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Marine Drill Instructor Addresses His Recruits

Some fascinating new research is out on the topic of personality differences between men and women. 

As just about everyone knows, men tend to be more reckless, assertive, competitive and unemotional, while women are more emotional, nuturing, cautious, and coopertive. Some people think these differences are innate, while others think they are the result of the way children are raised in our society.

The really interesting and surprising result of the research is that the personality differences between men and women are actually increasing.  You would think that as women move closer to equality with men, have their own careers, etc., the differences would tend to diminish.  One theory that has been put forward to explain this phenomenon is that in modern societies, as external barriers between the sexes diminish, some long-dormant internal differences are reviving.

Finally, it appears that most of the increasing differences in personality are due to changes in men.  In other words, men are becoming more competitive, assertive, etc. in our society!  This doesn’t sound like a good thing.

The Altamont Commuter Express

True or False: The longer a couple is married, the more boring and passionless the marriage becomes.

False. According to researcher Richard Levenson, who for the last 20 years has been conducting a study on long-term marriages. “Marriages continue to be really just as emotional, in terms of the overall amount of emotions, in middle and late life as they do early in life,” according to Levenson.

The research data show that for some couples there is a dip in marital satisfaction during the middle years, when children are in school and careers are being built. But then, after the children leave home and as retirement approaches, those couples who stay together rediscover the love they had in the early years of their marriage.

What does the research show to be the keys to long-term marriage success?  There are two: (1) communication and (2) emotional maturity.

Extreme Skateboarder

One of the more interesting defense mechanisms is projection, which was first described by Freud. In projection, one attributes his/her own unacceptable or unwanted thoughts or/and emotions to others. In other words, whatever you unconsciously don’t like about yourself is what you really despise in other people.  

All defense mechanisms serve to reduce anxiety, and projection is no different. Projection reduces anxiety by allowing a person to express unwanted subconscious desires without letting the conscious mind recognize them.

In couples therapy projection can crop up in a very interesting way. Someones I will work with a couple in which one partner has severe “trust issues” and constantly suspects the other of cheating, even when there is absolutely no evidence of it. On more than one occasion, it has turned out (surprise!) that the overly suspicious partner is the one who had cheated! The unfaithful partner felt guilty about his/her own cheating, and so projected it onto the innocent partner to reduce anxiety.

Schooner, San Francisco Bay

Solution-Focused Therapy is a “brief” therapy.  What are the differences between brief therapies and other, more traditional psychotherapies? Well, obviously, the therapy is brief!  It could be as short as 5 or 6 sessions (which is why insurance companies love brief therapy). But there are other differences too. In brief therapies:

• The focus is on the here-and-now. There is not a lot of time spent on the past (e.g. troubles from childhood).
• Therapist and client collaborate to set concrete and achievable goals in the first session.
• Therapist and client must form a good working relationship right away, rather than having it develop over time.
• The therapist is active and involved, rather than being a passive listener.

The effectiveness of brief therapy seems to be relatively high, according to multiple research studies. I think this is due in part to the fact that the goals are made very clear at the beginning, and that by the end of the therapy, it is easy to determine or not those goals have been attained.

East Brother Light Station

Solution-Focused Brief Therapy is a mode of psychotherapy that was developed in the 1980s. In a way, it turns traditional therapy upside down, because the therapist prefers to talk about solutions instead of talking about problems. In fact, in a strict solution-focused model, the problem is discussed in the first therapy session, but is never again brought up. From the second session onward, all conversations are about possible solutions. The therapist’s job is to help the client come up with possible solutions and then try them out.

Three maxims that guide the solution-focused process are:

1. if it isn’t broken, don’t try to fix it.
2. If it’s not working, try something (anything!) else.
3. If it is working, do more of it!

I think maxim #2 can be applied to many troubled relationships. Many couples continue to repeat patterns of interaction that cause the same undesirable outcomes every time. In cases like this, it’s time to start trying out some new possible solutions.

By the way, insurance companies love Solution-Focused Brief Therapy because it is brief, and as a result, doesn’t cost them as much money as other types of therapy do.

John Gottman has a theory about Positive Sentiment Override vs. Negative Sentiment Override in a couple’s communication. It’s pretty easy to tell the difference between the two. Consider a perfectly neutral statement such as, “we’re almost out of milk.” One possible response to this is, “OK, I should be able to pick up some more tomorrow.”  This is positive.  Another possible response would be something like, “so I’m a failure at grocery shopping? Why are you always criticizing me?” This is, of course, negative. This negative reponse is defensive and seems to indicate a chip on the shoulder.

How to change Sentiment Override from Negative to Positive?  Work on reducing criticism and increasing appreciation.

The defense mechanism of denial is is mentioned often in everyday speech. For example, we might say “Fred is in denial” when talking about a man who has a weight problem but won’t admit it.  However, there is another defense mechanism, repression, which is usually a more accurate description of what we see in ourselves and others.

So what is the difference between denial and repression? If something was once known, but is now not being thought about, it is being repressed. So assuming that Fred really does know that he is overweight, but just avoiding thinking about it, he is using repression, not denial, to avoid the unpleasant reality of his large size.

In true denial, information is instantly disregarded. As an example, if Wilma’s doctor tells her she has terminal cancer with only a few months to live, she might say, “that can’t be true” and go on behaving as if she is in perfect health.

Now that you know the distinction between denial and repression, you’ve got a bedrock of knowledge about defense mechanisms.

Sometimes the best solution to a disagreement between partners is to agree on a compromise. Each person gives a little on their position and the couple “meets in the middle.”

How easily can you and your spouse discuss a difficult problem and reach a solution that is acceptable to both of you?  The ability to reach a compromise is good tool to have in your marriage toolbox.

Here are some pointers on compromising:

• Figure out what aspects of the problem the two of you agree on. Where is there agreement? Begin by focusing on that.
• Tell each other what your goals are in this situation.  Each person should clearly understand the other person’s goals.
• Now the part that you don’t agree about. Once again, be sure you understand what the other person’s position is, and why it so important to them.
• Figure out where there is some flexibility in both positions.
• Take turns making suggested compromises with some give-and-take until an agreement is reached.

Here are three secretive behaviors to think about.  If you see your spouse engaging in them, you should be concerned about what he is keeping from you.

• Secretive about his e-mail.  Maybe he only reads his e-mail when you aren’t around, and then carefully deletes it.  Even worse: he has a secret e-mail account that he hasn’t told you about.
• Secretive about his cell phone.  Is he careful to keep his phone away from you?  Does he erase the numbers of incoming and outgoing calls.  Does he erase the text messages?  Even worse: he has a second phone that you don’t know about. Even worser: it’s a pay-as-you-go phone, which means that detailed bills don’t arrive at your home.
• Secretive about his credit cards.  He doesn’t want you to see the monthly statements. Even worse: he has a secret credit card with a different address so that the bills don’t arrive at your home.

And yes, people really do all of these things.

Here are some notable discoveries made during the 1970s:

• In 1974, Henry Jay Heimlich, in Emergency Medicine, described a subdiaphramatic thrust, pushing up suddenly on the soft tissue of the diaphragm, which sharply reduced death from choking. This maneuver is based on the reserve volume of air that stays in the lungs after exhalation.
• In 1975, Martin L. Perl, using the Stanford Positron-Electron Ring, discovered traces of an anomolous electron-muon event which he later named the ‘tau’ lepton, or ‘tauon,’ a new elementary particle.  The tau lepton is identical to the electron except that it is 3500 times heavier and survives less than a trillionth of a second.
• In 1977, cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead discovered that men actually do feel emotions. During the AFC divisional playoffs, the Oakland Raiders defeated the Baltimore Colts in two overtimes, and after the game ended Mead observed a male Raiders fan exhibiting signs of happiness and even joy.**

 

** Just Kidding!