Family Dinner

It should have been good news. Thirteen years ago parents learned that if they wanted to shield their teenage children from alcohol, tobacco, and drugs, they needed merely to schedule more regular family dinners.

In 1996 Columbia University's National Center on Addiction and Drug Abuse reported this conclusion. Further studies have confirmed their findings. Other researchers have suggested that regular family dinners can also prevent some adolescent eating disorders.

This suggests that adolescents are suffering because their families lack organizational structure. We need to spend less time thinking about whether parents love their children enough and more time encouraging them to organize family life.

As a cure for adolescent malaise, this feels more constructive than pills, talk therapy, mystical journeys of self-discovery, identity crises, and soulful conversations with parents.

Of course, family dinner is also harder. It requires more work, more coordination, and more planning.

You would think that it would all be good news. Not quite. Two days ago the New York Times reported that our therapy culture has taken this simple advice and used it to guilt-trip parents.

When you have learned how to guilt trip yourself and others, constructive suggestions become opportunities to exercise your talent. Link here.

It would be better if we all understood that once the information is out, once people know the importance of these rituals, then it is up to them to work out the details. Or not.

The more important issue concerns why family dinners work.

For my part I am not surprised by this research. Nor was I in 1996.

I emphasized the importance of family dinners in my book on "Saving Face," which slightly predated the original research. When I was working on that book I did not want to look at parent-child relationships in terms of a mother-infant dyad or in terms of psychosexual development. So, I took the more Confucian approach and considered the family as a functioning group, held together by ritual, not by emotional glue.

I wrote: "In a functional family the family dinner serves as a ritual affirmation of group membership. It transforms nourishment from a private experience of consumption into an orderly social event."

I added: "A family is not a romantic idyll in which solidarity is created by covering everyone in love. A child may receive all the love he could ever deal with and still by harmed by not knowing whether anyone will be there when he comes home from school, by not knowing when and with whom he will be having dinner, or by not knowing whether anyone cares about how well he did on his spelling quiz. Erratic evidence of deep affection will not compensate for the insecurity produced by inconsistent behavior."

Insecurity about an uncertain future causes children to look backward with nostalgia. It does not allow them to look forward with optimism.

As the Times article suggests, the value of family dinner does not lie in the deeply meaningful conversations that may or may not take place there. Dinners provide a child with organization, structure, and reconnection. They make him feel that he belongs, thus that he is not simply out there on his own.

I did not think then and I do not think now that the issue should be quality or quantity time. You may recall that the culture invented the notion of quality time when parental schedules became so full that parents did not have very much time to spend with their children.

Supposedly, increased quality time would compensate for decreased quantity time.

Thereby parents were encourage to seek out moments of intense emotional connection.

At the time this seemed shortsighted. It still does. It ignored the child's social being and veered dangerously close to taking the therapy session-- quality time, if ever there was any-- as the prototype of human relationships.

A child who does not have consistent family dinners will lose the sense of belonging to a group, will fail to see how his actions affect others, and will lose control over his impulses.

He might compensate with experiences of intense intimacy, or by experiences of intense sensation. Feeling along and isolated, disconnected from others, demoralized and depressed... a child might need to go to an extreme to connect or to experience pleasure.

Unfortunately, relationships that involve excessive intimacy can never fully provide the feeling of being a functioning social being.

Nor can talk therapy. Isn't talk therapy an excessively intimate experience that is supposed to cure anomie, but that often turns into drama.

As I have suggestion, drama ensues when we seek to use intimate relationships to compensate for a failure to affirm ourselves as social beings.

Complaining Does Not Help

You can complain about your problems or you can solve them, but you cannot do both at the same time.

As Alan Lurie wrote: "Someone who is actively working to bring about positive change through deliberate action is not a complainer, but is one who sees problems as calls to actions, and as possibilities for growth and transformation." Link here.

Lurie defines complaining as: "The disparaging observation about a person, event, or phenomenon, for which the complainer has no ability or intention to act in order to create positive change."

According to this definition, people complain about two kinds of problems. First, problems they have no capacity to change. Second, problems that they refuse to address through action.

We can complain about the weather or the behavior of other people, but there is nothing we can do about either of them.

If we choose to prepare for good or bad weather or learn to choose our friends better, then we are taking action, not complaining.

We can also complain about our past, about our parents, our childhood, or injustices visited on our ancestors... but again, complaining will not change what happened. It will make us feel that action is futile.

Why do people indulge the unfortunate, off-putting, and energy-draining habit of complaining? Lurie offers several cogent explanations.

First, people complain because they want to excuse themselves for not taking action. Then, complaining gives you a false sense that you are doing something.

Complaining produces drama; perhaps it is intended to produce drama. If the world is all drama, then attempts to engage consequential action are futile. When you are watching a movie or a play there is nothing you can do to change the outcome.

Second, people complain because it is better to blame others than to ask ourselves what we can do to change things.

Here, Lurie emphasizes correctly that complaining is a rationalization for inaction.

Third, people complain because it makes them feel morally superior to those who take action, get their hands dirty, and who might succeed or fail.

In complaining people who specialize in talking, feeling, and finding fault assert that they are superior to those who do the real work.

How can we all work to overcome our habit of complaining? Lurie offers some good suggestions.

The first is simple. When you are tempted to complain, ask yourself whether there is anything you can do that would change the situation.

Second, when you encounter realities that cannot be changed, then make it a habit to stop complaining about them.

Third, ask yourself whether complaining is improving your relationships and making you more effective. Does complaining make you a better person?

But how did we get to be a nation of complainers? How did it happen that a man could sit down next to Alan Lurie at a concert, and, with the slightest provocation, launch into a litany of complaints? Why would anyone consider this to be acceptable social behavior?

Readers of this blog probably know that I am going to say that our culture of complaint has been actively fostered by the therapy culture.

When you go to consult with a therapist, she will most likely not direct your attention to the positive actions you can take to change your life. More likely, she will invite you to vent and emote?

She might also encourage you to explore your past experiences, the ones you can do nothing about, the ones that damaged and harmed you. And if you become fully aware of all the bad things that have happened in days of yore, what can you do but complain about them.

What better way to get lost on the path to action.

If that is your therapist's approach-- and it corresponds reasonably well to Paul Weston's approach in the television program "In Treatment"-- then the only skill you are going to develop in treatment is the ability to complain, with force, and with gusto. When you complete therapy you will even feel good about yourself for doing it.

The Real "Secret"

What if someone discovered a magic elixir that would help you to live longer, would increase your chances of beating cancer, would make it more unlikely that you will catch cold, would lower your risk of heart attack, would help you lose weight, and would promote brain health?

Would you want to know what it is? Would you take it? Would you want to know why there aren't any infomercials trying to sell it?

Surely, you would.

The answer might be surprising. This "secret" is not hidden away in some guarded vault. It is all around you, in plain sight. As Tara Parker-Pope told us in the New York Times a few days ago, it is: friendship. Link here.

Why have we not all embraced it? Perhaps because it requires work, far more work than taking a pill or a supplement. And it also requires good behavior, something that is often in short supply in our celebrity-driven culture.

As Parker-Pope presents it, psychologists have been wracking their brains to discover the keys to family relations and true conjugal love, while they should have delved more deeply into friendship.

Professor Rebecca Adams of the University of North Carolina put it well: "There is scads of stuff on families and marriage, but very little on friendship. It baffles me. Friendship has a bigger impact on our psychological well-being than family relationships."

And yet, all of the interpretive keys that psychotherapy has taught us to use to decipher hidden motives lead back to family.

Why has friendship been neglected? I do not think that the oversight has been intentional.

Developmental psychology has good reason for beginning with the mother/infant dyad, moving on to the family unit, and then assuming that every other relationship merely replicates the basic family structure.

But this assumes that we never really put away the toys of our childhood, a dubious assumption, and one that ought at least to be questioned.

If it all goes back to your childhood relations with your parents and siblings, then, what matters is blood ties. And the central moral fact about blood relations is that they do not produce a connection that is based on behavior. You do not have to do anything to be related by blood. And you only have to do the minimum to stay connected.

It takes a major effort to be disowned by your family.

As for romantic love, mostly we believe that it is a precursor to the creation of a new family and new blood relations. We also hope that it will be unconditional.

Don't we expect that true love will entice people to overlook the kind of bad behavior that a friend would never tolerate? True love provokes emotional excesses that would kill most friendships.

Friendship, however, is a social tie. Friendship feels like belonging to a group, like having earned one's place within a group.

If societies are alliances between families, then they are modeled more on friendship than on blood relations.

And friendship promotes ethical behavior. To maintain a friendship you need to behave yourself. If you want to have a lot of friends you need to develop the good habits that build character.

Thus, Aristotle saw friendship, not romantic love, as the basis for ethical behavior in human community.

Friends are more therapeutic than family because, as Aristotle put it, we tend to see the best in our friends. Being your best self and seeing the best in those who are close to you makes your relationships more harmonious and enhances your self-esteem.

Freud saw human life as a family romance writ large. As a result, he wanted us all to see the worst in our blood relations. Freudian therapy is about exploring the limits of human depravity: molestation, incest, patricide.

But a process focused on the worst in self and others could hardly be therapeutic.

Nowadays research shows that patients are most likely to improve in therapy if they have a good human connection with their therapists. This suggests that therapy works best when there is something like a friendship between patient and therapist.

All those years of advanced psychological study and now they tell us that what really matters is the ability to get along. I venture to guess that precious few clinical psychology programs have courses in how to be a good friend!

If friendship is the basis for improvement in therapy and if friendship is a social tie that involves neither blood relations nor libido, then the transference-- considered as a re-enactment of unresolved childhood eroticism-- can only be an obstacle to anyone ever getting better.

A Woman in Full

How to explain Sarah Palin? How did this Alaskan huntress throw the presidential race out of kilter with a half-hour speech?

Prior to "the speech" Sarah Palin had been the subject of lurid rumors. The media had placed her at the center of an intense family drama. (I wrote about it last week in a post entitled: Drama on the Right.) Her speech did not make it all go away, but it did inoculate her against further attempts to obscure her record and confuse the Republican campaign.

Why so? Because she defied stereotyping and mythmaking. Is she the ultimate feminist, a post-feminist icon, or simply antediluvian?

Or else, why not say that Sarah Palin reached out to the American people, cut through the fog of media images, looked people in the eye, and became everyone's good friend.

The public liked Sarah Palin. They saw her as their friend and neighbor, a familiar presence they could trust. And this made it more difficult to criticize her. People do not take kindly to direct attacks on their friends.

Now the attacks are tinged with desperation. She has been called a witch and a dominatrix-- to each his own fantasy-- and even Obama, who knows better, seemed to compare her to a porcine being.

The attacks also did not work because, as Democratic consultant and columnist Kirsten Powers noted, they were disrespectful.Calling the governor of a state a mayor is demeaning.

Sarah Palin also resonated because she seemed to be something new and different on the American political scene. I would call her: a woman in full.

Up there on the stage, in the floodlights, surrounded by cheering throngs, she was not a persona. We were not watching an image crafted for the political stage. Here was someone for whom the ridiculous word personhood seemed largely inadequate.

She was who she was. The word that seemed to fit her best, as many noted, was: "real."

Sarah Palin is a woman in full in the sense that she has had a full life as a woman. Wife, mother, huntress, marathon runner, mayor, governor... she was all that, and she still had sex appeal.

"Sexy" is not the term people associate with very many female politicians. Some do not seem to have it; some hide it well. But few women with important jobs seem to exude sexual self-confidence, a sex appeal that is not contrived.

It's easy to understand why this should be so. People assume that feminine sex appeal is antithetical to the exercise of power. Women often believe that they will not be able to lead if they do not emulate male leadership styles. They fear that a hint of cleavage, a flash of leg, will detract from their professional demeanor.

To some extent they are probably right. In another, they are reinforcing a stereotype.

Sarah Palin broke the stereotype by being a successful and popular governor without being an ersatz man. She understood that you cannot show leadership by pretending to be someone you're not.

How many women would be more involved in their careers, and would compete for advancement more seriously if they felt that they could do it without leaving their femininity outside of the board room?

Leadership is about getting other people to do things. If you bark orders and no one follows them, you are not a leader. If you wink and smile and people do their jobs more effectively, then you are a leader.

For now Sarah Palin also seems to have redefined toughness.

It is not about macho bravado or empty assertions of self or constant criticizing and complaining. All of these make you look defensive and weak.

Toughness involves being good to your word and holding your ground. It involves saying what you are going to do and then doing it.

But toughness also involves confidence, poise, and composure. When you walk on a stage in front of tens of millions of people and deliver a speech, that as former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown put it, makes you sound like you are chatting with the meter maid, you are tough.

And her speech was political hardball. Palin might have used a soft touch, but she was certainly going for the jugular... with charm.

Where does the confidence come from? Surely not from an extreme makeover. I would assume that Sarah Palin shows confidence because she has accomplished some things as mayor and governor. Hers is not the empty self-puffery of the self-esteem movement.

In reaction, many pundits have been trying to ignore her record and her achievements. They have been trying to denigrate her as a woman.

Palin has been accused of not being a good mother, of not supervising her pregnant teen-aged daughter, and of neglecting her special need baby.

But why, pray tell, have they all assumed that only a child's mother can raise him or her. Didn't they read: "It Takes a Village" where the author famously argued that members of extended families and neighbors have always cooperated in raising children?

Some critics have argued that there is something essential to the bond a child forms with a mother. They have said that a mother's place cannot be duplicated or imitated by a father. Point taken. But have they forgotten that other women can and always have filled in for working mothers, and even for stay-at-home mothers?

And then there is the argument that if Sarah Palin takes a larger job than governor of Alaska, her family will suffer. As a friend once told me, you cannot be both a great mother and a great professional. Of course, it is equally impossible to be a great father and a great professional.

But who said that you have to be great at everything you do. Perhaps we make nurturance more decisive than it really is. A famous psychoanalyst once said that when it came to parenting, "good enough" was fine.

Even if parents do not spend as much time as they would like with their children, even if they cannot put as much energy as they would wish into raising them, this does not mean that their choice is merely a loss for their children.

Parents who work harder often succeed more than those who do not. And the advantages that accrue to a family from parental success in the outside world surely offset the disadvantages of not having Dad around to play catch after school.

Drama on the Right

Having sworn up and down that I would have nothing to say about Sarah Palin, I am about to eat my words. In response to several emails and phone calls encouraging me to say something, anything about this all-too-interesting personality and her pregnant teenage daughter, I politely demurred.

After all, Sarah Palin's private life, her personal choices, is none of anyone's business. I am certainly not going to explain to a woman-- or anyone else-- how to be a mother.

Nor do I want to get involved in the culture wars aspect of this situation. Not because I am not amused by it. After all, some liberal feminists are horrified because Sarah Palin is pro-life, while others, like Camille Paglia, are, at the least, intrigued.

Sarah Palin would not only be the first woman to hold the office of vice president, she would also be the first babe. Who but Camille would notice that.

On the right, many moral crusaders are lining up to say that they are happy Bristol Palin will be having her baby, while others, like Bill Bennett, are horrified at the notion of a high school student having a child.

To the Democrats McCain's choice looks like a golden opportunity. And many Republicans agree. However much the base has been fired up, more sober Republicans have been saying that their party should simply not play identity politics. They are like amateurs competing against professionals.

Since the Palin selection the polls have been running against McCain. This suggests that the general public has not been quite so enamored of this choice. And I suspect that the markets were not very happy about it either. As the polls started coming out today, the stock market began to fall. Eventually it gave up all of its early gains, and more.

Anyway, before the Democratic convention I offered some advice about how we could judge what was happening. It is contained in my post: Forever Nuance.

Why not apply the same predicate to the Republican extravaganza. My hypothesis was simple and unoriginal: politics is about policy-- the word is a give-away-- and the candidate who articulates the clearest policy proposals is most likely to win the election.

For all the hubbub about image and drama, it all comes down to policy. That was my point. I am sticking to it.

I had thought that Obama would be done in by excessive nuance. I should have added that if policy is drowned out by drama, whether during the convention or during the campaign, the candidate's chances will diminish.

How did I think Obama did at his convention? Not very well. The speech to end all speeches did not produce much movement in the polls. First, it did not articulate any clear policies; second, its message was muffled by the tumult of the event itself.

Now, here come the Republicans. they do not have to worry about John McCain's nuance or charisma. Now, however, they have to deal with the outsized personality and unconventional life of Sarah Palin.

Oops.

The more the public debate concerns the Palin family drama, the less it will focus on public policy. It might just be the case that the nation is ready for an African-American president. And it might be the case that we are ready for a vice president who is a babe.

The trouble is: do we want another administration generating headlines that are worthy of the National Enquirer. We hire presidents and vice presidents to do the people's business, not to regale us with tales of their private dramas.

For Republicans there is still hope. Bill Clinton showed all politicians that it is possible to overcome nasty Enquire headlines and refocus a campaign on policy. It remains to be seen whether John McCain can repeat the feat.

Unhappy Endings

It is always fun to engage with a serious thinker, so I am happy to offer a few comments on an article by the always-instructive Martha Nussbaum. It is called, "Stages of Thought," and is published in The New Republic.

In it Nussbaum reviews several books on Shakespeare and philosophy and attempts to draw conclusions about human psychology. In the process she adds some life lessons.

There are several problems with her commentary. The books, and Nussbaum's article, focus largely on tragedy. But why do philosophers and psychotherapists always draw life lessons from tragedy? This unfortunate theoretical habit did not begin with Freud, but he certainly helped enshrine it in the culture.

At best, tragedies are cautionary. They tell you what not to do, not how to conduct your life.

Beyond that, why does Nussbaum assume so easily that Shakespeare was offering us "real life." Why accept that Othello was a man, that Desdemona was a woman, that Romeo and Juliet convey young love, and that Shakespeare's version of Antony and Cleopatra express a mature love relationship.

Is Shakespeare providing something like an extracted, universal essence of human behavior? If so you will have no difficulty believing that our true human motivations coincide with those of Oedipus.

Try a different angle. Imagine that Othello is a fictional character; idem for Desdemona, Hamlet, Romeo, and Juliet. Like Antony and Cleopatra, they may be based on real people. They were not created out of nothing, but were derived from models.

Now, ask yourself this: Do you believe that a painting offers the truth about the artist's model? Doesn't art transform reality? Aren't the rules of storytelling different from the rules of social interaction? Why do you assume that fiction offers a higher truth?

Strangely, Nussbaum becomes so invested in the notion that Antony and Cleopatra represent the best of an adult love relationship that she claims that their love had nothing to do with their tragic ending.

If that were true Shakespeare would be a decidedly inferior playwright. The play may not be the greatest of the great tragedies, but it is certainly not as flawed as Nussbaum's observations would have us believe.

Normally, real life does not make for good stories. When it does, something has clearly gone wrong. Besides, why do we imagine that Romeo and Juliet represent young love more than, say, Beatrice and Benedict.

I will not say that art has nothing to do with human behavior, but I would limit the scope: tragic heroes represent an extreme of human possibility, they do not represent the truth of human being.

What life lessons does Nussbaum draw? Trotting out D. W. Winnicott's distinction between the true and false self, she declares that the true self is childlike, vulnerable, emotional, and receptive. The true self resembles your inner child.

The false self, in contrast, wants to be competent and in control. It complies with external rules and conforms to social norms. According to Nussbaum and Winnicott the false self is like a mask that is deployed to hide human vulnerability and childlike silliness.

Of course, the false self sounds like normal adult behavior. By the lights of this theory the progress of human life and the process of human maturation are nothing more than a systematic repression of our warm, fuzzy inner children.

If this is true then the ability to function as a responsible adult in society represents loss. You may feel that you have, in growing up, gained wisdom and experience. You may feel that your ability to exercise self-control is a good thing. The therapy culture says otherwise.

According to two of its most distinguished theorists, life is a downhill run that always ends badly. Is it any wonder that people who feed at this theoretical trough become depressed?

By Nussbaum's reading Othello was a soldier who repressed his vulnerable, silly, emotional inner child. This latter returned with a vengeance in the form of pathological jealousy.

Here Nussbaum is offering a life lesson. Show your vulnerability, allow yourself to be emotional, give vent to your infantile silliness... and you will have a good adult love relationship, like Antony and Cleopatra.

Nussbaum is saying that as we grow up we should bring our infantile selves along for the ride. She counsels us against putting away the toys of childhood.

Think about it. Do you believe that a man or a woman could succeed in a position of leadership if he or she were to display vulnerability, emotionality, or plain silliness. Can anyone lead by showing inconstancy and weakness?

As it happens, Shakespeare did not think so. Were she not as infatuated with tragedy, Nussbaum might have recalled what Prince Hal, become King Henry V, told Falstaff in Henry IV, Part 2. Addressing the person who surely represented his "true self" and who was pleading to come along for the ride,Henry says:

Presume not that I am the thing I was,
For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turned away my former self.

Now, Henry V is not on the path that would lead to a great love affair. He is also not on the way to becoming a tragic hero. And yet, wouldn't the therapy culture say that he had repressed his true self?

Perhaps this therapeutic notion that we can become competent, functioning adults without sacrificing something of our past childishness is simply a modern form of hubris. Being an adult means recognizing that we cannot be all things to all people at all times. it also means that we have to accept that the way we behaved at 6 should not hang around until we are 60.

Surely, there are times when it is good to display some vulnerability and silliness. But to make yourself into a human fiction where these are an integral part of your adult self... that is a formula for an unhappy ending.

Love and Marriage

Writer Gay Talese is celebrating his fiftieth wedding anniversary by writing a book about his marriage. Among the pearls of wisdom he will include is this: "marriage is not a love story."

Coming from the self-professed poster boy for infidelity-- see his book Thy Neighbor's Wife-- this is somewhat suspect. It is nonetheless true.

Spending your life with someone is not at all the same thing as living out a love story. Besides, as a professor once said, all of the great love stories in Western literature end badly.

Another professor once claimed-- more or less correctly-- that all of Shakespeare's great comedies end at the altar while most of the great tragedies begin with a wedding.

This might merely reflect on the bard's life, but then again, it may contain a larger truth.

I would not want to suggest that Shakespeare believed that all marriages end badly. It would be more accurate to say that when you try to make a marriage into a great story, then it will most likely not end happily.

To tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth... maybe

By now we have all seen the video explosion of one Tricia Walsh Smith. (If not, please find link at the end of this post.)

An accomplished playwright in the midst of an ugly divorce TWS decided to reveal the truth about her marriage on Youtube.

Most people know that this was not the smartest move. For the immediate thrill of embarrassing her husband she has covered herself with a special kind of ignominy.

TWS may imagine that she made her husband look like a sexually inadequate porn hound, but she has also made herself look bad in the process. Had she used more reason and less emotion she might have known that her husband's being in possession of condoms, Viagra, and porn might say that he was always ready, but not for her.

She may have gotten some relief and release by laying this all out to the public at large, but the good feelings that accompany such a catharsis are often followed by moments of severe anguish when the person recognizes that she has done serious damage to her reputation, her friendships, and her future romantic prospects.

Given her notoriety TWS is about to discover what it feels like to be radioactive.

But, you might be thinking, in the future she can offer to sign an NDA, that is, a non-disclosure agreement. The trouble with this is that once you descend to the level of NDAs, you have already lost the game. The existence of the agreement means that your trustworthiness is subject to doubt. No sentient individual is going to get involved, on any level, with someone who may or may not be trustworthy.

Who is at fault for this debacle? I am not ready to blame the internet or Youtube. When I ask myself where anyone would have gotten the idea that it is a good thing to let it all hang out, to overcome the sense of shame, and to express all of your deepest and darkest feelings... the answer that immediately comes to mind is: the culture of psychotherapy.

People who have suffered its influence often engage in precisely this kind of let-it-all-hang-out moment, the kind that is guaranteed to ruin any relationship.

So, let hers be a cautionary tale, If you decide to comport yourself as though you were in a courtroom-- by telling the whole truth, nothing but the truth-- then your life is likely to turn into a nasty drama indeed.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx_WKxqQF2o