Friday, November 28, 2008

Society on the Couch

Normally we see a person with serious problems we recommend professional help. After all, we go to the gym to keep our bodies toned, we go to the driving range. Why wouldn't we do something to address those psychological glitches that pop up in all of us?

But what do we do when our whole society is showing signs of breakdown?

Today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, we'll try to put "society on the couch".

But a couple of things first. I always appreciate hearing from you. Your feedback is really helpful in helping me shape the program, so don't hesitate if you've got a point or a question to raise. I'm always available - rich@richjonesvoice.com. If it takes me a day or two to get back to you, hang in. I'm getting to it.

If you've listened to the Podcast for awhile, you'll know Dr. Claudia Pacheco very well. She's a frequent contributor here and frankly is indispensable to this program - and indeed to everything we are doing down here in Brazil at the International Society of Analytical Trilogy. Well, Claudia and I are working on something really interesting ... a live, Internet call-in radio program which we're targeting to launch in January 2009. Make sure you're on the mailing list to learn more - rich@richjonesvoice.com

What this'll be is an online advice show with Claudia, who has 25 years of experience in Norberto Keppe's Analytical Trilogy - to my mind, the most innovative, effective and powerful form of psychoanalysis on the planet. Anyone who's got any experience with Trilogical analysis knows the experience of taking a long-standing issue to a session and getting a completely fresh take on it from the analyst.

"Wow! I never saw it that way before," is a common comment.

Keppe's Analytical Trilogy goes to the root of the problem, which is always something deep inside us, hidden from view. This is true deep psychology, often helping us see clearly for the first time long-standing issues that have been blocking us from achieving what we feel we have the potential to achieve. And who doesn't feel that? And after Norberto Keppe himself, Dr. Claudia Pacheco is the best in the world at helping people at this deep level. So this radio program will be very cool. To have a chance to listen to her weekly will be a great opportunity to address some of the core issues of human beings ... and you'll be able to call in personally with individual questions and issues.

We're calling the program "Healing Through Consciousness", and we're both pretty excited about it. Make sure you get on the mailing list. We'll keep you updated.

You know, we've had a lot of response to the last 3 podcasts looking at the roots of the economic crisis. A few thousand downloads of those programs - giving a pretty loud message that people are looking for some answers, some ways to understand what is going on.

One of the applications of Keppe's work is in the area of social psychology - analyzing the society as we would a person's neurosis. And why not? The corporation's been given the same rights as a human being through some decision of Congress way back along the way. As the Federal Reserve - a mostly private institution - was created by Congress back in the early 1900s, even though they had no constitutional basis to do so. So why wouldn't we hold society's systems up to scrutiny?

In fact, we must. I noticed in the N.Y. Times earlier this week that European and North American political leaders admit they may not be willing to fulfill their commitments to cap harmful carbon emissions or phase out polluting factories because of the slumping economy. A European Commission spokeswoman said, "Investing in reducing emissions is more difficult to do in times of economic downturn."

This is simply hard to believe, isn't it? How in 2008 can we make decisions based on profits over the environment? Hard to believe unless you understand about Inversion, Keppe's seminal psychological discovery. Keppe says in his beautiful book, Glorification, "Inversion, sickness, is the act of rejecting life, labeling it as bad; it is the attitude of denying truth, "seeing" it as negative; it is the wish to alter reality, "believing" it to be harmful - all because of the great envy, the enormous envy, we feel toward the Creator. We want to take His place by substituting what is fictitious for what is real, and we are assailed by the most terrible anxiety. If we were thankful for what is good we would be happy, but we constantly destroy all that is sound in ourselves because it was not created by any decision of our own."

Isn't that something to think about? Let's bring Dr. Claudia Pacheco in here today to explore this more.

Click here to listen to this program.

Tags: , ,

Monday, November 10, 2008

Economic Crisis III - Psychoanalysis of Society

We’ve got change in the White House. And in the tennis ATP rankings. A change in Madonna’s marital status, too … for what that’s worth. Not that those last 2 mean much. And whether the first is truly meaningful remains to be seen, doesn’t it?

One thing is clear, though … there’s not much change in the economic picture.

Today on Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head, we’ll continue our series looking at the causes of the economic crisis.

Well, after a historic day at the polls, America has woken up to the same scary reality as before. Jobless rates are up, stock prices are generally down … well, you know the story. Some of you much better than me, actually. But what I’ve been trying to do in this series of podcasts over the past few weeks is investigate some of the reasons for the mess. And I don’t mean in terms of explaining how the sub-prime mortgage market suddenly went south. No. But one thing I can help with is getting at the causes of all this. This is no small feat, in reality, and can be done because of the expansive work done on the subject at the Brazilian school of Analytical Trilogy founded by Dr. Norberto Keppe.

Look, one of the hardest things about trying to get a handle on what’s really going on is the style of the media. You watch CNN or CBS, and you get volumes of information. Analysis of the sub-prime aspect, reporting of G-20 meetings with ex-president Bush (and man, does it feel good to say ex-president Bush) … you get opinions and policies and figures, and spin, glorious spin. But it’s extremely difficult to pick your way through the information.

It’s always been like this. In our Information Age, we’re bombarded with information but starving for perspective. You have to know how to understand all this, and I don’t mean in the sense of being able to debate economic policy - the benefits of government stimulus packages over tighter regulations and broader oversight, or vice versa. No, there’s got to be an overall view to be had.

And it’s exactly here that Norberto Keppe’s work does what was before him very hard to do. Because of his success at mapping the human psyche, Keppe was also able to apply those findings to the society as a whole - verifying that what the human being does outside he first does inside himself. That our external social structures are simply the reflection of ways of seeing the world, of philosophies and biases and often questionnable reasoning.

One of Keppe’s landmark discoveries is that we are inverted. We act against our nature now in favor of our inverted values. “Cash flow is more important than your mother,” as one Wall Street broker termed it. This Inversion stems from inside us. I want to start there today because understanding our psyche leads to understanding our society. And that means putting the finger on causes, so that we can take real steps to change, not just rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. As always, love to hear your thoughts … rich@richjonesvoice.com

Sari Koivukangas, a professor at the Keppe/Pacheco Educational Institute here in São Paulo joins me today.

Click here to listen to this episode.