything that happens in a room. It is an act of courage to allow myself to be moved and effected (or is that affected--or both?) by the experience of my patients.

In that sea I found my confidence. Robin Cook Nobles, my supervisor who brought just a little fear into my heart by the sound of her fast paced rustle in the hall way, demanded with her ever-attentive mind that I offer up my best--and never doubted that it was possible.

In that sea I found I found fearlessness. Lisa Desai, my supervisor who showed  me how easy it was to encounter differences of race, faith, gender, or sexuality with my patients and how easily and gently it can be spoken about.

Any mention of my first year as a Wellesley Girl is incomplete without mentioning the endless love and support of Ann and Gail, office assistants, candy-enablers, and confidants. They helped me figure out how not to be so scared of the rustle of Robin coming down the hallway (she's actually not scary at all, promise!). Their collective compassion taught my as much about therapy as my supervisors.

Writing this today I'm discovering this is more of a meditation on gratitude for what was offered so freely to me. I would be remiss if I didn't mention the students. You came into my tiny office and sat down in those ridiculous orange chairs. You let me into your worlds as I learned how to let you into my world as a psychology-trainee. The gifts that I carry most of all from this first year at Wellesley College are those gifts you gave to me. The gifts are many: three come to mind right now. An undocumented person who struggled to make a better life for herself, a survivor who finally found someone would would believe her story, and another student who challenged me to think about what it means to be a woman. Each of these three young women, in their own different ways, showed me that psychology can transform.

So that's part one of being a Wellesley Girl. Come back again later for parts two and three.