With some regularity, former President Trump has been accused of being mentally ill. Here at From Insults to Respect, we’re going today to takea discerning look at this. We’ll begin with some pieces that appeared in the media when he was president, and then see if we can move ahead to make our own informed personal decision.
The Washington Post Article
Bernie Sanders
In a Washington Post article titled, “Bernie Sanders Calls Trump a ‘Pathological Liar’” Ed O’Keefe wrote, “Al Franken says ‘a few’ Republicans think Trump is mentally ill.”
What are the specifics that led to this determination? According to Senator Sanders,
“When somebody goes before you and says that 3 to 5 million people voted illegally …. there is not a scintilla of evidence to believe that, what would you call that remark? It’s a lie. It’s a delusion.”
In the same article, Franken, who was a senator at the time the article was written explains his statement about what he heard from Republicans:
Al Franken
“In the way that we all have this suspicion that — you know, that he’s not — he lies a lot, he says things that aren’t true, that’s the same thing as lying, I guess.”
Having read this article, I came away thinking that there are people who are very sympathetic with what the two senators were trying to say. At the same time, it is also conceivable that the former president knows full well when he is lying but he is using it as a strategy.
Perhaps he has come to believe that many of his most ardent supporters actually believe him when he lies, and it is the media who are telling the lies. Trump may also believe that others of his supporters don’t care that he lies because they believe business folks always exaggerate as they promote their goals, and that Trump is just promoting causes that match their values. Many Americans may therefore see his behavior not as a sign of mental illness, but simply that he is a shrewd businessman.
Finally, Trump may believe that there are other supporters who don’t like it that he lies, but believe that his opponents lie as well. They therefore cancel out this negative, and rely instead on one or more hot button issues such as abortion, immigration, burdensome regulations, health care, etc., for throwing their support behind him. Trump may believe that this group, when combined with those who believe his lies, and those who accept lying as part of doing business, provides him a worthwhile calculated risk that he will have enough support to achieve his personal goals. After all, it worked well enough to get him elected.
Now, to me, some of the solutions Trump was proposing to deal with these issues seemed completely irrational. For example, when he emphatically claimed that if elected he would send back to Mexico the millions of dreamers who had come to the U.S. illegally when they were children, and he was going to get Mexico to pay for building a “beautiful” wall the entire length of our southern border, I could hardly believe my ears. And yet, I soon met quite a few Americans who said that these ideas made perfectly good sense. Does it make sense, therefore that I consider all of these people who disagree with me as having some type of mental illness? What good would that do?
Let’s move on now to take a look at three psychiatrists that object to calling Trump mentally ill.
A Fox News Article
Dr. Keith Ablow
Recently, Fox News published an article by Dr. Keith Ablow titled, “Relax, Trump is Stone Cold Sane.” This doctor is a psychiatrist and a paid member of the Fox News Medical A-Team.
According to Dr. Ablow, the fact that Trump did become elected president is one indication of his soundness of mind. But that, in itself, is not sufficient to give him a clean bill of health. As the doctor explains,
“I should note that nothing I am saying should besmirch the reputations of men like President Abraham Lincoln or Sir Winston Churchill, both of whom are said to have fought the ravages of major depression or bipolar disorder. One was instrumental in ridding America of slavery. The other was instrumental in saving the world from tyranny. Mahatma Gandhi, by the way, also reportedly suffered from depression. Psychiatric illness does not, a priori, disqualify a person from rendering extraordinary service to mankind.”
So, according to Dr. Ablow, if you can become a country’s leader you can still be mentally ill. If that is the case, why then does Dr. Ablow claim that Trump is not mentally ill? It is because, “neither Lincoln nor Churchill nor Gandhi led a nation after becoming a business sensation and television star.”
Hmmm. Well, let’s keep this thought in mind as we move on to hear what another psychiatrist has to say.
Dr. Allen Frances’s Opinion
In the February 14, 2017 edition of the New York Times, there appears a letter to the editor titled, “An Eminent Psychiatrist Demurs on Trump’s Mental State.” The author of the letter is Dr. Allen Frances. In his opinion, “It is a stigmatizing insult to the mentally ill (who are mostly well behaved and well meaning) to be lumped with Mr. Trump (who is neither).”
Dr. Frances goes on to say in part:
“Bad behavior is rarely a sign of mental illness, and the mentally ill behave badly only rarely. Psychiatric name-calling is a misguided way of countering Mr. Trump’s attack on democracy. He can, and should, be appropriately denounced for his ignorance, incompetence, impulsivity and pursuit of dictatorial powers.”
Wow, pretty strong words. As we reflect on this for a few minutes, let’s move on to take a look at one more psychiatric opinion on this subject before we seek to draw our own conclusions.
Dr. Richard A. Friedman’s Opinion
Dr. Richard Friedman
Dr. Friedman’s opinion piece appears in the February 17, 2017 issue of the New York Times. There he tells us that it is unethical for psychiatrists to diagnose mental illnesses in people they have not examined and whose consent they have not received. However, psychiatrists can pretty much get around this principle by describing the common characteristics of a particular mental illness and then say how they might explain Mr. Trump’s behavior. According to a Huffington Post article, several mental health professionals have used this very approach to strongly suggest Trump is mentally ill.
Dr. Friedman then tells us, that even if a doctor did diagnose Trump as mentally ill after a thorough exam, it doesn’t mean he couldn’t be fit to be president. He then concludes:
“So the nation doesn’t need a shrink to help it to decide whether President Trump is fit to serve, mentally or otherwise. Presidents should be judged on the merits of their actions, statements and, I suppose, their tweets. No experts are needed for that — just common sense.”
I fully agree with Dr. Friedman’s conclusion. But it leaves us still up in the air with regards to whether or not it makes sense to view Trump as mentally ill. Let’s see if it makes sense for us to make this judgment for ourselves.
So, Is He, Or Isn’t He?
Since those articles that I discussed above were published, Trump has now been charged with a series of serious crimes regarding taking top secret documents that he was told did not belong to him. Do such actions legitimize viewing him as having a mental illness?
Most doctors would object to untrained individuals making this type of determination, arguing that this should be left to mental health professionals and only by a thorough examination of a patient, a detailed history and all relevant clinical data. This sounds like a pretty thorough way to make a decision as important as this, but from speaking to patients over the years, I’m under the impression that they have been given a so called diagnosis simply by having a discussion with a mental health professional for less than an hour, and often in less than twenty minutes.
The latest version of the DSM, which is used by mental health professions to make this type of determination, states:
“Although no definition can capture all aspects of all disorders in the range contained in the DSM-5, the following elements are required:
“A mental disorder is a syndrome characterized by clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognitive, emotion regulation, or behavior that reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological, or developmental process underlying mental functioning. Mental disorders are usually associated with significant distress in social, occupational, or other important activities. An expected or culturally approved response to a common stressor or loss, such as the death of a loved one, is not a mental disorder. Socially deviant behavior (e.g., political, religious, or sexual) and conflicts that are primarily between the individual and society are not mental disorders unless the deviance or conflict results from a dysfunction in the individual, as described above.”
Notice how broad this definition is. It makes mention of a “disturbance” that reflects a “mental dysfunction in the individual.” The DSM definition doesn’t direct us to any reliable or valid way too assess functioning. The process described in the DSM for assessing the subjective notions of “disturbance” and “dysfunction in the individual” is left to the clinician who decides if these are “clinically significant.” Thus, it provides clinicians an opportunity to include anything that benefits their set of values.
Most clinicians have a financial interest in deciding whether or not their clients have a clinically significant condition. When they judge that their patients’ conditions are significant, they indicate this on the third party intake forms and this allows them to continue to see these clients and to get paid for additional visits. On the other hand, clinicians who work in an underfunded community government clinic that is being swamped by those seeking to access mental health services might apply a more stringent standard for what constitutes a mental disorder. Thus, we can hypothesize that this type of clinical judgment may often be based on financial self-interest or clinic treatment capacity than one based on principles of science.
Let us look a little more at the DSM’s attempt to draw distinctions between what is a mental disorder and what is not. According to the DSM, certain socially deviant behavior and conflicts are not mental disorders, although they may be. If the deviance or conflict results from a “dysfunction in the individual,” then a mental disorder exists in the individual. How does one make this type of distinction? Can it be done in some recognized precise manner? In practice, this too is left to the subjective judgment of the clinician that can be biased by financial interests and the capacity of his or her clinic. Might it also be influenced by political points of view as well?
Upon reading the DSM, we find that there is no documentation that people, whether they are clinicians or not, can reliably and objectively distinguish between those who have mental disorders from those who do not. The whole concept of mentally illness is really used to serve the business interests of the pharmaceutical industry and psychiatrists.
Yes, there are people who act in ways that make no sense to the average Joe or Jill. There are indeed people suffering and concerned about their emotions and behaviors. Labeling someone as mentally ill really fails to clarify what is going on, though it creates the illusion to many that it does.
In my view, we become much wiser when we drop the mental illness descriptors and stick to more specific descriptors of behaviors, attitudes, levels of functioning, and our personal values.
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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.
Judy becomes bitter when she finds out that her husband, Glen, lied to her. That bitterness leads to a loss of the tenderness she had for him on their glorious wedding day. Despite efforts by Glen to straighten things out, his previous loving relationship ends in divorce.
Of course, not all incidences of lying end so sadly. Nevertheless, how much respect people have for you can be significantly influenced by perceptions of your truthfulness. Thus, the topic of lying is well worth a From Insults to Respect post.
As regular visitors to this blog well know, it is my habit of utilizing, from time to time, Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour show to provide a literary spin on a topic of interest. To that end, today we’ll turn to his wonderful episode that focused on the theme, “Truth and Lies.” You can listen to the show for free by clicking HERE.
Bob’s Opening Lines
Bob begins his show on truth and lies by lying to us:
Bob Dylan
Heh heh heh…Welcome to the Underground Garage. I’m Little Steven. All right, I’m not little Steven. I’m lying to you. This is Theme Time Radio Hour and today’s show is about veracity and prevarication, and the distance between the two. We’re going to be talking about the gospel truth and dirty lies, big fat lies, little white lies, half-truths, and we’ll be discovering that the truth will set you free…. To start things off, the Chromatics, “Tell a lie.”
There’s some fine sax and great vocal harmonizing on this song, but I found myself a little taken aback with its lyrics. Here are a few of them.
If the truth will hurt someone you love, Tell a lie, tell a lie, tell a lie. If the truth will bring a tear to her eye, Tell a lie, tell a lie, tell a lie.
Yeah, tell her that you love her, If that will make her smile. Though you’re lying you will discover, You’ll mean it after a while.
If the truth will hurt someone you love, Tell a lie, tell a lie, tell a lie.
Hmmm. This song actually has the singers enthusiastically encouraging us to lie. It focuses in on lying to a woman with whom we are developing, hopefully, a loving relationship. I’m not so sure this is sound advice. Let’s see what Bob has to say about this.
If you are going to tell a lie, make it a white lie. The dictionary defines that as an often trivial, diplomatic, or well-intentioned untruth. According to a survey, 4 out of 5 people admit to telling white lies at least once a day, and I’m telling you that that other guy, he’s lying.
Maybe I’m just taking it for granted, but you all know that it is a bad thing to lie. Just so we say it emphatically one time, it is a sin to tell a lie.
Even if lying is a sin, it is only a venal sin. It becomes a mortal sin only when the intention of deceiving risks mortal consequences. And just as a reminder, here are the seven deadly sins: pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust. Let me see, I’m good for about five of them.
Well, after listening to this first part of Bob’s show, I gave it a little thought. As it turns out, although I think of myself as basically an honest guy, if the truth be told, there are times when I told a white lie.
Let’s move a little further into this show to see what else Bob wants to share on this topic.
The Middle of The Show
As the show continues, Bob plays us a sad story about how a lie turned into gossip, and by the end of the day, a guy’s reputation was ruined.
From there, we hear Aretha Franklin doing a soulful version of “Don’t Play that Song.”
Aretha Franklin
Hey mister, don’t play it no more Don’t play it no more I can’t stand it Don’t play it no more (no more), no more (no more), no more, whoa-whoa (can’t stand it) I remember on our first date (ooh) He kissed me and he walked away (ooh) I was only seventeen (ooh) I’d never dream he’d be so mean (ooh)
Here, in Aretha’s heartfelt rendition of this song, we are provided with pretty much the opposite opinion of “Tell a Lie.”
“Don’t Play that Song” was a major hit not only for Aretha, but for several other musical artists. Its popularity is due, at least in part, to it so powerfully capturing the emotional pain that many experience when it becomes apparent that the person they fell in love with has lied about loving them. Such painful memories can last a lifetime.
Mark Twain
A little further along in Bob’s show he provides us a little of what Mark Twain had to say about the truth:
“Always tell the truth. That way you don’t have to remember what you said.”
Then Bob tells us that,
“You probably don’t want to hang around with liars at all. You don’t want to be spending a lot of time trying to second guess everything they say. And you certainly don’t want to have to keep saying what Fats Domino keeps saying in this song.”
The song Bob is referring to is “Don’t Lie to Me.” On this one we hear Fats playing some pretty decent piano rifts while singing the following lyrics:
Well, let’s talk it over Baby from the start I heard about the way you over do your part And don’t you lie to me
Oh don’t you lie to me Because it makes me mad And I’ll get evil as a man can be There is two kinds of people I just can’t stand
And that’s a lyin’ woman and a thievin’ man Oh don’t you lie to me Oh don’t you lie to me Because it makes me mad.
Here we get a sense of the anger and evil that can get stirred up when lying occurs. There are several other wonderful comments and songs in this part of the show, but my time is running short, so let’s move on.
The Closing Few Minutes Of Bob’s Show
The literary side of Bob loves to use some literature in his show to enrich his themes. This show is no exception. Thus, he says:
Carl Sandburg
Before we go, Carl Sandburg wrote a poem about the liars, and it goes like this:
A LIAR goes in fine clothes A liar goes in rags A liar is a liar, clothes or no clothes A liar is a liar and lives on the lies he tells and dies in a life of lies And the stonecutters earn a living—with lies—on the tombs of liars
A liar looks ’em in the eye And lies to a woman, Lies to a man, a pal, a child, a fool And he is an old liar; we know him many years back
A liar lies to nations A liar lies to the people A liar takes the blood of the people And drinks this blood with a laugh and a lie, A laugh in his neck, A lie in his mouth And this liar is an old one; we know him many years He is straight as a dog’s hind leg He is straight as a corkscrew He is white as a black cat’s foot at midnight
The tongue of a man is tied on this, On the liar who lies to nations, The liar who lies to the people. The tongue of a man is tied on this And ends: To hell with ’em all. To hell with ’em all.
Conclusion
Wow, that Sandburg poem packs quite a punch. Utilizing such poetry, along with other items, such as the Bob Dylan show, etc., helps to enrich the part of our brain that deals with lying. I come to that belief from my own experience.
When I was very young, I lied without any forethought. For example, I remember when I was in second grade, one day in the lunchroom a boy at my table announced that he just got a toy Tommy gun for his birthday. Seeing the enthusiastic reaction of some of the guys at my table, I announced that I got one also for my birthday, despite the fact that I hadn’t, and I didn’t even know what a Tommy gun was. The lie just shot right out of my mouth.
Well, immediately after I made this announcement, some of the guys started asking me questions about what a Tommy gun was. I tried to make up some answers, but the guy who actually had the toy, made it pretty clear I didn’t know what I was talking about. Then, a couple of other guys said they wanted to come to my house after school to see my gun. At this point, my red, sweaty face made one more desperate attempt at saving face, and then I hurried away, totally embarrassed.
With experiences like this, along with hearing stories about the trouble other people got into as a result of their lying, I began to catch myself beforehand whenever I was tempted to lie. One of the biggest influences on my ability to have some forethought when it came to lying was meeting a couple of people in high school that displayed a degree of humbleness. I came to admire this. Both appeared comfortable about their shortcomings, and although both had some impressive skills in a few areas, rather than bragging about them, they let their performance speak for themselves. I soon found myself modeling their style, and each time I was tempted to exaggerate something about myself, I found I could catch myself beforehand, and pretty often I chose a more truthful path.
So, there you have it, my From Insults to Respect post for this week. Have a great week, and please join us again real soon.
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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.
Empathy, as we have been lately discussing (see HERE and HERE), is crucial for being respected by your friends, coworkers, and community. And fostering empathy in our kids is crucial if we desire that they will grow up with integrity and honor.
Several suggestions have been made in my earlier posts on how best to foster this set of skills, including the value of reading literature. But in a recent post in another blog, Engaging Peace, the messageofthe literature approachwasdelivered in such a powerful manner, that I decided to devote a whole post on my own blog just on this topic.
The Engaging Peace Post
In the Engaging Peace post, the author, Kathleen Malley-Morrison, writes:
“What feeds the roots of empathy? One answer is: literature, specifically literature demonstrating the ways that pain, fear, love, joy, and a remarkable range of human reactions unite all of humanity, regardless of the divisive little categories like age, sex, religion, and ethnicity that we shove people into.”
To give us a sense of the power of literature to promote empathy, Kathleen tells us about her own experience reading All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. The novel is based on Remarque’s experiences as a German soldier in World War I.
The quote from the book that particularly touched Kathleen’s heart occurs during a scene in which Remarque’s character, Paul Bäumer, has just witnessed the death of a French soldier whom he has stabbed:
“But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony–Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?”
Wow! I was originally deeply affected by those lines many years ago. Returning to the depths of those feelings now provided me a vivid sense of the awesome power of literature.
Harvard Psychologist Takes On This Topic
The Better Angels of Our Nature is a brilliant book by Harvard University professor of psychology, Steven Pinker. There, we learn that human violence has not only dramatically declined, empathy for a wide range of people has surged.
One of the conditions that fosters such psychological development, the good professor explains, is the availability of stories that reveal the humanity of people that lie outside of our immediate circle of family and friends. Professor Pinker notes that prior to the invention of the printing press there were very few books available. Those people who lived in the upper classes rarely had much direct contact with the lower classes. A nobleman’s quick glance while passing by a downtrodden worker often merely left the impression of a filthy, smelly soul, hardly human at all. After novels became available, a nobleman might read of a poor young woman pressed into very sad circumstances by a cruel person of the upper classes, and discover tears running down his cheeks. To discover that people all over the world, in all classes, and other religions have very similar desires, dreams, and feelings that we can all relate to, increases empathy and the desire to deal with a wider range of humanity in kind and respectful ways.
Research On This Topic
David C. Kidd and Emanuel Castano recently published an impressive article in the journal Science. It not only summarizes the research supporting the value of empathy, but also describes five studies that they carried out demonstrating the value of reading literature for enhancing empathy.
Of particular importance here is that their studies indicate that reading just any book is not likely to significantly improve empathy skills. Neither nonfiction or popular fiction did the trick. Only what they referred to as “literature” clearly enhanced empathy skills even though there was some indication that most folks liked the popular fiction best.
Why might literature be so effective? In my view, nonfiction books tend to deal with things–rock formations, how to do quilting, etc. If you choose to read one of these books it is because you share a common interest with the author. No time is spent on getting to intimately know people who have opinions and views that are much different than yours.
With popular literature, the author typically presents an exciting plot, with clear views about the good guys and bad guys. Consider as an exemplar, the movie Star Wars, a phenomenally successful form of popular fiction. Within minutes, we come to know who the bad and good guys are. And the bad guys are pretty much completely evil, and the good guys, ever so swell. Moreover, the plot is rather simple–the good guys have to kill as many bad guys as they can, with the ultimate goal of destroying their headquarters known as the Death Star.
In contrast, with literature there is often room left between the words that allow the reader to give some thought to filling in for themselves what may be felt or done. Literature invites us to consider others not like ourselves, and whether those opposed to the main characters are really completely bad. And even the good guys might have more to their characters than mere goodness. Why did that character do this? We get some hints, but we have some creative work to do in order to reach some tentative ideas. All of this extra thought processing leads to a more developed sense of empathy.
Selecting Literature that Promotes the Development of Empathy Skills
If you hand your five-year old son a copy of Henry James’s classic literary work, Wings of a Dove, chances are that before finishing the first half of a page, he will end up crying out that it is way too boring for him. Young children require a different level of challenge when reading literature than teenagers and adults in order to be sufficiently engaging to them. Here are some suggestions for making your selections based on the age of the reader.
For children within the age range of 4 to 8, I recommend the free guide titled “Developing Empathy Though Children’s Literature.” It has been published by the US government, and you can retrieve it on line at: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED427316.pdf. The authors have done yeomen’s work in selecting a variety of excellent books that tend to be available at local libraries.
It is enormously important to read these books with your kids, and to pause now and then to ask them questions about what is occurring. “How do you think Sally is feeling right now?” is one worthwhile question. “Why do you think she is feeling that way?” is another. So too is, “If you were Sally’s friend, is there something you might do to help her?”
Now, for kids a little older than 8, I have found that good selections are harder to come by. The books for this age range tend to be the simple popular fiction type. I, therefore, wrote a trilogy of coming of age novels to fill in this gap.
The first in the trilogy is titled A Hero Grows In Brooklyn, and although you can buy an inexpensive paperback copy of it, I have made it available to be downloaded for free (For your free download, click HERE). Part of the plot involves a boy named Steve who, at age thirteen, has to move in the middle of the school year because his family has been thrown into poverty.On the first day in his new school, he has to use his dreaded free lunch pass that is provided to students who can’t afford to pay for their lunch. Here’s a little section from that work:
Steve gets in his lunch line. The aroma of chicken soup, peanut butter sandwiches, and fried fish cakes drifts into his nostrils. He picks out a peanut butter sandwich, a container of milk, and some ice cream. Then he shows the cashier his free lunch pass.
Ron DeFelipo, standing right behind Steve, starts to laugh and says to Mysterious Jane, “Look at this! This guy can’t afford to buy himself lunch! What a joke!”
When Steve hears this, it feels like a knife has been stuck in his gut. His face becomes hot, he pleads with himself not to have tears well up in his eyes, and he looks down avoiding everyone’s eyes.
Mysterious Jane looks at Steve, then turns to Ron, shoves him, and says, “You have no brains.”
When Steve gets back to his table, his appetite is gone. He picks at his food for a while, thinking he’s not going to be eating again until past six. With sourness spreading in the pit of his stomach, he comes to accept that he isn’t going to get any food down right now, and so he pushes his tray away.
Here we begin to get to know a character who is struggling with the embarrassment of being poor. Meanwhile, another character, Ron seeks to humiliate him. Mysterious Jane, in contrast, displays empathy.
In another type of literature, Ron would be treated as a character that is just one awful guy. Not so in AHero Grows in Brooklyn. Here we come to see that through the help of the talented social skills of Steve, Ron begins to develop into someone that is far more mature than when we are first introduced to him. The other characters, as well, mature as the story unfolds, and the reader grows with them.
The other two novels in the trilogy take the same characters that we met in the first of the series into high school. More and more mature themes are addressed as they approach their date of graduation.
Together, these novels challenge readers to explore social and emotional issues within a context that teenagers find themselves fully engrossed in.
Interestingly, the feedback I received about these novels indicate that adults enjoy them as much as teenagers. You can learn more about these novels HERE.
For adults, in addition to my own trilogy, I recommend making selections from the list of fiction finalists of the National Book Awards, which, each year, is readily retrievable from a Google search. For those who prefer short stories, O’Henry Award winners are great. Some of these stories were used in the research study published in the journal Science that was mentioned earlier in this post and found to increase empathy. You can find collections of these short stories by doing an internet search using the key words, “short stories, O’Henry Award Winners.
Well, that’s all the time we have for today. Here’s hoping you join us again real soon at From Insults to Respect. Until then, may your life be full of delightful wonder.
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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.
There I spoke about a dog who had recently passed away, and how my empathy helped the owner through his anguish. Further, I presented arguments that empathy motivates individual behavior that aids in solving communal challenges.
Since writing that post, I learned of a study by Sidney Blatt and his colleagues based on data from the large NIMH Depression Collaboration Project. These researchers found that the most effective practitioners shared the following qualities; being perceived by pateints as more caring, empathetic, and sincere then the less effective practitioners.
So, to me, empathy is a pretty good thing–I mean, what’s not to like?
Well, Paul Bloom, psychologist and Yale professor, recently has argued in a piece titled, “Against Empathy,” that it’s a bad thing—that it makes the world worse. Is he kidding me?
The Case Against Empathy
Dr. Bloom tells us that while we’ve been taught that putting yourself in another’s shoes cultivates compassion, it actually blinds you to the long-term consequences of your actions.
In defending his position, Dr. Bloom tells us about the warm glow that many get when they give to charity.
“So, what they do when they give, is to give to a lot of different charities, and give a little bit of money to each one because for each one they get a little rush–‘Oh, I’m helping the blind babies. Oh, I’m helping the farm workers. Oh, I’m helping the chickens.’ The problem is that when you give a small amount of dollars to a charity, often it doesn’t do much good because the dollars they need to process your donation, in some cases, actually ends up with the charity taking a loss on your donation.”
In addition to the charity example, Dr. Bloom tells us:
“Empathy’s engagement, being caught up in the suffering of victims, is usually the number one argument in a democratic country for going to war…. If we ever go to war against ISIS, a full blown military war, it will be motivated by our feelings for the suffering of their victims. But that’s just one consideration. Other considerations are, how many people will die in the war? How many other victims will the war create? But our empathy, our selfish moralizing, zooms us in and says, ‘Oh, my God, there are these people who are suffering, let’s bomb the crap out of them; Let’s destroy the whole country to save these people.’ And then people are later surprised that apparently we killed, you know, we killed 50 thousand people. Gosh, who would have known?”
Is Dr. Bloom Right?
It seems to me that the good professor confounds in his argument the experience of empathy with what one chooses to do when experiencing empathy. Yes, in some situations in which we experience empathy we could choose to take actions that in the long run causes more harm then good, but in other situations we act in enormously helpful ways.
When we choose to try to help a person or group for whom we have empathy, this is called altruism if it is not motivated chiefly by self-gain. In natural settings, altruism has been clearly observed in human beings during disasters and the almost universal protection of parents of their offspring.
Consistent with Dr. Bloom’s position, there is some evidence available that indicates that sometimes people will, upon experiencing empathy, act altruistic without much thought to the consequences. For example, in a study carried out by C. H. Fellner and J. R. Marshall, these researchers found that some kidney donors told them that they had silently made up their minds about the “right thing to do” as soon as they were asked to consider whether they would be willing to make the sacrifice to save the life of a member of their family. These donors reported that they were not really very curious about, or interested, in what the doctors were telling them. They appeared to have applied a simple moral decision rule as soon as they realized what the physician was driving at.
This type of evidence is far from conclusive because the donors may have retrospectively distorted their accounts to present themselves in a favorable light. However, a number of other studies (see HERE and HERE) has led me to support the hypothesis that there are indeed times when people do make moral decisions without much careful thought. That said, I believe that in most situations that require some significant physical and material cost (e.g., exertion, time loss) such costs do influence helping decisions (see Black, Weinstein, and Tanur for a review of this research evidence).
I think that Dr. Bloom’s real worthwhile point is not that empathy is bad, but rather, when we experience empathy we should be careful. If our empathy seems to be urging us to be helpful in some way, we would be wise to indeed consider the long term, as well as short term consequences of our actions. This, in truth, is how all of our decisions are best made.
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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their stress management skills and their emotional and social intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can clickHERE.
It was way back in 1972 on a pleasant autumn day. As I stepped out of the sparkling sunshine into the shadowy confines of the Coney Island Child Psychiatric Clinic, I was greeted by three people who could have been movie actors. One was a beautiful social worker in her late twenties, with flowing brunette hair; another, a tall, handsome psychologist in his early thirties; and the third, a psychiatrist who looked like he was trying out for a part as Sigmund Freud, with his long, graying beard and pipe. Initially they were warm and friendly but, within a few minutes, switched to more earnest expressions. The psychiatrist took charge at this point, informing me that I would be working with eight very troubled male teenagers—two individually, and six in a group. My first job teaching conflict resolution under the auspices of a real life professional organization had begun.
It was a period of time before the current practice of converting the psychological concerns of all children brought to a psychiatric clinic into a language of illness believed to be due to chemical imbalances. The prescribing of pills as the main—oftentimes only—action offered was something I had never dreamed of. Instead, a staff of professionals and several advanced psychology students from Brooklyn College sought to provide empathic emotional support, understand the conflicts the children were experiencing, and guide them toward more mature coping. I was one of the Brooklyn College students.
Achieving the first two goals proved to be a breeze. The kids’ hunger for attention made it easy to develop genuinely enjoyable relationships. And the way the boys spoke and interacted readily revealed volumes on the topic of conflicts with which they struggled on a daily basis. Guiding the boys toward more mature coping, however, tripped me up.
I remember one of my first attempts. A burly thirteen-year old boy with wild, unkempt hair began to express his anger about a kid at school who had called him a jerk.
“Called you a jerk!?” I replied. “Yikes! What did you do about it?”
“I shoved him.”
“How’d that work out?”
“I got sent to the principal.”
“Do you like to get sent to the principal?”
“NO!”
“Hmm, if you don’t like it, maybe we can figure out how to respond to a name caller in a better way.”
“If someone puts me down, I ain’t gonna let him get away with it.”
“I can understand that. Let’s discuss a few ways to deal with name calling that doesn’t let the other guy get away with anything and yet won’t get you sent to the principal’s office.”
“Na. If that guy calls me a name again, I’m really gonna let him have it! He better not start with me again!”
“I can see just thinking about this is really making you angry.”
“Yeah, it is!”
“Well, I have good news for you. I think I can help you to come up with some ways that you can handle name calling that you would respect but won’t get you in trouble. Wouldn’t that be a good thing?”
“Listen, I don’t wanna talk about this anymore!”
At this point, I realized that, for now, to pursue this any longer would be counterproductive.
Shortly after this, I noticed that the two black kids in the group I was working with were frequently being put down by the four white kids.
Some words got thrown back and forth that could have made a Brooklyn boy blush. Well, okay, maybe not a Brooklyn boy, but most people. Anyway, my efforts to address this were, unfortunately, met with the boys shouting over me as their anger flamed into rage.
“You’re doing just fine,” my supervisor assured me. “Working with kids requires great patience.”
I would have preferred specific suggestions on how to better teach. Still, his comments at least temporarily took some pressure off of me.
But as time went on, my patience waned, and I began to have difficulty falling asleep. In the wee hours of the morning my mind kept going over and over incidents in which my efforts to teach something to the kids ended without success. And then, during one such night, amidst an experience of what felt like endless tossing and turning and excruciating frustration, suddenly I recalled an incident that happened to me in fifth grade. Back then I had recently seen the movie, The Pride of the Yankees, with Gary Cooper starring as the New York Yankees’ great baseball player, Lou Gehrig. Nicknamed “The Iron Horse,” Gehrig had his Hall-of-Fame career cut short at 36 years of age when he was stricken with a fatal disease. As the film comes to an end, it reenacts Gehrig’s farewell address in front of a packed, tearful crowd at Yankee Stadium. I’ll never forget his parting words. “People all say that I’ve had a bad break. But today…today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”
Shortly after seeing the film, I decided to read a Lou Gehrig biography and learned that his parents were from Germany. Because I had grown up on war movies that depicted Germans as the vicious enemy, I had, at that time, come to hate Germans. But, when I began to read Lou Gehrig’s biography, I found my hatred undergoing a dramatic change. The story tells us that Lou’s parents were from Germany, spoke with a German accent, and this led the kids in his neighborhood to incessantly torment him.
Somehow, my heart went out to Lou, and from that day on, I came to believe that it wasn’t right to judge a person by their nationality.
Lying in bed recalling having read that biography so many years ago, my mind, at one point, returned to thinking about teaching kids coping skills. It seemed to me that there was something about that Lou Gehrig story that enabled me to reconsider attitudes that I had firmly held for so long. Perhaps if I could tell the kids at the clinic stories about a hero who portrayed higher levels of maturity, they might identify with the hero. I figured that kids like to try out the behaviors of their heroes. I know I did. Criticizing the actions of characters in the story would produce less defensiveness than when I had directly criticized the actions of the kids at the clinic. If I told the stories when the clinic kids weren’t already in a defensive state, maybe they would be open to a real discussion. Once they had thought the issues through, perhaps then they would be better able to integrate what they had learned into their own lives.
Soon afterwards, each time I saw the kids at the clinic dealing with a different conflict in a way that struck me as immature, a story dealing with the conflict in a more mature way just came to me in some strange, effortless manner. The hero of the stories, Cool Steve, has many of the attributes that the clinic kids admired.
I made it a point to tell each story at some point in our session when things were relatively calm. And it turned out that the kids loved them. When I told the stories to the group of kids I worked with—kids well known for their rambunctiousness—they settled right down and you could hear a pin drop as the tale unfolded. They discussed them, grappled with the issues, and oftentimes came to agree that Cool Steve had handled the conflict in a way they respected.
An interesting discovery that I made when I was teaching conflict management to graduate students at the University of Minnesota was that the adult students there enjoyed the stories every bit as much as teenagers. And so, with that encouragement, the stories grew and grew so that they now comprise a series of three novels collectively called The Cool Steve Stories that you can learn about HERE.
Readers of this blog know that as I provide lessons on conflict management, I often illustrate the ideas with newspaper comic strips. Although these comics are very helpful for introducing basic ideas, to really learn the subtleties of applying the ideas of conflict management in actual situations it is hard to beat the longer narratives that novels provide.
The first novel in the trilogy is A Hero Grows in Brooklyn. Most of the action occurs when the main characters are junior high school students. If it was a movie, it would likely be rated “PG.” Fights in the Streets, Tears in the Sand, the second novel in the trilogy, deals with some more mature themes. The main characters are now beginning an urban high school and there is a modest amount of cursing, and some talk about sexual feelings and fantasies. It would probably be rated “PG13” if it was a movie. Love, Sex and Respect, the final novel in the trilogy, takes the main characters through to their high school graduation. If the book was a movie, it might be rated “R.”
You can learn more about the novels at this blog’s NOVELS page toward the top of this page. There you will find that the first novel in the series can be downloaded for free on any iPad, Nook, Kindle or computer, or you can order a paperback version HERE.
I encourage my students to check these books out because they provide memorable adventures that are not only fun and exciting, but teach some profound lessons as well.
Have a great week!
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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional and social intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.
Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Regular visitors know that on this blog, we often find suggestions for improving our stress management skills.
The evidence supporting learning these skills includes studies demonstrating that prolonged stress is related to adverse psychological and physical health effects, as well as an increased risk of premature mortality (See Keller, et al., 2012 for a review of this evidence). Other studies indicate that not everyone exposed to high levels of stress become sicker than individuals exposed to less stress. Perhaps this is because the more resilient individuals have learned to respond skillfully.
There is some support for the “more skillful” theory. For example, in the Keller, et al. article, most of the people that these researchers studied believed their stressful experiences could make them ill, and indeed these folks did often experience more illnesses when they faced high chronic stressful experiences. However a resilient subgroup of individuals tended to not support the stress-illness connection. When faced with high stress, they had learned to believe that the physical sensations they experienced with stress was their body’s way to help them to rise to the challenges that they face.
Although this type of evidence encourages some to learn skills that teach us to respond to stress in ways that are related to being resilient, for some, it is not quite sufficient. What more is needed?
The skeptics would like to see studies that first identified people who were having ill effects from too much stress, and then, after learning stress management skills, they ended up having better health outcomes than a randomly assigned control group who were not taught these skills. Without such studies, it can be argued that it is just a coincidence that those who appear to be skillful at dealing with stress happen to be individuals who are also healthier. These skeptics point out that there are already a few randomly controlled studies that have been completed that provided some brief stress-skill training to people experiencing heart problems. The results from these studies turned out to be discouraging.
But now, a new study has come out that has the very characteristics that skeptics have been calling for. The results lend considerable support that those who learn stress skills in a more intensive manner than the earlier studies, do have significantly improved health outcomes.
The Study
Circulation, one of cardiology’s premier journals, published an article on March 21, 2016 titled, “Enhancing Cardiac Rehabilitation With Stress Management Training: A Randomized Clinical Efficacy Trial.” There we find that 151 outpatients with coronary heart disease aged 36- to 84-years were randomized to 12-weeks of comprehensive cardiac rehabilitation (CR) or comprehensive CR combined with stress management training (CR+SMT). A matched sample of CR-eligible patients who did not receive CR or CR+SMT comprised another comparison group. All participants were followed for up to 5.3 years (median = 3.2 years) for clinical events.
Participants who had participated in the CR+SMT group exhibited lower rates of clinical events compared with those who had just participated in the CR program (18% vs. 33%, P = 0.035). The group that did not receive CR or CR+SMT had significantly more clinical cardiac events then the other two groups (47%, P < .001). Patients randomized to CR+SMT not only reduced their stress levels, but also nearly halved adverse cardiovascular events, including heart attacks, strokes, severe angina, revascularization procedures and death.
These findings are pretty impressive. Let’s take a close look at both the CR and the SMT interventions used in this study.
Comprehensive Cardiac Rehabilitation
Patients engaged in aerobic exercise three times a week for 35 minutes. Patients also received education about coronary heart disease, nutritional counseling, and two classes devoted to the role of stress in this disease.
The CR+SMT Program
Patients in CR+SMT received the identical comprehensive CR intervention plus SMT. The SMT program combines education, group support, and cognitive-behavior therapy. The intervention is delivered in 12 weekly one and a half hour sessions in groups of 4 to 8 participants. Strategies for reducing demands are presented including prioritizing, time management, establishing personal values, and avoidance. Participants are encouraged to apply the skills that they have learned to address their own everyday problems.
Subsequent sessions focus on modifying responses to situations that cannot be readily changed. Several sessions are devoted to training in progressive muscle relaxation techniques and the use of visual imagery to reduce stress. Emphasis is placed on the importance of cognitive appraisals in affecting stress responses, with recognition of irrational beliefs and cognitive distortions such as overgeneralization, catastrophizing, and all-or-nothing thinking.
Later sessions focus on the importance of effective communication, including topics of assertiveness and anger management. Instruction in problem solving strategies is also provided. Methods included brief lectures, group discussion, role-playing, and weekly ‘homework’ assignments.
Take Away Message
Hopefully, the above discussion will increase the chances that you will take up the challenge of mastering stress management skills. I can tell you that from my own experience it is possible to transform many old entrenched habits, which typically escalate stressful experiences, to new ones that leave me in a far more comfortable state of mind.
That said, I am concerned that some people will come away from the above discussion being misled. They may find themselves thinking that all they have to do is to get a list of the various stress management skills, and once they know them, they will be all set to begin to be far less at risk of becoming ill. They may think, for instance, that now that they know that it is better not to believe that challenging stressful experiences will lead them to be sick, they’ll just stop believing that. But, just cognitively changing your attitude to the more health promoting attitude is not enough to convince your body of this.
Consider an analogous situation. There are many studies that involve people who are terrified of harmless snakes that appear in their gardens. These people, when they first come into a treatment program to help with this, first learn that the snakes they come in contact with are indeed harmless. Many soon become cognitively convinced of this, and yet the next time they come in contact with such a snake their bodies still become as stressed as ever. Such individuals, with guided practice, and a little patience, do learn to become comfortable when they see nonpoisonous snakes.
Similarly, to learn to act wisely when you are in other stress arousing situations, it takes some additional steps beyond just coming to know cognitively what they are. It takes practice over an extended period of time in a supportive setting.
Unfortunately, the stress management program described in the study published in Circulation, is not typically included as part of a cardiac rehabilitation program picked up by insurance carriers. Therefore, if such patients want to participate in a similar program described in the above study, they will have to be willing to pay the cost, assuming that they can find in their area someone with the expertise to teach them.
I hasten to also add that I believe it is a mistake to think that people should wait until their first heart attack before learning these skills. It’s no fun having a heart attack, and it makes sense to learn skills that may very well decrease the chances of having one.
So, for those who can not afford the financial burden of accessing such a program, or can not find such a program in their area, what can they do? Fortunately, you can dramatically improve your stress management skills without costing you a dime. That is what this blog is all about.
At the bottom of this post is a set of instructions for going to the first blog post, and working your way through the program at your own pace. Moreover, I have written three novels that further reinforce the skills by providing a narrative of some charming characters utilizing the skills in some pretty challenging circumstances. The first of these novels, A Hero Grows in Brooklyn, can be downloaded for free HERE.
There is great value of going through this entire free program with a few other people who can support one another along the way. Preferably, a group of about 4 to 6 people can meet somewhere weekly for about an hour and a half.
I suggest the following format for such groups. Everyone in the group would come prepared having read the post that will be discussed for the week. After 5 minutes of greeting each other, take twenty minutes to have a group meditation. A simple form of meditation is described HERE. Then, each person in the group is to describe in about 2 minutes how the the post that they read for this session can be connected in some way to their own lives.
When discussing particularly sensitive material that might embarrass either someone in the group or someone else if it ever was revealed, fake names are used. Moreover, the scenarios that are discussed are presented as something that may happen in the future.
For example, let’s say I had a nasty argument with my wife a few days ago. I want to get some feedback from group members about how this can be handled if a similar set of circumstances should arise. I would describe the scenario to the group like this: “Let’s say there is this couple, Ralph and Alice. Sometime in the future, this couple has a nasty argument….”
Now, of course the group members might guess that you are Ralph, but they would not be sure. After all, it is perfectly possible that you might be discussing someone else that you care about and you wish to offer him or her some guidance. Or you might want to prepare yourself if something similar did occur in the future. So by making up fake names to discuss various scenarios you want to discuss, it at least provides some privacy.
In most of the posts, there is a description of how you can handle a particularly stressful experience, such as someone criticizing you, or someone doing something else that is making you angry. Each member of the group would role-play one of the scenarios described in the post under discussion. After each role-play, group members would share their reactions. The group would then end with everyone taking a turn sharing something that they are looking forward to in the upcoming week.
Now, to form this group, if you can identify individuals you know who wish to participate, that’s great. If, however, you have trouble identifying at least 4 people to join the group, consider setting something up using one of the social networking groups such as meetup.com.
These groups can be lots of fun, and they may just save your life.
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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their stress management skills and their emotional and social intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can clickHERE.
William James (1842-1910) became one of the leading thinkers of his day, and through his writings he remains one of the most influential psychologists and philosophers the United States has ever produced. There is a certain wisdom and kindness that runs through his work that I particularly admire. So, in an earlier post when I wanted to come up with ideas on how parents can best teach their children how to respectfully deal with criticism, I naturally turned to him. In that post (see HERE) I mentioned a few of his ideas. For example, I explained how he advocated dealing with a child that has a “balky will.”
Dealing with the Balky Will Child
William James explained that certain children, if they do not succeed immediately in doing something just right and are then criticized, flare up in anger and refuse to cooperate. Such children are oftentimes treated as sinful and are punished; or else the parent pits his or her will against the child’s will.
John Wesley
William James
At such times some have argued that children should be forced to do as they are told, even if one has to whip them ten times running. “Break its will, in order that his soul may live!” exclaimed John Wesley, an eighteenth century theologian. But William James disagreed. “Such will breaking is always a scene with a great deal of nervous wear and tear on both sides, a bad state of feeling left behind it, and the victory not always with the would-be will breaker.”
When a situation of this kind occurs, and the child is all tense and excited, James believed that it is best to drop the subject for awhile. Direct the child’s mind to something else, and then, a little later on, bring it up again. As likely as not, the child will go over it now without any difficulty.
“It is in no other way that we overcome balkiness in a horse,” said James. “We divert his attention, do something to his nose or ear, lead him around in a circle, and thus get him over a place where flogging would only have made him more invincible.”
I personally have tried this approach many times when my wife, Andrea, and I were raising our two sons. It worked beautifully. So, whenever I taught a course called “How to Discipline Your Children and Have Them Still Like You,” I would offer it as one of my suggestions. Interestingly, some parents felt very uncomfortable with this. They would say something like,
“If you let your kids get away with doing wrong, you will end up reinforcing their balky behavior. The children will come to think they have won, and begin to think that to get out of behaving appropriately, they just have to throw a tantrum.”
Well, it just so happens that if you use the William James approach consistently, you really don’t reinforce balkiness because children soon realize that they have not won. They simply come to the understanding that “dropping the subject” does not mean that anyone has won. Instead, they soon connect the “dropping the subject” fact with the “bringing the topic up again later” fact. Dropping the subject, comes to mean their parents will be returning to the subject after they and their parents have some time to calm down and think about the issues in a more calm state.
Children typically are excellent observers of their parents’ routines, so in this type of situation there really is no need to say anything. However, for parents who are particularly anxious about reinforcing their child’s balky behavior if they were to just drop the subject, they can simply add a few simple words to this technique. Thus, when they decide to drop the subject, they might say something like, “Let’s take a little time out and we’ll discuss this more later.”
If this is shouted, rather than said in a pleasant tone, some children will have an added motivation to resist changing the attitude they initially took. So, if you find you can’t really control your tone, perhaps keeping silent makes the best sense.
Okay, so dealing with the “balky will” is one suggestion derived from my reading of William James. Let’s move on to a related approach.
Teach Kids to Choose to Act Rightfully Because It Leads to Something Good, Rather Than Because It Avoids Something Bad
William James tells us that anything people can avoid under the notion that it is bad they may also avoid under the notion that something is good. Those of us who act under the negative notion, was viewed by the philosopher Baruch Spinoza, as slaves. Those of us who act under the notion of good are free.
With this in mind, William James, in a lecture to teachers, said:
See to it now, I beg you, that you make freemen of your pupils by habituating them to act, whenever possible, under the notion of a good. Get them habitually to tell the truth, not so much through showing them the wickedness of lying as by arousing their enthusiasm for honor and veracity. Wean them from their native cruelty by imparting to them some of your own positive sympathy with an animal’s inner springs of joy. And, in the lessons which you may be legally obliged to conduct upon the bad effects of alcohol, lay less stress than the books on the drunkard’s stomach, kidneys, nerves, and social miseries, and more on the blessings of having an organism kept in lifelong possession of its full youthful elasticity by a sweet, sound blood, to which stimulants and narcotics are unknown, and to which the morning sun and air and dew comes as sufficiently powerful intoxicants.
The general idea here is that in the arena of the moral life, whenever a positive ideal is aroused, it is as if the whole scale of values change its equilibrium. As James makes this point, he declares that at such times, “The force of old temptations vanishes, and what a moment ago was impossible is now not only possible, but easy.”
To this end, James liked to tell stories of people illustrating the ideals he most valued. Abraham Lincoln was one of his favorites because the former president “accomplished results under the most intricate possible conditions.”
Using this idea, I have created a series of novelsdesigned to present a hero that generally acts for the good, although he makes his share of mistakes along the way. The first of these novels, A Hero Grows in Brooklyn, is suitable for children as young as 7 or 8 if read together with their parents. This type of reading provides parents a great opportunity to pleasantly discuss a number of issues well before something awful suddenly springs up.
Middle school students can read A Hero Grows in Brooklyn on their own, and it can be downloaded on a computer or any of the popular electronic readers for free HERE. The other novels are more suitable for high school students and mature readers because sexual feelings begin to be explored.
Interestingly, I originally wrote the novels to encourage youth to think more deeply about certain issues before they became embroiled in situations they had not given deep thought to. However, when I taught graduate courses at the University of Minnesota I learned that when I told these same stories to my students, they loved them just as much as my original target audience. So, I encourage anyone who is interested in these ideas to see what the novels have to offer.
In closing today’s From Insults to Respect post, let me add one more point. Sometimes we parents have kids who don’t seem to be learning what we want to teach them as quickly as we would like. Frustration begins to mount. At such time, I recommend meditating on the following William James quote:
“Be patient, then, and sympathetic with the type of mind that cuts a poor figure in examinations. It may, in the long examination which life sets us, come out in the end in better shape than the glib and ready reproducer, its passions being deeper, its purposes more worthy, its combining powers less commonplace, and its total mental output consequently more important.”
Have a great week, and I hope you’ll soon join us once again,
Jeff
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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.
Raising kids is one of the more challenging responsibilities that many of us take on in our lives. I know this from personal experience. My wife and I raised two rambunctious boys, and I’d be lying if I claimed I never once lost my temper.
I remember one particular incident when one of our boys was about ten. I had a pretty rough day at work, it was late, and I was pretty exhausted. Our son began making a great deal of noise in his room. I called up to him to quiet down. He got louder. I screamed again. When he still didn’t listen, infuriated, I rushed into his room and found him lying on the floor with a smirk on his face. I flung my foot back and then forward, kicking him in his thigh while screaming, “You think this is funny!”
I was barefoot, and I’m pretty sure I hurt my toes a heck of a lot more than his thigh, but my point is that from time to time, in a fit of anger, I went off the “ideal father” script. So, that said, in what is to follow, I’m not suggesting that the first time you lose your temper with your kids you have suddenly turned them into a future serial murderer, or anything of that sort. Both of my boys are now fully grown, and they are wonderful. Nevertheless, I do think it is worthwhile for parents to think about the most helpful approaches for bringing up their children, and to be guided by the best information available.
What about Spanking?
According to the most recent UNICEF study, 80% of children are spanked or otherwise physically punished by their parents. Is this a wise way to be raising children?
Over the years, hundreds of studies have been conducted that looked at the effects of this form of discipline on children’s behavioral, emotional, cognitive, and physical outcomes. Taken together, they provide evidence that physical punishment is associated with negative outcomes.
As this body of work on spanking and physical punishment has accumulated, supporters of spanking have argued that the current studies do not clearly distinguish spanking from more serious physically abusive parenting behaviors. They claim that it is probably only “real physical abuse” that leads to harm. Additionally, spanking, they have argued, has only been linked with detrimental outcomes in methodologically weak studies.
A Recent Study
A peer reviewed study (see study HERE) addressed the criticisms launched at the earlier ones. Titled, “Spanking and Child Outcomes: Old Controversies and New Meta-Analyses,” the researchers Elizabeth T. Gershoff and Andrew Grogan-Kaylor took a more up to date and sophisticated look at the research on this topic.
First, they looked separately at studies of parents’ behaviors labeled as “spanking” defined as noninjurious, open-handed hitting on the buttocks or extremities with the intention of modifying child behavior. This definition therefore excluded the use of objects, the use of methods that have a reasonable expectation of causing harm or injury (e.g., beating, burning, choking, whipping), and the use of methods that are gratuitous expressions of parent displeasure without a clear disciplinary component (e.g., pulling hair, shaking, shoving). In this way, the researchers were able to determine the extent to which ordinary spanking is linked with child outcomes.
Then they examined the ways in which the strength and direction of the associations between spanking and child outcomes compare with the strength and direction of the associations between clearly abusive methods and child outcomes.
To deal with the issue of poorly designed studies being included in previous analyses, these two researchers selected only peer-reviewed journal articles, and subjected them to a more advanced random effects meta-analyses. Finally, they were able to incorporate several dozen new, particularly well done, up to date studies not included in previous meta-analyses.
The Findings
Spanking was associated with more aggression, antisocial behavior, externalizing problems, internalizing problems, mental health problems, and negative relationships with parents. Spanking was also significantly associated with lower moral internalization, lower cognitive ability, and lower self-esteem.
Another finding strongly suggested that even for parents who do not intend to go beyond spanking as a form of punishment, the more children are spanked, the greater the risk that they will, in a fit of temper, end up physically abusing their children. Physical abuse was defined in the various studies somewhat differently. For example, one study referred to it as, “hitting with fist or object, beating up, kicking, biting, or beaten to injury.” Another defined it as “physical abuse leading to bruising.”
As expected, although spanking was associated with negative outcomes, physical abuse was found to have even greater negative outcomes. Said in a more technical manner, weighted mean effect size for spanking was d .25, while for physical abuse it was d .38. Both were significantly different from zero and both were positive in sign, indicating that both spanking and physical abuse were associated with greater levels of detrimental child outcomes. The magnitude of the mean effect size for spanking was 65% of the magnitude of the mean effect size for physical abuse.
Four of the studies compared adults who were spanked as children to those who were not. In three of the four, adults with a history of spanking from parents had more difficulties with controlling antisocial behavior, had more mental health problems, and came to believe physical punishment was a proper discipline strategy for their children.
It is important to point out that the researchers in these studies explained:
“While these findings suggest that there may be lasting impacts of spanking that reach into adulthood, they are only suggestive, as adults who engage in antisocial behavior or who are experiencing mental health problems may focus on negative memories of their childhoods and report more spanking than they actually received. The finding that a history of received spanking is linked with more support for spanking of children as an adult may be an example of intergenerational transmission of spanking, or it may be an example of adults selectively remembering their past as a way of rationalizing their current beliefs.”
Conclusions
The above research did not find any support for the contentions that spanking is only associated with detrimental outcomes when it is combined with abusive methods or that spanking is only associated with such outcomes in methodologically weak studies. The weight of the best evidence available indicates spanking has been linked with detrimental outcomes for children, a fact supported by several key methodologically strong studies that isolate the ability of spanking to predict child outcomes over time.
Now, as consistent as these findings are, they could very well have been far stronger if they had looked separately at a group of parents who not only didn’t use any form of physical punishment, but also didn’t use other forms of harmful approaches for raising kids. Said another way, within the group of non-spanking parents there may have been some who don’t spend much quality time with their children, or most frequently interact with them by screaming whenever they catch them misbehaving. If those parents were eliminated from the group of non-spankers, the difference between non-spankers and spanking parents probably would have been even far more impressive. Why do I say this? For several reasons.
In one study, for example, caregivers whose eyes wander during playtime due to distractions such as smartphones or other technology had babies with shortened attention spans when compared to parents who were more fully engaged with their babies. In another study, parents who had children already beginning to have discipline problems received some parenting training that involved such skills as catching their children doing some positive actions and praising them. By learning to do this at least three times for every one time they provided negative criticism when their child misbehaved, there was a distinct improvement in their child’s behavior when compared to parents who had been placed on a wait list to get parenting skill training.
In my view, one of the best ways to raise children is to have parents anticipate what types of problems might arise, and then discussing with their children how best to deal with them. By doing this at times when the child has not already begun to behave in the problematic manner, it is easier to have these discussions without a great deal of defensiveness interfering with reasoning processes. This is one of the reasons I’ve written a novel called A Hero Grows In Brooklyn. It can be downloaded on a computer or any of the popular electronic readers for free HERE. Parents can read a little of it each night with their children. Most children tend to identify with the hero, Cool Steve, along with his friend, Mysterious Jane. After each chapter, during a time that is pleasant and free of discord, parents can discuss with their children some of the issues that come up and the kindness that the two lead characters display.
Well, those are some thoughts for this week. Until next time, may you find life filled with wonderful opportunities to grow.
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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.
Welcome to From Insults to Respect. This weekwe are going to see if there is a more respectful way to view people said to have ADHD than the unjustified names in common use.
Professor Anita Thapar
In an article published in Science Daily, Professor Anita Thapar, referring to a study she is a coauthor of, is quoted as saying, “Now we can say with confidence that ADHD is a genetic disease.”
Anita Thapar’s opinion may lead some to conclude that she has to be correct. She is, after all, a recognized authority on this subject.
However, before making my own judgments, I insist on a reasoned argument even from authorities. If they won’t give me one, or if I find their argument unconvincing, I’m pretty skeptical about what they have to say.
So, what is the reasoned argument backing up Professor Thapar’s “genetic disease” label? She relies on the single study that is cited in the Science Daily article. Let’s take a look at it.
The study looked at the chromosomes of 366 individuals identified as having ADHD, and 1047 individuals who were from a sample of the general population, most of whom were assumed to not have ADHD.
Chromosomes are a threadlike structure of nucleic acids and protein found in the nucleus of most living cells, carrying genetic information in the form of genes.
The authors found that 57 individuals in the ADHD group had a difference in their chromosomes known as “copy number variants” (CNVs). Said another way, 15 percent of the identified ADHD individuals had this difference. Only 7 percent of the individuals in the sample of the general population had this difference.
Although this finding is, statistically, a significant difference, it is not of practical value in identifying the energetic individuals who tend to get classified as having ADHD. This is because if we were to rely on identifying individuals as having the pattern of behavior that leads to an ADHD classification by seeing if they have this CNVs difference, the vast majority would be incorrectly labelled. In the ADHD sample of 366 individuals, over 300 of them would be wrongly viewed as not having the behavior pattern that typically gets labeled as ADHD.
Professor Langley
In the words of Dr. Kate Langley, one of the other authors of the study, “Screening children for the CNVs that we have identified will not help diagnose their condition.”
So, based on the fact that in this study 15 percent of the ADHD labelled individuals were found to have this chromosome difference, is it correct or fair to declare that all ADHD labelled individuals have a genetic disease? I don’t think so because 85 percent of them were not identified as having any difference with their genetic profile.
What about the 15 percent that had this difference? Can we say that at least they have a genetic disease? Here too, I don’t think so.
Just because some people have a difference in their genetic makeup that might be involved in a specific behavior pattern does not mean these people have a disease. I know that some say, it is only if the behavior pattern can be linked in some way to some risky behavior would we properly label those with such a pattern, diseased. But the risky descriptor is highly problematic for the following reason:
Let’s say we can find a reliable gene difference in some people who enlist in the military. We then find that joining the military places these people at greater risk of harm, and even death. Would the finding of this type of connection require us to say that this means all who join the military have a genetic disease? I think that would be wrong and unfair.
How about people who have become addicted to cigarette smoking? At one point, most Americans were smoking. Smoking is a behavior pattern that has some risk. Did all smokers have a genetic disease? How about people who comfortably sit in class for hours, get well paying jobs that have them sitting in front of a computer all day, and when they come home, choose to sit in front of a TV? Somewhere there is something in their body make-up that is predictive of this type of sedentary life, so the theory goes. We know such a pattern is a risk factor for a number of health problems. Do these people all have a disease, or would it be clearer, and more scientific, to say their behavior pattern is a “risk factor” for some negative outcome? I believe the latter is more scientific.
How about being a male? Being a male is clearly due to some genetic difference when compared with the other sex. Males are clearly at a greater risk of violence, and they are more prone to dying from a number of diseases at an earlier age than women. Therefore, does it make sense that all males have a genetic disease? Not in my opinion.
Now, in a free society, a person is free to define a disease as broadly as they wish. If they want to declare that any behavior pattern they don’t like is a disease, no one is going to arrest them, certainly not me. That said, I do think there is value in making a distinction between a scientific definition, and one that is just thrown around in any willy nilly manner.
In science, there is a field of pathology. Here we discover that there is a cluster of body conditions that, taken together, define the field of diseases. These include tumors, microbe infections, tissue tears, bone fractures, and blockages to organs such as the heart. If some genetic difference is correlated to one of these pathological conditions, we say that the genetic difference is a risk factor for the particular disease.
The field of pathology, as it is now scientifically defined, is so broad that no single scientist or physician can be fully expert in all aspects of the conditions properly classified as diseases. That’s why we have heart specialists, cancer specialists, etc. To imagine that pathologists and physicians can become, not only experts in the scientific collection of conditions referred to as diseases, and also every other concern a person might have, is not remotely reasonable.
With regards to the individuals who are now being classified as having ADHD, the vast majority have no identified scientific pathology. Moreover, often we find that once they get out of a setting in which they are forced to sit in school for hours and hours, they find a career and life style that many value.
Some labelled individuals do get into trouble, but there are many questions concerning the reason for the correlations related to this. Can it be that being placed in a setting throughout their childhood and adolescence where they are viewed as failures, lead to alienation, and less job opportunities? Can this be part of the reason for the correlations?
In my view, the motivation behind physicians classifying the behavior pattern now referred to as ADHD has nothing to do with science, but rather, to make money. The pharmaceutical companies make billions of dollars by promoting the disease concept of ADHD, and many physicians have found their medical practice has enormously benefited as well.
Well, that’s my critique of the above study and the labels that I view as disrespectful for many a healthy person. I invite anyone to explain disagreements or agreements with my reasoning.
My Best,
Jeff
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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional and social intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.
As most of you know, controversy flared upon the announcement that Bob Dylan was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature. Some heatedly argued there are others more worthy of the prize. In this vein, a guy named Rob Delany tweeted:
“Bob Dylan wins the Nobel Prize for Literature? What’s next, Derek Jeter wins a Tony for his rice pilaf???”
In contrast, Director Martin Scorsese put out a statement saying he was “overjoyed” that Dylan was awarded the prize. He went on from here to say:
“Dylan’s poetry, his musical genius, has meant so much to me personally and to generations of people around the world. His work has impacted and shaped culture, and he has never stopped exploring and growing as an artist. The Nobel Committee has given Dylan a form of recognition that befits his role in our culture — in world culture.”
No doubt the Pulitzer Prize Committee members agree with Scorsese, they having awarded Dylan the Pulitzer Prize in 2016 for his “profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.”
Some felt Bob should refuse to accept the reward because of how Alfred Nobel earned his money. Thus, a Star Tribune article informs us that:
Alfred Nobel was the inventor of dynamite and was one of the original (to quote from one Dylan song) “Masters of war/You that build the big bombs” — i.e. he not only was a major producer of modern cannon, but also was one of the first modern armament producers. In addition, a premature obituary of Nobel, calling him a “merchant of death,” presumably inspired Nobel to turn philanthropist by creating the prizes.
Dylan’s song “Masters of War,” has a verse that goes:
Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good?
Will it buy you forgiveness?
Do you think that it could?
I think you will find
When death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul.
To be fair, dynamite has some very useful peacetime functions, such as blasting for the construction of tunnels. Moreover, most current day bombs no longer use dynamite. In any case, Bob did accept the award? Was he right to have done so. Would have you respected him more if he had refused it.
Bob’s Acceptance Speech
In thinking about your answer, it might help to take a look at Bob’s acceptance letter:
Good evening, everyone. I extend my warmest greetings to the members of the Swedish Academy and to all of the other distinguished guests in attendance tonight.
I’m sorry I can’t be with you in person, but please know that I am most definitely with you in spirit and honored to be receiving such a prestigious prize. Being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature is something I never could have imagined or seen coming. From an early age, I’ve been familiar with and reading and absorbing the works of those who were deemed worthy of such a distinction: Kipling, Shaw, Thomas Mann, Pearl Buck, Albert Camus, Hemingway. These giants of literature whose works are taught in the schoolroom, housed in libraries around the world and spoken of in reverent tones have always made a deep impression. That I now join the names on such a list is truly beyond words.
I don’t know if these men and women ever thought of the Nobel honor for themselves, but I suppose that anyone writing a book, or a poem, or a play anywhere in the world might harbor that secret dream deep down inside. It’s probably buried so deep that they don’t even know it’s there.
If someone had ever told me that I had the slightest chance of winning the Nobel Prize, I would have to think that I’d have about the same odds as standing on the moon. In fact, during the year I was born and for a few years after, there wasn’t anyone in the world who was considered good enough to win this Nobel Prize. So, I recognize that I am in very rare company, to say the least.
I was out on the road when I received this surprising news, and it took me more than a few minutes to properly process it. I began to think about William Shakespeare, the great literary figure. I would reckon he thought of himself as a dramatist. The thought that he was writing literature couldn’t have entered his head. His words were written for the stage. Meant to be spoken not read. When he was writing Hamlet, I’m sure he was thinking about a lot of different things: “Who’re the right actors for these roles?” “How should this be staged?” “Do I really want to set this in Denmark?” His creative vision and ambitions were no doubt at the forefront of his mind, but there were also more mundane matters to consider and deal with. “Is the financing in place?” “Are there enough good seats for my patrons?” “Where am I going to get a human skull?” I would bet that the farthest thing from Shakespeare’s mind was the question “Is this literature?”
When I started writing songs as a teenager, and even as I started to achieve some renown for my abilities, my aspirations for these songs only went so far. I thought they could be heard in coffee houses or bars, maybe later in places like Carnegie Hall, the London Palladium. If I was really dreaming big, maybe I could imagine getting to make a record and then hearing my songs on the radio. That was really the big prize in my mind. Making records and hearing your songs on the radio meant that you were reaching a big audience and that you might get to keep doing what you had set out to do.
Well, I’ve been doing what I set out to do for a long time, now. I’ve made dozens of records and played thousands of concerts all around the world. But it’s my songs that are at the vital center of almost everything I do. They seemed to have found a place in the lives of many people throughout many different cultures and I’m grateful for that.
But there’s one thing I must say. As a performer I’ve played for 50,000 people and I’ve played for 50 people and I can tell you that it is harder to play for 50 people. 50,000 people have a singular persona, not so with 50. Each person has an individual, separate identity, a world unto themselves. They can perceive things more clearly. Your honesty and how it relates to the depth of your talent is tried. The fact that the Nobel committee is so small is not lost on me.
But, like Shakespeare, I too am often occupied with the pursuit of my creative endeavors and dealing with all aspects of life’s mundane matters. “Who are the best musicians for these songs?” “Am I recording in the right studio?” “Is this song in the right key?” Some things never change, even in 400 years.
Not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, “Are my songs literature?”
So, I do thank the Swedish Academy, both for taking the time to consider that very question, and, ultimately, for providing such a wonderful answer.
My best wishes to you all,
Bob Dylan
My Opinion
Well, first of all, Dylan should be free to choose to do whatever he wants. He’s been doing pretty well without my advice all these years and, anyway, I think it’s unlikely he would give a good hoot what my opinion is on this matter. Moreover, I don’t like it when someone tells me what I should do, so applying the golden rule, I’ll not “should” him. I will, however, express an opinion about what I, personally, think makes sense.
If Dylan and I were together, I’d first ask him if he would mind if I let him know what I would like him to do. If he said no, I would respect this. If he said yes, here’s what I would say.
“Well, Bob, it seems to me that you are kind of like a guy who has found himself somehow perched on top of a narrow fence, struggling to keep his balance. If he falls on one side, he’d end up in the mucky manure of folks who think he would be an awful sellout for accepting the award. If he ends up landing on the other side, he’d end up in the mucky manure of folks who think that he would be disrespectful of a bunch of fine folks, such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Albert Einstein. Such folks were as passionate as anyone with regards to promoting peaceful ways to work out human problems and yet chose to accept a Nobel Prize.
“It seems to me, Bob, that I can spot a way down from that narrow fence; a way in which you can avoid much of the nasty muck. Climbing down off the side of the fence, with a little care and skill, I think I spy a small spot where the grass is still emerald green.
“What I have in mind, Bob, is taking advantage of this international stage moment to express why you are ambivalent about accepting the award. Next, mention that your song, “Masters of War,” helps to capture some of the feelings you personally feel. Then sing the song to the audience. A great gesture would be to donate the approximately $900,000 award to a worthy cause. You’d still be able to keep the 18-caret gold medal that also comes with the prize, or sell it. Two earlier Nobel winners have sold their metals, fetching $765,002 and $4.7 million in auctions.
Words of President Dwight D. Eisenhower
“I realize that the approach I’m suggesting would still result in many of those individuals that work for the military industrial complex spitting on your soul. And I also realize that most Americans with no direct connection to the military industrial complex genuinely believe, for many good reasons, that without a strong military, some warlike countries would be eager to take advantage of us. And I also realize that if you were to remain silent, there would be many who would cry out that you don’t have the courage of your convictions. So, yes, the road of an artist is always deeply challenging.”
Well, those are my thoughts. How do the rest of you feel about how Bob handled the situation?
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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.
Perhaps he has come to believe that many of his most ardent supporters actually believe him when he lies, and it is the media who are telling the lies. Trump may also believe that others of his supporters don’t care that he lies because they believe business folks always exaggerate as they promote their goals, and that Trump is just promoting causes that match their values. Many Americans may therefore see his behavior not as a sign of mental illness, but simply that he is a shrewd businessman.
“I should note that nothing I am saying should besmirch the reputations of men like President Abraham Lincoln or Sir Winston Churchill, both of whom are said to have fought the ravages of major depression or bipolar disorder. One was instrumental in ridding America of slavery. The other was instrumental in saving the world from tyranny. Mahatma Gandhi, by the way, also reportedly suffered from depression. Psychiatric illness does not, a priori, disqualify a person from rendering extraordinary service to mankind.”
In the February 14, 2017 edition of the New York Times, there appears a letter to the editor titled, “An Eminent Psychiatrist Demurs on Trump’s Mental State.” The author of the letter is Dr. Allen Frances. In his opinion, “It is a stigmatizing insult to the mentally ill (who are mostly well behaved and well meaning) to be lumped with Mr. Trump (who is neither).”
“Although no definition can capture all aspects of all disorders in the range contained in the DSM-5, the following elements are required:
Judy becomes bitter when she finds out that her husband, Glen, lied to her. That bitterness leads to a loss of the tenderness she had for him on their glorious wedding day. Despite efforts by Glen to straighten things out, his previous loving relationship ends in divorce.
As regular visitors to this blog well know, it is my habit of utilizing, from time to time, Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour show to provide a literary spin on a topic of interest. To that end, today we’ll turn to his wonderful episode that focused on the theme, “Truth and Lies.” You can listen to the show for free by clicking 
If the truth will hurt someone you love, 
If you are going to tell a lie, make it a white lie. The dictionary defines that as an often trivial, diplomatic, or well-intentioned untruth. According to a survey, 4 out of 5 people admit to telling white lies at least once a day, and I’m telling you that that other guy, he’s lying.
Even if lying is a sin, it is only a venal sin. It becomes a mortal sin only when the intention of deceiving risks mortal consequences. And just as a reminder, here are the seven deadly sins: pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust. Let me see, I’m good for about five of them.
“Don’t Play that Song” was a major hit not only for Aretha, but for several other musical artists. Its popularity is due, at least in part, to it so powerfully capturing the emotional pain that many experience when it becomes apparent that the person they fell in love with has lied about loving them. Such painful memories can last a lifetime.
Well, let’s talk it over
A liar lies to nations
When I was very young, I lied without any forethought. For example, I remember when I was in second grade, one day in the lunchroom a boy at my table announced that he just got a toy Tommy gun for his birthday. Seeing the enthusiastic reaction of some of the guys at my table, I announced that I got one also for my birthday, despite the fact that I hadn’t, and I didn’t even know what a Tommy gun was. The lie just shot right out of my mouth.
One of the biggest influences on my ability to have some forethought when it came to lying was meeting a couple of people in high school that displayed a degree of humbleness. I came to admire this. Both appeared comfortable about their shortcomings, and although both had some impressive skills in a few areas, rather than bragging about them, they let their performance speak for themselves. I soon found myself modeling their style, and each time I was tempted to exaggerate something about myself, I found I could catch myself beforehand, and pretty often I chose a more truthful path.
Empathy, as we have been lately discussing (see 
To give us a sense of the power of literature to promote empathy, Kathleen tells us about her own experience reading All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. The novel is based on Remarque’s experiences as a German soldier in World War I.
Professor Pinker notes that prior to the invention of the printing press there were very few books available. Those people who lived in the upper classes rarely had much direct contact with the lower classes. A nobleman’s quick glance while passing by a downtrodden worker often merely left the impression of a filthy, smelly soul, hardly human at all. After novels became available, a nobleman might read of a poor young woman pressed into very sad circumstances by a cruel person of the upper classes, and discover tears running down his cheeks. To discover that people all over the world, in all classes, and other religions have very similar desires, dreams, and feelings that we can all relate to, increases empathy and the desire to deal with a wider range of humanity in kind and respectful ways.
Of particular importance here is that their studies indicate that reading just any book is not likely to significantly improve empathy skills. Neither nonfiction or popular fiction did the trick. Only what they referred to as “literature” clearly enhanced empathy skills even though there was some indication that most folks liked the popular fiction best.
things–rock formations, how to do quilting, etc. If you choose to read one of these books it is because you share a common interest with the author. No time is spent on getting to intimately know people who have opinions and views that are much different than yours.
Consider as an exemplar, the movie Star Wars, a phenomenally successful form of popular fiction. Within minutes, we come to know who the bad and good guys are. And the bad guys are pretty much completely evil, and the good guys, ever so swell. Moreover, the plot is rather simple–the good guys have to kill as many bad guys as they can, with the ultimate goal of destroying their headquarters known as the Death Star.
For children within the age range of 4 to 8, I recommend the free guide titled “Developing Empathy Though Children’s Literature.” It has been published by the US government, and you can retrieve it on line at: 
The first in the trilogy is titled A Hero Grows In Brooklyn, and although you can buy an inexpensive paperback copy of it, I have made it available to be downloaded for free (For your free download, click 
Steve gets in his lunch line. The aroma of chicken soup, peanut butter sandwiches, and fried fish cakes drifts into his nostrils. He picks out a peanut butter sandwich, a container of milk, and some ice cream. Then he shows the cashier his free lunch pass. 
The other two novels in the trilogy take the same characters that we met in the first of the series into high school. More and more mature themes are addressed as they approach their date of graduation.
For adults, in addition to my own trilogy, I recommend making selections from the list of fiction finalists of the National Book Awards, which, each year, is readily retrievable from a Google search. For those who prefer short stories, O’Henry Award winners are great. Some of these stories were used in the research study published in the journal Science that was mentioned earlier in this post and found to increase empathy. You can find collections of these short stories by doing an internet search using the key words, “short stories, O’Henry Award Winners.
So, to me, empathy is a pretty good thing–I mean, what’s not to like?
“So, what they do when they give, is to give to a lot of different charities, and give a little bit of money to each one because for each one they get a little rush–‘Oh, I’m helping the blind babies. Oh, I’m helping the farm workers. Oh, I’m helping the chickens.’ The problem is that when you give a small amount of dollars to a charity, often it doesn’t do much good because the dollars they need to process your donation, in some cases, actually ends up with the charity taking a loss on your donation.” 
“Empathy’s engagement, being caught up in the suffering of victims, is usually the number one argument in a democratic country for going to war…. If we ever go to war against ISIS, a full blown military war, it will be motivated by our feelings for the suffering of their victims. But that’s just one consideration. Other considerations are, how many people will die in the war? How many other victims will the war create? But our empathy, our selfish moralizing, zooms us in and says, ‘Oh, my God, there are these people who are suffering, let’s bomb the crap out of them; Let’s destroy the whole country to save these people.’ And then people are later surprised that apparently we killed, you know, we killed 50 thousand people. Gosh, who would have known?”
It seems to me that the good professor confounds in his argument the experience of empathy with what one chooses to do when experiencing empathy. Yes, in some situations in which we experience empathy we could choose to take actions that in the long run causes more harm then good, but in other situations we act in enormously helpful ways.
Consistent with Dr. Bloom’s position, there is some evidence available that indicates that sometimes people will, upon experiencing empathy, act altruistic without much thought to the consequences. For example, in a 
This type of evidence is far from conclusive because the donors may have retrospectively distorted their accounts to present themselves in a favorable light. However, a number of other studies (see 
I think that Dr. Bloom’s real worthwhile point is not that empathy is bad, but rather, when we experience empathy we should be careful. If our empathy seems to be urging us to be helpful in some way, we would be wise to indeed consider the long term, as well as short term consequences of our actions. This, in truth, is how all of our decisions are best made.
The evidence supporting learning these skills includes studies demonstrating that prolonged stress is related to adverse psychological and physical health effects, as well as an increased risk of premature mortality (See 
There is some support for the “more skillful” theory. For example, in the Keller, et al. article, most of the people that these researchers studied believed their stressful experiences could make them ill, and indeed these folks did often experience more illnesses when they faced high chronic stressful experiences. However a resilient subgroup of individuals tended to not support the stress-illness connection. When faced with high stress, they had learned to believe that the physical sensations they experienced with stress was their body’s way to help them to rise to the challenges that they face.
The skeptics would like to see studies that first identified people who were having ill effects from too much stress, and then, after learning stress management skills, they ended up having better health outcomes than a randomly assigned control group who were not taught these skills. Without such studies, it can be argued that it is just a coincidence that those who appear to be skillful at dealing with stress happen to be individuals who are also healthier. These skeptics point out that there are already a few randomly controlled studies that have been completed that provided some brief stress-skill training to people experiencing heart problems. The results from these studies turned out to be discouraging.
Circulation, one of cardiology’s premier journals, published an article on March 21, 2016 titled, “
Patients engaged in aerobic exercise three times a week for 35 minutes. Patients also received education about coronary heart disease, nutritional counseling, and two classes devoted to the role of stress in this disease.
Patients in CR+SMT received the identical comprehensive CR intervention plus SMT. The SMT program combines education, group support, and cognitive-behavior therapy. The intervention is delivered in 12 weekly one and a half hour sessions in groups of 4 to 8 participants. Strategies for reducing demands are presented including prioritizing, time management, establishing personal values, and avoidance. Participants are encouraged to apply the skills that they have learned to address their own everyday problems.
Subsequent sessions focus on modifying responses to situations that cannot be readily changed. Several sessions are devoted to training in progressive muscle relaxation techniques and the use of visual imagery to reduce stress. Emphasis is placed on the importance of cognitive appraisals in affecting stress responses, with recognition of irrational beliefs and cognitive distortions such as overgeneralization, catastrophizing, and all-or-nothing thinking.
Hopefully, the above discussion will increase the chances that you will take up the challenge of mastering stress management skills. I can tell you that from my own experience it is possible to transform many old entrenched habits, which typically escalate stressful experiences, to new ones that leave me in a far more comfortable state of mind.
Many soon become cognitively convinced of this, and yet the next time they come in contact with such a snake their bodies still become as stressed as ever. Such individuals, with guided practice, and a little patience, do learn to become comfortable when they see nonpoisonous snakes.
I suggest the following format for such groups. Everyone in the group would come prepared having read the post that will be discussed for the week. After 5 minutes of greeting each other, take twenty minutes to have a group meditation. A simple form of meditation is described 
William James explained that certain children, if they do not succeed immediately in doing something just right and are then criticized, flare up in anger and refuse to cooperate. Such children are oftentimes treated as sinful and are punished; or else the parent pits his or her will against the child’s will.
“It is in no other way that we overcome balkiness in a horse,” said James. “We divert his attention, do something to his nose or ear, lead him around in a circle, and thus get him over a place where flogging would only have made him more invincible.”
Well, it just so happens that if you use the William James approach consistently, you really don’t reinforce balkiness because children soon realize that they have not won. They simply come to the understanding that “dropping the subject” does not mean that anyone has won. Instead, they soon connect the “dropping the subject” fact with the “bringing the topic up again later” fact. Dropping the subject, comes to mean their parents will be returning to the subject after they and their parents have some time to calm down and think about the issues in a more calm state.
See to it now, I beg you, that you make freemen of your pupils by habituating them to act, whenever possible, under the notion of a good. Get them habitually to tell the truth, not so much through showing them the wickedness of lying as by arousing their enthusiasm for honor and veracity. Wean them from their native cruelty by imparting to them some of your own positive sympathy with an animal’s inner springs of joy. And, in the lessons which you may be legally obliged to conduct upon the bad effects of alcohol, lay less stress than the books on the drunkard’s stomach, kidneys, nerves, and social miseries, and more on the blessings of having an organism kept in lifelong possession of its full youthful elasticity by a sweet, sound blood, to which stimulants and narcotics are unknown, and to which the morning sun and air and dew comes as sufficiently powerful intoxicants. 
The general idea here is that in the arena of the moral life, whenever a positive ideal is aroused, it is as if the whole scale of values change its equilibrium. As James makes this point, he declares that at such times, “The force of old temptations vanishes, and what a moment ago was impossible is now not only possible, but easy.”
Middle school students can read A Hero Grows in Brooklyn on their own, and it can be downloaded on a computer or any of the popular electronic readers for free 
“Be patient, then, and sympathetic with the type of mind that cuts a poor figure in examinations. It may, in the long examination which life sets us, come out in the end in better shape than the glib and ready reproducer, its passions being deeper, its purposes more worthy, its combining powers less commonplace, and its total mental output consequently more important.” 
So, that said, in what is to follow, I’m not suggesting that the first time you lose your temper with your kids you have suddenly turned them into a future serial murderer, or anything of that sort. Both of my boys are now fully grown, and they are wonderful. Nevertheless, I do think it is worthwhile for parents to think about the most helpful approaches for bringing up their children, and to be guided by the best information available.
According to the most recent UNICEF study, 80% of children are spanked or otherwise physically punished by their parents. Is this a wise way to be raising children?
As this body of work on spanking and physical punishment has accumulated, supporters of spanking have argued that the current studies do not clearly distinguish spanking from more serious physically abusive parenting behaviors. They claim that it is probably only “real physical abuse” that leads to harm. Additionally, spanking, they have argued, has only been linked with detrimental outcomes in methodologically weak studies.
First, they looked separately at studies of parents’ behaviors labeled as “spanking” defined as noninjurious, open-handed hitting on the buttocks or extremities with the intention of modifying child behavior. This definition therefore excluded the use of objects, the use of methods that have a reasonable expectation of causing harm or injury (e.g., beating, burning, choking, whipping), and the use of methods that are gratuitous expressions of parent displeasure without a clear disciplinary component (e.g., pulling hair, shaking, shoving). In this way, the researchers were able to determine the extent to which ordinary spanking is linked with child outcomes.
Then they examined the ways in which the strength and direction of the associations between spanking and child outcomes compare with the strength and direction of the associations between clearly abusive methods and child outcomes.
Spanking was associated with more aggression, antisocial behavior, externalizing problems, internalizing problems, mental health problems, and negative relationships with parents. Spanking was also significantly associated with lower moral internalization, lower cognitive ability, and lower self-esteem.
As expected, although spanking was associated with negative outcomes, physical abuse was found to have even greater negative outcomes. Said in a more technical manner, weighted mean effect size for spanking was d .25, while for physical abuse it was d .38. Both were significantly different from zero and both were positive in sign, indicating that both spanking and physical abuse were associated with greater levels of detrimental child outcomes. The magnitude of the mean effect size for spanking was 65% of the magnitude of the mean effect size for physical abuse.
Four of the studies compared adults who were spanked as children to those who were not. In three of the four, adults with a history of spanking from parents had more difficulties with controlling antisocial behavior, had more mental health problems, and came to believe physical punishment was a proper discipline strategy for their children.
Now, as consistent as these findings are, they could very well have been far stronger if they had looked separately at a group of parents who not only didn’t use any form of physical punishment, but also didn’t use other forms of harmful approaches for raising kids. Said another way, within the group of non-spanking parents there may have been some who don’t spend much quality time with their children, or most frequently interact with them by screaming whenever they catch them misbehaving. If those parents were eliminated from the group of non-spankers, the difference between non-spankers and spanking parents probably would have been even far more impressive. Why do I say this? For several reasons.
In another 
This is one of the reasons I’ve written a novel called A Hero Grows In Brooklyn. It can be downloaded on a computer or any of the popular electronic readers for free 
Just because some people have a difference in their genetic makeup that might be involved in a specific behavior pattern does not mean these people have a disease. I know that some say, it is only if the behavior pattern can be linked in some way to some risky behavior would we properly label those with such a pattern, diseased. But the risky descriptor is highly problematic for the following reason:
Let’s say we can find a reliable gene difference in some people who enlist in the military. We then find that joining the military places these people at greater risk of harm, and even death. Would the finding of this type of connection require us to say that this means all who join the military have a genetic disease? I think that would be wrong and unfair.
How about being a male? Being a male is clearly due to some genetic difference when compared with the other sex. Males are clearly at a greater risk of violence, and they are more prone to dying from a number of diseases at an earlier age than women. Therefore, does it make sense that all males have a genetic disease? Not in my opinion.
These include tumors, microbe infections, tissue tears, bone fractures, and blockages to organs such as the heart. If some genetic difference is correlated to one of these pathological conditions, we say that the genetic difference is a risk factor for the particular disease.
With regards to the individuals who are now being classified as having ADHD, the vast majority have no identified scientific pathology. Moreover, often we find that once they get out of a setting in which they are forced to sit in school for hours and hours, they find a career and life style that many value.
In my view, the motivation behind physicians classifying the behavior pattern now referred to as ADHD has nothing to do with science, but rather, to make money. The pharmaceutical companies make billions of dollars by promoting the disease concept of ADHD, and many physicians have found their medical practice has enormously benefited as well.
In contrast, Director Martin Scorsese put out a statement saying he was “overjoyed” that Dylan was awarded the prize. He went on from here to say:
Alfred Nobel was the inventor of dynamite and was one of the original (to quote from one Dylan song) “Masters of war/You that build the big bombs” — i.e. he not only was a major producer of modern cannon, but also was one of the first modern armament producers. In addition, a premature obituary of Nobel, calling him a “merchant of death,” presumably inspired Nobel to turn philanthropist by creating the prizes.
If he ends up landing on the other side, he’d end up in the mucky manure of folks who think that he would be disrespectful of a bunch of fine folks, such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Albert Einstein. Such folks were as passionate as anyone with regards to promoting peaceful ways to work out human problems and yet chose to accept a Nobel Prize.
