Health
Sales of this book
help support the work of The James Nayler Foundation
mental diseases.
Consultant Psychiatrist GMC
speciality register for psychiatry
formerly Head of Therapy, Ashworth Maximum
Security Hospital, Liverpool
Consultant Psychiatrist, Special Unit, C-Wing, Parkhurst Prison, Isle of
Wight.
MRCPsych (Member of Royal College
of Psychiatrists),
MRCGP (Member of Royal College of
General Practitioners).
Diploma in Neurology &
Psychiatry (Psychiatric Inst NY),
MA (Psychol),
PhD(med computing), MBCS, DPM,
MRCS.
Ï Ò Ñ Ò
Republished
in 2005 by Trust Consent Publishing, P O Box 49, Ventnor, Isle of Wight, PO38
9AA UK. www.TrustConsent.com. First published by The James
Nayler Foundation in 2002.
All rights
reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written consent of the publisher.
© 2005 Dr Bob Johnson
Dr Bob
Johnson is hereby identified as the author of this work in accordance with
Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British
Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A CIP record of this book is available
on request from the British Library. ISBN
0-9551985-0-X
Previous ISBN
was 1-904327-00-1. ISBN-13 is
978-0-9551985-0-2
10 9
8 7 6 5
4 3 2 1
Ï Ò Ñ Ò
If you
have comments please send them either via the publisher or via
www.TruthTrustConsent.com.
Sadly, time and age will limit my replies.
Please note – the emotions described in this book are the
real thing – and they can be deadly. However, nothing written here excuses, nor remotely
justifies any atrocity – but if we don't look at the reasons why they
occur, we can never prevent them happening again, and again, and again, and
again, and again. If we do,
we can.
The book
was written in early 2000 – but it goes to the roots of terrorism, by
describing the cause and cure of terror.
Sales
of this book help support the work of The James Nayler Foundation
Ï Ò Ñ Ò
printed by Biddles Ltd, Kings Lynn, Norfolk, PE30 4LS
Emotions are the single most vital ingredient
in all human affairs. Yet neither my medical school nor my Cambridge University
psychology degree taught me anything useful about them. The tabloid media runs riot with them,
politics and commerce stir them whenever they can – it's called marketing
– but too many psychiatrists, psychologists and scientists remain
convinced that emotions are defunct. Not a single human transaction, from falling in love
to nuclear war, can possibly occur without them – yet our academic
institutions insist on treating emotions as anathema.
Emotions have been banished to the periphery
for too long – time to put them back at the very heart of our human lives
where they belong. Human relations
come in a wide range – intimate,
institutional, industrial, international – each one has at its
heart an emotional component.
When this blossoms, its warmth can be a joy to behold – when it
turns sour, catastrophe looms.
The emotions which make the difference, are not difficult to appreciate
– fear, rage and revenge are readily apparent to any who care to
look. We must stop treating
emotions as if they were some sort of pariah. We need to understand them more clearly – where
they come from, how they work.
Emotional Health means us controlling them – rather than the other
way around.
If you have ever come across a psychiatrist or
other doctor who ignored your feelings, or been interviewed by a scientist
whose white coat turned them into unemotional aliens – then you need to
know that the fault is theirs, not yours. They have been taught that emotions don’t matter. Their training is supervised by
institutions where discussion of emotion is taboo – defying this ban can
hazard your career.
Frozen
emotions
are the most intriguing.
Sometimes childhood memories are too deeply painful to be easily
explored – they fester away at the back of the mind. Special measures are called
for, as discussed below. Yet
even in the most unpromising surroundings, such as Parkhurst Prison, these
‘frozen terrors’ can still be brought under control – and what works in a
maximum security prison can work anywhere. Charlie Bronson’s views of my prison work, and
Alice Miller’s views of this book, are described in their letters, included in
the appendix (pages 275 and 277).
Ï Ò Ñ Ò
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foreword v
list of chapters vii
contents ix
Introduction 1
Part One: Basic Emotional Questions 11
1 What Are Emotions and What Are They for? 11
2 What Is an Irrational Emotion and What Goes Wrong? 20
3 What Are Healthy Emotions and What Is Emotional Health? 29
Part Two –Problems Within Yourself 41
4 Why Your Mind Stops You Doing What You Want 41
5 Violence – Where It Comes from and How to Cure It 57
6 Jealousies, Guilts and Panic Attacks and How to Cure Them 72
7 Eating Disorders, Addictions and Self-harm – How to
Dismantle Them 87
Part Three – Problems With Others 101
8 Curing Family Strife 101
9 Restoring Amicable Family Relations 128
10 Relating Better at Work and in the Neighbourhood 146
Part Four – Poisonous Red Herrings 177
11 Is Psychiatry Bankrupt? 177
12 Pills and Potions – Tranquillizers, Anti-depressants
or Talk? 195
13 Psychiatry – Legal and Illegal 206
Part Five – Where We Go From Here 227
14 Science Versus Intent 227
15 Society’s Struggles with Serfs 243
Appendix 261
Letter from Alice Miller 263
Letter from Charlie Bronson 265
Dear Bob, These are some poems 267
Contemporary Psychiatric Anomalies – Aetiology, Emotion,
Mind & Intent 270
The Horrors of Misdiagnosis 275
references from earlier papers 276
foreword v
list
of chapters vii
contents ix
Introduction 1
Truth 3
Frozen
Terror 4
Trust 5
Consent 6
Part
One: Basic Emotional Questions 11
1
What Are Emotions and What Are They for? 11
Fear
– the Master Emotion 13
Thinking
and Feeling 15
What
Emotions Are for 16
2
What Is an Irrational Emotion and What Goes Wrong? 20
Always
Maximum and Always Obsolete 22
The
Mental Landmine and the Area around It 24
3
What Are Healthy Emotions and What Is Emotional Health? 29
Reasonable
Fears and Reasonable Angers 30
Invisible
Hazards 32
Emotional
Idylls 33
Part
Two –Problems Within Yourself 41
4
Why Your Mind Stops You Doing What You Want 41
The
Invisible Roadblock 43
Opening
the Box and Tidying Your Mind 46
‘Black
Dog’, Depressions and Other Mood Swings, and How to Tame Them 50
Who’s
in Charge? 55
5
Violence – Where It Comes from and How to Cure It 57
Tantrums 59
Curing
the Disease of Violence 61
Road-rage,
Trolley-, Parking- and All the Other ‘Rages’ 62
Judicial
Ignorance of Child Abuse 64
Vengeance,
Punishment and Retribution Are All Irrational 67
Curing
Tantrums 69
6
Jealousies, Guilts and Panic Attacks and How to Cure Them 72
Too
Many Siblings 73
Yesterday’s
Defeats 75
Where
Pangs of Guilt Arise and Making Restorations 77
Being
Naughty 80
Panics,
Phobias and Their Cure 81
7
Eating Disorders, Addictions and Self-harm – How to Dismantle Them 87
My
Target Weight Is Four Stone (25 Kilos) 88
The
Angrier I Am, the Less I Eat 90
It’s
Your Loss 92
Addictions
– Sexaholics, Workaholics, Gamblaholics, Heroin, Cocaine and All the
Other -aholics 93
Part
Three – Problems With Others 101
8
Curing Family Strife 101
Evidence
from Evolution 102
Why
Hurt Those You Love? 103
Cutting
the Roots of Family Frictions 106
What
Are We Like? 108
Ensuring
You Get More Fruitful Help from Others 111
Negative
Self-esteem, Negative Social Skills, Negative Futures 113
Fighting
Parental Figments 117
Why
Love ’em – then Leave ’em? 119
Pulling
the Teeth of Domestic Violence 122
Hitting
the Wrong Target 124
9
Restoring Amicable Family Relations 128
Are
Parents Human? 130
Do
Parents Need Us? 132
Who
Did You Marry? 134
Childrearing
and the Parental Dilemma 139
10
Relating Better at Work and in the Neighbourhood 146
Coinage
Is Not Everything 151
Buying
and Selling 153
Imperishable
Values 155
What
to Expect from Friends and Other Emotional Allies 156
Why
Should You Care? 159
What
Neighbours Are for – Building Social Support Networks 162
We
All Need Kith and Kin 168
Why
Poverty Matters 170
My
Benign Thread 172
Part
Four – Poisonous Red Herrings 177
11
Is Psychiatry Bankrupt? 177
The
Five Points 179
Does
Our Choice Really Matter? 182
The
Impact of ‘Intent’ 185
The
Mind Is Greater than the Brain 186
Computers
Can’t Think 188
There’s
a Gene for It – So What? 190
Born
Evil or Born Lovable? 191
12
Pills and Potions – Tranquillizers, Anti-depressants or Talk? 195
Stress 197
Software
Problems 199
Scientific
Credibility - The Role Chemistry and Hormones Really Play 200
Alcohol,
Prozac and Testosterone 202
13
Psychiatry – Legal and Illegal 206
The
Law Court as Social Destroyer 207
Trust
Me, I’m a Doctor? 209
The
Illegality of Untreatability 211
There’s
No Pill, So You’re Not Ill 213
The
Illegality of ‘Electric Shock
Treatments’ 215
If
the TV Doesn’t Work, Fix It by Throwing It Downstairs 216
‘Lock
them up and throw away the key’ 219
Under
the Carpet is Still in the Room 221
What
about the Victim, for Pity’s Sake? 222
Part
Five – Where We Go From Here 227
14
Science Versus Intent 227
Intent
on Mischief 229
Ambitious
Intentions 231
The
Failure of Biosphere Two 232
Darwin’s
Omission 233
How
Can Doctors Be So Certain? 236
Stable
Knowledge 239
Sociably
Sane 241
15
Society’s Struggles with Serfs 243
Serfs
– A Legal View 244
An
Avoidable Serf 245
Stopping
Serfs at Source 248
Poverty
Breeds Serfs – A Public Health Issue 250
Coercion
and Emotional Neotony 252
Future
Creativities 254
Appendix 261
Letter
from Alice Miller 263
Letter
from Charlie Bronson 265
Dear
Bob, These are some poems 267
Contemporary
Psychiatric Anomalies – Aetiology, Emotion, Mind & Intent 270
a) aetiolated aetiology 270
b) emotionless nosologies 271
c) pull yourself together 273
The
Horrors of Misdiagnosis 275
references
from earlier papers 276
‘Emotion’
– what a deceptively innocent word for something which
inflicts such grievous heartaches, havocs and confusions on a long-suffering
humanity. Emotions are so slippery
that fundamental questions must be settled at the outset. Firstly, what are emotions, and what
are they for? Secondly, what is irrationality, and where does it come from? And
when Emotional Health
finally does arrive, how can you recognise it?
Emotions are certainly odd
– easy to feel but impossible to define. Take a look at some of them – fear, anger, guilt,
jealousy, rage, joy, delight, gloom, cheerfulness, despair and war – the list
is elastic, bewildering and endless. It is elastic because each of these can be expanded sideways
– guilt for example, can be described as a mixture of anger and
fear. It is bewildering because it
tumbles out all higgledy-piggledy, with neither rhyme nor reason nor
pattern. And finally it is
endless, because there is always another ‘emotion’ you can tack on to
the end. Indeed poets vie with one
another to elaborate ever more delicacies of feeling, while the word ‘love’ has
more meanings than there are fish in the sea.
Emotions can make mincemeat
of words, befuddle our best intentions, and make a mockery of what we really
want. So one thing is clear from
the start – misapplied emotions exact a heavy toll. Does the following ring any bells? You
get up in the morning, and gloom is already firmly in the driving seat. You struggle to work, only to flounder
in a morass of jealousies, bickerings and non-cooperations. Eventually you stumble home to what you
always hoped would be a haven of peace, support and recuperation – but
somehow that dream dried.
Shouldn’t life offer more?
The key to tackling this
charade is understanding what your emotions get up to, at every point
throughout your waking life.
Clarity about where emotions are going wrong and confidence in putting
them right – these are the basic ingredients of Emotional Health. Every social interaction entails
emotional contacts. These can
either be benign and bountiful or malign and macerating. The healthier you are emotionally, the
more fruitful your social network will be. The more confident you are that your emotions are ringing
true, the better equipped you will be to build reliable foundations for what we
all aim for – peace of mind.
In a nutshell, Emotional Health means growing up emotionally. Easier for some than for others, but
richly available to all.
So what are emotions? Well,
for one thing they are slippery and fluid, with more possible shapes than a
pint of water. They are the most
powerful force we ever meet in our lives.
Yet they are persistently elusive – the harder you try to define
them, the more their ‘meaning’ slips through your fingers. Emotions cannot be weighed, measured,
bottled or counted – thereby causing pandemonium among academics. We need to accept at the outset that
there will never be anything equivalent to decibels of rage, nor centilitres of
fear. Aches and pains, after all,
suffer from exactly the same restrictions, and we cope well enough with them
– time to extend a similar courtesy to emotion.
What makes emotions
especially mystifying is the unclear link between words, meanings and
feelings. So we need to play them
straight. Truth is the first key
component of Emotional Health.
Indeed Truth is as important here as antisepsis is to a surgeon. When pretence prevails, emotions go berserk
with hidden agendas – something at which they excel.
If decibels could measure
rage, newborn infants would top the scale. Their ‘waaaaaah’ stops all other activities in the
neighbourhood – they put so much of themselves into it, that it almost seems
they might burst a lung. For once,
the meaning is crystal-clear. The howls may be entirely wordless, but the
message is obvious – ‘Don’t leave me here, or I’m dead.’ If you think I
am exaggerating, pick up a newborn infant in full flow. Their tiny body is rigid, they shake
with more passion than at any later time, and it consumes their whole being.
Here we see emotions at work.
We can readily understand why they are there and what it is they are
doing. Indeed this neonatal
volcano of emotion shows us a unique pathway through our emotional
problems. Perhaps surprisingly, we
all know perfectly well what to do to assuage and control exploding emotions in
wailing infants. We pick the child
up, croon a little, jig gently about, according to taste – in other words
we are assuring them that we are present, that we are capable, and that we have
their best interests at heart. Our
simple task is to convince them that we are not dumping them on the mountainside
or anywhere else, to die – not really a heavy drain on our
resources. Once reassured, their
emotional storm passes.
Now the really curious thing
about emotions, and this is something it took me 25 years to untangle, is that
this same pattern lies at the heart of every emotional storm. This may seem unlikely – it is
certainly not immediately obvious.
But the more I explored how emotions work, and where they go so terribly
wrong, the more I found that every time, underneath the brouhaha, there was
always a misplaced infantile emotion still pulling the strings. No single emotional disease occurs in
adult life without its roots being firmly based in the remnants of an infantile
strategy – not always easy to see, but invariably there, beneath all the
palaver.
The crucial reason this
simple underlying pattern remains obscure is that the victim of it is doing
their level best to ensure that it does.
Our whole adult thrust is to hide these painful ‘strategies’ at the back
of the mind. Indeed it pays us to
do so, until we want to do something sensible about it. So not only are emotions the very devil
to pin down, but their chief purveyor all too often disguises them, distorts
them and colours them differently.
No wonder we get in such a stew – hidden agendas destroying so
much we hold dear.
Let’s start with a simple example. Suppose, aged eight, you sing your classmates a song in a foreign language. The response is not applause but laughter. You conclude that your singing is at fault, whereas in fact they were really laughing at the words. Later you might find yourself avoiding all singing events, though you are never very clear as to why you do this. Until the ‘hidden fear’ is brought out into the open, you sheer away from vocalisings, without ever really understanding what your emotions are doing to you. The point is, you would not dare to begin – the very idea of singing causes you to flee, so the original misperception is never given a chance to be corrected.
How could you ever learn that you had a good singing voice, if you always avoided precisely those situations in which alone, this fact could be revealed? This avoidance would be quite deliberate – who likes being laughed at? What would it take to persuade you to risk facing up to the earlier ridicule, which is the only possible way to discover your misunderstanding? This simple illustration shows the difficulties inherent in all emotional disease. Viewed from the outside, the problem is obvious if not comic – from the inside, it can prove both intractable and tragic. Emotional Education seeks to persuade the victim that today’s reality is invariably healthier. In fact, that is all it ever need do.
‘Frozen terror’, which
underlies all serious emotional disorders, always starts in exactly this
way. Something happens to the
developing child which convinces him or her that further progress along that
line of thought will end in disaster.
The child says in effect: ‘If that’s reality, I don’t want to know’, so
they slam the lid on the box and vow never to open it again, on pain of death
(or so it seems to them).
When you find adults reacting as if the realities of
their nursery still apply, then this is the underlying reason. If instead of using their full
capabilities to solve the problems in front of them, they devote their energies
to looking around for an echo of a parental figure to do it for them –
then this is the underlying cause.
What worked, or should have worked, in infancy, is applied willy-nilly
in adulthood, where, because things are now different, kindergarten strategies
can guarantee only to make matters worse.
After Truth, the second key
component for Emotional Health is Trust.
If you cuddle a wailing infant and have not proved trustworthy, your
impact is likely to be diminished or worse. Trust is a tricky concept to handle, and indeed to
learn. But no human relationship
can thrive without it. Even the
City of London relies exclusively on Trust – ‘my word is my bond’. With Trust so essential for buying and
selling, it should be no surprise that it is equally indispensable for ensuring
Emotional Health.
Trust is a concept currently in need of repair. Cynics suppose that merchants of all
varieties always exploit their customers whenever opportunity allows. But this is a short-term, short-sighted
view. Deceits and betrayals
command a far wider press, but Trust is indispensable to all social
interactions. Perhaps we should
start a campaign to demonstrate just how essential and socially responsible
Trust is. When you next hurtle
down the motorway at lethal speeds, remember you are trusting your fellow
drivers not to pull out into your lane, unannounced. You Trust them to be sober, to drive only in the direction
of the traffic and to give you fair warning of hold-ups ahead, which they can
see and you cannot. Mostly they
do.
On occasion, however, Trust
is betrayed, and disaster follows.
But for the overwhelming majority, Trust proves its social worth. Deceit and betrayal are newsworthy, and
can sell many products – Truth and Trust are rarely dramatic, but you
cannot be emotionally fit without them.
To have a foretaste of what
Emotional Health is all about, place yourself in the position of that newborn
infant. The world around you is
strange and blurred – but little different from what you have always
known. You can wave your arms and
legs about, but cannot lift your head from the pillow. The unsettling notion comes into your
mind that these strange giants who feed you sporadically have decided enough is
enough and are about to dump you on a deserted doorstep. You do not approve. You do the only thing you have any
control over – you yell: ‘Waaaaaah.’
When, later, one of these
large creatures picks you up and tries to reassure you, you have to decide if
they are telling the Truth. That’s
the first question. Secondly, how
trustworthy are they – can you Trust them? Finally, you have to decide
whether to accept their offer or not, which brings us to the third key
component – do you Consent ?
It is up to you to Consent, or to decline. They may coo as much as they please, but you have the inside
switch, which you may or may not turn, entirely at your own discretion. Superficially, coercion appears very
powerful. But when dealing with
matters of the mind there is always the question of whether or not Consent
has been sought and
obtained. Along with Truth and
Trust earlier, Consent is the remaining crucial component of Emotional Health
– for all of us, whether infants or adults.
So here we have the three
cornerstones of Emotional Health – Truth, Trust and Consent. These are so important to Emotional
Health that I elevate them to the status of a basic ‘axiom’, or fundamental
assumption, the implications of which echo throughout the book. Without these three prerequisites the
mind becomes a battleground of flailing emotions. In their absence there is not the remotest chance of
controlling aberrant emotions, however destructive or even self-destructive
they may become. Emotional Health then remains an unattainable pipe dream.
The notion of Consent may
seem entirely straightforward. It
may seem obvious that you can choose, that valid choices are available to you
as of right. Unhappily, psychiatrists
today are taught that Consent is an illusion. Along with academic scientists, they are trained to suppose
that we all live in a fully determined, Newtonian universe, in which choice and
indeed intent are more apparent than real. The risk with this approach of course is that human beings
inevitably come to be treated as no more than mindless, unfeeling robots. And where this view prevails,
psychiatry is bankrupt.
Can we
choose? Can we give Consent ? Or
are we bound by rigid wheels of cause and effect? The question is of vital
importance. In 1792 Dr
Samuel Johnson summed it up succinctly: ‘All theory is against the freedom of will; all experience is for
it.’ Academic science today, like some latter-day
religion, favours believers who profess their faith in the first half of this
aphorism, while excommunicating the rest. Sanity, however, is impossible,
unless we deploy choice, intent and some freedom of will. Only by reversing the emphasis can
Emotional Health flourish – ‘Because all theories are unreliable, it
is vital we act responsibly.’
As we all know, emotions have
no difficulty making life hard.
But they can also help.
Once we corral them, and give them the attention they deserve, we can
explore their more positive side.
By placing
them at the centre of things, where they belong, we
can uncover not only better mental health, more robust Emotional Health, but
also – something especially welcome in today’s gloom – imperishable
delights.
Basic
Emotional
Questions