Frank Weil lectures; #6 (Reel 2)

We turn now from the techniques of psychotherapy back to the science of psychic dynamics from which the techniques of psychotherapy have been developed. I want to suggest a fourth pattern for the development of a technique of a technology of epics. This is to survey the field of psychodynamics itself and the related disciplines such as anthropology history jurisprudence social psychology to look for areas which have not been applied in devising the technique of psychotherapy effect which conceivably could be applied as a technique for the further development of the ethics. My own study of psychodynamics of human relations leads me to make the following comments which include some suggestions about the techniques of the affix. It seems to me that all indications point to the fact that the human animal at this stage of its development. And some biologists recently have taken to speaking the human animal

as an incompletely evolved animal least one can say that the human animal I did this stage of its development needs both an internal set of standards and an external staff Upsetter stand. We need both a good conscience internally and a good set of laws or of customs or of socially accepted patterns of behavior. Extern obey laws alone may be expression of a poor guide to ethical behavior such as the German laws in the 1930s and early 1940s obedience to which led to the destruction of millions of human beings. Also. The customs. Of enslaving a group of other human beings especially in Africa and laws which codified the institution of slavery elsewhere. Oh so our were extraordinarily poor guides to

ethical behavior. But also the coming shows on loan may be a poor guide to ethical behavior since the conscience speaks with contradictory voices ach time. And since one major part of the super ego is unconscious and primitive. But it would be wrong to express this in negatives our own way. It is proved also that much of the time the voice of the conscience has a good degree of reliability and that much of the time the laws and the customs of a country or of a culture are just invalid and relevant or can be changed by general agreement. But it is incorrect to say as some surgeons recently have said that we do not need a multi guest but an airy discussion of the ethical problems in organ transplants. Since the surgeon can rely simply on his own conscience. The conscience is not altogether reliable in any one of the time.

And also we must look at the other problem of what to do when others are convinced that a group decision inevitably is more reliable than one's conscience. And yet when he is convinced that one's conscience is more correct than the voice of the group or than certain rules or customs. It would be pretentious if I were to list my own defeat victories on the occasions in the past when I took a stance of this sort but it seems likely to me that no man started in the third third of his life. Could have lived that long without seriously jeopardising his career I have to absent times without being unpopular many times and without physical danger several times. But sticking to one's guns to one's conscience decision is a tricky business. I have seen too many individuals make

issues of functions on unimportant points which they regretted later. So I have one rule on this. It is or if it is an important issue I try to find at least two very reliable person who think as I do. An amusing example is that when I brought one issue an important issue to avoid it to a vote. In a board of directors meeting of a national organization I knew I probably would be voted down 14 to 1. I hesitated until I found the two former members of that board rather strongly as I cared about the issue and were in agreement with my stand so I took the stand was voted down 14 to 1. And continued to argue for several years about. So technique number four search the science of second dynamics and

related sectors the studies of the country for new techniques of ethical understanding and behavior. My suggestion for a new technique is that one should try this along this line my suggestion for a new technique is that one is that one ethic today has an epochal cut but should try to cross validate the voice in a kind and then to cross validate one's punctuation with external standard. You don't like that formulation has part of the AG but I can't or should not take the half hour as it would take for me to argue further about it. If I would pray at Dingle perhaps I could do it in a five or ten minutes but I can't bear another being only one hour a collective sigh I haven't cried some day.

The fifth now rioting of techniques for the development of epics can be phrased quite simply it's this. Check your favorite aphorisms or maxims against the fact some of them will be found to be very wrong to be seriously inappropriate. For example one maxim that you use a very Mike is that it often says the best defense and it often is recommended as part of a discussion or have a disagreement in a meeting in which the focus is on working out a problem. The fact is that this maxim may be relevant in military conflict or in revolutionary movements or in counter revolutionary activity. Also in an aggressive hostile argument in which the goal is to win out over the other it may be a good strategy to attack to a take off and see about action before one is attacked. In a sport in a letter contest aggressiveness is good but is limited by the rules and by the referee. Within those limits and attacking

aggressiveness does have some value. But in good human relations there are several things wrong with a policy about fences the best one is that if the category of defense an attack of attack and defense is the central pattern in the human relations the chance is great that the relation is not workable. It can be workable if the central pattern is much more largely one of a team that works with the defense and with the defense and attack category being more of a side issue. Surely it often is present and if the attacking defense pattern is mild enough and it is fretted genealogy it can be stimulating without being destructive. Finally an average human relations if the individual feels there is a need to be defensive and use his attack as his method of defense he has offended the other has accentuated or increased the attack defense part of the relation which might not have been so prominent otherwise. In fact in human

relations which have potential value often which probably is the worst pattern to you now it's valid and workable equivalent is the fact that in a good relation. One may find it necessary to be quite sharp limit setting and abrupt when the other is testing the limits or trying to dominate so much can be said here also. But surely not another jingo to help me make it. Sorry let it stand as fact. So technique number 5. It's a good idea to be skeptical about ethical Macs especially one's own and to check them against the facts. Now of the six variety of techniques for the further development about pictures try your hand at concocting a new Mac sim or aphorism of six doing your best to avoid twisting it to justify your own

power. Then test it against the available facts. And also have others join in the game and have them continually think about your new maps him and you about their views. Don't choose for the job. Those who always disagree with you are those who always agree with you. Because in this as in most things in life you need friends who respect what you do or what you try to do but who also have the self-respect to express any disagreement or suggest. Now one of my own concoctions and I have a side say one of my own concoctions as a maxim is that life is not just a bag of jelly. I used this aphorism in a previous lecture as a technique which helps to undercut the deep seated attitude of many people that the good things of life always are remembered as in childhood a bag of jelly beans contained only a limited number of pieces. Several children with

only one bag of candy. This means that competition is the rule of the game and that by competition and getting more one inevitably keeps the others from having as many as the others might want. Throughout the evening inevitably everyone has a number of experiences of finding something in limited supply. In fact one way of phrasing the issues faced by a minority group. Is that its members have too many experiences of finding things in limited supply. My aphorism that life is not a bag of jelly beans can be used to indicate that in most groups and even to some degree in a minority group during many periods at least most of the important things in life sectors love strength. Friendship masculine again man femininity and women success. Intelligence and new ideas are

not based on the jelly bean model are not in limited supply but each one can have is own share and more. And that when one has more it does not lessen what the other as your can have or be in life. In fact for example when the older brother is successful and happy that fact may increase not decrease the odds that he's younger brother will be successful and happy. The older brother often cries to be how he provides an image for identification. And this occurs even though in some families the central concept may be that there can be only one strong man in the family. In undercutting this pattern the jelly bean Maxime has some value. Also I've used the phrase that it's lonely on Mount

Olympus. To clarify the risks involved in taking a superior godlike stance toward others in life. So now technique number six. Concoct some new maxims and check them against the realities of life. Now the seven techniques for the development of ethics is to use acrobatic sports or other games as a source of maxims or analogies or phrases to replace some obsolescent phrases and AFAIK the widespread participation in sport press plus the even wider spread attendance of spectator sport makes the use as ethical maxims of such phrases from sports seem immediate and contemporary. A slice of life and not merely a distant goal. Almost all sports are not regarded at all so most sports are not regarded as we doing activity and so phrases from

sports are not regarded as urging purity and weakness. One of the great tragedies is that ethical principles and ethical behavior often is getting screwed as weakness or as subservience or compliance. For most boys the phrase of being a good boy is were guarded as the equivalent of being a weakling. But ethical phrases from the field of athletics are much less likely to be contaminated that way. Another point is that athletics involves some form of each of the two major patterns of Aphex and so offers a large variety of principle. The first pattern of ethics as I phrased it was the need to control or to modify the aggressive competitive destructive struggles in life. That is the defense of ethics in competitive sports. Each team or each person in a two person sport uses defensive tactics against the other against even the legitimate attacks by the other. Also each

person and in a two person game and each individual of each team must use ethical defenses against his own impulses to do serious damage to the opponent or to someone of the other team in the defensive ethics code in this defense of ethics in that select with external controls in the form of rules and of the referee and internal controls of punishment. Are you also the second time a type of ethics or creative act is very much in evidence in team sport in team play the members of a team often develop a remarkable degree of partnership of team spirit a spirit of mutual the help of an ally actors those on the same side the same of being beyond the adversary system. This is a crucial point in a good team. And finally a team which is having problems often does a much better job when the players have done some selfs have had

some productive discussion although sometimes at the heart of this has to be done by the coach or is not done and the team goes down it in its performance. Many others before me have used athletics as a source of ethical phrases the concept of fair play. The use of the Marquess of Queensberry rules as an analogy and the learning of courage and leadership on the playing fields of the IIT have often been mentioned. But I would like to add that the pung sept of perfection as of now can be replaced by the concept of a good batting average in which no one expect even a great slobbered to make it each time. Back. And everyone knows that a great slugger must not use the absence of a perfectionism standard the fact that no one bats a thousand to permit him to take life easy. Instead the slugger worked very hard to keep his batting average as good

as it is or to improve it. So it's not just of permissiveness to sloppy. As a further example from the field of sport. So I have used the concept of the fairway and golf with the rock on one side and the rough on the other to symbolize the fact that the ethical fairway in life is broadside not a thin line on which it is difficult to stay and that the ethical fairway is broad enough for individual variation not merely for a respected narrow compliant acts. Further one can get off the ethical fairway and at least two kinds of rocks. For example in the ethical fair way of showing consideration for the needs of the feelings of others one can get into the ruck on the one side of being careless about the needs of others and perhaps hurting them but also one can get into the ruff of being overly considerate of others acting as if the other were fragile and thereby like the

inferior as if he were on a boat to take life as it is. So technique number seven you use athletics or other games as a source perhaps ethical principle and ethical behavior in the previous lectures. There were half a dozen or a dozen other suggestions about ways to develop further technology of ethics and it would be challenging to take up each one name turn. And to see if I could carry it further. But Time speeds by. And so when the remaining time I want to concentrate on two essential issues in the technology of back in a moment I'll summarize the patterns of creative ethics. These are not easy as I promised to do last time. These are not easy to use and so the first essential there will

be just to ask what techniques one can use to keep from hitting one's self when one uses the creative type of ethics it is not so simple or clear. Create about takes as it is the defensive type of that. And so we need safeguards. The second issue is a very different one. It is the basic and fundamental question of how one can face up to the fact that ethics has always been a matter of the intellect of words and Maxim. But we know now that force is other than intellect. Play a major role in human behavior. This discrepancy may block their sorry this discrepancy may provide the best available opportunity for further growth in the technology of acting. Now we come now to a summary of creative ethics which I omitted from the last lecture to give us time for

the discussion of the bodhran rule. Some of the varieties of creative ethics can be phrased this way. One is that there are times when the conflict is between ethical systems. It is a conflict of good against good rather than of good against evil or of good against destructive power as is the pattern in defensive acting as it is in a way defense about takes is the struggle of good against destruction or damaging patterns whereas creative ethics it may be the interact. Or the alliance but tween ethical systems ethical standards which are of value. This partly explains some of the conflict of the ethical systems calls for the adjustment of different ethical attitudes to each other. When that is possible the example given in this but the discussion of the conflict about attitudes with it was the case of the fireman who died

of cancer of the bladder and who died because of his unresolved conflict between two ethical systems. Still another type of creative ethics is the kind of positive and creative interchange. For example in the non job seminar approach in which both sides provide to avoid unproductive domination rebellion or submission another creative ethical pattern is the process of recognizing and dealing with a situation in which simultaneously the relation is one of equality and one of inequality. As it is the conflict between the generations is another form of creative ethics is the process of trying to function beyond the adversary system beyond the pattern of the debater and of having a productive alliance. For example in the process of supervision

in an alliance there is compromise but also a new integration. One phrase which applies to many such creative ethical developments is that they arise but with this two pages these two pages are very concentrated because they represent things which have already been discussed in the preceding five lectures in which I'm concentrating to be able to go further. That one phrase which applies to many such creative ethical developments is that they arise out of our creative tension between opposite with the first step being the need to modify the opposites into versions which are less spree. Then there can be a productive interchange. A mutual respect a creative dialogue. No still another duty. For a creative ethics is Freud's concept of the post ambivalent stage of development. In which the gradual maturing of the individual results in his being able to behave

in such a way or to try to do so. But the interests of the other are given as much attention as are the interests of the individual himself. Also in creative ethics there is involved a pattern of trying to reach solutions which do not damage the interests of the individual himself at the moment he emphasizes the interests of others or of the group when the stability of the culture is predominant. Similarly the interests of the individual may be predominant at other times with the stress then being in the direction of his finding satisfaction in finding satisfactions for the individual without damaging others or the group as a second sublimation and finally looking forward to the millennium. We may even search for solutions which forward the interest of the individual and at the same time forward the end proofs of others and of the culture or of the group. But really we need not wait for the future for

many examples of this pattern. A scientific discovery may enhance the life the career the prestige and the self-respect of the discoverer and simultaneously you may alleviate the suffering and promote and promote the interests of all humanity. A good teacher a good parent simultaneously can do a good job for the next generation. And enjoy the process for himself or herself in spite of the many rough spots in the process. And there are many types of human helpfulness in the professions and in personal life. Which are based on respect for the other and which may increase the individual's own self-respect at the same time as well as prospering in reality the well-being of all concerned. Now right in the as you can see I suppose that they could be tricky but need not be voided because they are tricky in these and in many

other types of create by tricky I did not mean the one trick seen using mean that they are right that it's difficult to be stringent. They are honest in the use of complex. Attitudes and attitudes which represent the integration of a number of points of view and of many factors in these and in many other types of creative epics. The essential issue is that a spring gentle honest self spring day is of great help in preventing mistakes and in improving one's effectiveness. But self-scrutiny may not be enough time. And so there must be developed as types of ethical activity. Some forms of occasional supervision by a reliable person. For example our mother's handling of a child. Can in a sense be supervised by a well trained understanding pediatrician. Still further I urge the

development of the further development of one to further development as one of the most important of all technological innovations in the field of ethics the use of what we can call peer supervision. Several years ago I proposed this technique the peer supervision in the field of psychiatry for psychiatrists after their training was over. This means that small groups of psychiatrists form self-selected groups of four or five who are like each other and feel they can trust each other in rotation. One evening a month or so they present to each other their work with patients preserving confidentiality with a special emphasis in the discussion on their own patterns of work especially in difficult cases on the ways in which their own responses may interfere with their work. The others make comments about the presenter's approach in his responses and the chief effect is to stimulate an increase in his self scrutiny.

It is one of the most effective ways of continuing to develop that has ever been devised. Each is a supervisor of each other's work with the same kind of approach which was so valuable in supervision itself during the period of training. My suggestion now is that small self-selected groups of lawyers groups of groups of two groups of clergy groups of grad would screw students groups of mothers or fathers. Eventually you should develop comparable groups for peers supervision each would talk in rotation about a current problem and his way of dealing with it. The others would comment and suggest other ways of dealing with the situation or acts or express their agreement. If there is honesty a wish to help and wish to learn everyone can give and everyone can gain. You have just heard Dr. Ramani Slovene professor and director of the Department of

Psychiatry at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. Speaking on toward a technology about the aches the last in a series of lectures on psychiatry and ethics these lectures were given at the Franco Wilde Institute at the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati. These programs were produced at the University of Cincinnati station WAGA U.S. and are distributed by the national educational radio network.