My Latest Read

Well, Friends and Romans, with my intense summer job over, my attention has finally been turning to other things. What with all the personal changes in my life creating a tsunami of a to-do list, I headed to the beautiful local library the other day looking to walk away with a fun, engrossing read, to substitute for the vacation I need. (Said library being a descendant of the first free children's library in the U.S., no less.)

On the way out of the house, I grabbed a worn scrap of paper on which, months ago, I’d scrawled the name of a book and its author. Somehow, it had survived the blizzard of papers crossing my desk in the intervening time. While I had no memory of who had recommended the book or why I thought it worthy of remembering, I usually have the devil’s own time finding a book I want to read (for reasons too lengthy to go into here, though perhaps I’ll post on this later and invite some suggestions.) So, I thought I’d look it up. What did I have to lose?

Now, I’m sure that, after that interminable introduction, you’re one step ahead of me, sweet reader, and are waiting for me to reveal the name of a book which, with barely a hitch in my step, I plucked from the burgeoning stacks of my local lending establishment, checked out with beads of anticipatory sweat dotting my fevered brow, and which I have been reading ever since, clawing my own shirt with pleasure at the astonishing plot twists and sparkling turns of phrase. That’s why I write this dotty blog in the first place, you see, is for people like you – yes, you -- who (heaven help you) think like I do, who keep me on my toes, who reward my humble, over-wrought efforts at cleverness with embarrassing heaps of indifference.

Well, now, if that’s what you’re thinking (about the book, that is), then, ha! That’s where I’ve got you.

Well, okay. Actually, you’re right.

If you’re looking for a bracing read, a ripping yarn, a wicked sense of humor, writing with the kind of style that’s just plain gone out of style in the last 30 years (with one or two shining exceptions), then, gentle subscriber -- oh, fair and loyal verbophile! -- make sure you read The Egyptologist, by Arthur Phillips.

(Talk about burying the lead.)

I guess it was the hot ticket a few years ago (published in ’04, it was), and, in fact, was Phillips’ sophomore jaunt, after the best-selling Prague, which you can bet your sweet little cell phone/PDA/text messaging/push-email-reader I’m going to check out next.

It’s clever and entertaining. It reveals the many (too many) secrets of its labyrinthine plot via two separate sets of letters, sent to two different people, 30 years apart. This device gives Phillips the chance to take his stylistic chops out on the open highway and unwind the engine to about 124 mph, because the two correspondents write very differently. Which is the kind of thing that could drive me batty and lead me to heave the book through a closed window, if Phillips were any less talented. As it is, I love the approach.

The only other author who pulls off this kind of dangerous nonsense with such verve and panache is my primary contemporary literary luminary: one Michael Chabon, my main man, my Karl Rove, the clean-up power hitter in my library line-up, who, even when he goes wrong, can do no wrong in my eyes. (Like most, I didn’t love Summerland, but didn’t I finish all 500-plus pages, now, and draw out the scarce drops of nectar from that half-wilted flower?)

Phillips – so far, and the chunk I’ve read so far seems fairly predictive – is no Chabon, though he clearly is aiming his Taw marble into the same artistic chalk-circle. He’s very good, and that’s saying a lot. But a very good cyclist can either choose a fairly off-beat event and work towards ruling it, or he can enter the Tour de France. If he does the latter, he just has to know up front that he’s going to lose every time to Lance Armstrong.

Coming in second in the Tour rocks pretty dang hard – and so does Phillips. So far. I’ll keep you posted.

Carl Rogers Pumps his Fist

Interesting article in the New York Times Magazine this past Sunday by Laurie Abraham: Can This Marriage be Saved? Abraham followed a couples therapy group for one year, and provides an insider view on both the interactions between the participants, and the therapist's thought process. I liked the thoughts and personality of the therapist very much -- she's well-educated, but at her best when she lets her instincts guide her and her quirky personality shine through. I find the same approach works for me, but I haven't had her years of experience to prove that it's safe (and more effective) to go that way. Reading about experienced clinicians at work is often helpful.

There are a few interesting segués in the article, and I wanted to call out one regarding what the literature has to say on the nature of an effective therapeutic relationship:

Investigators have repeatedly tried to single out specific "therapeutic factors" that can distinguish good therapy from bad, and the only unequivocal winner is what's termed a "positive therapeutic alliance," meaning the client feels that the therapist exhibits qualities like empathy and support.

Jay Efran, a psychologist and emeritus professor at Temple University who surveyed the last 25 years worth of trends in therapy in an ambitious recent article (...) has another idea about what makes for an estimable therapist. He suggests that therapy boils down to a facility for conversation and therefore is a creative and contingent act that does not lend itself to formulas. "The profession has gotten itself into a bind," he told me recently, "because it wants to be seen as a science and it wants to collect money and it has made this category mistake of thinking it provides treatments for diseases and not just conversation or community or human contact or offering new slants on life."

In school, I've had the point in the first paragraph drilled into me so many times I can't count. It's one of the foundations of the humanistic approach that Carl Rogers, a founding father of modern psychology, first defined. And it feels right on to me. (Note that there is a silly, 40-year-old myth related to this which holds that therapists are simply trained to either a) say back to you what you've said to them, or b) gush vague, unexamined supportive statements. Neither is true of a good therapist, regardless of his or her theoretical background.)

The second point seems to me simply to take point number one a giant step further. It may be stated just a little too loosely for my taste, but the gist, again, feels right to me. And while I can hear my more scientifically-oriented friends in the field (and the HMOs, and their panels of well-paid MDs) groaning loudly in the background as I type this, there is a boat-load of truth in this quote.

Thinkulous readers know that I'm a big fan of what science can tell us about our minds, emotions, and behavioral patterns. Neurological breakthroughs in the last 20 years have taken our understanding giant steps forward. Social scientists blaze wide swaths of fascinating new information, cutting through the vast forest of ignorance about our inner workings. I adore reading this stuff, and I try to integrate it into how I approach the field.

At the same time, I've always believed that science, art and mystery are not only highly compatible (in this and any field) but are actually three parts of one whole. What I know, and what I've yet to know that I know, flow together indistinguishably and create my unique approach to clients and clinical situations -- the art. Heck, they create me. And while I adore what science can add to that picture, there isn't an argument in the universe that will convince me that science is any more important than mystery, intuition and subjectivity. We're talking about the mind, about emotions, about self-hood. If it isn't subjective, we are, by definition, off track. How could we possibly quantify why certain people are healing to be around?

One well-recognized marker of mental health is flexible thinking. Practitioners spend a lot of time fostering in our clients a balance of healthy empiricism and risk-tolerant acceptance of the unknown. If the field of psychology doesn't admit pretty soon that the dynamics of pscyhological healing are at least somewhat unquantifiable -- while also unmistakable -- are we then practicing what we preach?

It's All Over but the Clean-up

Well, friends and Romans, the seven-week journey of my summer job is nearing landfall. It’s all over but the clean-up. (That happens on Monday.)

We started with a full week of training, and then spent six weeks teaching theater games and making films with kids with Asperger’s Syndrome. This is an approach to teaching them social skills – the key deficit for people with Asperger’s, the one that all of them have in common to one degree or another. And an amazingly effective apporach it is, based on the gains I saw during the summer.

They know they’re there to learn social skills (and most, though not all, know that they have Asperger’s). But that’s essentially forgotten, and pretty quickly. The games are fun, and there are dozens of them, so each camper has at least two favorites. We played many of them each day. They get to be hams, to have their intelligence challenged, and to use their imagination nearly all day. In the moment, there’s no awareness going to “Hey! I just made sustained eye contact!” or, “Hey! I just conveyed real feeling with a loud tone of voice!” Or moved their bodies in coordinated ways. Or employed rapid, flexible thinking.

All these apparently small achievements are monumental for Aspies.

After they’ve played the games 20 times, it begins to sink in unconsciously that they are capable of initiating a full connection with another person (or entering a new environment, or doing all sorts of things that previously frightened them) and that good things will usually result. How wonderful is that?

There are many social pragmatics programs out there, and from their popularity, I’m inferring that they must be at least somewhat effective. But from what I’ve read (and heard from satisfied parents on the last day of camp), none of them pack that vital X-factor the theater games do: The gains in social skills come directly from the goals of the activity itself, which just happens to look like a fun game – not a “program” or a “lesson.”

Yet there are dozens of games (and more being created all the time, all over the world), and each targets a different set of social skills. So, they can be craftily combined to target specific kids, or to achieve carefully chosen group goals.

As you can tell, I’m fairly excited about the gains I saw kids make in six short weeks.

And it was both exciting and heartbreaking to see our teens – both the macho, crass, aggressive ones and the awkward, sweet, retiring ones – run up to us and give us hugs and good wishes and good-bye cards. We all milled around at the end of the day; no one wanted to say good-bye. When that last kid (who happened to be one of my favorites) got in his bus, we counselors looked around balefully, shrugged our shoulders and silently headed for the rooms to clean up.

(Of course, there was a wrap-up party last night, and it was boisterous -- a great way to blow off all that pent-up poignancy.)

It was a grueling summer session, five hours of intense contact a day with kids who often can barely stand 10 minutes of such (not to mention the hours of paperwork every day). But I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. We made a difference in their lives – and they sure affected me pretty deeply. My favorites will be on my mind for weeks, I’m sure.