Empathy - connects to Theory of Mind (ToM)

You in your small corner

2008-01-18T04:01:00.000-08:00

Hearing of Margaret Mead's work in a history cum anthropological seminar at Sussex brought me into a world I've been waiting to explore. She suggested, amongst so much else, that the British class system evolved from aristocratic family life in which the nurse cared for and then presented the child to her own parents at what was considered an appropriate time.

Similarly in the military, as I remember from my two years service but had never seen it in this light, the senior non commissioned officer having himself ensured we were fit for purpose invited the commissioned officer to inspect us befor marching us off to the next experience. All that shouting and saluting was to equip us to know our place and as Tennyson put it 'not to make reply ..not to reason why ..but to do and die'

Similarly a friend who is a civil servant employed in local government is being schooled even now for a forthcoming inspection which will result in her employing authority being being awarded one two three or even four stars. Such drama, such bullshit is supposed to impress those higher up the chain and as such but it's really designed to maintain a hierarchy.

Yet maybe try www.pigs-in-lipstick.co.uk/2005/01/the_emperor_has_no_clothes.htm

But I am apparently an individual who will eventually stand alone to be inspected and judged by he from whom no secrets are hid! Similarly anxious and pushy parents can monitor on line their child's behaviour or progess or whatever at school. For such fugitives there is no hiding place.

Margaret Mead's insight into the ways of the primitive British got me going. This morning I woke with a ditty I learned as a child 'Jesus wants me as a sunbeam ......you in your small corner and I in mine'. This stuff of individualism was soon reinforced by the notion that Jesus died for all the children, all the children of the world. A current aristocracy has Tony Blair ingests the body and blood of Christ whilst born again George Bush is confident that he, with others like him, is saved. This leaves them free in their crusade against bad people whilst denying in Gaza the democratically elected Hamas.

Let's stay with hymns. As tenant farmers with the lord of the manor in his private pew we sang of the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate and God ordered that estate. Whilst in the military I was so stuck with my non conformist affiliation I stood in Esher Baptist Church (with near by Sandown Park as the Welsh Guards training ground) to sing no 653 which might have been in army regulations 'Direct control suggest each day, all I design or do or say, that all my powers with all my might, to thy sole glory may unite'.

And paradoxically we live with all this bullshit whilst discovering that we are social animals and all that entails. As such we are equipped with a Theory of Mind making us empathetic to what the other is thinking feeling and believing; and what each has in mind makes all the difference. Such empathy is in effect a social skill and the basis for relating in every sphere of life.

Almost as a postcript: having now seen through the paucity of the British class system I realise why Latin Americans have been so powerful in my coming out as human. Manfred Max-Neef showed me that the potential of my fundamental needs can be realised. Carlos Casoni brought me into touch with my passionate self and Luigi Menchini gave me the notion of amicus, that a friend is someone I see worthy of my love and that my enemy is an other who treats me as a friend would not.

Can any mother help me

2007-11-16T06:31:00.000-08:00

Jenna Bailey wrote an amazing book Can Any Mother Help Me, an edited version of twice monthly round robin letters written by group of women more or less my mother's age from 1935 until well into the 7o's

Hearing Jenna speak to the life history group at Sussex disturbed me (which is always a good sign) She explained their predicament as a sense of emotional isolation

In speaking she brought to mind my own mothers isolation; she too suffered in silence but alas was trapped having to maintain to all and sundry a happy family syndrome, lacking as it was in empathy.

I'm sending my copy of Joanna's book to my sisters in the remote chance that they might hear what I'm trying to say; on previous experience they'll write me off as peculiar and stay content in the sense of their immediate well being. Mary my evangelical sister will probably keep me on her prayer list but alas it won't work.

But that notion of isolation stays with me so my heart is with people anywhere who are seen as irrelevant...but that'a another story.

The good news for me is the BBC's House of the Tiny Tearaways where some people are helped to talk to each other ...but that's yet another story.

Having what it takes

2007-10-01T02:36:00.000-07:00

This moment in time shows Sophie with Percy. They've got what it takes. So it's a matter of horses and courses and relating and confidence and courage and skill and practice over years; above all it's their empathy which gives this event a place in my mind.

Hypoempatica, a horrible condition of the mind.

2007-09-25T02:30:00.000-07:00

Carlos Casoni depicts someone suffering with hypoempatica; read hypo as inadequate and empathy to suffer with.

Were this a medical condition we could relax but it is an age old lack of humanity. Read of others who walked on the other side Luke 10.25-37

This condition happens in those who find their status from their firm organisation or even family's postition in some league table or peck order, and will bend their whole energy to maintaining it.

With that priority uppermost in their mind they can easily overlook empathy as a resource or a salient feature in the life of 'their' firm organisation or even family; or leave it to the women.

Control freaks top cats and other very important people afflicted with this condition maintain their status by keepinga the rest of us in our place. After all children can be seen but not heard!

Just seen it. This condition relates to sales and marketing people as to evangelists of every hue. That their sinister intent might be unwitting, at any rate they will deny it, but this in no way makes them innocent. Jehovah's Witnesses are obvious but all such are essentially predatory arrogant patronising and condescending brainwashers. They may be threatening or seductive, they may be amusing and even entertaining but they are out to get you one way or the other.

Panic and getting it wrong.

2007-09-21T03:23:00.001-07:00

Robin Dunbar in his The Human Story pp49-50 writes of those who find it difficult to get it right. It's as though in a tense situation 'their mind reading modules are working overtime without the benefit of the more rational part of the mind to act as a brake on the more outrageous inferences made on the basis of tenuous evidence'.

Hence we create conspiracy theories; all too often we get it wrong and waste a load of humanity and join the ranks of those who score poorly on theory of mind development.

Getting it wrong also denies the possibility of a useful encounter in what we find is a problematic situation. Maybe do well to look before we leap and listen before we speak.

AVAAZ

2007-09-18T05:42:00.000-07:00

I created the blog Coming Out As Human. Yet I admit that my concern for world wide injustice is recent. Whilst others marched and spoke on behalf of the oppressed in Vietnam and South Africa I was busy doing my own thing 'getting married trying out new oxen or buying a larger house'.

Then I came across AVAAZ a web based petition signing group. The issues they spoke of made sense. I added my name to a host of people around the world drawing the attention of the good and the great to situations in which ordinary people are persecuted.

With my coming out politically I joined a local group of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. On Saturdays we leaflet passers by in Brighton. We invite them to sign our petitions and maybe stay and talk about the plight of the Palestinians; but more often than not little notice is taken of our protest. But we can live with it.

What really matters is the empathy we bring and our celebration of the resilience tenacity courage and determination to live on the part of those we represent.

Another take on Empathy

2007-09-13T06:40:00.000-07:00

On TED.COM Steven Pinker deals with the myth of violence.

In a landmark talk Steven Pinker takes on violence. "We live in violent times, an era of heightened warfare, genocide and senseless crime. Or so we've come to believe". He charts a history of violence from Biblical times through the present, and concludes that modern society has less to feel guilty about. Watch this talk >>

Jumping to conclusions

2007-09-06T05:37:00.000-07:00

Stephen Webb was at Sussex and is now transported to Australia. In his paper Decision, Chance and Rationality he gives an insight into making rash decisons, a mental habit I used to use all too often.

These mental habits are called heuristics. We have three catagories of them: 1. anchoring and adjustment 2. availability and 3. representative. They are ready and waiting to be used by default when we're pushed to make a snap decision, when in an emergency we don't pause to reflect.

Lions out hunting or gazelles being chased make split second decisions. We too come hard wired with such mental processes yet if push comes to shove in such a predicament we would probably get eaten alive or trodden underfoot.

In evolutionary terms over maybe three million years we've developed what's called Theory of Mind. Equipped with this many of us are empathetic and can read each other's mind and don't need to resort to jungle behaviour.

However knowing that heuristics are part of our mental equipment we can look at the links we make between similar situations to reflect more carefully on them than we might otherwise do.

Eastenders

2007-08-31T04:36:00.000-07:00

Until yesterday I had not identified with a parti cular character in the soap but Ian has a truculent daughter Lucy. A conversation with a fellow in the pub and Ian is off on another wild good chase. He will send her to boarding school.

Reflecting on that incident I saw me sending Andrew and Stephen away to school some forty years ago because I had no sense I could talk to let alone negotiate with them. I can now see this was a fuss about nothing but at the time, rushing in as it were where angels fear to tread, I had to act, to be decisive

But what's caught me today is Ian's propensity to wild goose chasing.

Me chasing every rabbit that runs is now a bad dream and I've learned to work my way through most of whatever needs sorting. But what a waste of humanity, theirs and mine. It was as though I had no idea about relating.

For the family

2007-08-31T02:53:00.000-07:00

This entry is derived from Adam Phillip's essay For the Family in his Side Effects. See an earlier entry entitled Ineducability which I found difficult to write. This note is no easier but it's so near the bone and I need to struggle with it.

It starts when two people meet and enjoy each other's company and became an item. Lot's of passion secrets and probably promises too. All is well and then come the kiddiwinks and complications. Broken nights dirty nappies sheer fatigue and advice from granny but there is no going back.

The previous idyllic days and nights become a memory. Attempts to find and re-enact their original passion exclude and temporarily abandon the kiddiwinks so that the parents become criminals in their own home. ' In our erotic lives we abandon our children, in our familial lives we abandon our desire'.

So what was to have become a story of sheer delight becomes one of deprivation and frustration, a place where can't always have what we want when we want it and this is not easy to learn.

To make matters worse 'most people feel far worse about betraying their children than about betraying their partner'.

Some people invoke the happy family syndrome and pretend that all is well. Some go even further and invite the very grown up children to stay for ever within the ever generous fold of at least one parent, the good one. That fairy story eventually wears thin but the facts of life are that we can't always have what we want when we want it.

Haunted

2007-08-22T08:07:00.000-07:00

Kate Winslet played Susan whilst Christopher Eccleston played her cousin Jude in the film of that name . Eventually they were lovers and she had two children by him and together they adopted a ten year old Jude, a child by his previous ill fated marriage.

But the free thinking cousins did not marry and were ostracised in rural Dorset in the 1880's. Tragedy struck.

Burdened by a sense of guilt and of punishment well deserved Susan reverted to the church. End of Thomas Hardy's story. But not of ours for we find it all too easy to slip back into what we're used to, to what seems safe and relatively unproblematic.

Read the next entry on Ineducability to get under the skin of your predicament and talk it through with anyone who will stay with you. Such conversations will probably last your lifetime.

Ineducability

2007-07-22T05:06:00.000-07:00

Adam Phillips in his Side Effects gives me a handle on why we find so difficult, as it were, to change our minds. In the back of my mind I carry the biblical metaphor that a leopard can't change his spots nor a Nubian the colour of his skin. Yet both the leopard and the Nubian seem thoroughly at home with their appearance.

Phillips suggests that a child may be told the facts of life yet still believe the stork, or in my case the gooseberry bush theory.

Yet with all the Blair and now Brown talk of education that those who know best and do the educating believe that we, the great unwashed, who must be educated are in some way enhanced when we ingest all that knowledge we are supposed to need.

I prefer Terry Deary's ideas (see earlier post to this blog) on education. It ties in with my own childhood when I stayed off school to help with the haymaking and earlier when Daniel was off sick gave me a chance to be the pigman for a week. My wage packet was half a crown but that was less important than my sense of being useful and doing what needed to be done.

I digress. Adam Phillips offers the idea that teaching a child the real facts of life is what Winnicot calls an impingement and "what could at its most extreme be called a trauma, a sacrifice he is compelled to make; one that goes against the grain of a child's development."

The child is one thing. As adults when we come face to face with a new insight, much as we might know that it offers new promise yet the old beliefs won't lie down and go away but are ready to remind us of their fit. Until recently I clung tenaciously to the notion of being a really important person (adopted from my grandfather Cyrus Samuel who seemed larger than life to me as a child)until I saw the ridiculous nature and the futility of that myth, of that identity.

Search the blog for an earlier entry re Judith Rich Harris. She suggests that in our culture as it now is parents can easily fall into the trap of trying too hard with their children, even when the the co called children are themselves grandparents!

Somewhere out there I have a nephew Charles now well into his 50's who is, as I see him, not simply unweaned but still connected to his family by an umbilical cord. I have tried to reducate him but find he is ineducable preferring to cling to a family who, I suspect, attribute their financial prowess to themselves being sustained by the meta myth of god's unfailing providence.

Parents of of overage children' who don't won't or can't grow up might remember that piglets 6-7 weeks old grow sharp teeth so that sows make sure to educate their offspring to fend for themselves.

Passion.

2007-07-22T01:30:00.001-07:00

Introducing mi amigo Carlos with Max his son in a photo from Chile. I'm looking for a picture of him before he got domesticated when he lived in London and where we became good friends.

Besides much more Carlos showed me what passion looked like close up. He had a sister living in Equador and married to a Moslem who would not let her take her children back to Chile. Carlos somehow raised the money to go and rescue his sister by any means neccesary. He got to Equador only to find his brother in law already dead!

What remains so powerful in my mind is the passion Carlos felt for his sister. I had, still have come to that, two sisters and never in a month of Sundays could I find anything similar stirring in my breast for them.

I had known only rage and noise in my life but never passion as I saw it in Carlos.

But looking back I noticed twice when my father talked passionately. Once when he spoke of his brother in law, my uncle Ern, who had cheated his sister, my mother, from her rights under the provision of her parent's will. The other time he spoke of related to his days in Bournmouth grammer school when a master hit another boy over the knuckles with a ruler until the blood came. Twice he knew passion but was constrained and powerless.

This matter of passion came alive to me recently when I read of Terry Dreary's (see my previous entry) passion for Sunderland football club. This reminds me now of my father's roar of excitement at football when his side scored or missed a goal.

Late in life my modest passions come to life when I feel intently for the Palestians and I wonder why all my life I've been so passive, so dumbed down, so subject to what ought to be, so fearful of criticism and of ridicule.

Carolyn

2007-07-22T00:53:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across this picture of Carolyn, my daughter in law, taken at my 80th birthday party. And I stumbled into a bundle of empathetic feelings for her that I was not aware of but had somehow crept up on me. Whats's more I sense they are reciprocated; maybe if and when she reads this entry she'll confirm my reflection on our relationship.

As I looked at the photo I realised that this was not the Carolyn who married Andrew, my eldest son, some twenty five years ago. What's happened? I've come to see her in a new light which speaks of Theory of Mind and has not happened by trying hard or magic but inadvertinently. What ever it is I'm glad to have lived long enough to enjoy the experience.

A good idea

2007-07-19T07:54:00.000-07:00

Terry Deary author of Terrible Histories, best seen in any children libraries, quotes

"I've no interest in schools. They have no relevance in the 21st century. They were a Victorian idea to get kids off the street. Who decided that putting 30 kids with only their age in common in a classrryoom with one teacher was the best way of educating? At my school there were 52 kids in the class and all I learned was how to pass the 11-plus. Testing is the death of education. Kids should leave school at 11 and go to work. Not down the mines or up chimneys, mind, but working with computers or something relevant. Everything I learned after 11 was a waste of time. Trigonometry, Boyle's law: it's never been of any use to me. They should have been teaching me the life skills I was going to need, such aseat building relationships, parenting and managing money. I didn't have a clue about any of these things at 18. Schools need to change."

Terry took my breath away on the tv politics show when he suggested the Norman conquest, almost a thousand years ago, mobilised the good and the great to go fight Islam and reclaim Jerusalem from the infadels. And with Bush Blair supporting the Zionists we're still at it and the Palestinians are spoken of as Arabs and treated like dirt. So much for the good and the great. God save the queen and bless america!

A political system based on empathy

2007-07-15T02:52:00.000-07:00

Simon Baron-Cohen's contribution to What is your Dangerous Idea? suggests that a political system could be based on empathy. This is Theory of Mind made real and it's mind blowing

Simon suggests politicans are illequipped to resolve conflict but they might follow Nelson Mandela's and F.W.De Klerk's example; they sat down to try to understand each other, to empathisise with each other even if the other was defined as a terrorist.

We might see if this model has anything to say to our workplace. It has to some (but not all) Brighton & Hove bus drivers and those passengers who obviously empathise with each other. Some of us find it a useful tool in family and personal life but it can be slow coming.

I'll paraphrase Simon's piece using managers at work rather than politicians "who could be good listeners, who ask questions of others instead of assuming they know the right course of action. ....instead of seeking to control and dominate they would be seeking to support, enable and care".

Come to that such an empthetic approach might work wonders in family life and any sitution where someone or other has to know best.

But me no buts.

2007-07-13T05:03:00.000-07:00

The late Willis Harman quote , my re write of it
"We can learn the debilitating effect of fear
the fear of ridicule
the fear of criticism
the fear of failure
and surprisingly the fear of success
and learn to disenfranchise that fear thence come to trust our total enviroment where all experience is feedback and there is nothing to fear

Thence find within ourselves a deep sense of purpose in living and work and live with others who honour that purpose and come to rely on the motivation associated with it".

I stayed with that quote for weeks noting every anxiety I found myself lumbered with and identifying each with a fear of ridicule, criticism or failure.

The real surprise was realising the threat of success and having to grow up to a new sense of responsibility. No longer could I play the mistake card nor excuse myself for having got it wrong or not seen it coming.

In doing this is I was, in effect, applying a ToM to myself and taking myself seriously; once I got used to this I could no longer treat myself as rubbish but
as a becoming human with a mind of my own and experiencing my own beliefs, desires, fears, hopes and feelings as mental states.

What really happened

2007-07-09T06:16:00.000-07:00

I am glad to be associated with the Palestinian poeple. I feel for them in their distress and for them being seen as violent and referred to in a pejorative sense as Arabs.

I have dealings with a Jew. We dance around each other in the matter of Israel but occasionally he imagines I need to be better informed. He mentioned a video and would I watch it? Two or three slides in the feature page is entitled "What Really Happened . . ." I was amazed that I was invited to learn what really happened and switched off.

On reflection I see that title is patronising and simplistic. It assumes that I am ill informed and have no mind of my own. It lacks any sense of ToM that I experience my beliefs, desires, fears and hopes as mental states.

This incident says, to me, much more than I first supposed. It speaks of someone trying too hard. It begs the question of our relationship. How can I see him who was so keen to get me to watch the video as a friend, one worthy of my love?

The Law of the Medes and the Persians

2007-07-04T04:37:00.000-07:00

Read in the book of Daniel of King Darious, a control freak if ever there was one, whose word, it seemed could not be broken.

Some of us have tried this role in many walks of life. Many parents, priests and preachers, employers and their managers, to say nothing of politicians imitating God whose will, it seems must be done.

Anna mi amiga asked Andrew my eldest son what was it like living within my shadow. His response said it all "you did'nt have a chance" or words to that effect

Somehere I hear my father insisting "there's nothing to be done about it". He grew up as a teenager in the 14-18 war when a common belief was that if your number was on a bullet it would inevitably find you.

In such a despondant environment the good and the great are determined to keep what they see as their status and have no mind for lesser morals nor time to ascribe beliefs, desires, fears and hopes to them nor to believe they really do experience these feelings as mental states.

Remember Harry Secombe as Mr Bumble in Oliver Twist dealing with Oliver who had the temerity to ask for more. Just as Daniel survived so too did Oliver. And we too can learn to be resilient.

Deference as a bad habit

2007-07-01T02:35:00.000-07:00

Say shirrk! To defer to another man is an offence to Allah. Forget the Allah bit and ask who in your life must not be upset. To whom do you defer? What's the penalty if you break the rule. Who sets the rule anyway.

I learned the rule from my father who insisted that we should not upset his wife, our mother. Much later I asked why not only to find his own anxiety laid bare. Were she to be upset she might well have a breakdown and be comitted to the Old Manor, the local psychiatric hospital. "I would" said he letting the cat out of the bag "I would have to be seen going to visit her". All those wasted years, his hers and ours.

Yet as a spoiled child there were those who had not to upset me. Even now I find the idea difficult to handle. Since I lived under my mother's protection she forbad my father from dealing with me getting my own way so he was subject to her rule! And what penalty could she exert? The mind boggles.

Deference in a top down culture is endemic. And it's all about fear. Our fear. When we realise the hideous nature of this morbid cultural sickness we can prepare ourselves to deny the next situation in which we are expected to show deference or in which we know what's really happening. But there will be a penalty and you'll pay the price of rocking the boat or even of whistle blowing.

Manfred Max-Neef

2007-06-27T06:21:00.001-07:00

Manfred Max-Neef's contribution to my own well being is the basis of my becoming human. Abraham Maslow used the same list of needs but his approoach was top down whereas Manfred's approach is botton up.

Stay tuned. Manfred suggests each need is a potential, not a label on a container which has to be filled. This is best seen in the case of understanding. I have to understand what is there waiting to be understood. No one else can do my understanding and if I pretend to understand that won't make sense.

My father had the saying 'A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still' but I see it attributed to Dale Carnegie who was older than my father. It was he who shared it with me and I only wish I had learned it much earlier. Too many people believed Bush/Blair in the matter of WMD and look at that mess in Iraq.

Another salient feature of Manfred's approach is that our needs are constant and dynamic. Just as we need to sleep each day so we need to understand whatever does not ring true or violates our sense of injustice and what does not make sense or does our head in. In such a state of mind we are, in effect suffering from qualified satisfaction of our fundamental human needs.

So we develop a mind of our own and the confidence that comes with it. Lack of confidence can be seen as wallowing in such qualified satisfaction and imagining there's no way out.

Which brings us back to a distorted Theory of Mind which happens when we mix with those who persistenly deny us our humanity and we allow them an authority to do so.

Yet our need to understand and be understood is but one of nine. When I've learned how I will link Direct to another blog; in the meatime try www.basichumanneeds.blogpsot.com

Pamela Trevithick

2007-06-24T07:40:00.000-07:00

Pamela Trevithick gave a seminar at Sussex entitled "Steering a Course Without a Compass: Why are social work skills and interventions under theorised, under researched and . . ."

I don't recall her presentation but I remember the tenor of the questions and comments which flowed from it. So much anxiety and lack of confidence. It was the vulnerability of those participants that Pamela elicited. Must have been her own ToM at work.

We're so used to selling our strengths and confidence that we overlook the value of vulnerability. In that state we can look for and find a new resourcefulness. Of this more later.

In turn this enables me to see that this blog has become a way of developing my own experience of anything that disturbs worries or bothers me. Maybe using ToM makes this insight a sort of tipping point, and I didn't see it coming. And of this more later.

Happiness

2007-06-24T06:04:00.001-07:00

On the politics show 24th June I was fascinated by reference to a government initiative to enhance the happiness of us, the great unwashed. The other lot, the conservatives, are referring to this as our well being.

So I did a search to find the source of this clatter and found the name of Richard (call me Lord since I'm one of the great and the good) Layard. He looks benign but so did Tony Blair and look what happened to him.

The answer to our depressed state is, apparently, the recruitment of thousands of cognative therapists who will, in a short space of time, sort us out and in so doing save millions which we might otherwise claim as incapacity benefit.

But all this sounds so familiar. Maybe reference to Seneca (two blogs back) will save the nation from yet another government department. But I doubt if since there are those busy writing reports and arranging conferences to keep their show on the road.

Prone to friendship.

2007-06-14T10:27:00.000-07:00

Seneca suggested a long time ago that 'Nature produced us related to one another; she engendered in us mutual affection and made us prone to friendship'

We can't be all things to all men but we can bring a Theory of Mind to those we see as friends, those we see as worthy of our love, our time and committment.

But if we lack confidence or are fearful our encounters with each other have got to be suspect. What might seem friendly is one sided and the idea of do gooding comes to mind.

Mentors priests employers parents and social workers can fall into that trap and imagine their largesse is more significant than it really is. It's too easy to rush in 'where angels fear to tread' when management's ambition is more brownie points or future funding.

As a culture we seem to have spawned a rash of welfare entrepreneurs whose drive is to be helpful or even employed and forget that we 'the great unwashed' are essentially resilient, knowing that we are prone to friendship anyway.

Maybe God's trying too hard, taking on too much.

2007-06-09T09:58:00.000-07:00

To hear Richard Dawkins call for militant atheism enter TED.com and then search for his "An Atheist's Call to Arms". In it, besides much else,he suggests god is very busy

Listening to prayers

Going to marriages
Forgiving sins

Fighting on our side in a war and

Criticising our sex lives.

The other way round.

2007-06-06T09:04:00.000-07:00

Robin Dunbar entitles his chapter 3 of the Human Story (1.51 + postage from Amazon - best buy) Mind Magic. It's worked that magic on me and there's more to understand.

He writes of those of us who as he puts it failed to pass the ToM task so that in adult life we're inept, awkard and clumsy (my words - my experience) in social relations. He suggests we are in some measure autistic and I've known that for some years but used it as a metaphor.

If you've read my earlier blogs you may have picked up my bleat that is was an early exposure to chapel life which crippled me emotionally. All that sitting in pews, the right pew for fear of being scolded with looks that could kill any idea of a human encounter with whoever claimed that as their territor. So that dates back to renting a pew from the entrepreneur who built the place of worship and wanted the best rent for choice pews so that family status came into the reckoning.

Anyway once the family were safe inside their chosen (ie paid for) social space they stood up and sat down, listened carefully and sang what was appointed, time and time again. Until today I saw that process as inhibiting. It denies even a glimmer of a Theory of Mind in those who practice it with apparent fervour.

So what's new. Now I see that those who fall foul to this proceedure (and it differs little between the difference varieties of so called Chritianity) make it what it is. They go since it feels safe to go. It's a club with rules. It promises a place in society and another in heaven, wherever that is.

During a recent celebration of great British magnaminity in 'freeing the slaves' there was a huge church service which I found myself watching. HM and her consort stood in a special place, no rent 'cos she probably owns it and nearby (at a respectful distance which was after all a proper place) stood our blessed prime minister with his wife in dutiful attendance.

They were singing a hymn. The tv cameras went from Her glorious and victorious (in Iraq Palestine or Afghanistan?) Majesty and her long suffering consort to the Blairs. Then I came to and heard their song 'till in heaven we take our place'. I moved immediately to another channel but reflected that in no way with company like that do I want a place with them in heaven.

Amen.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

2007-05-28T23:32:00.000-07:00

TV last evening Archbishop Desmond Tutu revisited Ulster and picked up on his previous encounters with people who were sworn enemies

It struck me he was asking each of them to exercise a Theory of Mind so as to understand what the other is thinking, to ascribe beliefs, desires, fears and hopes to them and to believe they really do experience these feelings as mental states.

BM

2007-05-26T03:31:00.000-07:00

There she was, large as life on the tv, the woman who forty years ago made such a difference to me. The memories came flooding back as did the significance of our illicit friendship. Yet it started opening doors so that forty years on I am a fully human caring person

But having seen her on the tv what to do about it. On her answer phone I left an awkward message. This reminded me of my awkwardness in our friendship which clumsy state on my part was such a waste.

Being so clumsy I lacked a Theory of Mind; 'I had no idea that I could understand what my friend was thinking, nor could I ascribe beliefs, desires, fears and hopes to her nor believe she really did experience these feelings as mental states'.

When you scratch the surface of anyone you read as awkward or clumsy you'll find someone who has little or no idea of the empathetic approach we're calling the Theory of Mind. He won't thank you for trying to help him understand his feet of clay. But one day he might find new friends who can ease his anxiety but as I know all too well that will be a long slow job.

This gives me a chance to speak of those in public life who volunteer 'they made mistakes' when in effect they lacked a ToM. By default they cheated and lied and in the end got found out.

A born worrier

2007-05-23T07:19:00.000-07:00

On 16th June 1998 I went to a University of Sussex lecture given by Prof. Graham Davey. He spoke on worry and I was, as was my mother, a worrier so it was not difficult to see it as an inherited tendency.

My notes on that lecture are sparse but I remember Graham speaking of steps back and back to some sort of reservoir of worry ending in some catastrophic eventuality.

As a child and for as long as I can remember my father's repeated dictum was to 'not upset your mother'. Before he died I taxed him on what might befall anyone who did upset her - whatever that meant. Well, he mused, she might have to go to the Old Manor, The Salisbury psychiatric hospital and I would be seen going to visit her. So him insisting we should not upset her was an insurance policy against the shame, as he saw it, of an association with mental illness.

That takes me back to 1942 when Freddie Galpin, a herdsman at Barford Park Farm, was taken to Devizes, the County Mental Hospital from which incarceration few ever returned. Freddie had in mind an invention for the milking machine and he drew on a used ciragette packet and posted it to my father. I can see and sense him glancing at Freddie's rough drawings and rejecting it. This was in the war time and father had much on his mind but even now, with both men dead and buried, I can sense Freddie waiting in vain for a note of recognition from the boss.

Now to Graham Davey's lecture nine years ago. He reached me so that I included him chapter 10 of www.becoming-human.com in a list of those who made a difference to me.

I'm looking foward to him speaking again at Sussex on May 30th which prompts me to write a blog to celebrate my recovery from that awful state of continual worry. The link to the Theory of Mind is robust since I am not bothered by one hunded and one things which might go bang in the night but now "having a Theory of Mind means I'm able to understand what another individual is thinking, to ascribe beliefs, desires, fears and hopes to some one else, and to believe they really do experience these feelings as mental states".

Warmth ... empathy ToM

2007-05-22T00:08:00.000-07:00

Mrs Boight
Suzanne's blog

makes this blog a research tool affirmation rather than praise

Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us.
2 The Lord hath wrought great glory by them through his great power from the beginning.
3 Such as did bear rule in their kingdoms, men renowned for their power, giving counsel by their understanding, and declaring prophecies:
4 Leaders of the people by their counsels, and by their knowledge of learning meet for the people, wise and eloquent are their instructions:

And some there be, which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been; and are become as though they had never been born; and their children after them.
10 But these were merciful men, whose righteousness hath not been forgotten.

Sophie

As we grow up, we learn that even the one person that wasn't supposed to ever let you down probably will. You will have your heart broken probably more than once and it's harder every time. You'll break hearts too, so remember how it felt when yours was broken. You'll fight with your best friend. You'll blame a new love for things an old one did. You'll cry because time is passing too fast, and you'll eventually lose someone you love. So take too many pictures, laugh too much, and love like you've never been hurt because every sixty seconds you spend upset is a minute of happiness you'll never get back.
Don't be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin.

Send this to all of your friends in the next 5 minutes and a miracle will happen tonight

Appalling tea at the Brighton Centre

2007-05-18T09:32:00.000-07:00

From time to time I support the Nicaraguan Solidarity Campaign by selling excellent gift ware at the various trade union conferences. This happens at the Brighton Centre when delegates and visitors from every corner of the globe come together to have their say in a truly democratic way.

Which is something else in a political world of spin when children 'should be seen and not heard' or 'it's a matter of not in the front of the children'. In my own childhood the golden rule was that 'what they (the children) don't know they won't worry about'. And when I was told 'where babies come from' I hurried to the garden to look under a gooseberry bush. As subjects of the crown (since we're not citizens)we experienced similar responses from the good and the great, from those who knew best since God told them, when we dared to question going to war in Iraq.

This week the PSC The Public and Commercial Services Union held their annual bash at the Brighton Cantre and some 1200 delegates came and so far as I know a good time was had by all. And I went in service of the NSC and sold lots of stuff mostly taken home by delegates to grieving spouses who wre too busy to come to the seaside for such a junket.

To get to the point of this blog. A kind friend said he would bring me a cup of tea. It was appalling. Later I disocverd he had paid 130 pence (that's a weeks pay when I was in the army - 7 days x 3/6). I went quickly to the tea stall and a supervisor was called to deal with me. No, she would not refund the money but offered me a new cup made with one whole tea bag. But it was not a cup more a plastic container and I've got an idea the tea bag was made of sawdust.

I took my complaint to the management of the Centre who are after all are civil servants employed by the city council. Since I am a citizen, and pointed this out to the executive manager who attended me, I felt satisfied of being taken seriously. That was yesterday but this morning that manager had not done a test rum.

But didn't I realise the catering was franchises to such and such a firm. I was advised to contact their management etc. In effect I must be truly British and walk away from this storm in a teacup!

via Google I learned there is such an animal as the Tea Council. I telephoned them suggesting they do a spot check on the Brighton Centre and name and shame that appalling catering firm.

If you've stayed this far you may wonder what's the connection with ToM. By reworking the title phrase I've stumbled into this indictment of inaequate management.

"Not having a Theory of Mind means that Management of the Brighton Centre (or any other dysfunctional system) is unable or unwilling to understand what a client is thinking when being taken for a ride; nor would such a management ascribe beliefs, desires, fears and hopes to such clients, nor believe they really do experience these feelings as mental states."

Such an indictment could be applied to any suspect 'them and us' situation.

He who bought the tea which set me thinking was manning the Palestine Solidarity stand. In the appalling situation he represented I suggest that "Not having a Theory of Mind means the Israeli state is unable or unwilling to understand what the Palestinians are thinking when they are oppressed; nor will they, the Zionists, ascribe beliefs, desires, fears and hopes to the Palestinians, nor believe they really do experience their feelings as mental states."

Suzanne Hyde, a woman with a fully functional ToM

2007-05-15T07:24:00.000-07:00

Suzanne is a research fellow at the University of Sussex. Recently she presented her latest project report Women at Work: Progression thourgh Learning to an educational graduate seminar and I found it engaging. So too a chat with her and others in the IDS bar afterwards. But reading her report on the bus coming home blew my mind.

The research was commissioned by UNISON and tapped into the Sussex with its enviable reputation for undertstanding people's lives through biographical accounts in the traditions of Mass Observation and on its own research on workforce development and work based learning.

I was excited as I read her report on the experience of not young any more lower paid women who had left school early and now had somehow got themselves into adult education. They were asked to write of their experience. For instance TP writing of her group "We were all about the same age, and we all wanted a bit of 'me' time."

Page after page of student's experience of their joy at finding new confidence and new skills, some relating to their work, others at finding they were not the 'put upon people' they were used to seeing themselves as.

I connected Suzanne to Theory of Mind in her reporting student's experience. But my suprise was that it reached through the written report and jumped out of the pages to catch my imagination. Hers was no reporting of the good and the great but of the rest of us who go about their lives doing what needs to be done, be it for love or for modest sums of money.

My hunch is that Suzanne is a human whose warmth is such that it reaches through the pages she wrote to reflect the empathy of the students she represented to their caring work. In this way she presented them as those who really do experience their beliefs, desires, fears and hopes as mental states.

A difficulty amongst children to relate to one another.

2007-05-08T01:27:00.000-07:00

Save the Children conducted a study with primary school teachers across Britain; teachers who witness primary school children's play and interaction with their peers on a daily basis. A third of all of teachers interviewed noticed, since they had started teaching, an increase in pupils struggling to make friends, an increase in loneliness and a difficulty amongst children to relate to one another."

"Childhood is often a time remembered by playground antics with friends, a knock about with a football, a game of hopscotch or a game of tag. However recent research by Save the Children shows that many children's experience of play and friendship in their early years is deteriorating".

The Save the Children research suggests this is a new phenomena but it ain't. I suffered from it, so did mi amiga Anna but she devised her own world with friends but that was as a teenager.

This blog is about those of us who seemed unable to develop their ToM and stay that way unless and until they (we) encounter some one or some circumstance that triggers our release from such infirmity. Born again christians and their cohorts say they've made it but that's hogwash.

So I'll stay with our ability to understand that we're not sunk without trace but with new friends and new ideas we can stop digging and gradually find ourselves with a mind of our own.

For parents who try too hard.

2007-05-07T07:42:00.000-07:00

Judith Rich Harris writes (p253)in No Two Alike "When I was a kid in the early '40s troublesome kids were 'born that way'. Parents of such a child got sympathy, not blame; they felt unlucky rather than guilty".

I'm still chuckling at that line. Worth buying the book just for it. How things have changed in half a century. Here in the UK a troublesome child, whatever that might mean, reflects inadequate parenting and the whole family is carted off to a covey of specialists who are charged, and paid well to sort them out.

And the stigma of being an irresponsible parent sticks. My father, before he died, commented that three out of four was quite a good result. I was the black sheep where as my three siblings had done well for themselves.

Harris explores the growing child from two perspectives. She has object lesssons on relationships played out each day in the family and these matter, of course. More importantly the child plays with the other kids and in that school for socialisation she learns much much more, stuff that can't be weighed or measured and about which parents can do little or nothing.

Except that is for kids who are subject to parents and other adults imposed rules. That's what happened to me, that's where the chapel thing comes in. No play with ordinary neighbourhood kids for there were none. Well almost none living as we did in an isolated hamlet. The exception was Jim, several years older than me. We were driving a small flock of sheep down the lane. Go on you buggers exclaimed Jim. You will understand that no uncouth language was ever heard in my home so when I repeated Jim's telling phrase my mother's shock horror was such that I can sense it now some seventy years later.

Jim was one of the men's children. The men were farm staff but subject to their employer's (that was my father's)unwritten but none the less real house rules. Maybe Jim's father, Pete, got the message another day.

Anna, mi amiga, remembers uttering blast as an expletive and being hauled before the court of her parents for suitable admonition.

Alyson, my second wife, once invited two of the 'men' into the drawing room to await her father's return. Did not she realise their proper place was the back door?

Karen is a grandmother and her eight or none year old grandson telling Granny of his mother sighed as he spoke of yet another house rule he was subject to. Judith Harris is a liberating influence for anyone who can chuckle at their own experience from childhood and forgive their frightened parents for the strictures they imposed on their children.

Big decisions

2007-05-07T02:55:00.000-07:00

My interest in ToM was prompted by Steven Methen's suggestion that we developed that faculty over millions of years of evolution. But I gave no thought to what life is those far off times was like. Then I bought Judith Rich Harris's No Two Alike and she has blown the roof off my thoughtlesness and brought it much closer to home,

Page 154 excites me. "Under ancestral conditions, the effort of rearing a new infant could jeapordize its mother's survival and those of her previous children as well. Therefore, the first thing a baby had to do after drawing a breath was to win its mother's committment. Should she keep it and rear it? If food or water was scarce, if her previous child wasn't old enough to be weaned, or if there was anything iffy about the newborn itself, the answer might be no. Such decisions could never have been easy; they were made with sadness and regret.

Once the decision was made to keep the baby, the mother's committment was wholehearted."

Reflecting on this I can see that argument is much closer to home than I imagined. With no social workers priests lawyers or psychoanalysts cluttering up the situation this was essentially an encounter between two people.

But what really caught my interest was the idea of a new born having an unwitting say in the situation. The outcome of the encounter was her survival, or not. So the innate ToM was reciprocally at work in the relationship between mother and child, and its outcome affecting the others in the system.

Satan finds work for idle hands to do

2007-05-06T06:22:00.000-07:00

God wants this and Satan wants that and England expects every man to do his duty.

As a young soldier, 2740559 in the Welsh Guards our training camp was the racecourse at Sandown Park. I've written before of being chapel and some Sunday mornings I took myself off ot the Baptist chapel in the small town of Esher. I remember learning one verse of a hymn 'Direct control suggest this day/ all I design or do or say/ that all my powere and all my might/ to thy sole glory may unite.'

So that gullible and naieve young man, having sworn bible in hand to obey the king, as was them, and his officers took himself off to chapel and prayed to God a smilar oath of obedience. Too good to be true I was devoid of any sense of what we're calling a ToM, a mind of my own.

Mary Whitcomb worked on a turkey farm. The boss (that was me)seemed to be eveywhere but Mary teased him (though I didn't realise at the time) by initiating new staff to beat his eagle eyes by telling them always to carry a bucket. It could be empty but carrying it around the farm spoke of being industrious, definitely not one of idleness.

Manfred Max-Neef (of him more later) speaking of our fundamental human needs lists one of them as Idleness, the need for a relaxed state of mind and spirit that allows for reflection. But that sense of idleness is anathema to the Anglo Saxon busy busy andidote to Satan's will which, like God's will, must be done.

It's having to please so many people, Satan, God and Englands that keeps us on our best behaviour. But besides God Satan and England there are others. Mary Whitcomb's control freak employer with eyes in the back of his head was ever watchful for signs of idleness.

Reflecting on my early life I've often realised I missed out of childhood. I missed out on the development as a ToM and never did ascribe beliefs, desires, fears and hopes to any one else, nor did I believe they really do experience these feelings as mental states.

Horses and Courses

2007-05-06T02:14:00.000-07:00

Anna, mi amiga, sort of knew the sense of the saying but volunteered that she had never understood it.

Maybe it depends if you see yourself as a racehorse or a trainer. A trainer has big decisions to make depnding on the ground over which the horse must run. Don't ask me why he has to run in any case, but being at the starting line he can't not run and there's a jockey on his back who is there for a free ride.

The secret is the going. Some horses run better when the going is right for them. A trainer's job is to decide if on a particular day the going is right for a particular horse (that's you if you see yourself as a horse)so that all that effort at runnning, and mabe jumping, will get you to the finishing post a head in front of the next horse who seem to be chasing you.

Else you as a horse may never catch up with the others in which case you're referred to as an also ran. Those of us who never get it right knows the feeling. Rattling through my head is the idea that it's better to have loved and lost than never to have tried.

However it's not just you that came last. That disgrace will be experienced by the jocket, the trainer and most importantly the owner who not only bought you, or even won you as a bet, but has paid the trainer hoping that you would come first in the race. But you're an also ran whose future in always suspect.

Come last too often and you may end up going to the dogs which means being eaten by them. By then you will be dead and fogotten, another dream that bit the dust. In all the talk about, and like children you're best seen but not heard, your latest disgrace was being on the wrong course on the wrong day.

This is all reminiscent to our normal human experience. In one job or relationship we may take to it as a duck does to water. In another similar situation we find ourselves out of our depth and lke Stevie Smith suggested we may be waving but we're really drowning.

This brings us to ToM and the extent which we, wheover we are in a particular situation, are being able to understand what another individual is thinking, to ascribe beliefs, desires, fears and hopes to some one else, and to believe they really do experience these feelings as mental states.

But the maligned race horse has no ToM which is just as well for him. After all he is someone's property. The trainer is probably well able to know what the owner is thinking. But the owner won't be particularly vulnerable to what the trainer believes, desires, fears and hopes nor wil he believe he really does experience these feelings as mental states.

So it's all a matter of horses and courses and the winner takes all.

Reading the small print.

2007-05-03T02:36:00.000-07:00

Using a fully functional ToM is essential when we want to move on. With it we avoid guessing and wishful thinking. That ToM gives us the confidence that however irksome it is we've got what it takes to read the small print.

When buying a house your solicitor will searched for anything that's suspect. Similarly the small print embedded in a new job or new lover needs to be searched lest we believe the ads. Promises either way are suspicious.

And the others need to use their mindreading capability as well. Every anxiety and suspicion is an oppportunity to find out what is happening.This is like reading the body language and we can realise that every stone can be looked under.

Both parties using their own ToM offer a chance that the eventual relationship will be a meeting of minds which must be good thing.

A stranger and afraid

2007-05-02T07:14:00.000-07:00

We were say 8 years old. My cousin Michael had climbed to the top of his tree and with it he swayed in the wind. Being fearful I was stuck maybe two branches up. My aunt Addie clearly enjoyed her child’s adventure with life whereas my mother, standing alongside her, was silent and probably embarrassed at my ineptitude.

Robin Dunbar in his Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language suggests that autistic children never develop ToM. Maybe I was metaphorically autistic and never did develop a full theory of mind. I could not read my mother’s mind state so we were, in effect, strangers to each other with me stuck at the bottom of that tree.

Years later I came across A.E.Housman’s line “I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made” Now seventy years later I’m making up for lost time, risking it and climbing metaphorical trees and swaying in the wind. Writing this blog is part of that adventure.

My inhibition was essentially a response to what I call the chapel effect. My parents were trapped in different strands of the Baptist tradition. (Same variety as born again George Bush) In turn I bought it hook line and sinker and in due course tried unsuccessfully to impose it on Andrew and Stephen.

But that chapel effect was a killer of my latent ToM. I became obedient and apparently virtuous, spoiled and ignorant of what was really going on, swallowing the idea that we were a happy family and that things were as they seemed.
To pick up on Robin Dunbar I could not ‘reconstruct my parents mind state’ and without an effective ToM could not understand what they were thinking, nor could I ascribe to them their beliefs, desires, fears and hopes, nor believe they really did experience their feelings as mental states.

But no blame, they were people of their age as I am of mine. Soon, since I am an old man my various sons may take stock of their experience of me. I can only hope they will know that I connect with Alice Munro who in her short story Miles City, Montana in her The Progress of Love wrote of ‘her’ children “So we went on, with the two in the back seat trusting us, because of no choice, and we ourselves trusting to be forgiven, in time, for everything that had first to be seen and condemned by those children: whatever was flippant, arbitrary, careless, callous - all our natural, and particular, mistakes.”

Squeak

2007-05-02T00:11:00.000-07:00

Would she mind if I sat next to her? No, so I did. We were fellow travellers on a No 1, or maybe it was a 1a, Brighton and Hove bus going from Mile End Road where ever that is, to Whitehawk.

Sensing a chance of conversation I asked her what might she have said had she not wanted me to take that empty seat. "Squeak" was her immediate reply. Were there many people to whom she might say "squeak"; yes - to litter louts. But I pushed the argument to ask her to identify particular people to whom she would say it. She was sure there were some but at that moment could not say who.

So the conversation got going. She was a retired nanny now helping two days a week in a day nursery. With children on the agenda my mind turned to the ToM and she spoke of some parents of some children. By now we had gone far enough and she got off the bus.

But life for me will never be quite the same again. Squeak is such a useful noise to make when we choose not to encounter the other. It's shorthand for saying get off my patch when we don't want the others company or what she might want to convince us about. If you get my meaning. So try it. No explanations, just sqeak. Your choice.

So "having a Theory of Mind means being able to understand what another individual is thinking, to ascribe beliefs, desires, fears and hopes to some one else, and to believe they really do experience these feelings as mental states". Our brief encounter met that criteria. So she, my fellow traveller and I made a difference to each other and the idea of "squeak", as a non mating call, makes such sense.

Developing my ToM (Theory of Mind) -an emergency

2007-04-30T00:30:00.000-07:00

Having encountered Rob and Chris there was no going back. I had bonded with them. We were becoming a family and I had to run to keep up with the process.

Now I ask two primary questions.

Why had I not developed my ToM when I was 4 years old which is the normal age? I'll come back to that in a later blog.

What was different between me in a new family and the 'same' me in my previous family? That previous family was two boys Andrew and Stephen (ten years older than Rob and Chris, and yes they're still talking to me) and their mother, my first wife. Some how the 'same' me changed in a new environment.

Maybe it was something like this. In that previous family I was, or saw myself, as the man whose word was the law. After all they were my children, their mother was my wife; almost my property. This sense of property was the basis of my life. No one answered back.

Tennyson put it well (and Andrew will correct me when he reads this) when speaking of those who rode into the valley of death " Theirs is not to make reply, nor to reason why, but to do and die"

Born again George Bush and our pretend commander in chief Tony Blair use the same approach to the invasion of Iraq with god bless America and god save the Queen and the dregs of rule Britannia.

Rob had the same idea as Bush and Blair. He was eleven and came back from school saying he had imposed his might on another boy. He, Rob, insisted he had acted in the other boys 'best benefit'

So I'm a slow starter, a late developer

2007-04-29T15:22:00.000-07:00

This morning I woke so see the significance of an encounter I had thirty or so years ago.

I'm working on what's called the Theory of Mind. Reading p83 of Robin Dunbar's Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language "Having a Theory of Mind means being able (and wanting) to understand what another individual is thinking. To ascribe beliefs, desires, fears and hopes to someone else, and to believe that they really do experience those feelings as mental states"

Then it hit me. Thirty years ago I met Rob and Chris, with their mother, and it was as though I bonded with those ten year olds. Developing my Theory of Mind on the hoof as it were meant being able (and wanting) to understand what those youngsters were thinking. I had to ascribe beliefs, desires, fears and hopes to them to believe that they really did experience those feelings as mental states

And I've never looked back

So I started this blog and wonder if other people out there have experienced such a wake up call