Author: Dr Jean Pain

Categories
Behaviour Good and Evil

Do-Gooders Do Bad?

Money is not the root of all evil. The love of money is the root of all evil. We don’t kiss and hug our coins and notes.

Love they neighbour as thyself. This is also misunderstood. We cannot love our neighbour until we have learned to love ourselves.

Forget all this rubbish about original sin. In fact I think I dislike the word “sin” more than any other word except “sacrifice”. It began as a means for the powers that be to take it on themselves to tell others what to do and so this has happened since we first learned to talk.

Love is just about the most misunderstood word in our vocabulary. The opposite of love is hatred. This explains why, throughout history, so many hideous murders began with a “love affair”.

“I cannot live without you” is another excuse. Closer to the truth is I can’t live without myself. No-one can disagree about that. Q.E.D. My theme today is that if we try too hard to be “do-gooders” we are barking up the wrong tree.

It is a good idea to start children off reading fairy tales. Remember that these stories were made up by people trying to categorise different capacities of everyone around them. Jung called his categorising archetypes : characteristics that we are all born with to a greater or lesser degree. Part of every child’s education should be to learn what people can be like. Categorisations are useful ways to size up strangers quickly. However we can only make our own judgements out of all we know about ourselves and others. This is why the best of the classics in literature is a great help in understanding human nature. Studying the people around us is not enough.

I have often asked myself why certain kinds of literature are much more popular than others. I have in mind detective stories, which include much of the darker side of people and horror stories that thrill us and frighten us at the same time. Much of the more popular literature in the western world of Victorianism and earlier is full of injunctions to “be good”. It was late in the 19th century that the passionate interest in detective and horror stories began, at a time that more and more people could read.

I believe that this strong interest which includes an obsession with anything to do with “sex”, drugs and food is very understandable. This a time when we are beginning to hear more about the taboo side, that was avoided for so long.

I keep trying to find more suitable words for “good” and “evil”. I cannot do better than “positive” and “negative” because they are not saturated with strong emotions.

The trouble with “do-gooders” is that much of what they do causes harm. Look at what has gone wrong in the social services. We can see the results by the increasing number of negative actions. That is bound to happen if you don’t try to understand the dark side as well. Maybe, as someone has said, it is better to focus on “trying not to do harm”. Once we begin to think of ourselves as “good” we become overbearingly smug and hypocritical.

Categories
Autobiography Behaviour

Edward Heath – ‘I was robbed!’

British Conservative leader Edward Heath at th...
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In all societies it is much easier to copy others than to be yourself. When I was a therapist I found that most of those who came to see me were not happy with their lives yet do not want to pay the price for learning how to make the best of themselves. Two common excuses were they wanted to find a partner “I would be fine if I had someone to come home to” and “just help me to get better by curing my phobias, anorexia, obesity, inability to make friends or whatever”. When I told them I do not do miracles they spent their time with me doing their best to avoid what they needed to understand. It was frustrating work. Some left after a while and a few eventually managed to work things out for themselves with my guidance.

Earlier in my life I ran my second-hand bookshop in the centre of Cambridge and it was amazingly successful. The day I opened there was a queue from the shop to the Round Church. My son and I spent a lot of time travelling looking for books and doing book fairs. We had many customers including some well-known people.

Saturday was the busiest day of the week. One afternoon at about 3 o’clock I looked out of the window and saw Edward Heath [ex British PM – ed], flanked on either side by two stalwart men dressed in black. I assumed they were bodyguards. He was looking straight at my shop window. This is a man I never liked. I hoped he would not come into the shop. But he did. Every inch of the floor space, including the basement, was packed with customers.

I was behind the counter. He came straight up to me with his usual expressionless face. I forced out a smile and said to him “Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. Heath?”

“Yes” he said “Would you tell me how much I should pay for a Speede map of Kent?”

I said “For a first edition?”

“Yes” he said

“It would cost you about £700 pounds.”I replied.

He turned to his two men and said “I think I’ve been robbed!”

I couldn’t believe my ears. I reacted quickly from my high horse. By this time the voices of the customers had subdued somewhat as they noticed what was going on. With a sweet smile I said in a very loud voice “Oh I understand, Mr. Heath. What you want is a free valuation!”

Everyone was silent. Mr.Heath turned a bright puce and strode out of the door followed by his men. An explosion of laughter broke out and the customers clapped energetically. Clearly they disliked this man as much as I did.

Out of this event something very useful happened. One of my regular customers came up to the desk and congratulated me. Then he told me that an old aunt of his had died and would I like to come and have a look at her library. He said that he would usually have asked more than one bookseller for an offer but he was so impressed by the way I managed Mr. Heath that he would accept whatever I suggested. At that time the right kind of old books were getting very hard to find. I paid more money for them than I had ever paid before. It was just what I needed at that time. Here was a man who did not know how important it is to behave well to those who elected him.

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Categories
Behaviour Conversation Analysis Meaning of Words

Hello and Hello are different

We all have bits of talk that we have picked up from listening to the people around us. They are so familiar to us that we don’t have to think about them or their meaning. A lot of this phatic talk is to do with greetings and showing that you are pleased to meet people. If someone we know well fails to reply we at once ask ourselves “Have I done something to upset her or didn’t she hear me?” Which shows just how important greetings are. The tone of voice also matters.

A long time ago when I was at university our Spanish department room was very small and right at the top of a wide spiral staircase. One day, when it was time for my years’ lectures, a steady stream of us made our way up and passed another group coming down rather faster. I was saying “Hello” over and over again. When we got to the top of the stairs the girl just behind spoke to me.

“It’s easy to see who you like and who you don’t” she said. “What do you mean?” I replied. She laughed. “Every one of your “Hellos” was different. They varied from just above a whisper to a hearty laughing tone.

I learned two things. One, that I was not aware of this at all. I have always formed strong feelings for or against the people I meet but I had never realised how much I give away by the warmth or not of my greeting. The second thing I learned was that my friend was an acute observer of what was going on around her, especially people she liked. This made her one of a very small group of my friends. I also notice such minute things but I didn’t notice them in myself.

People who are sensitive to fine details are usually those who turn into writers. Without realising it they accumulate a wealth of small events with people and nature and they never forget them. When I began to work as a psychotherapist I had no difficulty at all in getting into a state of rapport with my clients. I thought that was normal in my profession. Other people who had trained with me began to ring me up after a few months to ask me how I was getting on. “Fine!” I said, They were amazed because they found it difficult to talk to complete strangers. Once again I realised that something I took for granted was quite rare. By the same token, when I first bought a computer when I was studying for my PhD, I found it very difficult indeed. My two sons and two grandsons kept telling me how easy it was much to my chagrin. I am now on my fourth computer and at last I have mastered all the basics I need for my work but I still quail when something goes wrong and I feel helpless.

I came to the conclusion that this sort of thing is part of why people do not get on together. Yet it can be overcome easily when both parties accept the simple fact that no two people are alike in everything. Like a lot of things that appear obvious, many people won’t accept them.

Categories
General

What are YOU looking at?

Whatever we are doing, whenever we are engaged in conversation, there is an ongoing dialogue taking place within us. We may not be consciously aware of it, but it manifests itself in a benevolent form when it enables us to talk to others in a way that we respect and like them and in a negative way when it is displayed through speech and body language as irritability, inappropriate annoyance with others and indecision with its close relation, procrastination.

In “Hamlet” Shakespeare presents us with a soliloquy which illustrates this point. “To be or not to be, that is the question”. To make a decision whether to live or die causes problems when is is based on a choice between two powerfully negative feelings: not being able to come to terms with everyday life and being afraid about what would happen after death. This is an extreme example, but many of us are often confused when making decisions because we can see more than one point of view. There is nothing wrong with confusion – it shows that we are able to remain open-minded. We can console ourselves that much harm in the world is done by people who think they are right. However, we cannot live interesting and exciting lives if we do not have the courage to keep taking risks and facing challenges. That means that we must be prepared to fight for what we think is good for us and our children. Do-nothings always end up as slaves and blame other people for their misfortunes. Too easy a life is a dangerous life. We need to experience both negative and positive factors to grow up properly with the ability to look after ourselves.

Constant self-analysis may or may not be useful. Wittgenstein showed us that “thinking” is very difficult to define. No-one knows how we manage to do it. We can make imaginary scenarios about the future but until we are involved in a new situation we cannot be certain how we will react to it. One of the main purposes of psychotherapy is to help us to find the hidden elements in ourselves. We are all blind to certain aspects of ourselves for understandable reasons, mainly because of our wish to be seen in a certain way by others. Whatever facets of ourselves that we dislike, and we all have them because we are human with complex natures, we tend to repress them to the point that we are not consciously aware of them. One of Freud’s most important discoveries is that it is impossible for us to prevent evidence of our repressions from breaking through into our talk with others. We all know about the reality of the “Freudian slip”.

Freud was not right in everything he said, as is true of all great discoverers, but the speed with which his method flourished throughout the western world could be seen as an overwhelming sign of the need for such a discipline. Nevertheless, more than a century away from his beginnings, there are many more facts to be unearthed about the mysteries of the human brain.

Categories
Children Education Power and Control

Motivate by Enthusiasm

If we want to lead a satisfactory life, we do work we enjoy in the most productive way to yield good results. To achieve this it is vital that we learn how to manage motivation and control. They go hand in hand. The best preparation is to have kind parents and kind teachers who don’t force their ideas on us but notice what we like doing most and and provide the tools for us to develop our own potential.

No-one can teach us motivation but we can create an environment for children to discover what arouses enthusiasm for them. It wasn’t until I went to grammar school and heard a pupil playing on the piano that my whole being was uplifted with the beauty of an impromptu by Schubert. It opened a whole new world for me and I have loved what we call classical music ever since.

If we could only do what we enjoy doing that lifts our spirits and makes life worth living, there would be no such things as bad behaviour, cruelty and lack of attention. Surely there must be a way where we can rule out compulsory subjects for those who dislike them. I can remember how I hated outdoor group games and found all kinds of ways to avoid doing them.

Motivation and control only work when they are the positive not the negative variety. It depends on the environment. Teachers can rarely motivate children unless they happen to be teaching a subject that a child is drawn to. Motivation comes from inside potentials that are awakened by something from outside. No-one can make you be motivated by something that you don’t like. Winston Churchill loathed Latin and loved English Literature and Language and what a genius he turned out to be regardless of the opinions of his classic teachers!

The increasing regimentation of teaching in comprehensive schools, where everyone is “taught” the same things in the same way is doomed to failure.

Control is profoundly necessary in everything that matters. In schools they call it “discipline” which “they” think is subduing bad behaviour:

a) it is impossible

b) it causes unnecessary exhaustion and misery to the teachers.

The only real control is self-control: something we learn to do for ourselves. Dominating parents and teachers that use forceful tactics arouse nothing but irritation and bad behaviour. Discipline in the armed forces is a different matter because it is in a different context. Children are obliged to go to school whilst young men (and a much smaller number of women) choose to join up. As I have mentioned before when a war breaks out there has never been a lack of volunteers. They accept all kinds of uniforms, orders, rules and hard physical work gladly. They know that they must learn to obey orders at once and willingly because those tactics are there to save as many people as possible in dangerous situations.

We pay a price for everything we want to do because we want to do it as well as we possibly can. That price is self-discipline, our own inner sergeant-major that makes us do whatever we have to do to achieve what we want to achieve.

Categories
Blog Education

Keep Your Hands Off Education

I’ve just read an interview of Nigel Fanshawe, an ex-headmaster of a grammar school who is nearly 100 years old. Like me, he came from a background that was very short of money, passed his 11 plus and worked his way through to university and then to teach in a grammar school. He took over an ill-disciplined school ravaged by wartime neglect and transformed it into one of the most successful schools in the country. Would he have been able to do this if he had government poking its nose into everything he did then? Of course not!

Like all heads in those days he took full responsibility for ensuring good discipline with punishment for bad behaviour. It is time that every adult needs to know just how much damage has been made by the government trying to get every child into a comprehensive school. You don’t have to be a genius to recognise that when children of all kinds are taught together, it is every child’s loss. It is nothing to do with money. When I was young everyone who passed the 11 plus from whatever kind of background had a good education and were not allowed to act badly. There were sanctions. No child should be permitted to destroy the sense of peace and order of those who want to learn. I know from personal experience that most children want to leave school at 16 and go out to work to earn money.

Trying to get everyone into a university, as the government wishes, can only result in a drastic lowering of standards, graduates who cannot find jobs and a dearth of good teachers because those who can teach well would not dream of teaching in a comprehensive school.

“Fanshawe regards the education system with a mixture of despair and anger. He believes the lack of good-quality graduates going into teaching is wrecking the system.”

“Governments have, for twenty years, been attacking the teaching profession, with the result that it is no longer attractive” he says. “Teachers do not want to spend their lives fighting 13-year-olds who couldn’t care less about education. It’s not fun to me. None of the brightest graduates want to go into teaching and that means comprehensives can never have the best staff at the top”.

I do strongly wish that the media would drop such words as “the rich and the poor”and “middle classes and working classes.” Society has immeasurably improved in our own country and many others since the end of World-War-2. “Working Class” ought to mean all those people, however much or how little they earn, who have done their best to find work that suits them. People, on the whole speak to each other in a friendly way and it is much more difficult for us to categorize people. Modern technology has, happily, ridden many of us of the exhaustions of the past.

We must all be quicker to complain when we see unnecessary injustices carried out by people who are supposed to serve us, i.e. bureaucrats of all types. Everyone should work harder at accepting responsibility and making good use of our freedom of speech.

Categories
Behaviour Children

Let it be

The whole of this last century the study of the importance of conversation has been ignored except for the work of Harvey Sacks and those who followed him. Without Sacks’ work we haven’t been able to focus enough on helping people to think for themselves and to discover what are their own particular qualities that they can get enthusiastic about.

If you have had an excess of people telling you things, beliefs and attitudes and lists of rules that you must obey, most of them contrary to your well being, you can easily lose your enthusiasm and it is hard to retrieve. Enthusiasm is a Greek word and it means inspired by the gods. All creative people have this quality and there is plenty of room for many more if children were given enough freedom to focus on what they like doing best. I love the Indian word ‘namaste’ which means “I honour the god within you.”

All children are enthusiasts otherwise they wouldn’t want to do anything. I go to my favourite supermarket, Waitrose, at least three times a week, not only to shop but also to sit down with a cup of coffee and enjoy looking at all the people around me. It is a big part of my ongoing research, watching people and families. When children have good parents who care for them it is a joy to see them running around looking at and touching all sorts of things, enjoying themselves. It is inevitable that we all must learn to find a place for ourselves in whatever society we were born into. We don’t seem to be very good at it. Why do so many people lose their lust for life as they grow older?

I dislike the whole idea of gurus and experts because it doesn’t matter how much any of us know we never know it all. We can learn something new from a child or any person we happen to meet if we want to. We all have something to give and so when a psychotherapist and a client are working together they cannot help to learn something from each other regardless of the outcome. All transactions in conversations are, one way or another, educative.

Categories
Behaviour Psychotherapy

Yes But, No But…

One of the very best books about human relationships is called “The Games People Play”. It was first published by Dr Eric Berne in 1964. Dr Berne called his method of doing psychotherapy Transactional Analysis. It was enormously popular in the United States. Unlike most books about psychotherapy he became a best-seller. It is not surprising. You don’t have to know anything about psychology to read it. It is hilariously funny and at the same time very serious. It is amazing that his method has not become the most popular in Great Britain.

It is all about the devices we humans dream up to get our own way. We are all vulnerable to flattery though some of us are more so than others. If we want to get good results as a psychotherapist we need to know how to deal with all kinds of strategies that our clients try out on us. Here are two examples:

“Gee you’re wonderful professor!” Years ago when I was a bookseller and spent many happy week-ends with a group of friends in hotels in different cities in the UK looking for books and selling my own. I was very popular. I was always being asked to go for coffee with my male colleagues. A new friend was sardonically watching me. He said “Why does everyone like you? Haven’t you got any enemies?” Needless to say I didn’t know what to say. I was dumbstruck.

“Why does this happen?” I said. “Because you have a halo round your head and on it is written in large letters ‘MOTHER’.” Just what many men and women are looking for: only they don’t realise it. Nor did I.

I remembered what he said. I didn’t like everybody and I ought to behave accordingly. I soon collected a few enemies. I felt better. Thirty years on he is now an old friend.

When I began my work as a therapist I met several clients who responded to me as my bookseller friends did. But I knew what to do to take the attention away from me and get them to do the work for themselves.

After the first few visits, some clients, both men and women said “I love working with you. I can’t wait for the days to pass so I can come again.” This is an example of “Gee you’re wonderful professor!” It is vital that a therapist must deal with this, or you would never get anywhere with such a person. My response was “Don’t you believe it!” Once we got down to serious work some stopped coming early and a few stopped putting me on a pedestal, learned to take care of themselves and didn’t need Mummy any more.

The second example is “Yes but”. It is commonplace in psychotherapy. One client had been to me for 4/5 sessions. Usually people will take up something each time, go away and think about it.

There are people, believe it or not, who pay good money to psychotherapists to prove them wrong. This one went back to the beginning every time. When we got to the sixth session I challenged him. “You don’t really want to change, do you?”

“Yes I do!” So I went on offering him some alternatives, as I had done before and every time he rejected it with the words “Yes but”. Then I stopped. “I’m feeling very frustrated” I said. “Why should you feel frustrated? All you’ve got to do is sit and listen” he said. I replied “Let’s switch roles. You’re Jean and I’m you.” He found it very difficult. ”Go on then. You must know by now what I say.” So he started off and every time he made a suggestion I said “Yes but”. I could see he was getting angrier and angrier. At last I said “How do you feel?” “Very frustrated.” “Now you know that’s how I feel when someone says “yes but” over and over again.” He didn’t come back, to my relief. You can’t force people to respond. He wasn’t ready to face his problems. At least he had learned something about how other people feel.

Categories
Children Education

Saussure, Wittgenstein and Harvey Sacks

Saussure, Wittgenstein and Harvey Sacks did not prepare lectures. They went straight into the classroom and started to talk. Of course they were teaching in universities to young grown-ups who already had a stock of knowledge picked up from schools. However, the way that these three men worked must have come as something of a shock to their students. They were all treated as researchers, continuously picking up new thoughts and possibilities as they went along, being free to be able to think and make notes about what was being said and sometimes to respond in their own ways to their teachers.

These three men treated every lecture as a continuation of ongoing discoveries. I was particularly impressed by Wittgenstein, who thought out loud and often showed his feelings and frustration because the work he was doing was so hard. It must have been very encouraging for his students that the great man could also suffer as they suffered when they came across blocks as all researchers do.

How I envied that method when I first found out about it! I would love to have sat at Sacks’ feet and heard everything straight from his mouth! However at that time my university degree was behind me and I was in South America with my young family and I didn’t know about Sacks until decades later.

Another unorthodox aspect of such teaching was that all three men published very few books. They were too busy thinking and learning. Indeed, Saussure’s students took on the task, after his death, to put together from notes taken during lectures and publish what they had learned from him. Similarly, one of Harvey Sacks women students, Gail Jefferson, had the foresight to tape-record and transcribe most of his lectures and published them in a hefty volume. Introductions to each of the two parts were written by Sacks’ close friend and colleague, Emanuel A. Schegloff.

Clearly, such a method would not be suitable for children. They need more guidance, but nevertheless, education would work better when children were encouraged to take part themselves instead of having to be talked at instead of with. The best teachers have always done that as I have heard from my own children and others who experienced the same approach. You can’t put teaching into a straitjacket and expect to produce creative and enthusiastic pupils for the benefit of all our futures.

Categories
Behaviour Children Education

Perfection is a Waste of Time

You won’t believe this but Ofsted has interfered so much in education, with pressure from the government, that at the beginning of each new academic year all teachers in comprehensive schools are obliged to attend the day before to be taught how to teach no matter how much or how little experience they have had. The result is that many of the best teachers feel very frustrated and look for another job or take the earliest retirement they can whilst the worst, who don’t mind being told what to do, stay on. The truth is that teaching, like writing, music and all kinds of creative activities are inherited abilities, just as we all have the mental capacity to be able to learn to speak and we all learn to do so in our own individual way.

So it follows that the the best teachers have their own methods learned from their own inherited talents and experiences. Three of the greatest in the field of language, Saussure, Wittgenstein and Harvey Sacks, were all innovators. They were from different countries: Saussure was Swiss, Wittgenstein was German and Sacks was American. Saussure discovered that words are signs and symbols that stand for all things, people and ideas. Wittgenstein taught us that the meaning of words depends on the contexts in which the words are used and Sacks agreed with Wittgenstein and contributed his work on Conversation Analysis in all social talk in many situations.

Could you imagine any of these great men allowing anyone to tell them what to do? Certainly not. We should show the same respect to our teachers as was the case before the 1950’s when I was at school. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Standards have dropped drastically. Useful subjects are largely left out, especially English grammar, Latin and foreign languages. Note these are all the humanities on which we build the foundations of our ability to think clearly and understand human nature and the bases of our own cultures.

We must not let ourselves be taken in by examination results. Anyone who wants to can rig them and they do. Who are making the judgements? Many of those whose education has suffered from the constantly lowering standards of the last few decades. They are the people who think they are right and that there is only one way of doing things according to their own prejudices.

More than ever standards are dropping in the fine arts.

However it is not all doom and gloom. For example, no-one tells conductors what to do yet they work in perfect harmony and this is recognised by the constantly filled Halls of the most popular music, including those from the past as well as the present.

Simon Rattle is, I think, one of the best. On the radio he was asked the question “How do you manage the orchestra?” His answer was “I’m constantly challenging the orchestra to do better. But they are also challenging me, so it’s a series of continual failures.”

This is a sharp reminder that nothing is perfect. All researchers have to bear this in mind. We learn more from our failures than from our successes. The more times we get something wrong the further we move towards success. What do we do when that is over? All who are worth their salt start to look for a further challenge.