Perversion Part 6: Recidivism

Written by Richard Bukowski

Causality vs. Probability in Recidivism

Continuing on our obvious path that perversion involves looking for replacement pleasures, pleasures appear to us as needs that motivate action, but objects of desire can be of a wide variety. When people commit criminal acts, including non-sexual ones, many in society are happy to banish them from their vision, but those people don’t just disappear. So called “perverts”, “weirdos”, or “losers,” end up in institutions that are often paid for by your taxpayer dollars. These dollars pay for incarceration related employees, psychologists and social workers. Their job is to first protect society, but afterwards the question comes, “why are these patients here? What are the precursors to their behaviors, and what methods can be done to reform them, if any?”

Part of the solutions are rewards and punishments. They come in many different forms, but they involve satisfying legitimate needs of the convicted, but also to make recidivism, or reoffending, too painful to return to. In Criminal Recidivism Explanation, prediction and prevention, by Georgia Zara, David P. Farrington, they emphasized that “causes are not deterministic; causes are probabilistic.” When causes and effects are added up, they are always so multifarious and complex that it moves beyond our current science and understanding, especially when involving anything complex like the brain. What motivates people to change can be hard to pin down.

“The original motive for stopping offending may be the motivation to change oneself, or the birth of a child, or the experience of a marriage, or a new stable job. What makes the offending interruption last to the point of true desistance is a renovated strength to adhere to a prosocial ethos and to have a psychological and social scaffolding that sustains and reinforces this decision, so that any other alternative (e.g. a relapse into offending) becomes not only unbearable but practically impossible. This is why researchers should concentrate not only on what constitutes
the trigger towards stopping a life of crime, but on the process that has to unfold for true desistance to take place. A trigger could be a new conviction, with the offender facing future months away from home, in detention, and witnessing the disruption of their lives, rather than the offender making a reasoned choice to stop. What is important is what the offender makes of that trigger, and how it operates to modify social adjustment.”

Theories of Sexual Offending

There are many theories as to the sources of sexual offending, and in Theories of Sexual Offending, by Ward, Polaschek, and Beech, they managed to flesh out how these complex sources might interact. “…We see both genetic and environmental factors as playing a strong and interactive role in the development of brain functioning. In our theory, there are three forms of developmental resources responsible for providing the psychological and social competencies necessary for human beings to function in the world. These three systems are genetic/evolutionary resources, social/cultural resources and individuals’ life circumstances. An individual is hypothesised to enter the world with various genetic advantages and disadvantages (e.g. an overly anxious temperament), that in conjunction with environmental factors (e.g. relationship conflict) may create offence-related vulnerabilities…For example, being exposed at an early age to parental violence and abuse can both adversely affect an individual’s brain development, and undermine the integrity of the three primary psychological systems. The impairment of these systems will compromise a person’s adaptive functioning in any number of ways, depending on the specific damage inflicted (e.g. make it harder for him to effectively regulate his mood: action selection and control). Exposure to antisocial models also is likely to teach individuals maladaptive ways of solving personal and interpersonal problems and result in problematic values and attitudes: the perception and memory system. Furthermore, an individual’s unique circumstances are hypothesised to influence his psychological and social development by virtue of their influence on the core functional systems. For example, the loss of a parent at an early age may result in the formation of the dangerous world implicit theory, making it hard for the person concerned to trust other people and to establish robust relationship skills. As a result of this, these individuals may display social difficulties as their clinical symptoms. We have used the term ‘ecology’ to refer to the set of cultural, social and personal circumstances confronting each person as he or she develops throughout life.  Sexual offending emerges from a network of relationships between individuals and their local habitats and niches, and is not simply the consequence of individual psychopathology. Throughout development, it is hypothesised that the three types of developmental resources (genetic, social/cultural and individuals’ circumstances) combine and interact to shape an individual’s unique psychological functioning. More specifically, the motivational/emotional, perception and memory, and action selection and control functional systems emerge in ways that are relatively adaptive or problematic. These systems interact with each other to produce all actions, and play a critical role in generating psychological and social phenomena.” When there are psychological skill deficits, the path is paved for triggering in the environment to the wrong cues and pathological actions afterwards.

These intertwined causes and effects can be detected in distorted thinking of those individuals and shows how hard it is to develop risk assessments that are truly predictive. “Farrington and Zara suggest that to understand behaviour we need to appreciate the psychology of individuals, gathering knowledge about their personality traits, about the situation in which individuals behave, and about the way they encode and decode the context, and give meaning to it. In the absence of a ‘causal’ story, it is meaningless to attempt to understand human development. In the interplay between ‘individual vs. environment’, there exists an inversely proportional relationship between the individual’s vulnerability and the environmental factors. The more criminogenic the environment, the less relevant are the personality components. The more striking the personality components and traits, the less significant or relevant are the environmental factors.”

Erich Fromm on Choice: https://youtu.be/rZ50TK5xkF4

Distorted Thinking

Looking at multiple causes and effects, like in meditation, helps to understand with a balanced compassion, that isn’t too hard or too soft, how distorted or catastrophic thinking can abruptly arise out of the unconscious. As expected, there’s a danger with rigid labels that don’t conform to behaviors. In The Shaming of Sexual Offenders Risk, Retribution and Reintegration, by Anne-Marie McAlinden, the dangers of relishing in bashing others, a cheap form of feeling superior, can make one an unintentional accessory to future crimes. “[Shaming and ostracizing] may impede the successful reintegration of the offender into the community, his ability to get a job or accommodation and therefore ultimately, his rehabilitation. Secondly, heightening the offender’s sense of isolation may ultimately increase the chance of subsequent delinquent behaviour as a coping mechanism. Through the application of a criminal label, which these measures inevitably entail, the sex offender may find it easier to live out this label than to try to break from it. To return to the language of shame, these measures rebuke both offender and offence, which may foster the ‘adoption of a delinquent identity’. Thirdly, from the ‘deviancy amplification spiral,’ also of the labelling perspective, the offender who is isolated from ‘normal’ law abiding society may be forced to associate with similar offenders where they learn more sophisticated techniques. Fourthly, if an offender becomes known or ostracised in the area where he lives he will not be deterred from future crime. The offender may simply go underground where he could be of even greater danger and commit crime elsewhere…People in the immediate vicinity where the offender lives may be protected, but the risk will merely be displaced to another area. In sum, a dual future consequence of such ‘name and shame’ measures is that ‘The defendant will be at best shunned from society and at worst subjected to physical harassment and abuse.’ Therefore, consistent with Braithwaite’s thesis of shaming, far from protecting the public, making the sex offender a public pariah will not stop levels of sexual offending and may even lead to an increase in such crimes. Disintegrative shaming practices in the form of coercive criminal justice responses will not deter offenders, protect victims or make significant reductions in recidivism levels, except perhaps in the very short term. Without structured support programmes in the community to assist in offender readjustment, to help them desist, and victims to protect themselves, arrest, prosecution and conviction via the criminal justice system may result in more incidents of sexual offences in the long term. However, in relation to restorative and reintegrative shaming practices, shaming can also be used to positive effect in the process of offender management and reintegration.”

Without a change in thinking, perpetrators will continue with old distorted scripts that lead to old behaviors stretching back to their old environments. Until they can police their own thinking, recidivism is inevitable. The best way to look at it is to ask oneself, “if I shame this person to hell, will that change their thinking?” In reality, the mind has to move from their distorted thinking where pleasure is found in the worst places, to a place where desires are understandable or even laudable. Law enforcement and prison provide the short-term, and in some cases long-term solutions when there are no prospects for rehabilitation, but in the case of successful rehabilitation, more effort has to be put in by authorities to deal with distorted thinking habits.

Without further ado, much of the distorted thinking that researchers target fall into three camps:

  • Denial of crimes or beliefs that the crimes were beneficial to victims.
  • Minimization of the damage.
  • Overvaluing personal desires against the desires of others.

The forces involved in distorted thinking are emotional dysregulation, and a lack of empathy. “Distorted thinking is the difficulty in seeing or recognising that other people have mental states and independent thoughts and needs. Emotional dysregulation is the difficulty in modulating and controlling emotions in response to other people such as victims. These cognitive distortions have at their roots some maladaptive thoughts, beliefs or implicit theories that can be elicited at different points in time and in different contexts to sustain, explain, and justify violent acts thereafter.” The lack of empathy is a little more complicated because empathy can be used to hurt people or to lure them. “It is plausible to assume that sex offenders have some impairments more in the affective facet of empathy, which also includes the relational dimension of emotional sharing, than of cognitive empathy, which includes perspective taking and sympathy (empathy concern),…the knowing without caring attitude.”

In this following review on recidivism I will focus more on how the dysregulation can relieved and how empathy is developed, instead of the cold statistical analyses that these books formidably provide. These are the two general pathways that can restore people’s lives to more normality, and is often the gulf between those who reform and those who persist in criminality and reoffend. Those who can actually feel emotional distress at the thoughts and actions of hurting others will less likely be ones who offend, or who rarely offend. They are able eventually to police themselves. Distorted thinking is also more likely to evaporate as individuals are able to develop a better understanding of the emotions of others, and especially if they can feel a sense of care.

But a reminder is needed in that there are people who are very resistant to change and any belief that police will be ultimately replaced by psychologists and social workers will have to be postponed until there are major innovations. Some perpetrators even admit as such, like that of Gerald Bordelon:

“After about two years of molesting my son, and all the pornography I had been buying, renting, swapping, I gotten my hands on some bondage and discipline pornography with children involved, and some of the reading I had done and some of the pictures I had seen showed total submission, forcing the children to do what I wanted, and I eventually started using some of this bondage and discipline with my own son and it had escalated to the point where I was putting a large zip lock bag over his head and taping it around his neck with black electrical tape and raping and molesting him at that point, to the point that he would turn blue, pass out. At that point I would rip the bag off his head, not for fear of hurting him, but because of the excitement. I was extremely aroused by inflicting pain, and when I seen him pass out and change colors, that was very arousing and heightening to me and I would rip the bag off his head and then I would jump up on his chest and masturbate in his face, and make him suck my penis as he started to come back awake. While he was coughing and chocking I would rape him in the mouth…If I hadn’t been arrested when I was, my stepson would be dead…The thinking process that I used with pain, and how arousing I found it was, if a child was screaming, the child’s not really hurting, in reality I knew I was hurting the child, but the way I could continue the act was to tell myself that I wasn’t hurting the child, and I found the more I told myself that, the more I believed it, and if I found that the child tried to pull away, or scream, holler, or cry, and all my lying to myself would enhance that and make it more arousing to me, and the aspect of inflicting pain was extremely arousing. It was something that had taken time to build up. It didn’t just happen. After awhile I could actually take it and turn it around: the child was screaming because they wanted more. The child was screaming actually because they liked it. The child was screaming because they wanted me to continue…I told myself this so many times that I believed it.”

Interview with Gerald Bordelon: https://youtu.be/UNURaaxE1zw

Motivation to Change

When people have such strong and quick responses to stimuli and act on opportunities so quickly, the road from policing to self-policing is a long one. In Motivating Offenders to Change, by Mary McMurran, a preliminary list is made of some of those precursors to change. Instead of the typical confrontation style that makes people shutdown, resist and drop out of treatment, researchers recommended focusing on future outcomes and comparing the benefits of changing to self-destructive behavior. A big part of treatment is cognitive-behavioral therapy, which looks at thoughts, feelings and actions. Emphasizing contemplation is more about the thoughts and images of a possible future life. The relief found when contemplating changing helps to nudge people closer to that outcome in their thoughts and actions.

Thoughts and actions are also in an environment. This includes the influences of others and triggers in the environment. Removing as many triggers as possible helps to reduce the speed of acting. How it slows reoffending is that if one wants to reoffend, one has to take the time to remove oneself from the safe environment and and then spend even more time locating the toxic one again. When the safe environment is appreciated and the toxic one is avoided, much of the temptation is removed. Despite this partial success, offenders usually have other types of replacements, and in Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices by Anil Aggrawal, he found that “the relationship between paraphilias, sexual offenses, and alcohol is well documented in the literature. The incidence of alcoholism among sexual offenders ranges from 28% to 52% depending on the stringency of the criteria used for diagnosing alcoholism. Alcohol use has been implicated prior to the commission of up to 80% of rapes. As many as 66% of sexual sadists, 28%–65% of pedophiles, and 8%–72% of incest offenders have been found to have a history of alcohol abuse. Langevin and associates assert that over half of the sex offenders are heavy drinkers, a third chronic alcoholics, and up to three quarters abuse non-medical drugs. This suggests a strong relationship between alcohol and drugs and sexual offenses. However, the debate continues whether alcohol has a direct or indirect influence on sexual crimes.”

Since the Self is developed through repeated action, new actions can develop a new Self. Part of the fragility of offenders and their ease of recidivism is the criticism of others and how the need for validation from others can be used to solidify toxic self-narratives. In a study of ex-convicts in Britain, they found that “‘to desist from crime, ex-offenders need to develop a coherent, prosocial identity for themselves. As such, they need to account for and understand their criminal pasts (why they did what they did), and they also need to understand why they are now not like that anymore.’ As offenders progress into preparation, they begin to develop more of a future focus as they imagine how their life will be free from destructive and self-defeating behaviors.” Changing so that one gains social rewards, which are very flimsy and inconstant even for the general public, is not as robust as an authentic approach where one imagines a world where one wants to live in, and then acts. The reality for most people is that they really desire social validation, but have trouble mustering the motivation to give validation to others. To make changes because you like the results, independent of social praise, is inherently self-policing. Internalizing these new healthier worlds in the imagination, and especially acting on them, so one can bask in success, can slowly develop this new Self.

Since there are many people who aren’t perfect, and many who are going through similar developments of a new self, there are still social supports available. Good therapists, and yes there are very bad therapists out there, establishing healthy therapeutic alliances, sponsors, and self-help groups can also provide social contracts with people who are rooting for your success. Each individual that succeeds in policing themselves in a way that is visible to others can provide motivation for those just starting on their journey. But again, the danger is still there if people don’t have enough of a new self developed to truly be free of the old one. “If people become dependent on such support for maintaining change, we need to be careful to fade out such support lest termination of therapy become a condition for relapsing. To prepare people for the longer term, we teach them to rely more on self-reinforcements than social reinforcements. We find clinically that many clients expect much more external reinforcement and recognition than others actually provide. Relatives and friends can take action for granted too quickly. Acquaintances typically generate only a couple of positive consequences early in action. Self-reinforcements are much more under self-control and can be given more quickly and consistently when temptations to lapse or relapse are resisted.”

Part of that new scaffolding are new jobs, hobbies, interests, new healthy relationships, and new goals for those activities so that one’s mind bends towards these pro-social activities and looks forward to them. Applying new arguments influenced by cognitive behavioral treatments to old distorted thinking helps to support inaction towards old impulses. Through gradual desensitization to old triggers, through non-action, and action on healthier triggers, leads to a new self that is able to take action more swiftly. There is also a resilience when old triggers inevitably return to the environment. “The largest and most consistent effects are obtained from application of a cognitive-behavioural approach, comprising a collection of theoretically interrelated methods which focus on the interplay between individuals’ thoughts, feelings and behaviour at the time of an offence.” The great skill is being able to work through impulses that are powerful and to be able to defuse them with better reasoning, and feelings derived from active weighing and comparisons, so that one can change one’s own mind. If this can’t be achieved, the social and environmental supports will likely fail since there are always gaps that are required to provide the individual freedom the patient needs to test themselves during and after treatments.

Alex’s Recovery – A Clockwork Orange: https://youtu.be/-5zKsxTRjsY

 

Social Skills

Like with parenting, repairing the sense of self partially comes from the social environment until a person can develop their own self-policing skills. As a form of reparenting, a lot of psychology involves targeting behaviors for growth instead of the usual way the general public blames permanent identities. This way problem behaviors don’t get reinforced. It avoids the trap of making people identify with their old habits and old self. The ultimate goal is to create enough robust conditioning so that social skill deficits are bridged. No matter what, the social aspect of imitation, mimetics, identification, or modeling if you want to call it, is always involved, and perceived slights wound many people and reinforce old identifications as a path of least resistance. Social shaming also confirms old desires as being hardwired, and through suggestion and belief, it can indirectly support excuses to behave in the same way because pleasure, even a low-level pleasure, is something the perpetrator is already skilled at attaining. If they believe they can’t improve, then their next thought of attaining pleasure will move in old patterns. Our desires have a sense of “being somebody” in identity and we even see psychological objects, or silhouettes of ourselves in our mind, modeling a form of savoring based on what models suggest. This is described in detail in What Works (and Doesnt) in Reducing Recidivism by Latessa, Listwan, and Koetzle.

“One way in which the environment can influence our behavior is when our behavior is reinforced by the person who we modeled our behavior after. Let’s take delinquency as an example to see how the youths we serve are often reinforced for their criminal behaviors. Let’s say Johnny sees his friend Steve shoplift some CDs and get away with it. Based on Steve’s successful outcome of getting away with the theft and then getting to listen to the CDs, Johnny decides to shoplift some CDs as well. After Johnny successfully shoplifts the CDs, Steve high-fives him and tells him how cool he is. This serves to reinforce the shoplifting behavior of Johnny. Another way that Johnny might be reinforced for shoplifting is through a third person. Maybe after Johnny shoplifts the CDs, he tells his friend Tyler about the theft, and Tyler also congratulates him for getting away with it and tells Johnny how cool he is for stealing the CDs. A third way that Johnny might be reinforced for shoplifting is through what we call vicarious reinforcement. This is when Johnny sees his model (Steve) being reinforced for shoplifting. An example of this is when Johnny sees Steve getting respect from other friends in their peer group as a result of shoplifting the CDs.”

Healthier models of course can use the same tactics to model better behaviors, and mental health professionals use the same methods, ideally to improve the client.

“There are some ground rules for utilizing effective social reinforcement, sometimes referred to as effective praise. To be most effective, social reinforcement—or praise—should be used immediately following the positive behavior. In other words, staff should tell the offender that they liked the behavior as soon as reasonably possible upon witnessing the behavior. When doing so, staff should make sure to use concrete, behavioral language as much as possible. For example, instead of telling an offender that you liked that he was able to ‘control his anger,’ you might want to describe exactly what you saw him do, such as ‘I noticed that instead of yelling you used a normal tone of voice and told Jim that you needed some time to calm down before continuing your conversation because you didn’t want to get into a fight.’ This language specifies exactly what the person did (i.e., the behaviors he engaged in) that you liked. This makes it easier for him to replicate this behavior in the future. If we simply tell him we liked that he calmed down, he might not know how to replicate that because it is an abstract concept and we all use different strategies to ‘calm down.'”

Some examples used, often in institutional settings are:

  • Specific praise or feedback on performance.
  • Indirect praise: For example, saying something positive about the offender’s performance to the offender’s probation officer in front of the offender so that the offender hears it.
  • Group recognition: This involves recognizing an offender in front of a group, such as recognizing him or her in front of peers. This should be used with caution, however, because not all people are comfortable with public recognition. Examples of this include resident of the month or public award ceremonies.
  • Field trips.
  • Extra visits or phone calls.
  • Game room privileges.
  • Private room or choosing a specific desk or bed: Some programs also utilize an honors room or dorm that comes with greater privileges attached.
  • Free time.
  • Television or radio privileges: This might include more time spent or simply being the one to choose that night’s station or show.
  • Playing host for visitors: For example, an offender may lead a tour of the facility for a visitor. In addition to being a potential reinforcer, this type of activity also has other benefits in that it can teach additional skills such as introducing oneself, leadership, and public speaking.
  • Lunch with a staff member.
  • Badges, ribbons, certificates: These are often very appreciated because many offenders never received these types of things in school.
  • Extra recreation time.

Naturally, these social rewards can’t be faked, and the targeted behaviors have to be specific and real, since any manipulation will serve to reinforce the old identity, that the person really hasn’t improved. In institutional environments it means correct behavior has to be modeled and the patient has to have opportunities to try it out. Vicarious reinforcement can happen when others’ behaviors are reinforced in front of the patient, but again it can’t look fake or overly scripted. The goal is to create a practice environment so that when skills are developed enough, a person can try them out in more natural settings.

Researchers also prefer a particular ratio of positive to negative reinforcement to enhance learning. “Positive reinforcement is a more powerful teaching tool than punishment. Although punishment certainly has its place in the behavior change process, reinforcement has been shown to be a more effective teaching tool. This is why the use of reinforcers should outweigh the use of punishers by at least 4:1…Punishment only stops behavior in the short term. Used alone, it does not teach alternative behaviors; yet, alternative behaviors are what is needed to bring about long-term behavior change…What staff think is a punishment for an offender may in fact be a reinforcer. For example, sending an offender into some form of isolation may be reinforcement for some who would prefer to be alone and away from the other offenders…Overreliance on punishment provides no incentive for behavior change. In other words, if we take everything away from someone, what does he or she have left to lose? Often when people get to this point, they simply give up and may act out even more.”

At some point the environment has to look less and less institutional so that a free life out in the world seems possible. “Although there is evidence for the importance of cognitive behavioral and behavioral approaches to the treatment of sex offenders, an alternative approach many practitioners have recently considered is the Good Lives Model. The Good Lives Model is a strength based approach that aims to provide a comprehensive rehabilitation theory to the treatment of sex offenders. The model takes a positive psychology approach to the treatment of offenders while holding practical reasoning as its core idea. The GLM suggests that offenders who desist from crime are healthier, happier individuals with fewer negative emotions and problems in life…As laid out by Ward and colleagues, the first assumption of GLM-C is that sex offenders, like all human beings, seek out primary goods such as states of affairs and of the mind, personal characteristics, activities, or experiences that will increase psychological well-being. The second assumption states that rehabilitation involves a variety of different values reflecting the individual offender, the interests of the community, and the practices and methods supported in the treatment field…According to the GLM, it is imperative not only to teach offenders new skills to manage their risk factors but also to help them foster a meaningful personal identity. The fourth and fifth assumptions suggest that the treatment plan should include all areas related to a good life along with considerations related to the necessary coping skills for the environment in which the offender will return. Finally, the treatment plan should be developed in collaboration between the corrections professional and the offender and emphasize the formation of a therapeutic alliance and motivating offenders to engage in the change process. The implications of these general assumptions for explaining and understanding sexual offending and its functions are such that offenders are either directly seeking basic goods through the act of offending or else commit an offense as a result of an unanticipated conflict between goods. Furthermore, according to the GLM-C, risk factors represent problem areas in the internal and external conditions required to implement a good lives plan. Naturally, GLM-C recommends that treatment should directly address the problem areas within the individual (i.e., skills, values, and beliefs) and the external problem areas (resources, social supports, and opportunities) to reduce each individual’s level of risk. Therefore, the GLM-C approach involves a focus on goals, self-regulation strategies, and ecological variables to equip the offender with the skills, values, attitudes, and resources necessary to lead a healthy life that is filled with meaning.”

Many of these theories are future oriented and aim to combat present moment impulses to gain a more rewarding future life. In What Works in Offender Rehabilitation An Evidence-Based Approach to Assessment and Treatment, by Craig, Gannon, and Dixon, it provides an example involving anger. “The provision of anger control treatment is an adjunctive therapy. Especially with forensic populations, it is best done as part of a multifaceted treatment programme. The rewards for anger and aggression are in the present. The rewards for their control are in the future. Without a stake in the future, there is little reason for someone to control violent behaviour or to adopt prosocial values. Anger treatment requires a centered and supportive therapist and a sufficiently resourced and cohesive therapeutic environment. Beyond anger control, the aim is to reduce violent offending…The cognitive-behavioural treatment of anger has been shown to have applicability to a wide range of client populations and many clinical disorders. Prisoners and hospitalized patients with long-standing aggression histories, mental disorder,…can be engaged in CBT anger treatment and have been shown to benefit.”

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Echoed in my review Letting Go, the value of CBT is how it can allow people to take in different perspectives which extract dormant feelings that need expression and psychological voices to speak for them. Those voices are able to see drawbacks to activities and are capable of steering behaviors in better directions. In CBT with Justice-Involved Clients (JICs) Interventions for Antisocial and Self-Destructive Behaviors by Tafrate, Mitchell, and Simourd, lay out the levels of pathological learning that are deeply dug in, like weeds in a garden.

“Cognitive therapy takes into account several levels of cognitive processes. At the most basic level are core beliefs (or schemas), which tend to be global and overgeneralized conceptions about the self, other people, and the world. These beliefs are formed in early childhood and often remain below the level of conscious awareness. Core beliefs influence the next level of thinking, intermediate beliefs (attitudes, rules, and assumptions), which form the basis for how an individual thinks, feels, and behaves across different situations. Lastly, automatic thoughts are quick evaluative thoughts that spring up in response to different stimuli and form the stream of consciousness that people can learn to identify with minimal effort.”

Letting Go: https://youtu.be/iekCpuNqmek

Some of the distorted thinking, role-modeling, and attitudes that therapists have to deal with are as follows: Identifying with antisocial companions, demands for excitement, having a disregard for others, exploiting others, being emotionally disengaged, having hostility for law and order, having hostility for criminal justice personnel, justifying and minimizing abuse, habits of grandiosity and entitlement, acting on the path of least resistance, obsessing over power and control, lacking coping skills, and underestimating themselves and others. The difficult goal is to defeat those thought habits and to succeed in getting patients to police themselves. “To understand the role of automatic thoughts and decision making, try this experiment: Focus on a recent time where you made an unhealthy choice, and try to recall the fleeting moment where you gave yourself permission to go in that direction (e.g., ‘I worked hard today and deserve to [have a drink, go shopping, stay out late]’). See if you can identify this type of ‘green light’ moment—when you gave yourself permission to do something self-defeating. It may be difficult, because such thoughts become more automatic and harder to detect with repetition. Developing awareness of the thinking that occurs in these decision-making moments is an important first step in changing automatic reactions. Helping JICs become less automatic and more deliberate in their thinking and decision making is a prerequisite to enhancing longer-term positive life outcomes…In some cases, JICs find their current destructive patterns enjoyable, largely harmless to themselves, and worth continuing (e.g., ‘If I don’t sell drugs in my neighborhood, somebody else will get rich, so it might as well be me’). Even when awareness of negative consequences exists, some JICs see the cause of their difficulties as other people or external circumstances, rather than their own behavior (e.g., ‘There were five other people dealing in that park, so why did the cops pick on me? That’s not fair’). They may also see themselves as victims rather than perpetrators, and may argue that any change ought to lie in other people and institutions, rather than themselves (e.g., ‘Weed is legal in lots of places now. The state should leave me alone. I’m just trying to make a living’).”

The researchers define the healthy voices that emerge in therapy as Change Talk, and the unhealthy kinds as Sustain Talk. “Change talk is any client speech that favors movement toward and commitment to change, whereas sustain talk is client speech that favors maintaining the status quo or not changing. With JICs, sustain talk often takes the form of minimizations or justifications related to negative, risky, or criminal behaviors. In the case of a drug seller, an example of sustain talk would be ‘Selling drugs in my neighborhood isn’t dangerous, because I know all my customers.’ This statement expresses a justification for continuing to sell drugs. Change talk from a drug seller, on the other hand, might sound something like ‘I’m getting a little tired of all the drug scene drama.’ Change talk may be quite subtle, expressing just a potential reason for change. It does not often involve a 100% commitment to suddenly stopping antisocial behavior and embracing a prosocial lifestyle. Also, both change talk and sustain talk will emerge in conversations, because it is quite normal for JICs (and people in general) to have two voices—one on each side of the equation (favoring change vs. maintaining the status quo)—bouncing around in their heads at the same time…A predominance of change talk predicts actual behavior change, whereas a higher proportion of sustain talk—or equal levels of sustain talk and change talk—are predictive of not changing…Change talk is organized across two levels and seven specific verbalization subtypes. The first level is known as preparatory change talk and consists of four change talk subtypes, which can be remembered by using the acronym DARN (desire, ability, reasons, and need). Preparatory change talk signals energy in favor of change. Here are some examples from Hank’s case:

‘I would really like to have a steady paycheck someday.’ [desire]
‘I could probably look into schools for getting my CDL [commercial driver’s license].’ [ability]
‘If I got a paycheck, I wouldn’t have to keep hustling and looking over my shoulder all the time.’ [reasons]
‘I can’t do this forever. I’ve got to get some job skills and get my life on track.’ [need]

The second level, known as mobilizing change talk, consists of three change talk subtypes that can be remembered by using the acronym CAT (commitment, activation, and taking steps). CAT verbalizations by Hank would sound like this:

‘Next week I will have information about three schools that offer the CDL.’ [commitment]
‘I’m planning to buy the course materials so that I can get started.’ [activation]
‘I looked on the internet and found the directions for getting to where the classes are held.’ [taking steps]”

The therapeutic style again focuses on behaviors and choice so that the sense of agency can be developed in the patient. There are many great examples in the book, but to simplify here, therapists have to ask their clients for contributions instead of demanding that they follow rules and obey. This way they also develop a sense of self by thinking about what they like. The therapist still provides examples of where the client’s life story is heading if they don’t change, but they also keep options open and try to learn which options are more interesting to follow for the client. This way the client is able to create their own reflections and develop those different voices. Identity can change, partially by developing those new psychological voices, but also partly because it’s more enjoyable to see choices and to get the opportunity to choose. Success is when the client brings out more change talk, especially if they are speaking with commitment, activation, and taking steps. Opportunities also appear for the therapist to provide positive reinforcement for good behaviors, but even better results are when the client doesn’t need them. Therapy can also look at the bad side by asking the client to describe their thinking patterns before a regrettable action and to compare it to when they did better. This exercises the mind so that it can learn to weigh things and gain new pleasures caused by making better and better choices: The New Self.

So much of this process involves psychological images. By creating imagery and homework, situations and reactions move to the forefront of consciousness and can be recognized, instead of quickly moving into actions. By actually bringing up imagery of what you should do, even if it’s a little polluted by memories of past authorities demanding obedience in the typical shame style as described above, there can be a sense of healthy agreement with some of those negative voices because at least there was some input from the client to bring up the imagery in the first place. Those who have been traumatized into helplessness in the past can also exercise the imagery comparison muscles and work their way into a new habit of assertion towards the development of the new self.

What happens with life after rehabilitation?

Beyond getting clients and patients to move into compliance, there has to be some empathy for their quality of life. Attention is moving away from self-defeating behaviors, but it can’t just move away. It needs to move towards something with purpose. The main purpose is to do enjoyable things that are socially acceptable, but to also engage in activities that are personally satisfying. We are still dealing with replacements, but instead one is to trade up for healthy activities that are authentically interesting. Along with Deci and Ryan’s Intrinsic Motivation, or Csikszentmihalyi’s Autotelic Personality engaged in Flow, many people have a potential to find activities that are purposeful and also enjoyable for their own sake. Despite this potential, most people have trouble getting into it. “In reality, most people experience flow rarely. In a sample of average U.S. working men and women we interviewed, 13 % claimed never to have experienced anything resembling it, while of the remaining 87 % the majority reported it as a rare event; fewer than 10 % reported it as occurring daily. The flow experience is relatively rare because it requires an unusual match between the person and the environment. Specifically, a person experiences flow when personal capacities to act fit the opportunities for action in the environment…At any given moment, persons are aware of a certain range of challenges available in the environment, of things to do, of demands to meet, of possibilities for action. At the same time, they have a sense of how adequate are their skills to meet the available challenges.”

Flow, as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls it, are states of mind that are conducive to happiness within activity. Once people have found healthier activities that they like, it’s important to understand how these states can be developed and how they fall apart. A lot of the reason people look for replacements is that they have rarely ever entered into Flow and how they were raised wasn’t conducive for developing Flow. The typical way of most people who aren’t skilled in Flow is to get depressed when pleasure can’t be had. When depressed, or as in the Alcoholics Anonymous acronym HALT!, when we are Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired, triggers are created to search for accessible forms of pleasure, including the bad ones a person has habituated to. Csikszentmihalyi focuses on Psychic Entropy, especially 2 forms of it which are stress and boredom. “This is a condition in which attention is incapable of ordering incoming information, making it difficult for the person to act effectively and with integrity of purpose. At a somatic level, severe psychic entropy results in what we call schizophrenia, which involves a loss of control over what we hear, think, or do; less severe forms include a witch’s brew of pathologies ranging from chronic depression to attentional disorders—all of which impair the person’s capacity to use psychic energy for coping with challenges in the environment, or for reducing disorder in consciousness.”

Many of you readers have probably heard of “what you pay attention to, grows.” Mihaly is the psychologist most of them are referring to, and the need to structure our experiences and to target specific areas in the environment that are better suited for Flow and growth. “Psychic energy is necessary not just to accomplish tasks such as understanding a conversation, driving a car, or balancing a checkbook. In a more fundamental sense, attention is required to have an experience. Any information that registers in consciousness triggers an experience—any sight, sound, idea, or emotion—only exists because some of our psychic energy causes them to exist…How attention is allocated determines the shape and content of one’s life…Attention is the process that regulates states of consciousness by admitting or denying admission to various contents into consciousness. Ideas, feelings, wishes, or sensations can appear in consciousness and therefore become real to a person only when attention is turned to them.” How it grows is like in any addiction. We just simply call this kind of motivation an addiction when it’s pathological. Like in my review of Xenophanes, we develop preferences through comparison. Honey is sweeter than a Fig, and we may start to prefer one to another because that experience is subjectively more positive, and we move up the ladder of pleasure in this way. Passive consumption is a little different though. Here we are comparing how we are doing with our skills, and get pleasure in the feedback. We notice boredom when things are too easy and naturally look for the new balance of challenges and skills, and avoid things that are too hard to prevent chaos that those goals bring to our lives. “Across all the activities—playing music, bicycling, bowling, or cooking gourmet meals—one prominent common theme was that the activity presented opportunities for action, or challenges, that were just about manageable given the players’ level of skills.”

Xenophanes: https://youtu.be/_QvCD-k0FOg

What we feel we are good at, and is also socially acceptable, is a form of personal strength that can be tapped into in order to develop that sense of self further to crowd out the pathological selves. As it develops it can branch out when things are boring and new challenges and cross-training are introduced. This process in particular is important because it can be self-policed. “When situational challenges balance personal skills, a person tends to attend willingly. For instance, a chess player will concentrate on the game only when the opponent’s skills match his own; if they do not, attention will waver. This relationship between a balance of challenges and skills on the one hand, and enjoyable voluntary concentration on the other, has been found to exist not only in various leisure and creative activities, but in occupations like surgery and mathematical research. Recently Mayers showed that high school students enjoyed those school subjects in which they perceived a balance of challenges and skills, and these were also the subjects in which their concentration was voluntary.”

Mihaly quoted William James on how the brain can naturally bend towards what potentially provides Flow. “Millions of items in the outward order are present to my senses which never properly enter into my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind—without selective interest, experience is utter chaos.”

So much of our sense of self is based on our ability to be absorbed and it makes sense why Mihaly looks at the self as a activity, a freely chosen activity that feels good in its freedom, and that self feels a breakdown when pleasurable activity ceases and it then looks for replacements out of desperation. “But why is voluntary focusing of attention experienced as pleasant? If attention is the means by which a person exchanges information with the environment, and when this process is voluntary—that is, under the person’s control—then voluntary focusing of attention is a state of optimal interaction. In such a state a person feels fully alive and in control, because he or she can direct the flow of reciprocal information that unites person and environment in an interactive system. I know that I am alive, that I am somebody, that I matter, when I can choose to interact with a system of stimuli that I can modify and from which I can get meaningful feedback, whether the system is made up of other people, musical notes, ideas, or tools. The ability to focus attention is the most basic way of reducing ontological anxiety, the fear of impotence, of nonexistence. This might be the main reason why the exercise of concentration, when it is subjectively interpreted to be free, is such an enjoyable experience…The inability to focus attention voluntarily leads to psychic disruption, and eventually to psychopathology.”

Meaning here can be an abstract definition for most, but in The Experience of Meaning, by Jan Zwicky, she simply defines “meaning is what matters.” If you can find activities that make a positive difference, then you have your meaning. It doesn’t have to be too complicated. As people practice fine-tuning their minds, the sense of agency and self develop, much like what is found in Self-efficacy with Albert Bandura. “Optimal experiences occur when a person voluntarily focuses his attention on a limited stimulus field, while aversive experiences involve involuntary focusing of attention. In other words, the individual’s choice determines the quality of the experience.” The self is a “weigh-er” that weighs options. The more comparisons are freely made, the more the self can develop.

Of course we live in a world of distraction, and being able to control that distraction by finally making a choice in our environment to concentrate on and to grow skill, we can move from loneliness, boredom, and emptiness towards a love of solitude and peace. “Optimal experiences occur when a person voluntarily focuses his attention on a limited stimulus field, while aversive experiences involve the involuntary focusing of attention. In other words, the individual’s choice determines the quality of the experience…Optimal experiences are made possible by an unusually intense concentration of attention on a limited stimulus field…The rest of the world is cut off, shut off, forgotten.” This sends a political statement here, because when people learn to value uninterrupted concentration, a world of ruthless competition, sabotage, office politics, and relationship drama reminds us that things are not setup optimally in the world. Lopsided energy exchanges happen regularly.

In typical exploitation, from both Capitalism and Socialism, this energy is harnessed like a battery and the danger is always there to go too far and kill the goose that lays the golden egg. “It is an interesting fact that people can be forced to do practically anything, but their attention cannot be completely controlled by external means. Even slaves, labor camp inmates, and assembly-line workers cannot be compelled to pay undivided attention to their masters’ goals. The intense concentration required for complex achievement appears to be available only when given willingly. Of course, scientists or artists might be driven to their work by unconscious wishes, the need for money, or by greed of fame; what counts, however, is for the person to think of his compulsion voluntarily to tasks that are against their objective interests, as when workers are turned into their own slave drivers through religious or moral indoctrination. These arguments lead to a second generalization: Voluntary focusing of attention on a limited stimulus field is necessary to achieve socially valued goals…If people are to lead a satisfying life and if society is to progress, we have to make sure that from childhood on persons will have a chance to develop their ability to concentrate. In schools, at work, and at home there are far too few opportunities for people to get involved in a restricted world of which they can be in control. Even when the opportunities are present—and to a certain extent they are always potentially present—most people do not know how to concentrate except under the most favorable circumstances, and so rarely experience the enjoyment that accompanies the flow experience.”

The warning that Mihaly provides is absolutely critical to all civilizations. Exploiting people into exhaustion so that the work no one wants is given to people who have no other choice for work can reduce the quality of the products and services. It also leads people to look for crazy replacement pleasures as described in this series, and countless other examples. “Thus, one might say that the survival of social systems depends on the balance in the ledger of attention income and expenditure. Conflicting demands for attention are a common source of stress in interpersonal systems. One of the most familiar examples is the mother driven to her wits’ end by children who compete with other tasks for her attention…This is easiest to see in the case of the simplest social system, the dyad. A dyad survives only as long as the two people in it continue to pay enough attention to each other to make their relationship distinctly different from a chance relationship. For example, if two people do not agree to constrain their respective schedules so that they can meet at a common time, their encounters will be random, and hence non-systemic. Unless two people synchronize their attentional structures to a certain degree by agreeing to common constraints, a relationship will be short-lived. Deciding to be at the same place, doing the same thing together, feeling similar emotions in response to similar stimuli requires restructuring of attention. Without it friends would not be friends, lovers would not be lovers. Even ordinary conversation between two people is only possible because each person abides by a complex set of constraints regulating when and how he should take the turn to speak or to listen. If one were not to pay attention to the cues that structure conversation, that interaction would soon become random, or stop before long…Every thinker who has dealt with the issue has recognized a basic conflict between individual needs and social constraints. The model of attention describes that conflict more economically than most theories. The point is that the psychic energy necessary to develop a satisfying personal life (i.e., voluntary focusing of attention) is the same energy needed to keep the social system in an organised state. Conflicting demands on the same supply of limited psychic energy cause the ambivalent relationship between man and society. An optimal social system is one that derives the psychic energy necessary for its existence from the voluntary focusing of attention of its members…The flow model has direct implications for social and cultural institutions as well. It seems likely that the effectiveness of political, religious, and cultural movements depends in part on the amount of flow experiences they make possible. For instance, a religious system that fails to provide clearly detailed activities in which the faithful can participate with the understanding that in so doing they are meeting the challenges of life, will not be able to offer- intrinsic rewards to sustain the interest of would-be followers.”

Beyond Capitalism, there’s also psychological capital when skills are developed. The more skilled a person is, the more Flow they can attain in different areas of life, echoing some of of Carl Jung’s personality theories regarding Individuation. Mihaly would point to a “Flow profile” on the personality types and which activities they are more likely to gain Flow from, but that isn’t to limit activities that don’t fit the profile, especially if they are freely chosen. As adults it’s great to think about these theories, but we have to remind ourselves where we started. Constrained as children growing up, it is a vulnerable period of time for people to develop Flow or a pathology or two. “It is difficult for a young person to be happy when living in a sterile suburb that lacks opportunities for action, forced to attend schools where there is little chance to express oneself except in abstract intellectual terms, surrounded by a small nuclear family that is seldom together and relaxed enough to interact freely. Understanding more clearly the conditions that affect happiness is a prerequisite if social scientists are to help improve the quality of life.”

These famous researchers of course bumped into the problem that we have necessities that have to be completed and how is intrinsic motivation to be developed in those situations? “In most cultures, it is assumed that a mature individual is one who can delay gratification—in other words, one who opts for investing energy in future goals in preference to present ones. Yet, it is arguable that the ideal situation is one where there is harmony between future and present goals, and the person is fully functioning and involved in the moment without sacrificing future goals. This happens in those circumstances in which externally motivated behavior that initially did not produce positive affect is later reinterpreted by the person so that the experience is now positive (cf. integrated self-regulation; e.g., Deci and Ryan). There is no distinction between what must be done and what one wishes to do. At that point, one achieves that amor fati, or love of fate, which philosophers such as Nietzsche and psychologists such as Maslow and Rogers have argued constitutes the fullest realization of an authentic self.” Of course this is a difficult and requires a lot of imagery of “wouldn’t it be nice?” and reminders of WHY something is being done, and the reminders of the “meaning that matters” for those long range goals. The short-term pleasure is seeing the small increments in skill as time passes and making sure to notice them and celebrate them. The short-term impact has to be felt along the way towards the long-term goal. The key here is being able to set goals within the chore. “How well can I do this? How fast can I do this? How efficiently can I do this? Etc.”

Similar percentages above, on how rare Flow is experienced, probably coincide with how much people like their jobs and Mihaly describes how to handle the challenge this way. “For the social activist who both finds daily work absorbing and the long-term goal of social transformation inspiring or the scientist for whom the research process is fascinating and the long-term scientific enterprise compelling, future goals are joined to the immediate rewards of doing something deeply enjoyable. We are suggesting that organizing one’s activity around this combination of goals is the optimal way of investing energy…In our model, action leads to experience, which leads to affect, which leads to goals. The goals help shape our subsequent experience by guiding, how we channel our attention. When we become aware of our goals and their hierarchical relations to each other, we begin to develop a self…The self is the sum of the goals that a person constructs (on the basis of feedback to experiences and affects). It is that which we have learned to desire…To the extent that a person’s actions are not based on self-regulation oriented toward experiential goals one might say that the self is inauthentic. In other words, if a person consistently pursues goals that do not produce positive affect, but are chosen for other reasons, the self that is manifested is one that has been constructed by external forces. An authentic self, by contrast, is one built on goals chosen because they optimize experience. Such goals need not be lofty at all, as long as they reflect the person’s actual experiences.”

I’ve reviewed extensively how Flow comes into being: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrNBLR4djB7FIf4naF-ha4Py22izdrBnf

Below are some other quirky elements that go into Flow. Because a written list of Flow qualities is not Flow inducing to read, the below quotes give you an idea of how constant motion involved. Flowing is a Verb-ing, not a noun-ing. It’s concentrating on what’s now and what’s immediately next, not ruminating about Flow strategies.

  • “If you ask persons who enjoy what they are doing to describe how they feel, it is likely that they will tell you some or all of the following: (1) that all of their minds and bodies are completely involved in what they are doing, (2) that their concentration is very deep, (3) that they know what they want to do, (4) that they know how well they are doing, (5) that they are not worried about failing, (6) that time is passing very quickly, and (7) that they have lost the ordinary sense of self consciousness and gnawing worry that characterize so much of daily life. Because of these dimensions of experience, they feel that the activity is worth doing for its own sake even if nothing else were to come of it; in other words, the activity has become autotelic [enjoyment for its own sake].”
  • “At any given moment, people are aware of a finite number of opportunities which challenge them to act. At the same time, they are aware also of their skills, that is, of their capacity to cope with the demands imposed by the environment. When a person is bombarded with demands which he or she feels unable to meet, a state of anxiety ensues. When the demands for action are fewer, but still more than what the person feels capable of handling, the state of experience is one of worry. Flow is experienced when people perceive opportunities for action as being evenly matched by their capabilities. If, however, skills are greater than the opportunities for using them, boredom will follow. And finally, a person with great skills and few opportunities for applying them will pass from the state of boredom again into that of anxiety.”
  • “When an activity is able to limit the stimulus field so that one can act in it with total concentration, responding to greater challenges with increasing skills, and when it provides clear and unambiguous feedback, then the person will tend to enjoy the activity for its own sake…Some writers have called this process a ‘narrowing of consciousness,’ a ‘giving up the past and the future.'”
  • “This experience seems to occur only when a person is actively engaged in some form of clearly specified interaction with the environment. The interaction may be primarily physical, emotional, or intellectual, but in each case the person is able to use some skills in acting on a limited area in his or her environment. The flow experience is therefore dependent on flow activities, and one needs to consider the second in order to understand the first. The most typical kind of flow experience is play, and games are the most common forms of play activity.”
  • “Flow denotes the holistic sensation present when we act with total involvement. It is the kind of feeling after which one nostalgically says: ‘that was fun,’ or ‘that was enjoyable.’ It is the state in which action follows upon action according to an internal logic which seems to need no conscious intervention on our part. We experience it as a unified flowing from one moment to the next, in which we feel in control of our actions, and in which there is little distinction between self and environment; between stimulus and response; or between past, present, and future.”
  • “For action to merge with awareness to such an extent, the activity must be feasible. Flow seems to occur only when persons face tasks that are within their ability to perform. This is why one experiences flow most often in activities which have clearly established rules for action, such as rituals, games, or participatory art forms like the dance.”
  • “A person in flow is in control of his actions and of the environment. While involved in the activity, this feeling of control is modified by the ‘ego-less’ state of the actor. Rather than an active awareness of mastery, it is more a condition of not being worried by the possibility of lack of control. But later, in thinking back on the experience, a person will usually feel that for the duration of the flow episode his skills were adequate to meeting environmental demands, and this reflection might become an important component of a positive self-concept.”

One of the better examples to illustrate Flow comes from rock climbing experiences described using Mihaly’s Experience Sampling Method (ESM) of real-time surveys of Flow experiences:

“The task at hand is so demanding and rich in its complexity and pull that the conscious subject is really diminished in intensity. Corollary of that is that all the hang-ups that people have or that I have as an individual person are momentarily obliterated… it’s one of the few ways I have found to… live outside my head… One tends to get immersed in what is going on around him, in the rock, in the moves that are involved… search for hand holds… proper position of the body- so involved he might lose the consciousness of his own identity and melt into the rock… It’s like when I was talking about things becoming ‘automatic’… almost like an egoless thing in a way-somehow the right thing is done without… thinking about it or doing anything at all… it just happens… and yet you’re more concentrated. It might be like meditation, like Zen is a concentration… One thing you are after is one-pointedness of mind, the ability to focus your mind to reach something… You become a robot – no, more like an animal. It’s pleasant. There is a feeling of total involvement… You feel like a panther powering up the rock.”

I know we are a long way from the beginning of this post, but for those people in life who got out of bad circumstances, identify negative things with themselves, one doesn’t have to become a professional rock climber, one can flourish based on what their current abilities are for certain skills and develop them as far as they want to, and for their own sake.

“The purpose of the flow is to keep on flowing, not looking for a peak or utopia but staying in the flow. It is not a moving up but a continuous flowing; you move up only to keep the flow going. There is no possible reason for climbing except the climbing itself; it is a self communication.”

Being able to reset Flow

Alex Honnold free-solo climbing Heaven in Yosemite Park, 2014.

The major challenge of Flow is trying to maintain it while measuring yourself. It’s not something you maintain all the time, but you want to be able to turn it on when you need to, and it means a complex letting go of parts of the self, which is very similar to what religions do to remove emotional suffering. “Without intentions or without feedback, the self would cease to exist as an ordered pattern of information. This is the reason why religions that try to abolish the self prescribe giving up desires and purposeful actions. Renouncing worldly attachments is the central method used to destructure the self in Zen, Sufi, Yoga, Judeo-Christian, and several other spiritual traditions.”

Here you’re not trying to drop the self completely but instead learning to put it in the background and to make the experience of the chosen activity the foreground. When troubled people find an outlet that is healthy, it can be an important source of self-esteem, a way to communicate with others, and a way to regulate emotions, but finding these activities that work well for a particular individual can be difficult, especially when social pressure and competition are involved. It’s easy to be distracted. “The addition of spurious motivational elements to a flow activity (competition, gain, danger), make it also more vulnerable to intrusions from ‘outside reality.’ Playing for money may increase concentration on the game, but paradoxically one can also be more easily distracted from play by the fear of losing…A person in flow does not operate with a dualistic perspective: one is very aware of one’s actions, but not of the awareness itself. A tennis player pays undivided attention to the ball and the opponent, a chess master focuses on the strategy of the game, most states of religious ecstasy are reached by following complex ritual steps, yet for flow to be maintained, one cannot reflect on the act of awareness itself. The moment awareness is split so as to perceive the activity from ‘outside,’ the flow is interrupted. Therefore, flow is difficult to maintain for any length of time without at least momentary interruptions. Typically, a person can maintain a merged awareness with his or her actions for only short periods interspersed with interludes in which the flow is broken by the actor’s adoption of an outside perspective. These interruptions occur when questions flash through the actor’s mind such as ‘Am I doing well?’ or ‘What am I doing here?’ or ‘Should I be doing this?’ When one is in a flow episode, these questions simply do not come to mind.”

Is it possible to be Busy Without Getting Stressed? – Eckhart Tolle: https://youtu.be/vkuPLEfR0o4

The climber Alex Honnold, for example, explained his experience of Flow and the competing distractions while preparing for a possibly suicidal climb of El Capitan in Yosemite. In the documentary Free Solo, the pressures mounted as he added on distractions involving a new girlfriend and having all those documentarians filming him. Before attempting the climb Alex talked about that external vs. internal motivation to free solo with Canadian rock climber Peter Croft. A: “You’ve soloed the Rostrum 50 or 60 times?” P: “I was just glommed on. Not like out of fear, but just…” A: “…because you’re just so tight. I love that about soloing…” P: “…My footwork gets really good, but it’s not for anybody else…It’s so important to be doing it for the right reasons…The worst thing about having a film crew is if it changes your mindset.” Only through over-preparation was Alex able to comfortably ignore the social pressure and make the climb. It’s an important lesson. You get good for yourself, and then with more development you can eventually be good in front of others. This way you remain in the authentic-self while in a social context. If a concrete self cannot be found, then self through development means that the old self is progressively crowded out by developments from a new self.

Free Solo (2018): https://amzn.to/37TNbkM

Criminal Recidivism Explanation, prediction and prevention by Georgia Zara, David P. Farrington: Paperback: https://amzn.to/2ND5RxW Kindle: https://amzn.to/3pltgkw

Female Sexual Offenders Theory, Assessment and Treatment by Theresa A. Gannon, Franca Cortoni: Paperback: https://amzn.to/2Ng8Psf Kindle: https://amzn.to/3dlhNz1

Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices by Anil Aggrawal: Kindle: https://amzn.to/3arKCI5

Motivating Offenders to Change A Guide to Enhancing Engagement in Therapy by Mary McMurran: Hardcover: https://amzn.to/3jWjeFx

Rehabilitating and Resettling Offenders in the Community by Anthony H. Goodman(auth.): Paperback: https://amzn.to/2ZktrBY Kindle: https://amzn.to/2ZlHdnN

The Shaming of Sexual Offenders Risk, Retribution and Reintegration by Anne-marie Mcalinden: Paperback: https://amzn.to/2ON1AIH

The Treatment and Rehabilitation of Offenders by Iain Crow: Paperback: https://amzn.to/2OBUEhk Kindle: https://amzn.to/3jZ0THU

Theories of Sexual Offending (Wiley Series in Forensic Clinical Psychology) by Tony Ward, Devon Polaschek, Anthony R. Beech: Paperback: https://amzn.to/3anBXGF Kindle: https://amzn.to/3rX4Xer

What Works (and Doesn’t) in Reducing Recidivism by Edward J. Latessa, Shelley L. Listwan, Deborah Koetzle: Paperback: https://amzn.to/3jVSe8U Kindle: https://amzn.to/3arrPgf

What Works in Offender Rehabilitation An Evidence-Based Approach to Assessment and Treatment: Paperback: https://amzn.to/3prr0bA Kindle: https://amzn.to/3bfFdTB

Flow and the Foundations of Positive Psychology: The Collected Works of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Kindle: https://amzn.to/3dVdLha Hardcover: https://amzn.to/3kwqhES

The Experience of Meaning – Jan Zwicky: Kindle: https://amzn.to/3bLnAvs Paperback: https://amzn.to/3dVhqeP

Photo: Alex Honnold free-solo climbing Heaven in Yosemite Park, 2014. By Et3115009 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83123322

Psychology: https://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/