Dear Young Therapist: Consider Your De Rigueur Requirements | The Post-Doctoral Tie Incident

image credit: Nicholas Ruiz. Bow Tie #10. Assembled November 2011.
 Acetaminophen pills, multiple adhesives, plastic knife. Forest Hills, Queens, New York.

The man interviewing me for a postdoctoral fellowship unwrapped the aluminum foil encasing his dry turkey sandwich and proceeded to stuff it into his mouth.

"Do you mind if I eat? Not that you really have a choice. I'm doing the interview and have the power in this situation."

He continued to masticate and fill his office up with the seasonally incongruent smell of Thanksgiving. This was going to be a fun filled interview.

"I'd like to ask you why you aren't wearing a tie today for your interview. Before you answer, I want you to know that as a psychologist I think everything has a meaning. I hope you have thought about the meaning of why you didn't wear a tie. If you haven't, then you aren't what we are looking for in a post-doctoral fellow. We'll end the interview here and I'll wish you good day."

I had a variety of inside-thoughts that I considered sharing. They included:

• Asshole. 
• Drop dead. 
• Who the hell do you think you are? I just had fucking brain surgery, a post-operative infection, and joint damage from an adverse reaction to the antibiotics that treated my infection. 
• Your turkey sandwich is making me want to throw up. 
• I'm scared because I can't find a job. 
• Do you know who the fuck I am? 
• Am I going to fail as a psychologist?

I took a middle course and smiled politely. I noticed the air flowing in and out of my nose. I watched as my agitated thoughts floated like clouds in the wind from the center of my awareness, to the edges of my mind, and then off into places where I can no longer notice them.

Sign, Click, and Feel Good

When is the last time you watched a documentary and were inspired to make a meaningful lasting change? After watching Bowling for Columbine did you sell your guns, call your senators demanding for gun control measures, and write a check to support a local agency that serves at-risk teens? After watching Food Inc. did you start your own garden, shop from local farmers, and eschew any form of pre-packaged food made by an agri-business? 

If you made changes, were any of them changes that you sustained?

Probably not.

I recently watched and fell in love with the luscious and beautiful film Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom. It didn't make me write a check to support Tsunami victims. It didn't make me board a plane for Japan to help survivors heal and rebuild their lives. It didn't inspire me to take any meaningful action that an outsider can observe, measure, and document.

Documentaries are an art form that stimulate us to have an emotional response about the human experience. They document history and teach us about it. They don't stimulate us--at least very many of us--to do anything. They stimulate us to feel something. When done well, the art form of a documentary exposes us to a new part of the human experience. In revealing something new about the world, we reveal something new within ourselves. 

I love documentaries as an art form. I love exposing myself to new parts of the human experience. I love discovering new parts of my own experience that were opened and exposed by my interaction with the documentary. 

I don't, however, confuse this with action, behavior change, or social change.

When and End to Hate Isn't an End: Boy Scouts

This Monday the Boy Scouts of America released a press statement that fired up the Internet. One would have thought gay men everywhere where pouring into streets to celebrate the end of homonegativity--or perhaps climbing up to the mountain tops to shout "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."

I'm keeping my hiking boots off. I don't see any need to rush to a mountain top just yet.

Let's look at what the Scouts actually had to say for themselves. As with most things, the devil is in the details. Read closely.

"Currently, the BSA is discussing potentially removing the national membership restriction regarding sexual orientation. This would mean there would no longer be any national policy regarding sexual orientation, and chartered organizations that oversee and deliver Scouting would accept membership and select leaders consistent with each organization's mission, principles, or religious beliefs. BSA members and parents would be able to choose a local unit that best meets the needs of their families."

What does this really mean? It means that if the Boy Scouts make this change, troops that are in areas that are already supportive of gay youth will continue to be supportive of gay youth. Young gay men can be scouts and adult gay men can be scout leaders. Great. Fantastic. Progress. 

The fine print also means that troops that are in areas that don't support gay youth will continue to be unsupportive of gay youth. In fact, 70% of Scout troops are chartered by religious organizations. Who honestly thinks that those religious groups that busy themselves with pray-away-the-gay charlatan therapy will suddenly start accepting gay youth into the scouts? 

Come on. Raise your hand if you think this will happen. 

Anyone?

I didn't think so.

Holiday Greetings: What if Jesus was Gay?

"What if Jesus was gay? Would you still be afraid? Would you torture and tease? Would you open your mind? Would you make him cry? Would you beat him the alley? Would you tell him to burn and rot?"

This little gem of a song, by Bryan McPherson, was recorded at Club Passim in Cambridge around the time same-sex marriage became legal in the Commonwealth on May 17, 2004. It's worth a listen this holiday season.

In listening to Bryan's song, I can't help but to think about how so many people make the conscious effort to bring hate and sorrow into the world. The choice of how are you are in this world is totally up to you.

Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. 

-- Viktor Frankl

Choose wisely.

Happy Holidays.

Book People Unite

Check out the story and the pledge. Also, while you are at it, check out the organization behind this video, Reading is Fundamental. From the website:

Reading lovers are coming together to help us get books into the hands of kids who need them the most. Remember visiting Narnia, playing Jumanji, and eating Green Eggs and Ham? Books can have an incredible effect on children's lives, yet there's only one book for every 300 kids living in underserved communities in the U.S. So we've brought together some of our most beloved literary characters to help make this film and rally Book People for the cause.

Why am I a book person? I'm a book person because when I was young and opened a book, my life was transformed. It made the world bigger, and it still does. Why are you a book person?

Anxiety Goes to the Movies: The Desk Set

So my TiVo recently decided that I'd be interested in watching classic movies. Over the years it's become quite the prescient device. As usual, it's recent choices have been right on the money in terms of giving me interesting things to think about.

I recently curled up on the couch to watch Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy star in the film "Desk Set"  (directed by Walter Lang). Here is the original film trailer for the movie which was released on May 1, 1957.

The machine that could replace everyone except a woman like Katie (aka Bunny Watson) was what really stood out to me about this movie. Here is a scene where Katherine Hepburn matches wits with Miss Emmy the computer, a modern miracle cloaked under a metal skin.

The movie got me thinking about how films provide us a way to work out some of the cultural anxieties that are embedded within the Zeitgeist of any particular era. Here in the Desk Set, at the dawn of the computing era, office workers fear the oncoming obsolescence of their jobs due to the modern marvel known as Miss Emmy (which was the stylized Hollywood version of the first computer, UNIVAC).

Bunny Watson prevails in the end of the movie, of course, and the computer proved to be no match for the problem solving skills of an actual person. Bunny, however,  has not exactly prevailed across time. The vision set forth in this movie--masses of information being transformed into electronic information and made available to nearly anyone with an internet connection (keeping in mind pay-walls and many scholarly resources kept locked within private university systems).

Have you noticed how much misinformation flies across the internet? Information moving across the world at near instant speeds comes with misinformation moving at the same rapid pace. We still need Bunny Watson to be there (be it a librarian, a journalist, a scholar, or a critical thinker) analyzing information and vetting it for its veracity.

At lot of people like Bunny Watson have gone obsolete. Hidden within this movie, for me at least, was the notion that while some specific jobs become obsolete, people do not. We adapt, we grow, and we discover new ways to create (hopefully assisted with new technologies and devices). We also remain remarkably afraid of change--and resistant to it too.

Before I digress into my own nostalgia, check out this article on using the movie Desk Set to teach computer and society issues.

The Seven Blunders of Man

I recently followed a link on Twitter to a blog called Lists of Note. This was a list worth repeating.

Shortly before his assassination, Mohandas Gandhi gave his grandson Arun Gandhi a piece of paper with a list of seven blunders that human society commits. Gandhi saw this list as the source of violence in the world.

What do you think? More importantly, how might things change if you made a commitment to working toward these things?

• Wealth without work
• Pleasure without conscience
• Knowledge without character
• Commerce without morality
• Science without humanity
• Worship without sacrifice
• Politics without principles

Can America Still Shine?

I came across Newt Gingrich's dissertation and tweeted a few select quotes. Watch what happens within my own little global community.

jaypsyd Jason Mihalko 

"Some specialists argue that American society will be warped and disfigured by this growing disparity in living standard."@newtgingrich

DivineParty RT 

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@jaypsyd @newtgingrich Yeah Interesting Quote , Caught my attention :) !

17 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply

DivineParty RT 

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@jaypsyd @newtgingrich Well , I hope his political views really supports Justice and Welfare of others , We have been disappointed a lot :(

9 minutes ago 

jaypsyd Jason Mihalko 

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@DivineParty They most certainly do not support justice and welfare of others.

9 minutes ago Favorite Reply Delete

Retweeted by DivineParty

DivineParty RT 

@ 

@jaypsyd I dream everytime there's a new president 4 the most powerful country of the world

7 minutes ago Favorite Undo Retweet Reply

DivineParty RT 

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@jaypsyd that he wud use this power to make the world a better place

7 minutes ago Favorite Undo Retweet Reply

My twitter friend from Egypt took my breath away.

I dream every time there's a new president for the most powerful country of the world that he would use this power to make the world a better place.

Such a simple wish. Such an embodied example of what American values are. Such a challenge for each of us to rise up and be more. When we watch these petty politicians on television debate, do you see any of them living up to this simple wish? Do you see any of them being able to stand up tall and wield their power--our power that we grant to our elected president--to make the world a better place?

Shame on them for being so small.

Shame on each of us that don't vote. Shame on each of us that continues to allow a politic of fear overshadow a politic of dreams.

DivineParty RT 

@jaypsyd Does Power spoil people that much ? why don't people treat it like a responsibility not a privilege !?

12 minutes ago Favorite Undo Retweet Reply

jaypsyd Jason Mihalko 

@ 

@DivineParty I think many use power to support their own self interested/not our shared global community.

12 minutes ago Favorite Reply Delete

DivineParty RT 

@jaypsyd In the endless fight between The Good & The Evil , How do you see it End !?

10 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply

jaypsyd Jason Mihalko 

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@DivineParty That's implying there is both a beginning and and end. It's what we do with what we have the concerns me the most.

8 minutes ago Favorite Reply Delete

jaypsyd Jason Mihalko 

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@DivineParty It's how we each confront issues of power, violence, and domination that unlocks our potentials, or dooms us to failure.

8 minutes ago Favorite Reply Delete

I hope we find our way--and soon.

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cites frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I light my lamp beside the golden door!"

Emma Lazarus, 1883

From: Ellis Island: Early Notions of a Multi-Cultural Society