We've talked before about the perils of being a good listener. Listening well is an art, but it also can be a liability, especially when you're prone to being cornered by strangers at parties and such.

And though a talent for listening is particularly valuable in friendship, it can even be a problem there at times.

Do you find yourself perpetually in the position of sounding board for your friends? Do you feel like you do all the listening and never get your chance to speak? Does it seem like most of the people in your life are all mouth and no ears?

A woman wrote to me with this problem. She felt that she did all the listening and that when she tried to talk, friends gave her a couple of minutes before spinning off into their own stories again. She wondered how to find friends who listen.

This struck a chord with me; I've found myself in that situation as well. I have a quite a few talkative friends. Sometimes I find this entertaining, other times it's exhausting. But either way, it appears I surround myself with people who have a lot to say, and that can't be an accident. There must be a reason, a reward.

What might the reward be?

• Perhaps it makes me feel useful.
• It certainly takes the pressure off of me to be interesting or entertaining.
• Maybe I think it's what makes me valuable as a friend.
• Or it saves me the effort of seeking out and connecting with other quiet people.
• I might just enjoy other people's drama.

Or maybe it's not rewards I'm seeking; perhaps I'm avoiding something.

• Maybe I don't want to risk exposing myself to others.
• Or boring them.
• Maybe I fear being judged.
• Or mocked.
• Maybe other people's dramas distract me from my own.

I admit, too, that I'm not particularly good at initiating conversations about myself. It's not fair for me to expect people to draw me out, but that's often what I need.

On the other hand, I have at times said to good friends, "I don’t feel like I'm getting equal time." It's not a pleasant conversation, but sometimes life is awkward. It's not necessarily a one-and-done conversation, the dynamic tends to be chronic, but it does provide a starting place for dealing with the problem each time it comes up.

Some other phrases we could get comfortable with to alleviate the problem day to day:

• "Wait, let me finish."
• "As I was saying..."
• "Wanna hear about my day?"
• "I need to bend your ear today."
• "I've got stuff on my mind but don't know where to start."

I believe that people in our lives are there because we care about them and they care about us. And fixing existing friendships, as long as they aren't genuinely toxic, is vastly preferable to finding new ones.

So if the balance of talking vs listening gets out of whack, it needn't be the death knell for the relationship. A conversation is a dynamic, and one way or another, we're contributing to the imbalance. So figure it out your part in it and then, speak up. Even if you have to interrupt. 

Book, books, I've got books. I've got The Introvert's Way: Living a Quiet Life in a Noisy World. And I've got a new fun book, 100 Places in the USA Every Woman Should Go. And coming in 2015: Introverts in Love: The Quiet Way to Happily Ever After. Books galore! (Note that anything you purchase from Amazon after clicking through a link here earns me a few cents.)

Want to hang out with a bunch of cool introverts? Come to my Facebook page.

There is a new marijuana product on the market called Wax (it's also referred to as Butter and Honeycomb). Its name was derived from its resemblance to earwax because it has a yellowish color and a waxy texture. This gooey substance looks and feels like lip balm, so it's super easy for teens to conceal. What's super scary is that this new substance is equal to smoking 15 to 20 joints and can give a buzz that may last a full day!  With the promise of getting higher quicker, drug users and even teens are giving the new drug a try. 

Wax is made from the oils of marijuana plants and has a high level of Tetrahydrocannabinol, (THC), the ingredient in marijuana that gets a user high. Just to point out the strength of Wax --- pot contains roughly 20% THC, and Wax can contain up to 80% THC. What makes Wax so potent? It's the combination of pot with Butane Hash Oil (BHO) - the oil extracted from the marijuana plant. BHO is not new; it has been around for over a decade. Just recently it has become  readily available, and unfortunately, it's here to stay. 

Wax is easy to make. In fact, one could make it with common household ingredients. And if you need to know how to cook up a batch you only need to go as far as the internet. There you can find step-by-step videos, not only showing you how to make it, but also how to smoke it. But making Wax comes with a serious caution, the ingredients are highly flammable and dangerous! There have been reports of explosions, injuries, and even deaths associated with the making of Wax.

As with many drugs, there are those who advocate for the use of BHO in pain management and recreational use. If you're in Colorado you can find Wax in the marijuana shops. And with the promise of a quick and intense buzz, many people are turning to the ever growing popular drug. Many proponents argue that there are no real dangers associated with Wax, despite the reports of psychosis and hallucinations caused by the use of the drug. People have reported seeing things that don't exist, hearing sounds that don't exist, and experiencing physical sensations that don't exist.

Wax may be growing in popularity with teens. It's easy to hide, easy to make (albeit highly dangerous) and promises a quick buzz. For these reasons, parents need to be en garde and keep an eye out for items used in the making of Wax. These items include things such as butane containers, glass/metal tubes, glass baking dishes, isopropyl alcohol, and coffee filters. If you suspect that your teen is using Wax or other drugs please get help immediately.

Additional Information:

Parent Toolkit

http://www.drugfree.org/the-parent-toolkit/

Articles

http://www.npr.org/2014/01/10/261390781/marijuana-hash-oil-explod...

https://ncadd.org/in-the-news/1031-dea-cracks-down-on-potent-mari...

http://fox59.com/2014/08/22/dea-warns-about-potent-marijuana-base...

http://www.drugfree.org/join-together/dea-cracks-down-on-potent-m...

However you define happiness, sometimes kids--even the most cherished of them--impinge on it.

They pick up every minor but unpleasant viral illness listed in the PDR, and generously share them all with you. Occasionally they share the major ones with you, too. Oh--and head lice. We wouldn't want to leave that lousiest of contagions off the list, would we?

They (the kids, not the lice--although now I think of it, lice, too) make engaging in certain intimacies with your partner, well...challenging. And speaking of Kiddus Interruptus, could someone please explain the uncanny timing of a child in need of parenting in the very wee hours of the night?

Small dudes. You are harshing my mellow.

I'll just wrap up my catalogue of insults and injuries by adding that kids are expensive and messy--and they ask a lot of questions when you’re trying to write, sleep, talk on the phone, or watch TV.

In spite of all that, I love my kids passionately and madly and fiercely. If you have kids, I'll bet you feel the same way about yours. If you're like me you would not go back to being childless, even if a fairy godmother dropped by with a magic wand and a big sack of thousand dollar bills, kindly offering to take the kids off your hands and leave the sack of bills in their place.

No thanks! I'll take the store-brand mac’n’cheese--the ORANGE store brand mac’n’cheese--and the kids. You keep the dough.

All parents have felt the inconvenience, the frustration, the irritation that comes, now and then, of parenting kids. If you deny it, I suspect you are deluded. Or a liar. Or a superhero?! In which case I’d like to get a selfie of you and me, side by side, so I can back up the name-dropping I am going to engage in later.

Lemme know, I'm here all night.

But in all seriousness, disability parents have extra. Extra noise. Extra stress and mess. Fiercer spousal battles. Deeper despair. Nastier judgment from people who feel entitled to judge what they only think understand.

(Not extra dough, however. Man, that lack of coin can harsh your mellow even more than the ol’ Kiddus Interruptus. Take it from one who knows.)

And parents of kids whose disabilities include mental health disorders must carry the added burden of stigma and bear the weight of ambiguity on top of the rest. People are easily spooked, and willing to be cruel if cruelty enables them to establish distance from the things they are afraid of, or don't understand. As far as ambiguity goes, “meaning” is half the time absent and the other half overdetermined, when you're dealing with maladies of the psyche. No one can tell you exactly what will be, and when, and why.

There are no promises in the world of mental illness, not even probabilities--only possibilities. No doctor or therapist or clinician of any kind can really give you a prognosis, or tell you how a medication will work on your kid. Not if they're being honest with you. So the child you love is probably also a source of unalloyed, ongoing stress.

Benjy is lucky. Lucky to have parents who were willing to plow everything we had into the process of making him well. Lars and I are lucky we've somehow bucked the trend. As it turns out, the stress of living the way we have lived for the past decade and more, breaks marriages and families more often than it binds them.

I guess if you can survive the loneliness, the mean but (sometimes) well-intentioned comments and baleful stares--fueled, in part, by uninformed analyses from public figures each time a young man goes ballistic with a semi-automatic weapon--plus the fear, the helplessness, and the grief, you might make it. Lars and I did it by communicating. That’s it. We talked to each other when we needed to--and we said “I’m sorry,” each and every time we behaved badly.

But were we happy? I don’t know. Are you? This might help us find out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqDUmYVQxOI

Until recently, with Ben’s breathtaking improvement (a story for another day), quiet joy, fulfilment, the ability to just BE--those were fleeting things in our lives: rare, occasional, not really meant for the likes of us. Now, suddenly--FINALLY--Lars and I are gingerly experimenting with contentment.

And Benjy and Saskia, too.

I would say that things are looking up, but hey--I wasn't born yesterday. I’ll simply confess that I've found contentment in new and unexpected places--on the saggy cushions of my old, butterscotch sofa, for example, a sleepy, idle dog beside me. Just scratching his belly and resting diligently, storing my energy and my bulldog-fight, because you never know when what's going right is going to blow up in your face, and blast you back to that place you'd rather not revisit.

Readers, do you think mental illness and contentment can co-exist in a person or a family? Please share your stories!

As the evening draws in on one’s life, thoughts inevitably turn to what it has all meant, what is next and also how one will be remembered. Politicians, business tycoons, and celebrities all fret over their reputations and for what, if anything they can do about it.

For some, the climb up the greasy pole has left a large number of envious enemies waiting to see them fall from grace. Others spend a great effort trying to ensure that they will leave a great legacy and be remembered for all the good that they did.

There are three standard ‘solutions’ to the problem of death and immortality. The first is religion. There are many possible brand choices with a variety of, albeit rather vague, promises of eternal life. Some say you return to this world, others hold the promise of paradise. Some still talk of hell-fire and damnation. Some are more clear than others about eternal life. Most suggest that the world is a relatively just place and that you will be remembered for all that you have done: both good and bad.

The religion solution also seems to have some costs. It is not good enough, it seems, on one’s death bed to renounce the materialism, selfishness and hedonism that have characterised one’s life up to that point. Also this metaphysical solution speaks little to one’s legacy.

The second is genetic. By having children one can guarantee the survival of some genes is guaranteed. Further, children can be shaped from an early age to share their parent’s values, vision and virtues. The next best thing is to form a tight family unit, hoping that the wider clan will protect one’s legacy.

Many a business person will describe the folly of this approach. You roll the dice with children. All parents “believe” in genetics for their first child, but give up the idea when the second one appears so different. It is very rare that family businesses last more than three generations. Relatives fall out with each other. As has been observed “God gave us our friends and the Devil our relations”.

In fact, given the number of ‘confessional books’ around and the number of repressed memory court cases it may seem that children are a distinct handicap, not only in not following the parental path but also in protecting one’s memory.

So that leaves the third solution. This is legacy management before death, hoping to cheat the grim reaper’s ability to induce amnesia in the living. Politicians agonise about how to do this as do enormously successful business people who have time and money to spare after they have put all their affairs in order.

First there is the book. We know history is written by victors. For some, e.g. Prime Ministers and Presidents, it is not only a course requirement but also a very serious source of income. It is so important to some politicians that they start writing in effect, the day they are elected. They remember well the old saying: you keep a diary and later it keeps you.

Hence the self-serving, egotistical and one-sided nature of hagiographic autobiographies. History is written by the victors; though with some autobiographies it is a matter of very selective facts are recorded by ghost writers.

Business people, even if relatively famous, are not always so lucky with their published works. Unless they appear on television a great deal, fewer people will buy the thoughts and life of the CEO of Acme Widgets, however much money was made.

The book solution is too daunting for many who cannot really write. The ghost-written solution sometimes works but the whole thing seems bland. It’s no wonder then that second hand shops are so full of very dull, hardly read, never reprinted books of the great and the good from the past.

Next there is architecture. You can build a monument to oneself. It worked for Christopher Wren and Gustave Eiffel . But even iconic buildings can be pulled down and blown up. The building approach also takes a lot of money too. Also often it guarantees little more than the memory of a name, let alone what the person believed in or stood for.

What about the scholarship fund? AKA Rhodes Scholarships, Nobel Prize Winners, Templeton prize winners. Or you can lend your name and money to charitable institutions. Leonard Cheshire Homes, McMillan nurses. This is perhaps the preferred solution of the super-rich. Bill gates, Oprah Winfrey, Warren Buffet have chosen this method. What do they have in common? A lot of money.

But even this method is not immune to fashion. Some universities still have great problems with scholarships to be awarded to the “top woman student”. Times and fashions change: the legacy becomes an embarrassment.

How about the endowed chair in a university? Or better a whole business school named after one. This is getting more populat, where even the most obscure business school from “Nowhereville, Fly-Over State” University is endowed by the local entrepreneurs who did well. An expensive option. What if all you can afford is an institution in the bottom division?

Perhaps there is a paradox or even a parable in this whole issue. The harder you try to ensure your legacy the less successful you will be. People will smell a rat; suspect manipulation. The bad news is what you should have learnt in Sunday School. It is only a long virtuous and selfless life that guarantees a just reputational reward. Alas that is not totally true either.

Best then to live in the present and not attempt to shape the future.

It’s a shame that the term “control” has acquired an unwelcome reputation. No-one, for example, wants to be known as a control freak. This is unfortunate because there is a growing science of control that is informed by Perceptual Control Theory (PCT; see sites such as www.pctweb.org, www.livingcontrolsystems.com, www.mindreadings.com) which explains that, in the final analysis, we are all control freaks. One of the secrets to living well is to recognise our own and other people’s controlling nature in all that we do.

An informal definition of control could be: “Making things happen the way we want”. This definition describes a process of keeping things the way we want them to be. At every point in time we act to keep the way we want things to be and the way things are as close as possible. If the tv is on channel 9 and I want it to be on channel 7 then I’ll grab the remote and make the necessary adjustment.

This idea of making things happen the way we want can be applied to all living things. If a single cell can’t “make things happen” the way it wants it will soon perish. To be sure, a tiny cell has very basic “wants” but it has them nevertheless.

A “want” in this sense is just a certain internal specification of a particular state of affairs. A single cell has chemical characteristics of its internal environment that must be kept in specified states if the cell is to survive.

A cheetah pursuing a gazelle across the African savannah “wants” to make the distance between it and the bounding gazelle as small as possible. Meanwhile, the gazelle wants to make the distance as large as possible. The animal that is better at controlling its preferred distance is the one who will continue to survive at least until the next meal time.

Since humans are alive they are designed along the same lines as other living things. This means that humans control. Keeping our body temperature constant is a control process, crossing the street is a control process, posting on Facebook is a control process, and typing “the” is a control process.

Babies control, Irish dancers control, and tennis players control. The US Open tennis tournament is being played at the moment and the Singles Champions will be the woman and the man who can control the speed and direction of the tennis ball better than any other woman or man.

Interestingly, our actions or behaviour are just one part of the process of control. In fact, when we come to understand behavior as control we can make a lot more sense of behavior than is otherwise possible. Essentially, we use our actions to reduce and keep reduced the difference between what we want and what we’ve currently got. Behavior, then, is the process of ensuring the want-got difference stays small, and to accomplish this, the same actions can be used to control different things and different actions can be used to control the same thing.  

Understanding behavior requires understanding what the want-got difference is that is being minimised at any time. Someone waving his hand on the footpath could be hailing a cab, or catching a police officer’s attention, or saying goodbye to a friend. We cannot tell what people are doingjust by observing their actions. The point of a person’s actions can only ever be established from that person’s perspective in terms of the want-got difference that has got her attention.  

Successful living requires having a clear idea of what you want and the means to keep the want-got differences minimised. Problems arise when people want incompatible things at the same time. A person might want help from others, for example, but might also want to push people away. In this situation, trying to reduce one want-got difference will increase the other want-got difference and vice versa.  Or, if one person’s idea of the perfect evening is a quiet night in front of the fire with his favorite Zinfandel and another person’s perfect evening is turning up to support her NBL team then these people will find it difficult to spend perfect evenings together.

So it’s time to embrace the control freak in each of us. Learning about our own controlling natures and finding ways to control what we want without preventing others from doing the same will lead to contented and harmonious day to day living for us all.

The 1353-page 2014-2015 Occupational Outlook Handbookprofiles hundreds of careers. From that, I picked 23 under-the-radar professions you might find appealing.  For each, here’s a very basic quick hit plus a link for learning more about it.

If you or someone you care about is looking for a career, perhaps one or more of these might at least whet your appetite for looking at the many under-the-radar options in the aforementioned Occupational Outlook Handbook or the 500+ in my book, Cool Careers for Dummies.

Archivist. Appraise, edit, and maintain permanent records and historical valuable documents for museums, libraries, and even corporations.  More info.

Art Director.  Oversee the work of designers and articles who produce images for TV, film, ads, or video games. More info.

Cost estimator. Collect and analyze data to estimate the cost of constructing a building, providing a service, or manufacturing a product. For example, for an appliance manufacturer, is it worth creating a new type of dishwasher? More info.

Court Reporter. Attend legal proceedings such as trials and depositions to create word-by-word transcripts. Or create captioning for television, online videos, or public meetings. More info.

Desktop Publisher. Use software to design page layouts for print and online products. You may gather others’ materials or create your own. More info.

Economist. Based on statistical analysis, interpret and forecast market trends, usually in written reports. Economists work for government or for large companies or nonprofits. More info.

Electro-mechanical Technician. Install or repair complex machines such as robots, space stations, and medical monitoring equipment.  More info.

Financial Manager. Produce financial reports, make investments, and develop plans for an organization meeting its longer-term goals, for example, if and how should the company expand. More info.

Forensic Science Technician. Perform scientific analyses on evidence taken from crime scenes. More info.

Fundraiser.  Roles vary: Plan fundraising campaigns, develop relationships with corporations and wealthy individuals to obtain donations, create and maintain donor databases with dossiers on each major potential donor, train volunteers, or develop fundraising materials. More info.

Genetic Counselor. Assess individual or family risk for inherited conditions and then provide the client with information and ask questions to guide the client into the decision they feel most comfortable with, for example, whether or not to get pregnant. More info.

Hydrologist. In the field, evaluate bodies of water for volume and flow, collect water samples, and in the lab analyze them to assess water safety, environmental impacts, and to model future trends. They also may evaluate the feasibility of hydroelectric power plants, irrigation systems, and wastewater treatment plants. More info.

Information Security Analyst. Plan and carry out security measures to protect and organization’s computer system: Install and monitor firewalls, fraud detection, and data encryption, ever trying to stay ahead of cyberattackers. More info.

Librarian. For government, colleges, companies, or schools, help people find information and conduct research. Also teach patrons about information resources, and select and catalog print and electronic items for the library or its website. More info.

Logistician. Analyze and coordinate an organization’s supply chain, the system that moves a product from supplier to consumer: How a product is bought, allocated, and delivered. Logisticians are used in all fields from military to manufacturing to scientific services. More info.

Management Analyst or Consultant. Propose ways to make an organization more efficient, usually by automation/computerization, more efficient processes, and eliminating job redundancy. More info.

Market Research Analyst  Analyze customer databases and survey/focus-group results  to understand consumer preferences and motivators. More info.

Music Conductor. For religious organizations, concert halls, or recording studios, prepare musical groups for live or recorded performance. Audition players and conduct rehearsals to ensure not just accurate note-playing but musicality. In performance, signal musicians to change volume, tempo, and tone. More info.

Nuclear engineer.  Design or develop nuclear-powered devices for medical or energy purposes. More info.

Preschool and Childcare Center Director. Hire, train, and lead staff, establish policies, develop programs, oversee daily activities, prepare plans and budgets, and resolve problems. More info.

Surveyor. Uses GPS, GIS, and land-bound devices to make precise measurements to determine property boundaries for, for example, real estate, petroleum product exploration, and ocean mapping. More info.

Wholesale and Manufacturing Sales Representative. Sell goods to businesses, government agencies, and nonprofits. More info.

Marty Nemko's bio is in Wikipedia.

If you have been following the news like I have then you may be feeling stressed. Especially if you’re female: women become more susceptible to stress after reading bad news and they remember those news stories better. My husband would agree with that as I unload my days catch of misery while he is trying to unwind and get to sleep. Sometimes you see a news link, and you really know you should leave it alone, but it’s irresistible, like the urge to put your hand in a flame or jump off a cliff edge. (No? Just me then…)

If you read different news sources and talk to people from around the world you soon find that the same stories can be given a very different spin depending on the source. That’s not too surprising. We know that people are generally biased toward groups they feel part-of or connected to. But a new study by Tiane Lee, Michele Gelfand and Yoshihisa Kashima in Maryland shows just how this bias keeps on growing as stories are retold so that it can escalate a conflict over time – independent of the conflict itself.

They took 196 male and female undergraduates and organised them into 49 sets of four. These sets of four would actually be chains of story-tellers rather like a game of Chinese whispers – without the whispering. One person in each chain read about a dispute between two groups of students living next to each other. Each person in the chain had to retype their version of the story which was taken to the next person in a different room – but no-one knew whether they had the original version or not.

There were two versions of the original story. In the partisan version one of the groups of students was a group of the readers’ friends while in the neutral version both groups were from different cities. When the researchers read and analysed all the retyped accounts they found clear differences depending on which version they had started with. The partisan accounts laid the blame on the other group, empathized only with their friends and tended to justify their friends’ bad behaviour. In a follow-up questionnaire they were also keen to get revenge on the other group: ‘I would want them to get what they deserve’.

Here is a typical neutral account: ‘One night the students from G threw a loud party .... The students from R complained that the guests from the party had left trash and cigarette butts everywhere. The students from G denied this and then accused the R group of leaving gross trash out.’ These neutral accounts tended to be, well, neutral - because there is nothing in the original account to indicate that one group is more to blame than the other.

Compare that with a typical partisan account: ‘Our friends on the third floor got into a fight with their neighbors. They threw a party a few nights ago ... The day after the party, their neighbors came by to complain. They whined about the noise level and how the guests left trash in the hallway. However the truth was that the neighbors are the ones that always leave the trash in the hallway.’ In the partisan accounts, their friends were just having a good time but those other students were just whiny, trash-dumping kill-joys. The language in the partisan accounts is more colourful, less passive – and I for one certainly find it more interesting to read.

Over the chain of 4 accounts the biased retelling clearly increased with each subsequent retelling showing how third-party accounts can escalate a dispute over time. So it’s not just about a single, biased version of events – the stories evolve with each retelling, further driving conflict independent of the conflict itself. Recall that none of the writers in this study have anything to do with the original dispute but their increasingly one-sided accounts have taken on ‘a life of their own’.

The authors suggest that ‘third parties to a conflict should be sceptical when listening to conflict narratives and question their authenticity.’ Even the most dependable and sober of news sources seem to be out to terrify the life out of me these days. Sometimes I read the headline and as if the plain story wasn’t scary enough I can see that the wording is intended to alarm me – just in case I’m not alarmed enough already. It’s the bread and butter of journalism as it gets harder and harder to compete for our attention: neutral news is no news. And then there’s social medialand where it’s hard to tell fact from fantasy at the best of times and competition for attention knows no boundaries.

But the kind of chronic stress people get from increasingly alarming and threatening daily news produces depressing feelings of helplessness. The only way to combat that helplessness is to take some sort of action (or stop reading the news). Then the choice is – do you act to increase or decrease conflict in the world? Because even high risk conflict can be preferable to helplessness. Partisan ideas about blame and revenge become critical at this point. The relentless media outpouring from all sources and all sides increasingly pushes people to make this choice and all of us in the chain of messengers must take some responsibility for the outcome.

As I pointed out in a recent post, the diametric mode of cognition has been strikingly endorsed by brain imaging, which has shown that, rather than having one, all-purpose system of cognition, we actually have two, parallel ones: one for what I would call mentalistic, and the other for mechanistic cognition. Furthermore, the neuroscientific findings also confirmed that the two networks of neurons are “anti-correlated” to use the researchers' terms: in other words, antithetical and mutually inhibitory—just as the diametric model proposes (left).

When people hear about such discoveries, they often react negatively, assuming that, because dualistic cognition is demonstrably hard-wired into the brain, it is deterministic, leaving us no freedom to think creatively or freely—and certainly not to switch content from one to the other.

But this fails to take account of the fact that, from the beginning, the diametric model portrayed mentalistic and mechanistic as modes of cognition. People speak of a mode of travel or mode of address meaning a particular way of getting from one place to another or of addressing someone. And of course, mode also means a style of dress or fashion—hence modish meaning fashionable or in vogue.

In technology modes can make all the difference to the way in which control systems function. For example, an aircraft's flight control system set in landing mode will interpret inputs from the pilot differently from one set in cruise mode: landing mode will lead the system to expect flight down to the ground, whereas cruise mode will dictate avoidance of the ground at all costs, and confusion between the two can be—and has been—fatal. 

Cognitive modes function in much the same way: they provide the context and setting in which things take on meaning and, as in aviation, confusion can be disastrous. Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union epitomizes the point: agronomy and biology in state-sanctioned mentalizing mode caused murder, mayhem and mass-starvation on a staggering scale. Yet at much the same time in the West, the green revolution was doing the exact opposite and bringing unprecedented crop yields and agronomic advances to many millions in the Third World thanks to thinking in the right, mechanistic mode.

In the past, modal changes in cognition have been brought about by paradigm shifts. As I explained in a previous post, paradigms are mentalistic to the extent that they are top-down, organizing concepts that define a science and set its agenda of research and validation. The Copernican revolution in astronomy demonstrably did this when, in the words of Copernicus’s successor, Kepler, it brought about “the unexpected transfer of the whole of astronomy from fictitious circles to natural causes.”

By the time of Copernicus the traditional Aristotelian, Earth-centered solar system had itself become enclosed within the wider religious beliefs of the Middle Ages thanks to authorities such as St Thomas Aquinas, who conferred scriptural authority upon it. Once Copernicus had broken the mold, astronomy became increasingly mechanistic thanks to the efforts of later authorities, such as Kepler, Galileo, and Newton. Indeed, by the time of the latter, people were routinely thinking of the solar system in mechanistic terms: as a clockwork universe, admittedly designed and wound-up by God, but nevertheless as running on inexorably according to Newton’s laws of motion and universal gravitation. Finally, Darwin extended the mechanistic mode of thinking about nature into biology with his discovery of evolution by natural selection, and in doing so dispensed with the last vestiges of divine involvement. 

What these examples show is that, even though mentalizing and mechanizing cognition may be hard-wired in the brain, exactly what those systems work on is partly mentalistically determined: in other words, by historical, social, and personal factors that cause people to change the context—or mode—in which they think about particular issues. Furthermore, if we have been able to change our mode of thinking in relation to cosmology and biology from mentalistic to mechanistic as most of us demonstrably have done, there is no reason in principle why we cannot do the same in relation to psychology, psychiatry, and the social sciences.

Of course, behaviorism tried to do this by banishing everything mental from psychology, but now we know that mentalizing is as valid a part of brain mechanics as is mechanistic cognition, thanks to having an entire network of neurons devoted to it. Psychoanalysis did the opposite, and hyper-mentalized the brain and behavior thanks to its catch-all/explain-all concept of the unconscious mind.

The diametric model, however, does full justice to both the mechanisms of the brain and the mentalizing of the mind, and suggests a third, definitive solution. This is to adopt the imprinted brain theory and its diametric model of cognition as paradigms by way of which we can voluntarily switch between contrasting modes of cognition, doing full justice to both. Such thinking may not be exactly modish today, but the fact that Freud dressed up his ideas à la mode mècanistique—in other words, in quasi-scientific/clinical style—suggests that the paradigm shift from mentalistic to mechanistic mode in Western thinking is inevitable, irreversible, and irresistible in the long run.

Illustration reproduced with kind permission from “More than a feeling: Counterintuitive effects of compassion on moral judgment,” by Anthony I. Jack, Philip Robbins, Jared P. Friedman & Chris D. Meyers in Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Mind, Continuum Press. Editor: Justin Sytsma, in press.

The 1960s has great cachet. The decade earned it with sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and big-time advances in civil rights, women's rights, and more. But wow, did that decade begin in a dim place. Here are just a few of the ways that life in 1960 was stunningly different – and by that I mean far worse – than it is today.

#1 In the ways they were viewed by others, single people were savaged. Now, when I talk about people who are single at heart (who live their best and most authentic lives as single people), or when individual single people say that they like living single, we get responses like "oh, you just haven't met the right person yet," or, when they are being a bit more presumptuous, "deep down inside, you don't really mean that." But just before 1960, a national survey found that 80 percent of Americans thought that people who wanted to be single were "immoral,""neurotic," or "sick."

#2 Maybe those scathing attitudes had something to do with how few single people there were back then. In 1960, only about 32 million Americans, 18 and older, were single (either divorced or widowed or always-single). That was 28 percent of the adult population. By 2013, there were 105 million single Americans, accounting for 44 percent of the adult population. The word dramatic is overused, but a jump from 32 million single people to 105 million of us is truly dramatic.

#3 On New Year's Day in 1960, the birth control method that became so popular that it is known simply as "The Pill," was not yet available. The FDA did not approve it until May. Still, it took until 1972 and a Supreme Court decision in order to make the pill widely and legally available to single women.

#4 This is what life was like for women in their early 30s in 1960: nearly 80 percent of them did not have a college degree and did have a husband and kids. Some specifics:

• Among women between 30 and 34 years old, in 1960, only 7 percent had a bachelor's degree (or higher); by 2012, 40 percent did.
• Among the same women, only 30 percent were employed in 1960; by 2012, 71 percent were employed.
• In 1960, 93 percent (!) of women in their early 30s were married; by 2012, 66 percent were.
• In 1960, 89 percent of women in their early 30s were had kids of their own living with them; by 2012, 73 percent did.

#5 In 1960, out of every 100 children, 65 lived in a family in which the parents were married, the dad worked, and the mom stayed home. By 2012, only 22 out of every 100 American kids lived such "married male-breadwinner" families.

#6 In 1960, only 1 child in every 350 lived with a mother who had never been married! By 2012, 22 out of every 100 kids lived with a single mom, and only half of those moms had ever been married.

#7 Compare #3 to #2 and look what you find: In 2012, more children live in a single-mother household than in a married household in which dad is employed and mom is not.

[Note: Data for #4 through #7 came from a new report published by the Council on Contemporary Families, "Family diversity is the new normal for American children," written by Philip Cohen. Thanks to CCF for their terrific work.]

Sometimes, you are not who you thought you were. Or you can handle things you thought you couldn't. Your own strength may surprise you when you are put to the test. There is strength in stoicism but also in true detachment.  Wthstanding difficulty is one thing. However, remaining not only upright, but unfazed and quite fine in the aftermath of a severe blow, is better. It is achievable with time, support, thought and insight.  

A compelling poem by Elizabeth Bishop, called One Art, captures the mind of a person who has suffered several losses. Because many people find it hard to let go of a place or a person, I thought the poem might be biblio-therapeutic. Seeing your self in a story or a situation –a film, book, fable, poem– brings relief because feeling understood, as if your own heart is being expressed, is healing. Art and literature are useful for psychological shifts.

This poem struck me because it goes beyond, “I survived, I’m still standing, I am stronger now.” The narrator seems to have evolved into a psychological position wherein the person she is addressing has become emotionally irrelevant. Self-possession allows her to distance herself, maintain sentiment and move on. If you have lost someone, this is a good place to get to. And it is totally possible.

Here is the poem:

One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

This is not evidence or research based and meant to be more playful than serious. However for those of you who don’t take it that way and become intolerant of it, feel free to lay into me in the comments... and then stop taking yourself so seriously.

12 Signs of Blah, Blah, Blah Intolerance Disorder

1. Become annoyed when other people go on and on about something of little importance to the listener and not usually that important to the talker
2. Get driven crazy by people who don’t get to the point
3. Not uncommonly found in CEO’s, founders and entrepreneurs
4. If the CEO of a company, usually have head of HR or COO deal with “blah, blah, blah” people
5. Form opinions and judgments of people based on their actions much more than words
6. Feeling their time is being wasted is one of the things they can’t stand
7. Often perceived as more angry, critical or negative of a person than they really are, they really just can’t stand feeling someone is wasting their time
8. May cause "non blah, blah, blah’s" to walk on eggshells around them (the "blah, blah, blah's" being clueless)
9. Tend to put down “small talk” often because they are awful at it
10. Tell spouse that they’d rather not socialize with a couple who has a “blah, blah, blah” person in it
11. Anti-depressants often help them to be more tolerant of others and life in general
12. More than occasionally lapse into pontification, believing their “blah, blah, blah” to be more important than other’s

These days, mindfulness -- defined by neuroscientist of Harvard University Britta Hölzel as “the non-judgmental awareness of experiences in the present moment” [1] – attracts many people interested in psychological health and happiness. Since Paul McCartney encouraged us to “Let it be” [2] when our hearts are broken, we know about the importance of acceptance. And surely nobody can escape the “Let it go” songs and books of today’s culture. I think we have pretty much gotten the message: resistance to reality is futile and letting things pass through us is the best we can do for our happiness.

However, knowing about something is not the same as being able to do it. Mindfulness is difficult. And as inspiring as it may be to hear from people who can go with the flow and stay emotionally positive no matter what, it can also exert pressure on those who struggle. “Let it go” may sound like “Let it go already!” which is a not-so helpful message of impatience in a stressed-out society. In fact, the pace has picked up so much since Paul McCartney sang that song, we are not going through life anymore; we are running. And so do our minds, a thousand miles a minute. It seems as if our minds are too full to be mindful.

What is it that we do with a box that is too full? We either reorganize it or empty it out a bit. I recommend we do both for our minds. We need to make sure that 1) not too much flows into our minds, 2) we relate constructively to what flows into our minds, and 3) we don’t obstruct the mind so things have a chance to pass.

“Let things in, let things be, and let things go” is a wonderful meditation practice. You can sit down, breathe deeply and observe your breathing, while repeating these words quietly to yourself. Indeed, meditation practice assures that the mind won’t clutter up, which is why I teach it in Chapter Nine in my book "A Unified Theory of Happiness” [3]. Beyond meditation, I think it is useful to look at the three areas from a practical point of view:

1) Letting Things In – But Not Too Much

In the information age, it is essential that you protect your mind from overstimulation. I am a working mother of three children, but refuse to multitask as much as humanly possible. How? There is a magic word hardly used around those seeking optimal stimulation for themselves and their loved ones and the word is: NO. “Say no to drugs” has become popular and a few have signed on to include “No texting while driving.” But we need the word so much more often. We need it when we get a cellular phone call while talking to others. We need it when we speak to one person and a third enters the equation. We need it when people flank their new dress or car or phone and our mouth waters. We need it when someone calls us a name, acts without manners, or makes unreasonable demands.

And then, say “Yes” to life and wholesome activities, nature, a warm bubble bath, a quiet conversation, a pain you don’t like but cannot avoid, such as sickness, work, and taxes. Regulate what you can and stop trying to control what you cannot.

2) Letting Things Be – With Patience And Love

Who wants to feel pain? We avoid it as much as we can, even more so than we hang onto pleasure, and all because we are a human animal. O well. Now that we have established this fact, what can we reasonably expect from ourselves in the way we process painful or uncomfortable experiences? We can learn to relate to them constructively, meaning without judgment, but with kind attention. In other words, we need to become our own best friend who does not wish us to wallow in misery, but who is patient and supportive to help us out.

One form of self-compassion is highly undervalued in psychological circles, which is nurturing the body with both exercise and nutrition. For example, you can help your mind process the myriad of things by avoiding refined sugar as if it were poisonous while eating primarily fresh fruits and vegetables instead. Did you know that greens give you magical powers? Also, it is an established scientific fact that physical exercise makes for a healthy, youthful, fluid brain. Please don’t deprive yourself of the fountain of youth and an important resource for your happiness [4].

3) Letting Things Go – Forgive, Throw Out, And Join The Club

Last but not least, please don’t stand in the way when things are ready to leave your mind. If you can help it, forgive those who have wronged you for you will be happier for it. Throw out the garbage, literally and metaphorically. There are some bad thoughts you hold onto just as you hold onto a pile of outdated clothes in your closet. If you have a hard time with letting things go, if you lust for the old girlfriend or boyfriend you could not have, if you keep mourning over your losses for year after year, know yourself in good company. We all do it! We like to hang on as it feels safe. Understand yourself, humble yourself, and then, with a kind kick in the butt, let it go.

[1] Meet Britta K. Hölzel from Harvard University: http://pps.sagepub.com/content/6/6/537.abstract

[2] Enjoy Paul McCartney singing “Let it be” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aocK0TMiZKk

[3] see www.AndreaPolard.com You can also go on the Happiness Resource Page to learn about mindful ways

[4] Great video on exercise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmc0ERKfjP0

NOTE: If this post in any way “spoke” to you, and you believe in might to others also, please consider sending them its link. Moreover, if you you’d like to read other articles I’ve written for Psychology Today, click here.

© 2014 Andrea F. Polard, PsyD. All Rights Reserved.

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A Caucasian, otherwise healthy 50-year-old man is struck with depression. He has never experienced depression before. A lawyer by occupation, with a family and a partnership at a firm, he is baffled by why he is feeling depressed and wants a prescription to fix his life.

I can readily think of many other patients and friends who’s lives are seemingly great. Decent jobs, stable marriages, kids in college and yet they are on antidepressants. Are they all depressed for no good reason or is the depression an appropriate evolutionary response to life’s circumstances?

I start talking to the patient, as he casually mentions other partners at the firm, their kids, young wives and some tennis friends. He says his marriage is great and he has never thought about leaving his wife. “Well, what do you think about?” He is “very depressed, has everything in perfect order and cannot understand the reasons for depression.”

Ever since Freud, mental disorders have been divided into neuroses such as panic, anxiety, and depression, which are considered to be less severe as opposed to something like schizophrenia, which is more challenging and is accompanied by other symptoms of paranoia, delusions and hallucinations. At first glance, we might think that schizophrenia is an anomaly, as it only occurs in about 1 percent of the general population. It is obviously a situation where the mind has done a major hiccup and the brain has become ill. But how does this mistake occur?

Research shows that many genes are involved in the disease of the brain such as schizophrenia, although there does seem to be a familial link. If one identical twin has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, the other twin is at a higher likelihood for the condition. This correlation does not however mean that both twins are destined to have the disorder.[i] Only about 60% can be explained through genetic linkage, which leaves another 40% to be accounted for by other factors: environment, chance, etc.[ii]

Psychiatrists have now speculated for sometime around advantages to schizophrenia. If the prevalence of the disorder is any indication, this might suggest an evolutionary adaptation. One group of researchers have suggested that schizophrenia makes people more resistant to outside viruses and stress as opposed to people without it. Perhaps a mind that is psychotic is trying to escape and disconnect from social pressures in a world largely driven by social interconnectedness.[iii] In an attempt to deal with stress, the mind escapes into psychosis. This view, perhaps more sympathetic than most literature might suggest, examines the brain and its disorders as a reasonable adaptation given life’s circumstances. It is a predictable human maneuver to escape a situation if consistently faced with failure to achieve biological goals.

This discussion around an adaptational role of brain-based disorders is interesting, but does not help those individuals suffering and crippled with uncertainty. The depressed man in the example earlier is a case and point. His depression is real and might even make some sense, but what can he do besides medication or simply waiting on life’s circumstances to change? Paul Gilbert and colleague Steven Allan maintain that feelings of depression are correlated with feelings of being trapped.[iv] Indeed there is a positive relationship between depression in those who have either experienced defeat or have a perceived sense of defeat. So it would make sense then, that our patient might be struggling with some perceived sense of defeat, perhaps an interpersonal issue between a colleague or a friend. The brain has simply learned to adapt to lower moods to adjust to trying times.

As I think about my own personal goals, I am struck by how wisely my brain adapts. If I submit a book proposal and it gets rejected a number of times, how do I cope? What I get initially is a sense of hopelessness, worthlessness, pessimism and little energy to go on. What are my alternatives? Give up and feel better? But that’s the problem. I cannot give up. It is just as unnatural for me as not drinking water after a 40 minute run. My body is dehydrated and needs water, much the same way my brain needs to feel a sense of accomplishment with my life’s goals. It can be argued then, that depression is an adaptational strategy and a regulatory motivator for humans. A positive mood indicates motivation and hope, and negative mood indicates lack of hope. This mechanism is brilliant and is ingrained into our genes. It is the same mechanism that gets bears to hibernate over the winter months and forage in the spring and summer.

In treatment, I have found it essential to ask patients questions beyond the standard set: “When did you first notice yourself getting depressed?” “How are you feeling now?” “What is your appetite like?” or “Have you ever thought of hurting yourself?” Beyond those questions lie those personal questions that touch on the depth of human purpose. “Are you pursuing a life goal that you cannot seem to reach?” and “Are you afraid of the possibility of losing something that is vital to your life and daily functioning?” The answer to eradicating symptoms lies in the riddle of human happiness and purpose. By considering another mechanism of influences, we consider another source to mental pathologies.

The now traditional Western psychiatric response to depression, anxiety, and psychosis is medication. Medication can calm the mind and change the brain chemistry enough to give patients a shot at a “normal” life. In other words, human condition of the brain in Western culture is treated as a disease, a malfunction and a system that has to be tightly regulated to function well. Yet disorders come in all sorts of forms, are so global, that to believe in only one idea of what makes people ill or well means to ignore other influences that might contribute to a person’s outlook on life. Those influences could have been thousands of years in the making and a part of our genomic code, or could have been as recent as some environmental stressors. Taking this view can tip the standard of care to instead of trying to make everyone logical, rational and orderly, to simply helping someone regain a sense of balance and in particular, helping those who are living with mental disorders regain a sense of purpose.

Sources:

[i] McGuire, M., and Troisi, A. (1998) Darwinian Psychiatry. Oxford, Oxford University Press

[ii] Portin, P., and Alanen, Y. (1997) “A critical review of genetic studies of schizophrenia II. Molecular genetic studies.” Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica 95: 73-80

[iii] Crow, T.J.A. (1995) “A Darwinian approach to the origins of psychosis.” British Journal of Psychiatry 167: 12-25

[iv] Gilbert, P., and Allen, J.S. (1998) “The role of defeat and entrapment in depression: An exploration of an evolutionary view.” Psychological Medicine 28: 585-598

I had just finished speaking to a small group of therapists on the topic, “How are emotions communicated, and what does the brain have to do with it?”

After fielding a few easy questions, one of the therapists in attendance tossed me a hard one.

“What difference does it make to know about the brain?” he asked. “As a psychotherapist, isn’t a psychological theory as good as a biological one?” His questions were respectful but also challenging.

I fumbled, not quite knowing how to respond. The answer to his questions seemed entirely self-evident, but never before had I been asked to put my underlying assumptions about this into words. 

“How could the brain not be a vital concern for therapists?” I thought to myself.

“Communication of emotion is central to how interpersonal relationships work, including how psychotherapy works.” 

My talk had been about the brain basis of communication, including gesture, facial expression, and language. I had explained how language is comprised of words, grammar, and “music.” The “music” aspect of language is called prosody; it includes nuances of tone, pitch, and cadence that convey subtleties of meaning and emotion.

I had described how modern understanding of the brain traces back to Paul Broca’s discovery that production of words and grammar is centered in a particular brain region, usually in the left hemisphere. Scientists who came after Broca continued to map the hubs and networks of nerve cells in the brain. Production of prosody, for example, is centered on the right, in a mirror-image area to Broca’s. 

Now we have an outline of the brain-basis of a myriad of human behaviors--gesture, facial recognition, social interaction, motivation, attention, and more.

Just as the heart is the organ-basis of cardiology, and the eyes are the focus for ophthalmologists, it follows that the brain is the organ-basis of neurology, psychiatry, and other fields that concern themselves with human behavior. 

Over the years I have thought about how I might have answered that therapist’s important questions. I wish I had said that it helps for psychotherapists to be aware that the words and the music of language are intertwined but neurologically separate functions. Words are easier to consciously manipulate and less emotionally nuanced than prosody. We read prosody as more authentic. 

The words in the therapist’s question had been straightforward and easy to understand. What I read from his prosody was far more complicated. He was aware that he was challenging the basic assumptions of my talk. He knew the stakes were high--for all of the psychotherapies.

Are psychological theories are as good as biological ones? I wish I had pointed out that this question contains the assumption that the psychological and the biological are separate. Yet, researchers have elucidated how experiences of every kind--emotional trauma as well as practicing piano, learning the streets of London or being in psychotherapy-- mark our lives by changing the brain and biology. It isn’t either/or. As psychotherapists, we need to bridge the gap between how we think of psychological and how we think of biological. As Michael Tomasello said in The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition, “There is thus no question of opposing nature versus nurture; nurture is just one of the many forms that nature may take.” 

Perhaps the most important reason for psychotherapists to understand the brain-basis of behavior is in order to enhance diagnostic thinking. For example, some people are not adept at reading the subtle messages conveyed through prosody; this leads to problems with social interaction and no obvious cause. Knowing about the brain opens realms of possibility beyond the usual DSM mental disorders categories.

As I was packing up to leave the lecture hall, the therapist who had asked these important questions wondered if I might offer my opinion about a patient he had seen on and off over many years. The therapist described a patient with brief but recurring episodes that involved unusual body sensations and other symptoms that I thought could be caused by focal seizures. The therapist told me he considered these episodes to be “somatic delusions” because they seemed so outside the range of normal experience. He knew the patient was not psychotic. Psychological interpretations had led to no change in the frequency or the nature of these states.

Someone had suggested to the therapist that these episodes might be seizures. What did I think? Yes, this was certainly a possibility and should be investigated neurologically. Sensations of the sort he described might be traced to particular areas in the brain. Moreover, if it was documented that the patient had focal seizures, she could be treated with anticonvulsant medications.

As I was leaving, I thought about how interesting this had been. The big questions can only be answered for oneself. And here indeed, I do believe the questioner had answered his own questions.

In the past decade, after thirty years in the deep freeze, research into the medicinal use of psychedelic drugs, ranging from psilocybin to Ketamine, and from MDMA to LSD, has begun to accelerate. FDA-approved pilot studies and clinical trials using the drugs under controlled conditions and in combination with talk therapy have shown they could be used safely, delivering promising results in a wide range of tough-to-treat maladies, including opiate and tobacco addiction, alcoholism, autism, anxiety, depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

These developments are not surprising to some who remember the first wave of research and even widespread clinical use of psychedelics in the quarter century after the accidental discovery LSD in 1943. A global review of psychedelic studies and clinical results in 1963 concluded:  “Some spectacular, and almost unbelievable, results have been achieved by using one dose [of the drugs].”

 In 1960, a psychiatrist named Sydney Cohen surveyed the results of 44 physicians who had administered 25,000 doses of LSD or mescaline to 5,000 subjects under widely varying conditions. Cohen found “no instance of serious or prolonged physical side effects” in either those 25,000 sessions or in the wider literature on psychedelic drug studies. Adverse psychological reactions, he found, were rare, and mostly related to pre-existing mental illnesses.

But the powerful drug that was proving surprisingly safe to use in the clinic was creating a panic when used on the streets. The mushrooming popular abuse of psychedelics in the late 1960s, particularly by unscreened young people taking it in uncontrolled environments, struck such a sensitive cultural and political nerve that it left the drugs, and the scientists who worked with them, severely stigmatized for more than a generation.

 “It was if  psychedelic drugs had become undiscovered,” one researcher recalled.

Ironically, the criminalization of the possession of psychedelic drugs in 1970 and the attendant passion of the authorities’ anti-drug crusade did little to slow the spread of recreational abuse, but effectively shut all research into possible beneficial uses down cold.

In the three decades that followed, an underground network of therapists continued to use the now illegal compounds in treatment of psychological maladies. In the late 1970s, with the rediscovery of the psychoactive effects of the synthetic psychedelic 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine, or MDMA, these underground therapists found a compound many felt was even more useful in combination with therapy than the classic psychedelics – avoiding the unpredictable effects and anxiety-provoking visions that sometimes arose, as well as creating an almost instant bond with the therapist. MDMA also had the advantage of not yet being illegal.

As the government prepared to rectify that in 1985, a coalition of credentialed doctors and scientist allied with those in the psychedelic underground to take the attempt to rehabilitate the drugs and bring back the hope of the 50s and 60s that they could become a powerful tool in psychotherapy. They sued the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to prevent them from placing MDMA on Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, the most restrictive category referred for highly dangerous drugs with no medical benefit.

After months of hearings and volumes of testimony, the presiding judge ruled dramatically in the plaintiffs’ favor – MDMA he declared, was neither particularly dangerous when used in a clinical setting nor without medical value.

The DEA simply ignored the ruling, which was not legally binding, and MDMA therapy went back underground. But some of those behind the challenge refused to surrender. If they couldn’t prove their case in court, they would do it in the lab. It took better than a decade and a slowly changing culture, but as the 20^th Century came to a close, the Food and Drug Administration began to once again approve clinical trials giving psychedelics to humans to test everything from whether they could reliably produce a profound spiritual experience to help people stop smoking. 

One of the most noteworthy and advanced efforts has been using MDMA-assisted psychotherapy to treat chronic, treatment-resistant PTSD. A completed and published trial inSouth Carolina, and additional ongoing trials there and in a half dozen other places, are showing very promising results. In the completed study of 24 subjects, primarily female victims of rape and sexual abuse, all but three subjects experienced lasting remission of their symptoms after just a handful of sessions in which the drug appeared to allow them to examine the roots of their trauma without fear and generate insights that released them from the disorder’s vicious cycle of avoidance, rage and hypervigilance.

 Even if all goes smoothly, the path to the point where MDMA becomes a tool available to all those in need is long, and very expensive. It could take more than a decade, and tens of millions of dollars to generate the final phase studies involving scores of therapists and hundreds of patients that must precede approval of a drug for prescription use.  At a time when half a million veterans have returned from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with PTSD, and an average of 22 each day are committing suicide, that seems like a long time to wait.

The cost to the American taxpayer of giving these vets the medical care they’ve earned will be in the range of a trillion dollars over the next 30 or 40 years. If PTSD could be reliably cured with a short-term treatment using an inexpensive drug like MDMA, those costs could be slashed dramatically. And yet, though the Department of Defense is spending lavishly on speculative development all sorts of untested therapies – including planting microchips in veterans’ brains – it has yet to budget a dime for MDMA research, in part, clearly, because the cultural wars of 1970 continue to hold the image of psychedelics hostage.

OK, so, you’re gay, you want to find a partner and eventually a husband; someone with whom to share your life. However, you just can’t seem to meet the right guy or make the right connection. You keep coming up empty-handed, stymied in your efforts, no matter what you try. All of this talk of legalized marriage just seems to make things worse, adding pressure from friends, family, and even yourself.

You think, maybe it’s just not possible for gay men to have long-term relationships. There must be some truth to the old joke: “What does a gay man bring on a second date?” Response: “What second date?” You would be ready to throw in the towel, if it weren’t for your best friend who met someone and is now in a happy relationship for the past 2 years—or that middle-aged couple who live in your building and who just celebrated 25 years together with a trip to Paris. So you end up wondering “What’s the matter with me? What am I doing wrong?”

As an openly gay man with over thirty years of experience as a therapist, I have seen scores of single gay men sabotage their efforts to find a partner, placing obstacles in their own path —without having the slightest idea as to what they are doing and why. Fortunately, I have also learned how to identify and name these self-defeating and often hidden hurdles—and have discovered that they are beliefs that too many gay men repeat to themselves, often without even knowing it. They are as follows:

“The real truth is, I am unlovable.”In my experience, this internalized belief is the poison that prevents some gay men from building a healthy relationship, and also why many mess up the ones they already have. There’s a reason for this. Few of us grow up unscathed by family, peers, and a society hostile to our attractions and behaviors. Some of us have been bullied as children; physically, verbally, and emotionally abused at tender ages by our peers and family members for being gay before we even recognized and understood our same-sex attractions. This toxic internalized belief is further ingrained if we have been treated harshly (or abandoned) by our fathers, the first men in our lives to teach us about our value in the eyes of other males. Sadly, these wounds are difficult to heal, and as a result, can leave gay men with the sense that we are unlovable and thus unworthy of love, affection, and happiness.

In my clinical and personal experiences, these feelings can be so deeply hidden as to be difficult to recognize, articulate and resolve. My clients rarely, initially state or even recognize that they feel unworthy of love, but their behaviors tell a different story. One telltale sign is obsessive jealousy. Once in a relationship you may feel a constant need to control the other partner to make sure he stays connected and faithful to you. In addition, you seek never ending reassurance (checking his cell phone, needing to know where he is at all times, demanding he tells you he loves you all of the time--you get the idea). What belies these feelings and behaviors is the fear that you are is so flawed that you cannot attract and keep a partner without monitoring and controlling him—even though these behaviors ironically push him away.

Another way feeling unlovable manifests is in the choice of partner. Read on.

"It is impossible to meet the right guy."No doubt, finding the right partner is not easy. Remember, you are looking for a life mate; that glass slipper is hardly one size fits all, and very few men will qualify. For sure, so much of the gay male world is way too focused on looks, youth, the gym, partying, and fast hookups; so searching for Mr. Right is like looking for a needle in a gaystack. However, feeling subconsciously unlovable or unworthy can again rear its head here through your choices. That muscled, tattooed bad boy is hotter than hell, and great in bed, but is he showing any sign that he is ready to settle down? You seek a man who wants a monogamous relationship, but do you really think you'll find him on Manhunt, Grindr or Scruff? (Trust me, these prowling tigers do not change their stripes once they are hitched.) Perhaps you have a bit of a fetish for the strong silent type. (They always seem to ooze masculinity, don’t they?) But if you need sharing communication and emotional reassurance, you may find that the mysterious brooder is actually an unresponsive “cold fish” after a few months. Is he really the one for you? Or how about the guy who gives you the chase, sending hopelessly mixed signals that are impossible to understand, such as ignoring you for periods of time alternating with romantic texting—leaving you wondering “does he or doesn’t he?” Isn’t this a dead end? (Answer: Yes, honey, it is.)

Perhaps your close friends have rolled their eyes as they’ve watched you repeatedly making poor partner choices, trying to make husbands out of men who are unavailable. If you find yourself consistently in these patterns, perhaps you are, as the song goes, looking for love in all the wrong places. At a deeper level, this could be an indication that you don’t feel worthy enough to be loved—or, perhaps even more perplexing—you do not really want to be in a relationship and don’t know it yet.

“I should be in a relationship.”In the old days, when I was coming out, being gay had more of an outlaw quality. Nonmonogamy was a political statement, and gay rights advocates saw marriage as constrictive, patriarchal, heterocentric, flawed (perhaps due to the 50% failure rate) and therefore not worthy of pursuit, especially in light of how gay men of the era were still getting ejected from their jobs, homes, families and blackmailed and arrested for who they were. For sure, the pendulum has swung far in the other direction. Contrary to heterosexual fears, legal gay marriage has given the institution an enormous boost in importance. Where it’s legal, same sex couples are getting married in droves, and some gay weddings are so theatrical and over the top that they can actually be intimidating (See the Saturday Night Live skit: Xanax for Gay Weddings http://vimeo.com/67930171%20for a hilarious send up of this phenomenon). This can all translate into feelings of pressure to couple up. Unfortunately, along with legal marriage comes the risk of inheriting straight society’s “couple-centrism,” which is the idea that being single is wrong, sad, and a sign of psychological problems that need to be “fixed.” This is just plain wrong. Not everyone needs to be in a couple nor should be. Many single gay men are happy, valuing their autonomy and personal freedom (like the muscled bad boy described above). There are things many men have to give up to be in a couple. No problem there, but one needs to be honest with oneself about his true needs and wants and do the (hard) work of freeing oneself from societal and family pressures.

Like that girl in Frozen, you need to “let it go.” Perhaps your hurdle is a previous relationship that you just can’t shake. I have worked with many gay widowers—guys with good relationship track records, who are anxiously seeking a new mate, but are sabotaging themselves in the ways described above. Upon close examination, we jointly discovered their worry that if they got romantically involved with someone else, they would be abandoning their previous mate. I have had several grieving gay men tell me: “If I move on, it will be like I am forgetting him” which is just not true.

A variation of this theme is when a relationship ends, but you just don’t want to let go of it—even if the guy is still alive. You might still be living together, or stay best friends. You are no longer official partners, but worry if you met someone, he would be upset—or perhaps you would, because it would be too painful to finally say good bye.

A wise teacher once told me that once we have been in a relationship, it never really fully ends—Even if we have been divorced or our partner has died, the heart never fully lets go. However, the good news is the heart’s capacity is not limited by physical space. Instead of getting rid of the old loves, the heart makes room for new ones—but we have to be willing to open up and welcome them. .

So, how do we figure out what’s getting in the way and how do we fix it? Here are some ideas:

Know Thyself.For sure, a first step is to recognize your patterns. Does anything you have read thus far seem familiar? Even a little bit? Take the time to reflect on your behavior and how you might be getting in your own way. You might even ask one of your good, trusted girlfriends (of any gender) for their honest feedback. Be sure to give them permission to risk hurting your feelings. It might sting but it could be worth it.

Love Thyself. Many people just keep making the same mistakes without taking the time to pause, breathe and figure out what’s really happening. Do this in a loving way, giving yourself the messages of compassion, patience and acceptance—no beating yourself up! (Hasn’t the world done that to you enough?) Reflect upon what you learned from your family and peers about how lovable you are—or aren’t (!) Remember, as a gay man, you have survived lots of indirect and direct messages that there was something wrong with you, which has left scars. You are not alone. Gay men have been taught to be think of ourselves as unlovable. So now, make a promise yourself to intercept and interrupt any self-talk that continues this tendency.

Therapy?I am not one of those therapists who think everyone needs psychotherapy. Many can figure out their behavioral patterns on their own and then proceed to change them. However, a good therapist can help you understand how wounds from the past, long-believed to be dead and buried, can reemerge like zombies when and where you least expect them. He or she can do this by helping you, 1) identify how you are getting in your own way; 2) figure out why you are doing this; 3) help you find ways to love yourself better and thus free you up to find men who are, in turn, healthy and good husband material, or 4) live happily single, as you were meant to be.

In the words of one our most prominent modern day philosophers, Ru Paul (who else?): “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you ever gonna’ love someone else? Can I get an Amen?” Amen!

Who sees humor in sexual assault?

Singer LeAnn Rimes, after making a quip about spiked drinks, told Joan Rivers how she lost her virginity with her boyfriend at age 16. When Rimes added, "But I think I raped him," the anecdote drew laughs from her husband and the Rivers film crew.

A Big Brother 16 contestant recently joked that two of the competitors sharing the Big Brother house "should double team" a female contestant while intoxicated and "take all of her virginities in one night." Laughter ensued. The young woman's mother issued a statement of concern for her daughter as a possible "target of rape" while still on the reality TV show and said she wanted the man who made that remark to imagine how he would feel if people made such remarks about his sister, Ariana Grande, "and see if he thinks it's funny."

A former comic book store employee has reported that she got fired for expressing concerns that included calling out the store's "rape room." Either a member of management referred to a back room as the "rape room" as the ex-employee has asserted or, as the store's owner has related in his response, that group trainer had actually called it the "stat room" (short for "statue room"), to which one new employee asked, "Stat, like stat rape?" (Even if that had been the case, who refers to statutory rape so readily and calls it by nickname?)

In the Steubenville High School rape case, witnesses laughed on and on as they discussed whether an unconscious 16-year-old girl was dead. Project Knightsec anti-rape activists released video of one witness howling that she was "deader than Trayvon Martin." Along with guffawing through remarks about how dead she looked, they laughed about what two football players did to her: "They raped her more than the Duke Lacrosse team." The most vocal jokester also tweeted, "Song of the night is definitely Rape Me by Nirvana." Tweets, photos, videos, and other evidence rapidly hit social media that night and in the days after. Two teens tried as juveniles were found guilty of raping the girl, photographing her, and disseminating child pornography for sharing a photograph of the undressed, unconscious, underage girl. Quite a few folks fretted that the case had ruined the convicted rapists' promising futures more than they cared how that crime had impacted its victim.

By no means are these examples equal in offense, but were any of these things sensible to say? Some rape-related jokes trivialize sexual assault while others endorse it. Some people who crack such jokes neglect to consider the implications and impact upon victims and those around them; some others jest in order to cope with bad situations as a misplaced defense mechanism; and then there are those who sadistically celebrate these terrible things. Rape joke defenders who say, "Come on, it's just gallows humor," might ought to consider that many law enforcement officers use dark humor to desensitize themselves so they own emotions don't overwhelm them on the job. This occupation-related reason does not justify such humor among others. There's also some difference between true gallows humor, i.e., joking in the face of death, and finding hilarity in the suffering of the living. While dark humor might help certain criminal investigators keep coming to work, it also increases insensitivity to victims and their families, potentially making investigators misinterpret vital information or simply discount true crime.

Why all the argument? After analyzing online debate content while noting the seeming futility of such disputes over whether rape is ever funny, Kramer (2011) concluded that both sides accept the same basic assumptions about how humor operates even though each side asserts the superiority of its own humor ideology. The respective contentions that "rape can be funny" or "rape is never funny" exert implicit claims that each objectively understands humor better than the other. The arguments become less about persuading others to see one's own position and more about asserting that position to express personal identity and identification with that side.

What kind of person jokes about rape? Decades of empirical research reveal surprisingly little given the magnitude their distribution and how many people from different walks of life are spreading them around. We know more about the effects of desensitizing people to any particular topic, though. 

Humor demeaning to women, even when nonsexual in nature, may reinforce some men's readiness to rape. Correlational work by Ryan and Kanjorski (1998) showed that men’s existing tendencies to enjoy sexist humor correlated positively with rape proclivity, rape myth acceptance, adversarial sexual beliefs, and general acceptance of interpersonal violence. In later experimental work, Thomae and Viki (2013) found that male participants who were simply exposed to sexist humor then expressed greater rape proclivity (willingness to commit rape) than did men exposed to non-sexist humor, although whether that means sexist humor increases willingness to rape or instead the frequency of admitting to it should be harder to determine. Thomae and Viki's studies further indicated that this effect depended on existing tendencies toward hostile sexism, an interaction which would mean that men with strong feelings of hostility and bias toward women were the ones most likely to express greater rape proclivity after exposure to sexist humor. The sexist humor therefore exerted a priming effect by activating existing inclinations, making them more salient, and bringing them out to influence overt behavior.

Empirical investigators have long shown that human males generally find either sexual humor funnier than females do, regardless of which gender serves as the so-called "butt of the joke" (Cantor, 1976; Groch, 1974; Malpass & Fitzpatrick, 1959; Prerost, 1980; Sekeres & Clark, 1980; Wilson & Molleston, 1981). Love and Deckers (1989) felt this was likely because women had experienced more sexual discrimination, but causality is likely more complex than that. Men report having more frequent and more intrusive thoughts about sex than women do (Fisher, Moore, & Pittenger, 2012; Hofmann, Vohs, & Baumeister, 2012; and many more). Men, on average, find both sex and violence to be more entertaining than women do as indicated by, among many other things, the male sex drive and sheer physical aggressiveness. Women can be more aggressive or hostile in other ways. Boys and men who feel irritated toward girls and women and who do not develop better ways of responding may imagine simply overpowering females by physical means where males more often hold the advantage. Social norms and gender role stereotypes include expectations that "real men" must be strong and powerful, able to conquer. Those frustrated by their own perceived inadequacies relative to their stereotypes might try to reduce bad feelings about themselves by blaming others. Instead of faulting themselves for not living up to stereotypes as "real men," they may resent females for not fitting their stereotypes for "real women." The stronger the woman acts in any manner, the more a troll might yearn to "put her in her place."

Research participants who demand less punishment for rape have been found to enjoy sexual humor more, although we might make better sense of this correlation if we knew more about the specific sexual humor that Ruch, Busse, and Hehl (1996) presented to that study's volunteers. Across genders, people with negative attitudes toward women enjoy sexist and sexually aggressive comics more (Henkin & Fish, 1986). Love and Deckers (1989) found that more women in their study would notice the sexist aspects in comics whereas men tended to overlook the sexism and perceive only the sexual aspects. The women also identified more with each cartoon victim than did the men. Use of sexually aggressive humor may be juvenile in origin, so the differences may be greatest among adults who are more immature, as indicated by Führ’s (2002) finding that adolescent boys use more sexual and aggressive strategies than girls do using humor to cope with anxiety and stress. 

Gelatophobes (individuals afraid of humor, also spelled gelotophobes), generally grumpier and less cheerful than others, show less appreciation for humor, tend to perceive humor as threat, and characterize their own senses of humor as inept, cold, and mean-spirited. Their enjoyment of sexual humor is more similar to that of non-gelatophobes even though gelatophobes find it more aversive (Ruch, Beermann, and Proyer, 2009), so when it comes to sexual humor, a person who wields it threateningly might still be amused. The mean-spirited person may more readily attempt sexual humor that others find inept, cold, or mean. If we're going to consider gelatophobia, though, we might also look at the accusation that the ones who have a problem with rape jokes are just a bunch of humorless feminists. Franzini (1996), in an empirical exploration of some such accusations, found no general relationship between feminism and sense of humor - i.e., feminists were not humorless.

We do not know nearly enough about the personality correlates, motivations, and other factors associated with the liking of this kind of comedy. Fewer researchers seem to investigate sexist and sexually aggressive humor these days. Have we have grown warier of presenting such jokes to today’s research participants?

Rape humor takes other forms, as well, and it’s not all about gender relations. Rape joke defenders, who say others should chill out and accept such humor, sometimes argue that a double standard exists depending on which gender gets raped. There is some cultural acceptance of man-on-man sexual violence, especially in prison. There's no shortage of prison rape jokes, from relishing what fate might befall felons in real life to making light of film characters as they fear, fend off, or fall victim to rape by fellow inmates. The taunt "Don't drop the soap!" is a popular punchline. Author Anne Rice recently said, "I'm nauseated by the way TV sitcom and crime show heroes joke about or threaten perps with prison rape...." Arguing that smirking over any sexual violence makes everyone less safe, Ezra Klein called prison rape "a cherished source of humor, a tacitly accepted form of punishment and a broadly understood human rights abuse. We pass legislation called the Prison Rape Elimination Act at the same time that we produce films meant to explore the funny side of inmate sexual brutality." Tolerating it for the guilty means accepting it as well for the wrongly accused. As for the rape joke defenders' purpose in bringing up prison rape jokes, though, it should be easy to note that gender is not the only difference in play there.

People are speaking out against rape jokes.

Brian Jones, who is a veteran Marine and editor of Task and Purpose veterans news, criticized the military for inconsistency in forbidding active Marines from publicly making disloyal statements while ignoring the active misogyny some display in public settings such as Facebook. "It's hard to believe that in 2014 that I have to tell my fellow Marines, my fellow veterans, that they shouldn't make rape jokes."  

Stand Up For Women, Object, Zero Tolerance, and Rape Crisis Scotland have asked comedians to rethink rape jokes. Comedian Kate Smurthwaite led the charge as a Change.org group has asked not for censorship but simply for comics and other performers to ask themselves, "What are we laughing at?" Many more have lent support through the hashtag #RapeIsNotFunny. 

Should they and countless others continue to campaign against rape jokes or should they, as fans of Team Dickwolves will argue, learn to relax and take a joke? What do you think? Is rape ever the right punchline?

Related Posts

• Are We Blaming the Famous Victims of Nude Photo Theft?
• JL8 Controversy: Is Sharing Phallic Photos Healthy Behavior?
• Star Trek vs. Star Wars: A Look at Bullying on Any World
• End Bullying! Responding to Cruelty in our Culture
• Super Sex Theorists: "Hung Up on Superheroes' Sex Organs"
• Ye Olde Masters of Sex: Sexology Before Masters and Johnson

References

Cantor, J. R. (1976). What is funny to whom? Journal of Communication, 26, 164-172.

Führ, M. (2002). Coping humor in early adolescence. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 15, 283-304.

Fisher, T. D., Moore, Z. T., & Pittenger, M. J. (2012). Sex on the brain? An examination of frequency of sexual cognitions as a function of gender, erotophilia, and social desirability. Journal of Sex Research, 49, 68-77.

Franzini, L. R. (1996). Feminism and women's sense of humor. Sex Roles, 35, 811-819.

Groch, A. S. (1974). Generality of response to humor and wit in cartoons, jokes, stories, and photographs. Psychological Reports, 35, 835-828.

Henkin, B., & Fish, J. M. (1986). Gender and personality differences in the appreciation of cartoon humor. The Journal of Psychology, 120, 157-175.

Hofmann, W., Vohs, K. D., & Baumeister, R. F. (2012). What people desire, feel conflicted about, and try to resist in everyday life. Psychological Science, 23, 282-288.

Kramer, E. (2011). The playful is political: The metapragmatics of internet rape-joke arguments. Language in Society, 40,137-168.

Love, A. M., & Deckers, L. H. (1989). Humor appreciation as a function of sexual, aggressive, and sexist content. Sex Roles, 20, 649-654.

Malpass, L., & Fitzpatrick, E. (1959). Social facilitation as a factor in reaction to humor. Journal of Social Psychology, 50, 292-303.

Prerost, F. J. (1980). Developmental aspects of adolescent sexuality in reactions to sexually explicit humor. Psychological Reports, 46, 543-548.

Ruch, W., Beermann, U., & Proyer, R. T. (2009). Investigating the humor of gelotophobes: Does feeling ridiculous equal being humorless? Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 22, 111-143.

Ruch, W., Busse, P., & Hehl, F. (1996). Relationship between humor and proposed punishment for crimes: Beware of humorous people. Personality and Individual Differences, 20, 1-11.

Ryan, K. M., & Kanjorski, J. (1998). The enjoyment of sexist humor, rape attitudes, and relationship aggression in college students. Sex Roles, 38, 742-756.

Sekeres, R. E., & Clark, W. R. (1980). Verbal, heart rate, and s.c. responses to sexual cartoons. Psychological Reports, 47, 1227-1232.

Thomas, M., & Viki, G. T. (2013). Why did the woman cross the road? The effect of sexist humor on men’s rape proclivity. Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, 7, 250-269.

Wilson, D. W., & Molleston, J. L. (1981). Effect of sex and type of humor on humor appreciation. Journal of Personality Assessment, 45, 90-96.

Follow Dr. Langley on Facebook or Twitter (@Superherologist).

We’re often too busy to reflect, even on something as important as our worklife. Asking yourself these questions may make it quicker and easier.

How good am I at my job, really? If I’m not sure, should I ask for feedback, perhaps using Talent Checkup, which gets me anonymous feedback from three to eight people of my choice? If I want to improve, should I simply more often ask coworkers for help? Watch someone who’s good? Read an article or three? Take a webinar or a course, perhaps online through your professional association or Udemy?

Am I too low-maintenance? For example, do I not often-enough ask for help? Am I always the person others dump work on, for example, when they decide to leave work early? Do I take on more work than is fair for one person to do? Am I too-often pleasant in the face of unfair treatment?

Am I too high-maintenance? Do I complain too much? Am I too sensitive to slights? Do I too often ask others to cover for me or otherwise do my work, for example, feeling helpless when, with effort, I could do the work? 

Am I working too many hours? Do I want to do anything about it, like talk with my boss, quietly cut back, or delegate work to others?

Am I working too few hours, including time at work that I’m not actually working: playing on the Net, chatting, long lunch, etc? Do I want to do anything about it?

Am I doing too little or too much volunteer work?

Should I have the guts to change jobs? If so, what’s a low-risk step I could take: a little internet research? An informational interview? Job shadow? Take a one-shot webinar or a course?

Should I aspire upward or downward? Up isn’t the only way. Yes, sometimes, people are happier at a higher level but sometimes at a lower one.

Now what?

Chances are, your answers will suggest more than one thing you want to do. But that can feel overwhelming with the result being that you do nothing. So look over your answers and pick the one, okay two if you wish, things you’d like to do.

And if there’s nothing you want to do, congratulations: Already you’re probably a contented workplace rock star.

Marty Nemko's bio is in Wikipedia.

It is back to school, and for many parents back to the ruminating and fretting that accompanies those late-night conversations about how best to educate Junior. Amy Chua’s answer, originally set out in a 2011 Wall Street Journal opinion article “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior,” was that “tiger mothers” were prepared to coerce kids into doing homework and practicing the piano, in part by calling them names.

What to do if you aren’t Chinese?

Well, maybe you just have to be wealthy and well-connected.

A study published earlier this year in the journal “Race and Social Problems” by two California scholars chipped away—successfully, I think--at Chua’s money-making myth of Chinese motherhood , suggesting that with all the economic resources at her disposal — she and her husband are Yale professors with highly-educated parents — her children’s success is just as likely the result of socioeconomic and cultural advantages, something known by scholars not so at ease with pop psychology writing as Ms. Chua, as the main reason some children do better than others.

The scholars who wrote “The Success Frame and Achievement Paradox: The Costs and Consequences for Asian Americans” are Min Zhou, professor of sociology and Asian American Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, and Jennifer Lee, professor of sociology at the University of California at Irvine.

Their findings: Young Asian Americans have many good role models to emulate. Their communities and families make sure they get extra help when they need it. Their families, even those with limited resources, manage to seek out and move to neighborhoods with good schools. They aspire to success with specific goals in mind: medicine, law, engineering and pharmacy. And they aim for the best universities and professional schools.

So, forget about coercion or some unfathomable, ethnic-specific feng shui for the space between the ears, say the authors. It is more about the way families view their horizons, the most successful with extraordinarily high expectations for those horizons. Granted, if the heights expected are not attainable, the disappointment may be as emotionally draining as being yelled at during piano lessons. But disappointment is one of the lessons of life.

It takes a village, talent, and a little luck. Not Mommie Dearest with hoisin sauce.

The researchers believe that once we all step back and decouple race and ethnicity from achievement, the world can take the first steps in acknowledging that most Asian Americans are not exceptional, and many do not achieve extraordinary educational and occupational outcomes. There are at least as many Asian Americans enrolled at Pasadena City College and Cal State Los Angeles as compared to UC Berkeley. As a consequence, so-called "underachievers" may be less likely to reject their ethnic identities out of frustration. The beneficial side effect of such realizations could improve the self-esteem of Asian American college students, as well as the self-esteem of whites, blacks and Latinos, who are often stereotyped by teachers and peers as being academic low-achievers compared to their Asian peers.

And when the world stops being so mesmerized by what it thinks should be at the end of the rainbow, maybe we will all appreciate that journey—and its origins.

Interestingly, the study found that Mexican-American parents strongly value education, but that their frame of academic achievement is less exacting than Chinese-American parents. They emphasize finishing high school, possibly going to college—though not necessarily Harvard—and having some kind of career. Mexican-Americans aspiring to higher education look toward good colleges in the Los Angeles area (assuming they are from Los Angeles), and often settle on community colleges in their neighborhoods. Because many Mexican immigrant parents have a relatively low level of education, they were not as well-equipped to help their children succeed when compared with Chinese-American parents.

We should take our cue from the mathematician, who appreciates the deltas in life—the incremental changes in variables. Too often we deal in absolutes: the final sum. But how much did it take to achieve whatever the final sum is? For the child of Mexican immigrants who may have spent his formative years using an outhouse in the Sonoran Desert, and who just graduated from a local community college, that academic achievement may represent a road travelled and an effort expended that the Asian-American counterpart, ferried from SAT prep courses to calligraphy class, may never understand—the equivalent of which he or she may never even dream of accomplishing.

We must never forget the delta.