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PEACE ON EARTH HAPPY HOLIDAYS JUSTICE FOR ALL
Issue 2 - December 2003
Welcome to "Growing," the newsletter of the Institute for Personal Growth/IPG Counseling. We hope you enjoy it and will pass it along to friends and colleagues. Please feel free to mail us feedback and comments, suggestions for future articles, and/or first person contributions at: ipgcounseling@ipgcounseling.com. And, we're starting an "Advice" column, so feel free to ask for an "expert" opinion about an issue or problem in your life - just make it clear that your question is for newsletter publication, we'll keep your identity confidential.
Peace and love,
Margie Nichols Ph.D., Editor
Click here for Growing Diversity, our newsletter for sexual minorities.
IN THIS ISSUE:
FEATURE STORIES:
-- Is psychotherapy obsolete in the 21st century?
-- Depression is the "common cold" of mental illness - but deadlier
TRULY INSANE: News of the Psychologically Absurd
-- Masturbation is controversial; an orgasm machine for women; Vatican says
condoms don’t prevent AIDS; Ecstasy research fraudulent; and other
ridiculous news
FREE ASSOCIATIONS: Editorial Comments
-- Reasons to be grateful
IPG NEWS:
-- Female Sexuality Survey
THE END OF PSYCHOTHERAPY?
Freud himself said that all that psychoanalysis could do was prepare people for the misery of everyday life. But in the last half of the twentieth century we've increasingly turned to psychotherapy to make us happy - in effect, to teach us how to live competently and successfully in the world.
New research findings, and new ways of looking at old research, are showing that some of the most cherished assumptions of psychotherapists may be wrong. Judith Rich Harris rocked psychology a few years ago by claiming that parents have very little influence over how their kids turn out. As a writer of textbooks on child development, Harris reviewed the results of thousands and thousands of studies on what "matters" to children. She noted that kids from vastly different child-rearing situations - divorced versus intact families, for example - seemed to all have about the same likelihood of developing mental or emotional illness, addictions to drug and alcohol, or delinquent or criminal behavior. Harris found that only genetics and peer influence seemed to make a difference in kids' life outcomes.
Other research has suggested that economics may trump both family and genetic influences. Poverty appears to suppress I.Q. and be directly related to deviant and aggressive behaviors. Eric Turkheimer from the University of Virginia looked at twins to study IQ in poor and in middle and upper class families. Genetics determined IQ differences for the economically advantaged kids, but not for poor ones, leading Turkheim to conclude that a minimally supportive environment is necessary before IQ can be fully developed - and kids living below the poverty line don't have that support. Dr. Jane Costello of Duke University studied kids on a Cherokee reservation before and after the introduction of a casino on their land. Because the proceeds of the casino were distributed among all families on the reservation, many poor Cherokee families found their impoverished situation vastly improved. Cherokee children exhibited far less delinquency and aggressive behavior problems when income increased, regardless of their home situation.
Meanwhile, research on the effectiveness of psychotherapy has always been disappointing, as far back as the 60's. Taken as a whole, therapy helps people barely better than no therapy at all, and of all possible therapeutic variables (technique, type and length of training, etc.), only therapist warmth and empathy seem to make a difference - implying that personality and not approach are what matter.
Some therapists, frustrated with their inability to help clients, have looked to other belief systems, to non-verbal modalities, and to studies of lifestyle. They have adopted visualization techniques from sports psychology, meditation from Eastern sources, behavioral change strategies from the research on habit formation and habit breaking. They are using EMDR - rapid eye movement therapy - and body work. They are asking clients about things like exercise, what kind of food they eat and how much water they drink, and advocating medication for many clients. These psychotherapists also appreciate the power and importance of the Recovery movement and other self-help groups.
And some are looking deeper, questioning whether psychotherapy might not be a bit narcissistic by encouraging people to spend so much time on their own individual psychosocial histories. The path to happiness and peace as explained by Buddhist psychology, for example, does not lie in talking about yourself. Instead, happiness is attained by such things as developing compassion for others, appreciating your blessings in life, and learning to live in the here-and-now. Taking a lesson from the research on stress resiliency, many psychotherapists help clients to find meaning in their lives and a sense of purpose. They believe unhappiness may not be caused by an individual’s past as much as it is, for example, from working at an unsatisfying job or being addicted to acquiring material goods. And psychologist Martin Seligman has helped create the field of "Positive Psychology," which focuses on what makes people happy rather than on what makes them neurotic. Seligman is designing therapeutic exercises based on his research, such as "gratitude visits," designed to help people learn to express thanks to others.
What does the future of psychotherapy hold? It may very well be going in the direction of blending two seemingly antagonistic approaches: science and spirituality. We can expect therapy to become more evidence-based - grounded in proven techniques - and in neuroscience. More attention will be paid to the interaction between physical body states and mood. At the same time, we can expect psychotherapists to ask us to focus more on meaning, purpose, and ethical treatment of others. So don't be surprised if your therapist both recommends that you seek a medication consult and that you explore your own values and goals in life; that you change some unhealthy habits and at the same time do some volunteer service for others.
To read more about alternative psychotherapy at IPG, click here.
WHEN THE HOLIDAY BLUES LAST ALL YEAR LONG
Everybody has "down" days, times of excessive irritability and sensitivity, nights when sleep is fitful and disturbed. Those moments can come more frequently around the holidays, especially if our lives don't match the "ideal" - if we don't have a date for New Year's, for example.
But for many people the "Holiday Blues" don’t go away. Clinical depression affects nearly one in five people at some point in their lives. Depressive illness disrupts relationships and home life, impairs work functioning, and claims some lives through suicide. Recent studies highlight the origins of depression - and point out other ways it can kill. The July 2003 issue of Science magazine featured a report on the interaction of the "depression gene" and stressful events in adulthood, things like losing your job, the death of a loved one, problems with kids. The gene, discovered in the '90's and named 5-HTT, seems to cause depression by altering the brain's use of serotonin, the same neurotransmitter affected by modern antidepressants.
5-HTT comes in two forms, or "alleles." There is a long and a short allele, and all of us have some combination of the two. The long form seems to confer emotional resilience. People with two long alleles seem to bounce back from all adversity; their strength under fire sometimes seems too good to be true. The short allele, dubbed the "Woody Allen" gene, is linked to depression. People with two short alleles tend to crumble under even ordinary stress – they are hypersensitive to life's travails. Those with one long and one short may handle moderate stress quite well, but sink into clinical depression when problems pile up. This research, though in its infancy, may explain why depression is so common – more than half of us have at least one short allele, and thus the potential to develop depressive illness. It also suggests why people seem to vary so widely in their reactions to life events.
The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute released data this past summer showing an extraordinarily strong relationship between depression and heart disease. By middle age, the study showed, depression triples or quadruples the risk of cardiac death. But, in patients who already had suffered one heart attack, use of antidepressants reduced the recurrence of death or another heart attack by 30 to 40 percent. Although other research has shown that the most effective treatment for depression is a combination of medication and cognitive therapy, in this study cognitive therapy alone didn't prevent second heart attacks. If you are depressed and have risk factors for heart disease – your Zoloft may save your life.
The June 18 2003 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association reported on increased public awareness of depression. Sixty percent of Americans who suffer from depressive disorder now seek treatment, the highest number ever. Unfortunately, only 40% of those who go for help get adequate care. Most people turn to their family physician for help with this disorder, and physicians seem less well educated about the disease than their patients – they underprescribe antidepressant meds, give too-low doses, or give tranquilizers or sleeping pills instead. In short, you can go to your primary care doctor for help with depression – but arm yourself with information first, you may have to educate the doc.
To read more about depression and other mood disorders, click here.
TRULY INSANE: News of the Psychologically Absurd
"If you don’t have a sense of humor, the world situation just isn’t funny anymore"
-Wavy Gravy
Masturbation is controversial again- it apparently helps you avoid cancer but it ruins your sex life. In July, Dr. Graham Giles, a researcher in Melbourne Australia, proclaimed that masturbation prevents prostate cancer. Research done by his group showed that men who had ejaculated daily during their twenties had one-third less incidence of prostate cancer in middle age. At the same, a number of websites have sprung up warning of the dangers of Traumatic Masturbation Syndrome. These sites, apparently constructed by TMS sufferers, maintain that men who masturbate while lying prone on their stomachs do permanent damage to their penises, with resultant inability to engage in insertive partner sex without pain. Sex researchers and sex education experts say there is no basis in fact for TMS. Wonder if the TMS people think they'll grow hair on the palms of their hands, too?
There seems to be lots of absurd sex in the news lately. On November 6, Reuters reported that a policeman in Singapore was jailed for two years for having oral sex. Seems that in Singapore prostitution is legal – but oral sex is not.
Also reported by Reuters - in North Carolina, Dr. Stuart Meloy is looking for women to test a new orgasm machine. Meloy, a pain specialist, has developed an implant device that delivers spinal cord stimulation to a particular spot that triggers orgasms in women. As of November 26, only two women had volunteered, though those women are extremely pleased that they chose to participate. One commented, "You have to teach my husband to do this."
There’s also been some insane AIDS-related news as well, but it’s too lethal to be funny. The Catholic Church is telling people in countries stricken by AIDS – particularly in African countries where the Church is quite powerful – that condoms don’t prevent AIDS. Cardinal Alfonso Trujillo, President of the Vatican’s Council for Families, has gone on public television to warn people not to use condoms because "they have tiny holes in them through which the HIV virus can pass." What prevention method should be used? According to the Church, only abstinence until monogamous marriage is scientifically safe. The WHO (World Health Organization) has condemned the Vatican's views, citing massive research that shows that condoms have a high success rate in preventing AIDS. Nevertheless, Cardinal Trujillo has refused to retract his statements. The archbishop of Nairobi, Kenya has echoed Trujillo's words to Kenyan Catholics, and as a result, HIV prevention workers can't get Kenyans to take condoms anymore. Some priests, the workers say, have been telling their parishioners that condoms are actually laced with HIV.War on Drugs: Drugs 1, National Institutes on Drug Abuse 0. Some of you may remember a government campaign a few years ago with pictures of the "Plain Brain/Brain on Ecstasy" – an MRI film that made it look like Ecstasy use produced holes in the brain. The "research" behind that campaign, funded by NIDA, was done by Dr. George Ricuarte of Johns Hopkins University. In September, the esteemed Science magazine, in a very unusual move, issued a retraction of a Ricuarte study published in 2002, saying the study of the "designer drug" was so flawed as to be worthless – and possibly fraudulent, as well. Ricuarte did his work with primates, but it now turns out that he never gave the primates Ecstasy. Instead, he gave them overdoses of methamphetamine – two of the monkeys died, in fact. Ricuarte, who has been cited for flawed research on illegal drugs many times, says "someone switched the test tubes." Ricuarte has received over $10 million from NIDA, more than any other "club drug" researcher. To date, NIDA has not withdrawn his funding.
FREE ASSOCIATIONS: Editorial Comments
This editorial is not a rant – but rather a hymn of gratitude. This is a time of year associated with birth and new beginnings: the birth of a new year, the start of the six months of the year when the sun waxes and every day there are a few more minutes of sunlight. It is also a time of caring and compassion, connection with loved ones and, hopefully, connection with a sense of greater community – opening to Gaia, the interrelatedness of everything on Mother Earth.
The weeks leading up to December and the New Year can be a time for looking inward and reflecting on the past in order to prepare for the future. This year, it has been such a period for me.
To begin with, I had two clients return to me that I had first seen twenty-three years ago. Over more than two decades much had changed in their lives and mine – and yet much about the essence of who we are had stayed the same. It was like reuniting with long-lost friends, people who I knew, and who knew me, "back in the day." I have been overcome with gratitude that my life work, my avocation, has allowed me the privilege of being a witness to other people's lives. I share their pain, their struggles, their most intimate moments. I am clear that in the interactions between me and my clients – I gain at least as much as they do. I am thankful for my clients, past, present and those yet to come.
Then, Angels in America aired on TV, and I was flooded with memories of the 80's, of IPG's involvement in founding Hyacinth AIDS Foundation, of all the bright spirits who died back then, the generation lost to the epidemic. I am grateful that we are alive, and I’m also thankful that through AIDS work I regained a strong spiritual life.
Finally, at our annual staff Holiday party, I was overcome with gratitude at the community IPG has become. We are a group of people, together for varying lengths of time, who feel IPG is more than just a job. What we have in common is the feeling that our work is, forgive the corniness, our spiritual path. And, we know that part of that path is the way we work together. We take care of each other, we cherish and appreciate each other, we accept each other's flaws and work through difficulties. In many ways we are family. I am grateful to be a part of this family.
But I also realized something else about us and our counseling work. There is a Buddhist principle of activism that maintains that you must BE the change you want to bring about in the world. The same goes for doing therapy. If you want to teach people unconditional self-regard and love for others, if you want to help people communicate better with loved ones – as a therapist, you must first do this with the people in your own life. The teacher and writer Ram Dass once said, "The greatest gift your therapist can give you is the work they have done on themselves." At IPG, I've realized, we try to live that.
IPG NEWS BRIEFS:
IPG Study of Female Sexuality: The most exciting new development at IPG is the launching of our new study of female sexuality. We started collecting data in November, and soon our survey will be on the Internet as well.
The idea for the study began when Dr. Nichols was asked to contribute a chapter on lesbian sexuality for the first-ever medical textbook on female sexual function and dysfunction. Margie asked IPG therapist Sue Menaham to co-author, and they decided they needed to collect new information instead of just relying on the little information already published and on their clinical experience. Debbie Williamson and Cheryl Langfield joined to give advice and practical help with data gathering and analysis.
While piloting the questionnaire, at first designed for just lesbian and bisexual women, we realized that what we were learning was so interesting we wanted to expand to get information about sex from ALL women, regardless of sexual orientation. And so the Female Sex Survey project was born. We're asking all kinds of stuff about women's sexual experiences and behavior, and about sex in primary relationships. Be sure to look for results in future issues of Growing.
To read staff papers on sexuality, click here.
IPG Develops Protocol for DINS Couples: In October, Debbie and Margie worked with IPG clinical staff to perfect a model of sex psychoeducation we can offer clients that is unique to our practice. Over time we've come to believe that a major cause of decreased sexual desire and frequency in long-term couples of all kinds is boredom. Most of us get into routine patterns of sexual activity that "work" for a long time but then are less and less arousing. So, we've decided to take a "hands on" approach - we have a lending library of erotic films and audiotapes available to clients, books of sexual variations and ideas for creative sexual adventures for couples – and now, a Toy Box, filled with sexual enhancers to add spice to the same old routine. The toys are not for loan, but instead for "show and tell." Clients, for example, can feel the difference in intensity between six different types of vibrators or see what it's like to wear a blindfold, and can get information about where to shop on line or in person for sexual enhancers and how to care for sex toys.
To read more about DINS, click here.
New IPG Staff: We’ve added new therapists in Highland Park and Jersey City to make our staff more diverse than ever. For the first time in several years, we have a Spanish (and Portugeuese) speaking therapist in Jersey City. Now, the range of both life experience and training represented on our clinical staff is the broadest it has been in our 20-year history.
To read more about IPG staff, click here.
Click HERE to read previous issues of Growing