Or Notes from the Fringe How Could He Do That?
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4/15/18 How Could He Do That? Or Notes From The Fringe William K. Marek, Ph.D. It’s a truism, sadly, And, yet…for some isn’t it? reason, he/she ended it one We all know of someone who day…. had it all…a great S.O., We ask…. job, money, health, car…. How could he do that? All the trappings…. Locked up…away from their loved And what about inmates? ones…. A “fish”…. Mustn’t it be worse for them? Facing a long sentence Rolled on by their Fall Partners… Scared of their Cellies…. 1 4/15/18 I used to “be” someone… Oh, wait….the suicide rate for My sense-of-self? inmates is frequently less than for An extraordinary, unique, one-of- the streets…year after year…. a-kind guy… My manliness? How to explain that? What about And, yet…here I am… the importance of all those outside Prison is so bad…. influences? Suicide might seem like a reasonable option for an inmate…. In prison…. This presentation is an essay. It’s hard to get away from that pesky Nature and Nurture, isn’t it? An essay based on Facts, There must be something Evidence and Opinions. dispositive…there must be some My goal? To inform on what I combination of outside factors that believe to be a would make someone suicidal. Big Picture Idea. You’d think so, wouldn’t you… There are a number of An Internal Locus of Control. concepts…ideas….theories…. An emphasis on Belief, Thought, Attitude, Perspective, Point- that share certain features, Of-View. certain commonalities… Inmates and core life concepts A big emphasis on Personal like Purpose, Meaning, Happiness, Responsibility…but… Gratitude, Resilience, Personal Responsibility and Wisdom Who gets the American Dream? 2 4/15/18 Does the government have a role in The ideal individual was an independent individual achievement of the American intellect with common sense. Dream? Is the State responsible for Grounded by an innate moral sense, fulfilling expectations and false lived by moral principles and habits, promises? Happiness, receding into the exercising adult personal responsibility. distance? The curriculum in American colleges Until the mid-twentieth century, reflected that ideal until the end of the Americans were served by the ethic of nineteenth century. individual responsibility, to determine well-being through personal effort. Individual responsibility has been the Renaissance humanism reintroduced the foundation of human achievement in Western classical emphasis on the person as an civilization. individual. The Magna Carta and English common law Every advance, beginning with the freed the individual from the sovereign or Greeks and Romans, sought individual state. responsibility. The dignity and autonomy of the individual The Renaissance and the Reformation became the touchstone of Western and American freed the individual from subordination to concepts of liberal democracy, with personal responsibility in freedom and rights. any kind of group. Progressive ideology soon replaced . individual responsibility with the collective responsibility of groups. We acquired an “other-directed” personality. The principled and purposeful individual was being replaced by the socially constructed individual relying on others to provide meaning for a life. In the 1960s, academic social science led the change to an entitlement mentality. 3 4/15/18 Universities now stress the empowerment of Institutionalized and academic opposition oppressed people to provide social justice or to emphasis on personal responsibility for more egalitarian access to income through economic well-being. state-sponsored redistribution. Freedom from responsibility replaced Empowerment is not to be earned through acceptance of responsibility. individual responsibility but is to be granted as entitlements to oppressed groups through The social construction of self-esteem may collective responsibility. have created a Culture of Narcissism. Collective responsibility and communal sharing has replaced personal and family responsibility. What To DO? An amalgam of Albert Ellis' Rational Emotive Therapy and Viktor E. Frankl's Logotherapy. In the context of RET, logotherapy can be taught to those clients who experience little purpose and meaning in life and believe their personal situations are pushing the limits of human endurance. In Frankl's logotherapy, choice is of paramount importance in living a happy, fulfilled life. External factors such as wealth or The past has an effect on us all but poverty, prison or beach, concentration almost always in a direction that can be camp or mountain top play a substantially chosen. less important role. Inmates may have to be innovative in RET and logotherapy are fully their attempts to acquire purpose and compatible and complementary because they meaning but is a far easier task than is stress choice, personal responsibility, generally believed. overcoming adversity and the primacy of belief and thought. Clients are to generalize from Frankl's teachings to their own lives. 4 4/15/18 Maultsby formulated five Rules that are Two Rules of Disputation: to be used when investigating the validity, efficacy, rationality and 1.) Is the belief based on fact? Is it a fact reasonableness of a Belief. I kept Rule (A) that she SHOULDN'T have done what she did? One. No. It is not a fact that someone shouldn’t attack you without provocation, for example. I consolidated the last four to Rule You cannot control another person, even if Two. Having only Two Rules makes it much you have done nothing to bring it about. easier for clients to remember and 2.) Will the belief give you a Good or Bad implement. Consequence? If not, the belief should be disputed, modified or discarded. If the Belief fails these Rules, Or, a grieving person will the words used to replace it are eventually come to hold these kinds Prefer and Rather. of beliefs: "I would prefer that he not have "I would rather (B) that my wife cut me off on the road but I cannot not have died (A). Unfortunately, change another person. I will she did. I will grieve appropriately exhibit internal control (B) and not (C) for as long as it takes...but I chase him with my own car (C)." will (painful sigh) eventually move on." It is frequently therapeutic for a client If the belief fails these Rules, it is to understand that it is what she is thinking deemed irrational and counterproductive about the thing (B), rather than the thing and is to be replaced with a belief that itself (A), that is causing her pain. allows the person to experience a more personally beneficial Consequence. It puts her back in control and liberates her from the mental weight of past and current Activating Events. She can change her focus "What is the worst thing (Consequence) from the unchangeable (A) to the changeable (B). that can happen in this situation?” (Activating Event) This knowledge frequently provides tremendous symptom relief. 5 4/15/18 Unfortunately, many people think that A thought may cause pain, however: If a man it is the A that is causing them pain (C). did not care about some event, would he be in They know that the past is pain? No. unchangeable, so they erroneously conclude that past events and present pain are Do cognitive psychologists want clients to inextricably linked. not care? No, they want clients to care appropriately. It is absolutely appropriate for someone to be unhappy about some past A. However, this reality, this A, may have happened 20 years previously. It exists It will color their existence, certainly, only in the mind (B), not in time and but clients should be taught to not give up space, and can no longer bother a person. their lives to this event. We should be unhappy every now and then. An appreciation of the good does not come without an appreciation of the bad. Teach clients to acquire some mental I stipulate Activating Events… distancing from what has happened: BE unhappy, just don't become so unhappy that you believe to be Bad… that it results in unwanted consequences, like severe depression, getting fired, suicide. “The problem is not the problem. “If you weren’t unhappy, I’d think you were weird.” The problem is your attitude about the problem.” 6 4/15/18 Johnny Depp Captain Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean Man is not free from conditions (A), be they biological, psychological or sociological in nature. But he is, and always remains, free to Viktor Frankl take a stand (B) toward these conditions (A); he always retains the freedom to choose his attitude (B) towards them. Logotherapy Man is free to rise above the plane of somatic and psychic determinants of his existence (A). Man can reflect on himself from a distance. ...but man is ultimately self-determining. It is time that this decision quality What he becomes (C) - within the limits of (B) of human existence be included in our endowment and environment (A) - he has made definition of man. himself. In the living laboratories of the Our generation has come to know man as concentration camps (A) we watched comrades he really is: the being that has behaving like swine (C1) while others behaved like saints (C2). invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Man has both these potentialities (B) within and also the being who entered those gas himself. Which one he actualizes depends on chambers upright (C), the Lord's Prayer decision (B), not on conditions (A). or the Shema Yisrael on his lips (C). 7 4/15/18 ...whether any circumstances (A), be There is nothing conceivable (A) that they inner or outer ones, have an would condition a man wholly (C), i.e., influence on a given individual or not, without leaving to him the slightest and in which direction this influence freedom.