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Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubez
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Being insanely busy all the time is not only bad for you; it also prevents you from discovering the human being you were meant to be.
Andrew Smart, Autopilot
Although case studies are a well-recognized form of scholarship, in the nonfiction aisles of retail bookstores it can become a sobriquet for “war stories.” Their presence and popularity grew immensely with the popularity of books by neurologist Oliver Sacks. Many authors, though, have difficulty equalling his prowess.
Mark Rubinstein deftly avoids the many pitfalls of the genre in Beyond Bedlam’s Door: True Tales from the Couch and Courtroom, his second book of vignettes from his four decades as a psychiatrist. It follows the same format of his first such book, last year’s Bedlam’s Door:True Tales of Madness and Hope. Both tell the stories of a variety of patients, each followed by an “Afterword” addressing the particular issues or conditions at play. In this way Rubinstein seeks to not only make each patient’s story personal and relatable but to explain psychiatric conditions and their ramifications for the individual, their family and society.
 Bedlam’s Door, a term used when an emergency room becomes “a revolving carousel of psychosis,” portrays patients Rubinstein encountered at various medical facilities. Beyond Bedlam’s Door is just what its title and subtitle suggest: accounts of his work outside the institutional setting, whether treating someone in private practice or as a forensic psychiatrist.
Rubinstein uses an almost parable-like approach in the 21 stories in Beyond Bedlam’s Door to illustrate the diversity of psychiatric issues and what psychiatrists do. Among the topics he explores are professional malpractice, the difficulty of treating adolescents, the importance of doctor-patient boundaries and the difference between crossing those boundaries and violating them. His method of recounting patient histories in the form of reconstructed conversations provides a foundation by which Beyond Bedlam’s Door intelligibly explains and demystifies a variety of mental health issues, from panic attacks to depression to post-traumatic stress disorder. More important, Rubinstein shows that the stories of his patients really weave “a tapestry of human thinking, feeling and behavior” in which “we see reflections of ourselves.”
Rubinstein’s background as a forensic psychiatrist — a psychiatrist who works with attorneys, courts, or other parties involved in actual or potential litigation — also allows him to provide an inside view of the interplay between law and psychiatry. He furnishes easy to understand explanations of various psychiatric issues in the law. For example, Beyond Bedlam’s Door concisely and coherently spells out the recurring question in workers’ compensation cases of “physical-mental” and “mental-mental” injuries. Likewise, he describes the job of an expert witness, the so-called “gunslinger” expert and how forensic evaluations differ from evaluating a patient for treatment.
Beyond Bedlam’s Door sporadically repeats information from Rubinstein’s prior book, at times verbatim. To be fair, that likely is simply the nature of the beast when it comes to describing and explaining mental health conditions. Some may also be put off by the fact that while the reconstructed dialogue makes the book more literary, it can also feel artificial. That said, Beyond Bedlam’s Door is a top-notch look at the reality and relevance of psychiatry in today’s America.
Where money and the law intersect, truth can sometimes be the victim.
Mark Rubinstein, Beyond Bedlam’s Door
Consider this. Between 1979 to 2008, use of the word “mindfulness” in books published in the U.S. increased 807 percent. It’s become a buzzword for modern psychology, business consultants, employee assistance programs and the media. But it’s nothing new; it stems from centuries-old traditions, one of which is Buddhism, known for its deep-rooted meditation methods.
Mindfulness is often promoted for stress reduction, whether through conventional meditation or more informally taking time to clear your mind and pay attention to the present moment. This mass market mindfulness helps explain why it’s fashionable but it’s really a secularized element of one aspect of Buddhism. In an updated edition to Buddhism for Busy People: Finding Happiness in a Hurried World, British author David Michie uses what he calls an “unashamedly personal account” to explain core elements of Buddhism and their use in day-to-day life. First published in the U.S. in 2008, Michie’s book helps illustrate why mindfulness and Buddhism attract increased interest.
Affluence is a hallmark of modern western society. Yet those Michie calls “the luckiest 10 percent of the human population” also are plagued with “grinding dissatisfaction.” The situation hasn’t improved since Buddhism for Busy People was originally published in Australia in 2004. The internet, mobile technology and social media dramatically increased the demands on our time and attention.
 Buddhism aims to shift the focus of busy people, Michie says. The goal is not to control what’s happening around us but to take control of our how we experience the world. This all proceeds from the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths. Buddhism for Busy People most closely comprehensively and comprehensibly the first two.
Dukkha, the first noble truth, is most often described as “suffering.” Yet, Michie notes, it embodies the concept that our underlying state of mind is dissatisfaction. That is explained by the second noble truth, samudhaya. According to Michie, we yearn for objects or goals but once achieved they don’t live up to our expectations or, if they do, it is short-lived. We think our happiness is dependent on some object, person or situation when, in fact, we alone determine our state of mind. Ultimately, we “keep deluding ourselves that the achievement of some particular milestone will represent a major personal breakthrough. But after sometimes the shortest of honeymoons we wake up one morning and discover we’re still just us.”
Michie details the purpose and goals of meditation, as well as particular exercises. Like virtually all books on the topic, though, it is much easier to write about specific practices than for the reader to successfully implement them. Other aspects of Buddhism and its practices are addressed largely through Michie’s own experiences. Sadly, only a certain percentage of readers have comparable firsthand access to Buddhist organizations, centers and teachers like Michie. He does deserve credit for his intriguing exploration of the concept of karma. In essence, “[t]he desire to give others happiness (love) or prevent their suffering (compassion) in the past was the karmic cause of our current life.”
Buddhism for Busy People also examines compassion and its role in finding happiness in daily life. Michie views “Self” as the most significant and deeply rooted obstacle.
We do our best to make [Self] feel special, brilliant, successful, popular, wealthy, powerful, enlightened or whatever trip he happens to be on. Most frightening of all, somewhere along the line we allow Self to so dominate our consciousness that we even start to think of him as our essence. Our true being. Our “real me.”
From a Buddhist perspective, this indulgence is responsible for “all our dissatisfaction, every last ache of suffering we experience.” The antidote, Michie says, is the altruistic bodhichitta. Instead of letting Self dominate the mind, bodhichitta calls for thinking of others with profound compassion in the hope of freeing all living beings from suffering. Like many Buddhist concepts, understanding what to do isn’t hard, it’s actually doing it that is most difficult. Michie suggests generosity, ethical behavior and patience are the keys to implementing it in daily life.
With both this and the concept of karma, Buddhism for Busy People ventures into the fundamental Buddhist tenet that when a person dies they are reborn and the process continues until they attain nirvana. Because each life is just part of our ongoing mind stream, today’s (and yesterday’s) actions and thoughts affect our future mind stream. While many of us may find this a dubious concept, Michie says that in Buddhism “it is what you do that counts, not what you say you believe.”
Michie is adept at using his own experiences and those of friends and colleagues to illustrate his theses, as well as Buddhist concepts and practices. The extent to which they assist understanding will be in the eye of each reader. Overall, though, Buddhism for Busy People concisely and distinctly provides a deeper understanding of how and why mindfulness and meditation are of such interest and practical advice on implementing the concepts into everyday life.
Michie’s ultimate and most fundamental message may be epitomized by his observation that “true happiness arises when we are able to change our minds rather than the world around us, when we loosen the bonds of self-focus enough to care more for others.” And one certainly need not be a full-fledged Buddhist to agree.
It is a simple but powerful truth that if we want to experience happiness, we must first give it. Generosity is the direct antidote to unhappiness.
David Michie, Buddhism for Busy People
The attention of many, if not most people, who see the title The Autobiography of Satan: Authorized Edition will be drawn to the word Satan. Actually, the key words are authorized autobiography. Autobiography is crucial because countless stories have been written or told about Satan’s life, motives and deeds. And while it would seem that any autobiography would, by definition, be authorized, the term here signals the deceit of the other stories and seeks to confirm this isn’t a fabrication.
We all should understand that even this authorized autobiography is fictitious. Yet a 2013 poll indicated that 57% of Americans believe the devil exists. In another poll that year more Americans expressed belief in the devil (58%) than evolution (47%). For William Glasser, president emeritus of Southern Vermont College, the time evidently seemed ripe for Stan to publish an autobiography.
Glasser, who combined his Ph.D. in English with a minor in comparative religion, advances a thoughtful premise. While certainly written from a freethinker’s perspective, The Autobiography of Satan isn’t predicated on some sort of grand clash of metaphysical beings. This is seen from the outset, as Satan flickers into existence when a prehistoric hominid puzzled over the spark created when he struck two rocks together. From this point forward, Satan’s story is that of and shaped by human history.
 Even since prehistory, man faces the enduring shroud created by what we know and explaining what we don’t understand. For just as long, man has looked to gods for and as the answer to what mystifies us, including the problem of good and evil. Glasser traces the evolution of religious beliefs and how the unknown was transformed into and maintained as the exclusive province of the gods. Because this was outside human dominion, it was forbidden knowledge. And Satan contends that even the Garden of Eden, whether real or apocryphal, was conceived to keep man “distracted from becoming aware of your deplorable ignorance.”
In ceding the unknown, humans chose “to deify their ignorance.” And since the gods possessed all knowledge, some entity had to be responsible for enticing people to dare question or seek that which they — or their religions — considered beyond man’s ken. Moreover, since man deemed gods the source of good in the world, he needed to ascribe evil (the definition of which changed despite supposedly being the province of any particular religion’s deities) to some entity. Man piled all this on Satan’s shoulders, even though the reality was he was not cast out, waging war against any god or spawning evil in the world.
The only foe Glasser’s Satan has is “exalted ignorance.” And that is where hostility exists between Satan and religion. History as recounted by Satan is replete with efforts by religions to restrict knowledge and investigation because “they were fearful of what you might discover beyond the borders of their own beliefs.” According to Satan, considered by nearly all to be an expert in the field, the suppression of knowledge and free inquiry is “the true source of evil in this world.”
Satan’s recounting weakens as Glasser moves us into the present and even the future. Although shrewd and at times droll, the book also stumbles with perhaps too frequent, and occasionally trivial, interludes of dialogues between Satan and his scribe, Wag. Still, approaching Satan, or the concept of Satan, as a struggle over knowledge and not a battle between good and evil heightens the level of discourse over conventional notions of Satan. Granted, many will claim Glasser is simply vilifying religion. Yet anyone embarking on The Autobiography of Satan without preconceptions will find an intelligent, well-reasoned and insightful exploration of historical ideas and their evolution.
People will do anything to hide their own ignorance, particularly from themselves. Perhaps that accounts for why the pursuit of knowledge, throughout human history, has so often been twisted into something evil.
William Glasser, The Autobiography of Satan
Bulletin Board
Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubez
- The Admission (“Was this really my life now? I couldn’t think of a greater failing than not being able to keep yourself alive.”)
Bookish Linkage
Nonbookish Linkage
There’s never enough time to do all the nothing you want.
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes, October 10, 2011
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