Author: Dr Jean Pain

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Children Education Parents

Children – Let Them Get On With It

What usually grab the headlines are great disasters. The publicity aroused by the rescue of the Chilean miners was well deserved. This does indeed have a real reason for raising our spirits. For once in a while a lot of government money was put into equipment that was very expensive and the chances of it finding the right place was very difficult. The joy that went around the world was more than justified. The overwhelming courage of the trapped men touched everyone who might have been in the same situation. For once, here was the head of state, President Sebastian Pinera who put people before money and has now promised to do something about the hardships the miners had to put up with.

Last night I watched one of my favourite writers on politics, Andrew Marr. His subject was how Jack Kennedy won the Presidency for the first time by having had a vast sum of money from his father, whilst his opponents had far less. He also told some cruel lies about his opponents. He appeared as having no scruples whatsoever. He, too, was good-looking and charismatic and quite ruthless about lying and deprecating better men than he was. His oratory was his best weapon. Why are we all taken in by such things? Because we don’t think properly.

I have a feeling that most of us do not have a very good opinion of ourselves. If all of us, as individuals, were educated, from earliest days, to use words and conversations to help them to think clearly, they would grow up with a natural sense of their own worth. Would they still need heros and heroines? I think not!

Our children are our best hope for the future provided that we start now to change the way we talk with them and respect them. Throughout history children have been exploited by adults in all sorts of ways. Alice Miller called this Poisonous Pedagogy.

Children are small and weak physically in their earliest ages. But there is a wealth of wonderful potential in their minds. Anyone who pays close attention to these little ones know this. We do not need teachers who try to force on them what they do not want. All we need to do is to give them an environment full of things that would catch their interest and let them get on with it. Some of our greatest men in the past, Churchill, Bertrand Russell and George Bernard Shaw were not regarded as geniuses by teachers. We must have always lost exceptionally talented people because of their being disenchanted through having missed out on kindly ecouragement from people who like and respect them.

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General

Here’s to the Queen

Is the Royal Family a good thing for our country? The answer has to be “Yes!” Since our last invasion by William 1 in 1066 we have never had another one. Since then there has been a Royal Family. The only reason I can think of about how this was maintained is our geographical situation: an island big enough to develop a sense of being united, despite ups and downs like The Civil War, the Armada and the failure of Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler to attempt to conquer us.

As we all know, the Royal Family has changed a great deal over the centuries to the point where they have no political power. This is a great blessing. They are an important icon representing all of their subjects but they have not the right to interfere with the government. That does not mean that the Queen has no power at all. She talks to our prime minister every week and is kept informed about the state of the kingdom. Over her reign she is the only person who has had the chance to form her own judgements and, although she cannot change things, she is very conscientious and intelligent and can pass on to each P.M. information gleaned from her wide knowledge of the past.

The kings and queens are born into their jobs and cannot give them up unless they abdicate. Whatever people say about the cost of maintaining them, the hard work they put in is unprejudiced and encouraging to all kinds of people as well as keeping up constant contact with the rest of the world.

There is no way they can be corrupt because they have no incentive to make money as they have more than enough already. Prince Philip runs businesses and charities that are useful to all of us and makes a good job of it.

Right now the flavour of the day is the coming Royal Marriage. Perhaps because the two young people

seem to want to make a genuinely suitable alliance, at a time when divorces are far too common, especially in the Royal Family itself. I have nothing against the announcement except it is way over the top in emphasis. I think all those people who are searching for the ideal marriage, despite the fact that there is no such thing, are longing that their expectations will be met.

It seems to me that one of the powerful needs of humans is to have someone to look up to. There is nothing wrong with this if those who are idolised are good examples. Looking back at history, those whose names remain well-known, comprise a motley mix of soldiers, dictators, martyrs, saints and miracle makers, gangsters and Royalty. This phenomenon reveals the two opposite sides of us all. The darker side of ourselves gets a thrill from seeing and hearing those who are brave enough to take great risks. That is why detective books are so popular, except for the fact that right always wins. Nevertheless many of us love to read autobiographies of criminals whether they get away with their crimes or not. It can be very boring to try to be good all the time.

The last time I noticed such a fuss was when Princess Dianna was killed. This was a very difficult time for the Queen and Prince Philip. Despite the fact that she had not behaved at all well as would be expected from someone in her position, her enormous popularity, good acts and above all outstanding good looks, created an extraordinary response. Would there have been such a response if she had been lacking in beauty and charisma? I think not. None of us are perfect but nevertheless we still hope that perfection is still possible. Is it better to look up rather than down? Of course it is! But good marriages have to be worked for.

I believe that despite the hicccups of having a royal family, a far worse things to bear are huge posters of power-seeking politicians or bloodthirsty dictators.

Categories
Children Education Parents

Offsted – Wrong, Wrong, Wrong!

I read in my Saturday paper that at long last pupils will be taught to spell and learn grammar. About time too and the younger the better. When I was a child I enjoyed doing spelling tests every week. I believe that the teaching of English grammar should be started at the same time as children are learning to read and write. This is the practice in some European countries. Another subject that could be taught in primary school is another language.

It is well known that up to a very early age, say 6 to 8, children can easily learn two or even three languages at the same time and we are talking about all normal children, not the brightest ones. The older we get the harder it is for children to learn another language.

I have heard from parents that when their children start school they are often very disappointed because they don’t want to play they really want to learn proper subjects. We have always underrated just how much small children can take in. Of course the methods for this early teaching need to be carefully designed. Let me give you an example. My nephew’s son has a Danish mother. They came to visit us when he was three years old and he was already speaking Danish and English. His wise mother spoke her own language to him from the start in tandem with lots of English from his family and friends.

As we were having lunch his mother was talking with him. “Did you answer in Danish?” I asked him. He looked puzzled and turned to his mother for help. She said “This is how Mummy talks”. His mother cleverly used this phrase instead of the word ‘Danish’. I realised that he could easily move from one language to another, but he hadn’t yet grasped the concept that there were many other languages. He just took all this for granted.

It occurred to me how useful it would be to to learn the grammar at the same time as we are learning the language. I had to wait until I was at grammar school to learn two languages, French and Latin and English grammar. I know I would have learned all this much earlier and easier with skilful teaching leaving me free to go further and faster later on.

If children learn real grown-up stuff, in their eyes, it would be a wonderful boost to their confidence and they would improve, not lose, their ability to concentrate.

One of many mistakes in education changes since I was a child, is giving homework to children under eleven. With good teachers, there is no need. Children need time to themselves to play and read in their own homes and put school behind them until the next day. Even worse, it is another great mistake for parents to try to ‘help’ with homework. That is not a role of parenting. Home is somewhere to relax and rest. There should be no interference between teachers and parents unless there is a serious problem that needs to be examined. However, most teachers who choose their job have the gift of finding their own way of passing on information. Busybodies, i.e. Ofsted, should stay away unless there is a real reason for help.

Categories
Behaviour

Health and Safety – don’t make me laugh!

Why do we need a Department of Health and Safety? Surely the majority of sensible people can manage to deal with most problems in those two areas. I can see the necessity for inspectors in places of work and hospitals. But I am constantly hearing of people who are being paid to do unnecessary jobs such as teaching workers how to climb ladders or how to carry out procedures that anyone with any sense already knows. This is a branch of the ‘Nanny State’. The whole business smacks of trying to take away our freedom to do what we have learned to do for ourselves. The more things we try to do for other people the more we deprive them of their independence.

Society is a group of individuals who do their best when they are free to make their own choices in work, health and safety. Those people who are disabled may need help and ought to get it, but they too do not want to be told what to do all the time. The minimum of help encourages all of us to take responsibility for ourselves as far as we are able.

After World War 1, there was a lot of talk about it being The War to End all Wars . Did anyone prescribe how this could be done? Of course not! There are always big-mouths, usually politicians, who love to dream up statements to try to encourage enthusiasm in what they call “The People”. World War 2 knocked that idea on the head.

We have had no more world wars because the enormous progress of dangerous weapons would probably have killed both sides including civilians. Yet there have been several smaller wars that have no access to things like atom bombs.

Whenever the most horrible of murders, especially those of children, happen, we are fed the same old words “We must ensure that nothing like it ever happens again.” Do they think they are God or something? The steps taken to avoid such tragedies are usually further ways of curtailing our freedom.

For example, we can make all the laws we like but the lawless take no notice. People are banned from buying guns, but criminals have no difficulty in getting hold of them. When I was a child most little boys carried pocket knives. Now knives are forbidden. The assumption is that anyone who carries a knife is a potential killer.

A safe life is a boring life. All those who want to make their own minds up about what to do with their lives need to have the courage to take chances. The more out of the usual are our ambitions the greater the risk and the more the satisfaction when we succeed.

The more freedom we have the less likely are we to submit to dictators. We should all honour the rebel within us. If we do not, we will not have the guts to speak out and act when we feel we are being pushed into something we do not want to do. Satisfied electors keep an eye on government and do their best to keep their actions within reasonable limits.

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General

What’s the point?

All the talking and cajoling in the world can be beaten by behaving well ourselves. I’ve repeated the last line of the preceding article “Trust Yourself” because I wrote ‘cannot’ instead of ‘can’, which made it the opposite of what I intended. I am telling you this to make it clear how easily we can say the opposite of what we mean. This is what we call a Freudian Slip.

Why should I do so? Does it mean I really do want to say the opposite of what I said? No. But just as everything must have its opposite, hidden away in our unconscious minds, we are reminded to make sure of the truth of the conscious utterance by comparing it with its opposite. There may be another reason for this lapse. It may be that I am frightened that what I meant to say might not be true. Because I very much want it to be true this makes me try to think of more reasons why it could be true. That is the theme of this article.

Every day something happens in the media that makes me very angry. But it doesn’t do me any good if I do: or does it? I have said before that powerful emotions can distort circumstances. But there is always another side to it.

As in most revolutions, people lose their fear because it is overcome by the powerful effect of extreme misery. People do not then care whether they live or die. We, in the western countries, live in conditions far better than ever before. Yet we all know about and some of us have lived through the worst wars in history. When I was at school doing my School Certificate we heard about the first atomic bombs dropped on Japan. I was devastated. I believed that I would not live for very long, because now there was such a weapon I could not imagine that it would not be used, and very soon. If someone had told me I would still be here in my eighties I would not have believed it.

In fact the new weapons were so devastating that no-one dared to use them for fear of another country retaliating.

There have still been wars, but nothing like a Third World War. After the devastation during 1939-1945, I have been surprised by all the good things that have happened to improve our lives. When the pendulum reaches the extreme of painful times there is always a reaction and it starts to go back in the contrary direction.

After the French Revolution and the terrors that followed, people became sickened by all the bloodshed. When it was over there were great public celebrations including ecstatic dancing on the graves of the dead. It is all too easy to become overwhelmed by the bad things that happen but nothing lasts for ever.

Bertrand Russell pointed out that despite all the madness in history “folly is perennial as Erasmus found and yet the human race has survived. The follies of our own times are easier to bear when they are seen against the background of past follies.” There are always two sides to every situation.

Categories
Behaviour Self Esteem

Trust Yourself

In a concentration camp where our freedom has been taken away from us our powers are reduced to the thoughts that we create in our heads. In such circumstances if we want to stay alive, doing being ordinary has to be doing nothing that draws attention to the prison guards. If we are imprisoned according to the laws of this country the best way we can help ourselves is to follow the rules and make no attempt to rebel. That is what doing being ordinary means if you want to be released as soon as possible. In other words we work at fitting into a law-abiding society.

Exceptional men and women have to do being ordinary in their own special way. This means getting to know themselves very well by constant self-examination, especially learning from their mistakes. They gradually assemble a set of rules they choose to live by that help them to maintain looking after themselves as a first priority.

Such people understand many kinds of doing ordinary because they constantly study human habits. The better they know themselves the more use they are to other people. They rarely need to ask anyone else for advice because they have had enough experience to trust their own judgements, but at the same time they are always open to new ideas. This enables them to grow and develop and manage their own particular prejudices and negative sides.

They are never anything but themselves whoever they talk with. Titles, ceremonial garments and special kinds of oratory do not impress them. They never become “do gooders” although they are as pleased as anyone else if something they have done has been useful to someone else and at the same time they put their own wellbeing first. They never become martyrs nor are they victims if they can help it. They worship no-one and nothing but they recognise everything that is beautiful and revel in it. They prefer to work alone and they rarely join groups. Einstein was such a one and so was Victor Frankel. The good that they do is not deliberate but the result of having a great virtue: that they set a good example without realising they have done it. That, I believe is the highest kind of doing being ordinary. This kind of ordinariness is the extreme of extraordinary. Another kind of anentiodromia.

When we want to help people we must first consider what our motives are. Many of us are drawn into the so-called ‘caring professions’ because they think they want to help people, or because they have been bludgeoned into accepting beliefs that have more to do with keeping other people under their control than improving their lives.

If we are not on good terms with ourselves, we can be sure we will not be good for other people. All the talking and cajoling in the world cannot be beaten by behaving well ourselves.

Categories
Behaviour

Learning Ordinary

Order and ordinary come from the same Latin word ordinarius. Both words are related but they have different meanings. To be orderly means to obey the laws of the land and the many rules and habits that we need to follow for our own good, for example road rules. Why then does the word ‘ordinary’ come across as disparaging? If we speak of an ordinary man or woman we think of someone who never does anything much out of the usual. For instance we would not call a convict or a multi-millionaire, ordinary. Why? Because they have taken risks in their lives that most people would not dare to do.

That is just as well, as if everyone did extraordinary things we might well get into a state of anarchy.

Most of us want to have a job they can enjoy and a settled family. Their lives are highlighted by ceremonies such as Christmas and holidays when they can enjoy a break from everyday lives and then come back to everything they are used to.

Learned habits and behaviours are the foundations of our lives. We feel safe when we have created a regular routine. This is the reason that when people retire, after doing the same work for decades, they often find it very hard to adjust to a new way of life and sometimes they go back to work, if they can. Those people who have created work for themselves and changed it from time to time when they want something new to do, as I myself have done, can always find something fresh to fill in their time.

Rarely do such creative people as writers, painters and all kinds of people who have imagination and curiosity never stop.

If we pay attention to the kind of passive entertainment that is particularly popular we can easily see

what is lacking in so many people’s lives. Throughout history the telling of stories , travelling circuses and the theatre have been favourite pastimes. They provide the colour and excitement that are lacking in so many people’s lives.

The nature of these entertainments have changed as the times change. All the things that ordinary people were never able to do either because they dared not nor could not do are on display today in books, cinema, football, TV and the theatre. They get a vicarious thrill by identifying with the heroes, gangsters and oddballs of all kinds that leaves them unharmed but satisfied.

A new manifestation is the obsession with celebrities. That is why young girls, even the intelligent ones, will imitate what they do and what they wear. I don’t know why. But it must be something that they feel is lacking in their lives. What a pity when there are so many better ways for them to spend their spare time. I think some aspects of women’s lib. are responsible.

Categories
Behaviour

Victor Frankl Being Ordinary

According to Harvey Sacks “doing being ordinary” is a job we all have to learn to enable us to know how to fill in the oceans of time we have unless we choose to fill it up with useless minutii to stop ourselves from doing the real work of creative living. Since much of it is spent with other people, unless we are recluses, we need to find a way to talk and behave that will not get us into unnecessary difficulties.

We are a gregarious species. Most of us want to be of use to ourselves by finding a suitable occupation that we can enjoy and being able to make friends. This sounds very simple but it is not. If it were we wouldn’t have so many people trying to “help” us. Whenever I have been asked why I wanted to be a therapist the question is usually “Ah you want to help people?” My answer was “Well no. I want to help people to help themselves.” That is something quite different.

During my long life I gradually learned that I should be very careful when I began to feel sorry for someone. If I saw anyone in what I thought was distress, I leapt in without thought. I wasted time in this unfortunate habit instead of putting myself first.

When I began work as a therapist I had still not completely outgrown this belief, but I was well on the way to it. I wrote my second book “So You Want to be a Therapist” to help those who wanted to help others by telling them about the pitfalls that can get in the way of doing the job properly. We all need to remember that we must not get tangled up in another person’s distress. Our job was to help clients to understand how they got into an unhappy state, so that they were able to change their own attitudes to life.

One of my favourite books is Victor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”. A Jewish Psychotherapist, who was imprisoned in a concentration camp from 1942 – 1945. His parents and his wife all died there. He describes in detail the terrible experiences of all the prisoners. He was determined to survive so that he could continue his work. He learned to harden himself to all the suffering going on around him when as a doctor he could do nothing about it. He wrote “Man can preserve a vestage of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and spiritual stress.”

He also said “What was ultimately responsible for the state of the prisoner’s inner self was not so much the enumerated psychophysical causes as it was a free decision.”

He was released by the American forces. He went to the states where he continued his studies and developed a form of psychotherapy that he called Logotherapy. He married again and had a daughter. He eventually went back to Vienna. He did wonderful work and was devoid of bitterness. He was very well liked and lived into his nineties in spite of his dreadful experiences. His “doing being ordinary” was of a very high quality.

Categories
Behaviour Psychotherapy Self Esteem

So Ordinary

Harvey Sacks’ lectures were not prepared. They were delivered ad hoc in ordinary everyday language, which is very encouraging to those of us who are used to reading academic treatises full of special words we don’t understand. Yet paradoxically, its very strangeness surprises us and makes us work hard to see what he is aiming at.

Much of what he says we haven’t heard anywhere else because he was working from sets of human behaviour that he had observed and had not taken for granted. For example when we are in a different group of people we adapt ourselves to the unwritten rules of that group without even realising what we are doing.

Whenever I went to a conference to find out more about psychotherapy I found myself floundering in the group exercises because I hadn’t the faintest idea of what these hidden rules were. Whenever I came up with a response of my own I always heard cries of “This is not what we are talking about!” and I did not know why I should be denied to come up with my own ideas.

Sacks wrote a lecture called “Doing being Ordinary”. This at once threw light on my dilemma. I never learned as a child to fit in anywhere, because my parents left me to my own devices or told me things that seemed so ridiculously childish that I took no notice of them. Neither did I want to join in any kind of group because they never fitted in with what I wanted to do, so I learned to be myself and to act that way to whoever I might be talking to. My book “Boadicea’s Chariot” is about my childhood experiences and clearly explains what I am trying to say here.

Sacks points out that circumstances alter rules about conversation. We all have a job to do which enables us to create different kinds of rules for how we fill in our time.

People who are as independent as I am are categorised as eccentrics because they have found there own way to live and their own work to do. When I consider the small number of what I call ‘real friends’, these are the ones we keep forever even when we rarely meet and even after they have died. I realised in due time that the complete freedom of speech between us is what I value most.

So how can we learn to “Do being Ordinary”? If we have different ways of being and doing ordinary what do we do when we come up with a completely new kind of person? We can say what we like as in my article called “Stranger”.

I end with a story. When I became a psychotherapist I was determined to work only with people who were willing to come to terms with themselves. I noticed that those who did not would play all the games they could think up to avoid taking responsibility for themselves.

When clients came for the first time, I spoke to them as I would have done with any stranger with the sole exception that I would take into account their emotional state by close observation so that I could understand it better.

I worked with a lady who did not value herself enough. She was also making a good recovery from an operation for cancer. I don’t know what I did. Like Sacks I let myself respond to her in a way that would, hopefully, do her no harm. I took a great liking to her from the first time I met her. That made it easy for me. Clients are not fools. They soon find out how you feel about them. Our work was very successful. It took quite a while until she felt confident enough to look after herself. Towards the end of our work she suddenly said, in tones of astonishment “I don’t know what you did but I feel like a different person. I can’t believe it. After all you are just an ordinary person!” “Quite right” I said. It was one of the best things anyone said to me, that just by being myself I could have had such an effect on another person.

Categories
Equality

Complimentary Not Equality

Be patient with me. Everything I have written so far is leading up to what everyone wants to know about human relationships. Mother and son, mother and daughter, father and son, father and daughter all the way through all the different relationships up to the last two which are the most important: husband and wife (or call it long term partners if you like) and the relationship with ourselves.

The starting point is that men and women are complementary to each other. To say that they are equal, is a misuse of the word.

Equal payments for doing the same kind of work? Yes equal. Women and men are different in their physical construction, and therefore there are some jobs that men can do better than women and some can be done better by women. These are the main differences but there many more. As the man in the French parliament said, “Vive la Difference!” If I could be a man for one day I am sure I would learn more about what it is to be a man than a lifetime’s observation. Two phrases we hear repeatedly are “I wish I could understand women” and “I wish I could understand men.” Ask any mother who has had babies of both sexes, myself included. It’s the difference that makes us interesting and, of course, the

something that cannot be done by one person. Despite the development of science, it still takes a sperm to fertilize an egg.

Back to good and bad. I’ve decided to keep these words because they are laden with emotions. After all we are not robots. First and foremost, we all have different ideas about what is good and what is evil. I am not in favour of organised religions because they, more than any other groups cause dissents about the meaning of the words that end up in wars, torture and many other evil things. My friend Jerry Planus, who is now dead after living into his late eighties, bless him, was brought up by nuns in an orphanage. He was an excellent writer and honoured me by sending me details of his early life “Cos you are an intelligent woman” by which he meant the nuns were most certainly not. I would love to publish it because it is very enlightening and fascinating. But I cannot, because it is his and I do not know if there is anyone in his very small family still alive. What he learned from his early experiences was to be an atheist and that he must trust himself and no-one else in his life decisions.

I know several stories about Jerry, but here is the one I like best. When he was fifteen years old he was sent to train to be a soldier. Despite the disgusting way he was treated by the nuns he enjoyed the new life he made for himself. When he had completed his time in the army he first cured himself of a long-standing stutter so that he would be able to be a travelling salesman and then to be a dealer in antique clocks.

He was in the army when he went to France with the infantry; part of the freeing of Europe in the Second World War. He was a big strong man and didn’t understand the meaning of fear. He got rid of that in his own way from his early experiences.

After some time had passed and he was getting tired of the slow movement forward in France and all the things he had to put up with, he found himself one day separated from his mates. Shells were dropping all the time. He looked for a safe spot to hide in. He soon came across a big crater caused by a shell. He ran and threw himself into the bottom and breathed a sight of relief.

There, shrivelled up in a corner, he spotted a very small man. His whole body was shaking with fear. He could hardly speak. Jerry stared at him, looked down at his own body and found he was quite still and relaxed. A strong feeling of anger burst out of him and he tried to learn to shake with fear himself but he found it was quite impossible.

He then turned his rage on this poor little soldier. He lifted him off his feet and shook him as hard as he could. “You blighter!! Stop shaking!” This had no effect on the little man. Jerry threw him to the ground and said “I wish I could shake like you but I can’t however hard I try. You are so lucky because you will soon be home again, but I’ve got to put up with all this to the end.” What a remarkable man!