FEST Writing Group

I will be discussing the decline in functioning one experiences eventually in aging, and how that interacts with one’s conception of self.  Sooner or later an aging person experiences decline of the practical effectiveness of different areas of functioning.  I contend that this necessitates the revision of one’s beliefs about self regarding those.

Sing for Your Life is a biography of Ryan Speedo Green.  He had a tumultuous, abusive childhood.  His Adverse Childhood Experiences(ACE) score would be off the charts.. Yet now, as an adult in his 30s, he is a bass baritone star at the Metropolitan Opera.  How can that be?

I.

The problem

In the general population, about 10% of people had a grandparent death within two years of their birth.  My brother and I are two of those.  Froma Walsh(1978) found that among young adult hospitalized schizophrenics, that figure was around 41%.  In today’s statistical parlance,.

I began thinking about this topic several years ago when I realized that I had met many people in my practice and in my personal life who are considered successful in life, but appear to be lower in level of differentiation of emotional functioning.

Many people have the thinking, “If.

My wife Mary and I were very excited in anticipation of our Smithsonian tour of Naples, Herculaneum, Pompeii, Paestum, the Amalfi Coast, and Capri.  Three years ago this tour had been canceled at the beginning of the pandemic.  We felt safe in scheduling this trip now, since worldwide percentages of new COViD cases.

>This is a work in progress.  I have struggled for several months with these two books.  I think they are important, but they both are using a research model I am not used to evaluating.<  In the last few years, Michael Kerr has cited two books on spontaneous healing.

1. Radical Remission, by Kelly.

I selected this topic because I think that Bowen family systems theory has something to offer for important societal problems, like psychopathy in systems.  We seem to have an epidemic of psychopathic behavior in U.S. society and internationally, certainly a part of societal regression. I have never personally encountered someone whom I for certain knew.

Societal Emotional Process is a large and complex phenomenon.  This paper will address just one perspective on societal emotional process, the repeating interaction patterns of some large social groups, analogous to the interaction patterns Bowen described in the nuclear family.  

Large Group Interaction Patterns

     Reciprocal Societal Projection Process is the reciprocal.

Societal emotional process describes patterns of interaction one finds in large societal groups, similar to the patterns of interaction which Bowen observed in the nuclear family.  Two patterns of societal interaction observed so far are social category projection process and reciprocal societal projection process. The first, social category projection process, is very like family projection process. Read more

In my opinion, one of Bowen’s most important contributions was the concept of automatic emotional reactions.  My first coach instructed our supervision group to start our attempts to improve our level of differentiation by trying to observe our own automatic emotional reacting.  It seemed to me too simple.  I was wrong. .