Psychiatrists Approve the New DSM-5 Revisions

After several years of wrangling, arguing, and ignoring most of the serious criticisms, the APA (American Psychiatric Association) has voted to approve the controversial revisions that have been drafted for the industry standard psychiatric diagnosis manual.

Say goodbye to dyslexia, Asperger's Syndrome, several of the personality disorders, and grief as a natural response to loss - and say hello to bratty children (often the result of poor parenting skills) as mentally ill, only six personality disorders (antisocial, avoidant, borderline, narcissistic, obsessive/compulsive and schizotypal) down from ten, and grief lasting more than two weeks as a major depressive disorder ("having just 2 weeks of sadness and loss of interest along with reduced appetite, sleep, and energy").

You can find out more at the DSM-5 website or Dr. Allen Frances' Psychology Today blog, DSM-5 in Distress (Frances oversaw the DSM-IV revision process but was not even invited to participate in the 5th revision - this points to a possible bias in his criticisms [which I reject] and to the short-sightedness of the APA).

One last thought - the DSM is created by and for psychiatrists, not counselors, social workers, or psychologists (collectively, psychotherapists). We should leave them to their book and work together to create a new manual reflecting what we actually worth when we see clients (most psychiatrists no longer do therapy, they prescribe drugs). Failing that, we should switch (for now) to the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual, which is more suited to therapy than the DSM ever was or will be in the future.

DSM-5: Psychiatrists OK Vast Changes To Diagnosis Manual 

By LINDSEY TANNER 12/01/12 

CHICAGO -- For the first time in almost two decades the nation's psychiatrists are changing the guidebook they use to diagnose mental disorders. Among the most controversial proposed changes: Dropping certain familiar terms like Asperger's disorder and dyslexia and calling frequent, severe temper tantrums a mental illness 

The board of trustees for the American Psychiatric Association voted Saturday in suburban Washington, D.C., on scores of revisions that have been in the works for several years. Details will come next May when the group's fifth diagnostic manual is published. 

The trustees made the final decision on what proposals made the cut; recommendations came from experts in several task force groups assigned to evaluate different mental illnesses. 

Board members were tightlipped about the update, but its impact will be huge, affecting millions of children and adults worldwide. 

The manual "defines what constellations of symptoms health care professionals recognize as mental disorders and more importantly ... shapes who will receive what treatment. Even seemingly subtle changes to the criteria can have substantial effects on patterns of care," said Dr. Mark Olfson, a Columbia University psychiatry professor who was not involved in the revision process. 

The manual also is important for the insurance industry in deciding what treatment to pay for, and it helps schools decide how to allot special education. 

The guidebook's official title is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The new one is the fifth edition, known as the DSM-5. A 2000 edition made minor changes but the last major edition was published in 1994. 

The manual "seeks to capture the current state of knowledge of psychiatric disorders. Since 2000 ... there have been important advances in our understanding of the nature of psychiatric disorders," Olfson said. 

Expected changes include formally adopting a term for children and adults with autism – "autism spectrum disorder," encompassing those with severe autism, who often don't talk or interact, and those with mild forms including Asperger's. Asperger's patients often have high intelligence and vast knowledge on quirky subjects but lack social skills.

Transference and Countertransference: An Interview with Kerry Malawista

Kerry Malawista is co-author of Wearing My Tutu to Analysis and Other Stories: Learning Psychodynamic Concepts from Life, and she joins Michael at The Psych Files for a discussion of transference and countertransference (which should be conceptualized as co-transference).

Transference is about the client's unconscious material being projected onto the therapist; countertransference is about the therapist's unconscious material being projected onto the client. Each of these, in their traditional usage, misses the intersubjective field created whenever two (or more) people are in conversation.

Co-transference (Donna Orange - see Working Intersubjectively: Contextualism in Psychoanalytic Practice, written with George Atwood and Robert Stolorow) recognizes that if the client is projecting onto the therapist, then the therapist is also contributing to the dynamic. Likewise, if the therapist is projecting onto the client, the client is contributing to that exchange as well.

As you listen to this podcast, please keep in mind that the ideas of transference and counterference are conventional concepts - co-transference is an intersubjective perspective, and represents a post-conventional understanding.

Dr. Malawista is a training and supervising analyst with the Contemporary Freudian Society. She has taught and supervised in a variety of settings, including the George Washington University Psy.D. program, Smith College and Virginia Commonwealth University Schools for Social Work, and The New York Freudian Society.

Ep 185: The Dynamics of Therapy: Transference and Counter Transference: An Interview with Kerry Malawista

Podcast: Download

Transference and countertransference are two key concepts in psychoanalysis and they are fascinating. If you’re interested in the therapy side of psychology – particularly psychoanalysis – this is the episode for you. Kerry Malawista, psychoanalyst and author, along with Anne Adeleman and Catherine Anderson, talks about their new book, “Wearing My Tutu To Analysis“. In this episode we focus on two of the stories in the book, which focus on transference and countertransference. In earlier episodes of The Psych Files I asked you not to dismiss Freud’s ideas. Too often we only hear about his (100 year old) ideas on sex. There is A LOT more to Freud and this episode will convince you of that.

Basically, transference is when we take real live feelings from our own life and then literally transfer them onto the therapist or analyst. We do this in all aspects of our lives. If the brain had to respond to every new encounter like it had never seen it before we’d be overwhelmed with data. So transference is our way of using what se’ve learned from our earlier lives and then representing it on new people that come along. Sometimes that’s for positive when things went well in the past, and sometimes negatively when we keep repeating relationships [from the past] that weren’t helpful. – Kerry Malwista

Just like transference, countertransference is ubiquitous. It’s all the emotional responses a therapist has to a patient – both conscious and unconscious – and how valuable that data is if it can be used in the right way. That’s where the skills of the therapist come in. They can make note of the feelings they’re having and their [own] reactions and use them to further the work and maybe understand how the patient is actually feeling. – Kerry Malawista

Resources on Psychoanalysis

• The Necessity of the Frame in Psychotherapy
• In Defense of Defense Mechanisms
• Kerry Malwista’s blog on the Psychology Today site, Wearing My Tutu to Analysis

A Critical History of Findhorn - Birth of the "New Age"

This interesting article comes from the November 5 issue of Swans, their special "New Age" edition with an interesting assortment of articles on the various contributing sources to what we now term the "New Age" movement. Several of these are cool articles, but I was struck by the one on the Findhorn community, one of the most influential intentional communities of the 1960s and 1970s. You can read the "official" history of Findhorn at their site.

Here are the contents of the New Age issue.

New Age Special Issue

Manuel García, Jr.: Asian Philosophies And The "New Age"
Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist philosophies that influenced the New Age.

Glenn Reed: Mildred I Presume?
Reflections on technology and its effect on social interactions.

Jason Colavito: Of Atlantis And Aliens
Discussion of how the myth of Atlantis and alien visitation are related to imperial historical narratives.

Jan Baughman: New Age Geriatrics
A cartoonish look at the commercialized New Age movement in its old age.

Michael Barker: New Age Flying Objects
An examination of the theosophical roots of UFOism, drawing upon David Clarke and Andy Roberts book, Flying Saucerers: A Social History of UFOlogy (Alternative Albion, 2007).

Michael Barker: Sir George Trevelyan's Life Of Magic
A review of Sir George Trevelyan (1906-1996) contribution to the New Age community.

Michael Barker: Findhorn's Angels
A critical history of the Findhorn Foundation, an eco-village based in Scotland.

Michael Barker: Paul Hawken's Spiritual Business
Exploration of Paul Hawken's spiritual proclivities vis-à-vis his love of capitalism.

Peter Byrne: Sounding Off Between New Age And Counterculture: Norman Mailer
A critical synthesis of Norman Mailer's literary output vis-à-vis the New Age.

Gilles d'Aymery: Old New Age
A look at the New Age movement through the now-defunct Foundation for Global Community.

* * * * *

Findhorn's Angels

 

by Michael Barker

"A born skeptic, I can appreciate that much of what you will read will seem implausible and incredible. I do not ask that you believe this account, for it is written only through one man's eyes. Every aspect of creation has as many realities as perceivers."
— Paul Hawken, 1975.

(Swans - November 5, 2012)   Paul Hawken is one of the world's leading proponents of green capitalism, having authored a number of books on this subject in recent decades, the most famous being Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (Earthscan, 1999), which he coauthored with Amory and Hunter Lovins. What is less well known -- although far from secret -- is the topic of Hawken's first book, The Magic of Findhorn (Souvenir Press, 1975), which explored the role that angels can fulfill in revising humankind's destructive relationship with planet earth. This book accomplished this stunning feat by eulogizing the early history of the Scottish-based Findhorn Community, a group that presently describes itself as "a spiritual community, ecovillage and an international centre for holistic education, helping to unfold a new human consciousness and create a positive and sustainable future." 

Hawken recalls how he first came across Findhorn when he read an article in Harper's by occult author Peter Tompkins "describing a small group of people, isolated on a cold windblown peninsula in Scotland, who were growing one of the world's most fantastic gardens with no resources except bushels of love and contact with another dimension of consciousness called the Devic and Elemental Worlds." But despite the fact that "reports of 42-pound cabbages and 60-pound broccoli plants" made the Findhorn story "quite unbelievable," Hawken's interest was piqued as to how the founder of Findhorn, an ex-Royal Air Force squadron leader named Peter Caddy, had obtained such success in the windswept Scottish sand dunes when before starting the garden he hadn't as much as planted a seed. (1) However, Peter did not simply talk to angels to produce large vegetables but actually spent years consciously enriching the garden's nutrients with organic matter; likewise his initial bumper crops are comparable in size to those regularly attained by British gardeners in competitions (or perhaps those attained by his father who was a prize-winning gardener); (2) while the windswept gardens of Findhorn benefited enormously from the warm air generated by the local Gulf Stream currents, and midsummer days that are some twenty hours long. The area is sometimes referred to as the Scottish Riviera.

 

Peter sat "at the helm of a community with the aura of a corporate president," perhaps owing much to his years spent in the Royal Air Force; and as Hawken adds: "The one thing that Peter emphasized was Punctuality." Much like military doctrine -- unquestioning dedication to Findhorn is a prerequisite for success; critical thinkers and naysayers are a burden to efficient organizational maintenance. Positive thinking is thus key to Peter's "Law of Manifestation" -- positivity being so central that the word "if" apparently "atrophied from his vocabulary years ago" as the word represents negative thinking, which as far as Findhorn is concerned is "self-defeating, demoralizing, and useless." "Just four rules at Findhorn: no dope, no smoking in public areas, a rule can be made by Peter at any time, and no negative thinking!" So although Hawken credits Peter as being "inwardly... extremely sensitive and intensely motivated," outwardly he is "very much the ex-squadron leader barking out commands." (3)

Here it is useful to backtrack a little to understand how Peter came to work for angels. Hawken traces Peter's first occult experience to his childhood, when his father's search for a cure to the crippling "pain of rheumatoid arthritis" led Frederick Caddy to the...

...mysterious medicine of Lucille Rutterby, a "spiritual healer" gifted with the ability to contact those on the "other side" and seek their help. Her husband, Plato Rutterby, joined her and the Caddys in a circle of friends, meeting once a week to channel and transmit the messages of the great Silver Deer, a former North American Indian chief who soared weekdays among the Celestial Ones and descended on Friday nights to the Earth Plane into this jaunty woman in her thirties who resembled a fresh boiled dumpling in woollies. (p.43)

Rutterby's unorthodox approach to healing, however, proved unsuccessful, and when Peter's father -- who despite his occult forays was a "staunch Methodist" -- went back to his family doctor he was diagnosed as suffering from kidney stones, which were promptly remedied by conventional means, as was his pain. "To hear Peter explain it, good came out of the pain and suffering that his father experienced because it brought Peter into contact with his first 'medium'" (4) Never mind that the medium's mysterious approach to healing his father had utterly failed.

Read the whole article.

UA researchers look at how memory impacts identity and sense of self. Autobiographical memory is essential to Antonio Damasio's autobiographical self, so if that memory is impaired for any reason (and for the study they looked at TBI), then the sense of self is altered.

The upside of their research is that "self-imagination" (imagining something from a personal perspective) can be an effective way to rehabilitate memory losses.

UA Study: Self-Imagination Can Enhance Memory

By Association for Psychological Science, November 7, 2012

Researchers in the UA department of psychology believe their findings could have important applications for memory rehabilitation. 

There’s no question that our ability to remember informs our sense of self. Now research conducted at the University of Arizona and published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, provides new evidence that the relationship may also work the other way around: invoking our sense of self can influence what we are able to remember.

Research has shown that self-imagination – imagining something from a personal perspective – can be an effective strategy for helping us to recognize something we’ve seen before or retrieve specific information on cue. And these beneficial effects have been demonstrated for both healthy adults and for individuals who suffer memory impairments as a result of brain injury.

These findings suggest that self-imagination is a promising strategy for memory rehabilitation. But no study has investigated the effect of self-imagination on what is perhaps the most difficult, and most relevant, type of memory: free recall.

Psychological scientists Matthew Grilli, a UA doctoral student in psychology, and Elizabeth Glisky, professor and head of the UA psychology department, decided to put self-imagination to the test. They wanted to compare self-imagination to more traditional strategies that involve sense of self in order to gain a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms that might be at work.

The researchers recruited 15 patients with acquired brain injury who had impaired memory and 15 healthy participants with normal memory to take part in the study. Over the course of the study, the participants were asked to memorize five lists of 24 adjectives that described personality traits. As they were presented with each personality trait, the participants were instructed to employ one of five strategies: think of a word that rhymes with the trait (baseline), think of a definition for the trait (semantic elaboration), think about how the trait describes them (semantic self-referential processing), think of a time when they acted out the trait (episodic self-referential processing), or imagine acting out the trait (self-imagining).

For all participants, healthy and memory-impaired, self-imagination boosted free recall of the personality traits more than any of the other strategies did.

Comparing the more traditional self-referential strategies, Grilli and Glisky found that the participants with memory impairments were better able to remember a word if they were asked to think about how well it described them (semantic) than if they were asked to think about a time when they acted out the personality trait (episodic).

This result falls in line with previous findings that knowledge about specific events from the past is often impaired in patients with brain injury. It also lends support to the researchers’ hypothesis that the benefit of self-imagination for memory-impaired patients might be related to their ability to retrieve knowledge regarding their own personality traits, identity roles and lifetime periods.

The researchers believe that their findings could have important applications for memory rehabilitation.

“Based on the results of our laboratory research,” Grilli said, “it might be possible to adapt self-imagination to help patients with memory problems remember information encountered in everyday life, such as what they read in a book or heard on the news.”

Self-imagination could also help clinicians in teaching memory-impaired individuals how to use memory aides that can enhance their independence. For example, this approach could help improve their ability to remember to program and consistently use smartphones to manage everyday errands, such as taking medication, purchasing items at a grocery store, or attending social events. Self-imagination could also be used to help individuals suffering from brain injury learn complex skills in order to return to the workplace.

“An important future step will be to investigate how to most effectively apply self-imagination in a rehabilitation program to make a meaningful impact on the lives of people with memory impairment,” Grilli said.

Grilli and Glisky conclude that the possible applications of their findings are quite broad since episodic memory deficits are linked with various conditions including autism, depression and normal aging.

Z Communications - Who Rules America?

From Z Communications, a great place to generally find more in-depth and (liberal) coverage of government, politics, and society. Press TV's documentary program 'Who Rules America?' provides a comprehensive look at the so-called democratic governing system of the United States of America and reveals the actual powers who are ruling the nation.

Who Rules America? (I)

Sunday, November 25, 2012
By Danny Schechter
Source: Press TV
Danny Schechter's ZSpace Page
Join ZSpace

Who Rules America? (I)



Press TV's documentary program 'Who Rules America?' provides a comprehensive look at the so called democratic governing system of the United States of America and reveals the actual powers who are ruling the nation.

* * * * * *

Who Rules America? (II)

Wednesday, November 28, 2012
By Danny Schechter
Source: Press TV
Danny Schechter's ZSpace Page
Join ZSpace

Who Owns America (II)



Press TV's documentary program 'Who Rules America?' provides a comprehensive look at the so called democratic governing system of the United States of America and reveals the actual powers who are ruling the nation.

Peter Meineck - Cognitive Science and Ancient Greek Drama

From Stanford University, this is a very interesting lecture by Peter Meineck on how cognitive science can enhance or shape our understanding of Greek drama. This is the autumn quarter 2012 Lorenz Eitner Lecture on Classical Art and Culture sponsored by the Classics Department.

Cognitive Science and Ancient Greek Drama

(November 8, 2012) In this illustrated talk incorporating live demonstrations, Peter Meineck will suggest a new method for approaching ancient drama using research drawn from the cognitive sciences. Can neuroscientific studies and modern cognitive theories be applied to the ancient Athenian brain? Can recent advances from the affective sciences offer us an array of new tools for better understanding the experience of ancient performance? This talk will suggest that the dramatic mask operating in a multisensory dynamic environment provided a deeply personal emotional anchor to music, narrative and movement of ancient drama and that new research in face recognition, neuroaesthetics, eye-tracking, human proprioception, and sensory processing can indeed illuminate important aspects of the ancient world. 

This is the autumn quarter 2012 Lorenz Eitner Lecture on Classical Art and Culture sponsored by the Classics Department. 

Dr. Peter Meineck is Clinical Associate Professor of Classics at New York University, Honorary Professor of Classics at the University of Nottingham and Founder on Aquila Theatre (www.aquilatheatre.com). He has published several translations of ancient plays with Hackett and is currently completing a new book on cognitive science and Greek drama. He has directed and produced over 60 professional theatre productions and written several stage adaptations of classical works from Homer to Rostand.

Warren E. Buffett's Blueprint for Tax Reform

Monday's New York Times editorial by Warren Buffett on creating a minimum tax for the wealthy is much more than that. It is a blueprint for tax reform and for saving the middle class from annihilation by the 1% (or, really, the top 400 incomes in the country).

A Minimum Tax for the Wealthy

By WARREN E. BUFFETT
Published: November 25, 2012
Omaha

SUPPOSE that an investor you admire and trust comes to you with an investment idea. “This is a good one,” he says enthusiastically. “I’m in it, and I think you should be, too.” 

Would your reply possibly be this? “Well, it all depends on what my tax rate will be on the gain you’re saying we’re going to make. If the taxes are too high, I would rather leave the money in my savings account, earning a quarter of 1 percent.” Only in Grover Norquist’s imagination does such a response exist. 

Between 1951 and 1954, when the capital gains rate was 25 percent and marginal rates on dividends reached 91 percent in extreme cases, I sold securities and did pretty well. In the years from 1956 to 1969, the top marginal rate fell modestly, but was still a lofty 70 percent — and the tax rate on capital gains inched up to 27.5 percent. I was managing funds for investors then. Never did anyone mention taxes as a reason to forgo an investment opportunity that I offered. 

Under those burdensome rates, moreover, both employment and the gross domestic product (a measure of the nation’s economic output) increased at a rapid clip. The middle class and the rich alike gained ground. 

So let’s forget about the rich and ultrarich going on strike and stuffing their ample funds under their mattresses if — gasp — capital gains rates and ordinary income rates are increased. The ultrarich, including me, will forever pursue investment opportunities. 

And, wow, do we have plenty to invest. The Forbes 400, the wealthiest individuals in America, hit a new group record for wealth this year: $1.7 trillion. That’s more than five times the $300 billion total in 1992. In recent years, my gang has been leaving the middle class in the dust. 

A huge tail wind from tax cuts has pushed us along. In 1992, the tax paid by the 400 highest incomes in the United States (a different universe from the Forbes list) averaged 26.4 percent of adjusted gross income. In 2009, the most recent year reported, the rate was 19.9 percent. It’s nice to have friends in high places. 

The group’s average income in 2009 was $202 million — which works out to a “wage” of $97,000 per hour, based on a 40-hour workweek. (I’m assuming they’re paid during lunch hours.) Yet more than a quarter of these ultrawealthy paid less than 15 percent of their take in combined federal income and payroll taxes. Half of this crew paid less than 20 percent. And — brace yourself — a few actually paid nothing. 

This outrage points to the necessity for more than a simple revision in upper-end tax rates, though that’s the place to start. I support President Obama’s proposal to eliminate the Bush tax cuts for high-income taxpayers. However, I prefer a cutoff point somewhat above $250,000 — maybe $500,000 or so. 

Additionally, we need Congress, right now, to enact a minimum tax on high incomes. I would suggest 30 percent of taxable income between $1 million and $10 million, and 35 percent on amounts above that. A plain and simple rule like that will block the efforts of lobbyists, lawyers and contribution-hungry legislators to keep the ultrarich paying rates well below those incurred by people with income just a tiny fraction of ours. Only a minimum tax on very high incomes will prevent the stated tax rate from being eviscerated by these warriors for the wealthy. 

Above all, we should not postpone these changes in the name of “reforming” the tax code. True, changes are badly needed. We need to get rid of arrangements like “carried interest” that enable income from labor to be magically converted into capital gains. And it’s sickening that a Cayman Islands mail drop can be central to tax maneuvering by wealthy individuals and corporations. 

But the reform of such complexities should not promote delay in our correcting simple and expensive inequities. We can’t let those who want to protect the privileged get away with insisting that we do nothing until we can do everything. 

Our government’s goal should be to bring in revenues of 18.5 percent of G.D.P. and spend about 21 percent of G.D.P. — levels that have been attained over extended periods in the past and can clearly be reached again. As the math makes clear, this won’t stem our budget deficits; in fact, it will continue them. But assuming even conservative projections about inflation and economic growth, this ratio of revenue to spending will keep America’s debt stable in relation to the country’s economic output. 

In the last fiscal year, we were far away from this fiscal balance — bringing in 15.5 percent of G.D.P. in revenue and spending 22.4 percent. Correcting our course will require major concessions by both Republicans and Democrats. 

All of America is waiting for Congress to offer a realistic and concrete plan for getting back to this fiscally sound path. Nothing less is acceptable. 

In the meantime, maybe you’ll run into someone with a terrific investment idea, who won’t go forward with it because of the tax he would owe when it succeeds. Send him my way. Let me unburden him. 

Warren E. Buffett is the chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway.

Tom Stafford - What Makes Us Intelligent?

This is a brief but interesting article from Neurohacks (aka Tom Stafford of Mind Hacks) at the BBC on the influence of technology on our brains, memory, and intelligence . . . and how we are having to reconsider our understanding of what intelligence is.

What makes us intelligent?

Tom Stafford | BBC Neurohacks

(Copyright: Thinkstock)

… and does Google and Wikipedia make it better or worse? Studies show that other people and tools influence our brain power as much as our own minds.

We like to think our intelligence is self-made; it happens inside our heads, the product of our inner thoughts alone. But the rise of Google, Wikipedia and other online tools has made many people question the impact of these technologies on our brains. Is typing in the search term, “Who has played James Bond in the movies?” the same as knowing that the answer is Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig (… plus David Niven in Casino Royale)? Can we say we know the answer to this question when what we actually know is how to rapidly access the information?

I’ve written before about whether or not the internet is rewiring our brains, but here the question is about how we seek to define intelligence itself. And the answer appears to be an intriguing one. Because when you look at the evidence from psychological studies, it suggests that much of our intelligence comes from how we coordinate ourselves with other people and our environment.

An influential theory among psychologists is that we're cognitive misers. This is the idea that we are reluctant to do mental work unless we have to, we try to avoid thinking things though fully when a short cut is available. If you've ever voted for the political candidate with the most honest smile, or chosen a restaurant based on how many people are already sitting in there, then you've been a cognitive miser. The theory explains why we'd much rather type a zipcode into a sat-nav device or Google Maps than memorise and recall the location of a venue – it's so much easier to do so.

Research shows that people don't tend to rely on their memories for things they can easily access. Things like the world in front of our eyes, for example, can be changed quite radically without people noticing. Experiments have shown that buildings can somehow disappear from pictures we're looking at, or the people we're talking to can be switched with someone else, and often we won't notice – a phenomenon called “change blindness”. This isn't as an example of human stupidity – far from it, in fact – this is an example of mental efficiency. The mind relies on the world as a better record than memory, and usually that's a good assumption.

As a result, philosophers have suggested that the mind is designed to spread itself out over the environment. So much so that, they suggest, the thinking is really happening in the environment as much as it is happening in our brains. The philosopher Andy Clark called humans "natural born cyborgs", beings with minds that naturally incorporate new tools, ideas and abilities. From Clark's perspective, the route to a solution is not the issue – having the right tools really does mean you know the answers, just as much as already knowing the answer.

Society wins

A memory study by Daniel Wegner of Harvard University provides a neat example of this effect. Couples were asked to come into the lab to take a memorisation test. Half the couples were kept together, and half were reassigned to pair up with someone they didn't know. Both groups then studied a list of words in silence, and were then tested individually. The pairs that were made up of a couple in a relationship could remember more items, both overall and as individuals.

What happened, according to Wegner, was that the couples in a relationship had a good understanding of their partners. Because of this they would tacitly divide up the work between them, so that, say, one partner would remember words to do with technology, assuming the other would remember the words to do with sports. In this way, each partner could concentrate on their strengths, and so individually they outperformed people in couples where no mental division of labour was possible. Just as you rely on a search engine for answers, so you can rely on people you deal with regularly to think about certain things, developing a shared system for committing items to memory and bringing them out again, what Wegner called “transactive memory”.

Having minds that work this way is one of the great strengths of the human species. Rather than being forced to rely on our own resources for everything, we can share our knowledge and so pool our understanding. Technology keeps track of things for individuals so we don't have to, while large systems of knowledge serve the needs of society as a whole. I don't know how a computer works, or how to grow broccoli, but that knowledge is out there and I get to benefit. And the internet provides even more potential to share this knowledge. Wikipedia is one of the best examples – an evolving store of the world's knowledge for which everyone can benefit from. I use Wikipedia every day, aware of all the caveats of doing so, because it supports me in all the thinking I do for things like this column.

So as well as having a physical environment – like the rooms or buildings we live or work in – we also have a mental environment. Which means that when I ask you where your mind is, you shouldn’t point toward the centre of your forehead. As research on areas like transactive memory shows, our minds are made up just as much by the people and tools around us as they are by the brain cells inside our skull.

If you would like to comment on this article or anything else you have seen on Future, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.

 

Whatever Reality Is . . . Bookforum Omnivore

Another interesting collection of links form the god folks at Bookforum's Omnivore blog - on space, quantum physics, cosmology, the universe, and everything.

Whatever Reality Is

Nov 21 2012  

1:00PM

• From New Scientist, a tour of our fundamental understanding of the world around us, starting with an attempt to define reality and ending with the idea that whatever reality is, it isn’t what it seems. 
• David Berman on the ten dimensions of string theory (and part 2). 
• The measurement that would reveal the universe as a computer simulation: If the cosmos is a numerical simulation, there ought to be clues in the spectrum of high energy cosmic rays, say theorists. 
• Digging up the early universe: Cosmologists are uncovering relics from the dawn of time, letting them look back almost all the way to the Big Bang. 
• The universe is almost done making stars: Star formation is now 30 times lower than at its peak 11 billion years ago. 
• Constructor theory: David Deutsch on how many mathematicians to this day don't realize that information is physical and that there is no such thing as an abstract computer — only a physical object can compute things. 
• Clay Dillow goes inside the largest simulation of the universe ever created: A giant supercomputer is making massively detailed models of the cosmos. 
• Should 16–18 year olds be taught modern physics such as quantum mechanics?

RSA - The Rise of the ‘Biotechnosciences’

From the RSA, this is an interesting discussion about the newly emerging field of biotechnoscience, which blurs "the boundaries between science, technology, universities, entrepreneurial biotech companies, and global pharmaceuticals." Neuroscientist Steven Rose and sociologist Hilary Rose discuss the implications of this trend. Hilary and Steven Rose are the authors of Genes, Cells and Brains: The Promethean Promises of the New Biology.

The Rise of the ‘Biotechnosciences’

22nd Nov 2012

Listen to the audio

(full recording including audience Q&A)
Please right-click link and choose "Save Link As..." to download audio file onto your computer.

RSA Thursday

In the last thirty years, the so-called life sciences have been completely transformed. We now have the hybridised ‘biotechnosciences’ which blur the boundaries between science, technology, universities, entrepreneurial biotech companies, and global pharmaceuticals. But what are the implications of this shift, and who benefits?

When the modern era of genomics opened in the 1990’s, we were told that decoding the human genome would lead to cures for everything from cancer and schizophrenia to homelessness, and that a cornucopia of health and wealth would result. It’s now twenty years on, and the genome has been decoded, vast DNA ‘biobanks’ have been set up, some companies and individuals have become very rich, but both hypes and hopes are greatly diminished. 

What went wrong?

Join renowned sociologist Hilary Rose and neuroscientist Steven Rose at the RSA as they tackle the claims of the bioscience industry head on.

Chair: Marek Kohn, science writer, journalist and author of 'Trust: Self-Interest and the Common Good' and 'Turned Out Nice: How the British Isles Will Change as the World Heats Up'.

See what people said on Twitter: #RSARose

Get the latest RSA Audio

Subscribe to iTunes | RSS | Mixcloud

You are welcome to link to, download, save or distribute our audio/video files electronically. Find out more about our open access licence.

Speakers

• Marek Kohn
• Hilary Rose
• Steven Rose

Books

Genes, Cells and Brains: The Promethean Promises of the New Biology - Hilary Rose and Steven Rose (Verso Books Ltd, 2012)

The Mind Report - Paul Bloom and David Pizarro on the Politics of Disgust

A cool new discussion the politics of disgust from Paul Bloom and David Pizarro.

The Mind Report

Paul Bloom (Yale University) and David Pizarro (Cornell University)

On The Mind Report, Paul talks to David about his recent TED talk about the politics of disgust. Paul asks David for a theory of why we connect repugnance and wrongness, and they argue about whether we pass moral judgment on a baby with a dirty diaper. Both Paul and David agree that disgust is not a good guide to morality. They next consider the dismissal of reason as a trend in academic psychology. Paul and David close by explaining how the lessons of social psychology can help with everyday life.

Play entire video

Recorded: Nov 21   Posted: Nov 24, 2012

Download:   wmv | mp4 | mp3 | fast mp3

Links Mentioned

• David Pizarro's TED talk on disgust
• Paul Rozin and Jon Haight's disgust scale (need to register first)
• Richard Dawkins's documentary, "Sex, Death, and the Meaning of Life"
• Reason Magazine's interview with Martha Nussbaum
• Martha Nussbaum's book, "From Disgust to Humanity"
• "The Wisdom of Repugnance" by Leon Kass
• Joshua Greene's diavlog with Joshua Knobe
• Lee Jussim's book, "Social Perception and Social Reality"

 

Brené Brown on Vulnerability (from On Being)

From NPR's On Being, Krista Tippett interviewed Brené Brown about vulnerability and her newest book, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. Her last book was The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are.

Brené Brown

Brené Brown is Research Professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. Her books include: The Gifts of Imperfection and Daring Greatly.

listen

Radio Show/Podcast
(mp3, 51:09)

Unedited Interview

» Brené Brown
(mp3, 87:24)

Transcript for Brené Brown on Vulnerability

November 21, 2012

Krista Tippett, host: In a culture where we like to fix or prevent vulnerability, Brené Brown is reviving the knowledge that our struggles make us who we are. And it's based on data — social scientific research she conducted first into shame and then into qualities that distinguish lives with a strong sense of worthiness. She's frank about the resistance her own findings awakened in her, a classic American perfectionist who wore exhaustion as a status symbol. She also discovered a stark gulf between what we want to be true — and what is true — in vulnerability between men and women. And she exquisitely uncomfortably describes the difference between making our children happy or raising brave, engaged human beings.

Brené Brown: I think we lose sight of the beauty, the most beautiful things I look back on in my life are coming out from underneath things I didn't know I could get out from underneath. You know, the moments I look back in my life, and think, those were the moments that made me — were moments of struggle.

Ms. Tippett: I'm Krista Tippett. This is On Being — from APM, American Public Media. Brené Brown is an Assistant Professor of Social Work Research at the University of Houston. She's the author of several books, including The Gifts of Imperfection and Daring Greatly. Millions of people have viewed Brené Brown's talk at a TEDx event in Houston and her later talk on the main stage at TED with the arguably unappealing title, "Listening to Shame."

Ms. Tippett: So, you know, I've been kind of steeped in you for the last few days and I thought I might start by mentioning one of the articles about you in The Telegraph, the U.K., that started out: "Brené Brown is a shame and vulnerability expert. I know — that was my reaction too. I'm really not hard-wired for this stuff, but bear with me." You often make the point that, as a fifth-generation Texan, you would not have believed that you'd be hard-wired for this stuff either.
[Laugh]

Ms. Brown: No, true.

Ms. Tippett: So can I just say the word "shame" is hard for me, you know? As I was reading you, especially in the beginning, I was thinking, you know, I get what you're talking about, but I don't identify with the word "shame." Then I wondered if maybe the fact that I'm so uncomfortable with it is part of what you're describing.

Ms. Brown: I mean, I think that is — I don't know about, you know, for you personally, I don't know, but I think that is very often the case. I mean, I sometimes say that when I use the word "shame," people have one of two responses: I don't know what you're talking about, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't have anything to do with me, or I know exactly what you're talking about and I don't want to discuss it with you.

Ms. Tippett: Right. Well, to me, it has this connotation of ashamed of something.

Ms. Brown: Right.

Ms. Tippett: But you're talking about something that's actually a layer below. I mean, that can be part of it, but that doesn't capture it, does it?

Ms. Brown: No. I'm really talking about that kind of warm wash that we experience of not good enough. You know, I always say that shame drives two primary tapes: not good enough, and who do you think you are? So to me, it's a very formidable emotion. Its survival is based on us not talking about it, so it's done everything it can do to make it unspeakable.

Ms. Tippett: So vulnerability is this other word you use a lot that our culture is almost allergic to.
[Laugh]

Ms. Tippett: And I think it's really interesting how your work on vulnerability came out of your attempt to kind of put this shame learning into a positive context, right? To figure out what were the ingredients of the lives that you saw as wholehearted. And you say that you started with an assumption that people who were able to live it wholeheartedly were acting out of a place of knowing their worthiness.

Ms. Brown: Right.

Ms. Tippett: But then you started to see it differently. It kind of shape-shifted, and I wonder if you would tell the story of this epiphany that you had and you date it November 2006.

Ms. Brown: You know, it's so funny because I still have that painted red wood kitchen table where everything amazing has happened in my life and everything hard seems to have happened in my life too. I actually was running out of the house this morning and looked at it and thought about that moment this morning. You know, for me because I had spent the first six years really trying to understand the anatomy of shame and understand scarcity and fear and this struggle with worthiness.

It wasn't until, you know, I had really kind of put a theory together about what shame is and how it worked that I thought, oh, man, I have all this data and I've interviewed so many people who are just, you know, they're like me and they're like a lot of the people I know. You know, they struggle, they're trying their best, but their lives seem so different than mine. They really seem to engage with the world from this place of worthiness. You know, they say, yeah, I'm screwing things up and I'm imperfect and I'm afraid, but I'm still worthy of love and belonging, like their love and belonging wasn't on the table, it wasn't negotiable.

Ms. Tippett: Right.

Ms. Brown: And, so I sent my husband and my kids to — they went to my in-laws for the weekend in San Antonio, and I stayed and pulled out a bunch of data and kind of spread everything across the house. I started thinking, you know, what I'm looking for are these kind of very wholehearted people. And the word actually came to me because I go to an Episcopal church and, in one of our prayers, there's a phrase that, you know, "I have not loved you with my whole heart." And I keep thinking these are people who are really loving with their whole heart, like even if they're getting hurt, they're still loving with their whole heart.

So I started coding data and looking for patterns and themes in words and they started emerging very quickly. And I just started to put together lists, like here are the things that wholehearted men and women really consciously choose and here are the things that they push away from and try to move away. So I ended up with two lists and, you know. I called one kind of the bad list and this was the wholehearted list. I was so in such a little kind of coding trance that I wasn't paying attention, and I think I finally sat down at the kitchen table and put these two huge poster-size post-it notes up with all these words. And I just remember looking up and looking at the kind of do-not-do list and it just described my entire life. I'm like I'm on the wrong list.

Ms. Tippett: So what was on it — well, what was on it? Well, let me just ask you this before that. So did you think that you were going to find that these people had been better parented or had less trauma or had had better support systems? I mean, what did you think?

Ms. Brown: Oh, I had a lot of self-righteousness about that. I think I thought, well, these people, you know, the people who believe in their worthiness, their lives probably panned out extremely well.

Ms. Tippett: Better, yeah, right.

Ms. Brown: Yeah, those are the people whose …

Ms. Tippett: They were dealt a better hand of cards.

Ms. Brown: They were. Their nail polish doesn't chip, no stretch marks, no struggles, you know, but — but there wasn't the case. You know, there weren't fewer divorces or bankruptcies or history of trauma or addiction. I mean, they were just like the general population in terms of those variables. They were just like everyone else.

Ms. Tippett: So what was on the list that described you?
[Laugh]

Ms. Brown: Perfectionism, judgment, exhaustion as a status symbol, productivity as self-worth, cool, what do people think, performing, proving, quest for certainty. Such a pretty picture.

Ms. Tippett: Yeah.

Ms. Brown: You know, and the other side were things that I had really strong emotional reactions to, like the first one that I saw that just — oh, I just was so mad — was creativity.

Ms. Tippett: Creativity was not correlated with perfectionism or productivity?

Ms. Brown: No, no. Creativity was on the other side and I think, before this, you know, I was one of those people who, if someone said, you know, "Hey, do you want to take this painting class with me, or do you want to scrapbook or do you want to …" you know, I was like, aw, that's really cute. You know, "You do your A-R-T, I've got a J-O-B." You know, it's so funny because as a shame researcher, my lens on this was very different. My lens was not just like, oh, OK, so we should be more creative and we should incorporate more rest and play into our lives.

My question was like, OK, so I get rest, it's important, and play and creativity and all these things that make me super uncomfortable. But what are the shame triggers that get in the way of us doing these things? Like I wasn't satisfied with just knowing what we were supposed to do. I wanted to know what is it that the wholehearted, if they were just like us, what did they have to overcome in order to soften into some of these things? So like with creativity, the primary shame trigger around that is comparison.

Ms. Tippett: So that when you get into comparison, you're not going to be able to soften it to creativity.

Ms. Brown: No. It just kills creativity. For every one of these choices that leads to wholeheartedness, there is real shame work to be done about how we get there. I mean, how can we embrace rest and play if we've tied our self-worth to what we produce?

Ms. Tippett: And was vulnerability — the way you use the word now — just kind of an underlying quality of these lives of wholeheartedness …

Ms. Brown: Yeah, absolutely.

Ms. Tippett: Creativity, play, rest?

Ms. Brown: Yeah, absolutely, because, you know, these were folks who they show up in their lives without a lot of guarantees. I remember sitting at that table a couple of days later kind of making the decision that I was going to put the data away and get a therapist — and I did. But I remember thinking does this mean that our capacity for wholeheartedness can never be greater than our willingness to be broken-hearted?

Ms. Tippett: I'm Krista Tippett, and this is On Being — conversation about meaning, religion, ethics, and ideas. Today I'm with grounded theory researcher — and vulnerability expert — Brené Brown.

Ms. Tippett: Here's a statement you made: "Vulnerability is the core, the heart, the center, of meaningful human experience." So explain that sentence to me.

Ms. Brown: Vulnerability, I think, you know, when I ask people what is vulnerability, the answers were things like sitting with my wife who has Stage III breast cancer and trying to make plans for our children, my first date after my divorce, saying I love you first, asking for a raise, sending my child to school being enthusiastic and supportive of him and knowing how excited he is about orchestra tryouts and how much he wants to make first chair and encouraging him and supporting him and knowing that's not going to happen. To me, vulnerability is courage. It's about the willingness to show up and be seen in our lives. And in those moments when we show up, I think those are the most powerful meaning-making moments of our lives even if they don't go well. I think they define who we are.

Ms. Tippett: And it's easy to associate a word like vulnerability with a word like gullibility or even, like as a parent would associate it with, is that dangerous, right?

Ms. Brown: Oh, for sure.

Ms. Tippett: So how do you make that distinction because that's not really what you're talking about?

Ms. Brown: Well, I think it's part of — you know, I love that you said that we're allergic to vulnerability. I think it's a part of the allergy. I think it is part of the vulnerability's weakness, its gullibility, its being naive.

Ms. Tippett: Getting taken advantage of, getting hurt.

Ms. Brown: Absolutely, right. But to separate that from the reality of vulnerability, I always ask a very simple question to people. I just say think of the last time you did something that you thought was really brave or the last time you saw someone do something really brave. You know, I think, without question ? and I can tell you as a researcher, 11,000 pieces of data, I cannot find a single example of courage, moral courage, spiritual courage, leadership courage, relational courage, I cannot find a single example of courage in my research that was not born completely of vulnerability. And so I think we buy into some mythology about vulnerability being weakness and being gullibility and being frailty because it gives us permission not to do it.

Ms. Tippett: Right. And one point you make also is — this is really important for me to hear. These people who live vulnerably in this healthy way don't find it comfortable, right? I mean, there's some place you say that part of the way to become this way is to practice being uncomfortable, right? So there's nothing flowery about this. You're not saying, oh, it's fun, you'll get to like it, and you're not saying it will go well all the time.

Ms. Brown: No, it doesn't. I speak from experience. You know, I think one of the things that happened for me, you know, I did this TEDxHouston talk in June of 2010 and then, in December of 2010, the talk was chosen to be on the main TED website and it went viral very quickly. And one of the things that happened during that experience for me, it was the most intense vulnerability I've ever experienced in my professional life.

Ms. Tippett: Yeah, it's like 6 million views for that TEDx talk now.

Ms. Brown: Right.

Ms. Tippett: And over a million for the other one.

Ms. Brown: And that thing was an experiment, like, I never had — if someone would have told me that was going to happen, I would have never said the things I said. And my experiment was let me just try being vulnerable while talking about vulnerability. Let me see what that's like. One of the things for me that happened in the midst of that is I realized that I worked very hard to get my work out as widely as I could without getting too big and listening to too much criticism. I mean, I was so afraid of the hard, negative, terrible stuff that happens in our culture today, you know, the anonymous comments and just the crappy stuff.

Ms. Tippett: Right, and you were taking risks in your profession, right? I mean, you were blazing some new territory.

Ms. Brown: I was trying, yeah. I mean, very much like you, I think, trying to hold space for a new conversation. So it was really painful. There were parts of it that were very hard for me and that I felt very unprepared for. Somewhere I write something about, you know, I'm a big Leonard Cohen fan and there's the "Hallelujah" lyric that says, "Love is not a victory march, it's a cold and broken hallelujah." Vulnerability is not a victory march either.

Ms. Tippett: But, you know, the other lesson in that is success is not a victory march, right?

Ms. Brown: No.

Ms. Tippett: Because you are talking about what, for you, may have been the thing that you let in most, which was the criticism and the hard side of vulnerability and a lot of people would look at that phenomenon and see the 6 million views, right, and only see that as a nonqualified success.

Ms. Brown: Right. It's a very interesting premise here that you're talking about because a lot of people do define success as a strictly positive experience.

Ms. Tippett: Yeah, or they imagine that it would be, right? We're striving for that moment when it's just positive.

Ms. Brown: Right. So I think vulnerability has — you know, gritty and tenacious is kind of in my DNA. It's kind of who I am and I am very hardheaded about some things and I think being vulnerable has made me a lot stronger and a lot tougher because, when I reflect back on times where I've shown up and — you know, one of the reasons that I use the Theodore Roosevelt quote for book titles and I use it as kind of the arc to talk about vulnerability, this idea of daring greatly, is because I think there's something incredibly brave and daring about showing up and putting your ideas — I don't care if you're raising your hand at a PTO meeting, if you're putting your pottery on Etsy.

Whatever your daring is, however you're trying to show up in your life, I think there's something incredibly contagious and powerful about it. I think it makes the people around us a little bit braver and I think it helps us get very clear on the ideals and values that guide our lives.

Ms. Tippett: And how that's making sense to me as I hear you now is, you know, going back to what you described as kind of the default shame place in us, which is not good enough. Why do I forget the other one which is so familiar to me too? What was the other one?

Ms. Brown: Who do you think you are, yeah.

Ms. Tippett: Who do you think you are, OK, yeah, that one. So if you do something and you think my identity is on the line here, like if it fails, I'm bad. The difference between that or being vulnerable and — well, the only thing that's at stake is it could fail. It could fail, but not that you are nothing.

Ms. Brown: I mean, that's the whole heart of it. That's the whole heart of it for me.

Ms. Tippett: And that's very hard.

Ms. Brown: And it's really hard and you can't have it both ways.

Ms. Tippett: Right, right.

Ms. Brown: Which I want it both ways.
[Laugh]

Ms. Tippett: Yeah, that makes sense to me too.

Ms. Brown: Just FYI, yeah. When it's really great and supported and successful, I want it to be about me. And when it sucks, I want it to be about the work. So I haven't figured that out yet.

Ms. Tippett: So something that I think is really important also that you've gotten into is the difference between men and women in this and the way women do shame and perfectionism and vulnerability and the way men do it. I want you to tell the story about the man in the yellow golf jacket.

Ms. Brown: OK. So when I started researching shame, I only studied women and I did that for a couple of reasons, the first selfish. I wanted to know — you know, that was my interest because that was my experience and because there was a lot of argument in the academic literature about men and women are different, that we don't experience shame the same way. So I thought, let me keep it really clean and just study women.

Ms. Tippett: It also kind of feels like a word that women would say more, like even if I said I didn't like the word, it feels like a word that's hard to imagine men talking about.

Ms. Brown: No, it's true. But I also came up under a pretty rigorous feminist academic upbringing in my studies, so I was really interested. Because, you know, you think about shame in women, you think about media, body image, you think about — yeah. So it made sense to me.

So I was at a book signing and a couple came up to me and I signed four books for the woman and she grabbed them and she's walked away from the table and her husband who was standing with her stayed. And she said, "Come on, babe, let's go" and he said, "No, I want to talk to her for a minute," meaning me. She said, "No, come on, let's go, let's go." He said, "I'm going to talk to her for a second." There was some tension in that conversation. I was thinking, oh, my God, you need to go. I don't know why you want to stay.

Ms. Tippett: Go with your wife.
[Laugh]

Ms. Brown: Yeah, go because you're hell bent for leather to talk to me and I'd rather you not. He said, "I really liked everything you said. I really like this idea of reaching out and telling our stories and showing up, but you didn't mention men." You know, my initial thought was, oh, gosh, thank God this is going to wrap up quick, because — I don't — you know?

So I looked to him and I said, "I don't study men." And he said, "Well, that's convenient." And my heart was just like, oh, God. And he said, "We have shame, we have deep shame, but when we reach out and tell our stories, we get the emotional [bleep] beat out of us." And he said, "And before you say anything about those mean fathers and those coaches and those brothers and those bully friends, my wife and three daughters, the ones who you just signed the books for, they had rather see me die on top of my white horse than have to watch me fall off." Then he just walked away.

You know, when truth hits you, it just hits you and you know what it is the second it comes to you. I knew that my research was going to be profoundly changed and I knew that it was going to be difficult and painful and that I was going to learn things about myself that I probably didn't want to know, and that's exactly what happened.

Ms. Tippett: I mean, I think you learn things also that women growing up now and feminist and post-feminist women, I mean, it's like a reckoning.

Ms. Brown: It felt like a reckoning and it felt like a reckoning for years talking to men about their experiences. I think, you know, shame is a universal human experience. Like you say, if it washes over me, it's going to be the same as it washes over, you know, my husband, Steve. But the messages and expectations that fuel shame, the messages and expectations that bring us to our knees, are so organized by gender. You know, for women, it's really about do it all, do it perfectly and make sure you make it look effortless.

Ms. Tippett: Right. It's also about how we look, right? I mean, part of that is, and look great while you're doing it too.

Ms. Brown: Oh, yeah, absolutely, no question. I mean, that's the part that better look effortless. Appearance and body image is still the number one shame trigger for women. For men, there's a really kind of singular, suffocating expectation and that is do not be perceived as weak. So for men, the perception of weakness is often very shaming and that one of the things that's interesting is, I talk to men and, you know, what I heard over and over was some variation of, look, my wife, my girlfriend, whomever, they say be afraid, they tell me, you know, share your vulnerability with me, open up, but the truth is, they can't stomach it.

The truth is that, when I'm very vulnerable, when I'm in fear, when I talk about it openly, it permanently changes the dynamics in our relationship. And when I started sharing this with women or whenever I started interviewing couples, women are like, oh, God, it's true. I want you to be open and I want there to be intimacy, but I don't want you go to there.

You know, and so, I've come to this belief that, if you show me a woman who can sit with a man in real vulnerability, in deep fear, and be with him in it, I will show you a woman who, A, has done her work and, B, does not derive her power from that man. And if you show me a man who can sit with a woman in deep struggle and vulnerability and not try to fix it, but just hear her and be with her and hold space for it, I'll show you a guy who's done his work and a man who doesn't derive his power from controlling and fixing everything.

Ms. Tippett: That's really important. Really, it's jarring, right? It's like we needed to say that a lot and sit with it.

Ms. Brown: It's so jarring. I remember driving home and having this moment where I was like, oh, my God, I am the patriarchy, like I am facilitating this. I'm participating in this. It's just a conversation that's way overdue, I think.

Ms. Tippett: It sure is, yeah.
["Hallelujah" music]

Ms. Tippett: You can listen to this program again, or to my entire unedited conversation with Brené Brown at onbeing.org. And, on our blog, we've posted her popular talk at TEDxHouston. She presents more of her research on vulnerability and the personal discoveries that shook the ground beneath her own feet. Watch that video at onbeing.org. 

You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. Follow our show us @Beingtweets, follow me — @KristaTippett.

["Hallelujah" music]

Ms. Tippett: Coming up, if courage is a function of struggle, what are we doing to our children when we try to make their lives perfect?

I'm Krista Tippett. This program comes to you from APM, American Public Media.
[Announcements]

Ms. Tippett: I'm Krista Tippett, and this is On Being. Brené Brown, who has taken the world of TED talks, health care, and corporate leadership by storm with her research into vulnerability. She says vulnerability and struggle are fundaments of "wholehearted" living — lives of relationship, courage, and creativity.

Ms. Tippett: I want to talk about parenting. You know, a joke I've made across the years about parenting is — I mean, there are so many joys about it, but it's also this unfolding, um, variety of reasons to feel guilty.
[Laugh]

Ms. Tippett: You know, and my daughter's in college now, and I've just found a new one and, um …

Ms. Brown: Don't tell me that.
[Laugh]

Ms. Tippett: But, you know, it's funny, but I think one of the things I was most aware of when I had my daughter, my first child, is that it is utter excruciating vulnerability like you have never known before. You are not in control, you do not know what's going to happen next.

Ms. Brown: Yeah. I mean, just to hear you say it takes my breath away. It is the ultimate experience in vulnerability, I think.

Ms. Tippett: And no one prepares you for that.

Ms. Brown: No, and I think first child, first time, that the intensity of that vulnerability can be crazy-making. Like I remember looking at Ellen sitting in her little bucket seat, you know, and thinking who has left her with me?

Ms. Tippett: I know, I know.
[Laugh]

Ms. Brown: And I just remember, you know, that completely universal car ride home from the hospital where you're like, "Jesus, they're in our lane! Move over! Slow down!" and it never ends. It is where the rubber meets the road.

Ms. Tippett: But as you write so well about, and this gets back to our cultural allergy to vulnerability, what we have done with this primal sense of vulnerability and, I think, you know, which is not a good and a bad impulse, our need to protect, is that we've gone perfectionistic on this.

Ms. Brown: We have.

Ms. Tippett: In that, I mean, I think we're kind of waking up to that, but you really, really point out why that is just destructive for us and for our children in a whole new way, I think.

Ms. Brown: It's so hard because, you know, one of the things I write about very openly is, you know, I call it the 2007 breakdown/spiritual awakening.

Ms. Tippett: At that red kitchen table.

Ms. Brown: At that red kitchen table where it all started. Then I took my syllabus to my therapist and said, you know, I need more vulnerability. I have six weeks, go. I think the part that really pushed me kind of to getting help and wanting to live differently was what I was seeing about parenting, that this whole idea that who we are and how we engage with the world is such a far more accurate predictor of how our children will do than what we know about parenting. I'll start by saying I agree with you. I think we're in a gentle, quiet awaking period right now.

Ms. Tippett: Yeah, yeah.

Ms. Brown: But I started my research just very coincidentally six months before 9/11, and so over the course of the last 12 years, I have seen fear absolutely run roughshod over our families. And I have seen us go to these crazy lengths to protect ourselves and our children from the uncertainty that the world has become. I've not only seen that through my lens as a researcher, but certainly experienced it as a parent, but as a college professor. You know, this is my 15th year teaching and I only teach masters and doctoral level students.

But I see students come to us who have never had experiences, real experiences, with adversity and how that shows up is hopelessness. You know, one of the most interesting things I've found in doing this work is, you know, something the wholehearted share in common is this real profound sense of hopefulness. And as I got into the literature on hope, very specifically C.R. Snyder's work from the University of Kansas at Lawrence, that hope is a function of struggle.

Ms. Tippett: Right. I think that's one of the most stunning sentences that I saw in your writing.

Ms. Brown: Yeah, and that hope is not an emotion, but hope is a cognitive, behavioral process that we learn when we experience adversity, when we have relationships that are trustworthy, when people have faith in our ability to get out of a jam.

Ms. Tippett: Right, which is different from this pattern of having faith in us which means telling us everything we do is wonderful and shielding us from pain as long as they can.

Ms. Brown: Right. And, you know, I'm literally — I don't even know how to talk about it. It really just floors me that, when I go out and I do a lot of talks for big corporations, you know, Fortune 100 companies, how many people tell me — like the HR folks who I end up — luckily, I love them and I get to talk to them a lot, who will tell me how often parents call to go over the performance evaluation of their children or to find out why they didn't get a raise or a promotion.

Ms. Tippett: Really?

Ms. Brown: Yeah, oh, yeah.

Ms. Tippett: I mean, I just took my daughter to college and we got this lecture, the parents and the families who were there, from like the Dean of Students and it was so clear that they were dealing with that same thing, right? I mean, they basically said I need you to understand that we're going to take great care of your gem and also that my relationship is to them and not to you. We got this lecture, which was clearly based on parents still trying to control. You know, again, it's like, boy, we know this, don't we, this desire that you have to create a beautiful world and life and experience for these people you love?

Ms. Brown: But you know what? I think we lose sight of the beauty. The most beautiful things I look back on in my life are coming out from underneath things I didn't know I could get out from underneath. You know, the moments I look back in my life and think, God, those are the moments that made me, were moments of struggle.

Ms. Tippett: Or I look back at things I did where, if my parents or I had understood how crazy it was, like if it had been me, I would have tried to intervene and rescue?

Ms. Brown: Oh, for sure.

Ms. Tippett: And you're right. Those are the moments you become who you are.

Ms. Brown: You know, and I've seen how this research has really changed, you know, like I'll give you just a very specific example. My daughter decides, you know, that she wants to try out for something that she's really new at. You know, a sport or something that she's just taken up.

And I think before, maybe even three years ago, before this research, not only before I wrote it up, before I started trying to practice it and live it, I think I would have been the parent who said, you know, either let's get you in 34 camps before you try out so you've mastered it, or I don't think you should try out for that because there are girls who've been playing this sport as long as you've been playing soccer …

Ms. Tippett: And you want to shield her from disappointment.

Ms. Brown: Right. And I want to take away that moment that I had. You know, it wasn't the moment. When I think back and I talk to parents a lot about this, it wasn't the hard moments that we don't want to expose them to. It was the isolation and shame we felt around those moments because a lot of us didn't have people to process them with.

Like I think when I went out for something and didn't make it, I don't think my parents were ashamed of me, but I think they were ashamed for me. I don't think they knew how to talk about that. I don't think we had a conversation. I know we didn't have a conversation that I can have with my daughter today where I say, you know what, I'm so proud of you not only for trying, but for letting the people around you who you care about, you let us know how much you wanted it, and it doesn't get braver than that.

Ms. Tippett: Right. Right. Well, I mean, here's this other sentence that's a corollary to the sentence hope is a function of struggle. You say you look at a baby, your newborn baby is hard-wired for struggle. It's built in us that that is how we are going to shape, that that's what we're going to encounter, that's how we're going to shape ourselves. That's actually a really hard thing to take in, you know, as a parent, especially thinking about those moments early on when you first meet this being that is going to have dominance over your life.

Ms. Brown: Yeah, because I think we look and think I can make this right. I can do for her or him what wasn't done for me. I can protect them from the things that hurt me. I think we are so much more hard-wired for who we are than what people, especially parents, want to believe. And I don't think our job as parents is to make everything right and perfect and beautiful and true. I think our job is, during struggle, to look at our kids and say, yeah, this is hard and this is tough and you're hurt.

Ms. Tippett: And you're not alone, you're not alone.

Ms. Brown: But you're not alone.

Ms. Tippett: I'm not going to fix it, but you're not alone.

Ms. Brown: Right, you're not alone and I want to make sure you understand that this doesn't change the fact that you're worthy of love and belonging.

Ms. Tippett: I'm Krista Tippett with On Being, conversation about meaning, religion, ethics, and ideas. Today I'm with grounded theory researcher and vulnerability expert Brené Brown.

Ms. Tippett: It's interesting to me that you have taken up this subject and maybe this is partly why it's gone so viral at precisely at a moment in which Americans, I think after a few generations of pretending like collectively we weren't that vulnerable at least, have rediscovered geopolitical vulnerability, economic vulnerability. So I've been thinking about this a lot in terms of how that manifests itself in our civic life.

I mean, you have this really great sentence, "Feeling vulnerable, imperfect, and afraid is human. It's when we lose our capacity to hold space for these struggles that we become dangerous." It seemed to me now that that's one way to describe what is happening in our culture and our political life. We have no space to be honest about that, to be vulnerable, to be imperfect and afraid together, and it's become dangerous.

Ms. Brown: No, we don't, you know, on a micro level as individuals, we're not our best selves in fear and collectively we're certainly not our best selves when we're in fear. And the national conversation, and I think this is true politically, I think it's true socially, economically, I think in the sector where we talk about religion and spirituality, the conversation has really centered on what are we supposed to be afraid of and who's to blame for it.

Ms. Tippett: Right, right.

Ms. Brown: And I'm hoping it's not wishful thinking, but I'm thinking we've grown weary of that. I think we're sick of being afraid, and I think there's a growing silent majority of people who are really kind of thinking, at a very basic human level, I don't want to spend my days like this. I don't want to spend every ounce of energy I have ducking and weaving. I don't know where we'll go next, but I really believe with every fiber of my professional and personal self that we won't move forward without some honest conversations about who we are when we're in fear and what we're capable of doing to each other when we're afraid.

Ms. Tippett: Right. I do like that, again, that idea of hope as a function of struggle. It's almost like, you know, it would be counterintuitive, counterculturally, to say we need to struggle with this honestly, vulnerability, to cultivate the hope that we need to figure out what's next.

Ms. Brown: And I see it happening. I mean, I see some movement and I think …

Ms. Tippett: Yeah, I do too.

Ms. Brown: I feel hopeful for it about it. I feel like I always think about things in terms of family. You know, I think about systems and organizations and this is probably a function of my social work training to always think about systems. But, you know, I think about families, I think about schools, I think about organizations, I think about community. I think we're awakening maybe from a period of deep disengagement.

Ms. Tippett: Mm-hmm, and we're all so sick of being disengaged.
[Laugh]

Ms. Brown: And we're sick of being disengaged. I think we are. I think it's, hey, not caring and choosing to live disappointed, because that's easier than feeling disappointment has not paid off.

Ms. Tippett: You know, something else that runs through your work that I have to say it just so matches up in such a beautiful way with a question that I've asked myself over time about, you know — what are — well, the way I've asked the question, which is a very kindred question to yours, is what are the qualities of, you know, the genius in the art of living? It's kind of a phrase of Einstein's, spiritual genius. Wholehearted lives would be another way to say it.

It's not just that the things that go wrong for us are part of our wholeness, right, as you describe, that the vulnerability is what makes us — keeps us in, but also that what goes wrong for us is part of our gift to the world. It's what enables us to connect and be compassionate. I mean, that's a lovely way to think about, you know, the hard, possibly excruciating upside of the fact that so many of us are struggling and suffering right now.

Ms. Brown: I agree 100 percent, and I think it points to maybe one of the deepest paradoxes about vulnerability, which is when I meet you, vulnerability is a very first thing I try to find in you and it's the very last thing I want to show you in me because it's the glue that holds connection together.

It's all about our community humanity and, when we own our stories and we share our stories with one another and we see ourselves reflected back in the stories of people in our lives, we know we're not alone. And to me, that's the heart of wholeheartedness, it's the center of spirituality. To me, that's the nature of connection, to be able to see myself and hear myself and learn more about myself in the stories you tell about your experiences.

Ms. Tippett: I also see an upside of aging. When I see people aging badly in a sad way, it seems to me that the common denominator is they have not faced their demons and they just get smaller. It's like they just get eaten alive from the inside. And that's about being vulnerable and, you know, claiming what's gone wrong and the imperfection. But there's a way in which getting older, especially kind of getting into your 40s, you know, it kind of pushes you to finally do this if you haven't done it. You know, that's in your story. I just wonder if you think that, you know, this is something we can lean into almost as a gift.

Ms. Brown: No. I think what you're describing is what I have found as a very critical developmental milestone for us. You know, some people call it the midlife crisis. You know, I call it the midlife unraveling. I think there is a place and time in our lives where we realize that growing up, when we felt pain, when we felt small, when we felt unseen, we constructed walls and moats and we protected ourselves and we shut down parts of ourselves. Then I think this happens in midlife where we realize, oh, God, to be the person we want to be, to be the partner, to be the parent, we have to take down everything we put up that was supposed to be keeping us safe.

Ms. Tippett: And that has not served us.

Ms. Brown: And it has not served us.

Ms. Tippett: Right. Where do you say? You say if you shut down vulnerability, you shut down all these other qualities that you long to have, right?

Ms. Brown: Right, because, you know, vulnerability is the center of things like fear.

Ms. Tippett: You shut down joy, you minimize joy.

Ms. Brown: Yes. And when you describe those people who, you know, don't seem to be aging well, I think knowingly or unknowingly and probably more so unknowingly they get to that place where they say, I have to make a choice whether to pull all this stuff down and be seen or keep going with all this up. And I think they keep going, carrying all this, and I think it is just so heavy.

Ms. Tippett: Yeah. And do you think that we have an intuition for this? I mean, is there any advice you can give? Let me say this. When I look at your story, OK, from the outside, it seems to me that you were completely shocked that day at the red kitchen table when you discovered vulnerability, right?

Ms. Brown: I was, yeah.

Ms. Tippett: But on the other hand, if I look at it from this privileged removed perspective, it seems to me almost like you were heading towards it like a heat-seeking missile, you know.
[Laugh]

Ms. Tippett: Like you didn't want to go there, but you found exactly the way in in your research, which was a departure from the other research, that took you there.

Ms. Brown: Right.

Ms. Tippett: And you got there at a moment in your life when you realized you had, you know, it was a stark choice. I mean, do you think that we — do you — is it your experience that, you know, that maybe we all are kind of on that trajectory whether we want to be or not? And, you know, how can we listen to that impulse or how can we follow it? What can we cultivate to get there gracefully as possible?

Ms. Brown: I don't think — I think grace will have a lot to do with it. I don't think gracefully will be a part of it, unfortunately.
[Laugh]

Ms. Tippett: OK.

Ms. Brown: At least I don't see many people do it gracefully. I'm sure some people do it gracefully, not anyone I know. But, um, I think it's the long walk from what will people think to I am enough. I think it is recognizing that, if courage is a value that we hold as important, that vulnerability is the only way in and through.

It starts by an openness to seeing ourselves and seeing kind of how we're protecting ourselves from vulnerability. I think that's where it started. I think for me at that red kitchen table, even for me today, I am the most successful doing, you know, this work and trying to be real and transparent and me and feel good in my own skin when I stay very aware of what kind of armor I'm throwing up or when I feel afraid.

You know, I think maybe the definitive piece of knowing that has helped me with this is that I was raised in a very kind of binary culture. If things were good or bad, you know, you were brave or you were afraid. You were courageous or you were fearful. And I think for me, one of the definitive moments in my life was realizing that most of us are brave and afraid in the exact same moment all day long.

Ms. Tippett: Brené Brown is Assistant Professor of Social Work Research at the University of Houston. Her books include: The Gifts of Imperfection and Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead.

To listen to this show again, or hear my unedited conversation with Brené Brown, stream it on our website or download it on iTunes. Find both links at onbeing.org.

On Facebook, we're at facebook.com/onbeing. On Twitter, you can follow our show @Beingtweets. Follow me @KristaTippett.

On Being on air and online is produced by Chris Heagle, Nancy Rosenbaum, Susan Leem, and Stefni Bell.

Our senior producer is Dave McGuire. Trent Gilliss is our senior editor. And I'm Krista Tippett.