So let's see - the first paragraph says compulsive shopping and sex are addictions just like compulsive substance use is. That was my point in Love and Addiction. (By the way. I would point out the mathematical error when Dr. Beck claims drug and alcohol dependency is "the leading cause of addiction in the U. S." - more than "compulsive shopping and spending food sex gambling video-gaming the Internet and more." Really?)
The second paragraph says that according to Beck they are all chronic diseases requiring "dedicated medical management." I can just picture a rock star hooked up to an IV machine as he recovers from his latest affair with the likes of Paris Hilton. Heather Locklear. Pamela Anderson - whoever. And I can see millions of husbands looking at their shoes as they imagine what they would do if confronted with a willing nude version of some Hollywood hottie.
And that's where the average American parts company with Dr. Beck: "That's no disease," they shout in unison. Just like eating oodles of hot fudge is no disease. It's an excess -- yes it can be extremely self-defeating - even to the point of endangering one's health. Yes it can be fueled by the negative consequences from previous such indulgences. That's addiction.
But is that a medical disease? Hasn't this kind of addictive self-destructive cycle been around since the bible? Haven't we all experienced doing more of something we know is bad for us because it temporarily pleases us? There in a nutshell is my argument that addiction is not a disease but rather an experience people seek in order to allay negative feelings (like anxiety or depression) and to give them a false sense of control in their lives and which can become insanely self-fueling.
And what if we say it is a medical disease? For Dr. Beck that means it is uncontrollable inbred and genetic can never be reversed is not subject to interpersonal and setting factors like stress and exposure and cannot be cured by improving coping and situational control such as through teaching problem solving skills contrasting behavior with personal values changing social networks to comprise moderate users. Too bad. Dr. Beck -- because those are the most empirically effective treatments for addiction.
In 2003 William R. Miller and his colleagues rated forty-eight kinds of treatment by combining the results of 381 controlled trials that had compared the effectiveness of a treatment with either no treatment or with other alcoholism therapies. The treatment with by far the best score was 'brief intervention' - followed by motivational enhancement community reinforcement and social-skills training. The least effective treatments were found to be general alcoholism counseling and education ordinary psychotherapy and confrontational therapies followed by twelve-step interventions and AA (ranked 37th and 38th) - the very treatments most utilized in the U. S.!
Paul Newman often referred to his beer drinking and was identified by it. His obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle listed: "Mr. Newman reveled in certain aspects of stereotypical male behavior. He loved drinking beer and playing elaborate pranks on friends." In the New York Times best friend A. E. Hotchner recounted long days "on Long Island Sound drinking beer and scaring the fish." But Newman's predilection for beer is not well known -- perhaps because it is incongruous with his image.
I thought of this when I had lunch with several friends and one said. "Paul Newman had a six-pack of beer every day." Everybody else in the room denied this factoid out of hand. I believe they thought that a happily married man successful professional and philanthropist like Newman - one who moreover never entered the Betty Ford Center - could not have been a regular drinker. It just didn't add up. (They might have added that Newman was an anti-drug activist due to the drug overdose death of his son from his first marriage.)
Although I'm not aware that Newman ever addressed this "controversy," I imagine he might have said. "I lead an active healthy engaged life in which I regularly drink beer. I hold myself responsible for being a productive positive person - and I don't see anything wrong with regularly consuming a potent psychoactive substance so long as I am true to my own values" (and presumably his wife's).
Since alcohol is legal and widely available and drug use is quite prevalent (100 million Americans have consumed illicit drugs). Americans - human beings - all have to somehow come to grips with what we might call the Newman paradox - making peace with psychoactive substance use (including alcohol). And despite all of our anti-drug efforts as National Institute on Drug Abuse director Nora Volkow has recently announced this task is becoming exponentially more difficult with the proliferation of powerful pharmaceuticals among current generations of children.
But schools are not allowed to talk about this. Certainly school authorities are not going to bring in successful actors or athletes who confess they have used drugs or to talk about their enjoyment of drinking. The prevailing prevention approach is to tell everyone not to do these things claim no one successful has ever done them and carry on with what everyone knows to be a complete fiction. (.)
When I speak with a group of parents - or parents and students - I begin by asking. "How many people in this room drink alcohol?" Looking around at the majority of parents (in an upper socio-economic and ethnic state like New Jersey) who do. I ask people. "What does this say about your school's DARE program?" A parent will then reply. "I was always afraid to voice my concern that the zero-tolerance message they teach our kids - it just doesn't make sense. Look around you!"
Here's Kareem Jabbar's resolution of these issues in Giant Steps: "Drugs are an open secret on all strata of America society: . [So] each man and woman from the most known to the least should have the confidence and the strength to create and live by his or her own beliefs and not be led blindly by others who may not be qualified for the job."
"I don't really care who's doing drugs in the NBA as long as the scene isn't adversely affecting my team and teammates. I've known enough drug users--going as far back as grade school and the streets of New York--not to view them as pariahs or lost souls. I've certainly smoked more than my quota of weed."
Whoooa! But Jabbar is not endorsing drug use willy-nilly here: "For a while there at UCLA I didn't want to hang out with anyone who didn't smoke reefer but that was as parochial a view of the world as any uptight antidoper's and I got over it quickly." And he notes as a professional athlete. "serious drug use whether it's pot cocaine amphetamines or heroin will wrestle with your conditioning."
But we were uneasy about the shift not the least because we feared there were limits to our ability to continue consuming. We elected a nudge who told us that - but then we rejected him. Instead in response to our fear rode Ronald Reagan like the cowboy heroes to whom he often played supporting roles in films. He convinced us there were no limits to our ability to consume now and forever.
With this last restraint removed. Americans set all their efforts to feeding themselves - eating more and better foods driving bigger and better cars getting their kids into superior schools making more money owning larger homes being healthier having better sex being happier protecting ourselves from discordant elements around the world.
But each of these consumptive goals has proven double-edged. The eating has interfered with the health the larger homes and cars have bumped into the limits on natural resources our ability to protect our international interests has been undercut by the massive discrepancy between our productiveness and our consumption our happiness and mental health could not be purchased as we were promised they would be and so on.
"Chickens coming home to roost" has become a favorite metaphor for critiquing American society and our economic system. The largest latest example of an obstacle we cannot overcome is the collapse of real estate consumption and the related implosion of our financial institutions.
And our response? Like the fantasy futuristic figures in the cartoon hit film WALL-E - who are so fat and complacent they are permanently attached to personal conveyances they ride from one shopping venue to another - we scream for a return of our toys and treats. We want overextended mortgages to be forgiven we want American automakers who made massive hunks of steel for us to be saved we want the planet to be okay despite our assaults on it to obtain the resources we need for our pleasures.
But we are incapable of sacrificing anything to achieve these goals - we have lost that ability. We define what we want to be lower taxes and more goodies not a return to financial soundness and living within our means. So to succeed at our goals is to feed our failures. The presidential candidate who wins will be the one who best convinces us he can square this circle - but the impossibility of his doing so is written in the wind.
Audiences rely on TV psychics to divine their love lives health what happened to missing relatives and - more than anything else - to make sure dead relatives aren't mad at them. This usually amounts to asking whether so-and-so knew that the questioner loved them. Sylvia or James reassures the depressed audience member often discerning that the dead people in question are hovering nearby and can hear the professions of love themselves.
Ghost Town is about a husband who cheated on his loving wife his loving wife and a go-between who acquires the gift of communicating with the dead. The husband (played by Greg Kinnear) harangues Ricky Gervais to tell his wife (Tea Leoni) that her new fiancée's a bum - but really he wants to say he's sorry for being a bum and that he loved her.
Kinnear is joined in his harassment of Gervais playing misanthrope dentist Bertram Pincus (himself nursing a broken heart) by scores of dead people who can't leave New York City until someone communicates something critical to their survivors that will show how much they really loved them or some such. As if you could live a whole life with someone and then by some unfortunate accident misplace at the last moment the one thing that would show them you really cared.
Interviewed about the movie. Brit Gervais points out the parallels to Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," in that Pincus becomes a feeling human being after his experiences in the underworld. It is true - both tales are about redemption. But there is a difference. Scrooge never actually communicates with the dead or missing while observing them before he returns to life to rectify his current behavior and relationships.
3. The genome is more mobile and malleable than had been deemed possible with many genes interacting most DNA serving to impact rates and direction of ontological development and pre- and post-birth environmental influences changing sometimes radically genetic expression.
5. The entire genome-determines-all concept turns out to have been an American fantasy fueled by our never-ending hope that medical science can cure everything wrong with us. Whether it can make coming generations physically healthier than past ones. Whether it can make us happier better able to accept and relate to others and our world and more resistant to the lure of addiction has on the other and been decisively refuted.
The government agency that most traffics in MRIs of the brain is the National Institute on Drug Abuse where they claim cocaine causes addiction because the drug floods the pleasure centers of the brain. But not one scientist claims they can tell if an individual is addicted by the effects of cocaine on the person's brain.
Rather testing goes the other way - when a person shows a particular brain image from cocaine use researchers quickly examine their drug usage patterns to "prove" that the drug's impact on the brain "causes" addiction. But if the person says. "I was uncomfortable when I felt that ‘lit up'," or "I was afraid to use the drug regularly because of the impact it had on me," we say they are not addicted no matter what their MRI looks like.
Well hold your horses. In India they are using such MRIs in court; India became the first country to convict someone of a crime because the prosecution claimed a brain scan revealed a defendant had specific memories of the murder in question and was therefore guilty of the crime. The woman received a life sentence.
"Psychologists and neuroscientists in the United States which has been at the forefront of brain-based lie detection variously called India's application of the technology to legal cases ‘fascinating,' ‘ridiculous,' ‘chilling' and ‘unconscionable.'" That is although the dominant reaction was that hocus pocus was being used to prove something for which there was not sufficient actual evidence some Americans couldn't help but be fascinated by the prospect that some day soon we could be making similar claims here.
In the 2002 Tom Cruise-Steven Spielberg movie (from a Philip K. Dick story). "Minority Report," people are convicted and imprisoned for crimes which have not occurred but which are foretold from examination of their genetic material (or something). As ridiculous as its seems to apply this to contemporary American jurisprudence what if one day soon we rely on a scan to show that a person has a level of hatred and rage towards someone that is significantly associated with people harming a person? What if we decide this is a reliable enough indicator that such a crime will occur that we imprison the person before they actually perpetrate any such violence?
Murrow never confronted McCarthy directly. O'Reilly on the other hand actually poses questions gets answers and reframes his thinking as he sits before millions of viewers frequently coming up with brilliant rejoinders or at least new ways of phrasing questions to sidestep defensive moves by those he interviews.
As a result the two best political interviews of this presidential campaign were O'Reilly's of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (separately) where real differences were aired and explored - since of course. O'Reilly was as interested in expressing his views as hearing the candidates'.
2. Voters have no interest in hearing candidates debate issues. At any moment in the campaign half to two-thirds of Americans are tuned out because politics is too complicated and bores them. The better-informed they are the more likely they are to have set opinions and to back a candidate strongly already.
Campaigns and debates are about candidates processing phrases looking presidential (but personable also) and hoping the other candidate will say something idiotic. The most potent vote-grabbing ideas - "low taxes," "getting tough" - are more likely to be harmful to the country than helpful. Occasionally the smarter better candidate is elected but the democratic political process does not reliably produce this outcome. More likely the mass of uninformed voters stampede when they smell that one candidate is different weak or - God forbid - thoughtful and complicated.
3. Tina Fey bears no resemblance to Sarah Palin. I pride myself on discerning resemblances that are not immediately obvious but I cannot recognize Sarah Palin in Tina Fey even (or especially) on the recent Saturday Night Live skit. Tina Fey conveys a self-awareness and consciousness that are entirely absent from the visage of Palin who confidently sees the world as she - and her fellow Christian fundamentalists - imagine it.
4. John McCain is not brave. When I was in high school. I was shocked when a large physically imposing football player I knew allowed a friend to bully a girl with epilepsy. Of course he simply wanted to be accepted by the other kids who felt better about themselves when mocking and harassing someone with a disability. John McCain learned the meaning of military honor as a midshipman - stand by your men accept punishment from captors endure physical pain. McCain is not strong enough emotionally morally or intellectually to map out an unpopular position and stand by it. And he'll gang tackle the weak among us with the gusto of a kamikaze pilot.
Almost but not quite. Referring to the recent in which 100+ university presidents recommended lowering the drinking age to 18 so that young people can be socialized into sensible drinking. Brody obligatorily sniffs: "But opponents say there is no hard evidence for this belief and a better plan would be to change the drinking culture on campus."
Of course the purpose of the age-change proposal is to change the campus drinking culture. Recognizing that drinking occurs while curtailing its dangerous excesses is called "harm reduction." I have outlined a and a in high school and entering college.
As a result. Wechsler and colleagues have begun studying campus settings which encourage heavy drinking: "The study found that the sites of heaviest drinking by college students were off-campus bars and parties held off-campus and at fraternity and sorority houses." But blinkered by their zero-tolerance blinders this quickly segues into global recommendations such as "state alcohol-control policies like keg registration and laws restricting happy hours open containers in public beer sold in pitchers and billboards and other types of alcohol advertising."
Wechsler and Brody are incapable of seeing that such measures are stop-gap and rearguard - that instead of trying to prevent drinking at sites "that sell alcohol in large containers fishbowls and pitchers special promotions: women's nights where the women can drink free; 25-cent beers; two drinks for the price of one; and gut-busters where people can drink all they want for one price until they have to go to the bathroom," it would be better to create sensible drinking settings on campus -- which would be possible with an 18-year-old drinking age.
For example a campus eatery could serve beer and wine to students with meals in a well-lit environment that permitted active conversations and low-key nighttime entertainments (e g. live acoustic music) involving people of all ages (faculty staff families undergraduate and graduate students). It is settings like these in which people not only drink sensibly - they learn lifetime habits of sensible drinking.
Of course as I make clear in avoiding excess and addiction involves more than tutoring people on substance use - it entails deeper values and purposes in life: young people who want to accomplish something and who believe they are capable of doing so will avoid self-destructive excesses of all kinds.
The only problem with Clapton as suitable mating material was that he had just left a three-year period of holing himself up with a girlfriend and heroin. After treatment to overcome that addiction he then embarked on a several-year drinking binge which is where Boyd joined him.
Although Clapton had individual problems. Boyd's entire social set indulged in non-stop partying in which she regularly joined. Still she couldn't help but notice some difficulties in their relationship. Joining him on tour she found that Clapton "coped by drinking himself close to oblivion" daily sometimes showing up for concerts so drunk he performed on his back.
After the tour away together on an idyllic Caribbean island they had "the most glorious time." Except that the gardener would round Clapton up every morning and "take him to the ‘tea shop'" where they would "spend the day smoking dope and drinking. Eric would come home in the evening and pass out."
When they returned to England. Boyd found. "Eric loved the pub. we would go there most lunchtimes. and then he would invite all these people who happened to be there back to the house afterward and carry on drinking. ." For relief once again they went on vacation to a hotel Clapton owned with a friend where they "inevitably settled down to some serious drinking."
Finally back at Clapton's home. "we settled down to a normal life - although it was far from normal." Their lives revolved around parties for "Eric only came alive" when drinking and with an audience. "As the drink took hold. Eric began to live his life in five-hour cycles: his body needed alcohol every five hours so there was no set pattern to his life or his moods. . I was never away more than five hours and I would never know what mood I would find him in when I came back into the house." At night. "I used to dread the sound of his lurching footsteps on the wooden stairs not knowing what to expect next."
Houston do you think there could be a problem? But Pattie Boyd says she didn't recognize one: "I accepted Eric's behavior." This was not because she was feeling good but "It wasn't until later that I realized how shallow and narrow my life was becoming." No signs there despite indignity after indignity. She came home once to find Clapton sitting next to a model. Clapton told her to leave: "'Can't you see we're having a really intense and intimate conversation here?' He was very drunk."
What else to do but get married? Only later did Boyd find out "how the whole thing had come about. Eric had been playing an endless drunken game of pool. ." A friend bet "Eric he could get his photograph in the newspapers the following morning." And so the wedding was set.
All of this was before the chapter "Spiraling Our of Control," including Clapton's nonstop infidelity. But Boyd had trouble coming to grips with all of this for the following reason: "I spoke to a few doctors about it but no one in the medical profession seemed prepared to acknowledge there was a problem." More pain and despair followed. Oh. Clapton did write "Wonderful Tonight" about Boyd.
Okay let's say there was neglect of alcohol problems in the British (and American) medical communities (although this was the 1980s). Simply looking at her life and Clapton's and the feelings of dread and misery that pervaded her existence shouldn't Boyd have recognized something was amiss even leaving out any reference to alcohol? Didn't she have ample evidence of this before she married Clapton? Did she need an expert to explain. "Your husband is an alcoholic and his drinking is making your life a hell?"
Initially the Palin family and Republican leadership seemed secretive about Bristol's pregnancy. But when it became apparent that the pregnancy is actually a plus for the Republicans politically the teenager and her 18-year-old boyfriend. Levi Johnston proudly joined her mother on stage after her speech at the Republican convention.
Palin supporters uniformly describe Bristol's pregnancy as a mistake that shouldn't be held against her. Fair enough. But they never say what the mistake was. In fact they believe the mistake was the sex act itself - not the failure to protect herself against pregnancy and disease.
So sex between these kids is wrong - as is sex education in the eyes of Palin supporters - but pregnancy is good. So long as the two young teens settle down get married and no longer enjoy sex all is forgiven. Of course it is unlikely that they initiated sex with this attitude - they did it for excitement and pleasure in which guilt was an important ingredient.
But now that they are "settled in" (to a premarital pregnancy) all thoughts of sexual pleasure are out the window. They will have to raise a small child go to school and parade themselves in front of Republican crowds as upstanding chaste Christians. Not a very sexy journey to embark on at the age of 17.
Somehow since former Republican VP Dan Quayle chastised Murphy Brown for being a single mother the American sexual ideal for teens has shifted. Recognizing that chastity is impossible stalwart Americans have regrouped to the position that kids can go at it as long as sex for fun is quickly abandoned. The symbol of this transition in thinking about teen sex is the happy greeting of Bristol's pregnancy.
In a way we have returned to the bundling enjoyed by Puritans in Colonial America where unmarried young people slept together on winter nights for warmth which quickly put them in a family way and eliminated all thoughts of illicit sex. That is until they started cheating on one another.
When a girl conceived out of wedlock. Puritans generally tried to establish a family. Pregnancies often resulted from the Puritans' Bundling allowed a courting couple to sleep together in the girl's home provided they were individually bundled. While the Puritans appeared to take a loose position on fornication they severely punished adultery and they executed homosexuals.
Whatever problems he has had and overcome however. Thus his remarkable effort to compel government agencies to call addiction a disease titled the "Recognizing Addiction as a Disease Act of 2007," has been introduced for debate in the United States Senate this month.
Biden's nutty mistaken bill will rewrite government language regarding addiction and recovery. Outside of China most technologically advanced countries don't pass bills announcing scientific truths. Einstein had to muddle along seeking recognition and acceptance of his ideas from the scientific community while Galileo labored under the Catholic Church's declaring that his finding that the sun was the center of the solar system - not the earth - was doctrinally unsound.
Biden is seeking to replace the word substance "abuse," which suggests that addicts intentionally abuse substances. Well some do. What about all the people who abuse substances who don't achieve the level of addiction (or "dependence"). DSM-IV (for which I was an advisor) divides substance use disorders into "abuse" and "dependence" categories which is already a complex oversimplification.
And nearly all addicts are aware at various points in their careers that their use is excessive negative and dangerous - as a result of which many quit. Some do not at least right away. But you can't capture this complexity by replacing the term "drug abuse" with "brain disease."
In fact. Biden's bill while oversimplifying self-consciously recognizes it is oversimplified (see below) - note such formulations in section (1) as "it is considered a brain disease," "scientists have identified many of the biological and environmental factors that contribute to" (let's not go out on a limb and say something definitive here). As for personal shame and social stigma in part (2) what if an addict kills a child in their care. Should they be ashamed? What if people quit addictions like smoking because they can't take the stigma of huddling in the courtyard with other smokers or if addicts or alcoholics quit drugging or drinking because they don't want their children to be ashamed of them?
(1) Addiction is a chronic relapsing brain disease that is characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use despite harmful consequences. It is considered a brain disease because drugs change the brain's structure and manner in which it functions. These brain changes can be long lasting and can lead to the harmful behaviors seen in people who abuse drugs. The disease of addiction affects both brain and behavior and scientists have identified many of the biological and environmental factors that contribute to the development and progression of the disease.
(2) The pejorative term "abuse" used in connection with diseases of addiction [note that part (1) itself speaks of "people who abuse drugs"] has the adverse effect of increasing social stigma and personal shame both of which are so often barriers to an individual's decision to seek treatment.
I like Biden because he is independent brave hard-headed and says what he believes. But isn't this bill getting into totalitarian territory declaring what researchers and clinicians may call and regard a problem? (although in declaring this God's truth it amounted to an official coronation).
When Jeff Schaler got me kicked off the St. John's server (including addiction groups on whose boards I served) after I disagreed with how he handled opponents to our anti-disease views on the Controlled Drinking/Drug Use Listserv. I thought I was as much in Siberia as I was likely to get. But now I suppose the government could declare my views on addiction illegal and confiscate my computer. However even if they put me on the rack I won't say addiction is a brain disease -- you have to stand for something.
What is important is that a respectable interest group has spoken up for the most ethically clear and psychologically sound principles. The United States is the only Western country that delays legal drinking until 21. As Americans we are forced once again to ask. "" Everywhere else people realize you can't prevent 18-21-year-olds from drinking you can only encourage them to drink in more antisocial guilty and illegal ways - .
The bizarre ritual of sanctioned binge drinking takes place on virtually every campus around the country (I remember asking a young man who attended a Christian Science college where he learned to drink - "At college like everyone else," he answered). Instead of taking an opportunity where young people are in a protected environment which wraps around their entire lives to teach them to do something critical like drinking in a reasonable way the best we can currently say is. "We know we can't tell you to drink sensibly - so go out and booze at bars and parties but please don't kill yourself or anyone around you."
As I describe in every campus should offer drinking environments where beer and wine are served to all students along with food in brightly lit settings with people (including faculty and grad students) of all ages present and where civilized drinking is the rule of the day. How better to counteract the ubiquitous instruction in week-end bingeing now taught at fraternities and military bases?
Whenever suggestions like this are raised. - stemming primarily from America's blue-nose tradition of ambivalence towards intoxicants - rush from the woodwork to say. "You're telling kids it's okay to consume addictive substances." Yes and we need to give them some practice in using them responsibly happily and even healthily. But this usual group of opponents can't simply discount the Amethyst Group as industry stooges - they are our leading experts on what the hell kids are up to after they leave our homes before they enter the world.
At the Olympics. President Bush was questioned about performance-enhancing drugs in baseball (where he formerly worked) as well as the Olympics. Surprise - he was against them. Of course. Bush now abstains from alcohol and tobacco - after being a heavy smoker and drinker for years.
There you have it - he should know. But steroids and other substances employed to improve functioning - including mental acuity - occupy a more ambiguous place. Most users don't voluntarily decide to desist due to health problems. Rather athletes like Barry Bonds are suspected of using and uncovered due to their superlative performances. As the case of Roger Cleamons revealed the two classes of athletes are not those who use such drugs and those who don't but those whose use is more-or-less ignored (Cleamons) and those who are prosecuted for it (Bonds).
The ongoing conflict between use and abstinence received an interesting jolt when the New York Times featured an article by respected science writer John Tierney entitled. "Let the games be doped." In other words substances that improve performance can never be eliminated so allow and monitor their use.
Tierney actually has created a Web site to invite suggestions for how to do this! Good luck. I recently discussed my alcohol use with my doctor who said that my thinking 2-3 drinks daily was good for me (a 62-year-old male) was a self-deception. I am familiar with this literature and the most respected medical journals regularly publish information that this is so. But I have come to see that this advice will never be publicized by public health and medical authorities in the United States. We just can't go there. If you're going to live longer you're going to have to sneak your drinks.
There are many things the truth of which Americans deny. But what is so amusing in the case of these substances is that somehow many millions of Americans use them at the same time as the American public at large disapproves of them. When you count all the drinkers smokers (sometimes secret) antidepressant and other mood-modifying pharmaceutical users (legal and illegal) performance substance consumers and so on - we incorporate not only the majority of - but virtually all - Americans. And of course. I haven't even mentioned coffee drinkers.!
And Bush's answer was the same in each case: "I told them we were unhappy with their policies." With what result? Bush shared a box with Putin during the Olympic opening ceremonies and apparently told him about America's unhappiness with Russian bombing of Georgian civilians. The next day. Russia invaded Georgia.
Of course the President could have gotten a reading of what the Chinese leader was thinking - he could have asked him. But in this - as in so many interactions by politicians moral and religious leaders educators et al. - asking questions is not the order of the day. (Can you imagine John Edwards seeking reactions to his affair with Rielle Hunter?)
The only problem in all of these cases is that not only do the speakers have little idea of what the supposed object of their communication is thinking; in most cases a direct verbal thrust produces an equivalent reaction in the opposite direction by the recipient. The recognition of this truth has created a whole brand of therapy called motivational interviewing (MI).
In MI the therapist simply restates and explores whatever the therapy client tells the therapist. This approach is based on the simple principle that lecturing people to change doesn't work and in fact cements their current dysfunctional views and actions. If you want people to reconsider their behavior you must enter their minds enough to allow them to review their way of doing things.
Perhaps the best example of the futility of lecturing people to acknowledge guilt and change their ways is Judge Judy - the widely syndicated small claims court TV show presided over by former family court judge. Judith Sheindlin. Sheindlin regularly lectures plaintiffs and defendants about their misdeeds - indeed about the whole direction of their lives.
But I have never yet seen a person acknowledge any fault based on Judge Judy's lectures when questioned after their hearing. Not once. Being humiliated in front of millions of TV viewers (and probably more important to the participants several score of court room spectators) makes people defensive not open to self-examination and change.
I don't think that Bush's asking Putin why Russia is intent on bringing Georgia to its knees or Juntas why China refuses to allow protestors to speak up would bring about instant change in these countries' policies. But at least the President would have some notion when asked what exactly is on the minds of those who can and do impact the lives of billions of people worldwide.
The National Enquirer reported last December on an affair then Presidential candidate John Edwards had had with campaign cinematographer Rielle Hunter. Edwards immediately and repeatedly labeled the story a lie and for the last eight months no other major media outlet had picked up the story. But on July 21st the Enquirer reported catching Edwards visiting Hunter and her baby daughter at a Los Angeles hotel leaving after 2AM in the morning.
Once again. Edwards denounced the story but it set into motion the events culminating in Edwards' public confession last Friday on ABC's "Nightline." While he admitted having an affair with Hunter. Edwards minimized it as short-lived labeled it a liaison and definitively rejected claims he was the father of Hunter's baby. At the same time his wife Elizabeth posted at her blog that she forgave her husband and requested privacy for their family.
Edwards' TV performance will go down in history. It is hard to find a way to parody it. He confessed to "a narcissism that leads you to believe you can do whatever you want you're invincible and there will be no consequences." . But more incredible. Edwards was demonstrating the same narcissistic sense of invincibility in his supposed confession!
Edwards told Nightline that his purpose in meeting with Hunter was to try to keep her from revealing the affair. But this does not hold water on a number of grounds. While Edwards told Nightline he would gladly take a DNA test. Hunter said on Saturday she would not participate in testing. The hotel meeting obviously required a good deal of planning and Hunter was accompanied by a friend and took two rooms so she could meet privately with Edwards after allowing him contact with the baby according to the Enquirer. What was that about?
Hunter's entire living situation is - and remains - shrouded in mystery. She originally moved from New York to North Carolina near Edwards' headquarters through 2007 (Edwards claimed the brief affair ended in 2006). She has since moved to California and is reportedly in close contact with long-time Edwards friend and associate Andrew Young and his family who likewise moved to California. This is stunning news since Young confessed to being the baby's father although no father is listed on the North Carolina birth certificate.
Edwards' entire conceit in imagining that he could run for president while keeping the affair secret - a secret he would presumably have maintained if elected President (and if his wife dies of cancer) - represents a breathtaking self-centeredness. But it seems entirely possible he has made this very belated announcement of the affair as part of an effort to cover-up his continuing involvement with Hunter. Edwards claims for instance to have no idea about how Hunter supports herself is living in California and any connection she has with Young! The Enquirer meanwhile reports Edwards has had several assignations with Hunter in California.
If there is any truth to these allegations (and both the Enquirer and ABC are promising to reveal more about the situation). Edwards telling the public as much as he must while hiding other information - and claiming to be entirely forthcoming - represents a greater level of arrogance self-reference and psychotic distortion of reality than has ever been displayed by the many political figures who have gone down in flames giving expression to their sexual urges as the just deserts for their political prowess.
politicians who are hypocrites?" Apparently not - . As is typical of such confessions. Edwards announced that he had been "99% honest," after previously claiming media reports about the liaison were "lies." He said he would refuse to say anything more about his affair despite making a midnight hotel visit to see Hunter recently. He also swore he gave her no money although reports are that supporters have paid her off handsomely.
Wife Elizabeth meanwhile and requesting that their family's privacy be respected despite Edwards placing his family at the center of his campaign. No one can fault a woman combating potentially terminal cancer anything but we must wonder about a family dynamic where Edwards relies on his wife's illness for sympathy while cheating on her.
[Psychological note: Some readers complain this post isn't psychological although I think it is psychological through and through. Let me express exactly what I think is happening with Edwards. An ardent Christian he has suppressed his ambiguous sexuality throughout his life and married a sexually non-challenging woman. When confronted with a younger woman who found him sexually attractive (see You Tube clip in which Hunter gushes about Edwards ) he was knocked off his pins (see You Tube clip by Hunter where Edwards giggles and boasts like a school boy to her ). He had no defense against such emotions along with. Presto -- a brief affair which was only secondarily sexual.]
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