Black History Month is over, and we’re now into Women’s History month. Forgotten history, unrecorded stories, marginalized peoples, all need their own month to remind us and encourage us about our past and future. If that’s the rationale, then we also need a Personal History Month to remind us of our own hidden histories and how they still live in our every mood and moment. When it comes to personal development, psychology is guilty of eclipsing the impact of history, except for our childhood and family of origin stories. We don’t consider enough that who we are is a habit of history. We carry with us the vestiges of our ancestors, and much of our personality, behavior, beliefs and habits, for both good and bad, are the legacy of those who came before. (more…)

I’m enjoying teaching an advanced symposium this semester on applying Process Work at the Process Work Institute. We’re looking at the challenges of the so-called Wanderjarhe – the post training phase of developing mastery and becoming a craftsperson. In the Medieval European tradition once the apprenticeship was completed, in order for the apprentice to become a craftsman he had to gain experience moving from one town to the other, applying his skills in different settings, and under different craftsmen. This became a very crucial part of the development of the craftsperson.

Fast forward a few centuries, and the still need remains, but the traditions have changed. Moving from mastery of (often theoretical) knowledge to mastery of craft takes a long time. In some professions the route is straightforward: you gain an entry level position and work your way up. But if people go into private practice or consulting, or become sole proprietors of a professional service business like counseling, coaching, psychotherapy, or facilitating, it’s a more circuitous route. In a way, it’s a start-up. But where a tech start up requires a big infusion of cash, starting up a business that is your own professional service requires a big infusion of, well, other things. Here are some of the things we’ve been discussing in class. These are true for anyone starting their own business, non-profit, association, or pursuing a cause. (more…)

In a post-game interview, L.A. Laker Ron Artest thanks his psychiatrist for helping him relax under the intense pressure of the playoffs.

First reactions to his comments were critical, yet when players thank God or Jesus for help, which they often do, I rarely hear criticism about that.

In my mind, the two are not not that different – both offer a vantage point, a detached perspective from which to handle the extreme stress and pressure of the situation. In fact, I think it would be great to hear more from athletes, politicians, leaders, and others working under fire: what do they turn to for support to help them stay awake and useful under such immense stress?

A friend posted this great video clip of Viktor Frankl on Facebook. What an extraordinary man he was, and what a treat to see him in action.

Frankl’s analogy of learning to fly and how he learned to aim ‘north’ to arrive at his destination, reminded me of my high school yearbook quote. In the 70s, it was fashionable to put a quote underneath your photo. Most classmates had rock lyrics, like, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” but I was captivated by a line from a Robert Browning poem, “Ah, but a man’s reach must exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” (more…)

I read a lot, not as much as I’d like, which I would like to blame on the super-addictive UFC, Guy Frieri, not to mention the time-consuming tasks of Facebook, Twitter, and well, OK, I admit, the occasional spider solitaire game (sigh). Though in spite of such vices, I do manage to get through several books a month. And this past year I’ve read some truly outstanding books. There is an art, I think, to finding and choosing great books. It’s actually not so easy. No matter what reviewers say, I have specific interests, and no amount of praise can interest me in, say, books about a recent election. And even if the topic does draw me in, I’m a slave (as we all are) to my particular thinking style, and I get easily impatient with how some authors think. And for reasons unknown, some things just won’t stick, no matter how riveting the topic is. What I’ve discovered is that in my search for good reads, how I find the book is a good clue to whether or not I’m going to love it. So for anyone a bit like me, I’ve included in my list below how I got tipped off to the book. So, here we go, a round-up of the best books I’ve read in the past year, in no particular order, and a note on how and where I found it. (more…)

Last week the American Psychiatric Associations released a draft of DSM-V, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The final version is set to come out in May 2013. It has a number of proposed revisions which have been widely blogged about, including a new diagnosis of hypersexuality. In just about every post I’ve read, at some point, the author proposes Tiger Woods as the poster child for this new diagnosis.

As a blog on power and leadership, I’ve spent a fair amount of time here discussing instances in which power goes awry, in particular, why and how public figures and leaders torpedo their careers by engaging in risky sexual behavior. How can public figures like Bill Clinton, John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer and Tiger Woods, believe their sexual behavior can be kept secret from the world?  It is easy to see it as a mental disorder and it very well may be. Undoubtedly we’ll even find the gene that’s responsible, but making this a medical disorder keeps us from contemplating it as a behavior on a continuum, one we’re all prone to. (more…)

While it’s been quiet on the blog front, it’s been a storm of ideas, activities and projects in the back office, so to speak. I just arrived down in Yachats for my much anticipated and much needed end of year retreat, and I’ve got several projects I’m looking forward to spending time with. Here’s a little overview:

• I’m fascinated by Scott Miller’s work, His research into what works in psychotherapy raises a lot of questions about change and growth, specifically why and how do people change? It seems that rather than any one modality, there are a few ‘meta-therapeutic’ factors that account for efficacy in psychotherapy. Part of what prompts me to look at this more closely is my interest in the future of psychotherapy. Will psychotherapy endure as a profession, or will its ideas and methods become absorbed into the larger discourse of change and learning?
• Kids and leadership! For my work with the Dreamers, the 4th graders I’m sponsoring as part of the I Have a Dream Foundation, I’m starting a “Kids City Club.” Field trips to city hall, the police, local TV station are all part of a project on helping kids understand how the government works, and how the city runs. Part of this will also include learning about the local city council’s proposal to revitalize their neighborhood, and then making a presentation to the city council on what changes they’d like to see.
• Happy to see one of my favorite authors, Doris Kearns Goodwin, get such great publicity of late. Also happy to see how much history is referred to in current events. Just before the election, while traveling overseas, I read her book on FDR, Eleanor and the home front during the war: No Ordinary Time. Tremendous book, and like Team of Rivals, eerily relevant for the current economic crisis.
• Just one thing more on Team of Rivals. When reporters asked Obama how he would avoid having a “clash of rivals” rather than a “team of rivals,” he said he wanted “vigorous debate” as he was “a strong believer in strong personalities and strong opinions.” He cited the dangers of groupthink, where all data confirm the theories and ideas already agreed upon. I’m happy to see such a discussion on the front page about the value of and necessity for conflict.

The past is never dead. It is not even past.

– William Faulkner

I just finished a Process Work seminar here in Auckland, the second in a series of three. Last week I was in Brisbane, and tomorrow I’m off to Tokyo for a training on workplace bullying (and to watch the US elections from abroad). This weekend’s seminar was called, The Unfinished Work of Ancestors. I wanted to explore how lineal issues, problems inherited from previous generations, determine, influence, and shape our current relationships and family life.

It struck me over the course of the weekend that not only are many of the issues and patterns we grapple with in relationship inherited habits of history, but also how relieving and liberating it is to view our chronic relationship challenges as ‘lineal’ problems – social, historical and political issues that our ancestors struggled with. We are positioned in history, shaped and influenced by social, historical and even natural forces – and the echoes of the great potato famine, World War II, the harsh lives of coal miners in Scotland, of itinerant workers, of Russian peasants reverberate in our intimate interactions, daily habits, and moods.

For instance, perhaps due to the seminar’s setting of New Zealand, the so-called “New World,” for Anglo-Europeans, immigration, refuge, deportation, and itinerancy were themes people connected to their relationship struggles . The immigrant or refugee psychology reflects itself as a lack of certainty, of ‘being-at-homeness,’ never certain of our foothold, of whether the world could sustain or welcome us. What looks like fear of commitment, intimacy problems, or feeling a lack of permission to be yourself with another, for many, was a reflection, amplified through the generations, of the fears and anxieties of their ancestors in a strange land, only tenuously and temporarily hosted by its peoples and government.

Individual psychotherapy, the habit of looking inward, while yielding tremendous insights, needs to be complemented, at least occasionally, with this broad sweep of history. We are who we are for so many reasons, and to realize that our strange tendencies and pesky moods are not only to be found in a psychology text, but in a history book, is, at least for me, a huge relief. What won’t yield to self-reflection and inner probing might best be explained and even resolved by reading the history that our forebearers lived.