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kristalphoenix@icqmail.com - That's my secondary email, checked weekly at best.
but here's my phone 310/202-7852. I'm a night-owl, so keep it 2pm-midnight.
Tarot reader / Metaphysical counselor.
Ecclectic guitarist: Hindu blues bach trance surf blue-grass, fibonacci time-signatures, tappistry technique, using Captain Nemo in the Quasars sort of sound effects.
Into almost all the arts and sciences from stone-carving to mystical nanotechnology programming.
Current activities: Building hybrid motorized tandem bicycle, building electro-acoustic bass slide-harp-dulcimer-zither, theater, political platform treatises
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Recent Surveys:
1) How long should one live as if they have to live?
2) In what manner would you live more extravagantly if you could?
3) On using the phrase "Oh brother"...
more) more surveys by Kristal_Rose...
Recent Comments:
| Jump to Survey | I never thought of this (LA) being a metaphysical mecca. I suppose it is. It's also true though that it's home to some of the most superficial cultures on the planet.
Unlike fundamentalism, a fascinating thing about new age teachings is that they are evolved by explorers, who are excited about a newly found or more deeply understood and sysematized principle or phenomena, then come to find a year or two later that it was a dead end and have moved on to something else or pushed the understanding even further and integrated it with existing understandings. - Ah, I should read ahead. You're on top of that aspect.
When I brought up SY as B&W, I wasn't referring to the environmental philosphies. Anyone with that flavor of inclination in those circumstances would have the same. I was referring rather to a particular cognitive style, highly linear and objective, too focused on subject to pick up vibes that the context has changed. Such a mode of perception would naturally go with a philosphical world outlook as well, that the whole world primarily operates in this same nature of linear objective causality. In like style, to use a cheap catch phrase, I think holographically, and therefore see the holographic nature of the world more.
Didn't realize I was revealing any beliefs; cosmology perhaps, and opinions on psychology practice.
I even do engineering 'freeform' (with a ton of systematic structure as well). Works for me. 22 years ago I invented the currently popular form of freeform tarot readings (which I taught to the teacher who published the method). I know way better though than to put myself in any formal environments that I don't have to.
I suppose at this point that someone might miss that I've been there and back again myself. I forget myself at times. There were years that I thought I could never forget what I knew enough to take the mortal plane seriously again. At this point I'm fully engaged in it, though I'm sure my experiences have had a profound on everything from philosophy to attitude and desires.
I've seen simpler forms of communication, where one is in the presence of another and simply knows. Don't make out metaphysics to be complex, where nature is cherry branches by a stream. It's complex when speaking with me because I am a complex engineer. I could make bubble-gum sound too overwhelming complex to ever grasp a comprehensive notion of.
Thanks for the opportunity to know you better.
| | Jump to Survey | I wonder if just whacking off their head with a sharp katana counts as kosher (it could be considered pushing the blade though). I'd love to see the cow call back in Python 'Jabberwocky' style "Bah, it's just a flesh wound", or in the cart "I'm not dead yet."
That could be another survey 'Would you still eat meat if the animals could speak English?', as Addam's in 'the Restaurant at the End of the Universe' in which the cow comes to the dinner table before butchering, recommending cuts. | | Jump to Survey | "These conversations are more appropriate on some mountain peak" - true, but the most useful counseling likewise comes from these talks. At the last visit to a neighbor I came to realize that I played the ivory tower commander rather than committing to any stream of action because to do so was to move from unlimited potential to only a single experience. Somehow that sort of revelation never comes up with the psychiatrists/psychologists I've met, yet has a profound influence on my behavior.
".Though each of those miscommunicating souls first must visualize the basic concept of a 'tree' before applying their differences. Thoughts and emotions pretty much work the same way." - But the tree may not be their significant point. Two people could be discussing a traffic accident (a tree), but their actual concerns may be 7 generation societal behavior principles or a fear of the unknown of death, rubriks totally absent in each others working outlook vocabulary.
"miscommunicating souls first must visualize the basic concept of a 'tree' before applying their differences" - 'Differences' implies a foundational standard people deviate from. Whethar genetic or conditioned, I'm suggesting that people come from different places to begin with. A person may not come to grok 'operating out of principle' or 'omnipresent fear of the unknown' until later in life, if at all.
They have found a link recently between hoarding and perfectionism, which I take to mean that they have found a black-box statistical correlation. Jesus, all they had to do was ask a perfectionist hoarder what was up. It's unwise to toss anything you will need. Perfectionists don't wish to risk making mistakes. Unfortunately the information required as to whethar something may be required or not will never materialize; even when it is needed, it may be needed again.
I'm airing my complaints with you both because I believe you can understand them, and because your simplification sounds like it leans towards the BT side of CBT or NLP, the black-box causality rubrik which isn't so much concerned wih discerning or comprehending 'why?'.
Part of what offends me about Skinner derived psychology is the philosophy that the material world is more important than things like the perceptual ideological worlds. For me, the tree is just a prop for mutual discussion, and not the significant content which gives life value. It seems some doctors wouldn't see a problem with a patient losing the faculty for romantic fantasy if it resulted in regular teeth brushing.
"There are endless types of these practices, none of which a clinician can submit with an insurance claim and except a reimbursement fee. We are bound by codes, dx's, treatment models and other tangible type of psychological criteria. This (probably unfortunately)is how our mental health system works. Detailed progress dictates the type and the length of treatment. "
- Yeah, huge problem there, and not one going away any time soon while the vast drug industry perpetuates the myth that their is a causal material/procedural cure for everything. I once wrote code for a medical insurance software company, and was sort of glad to be fired after hearing the company's matriarch say in our post-hire interview that any doctor who thinks medicine in this age is an art is a quack; that there is one and only one most cost efficient procedure for any circumstance, and that it was the job of our software to enforce this.
"We are bound by codes, dx's, treatment models and other tangible type of psychological criteria." - People are so incredibly complex and diverse that it's absurd to imagine that one treatment fits all persons of a given profile, and yet improving upon that profile may easily mean more to their overall quality of life than having a second arm, something insurance will pay for.
"The client comes to you for the 'angles' and expects services rendered." - Yeah, but they'll shop around for the particular angles they identify with too, or at least those meeting their idealized expectations.
"You would never want a client to feel as though you are just throwing random thoughts and beliefs out at them." - No, but being a wise open-minded listener with suggestions coming from practiced experinece doesn't hurt. I'd rather hear a doctor say 'perhaps' on a long-shot than not get to try on a template which had reasonable though uncertain potential.
"Casually discussing a myriad of philosophical beliefs may be fine dinner conversation...but not in the office of a clinician." - Well I'm not sure how else one finds out this sort of thing. I expect that the majority of dysfunctional behavior has philosophy as it's underlying cause. Some crazy notion like having to repent for natural born sins could wreak havoc on a person's life and affect every detail down to how they go about washing the dishes. Everyone has something like this going on in one form or another, some being generally quite useful but nearly all coming with a hidden dysfunction cost somewhere.
"> I'm not saying in all this that you haven't been vastly helpful, and
> I gather that you are getting closer to retirement. What I am saying
> though is that it would be responsible of you to set aside your worthy-self-confidence
> and use your career experience to tackle the investigation of the
> limitations of your practice such that you can inspire the next generation
> of practioneers appropriately.
This, again, is better done independent of therapy with like minded individuals who embrace these ethereal and highly complicated belief systems. There are endless groups and such devoted to exploring higher consciousness, The Secret, Laws of Attraction, etc...and I firmly believe that they have their proper place. My clients do not come to me to seek this information, nor ethically can I explore these principles in any depth."
You totally missed me there. For one, I said "such that you can inspire the next generation of practioneers appropriately." - Nothing about present or future therapist sessions implied (or at least not yours). I meant to review your own practice with the benefit of hindsight such that you can pass on wisdom to the interns. It's something people in all careers should be doing. For two, you're bringing into the suggestion ongoing baggage from your familiarity with me that was not intended in this context. I was implying consideration for more internally perceptual/philosophical frameworks than the CBT route of seeking to identify simple linear causality in what is really a closed-loop eco-system of philosphically driven emotion and cognition. Such things may overlap with (as in The Secret), but aren't of themselves in the domain of the supernatural, but are directly in the realm of behavior.
btw, I knew the co-author of The Secret; Carolyn Myss (and some other rabbi/buddhist lecturers) does a much better job of elucidating the subject with an ethical foundation and minus the hype that Beckwith and Oprah present. I'm as irritated as Myss about the book (or the summary I hear of it rather). It's irresponsibly self-interested and glosses over any understanding of the more important spiritual infrastructure.
"..nor ethically can I explore these principles in any depth." - That's tragic too. Do you not believe there is value in such approaches?
"That is just it: "digging up details to support any notion". This is not necessarily confidence building when those are seeking a valuable service from you, and expect results."
- You have reversed the intended context of this line. I am saying that you can find material in any person to support any DSM-IV diagnoses if that is what you are looking for, and that only by surveying the entire field of a person's psyche, then letting a diagnosis congeal from that breadth of material, will you stand a chance at accurate diagnosis which wasn't merely the result of statistical luck and educated guesses upon vulgar hints (although sure, even the shotgun spectrum rubrik-identification approach still ultimately comes down to that). The more templates one has on tap to identify within a survey, the better, but better yet is to have an engineering understanding of the sub-components from which such templates are built (for instance the components of perfectionism, their allies, and their associated philosphical contexts), and best of all would be able to actually learn from a patient an unfamiliar behavior set and discern it's underlying mechanisms, devoid of any any matching template at all. Every person is a different system, and only by learning how that system works can one identify the roles of behaviors or lines of thoughts within that system. We all do chores, identical necessary behavioral output, but we have a myriad of outlooks which go into performing these chores - duty, desperation, pride, wariness, glee, loathing, etc etc. If someone has a dysfunction which affects their doing chores and leads instead to depression, anxiety, or distraction, you're rarely going to find it's source within physical cognitive disabilities, or even within a flaw in their practical conscious cognitive reasoning. It seems to me though that the majority of western scientific psychology imagines one can. It's understandable that this has come to be the case. Systems tend to reflect themselves, thus it's natural that by utilizing the methodology of scientific inquiry, one molds an understanding of the subject matter to this rubrik as well. Psychology would be an entirely different practice with different understandings, methods, and results, if it were an offshoot of musicianship. ..and there's no telling if that entirely different approach would ultimately be more beneficial to patients or not.
"They all have the answers within them. Our job is that of assisting in self-discovery..." - Wisest thing I've ever heard from you. It sounds good (guess I'm on a devil's advocate track tonight) but I'm not entirely sure it's true. There have often been times in my life in which the quality of my life improved not because I latched on to some unconscious brewing understanding, but because I learned a whole new way of looking at things from someone else. I used to front-face groceries and otherwise be as helpful to employees as I could at any opportunity (coming from ancient hardship as a fast-food employee, I think), but then a girlfriend pointed out that if everyone did this those employees would lose their jobs, so really I was just tossing away time within my own gifted specialities to save money at what would evolve to become self-service businesses.
Speaking of changes from within though, I just spent two arduous weeks of cleaning my apartment for an inspection. Imagine several careers in sculpting, robotics, instrument making, vehicle prototyping, etc., complete with bench tools, building materials, electronics parts inventory, etc., going on in a studio apartment and you see what I was dealing with. Anyhow, yesterday, for the first time in a dozen years it finally clicked, "What the hell do I need four boxes of diverse organized jars for?". I'm not qute sure what made the difference. Perhaps it's that I value the open space I recently achieved. Perhaps it's that I now have a pretty good picture of what projects are lined up for the next few years, and something that may require several jars is no longer on the list. Anyhow, I'm thankful for the clarity.
More than anything, it's a lack of clarity which has held me down. This gets back to my experience with psychiatrists (yeah, I know, part of the problem is my expecting psychiatrists to be psychologists. ..but that's what the state pays for. (harping back to that insurance issue)). Anyhow, I've gone through a few and have always been dismayed that they never investigate the contents of my mind. How can they expect to clarify what goes on in there if they never even get to know it? - Perhaps an answer like "Ah, I don't need a med, I need a relationship" was within me, but I don't get the idea that any psychiatrist was heading me towards that self-discovery which I could have used a few years back. (I'm over-simplifying my life issues, of course.)
"> In my own life I'm increasingly valuing simplicity and clarity, but
> I am finding that these qualities are the result of conscious will,
> and not the result of thorough evaluation. We choose to create simplicity
> from a field of infinitely open-ended complex potential. It's not
> a truth the essence of which can be extracted any more than forms
> found in clouds. About the only genuine simple truth I've extracted
> is that mind and matter are reflective facets of the same entity,
> and that only halves the complexity of the infinite universe. (and
> half of infinity is still infinity).
This would be impossible to put into a theraputic modality."
I've been trying to put my finger on it, and just fully realized that what concerns me about you is the exact same pattern as SouthernYankee has. It's a life operational outlook that doesn't sit well with me, but I am guessing the only one of reliable use to those such as yourself, as evidenced by yet another example of not identifying shift in context. There are several related contexts going on in this conversation, only loosely supporting each other subjectively: my life, your life, clinical psychology practice, spiritual concepts and experience. Some of what I say to you is as a practioner, and some of it is person to person, attempting to take you on a journey with me. In the last passage I wasn't suggesting anything pertaining to clinical circumstances, excepting to the small degree that the common thread of clarity and simplicity pertains to identifying diagnoses (or rather, half doesn't). What I was having was a personal sharing on the philosophy of simplicity (a common interest), and imparting to you my revelation that simplicity was an act of will, not an intrinsic truth of nature to be sought, such that you might consider the truth of my revelation in your own pursuit of simplicity.
It makes sense that you endorse methods of linear causality if you are not adept at navigating nebulous multi-contextual terrain, or to exxagerate, that you would prefer black and white methodology if you see the world in black and white. What I'm balking at is that I know the world to not be black and white, and am sure that black and white methodology can only result in black and white results, if even that, given the translations to color between the input and output of the black box.
On the other hand, I've put you in the positition of defending black and white methodology, and must bear in mind that people will often defend views they don't even actually believe in if challenged. (It's humorous to watch happen or encourage, really. (Not that I try to do such.)) Anyhow, if I argued the world to be black and white instead, I might find you to be quite the colorful person in your philosophy and practice.
"These self help books would probably not be endorsed by the American Psychiatric Association/American Psychological Association " - Probably not, but that doesn't make it less truthful or helpful insight. No one made the APA God anyhow.
"> Hopefully I've either stimulated you or clarified comprehension of
> your choices.
And, yes KR....your vast knowledge of other more complex metaphysical applications is impressive (and familiar), but my goal (with you) is to paint a realistic picture of how we practice American psychiatry and psychology in the clinical setting."
(the context was actually more personal, but no matter.)
- Well why didn't you say so from the start. I took you to be defending/endorsing the industry practices, not merely portraying them.
Still, that doesn't strike me as your being optimistically empowered to nurture change (which can begin by simply voicing an informed opinion which spreads). Either you seem to agree with those practices, or don't see yourself as having any potential role in changing them. I'm not happy about anyone going around "because that's the way it is." Is there anything you would like to change, or do you have faith that the current system is state of the art? With the recurrent theme of insurance and limitations, I get the idea that you do not feel that the current practices are those of optimum benefit, but merely a semi-pragmatic compromise.
What would the practice of psychology in utopia look like to you? For me it would probably take the form of group meetings in a garden, but now that I think of it a second further, I recall ditching anything close to group therapy (gender groups, mostly)(but even spiritual discussion groups now that I think about it) because I found that the participants seemed to be more interested in clinging-to/identifying-with their dysfunctions and mutually griping about external circumstances than resolving for any release from them. They were generally a downer without educational benefits (aside from quietly observing what not to do). I suppose a good guide could have changed all that. I think the time I spent in conceptual art classes was of vastly more psychological improvement value.
Just to be sure the point wasn't missed, the key in that discourse on mind-based vs heart-based oneness-with-the-universe (presented as a deep truth by exhibiting it's outer limits) is that mental solutions in clinical settings are not enough to foster fulfillment. One of the best things I ever did for my own well being starting a few years back was to surrender self-analysis. It turned out to be a clinging form of self-perpetuating hypochondria, finding problems that weren't there nearly as much if I stopped looking for them and trying to understand them. {Flip side of the law of attraction, I suppose.}
It seems to me that another limitation of current practice ('angles' expected rendered) is that an air of professionality requires some cold detached décorum. I say this in the heart vs. mind context. Granted, I'm not broadly familiar with what happens in psychology offices these days, but presuming this to be the case, it seems to me that this backs up the premise that answers can be sought via rational conceptualization. I realize one wouldn't want to emotionally lead a patient, but the patients aren't going to get in touch with what emotionally matters to them by mirroring clinical décorum either.
I realize now that I'm in part prodding you to teach me something, and so far that isn't happening except via my version of the unidirectional psychiatry couch model I use with everyone, in which I learn by taking in myself what I find myself teaching others. I suppose at least that I benefit from the caliber of who I'm explaining things to, much the same as my guitar virtuosity depends on the caliber of who I'm playing with. It's not like I'm explaining to you the benefits of brushing one's teeth in the morning.
~
I was thinking "..or perhaps we could switch topics to metaphysics". You're right if you've formed the opinion that such esoteric knowledge is mostly unneccessary (I disagree that's it's any more complex than professional fields though). It's very much like engineering knowledge. You'd think it could help immensely, but for the most part those who have it gripe all day over engineering difficulties that others would never have in the first place. Probably psychology is typically similar in that respect as well. It's fun to be human. |
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