Emotional bailout1

The current and lingering economic crisis and financial meltdown has affected everyone. The worldwide recession, foreclosures, increasing unemployment, deterrents to lending, borrowing, and business expansion have affected everyone. It is useful to draw saome parallels between the financial scene and accepted psychological medels, processes and treatment. Only a thumbnail sketch is pressnted here.

Financial capital has its personality counterpart in emotional resources, or what psychoanalysts label ego strength. Money or credit is required to grease the wheels of commerce and business. Ego resouces are required to cope with crises and internal conflict. Liquidity, or the ability to generate monies for business expansion, can be compared with emotional lability needed to respond appropriately, not excessively to external stressors. Confidence in government, leaders, previously valued banks and corporations, and the "American dream," translate into processes of trust in others. Histrically acceptaed support systems --banks, Bernake, Buffet, our homes, and government regulation are perceived as having failed us. Conflicts between advocates of freemarkets and those seeking rescue by the Federal Big Brother are reminiscent of Skinner's battle between free will and determinminm. Any Rand surfaces again.

Clinical syndromes of anxiety and panoic, depression and helplessness, phobias and avoidance behaviors, obsesssive compulsive symptoms have not been confined to psychaitric clinics, hospitals, and consulting roooms and are now commonplace on Wall Street and Main Street. Cognitive and emotional processes are apparent in
in speculators,investors and savers alike and include denial and delusional systems, anger and attribution of blame, loss of trust (e.g., consumer confidence), and attachment.Concepts of risk, expectancy of success, and incentive have direct application in business decision making.

Treatment models for treating anxiety, depression, anger, disturbed and irrational thinking, hysteria, and learned helplessness seem now to be equally relevant to the marketplace. The new emphasis upon positive psychology, heralded by Martin Seligman, may be directly applicable on a national level for a healthy emotional bailout
of our citizenry. We need to embrace concepts of resilience, optimism, and the setting of realistic emotional as well as financial goals. We need to learn ways for turning negatives into positives, to diversify our emotional as well as our financial assets, to avoid despair, sadness, and bitterness, to combat stress with a well oiled emotional immune system. Time is a friend of personality integration as well as financial recovery. Regression toward the mean applies eventially to financial markets. There is no certainty, only opportunity.

On self-esteem

My wife was babysitting two of our seven grandchildren. Ethan and Julia are four year old twins. It was time for Joyce to take them to pre-school. Ethan remarked that perhaps his teachers didn't want them to come to school that day but to stay home and play. "You have to go to school Ethan," Julia lectured to him, as she often does.
"Ethan," my wife offered. "Don't you remember? You are line leader today."
"O.K. I'll go to school."
"Line leaders are very special people" explained my wife.
"No," Julia contradicted. "Everybody gets a turn to be line leader."

Jack, another grandchiold, age five and in kindergatrten plays T-ball and flag football. After the T-ball season everyone on the team received a medal "When I played T-ball," his father remarked, "only the league champions received a medal."

At the high school where I work part time I notive that even children who haven't attended all year often receive "Incompletes" on their report cards rather than Fs.

Psychologist Martin Seligman, in his book "The optimistic child" rejects the common assumption that low self-esteem results in poor academic achievement. It is the reverse, he insists. Seligman attributes the accelerated increase in the frequency of childhood depression over the past 20 years to our prevalent "feel good" philosophy. Everyone seems fearful of destroying a child's self-esteem so that even minor effort, just showing up, is extravagantly praised. Feelings alone do not account for self-esteem, which should be based on actual accomplishments. Parents, teachers, and coaches need to teach children real skills and reward their achievements rather than focus only on building self-esteem by empty rewards and undeserved recognition. Children quickly learn to recognize bogus praise, which may actuually lower self-esteem. Julia was right on target,Joyce off base, if Seligman is right.

On resistance to change

Recently I had cause to ponder the source of resistance I encountered in trying to introduce a new mental health system in a high school at which I provide psychological services. Opposition was encountered despite the sore need for mental hrealth sevices and the receipt of grant support for proposed additions to the on-going program.

During the past presidential campaign both presidential candidates attacked the present administration and promised change. Most voters also seemed to desire change but the change had to be according to their own definition of how it would be structured

A close relative of mine was violently opposed to the Democratic candidate before the election and extremely bitter about the outcome. Her perception of Barack Obama conformes to the worst stereotyping and slander that had been circulated by radical conservatives. She sincerely believes that he is a fanatical Moslem who consorts with terrorists. Furthermore he is a Socialist, despite the fact that she gladly accepts social security and medicare payments and was raised by a family that voted Democratic since FDR and the Great Depression. In her view it is highly likely that the new president will sell out to Islamic interests,will transfer inordinate amounts of her assets to undeserving poor people, will make her pay for universal health care. In fairness to her she opposes using federal bailout money to greedy bankers who caused the present financial crisis, yet somehow attributes the ultimate fault to lie with previous Democratic regimes. She sees no inconsistency in endorsing Republican free trade and anti-regulatory philosophy. Accepting her concepts as true, it is small wonder that she opposes change. I await the building of her air raid shelter.

It seems to me that reaction to proposed change is determined by a definable set of factors. Resistance to change may be directly related to the perceived magnitude of change from the status quo and the perceived risk to be incurred by change, and inversely related to the perceived value of the proposed change both persoanlly and to the system as a whole. Reformers endorsing change need to manipulate each of these factors to win support for their program. The Magnitude factor requires imposition of change in small and grsdually applied stages with proven success of each incremental modification. Attention to Risk requires demonstration of the feasibility of the planned changes without radical disruption of individual or the common good. Manipulation of Value perception requires attention in promoting visible, understandable, and concrete outcomes of change. Rather than emphasizing a global concept of satisfaction of the whatever administration is currently empowered, public relations persons need to address and measure public perceptions of specific components of each of the three determining attitudinal and emotional factors.

A visit to Crown Point

A few short blocks along Kingston Avenue, Brooklyn house the Latavich Chasidic Community. A visit to this area is like stepping back in time to 19th century European shteltes. About 15,000 members of this community practice the Chasidoc life as it was done in Russia for generations. The Latavich brand of Chasidism is worldwide and is the largest group of Chasidics in the world. My wife and I spent four hours touring this area and being briefed by Rabbi Beryl Epstein, who serves as public relations guide for the group. Among the places we visited were the synagogue, the world headquarters of the group, and the building where Torahs are repaired. Joyce and I make many vists to Manhattan and have been doing so for several years. This trip to Crown Heights, easily accessible by subway from midtown Manhattan on the 7th Avenue Line, was by far our most memorable trip.

Without going into too much detail here it is important to understand that the study of the Torah and adherence to over 600 rules prescibing the way one must live govgerns one's life Children spend most of their waking hours studying Torah to the exclusion of more traditional academic pursuits of American children and adolescents. I asked if they also studied traditional philsophical doctrines--Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Kant and the like. The answer was no. These writings may contain many approximations to the truth but only God's word, as written in the Torah, is the ultimate truth.

The Chasidic are pure in thought and deed. They are modest in their dress. Men must not touch a woman other than their wives, even to shake hands, as my wife found
out. Married women wear wigs so as to avoid attracting men to them sexually. Men must not allow a blade to touch their faces and so grow long beards that remain untrimmed for life.

I deal here with only one of many revelations I found interesting. Behavior must be dictated by both heart and mind, but of the two the mind is supreme. Thus passions are controlled by reason. My association here, and the sole purpose of this blog, is to draw a paralel with cognitive behavioral psycholgy of Beck, Ellis, Seligman and others. Cognition determines behavior and feelings. Treatment is in the form of cognitive restructuring to correct irrational thoughts tha drive self-defeating, painful,inappropriate, and destructive behavior. That, along with more traditional behavioral approaches, are often successful and are evidence-based. The Chasidic would be cynical of such a short circuited approach to a healthy life as compared with a lifetime of study, prayer, and rigid adgerence to God's word as handed down at Mt. Sinai. One does not require a therapist to go to Heaven but a rabbi may help.