Tag Archives: Health

Rioting and deaths in detention: anyone could see that coming so why don’t the politicians?

30 Mar
A bunch of Razor Wire atop a chain link fence

Image via Wikipedia

Guest blog today by Dr Stewart Hase

A Refugee Crisis in the Camps: Now Who Could Have Predicted That?

The media treat it as something of a surprise that the ungrateful inmates of our refugee camps are rioting and committing suicide. But it does make for great headlines and, let’s face it, that’s mainstream journalism these days: the ‘gotcha’ rather than real investigation. Well, it is no surprise to psychologists who, had government taken the time to seek some good advice, could have easily predicted these events. In fact, if a research psychologist had wanted to design an experiment confirming the negative impact of incarcerating people, they could have done no better than the politicians and bureaucrats with the fiasco they have invented. The experiment has it all: desperate people; close confinement; razor wire; remote locations; removal of dignity an extended but variable process that engenders hopelessness; an unnatural existence; and overcrowding.

It has been long known in psychology that even relatively innocuous forms of incarceration cause psychological problems: an abnormal situation creates abnormal behaviour in and of itself. We know that guards become abusive towards inmates when they are in this unique position of power. The abuse of the powerless is not restricted to psychopaths or other similarly inadequate personalities. Mr and Mrs Average are quite capable of abnormal cruelty when given the opportunity. We see this in wartime, concentration camps, prisons and the now defunct (thankfully) psychiatric hospitals of the first half of the twentieth-century.

Any first year psychology student knows that you cannot expect people to behave normally when they are placed in abnormal situations. And we could expect people to riot when they are placed in a threatening situation. We can expect people to kill themselves or develop psychoses when their disbelief turns to despair turns to hopelessness. We can expect to see children rapidly wither on the vine when normality is stripped from them: they have few defences to protect themselves.

Successive Australian governments have failed the compassion test, as have we, the Australian people for not urging a humanitarian approach to this problem. This does not mean allowing illegal entry to our country. It does not mean opening our doors. But it does mean having a process for dealing with the problem that is in keeping with the mores of a twenty-first century civil society rather than those of the dark ages: a society that bases its decisions on evidence rather than false and convenient belief. I wonder if we are ready yet and is there a politician out there that is prepared to rise above the sorcery that is popularism?


Dr Stewart Hase

 

Dr Stewart Hase is a registered psychologist and has a doctorate in organisational behaviour as well as a BA, Diploma ofPsychology, and a Master of Arts (Hons) in psychology.

Stewart blogs at http://stewarthase.blogspot.com/

Related Articles

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Linda Burney confronted about punitive surrogacy amendment

26 Mar

On SBS Insight on Thursday, March 22,  audience members got their chance to confront the NSW Minister for Community Services, Linda Burney,  on her amendment to the NSW surrogacy legislation that makes overseas commercial surrogacy a crime in NSW.

Extra territorial laws such as this are at present only in place for terrorist activities and child sexual abuse.

Burney introduced the amendment in an effort to protect women overseas she considers to be exploited by Australian parents seeking a surrogate.

It is a little on the grandiose side to imagine that any NSW law will have any impact at all on commercial surrogacy in, say, India.

But Burney’s agenda is punitive – she has admitted  that it is intended to “punish” couples who seek overseas surrogates. It will do nothing to prevent couples using overseas surrogates, as she also admitted in the program.

What it will do is put couples at risk of hefty fines and custodial sentences of up to two years if on returning to NSW they attempt to obtain parentage orders for their babies.

Parents are unable to apply for the orders without disclosing the circumstances of their child’s birth. If in an effort to avoid prosecution the parents don’t apply for parentage orders, their children are cast into a legal limbo that leaves them disadvantaged and discriminated against.

Ms Burney was supported by  Dr Renate Klein, a  “pro life” or anti choice feminist, depending on your point of view. Dr Klein steadfastly refused to acknowledge the right of adult couples to make responsible choices about commercial surrogacy. She stated that we cannot all have what we want, and when couples can’t have children, they must learn to live with it.

There has been much discontent around Burney’s amendment, and widespread agreement that it was passed without anything like the amount of public discussion and consultation it should have had.

It was clear from the couples in the studio who’d used surrogates that they are decent, fair people who went to great lengths to ensure the women who carried their babies were decently treated.

A father told the story of how his twin boys were born prematurely, and he’d lost them both. Klein immediately demanded to know if the surrogate got paid anyway.

The father broke down, and haltingly responded that of course she did, and that he thought it was disgraceful that Klein had had asked that question. I have to say I agree with him.

While there are of course incidences of exploitation, constructing all surrogacy arrangements as exploitative is extremely dishonest. This is what Burney and Klein have done, in order to further their personal agendas.

The topic is too vast, and too important to be left to the agendas of two women whose primary purpose is punitive and who’s moral position, in the case of Klein, extremely narrow.

Lastly we crossed to a short interview with twin boys carried by an American surrogate, whose parents were in the studio audience. The boys know all about their gestation, and are looking forward to a trip to the States where they’ll to go to Disneyland and spend time with the woman “who borned us.”

It seems unlikely that Burney will be a Minister after this weekend. She might be out of a job as well. She leaves a mean-spirited, dishonest and disempowering legacy to couples and their children. It is probably too much to expect that this amendment will be revoked. This means there will probably be babies in NSW who have no legal status and no legal protection, and no legal identity.

Another disgraceful legacy from NSW Labor.

Related Articles

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

How to spot the psychopath in your workplace

23 Feb

Psychopaths rule our world. by Adam Crowe via flickr

 

Get back in the Box: Nurse Ratched is Alive and Well

by Dr Stewart Hase

In the famous book and movie, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Nurse Ratched thoroughly runs the roost. From a Jungian archetype perspective Nurse Ratched represents the dominating and emasculating mother. Her main modus operandi is to manipulate the male patients into believing that their welfare is her primary concern and that everything she does is for their benefit. With this backdrop of apparently caring intention, she holds tightly onto control in the guise of benefactor and protector from the evils of the world. The most mischievous component of her behaviour, however, is to build up expectations for rewards in the form of activities, treats or even positive attention from her as a projection of their mother, and then shatter them at the last moment. It is consummate controlling and deeply obsessive behaviour. When McMurphy (Jack Nicholson in the movie) challenges Nurse Ratched by emancipating the patients and shows signs of winning the battle for control, he is lobotomised.

Ken Kesey’s Nurse Ratched character is based in reality. I actually saw this archetype in the real world when working in a psychiatric hospital in Western Australia in the early 1970s. In my case Nurse Ratched was a male. So, what follows is equally applicable to both sexes but I refer to Nurse Ratched as female throughout to be consistent with the fictional character and, hopefully, not for any other unconscious desire.

by Corey Bond via flickr

Some recent research I have conducted with colleagues suggests that the Nurse Ratched archetype is alive and well in organisations other than psychiatric institutions. It appears in various configurations and degrees but has the same end game, which is to control the inmates: to keep them in their box. This reinforces Nurse Ratched’s sense of power, strengthens the mask that hides a deep-seated insecurity, a poorly developed sense of self and a sense that all is not well with herself, and, hence by projection, the world. Nurse Ratched has developed a set of behaviours that serve to protect her from seeing her true self and the maintain the illusion that others can’t see it either.

Nurse Ratched is a micromanager. Nothing is left to the deliberations of others. Of course there are committees, although one might find precious few of them and they are functionally impotent. This impotence is openly reinforced by Nurse Ratched who frequently overwrites their decisions using an unwritten but thoroughly understood power of veto. All decisions no matter how minute and trivial such as office allocation and travel claims are made by this manager: nothing is left to chance.

The archetype is surrounded by supplicants who have been handpicked to ensure that they do not challenge in any real way. Most importantly they all toe the party line. Dissidents are seen as not being loyal and either micromanaged or managed out. Members of the management group are found on most committees in the organisation. Committee membership has less to do with expertise and more to do with ensuring control. Loyalty is much more important then ability to be appointed as an acolyte. Even the most appalling manager and bully will be supported as long as they are loyal, get the job done and make Nurse Ratched look good.

Nurse Ratched makes sure that appointments are carefully managed. Selection panels are small and consist of herself, a couple of acolytes and a rep from HR. It is important not to have someone on the committee with expertise in the area of the appointment. Lower levels of staff are never involved in the selection process. It is not unusual for Nurse Ratched to veto an appointment and tap someone on the shoulder either within or from outside the organisation. Nepotism is so commonplace that it is taken to be normal. It is one of the rare instances where the manager does not employ a clone of self. There is room for only one Nurse Ratched in an organisation.

Information flow is carefully managed by our archetype. Most critical information is held by the management group and does not filter down: there is a hard communication barrier between senior management and the inmates. The acolytes realise that their survival depends on making sure that only selected information is sent upwards.  Meanwhile Nurse Ratched is fed a diet of misinformation from employees dotted around the organisation that are the result of the nepotistic and political appointment processes. There is nothing like pillow talk to sink an upstart’s reputation.

Nurse Ratched likes to make sure the inmates are busy: extremely busy. Staff levels are kept to a minimum, performance expectations are high and there is little room for diversion from the key tasks of the business. This archetype depends on looking good in front of the board or shareholders and this is achieved by ensuring positive business outcomes no matter what the cost to people or organisational climate. There is a Calvinesque austerity and lack of celebrations of success are rare and token. Nurse Ratched depends on an efficient and well-run ward. In the movie McMurphy’s joie de vive is a major irritant and is finally silenced by reducing him to a vegetable. With such a threat people become malleable.

The result of this archetype’s behaviour is an adversarial, ‘us and them’ culture. The ‘management team’ interpret any discontent as being due to the implicit failing of the inmates and not the result of dysfunctional leadership and a toxic culture. The inmates should be grateful: let them eat cake.

Widespread cynicism pervades the organisation underpinned by powerlessness. Some inmates, like the Chief in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, find a way to escape-he throws a water cooler through the window and runs away. In less potent expressions of their disappointment, the more imaginative and stronger personalities soon see the organisation for what it is and fly the coop. There are others who don’t quite understand the culture and innocently push back. But they are soon put in their box one way or another by being micromanaged to death, assigned meaningless tasks, and/or subtly bullied. Many are trapped due to circumstances and suffer the same pathology as Seligman’s dogs, learned helplessness that manifests itself as depressive behaviour. Denial and rationalisation of their situation help maintain a tolerable level of mental health in many.

People being people, they will in even the most adversarial environment find a way to let their creative juices flow and mostly find satisfaction in doing well what they often love doing. This is tolerated as long as the widgets continue to be churned out and there is not too much dysfunction. In fact Nurse Ratched rewards this behaviour with acknowledgement, which is gratefully received from inmates starved of recognition and positive reinforcement. But beware if the light shines too bright or the irrelevance of the activity to Nurse Ratched’s agenda is brought to her attention, the tit-bits are quickly withdrawn. After all, it is for the inmates’ own good.

This is the most toxic aspect of the culture that Nurse Ratched presides over and is the hallmark of the ultimate bully: the manipulation of the human need for recognition. The bully keeps the other in a state of constant desire for acknowledgement by maintaining a high level of disappointment, an air of disapproval. The victim’s diminishing self-esteem cries out for recognition and is occasionally, momentarily rewarded. The rush of pleasure increases desire for more and the person works even harder even as the tsunami of disappointment washes them away yet again.

Such is the dark side of organisations.

Dr Stewart Hase

 

Guest author Dr Stewart Hase is a registered psychologist and has a doctorate in organisational behaviour as well as a BA, Diploma of Psychology, and a Master of Arts (Hons) in psychology.

Stewart blogs at stewarthase.blogspot.com

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

I must be alive ’cos my heart’s still beating.

29 Jan

Some time ago I was told that I have an indolent lymphoma, a death sentence, the specialist implied. But so is life, I said. The moment I’m born I’m old enough to die. David stared in dismay, as if he found my attitude cavalier. As if he feared I hadn’t been listening.

Dying Rose. By lovestruck via flickr

After receiving this dismal news, I left David’s office and went into the hospital bathroom, where I stood looking in the mirror for a long time, talking myself down from the ceiling and back into my body.

Who am I, I wondered as I stared at the pale woman in front of me.

Where am I going?

This sudden loss of self- recognition and purpose spooked me. Get a grip, I advised myself. I adjusted my old leather backpack on my shoulders. I washed my face, put some balm on my cracked lips, and left the hospital.

I was wearing jeans, brown boots, and a white shirt. An emerald green silk scarf, a gift from my youngest son whom we all call The Adventurer, was thrown carelessly around my neck. The scarf was stiff with tears and snot. I’d lost my bravado when David insisted on repeating his diagnosis. I’d held up both palms in protest, as if to keep him and all his words away from me, then I’d sobbed like a little girl who’d been unjustly punished, that it wasn’t fair.

David pushed the tissues across the desk. I’d used my scarf instead. It smelled, still, of my child.

This is how my life ended, and my dying began.

 

GET OFF MY CLOUD

After leaving the hospital I walked carefully down the familiar Newtown streets,leaking vital energies like a dying alien.

Dog in the forest

To return to the city after a long absence is to invite a serious assault on the senses. My senses were attuned to the ocean, and the secret scents of the rainforest.To the distant chug of trawlers as they crossed the bar at sunset, heading out for the night’s fishing.

My senses were used to the sounds of the whistling kites nesting at the bottom of the garden, and the sorrowful cries of the black-capped terns on the winter beach. Calmed by the blue heron absorbed in picking its delicate way across the mud flats in the wispy grey of an early morning river mist.

These senses were ill-prepared for traffic fumes and the roar of trucks; the hot sun glaring off shop windows, and dog shit in steaming piles around my feet. Neither had they managed well with the hospital’s chemical odours, and the sight, through an uncovered window, of a purple-gloved hand preparing a large syringe.

Purple. The colour of bishops, martyrs,and feminism, and now of cancer.

I was much taken with the name of my illness. It sounded refreshingly non-medical, even poetic. In.do.lent. Having or showing a disposition to avoid exertion. Sluggish, I read when I looked it up, the better to get a handle on the nature of the intruder.

I imagined the Indolent Lymphoma loafing on a Caribbean beach in a Panama hat, sunning itself under a striped umbrella, with a pink cocktail in its hand and a bag of weed in the pocket of its board shorts. I imagined myself confronting it.

‘We need to talk,’ I’d begin. ‘You’re on my cloud. You need to get off. Your attitude is costly for my life, and it cannot be allowed to continue.’

When I got up close I saw the creature had reptilian eyes and a self-satisfied leer. It winked at me and sucked on its roach. It didn’t speak, but roused itself enough to adjust the umbrella to keep the sun off its face. Then it idly threw the last of the roach into the warm turquoise sea. I lost my temper.

‘Well fuck you!’ I yelled.‘This isn’t fucking over yet, you know!’

 

STUFF FUCKING EVERYTHING

For a long time I slept with my teeth clenched, and woke each morning with an aching jaw. I couldn’t rouse myself enough to talk to anyone. I dreamed I was swimming in a turbulent sea and when I sank beneath the waves, my skirt became trapped under a rock.

I told no one I was ill. I thought that by telling someone I would make the diagnosis real. I lived alone then. My children were scattered across the world, and I was bereft of husbands and lovers. It was easy to keep a secret.

The dreams became worse. Apocalyptic, with tidal waves; angry wolves, soldiers, and smoking theatres of war littered with the limbless dead. I became afraid to fall sleep. I sat up at night watching infomercials on television and drinking red wine. In the early hours of the morning I’d swallow non-prescription calmatives. I didn’t consciously consider suicide, though I had it in mind if things became too bad, if pain became too bad further down the track.

A frightening aridity then took hold of me. My fevers were dry and wouldn’t break. My skin shrivelled. My eyes felt full of grit. My salivary glands reduced their output and my tongue, deprived of normal lubrication, became unwieldy and attached itself to the roof of my mouth as if both were lined with Velcro. I craved fluids and drank frequently and in large quantities. But the liquids brought no relief.

My spirit is burning itself out, I thought. I hadn’t anticipated this deathly dryness, this burning up, this slow progression towards grey ash.

Grim Reaper. By Brave Heart via flickr

‘I don’t know how long I’ve got,’ I realised in a rare moment of reflection and assessment. ‘What do I most want to do?’

I had infant grandchildren as yet unmet on the other side of the world. Why not take a trip and visit them? At this thought I was immediately afraid. Fear has always been my Achilles heel.

‘What if I get sick, really sick in a foreign country?’ I worried, as I walked the winter beach with my black and white dog.

‘But why does it matter where I get really sick?’ I argued back.’Does anywhere feel like home to me? Where do I belong, where have I ever belonged? Does it matter at all where I die?’

I considered these questions mostly in the abstract. As generalised philosophical meditations, as a scholar rather than a sufferer, and got nowhere.

There are times when knowledge fails to make the necessary journey from the head to the heart.

‘Stuff fucking everything,’ I thought one day, overwhelmed by circumstances of such magnitude that my mind rebelled against admitting them. And besides, I was beginning to bore myself. There is only so much time one can spend contemplating one’s death. It was now a time for action, not stasis.I also wanted very much to start smoking again after twenty-four years of abstinence, and that urge had to be resisted at all costs.

So, with what felt like my last reserves of self-care, I decided I would go to Mexico. My son the Chef lived on the Mexican Caribbean coast with the grandchildren I had yet to meet. What better journey could I make? And my best friend, Jane, agreed to join me there later in the year.

I stored my winter clothes in boxes. Where I was going it was always summer. I packed my bags and boarded the 10am Qantas flight from Sydney to Los Angeles, to Dallas, Forth Worth, and on to Cancún. A thrilling optimism took me over. No regrets! No tears goodbye! Hola! Buenos dias, senors y senoritas!

Flying into...

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,