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Writing Therapy Exercise for Small Group

Trigger-Response Reflective Writing Prompt for Group

Materials:

Print-out with Shakespearian and Petrarchan sonnets
Paper
Pens

Timing:

5 minutes: Introducing myself and then meeting the group.
10 minutes: Explaining sonnet form, reading examples.
5 minutes: Discussing anxiety triggers for negative coping mechanisms and behaviors (maybe longer depending on how far along the group is in their understanding of these issues).
20ish minutes: Time allotted for group to write, I circulate and assist as required.
20 minutes: Group share of works produced and discussion.

Non-rhyme form of the sonnet:

First quatrain: Description of the anxiety trigger.
Second Quatrain: The previous response to it/why it’s specious.
Third Quatrain: The good response/why it’s beneficial.
Final Couplet: An empowering slogan.

Review of "Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love

Dr. Sue Johnson’s book Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love is a couples focused, practically-oriented example of emotionally focused therapy. The “emotional focus” stems from the fact that unlike other forms of couples therapy it does not view the romantic relationship as a form of rational calculus designed in order to achieve the greatest amount of happiness but the formation of dependency upon a partner to fulfill emotional needs. By working towards strengthening the bonds between partners that identify and transform the foundational moments that contribute to a loving adult relationship the couple is able to become more open and responsive to their each other’s needs. This focus is summarized by Dr. Johnson early on when she states that we need to “forget about learning how to argue better, analyzing your early childhood, making grand emotional gestures or experimenting with new sexual positions. Instead recognize and admit that you are emotionally attached to and dependent upon your partner in much the same way that a child is on a parent for nurturing, soothing and protection” (7).

One of the hallmarks of EFT, indeed all therapeutic interactions, is a willingness to commit to alteration of behavioral and conceptual habits. If one partner expresses an unwillingness to commit to them, or expresses such a desire but does not follow through, than EFT as well as any other form of connecting practices are impossible. Operating upon such a presumption, Johnson then outlines her theory of love, which is an inter-personal theory of romantic attachment. The cases studies which she uses to build up her definition of attachment is varied, but rather than this being a failure to operationalize her terminology I see this broad, positivistic term more reflective of the variety of human experiences. Attachment, like love, changes over time – a fact reflected by the increasing gray divorce rate – and also is understood differently by people based upon their upbringing and value system. That potential criticism dealt with, love is largely viewed within the framework of the classic romantic sense. Its attributes and operation are linked to physical attraction and basic human needs for security, safety, connection. With these we feel generally empowered, more confident, positive and peaceful. Lacking this sense of attachment not only damages our love life, but can have a huge impact on our health. Citing psychological research literature, she points out that hostile criticism from and conflict with loved ones increases our subjective self-doubts, creates a sense of helplessness, mars one’s self-image and leads to a tenfold likeliness for depression. When a relationship is good, however, loving contact and interaction with a partner acts as buffer against shock, pain and stress due to the hormones and chemicals released by this interaction.

Dr. Johnson follows this explanation of biochemical regulation related to attachment by illustrating how it is that couple can fall into a spiral of insecurity. When one partner becomes emotionally unavailable, unresponsive or even sadistic we feel that that once robust connection is at risk and this pushed the other partner into a primal panic. Whatever possibility at effective emerging from this dynamic is destroyed as a spiral of insecurity develops due to the lack of safety. Power struggles begin and making demands rather than requests is just one example of how once loving expressions become tainted, decreasingly responsive and alienating for both.

The seven conversations that follow all build upon the above theoretical framework and scaffolds on each other in a way that leads to a process of reconnection so as to create greater intimacy, security and compassion between the couple. By focusing on the emotions that are evoked in situation rather than the situation itself the negative habits of blame and the flight-or-fight response are circumvented and it becomes easier for new patterns of loving, connected action to emerge. While the book is directed to couples on the metaphorical rocks, the questions and experiential practices presented are good for any couple seeking to gain a better understanding of their partner and obtain a deeper their connection to them.

Kusang & Satsang the Body Electric: A Brief Investigation of Social Impact on Individual Happiness

After another wonderful weekend intensive class reviewing FICAM material on emotional intelligence and practicing therapeutic protocols I left feeling elated, electrified and exhausted at the same time. Seeing others make powerful shifts in their perception as a result of the work, feeling it myself and reviewing it all on a cognitive level I’d say it’s impossible not to be so touched! As I shared some of my experiences with friends and acquaintances, I heard the same response repeatedly: “I would love to be involved with something like that!”

As I thought more about these comments, being the hypermensiac that I am, a number of associations came to mind. For one, their stated desires reflected something that recent psychological research also attests to. People are able to achieve a happier, more fulfilling life by making less small talk about mundane things. Those that instead have substantive conversations about the issues of the day, deeply analyze their own or other’s motivations, problems and values all allow people to really examine our place in the world and give it meaning. This creation of significance on an individual and social basis not only gives meaning to our lives and world in some abstract manner, but provides a tangible manner in which individuals can engage to better themselves.

As the initial situation that obtained such responses from people expressing desire related specifically to my experience in an intentional community of people seeking similar abilities and knowledge this additionally made me think of the concepts of kusang and satsang found in Eastern philosophy that I was first introduced to while studying with Swami Shyam at the International Meditation Institute in Kullu, India. I highly recommend this article’s exegesis on the concepts from a Sikh perspective as it delineates the various manners by which doing so brings about personal and social unhappiness and goes into more depth than I will here. In brief, kusang (false association) is the categorization of attributes that indicate a fixation upon and devotion to small talk and the social values implicit within it. It’s opposite, satang (truth-filled company), was of course what my weekend at FICAM was all about.

The general tendency of American settlement patterns to develop Bourgeois Utopias that inculcates social isolation and class-based segregation has also assisted in it’s turn away from once vibrant religious communities. This has had numerous effects on the so called “Habits of the Heart” and not for the better. Whatever one’s position on organized religion, it has generally fulfilled the inherent need for individuals to unite into a group for identification with others based upon the discussions and dissemination of literary material that addresses to some degree the everyday experiences which cause people anxiety, desire, fear and hope.

How then to develop this if you can’t be involved like I am in FICAM? Simple! Extend and enact your will to achieve greater happiness and feeling of being present in the world through action. Make an effort to speak with others about the issues that concern you, form conversational groups or book clubs that will allow you to tap into this source of personal fulfillment. Secondly, try to avoid conversations or cultural products that don’t evoke spiritually or intellectually ennobling features. After all, you can’t touch garlic without getting its stink upon you for a period of time afterwards and by focusing on the ennobling you take it into you almost as if by osmosis.

Review of "Trances People Live: Healing Approaches in Quantum Psychology"

According to Dr. Stephen Wolinsky’s book Trances People Live, you are in a trance right now. How do I know this? Because your attention is focused on the text as you are reading this. You are internalizing the symbols of these words and converting them to sound in order to understand what I am trying to convey. For the most part you are likely wholly unconcerned with the ambient sounds or space around you, and while this “absorption of knowledge” trance could be broken by, say, a loud sound it would not necessarily make you trance free, but instead send you into a “be on the alert” trance. While this example makes trances appear innocuous, at a more fundamental level they play a powerful role in our daily lives and are primary determinants as to whether or not we experience the sensory world in a present or hallucinatory manner.

Trance states are the patterns of thinking which hold us together in the present moment. They are not necessarily singular and topical, as in the above illustration, but are also amalgamations of strongly held values clustered under the general header of Deep Trance Phenomenon. These are the associations and responses that we literally embody, that is to say somatically, on a daily basis which we consider to be “us”. At one level “I” am the experience of these various clusters in a world that subverts, is neutral to and assists the manifestation of said trances. From another vantage point, the “I” is a completely fictional construct able to be manipulated to a new form by our will if we so desire. The problem is, however, that quite often our responses to large or small traumatic events are so ingrained or occur within conscious evaluation that we forget the resources we once knew and become stuck in patterns that inhibit our maximal agency. Put another way, our psychosomatic symptoms are caused by the non-utilization of unconscious resources. When something is overwhelming us, affecting us in a way that is purportedly beyond our control it is because we are preventing our deeper knowledge of the self from surfacing and steering our consciousness.

Using hypnosis to interrupt, shift or alter these Deep Trance Phenomenon allows the practitioner to both access these resources and circumvent the content issues that in other forms of talk therapy. This form of de-symptomization is called brief therapy and was pioneered by, amongst others, Milton Erickson who Wolinsky openly models himself upon and theoretically adapts. Avoiding the stories that are falsely perceived as causative of the symptoms may seem counter-intuitive, but upon a closer examination it becomes more apparent why this is preferable at times.

Instead of spending an extended period of time locating traumatic moments the precede and inform that maladaptive psychosomatic symptoms which first brought the client there, as Wolinsky demonstrates that such a narrative is only related to the patient’s present circumstances as firmly as they desire it to be, it’s better to simply shake up those help the patient realize their authorship and control of the situation through various practices of creating context. Once we have come to recognize that we are more than or larger than the source of distress with which we most often identify our entire experience of life shifts. This is not to say that such derivational searches into one’s past are wholly specious – just that we should not fetishize the Freudian talk-therapy model that would have us spend countless hours rehashing details of traumatic events that we’d like to move beyond. Additionally worth mentioning is how Wolinsky repeatedly states that if regression work is done it’s of the utmost importance to have the client acknowledge that the response to a traumatic situation was the best possible choice at the time. But now that time has passed and conditions are no longer the same, he argues, it’s imperative to shift it to a state of greater presence so that a more appropriate perspective can be embodied.

Dr. Wolinsky then proceeds to delineate the qualities of various trance states that cause detrimental effects on the psyche. Based upon the entrenched patterns of the states he places them within an oppositional dichotomy so that therapists can process them via negation. Doing this helps patients realize their control over their internal dialogue and psychosomatic symptoms. As the list is not long I will include it here so that the reader can get a hint at some of the specific Deep Trance Phenomenon that lead to unnecessary anxiety and stress: The opposite of age regression is a pseudo-orientation in time; the opposite of hypermnesia is amnesia; the opposite of sensory distorition is analgesia; the opposite of over-identification is dissociation or hypnotic dreaming; the opposite of positive hallucination is negative hallucinations. Unfortunately the descriptions of these are and I doubt anyone will be able to read it and not be able to recall their having been trapped by one of these perspectives. Another aspects of this section that I found personally moving was reading Dr. Wolinsky’s narrative of how he had come to embody the state of hypermnesia as I had similar early life conditions which lead me to the same vigilant trance state.

This particular book has been one of my favorites amongst the assigned FICAM reading and I look forward to reading more of Dr. Wolinsky’s work. Not only is his exegesis of concepts clear and the contextualization of his use of them insightful, but the processes he outlines for working with patients based upon his experience makes the knowledge the book provides eminently operable.

Review of "The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America's Politics and Culture"

Brink Lindesy’s book The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America’s Politics and Culture is an excellent narrative of the some of the cycles of American thought and politics and masterfully shows how it is that quantitative shifts in general material well-being can create significant qualitative shifts in thought. Brink writes through a lens that applies several of Karl Marx’s materialist and historical categories, but does so in the vein of Max Weber. While this does at times preclude consideration of the economic factors that inform the development of various personal and social agency, I did not find it to be something that was generally overly problematic. I say this as Lindsay writes from the position of an expositor rather than an academic demagogue – something that’d I’d first been concerned about given his relationship to the Cato Institute. The clear breadth of his research into the subject, the warm, friendly tone of his commentary and the analysis which never falls too long into excessive details and the framing of his tale into a form matching Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy makes the book for a compelling read on how it is that America’s transition from a fundamentalist, frontier, material culture to an affluent, post-materialist one. For Lindsay, these reactions presage and inform all of our contemporary Culture Wars and furthermore hint at the possibility for a greater reconciliation based upon the libertarian aspirations engendered by a post-scarcity context of material abundance.

Scarcity, technological crudity and cultural under-development was a defining feature of 19th and early 20th century America. As America shifted from a society whose production still predominantly consisted of craftsmanship to industrial production there were many significant cultural, social, and economic changes. Agriculture was the primary avocation of many American up until the beginning of the second world war, the number of American’s graduating from high school, going on vacation, with an income that they could dispose on novel consumer goods was all quite small. Prior to World War II, America was still, in phrasing that we would use today, largely a second world country. World War II changed all of that and created such great reserves of wealth among the elite and militancy amongst the workers demanding a portion of it that the government could not overly resist their demands and it was shared. As I hinted at in the above, Lindsay sees the two major responses to such wealth to be Dionysian and an Apollonian, or as he puts it in his words libertarian and conservative. Increased purchasing power and advances in technology, be it in the realm of transportation or in family planning, radically shifted the realm of potential social forms. It became easier than ever for children to leave their homes and the support structures which once kept them in check. The symbolic possibilities for self and group identification multiplied exponentially which, combined with the real threat of potential nuclear annihilation helped engender new forms of “counter culture”.

These counter cultures were in many ways a conscious refutation of the staid, puritanical bourgeoisie order that had previously encouraged thriftiness, delayed gratification, industriousness, etc. Now that people no longer had to annually carry tons of wood to light their homes but could simply turn on a switch, now that people could go to a doctor instead of pray to get better, now that people were increasingly literature and could take part in the cultural wealth made available to them by previous generations captains of industry and robber-barons who sought to immortalize themselves through public arts bequests the shift of American’s concern was not on the immediate needs to replicate life but on more abstract notions like happiness and self-actualization. These were not the sole preoccupations of Americans, many still sought to accumulate wealth and status and found the disruptive activities of the counter-cultures to be upsetting. Affluence was thus not a balm upon the soul of Americans but a new battleground manifested by all the varieties of life-styles that it enabled. It is as a response to this outgrowth of New Age morality predicated on epicureanism, sensualism and a resistance to engage in banal forms of labor that Lindsey sees the development of the evangelist movement in the United States. While pulling intellectually from the fundamentalist tradition, a term now unfashionable and thus in need of re-branding, it sought to provide an avenue to channel the anxieties created by such worldly affluence. These fears over the new parent-child, racial, gender, labor-management and religious relations helped engender a politically conservative backlash that divided states into reds and blues. Funding for minor arts programs became hot-button issues and as the ownership class increasingly supported the leaders of these religious revivalist movements. Additionally, with the increased awareness of political issues and disposable money able to support NGOs, a new era in political consciousness and activism emerged.

Such a wholly antagonistic relationship was bound not to last, Lindsey points out, as there is an essential difference between the Christian gospel which seeks to ameliorate the sufferings of poor and deny the exploitative rich man into heaven with the capitalist one that seeks to personally benefit from others labor as cheaply as possible. Additionally, the failed New Left movement of the 60 has increasingly sought accommodation with the state rather than a total overthrow of all hierarchies. Because of these two developments Lindsay points out how currently there is an increasing convergence of the values advocated by modern politicos. The liberal and conservative positions have merged in many ways and this, he states, has opened up the field for increasingly libertarian policy promotion. While the form of the community may not have been settled, mutual recognition and respect of a yearning for it has been. The recognition that workers immiseration is something to be resisted has not been completely reconciled but is no longer solely recognized as the cause of individual failings except by the most intractable ideologues. Increasingly the command and control regulatory structures designed to promote economic growth was dismantled and reformulated way due the realization that it promoted inefficiencies and engendered perverse incentives. These re-regulations have not always been perfect and are still a battlefield, however many of the core values informing debate on them are agreed upon if not the form they take in operationalization. This along with the increasing fractionalization of group identities had made it more difficult for one cultural group to excerpt hegemonic control over another – though recent data on public policy suggests that this is not true and that the economic elites actually do – and that the time of polarization is mostly over due to the realization that compromise is necessary. I greatly enjoyed this book and would assign it for freshman survey courses in American history.

Talking About Self-Generation: Reframing Self-Talk to Increase Autopoiesis

In the Mishlei the author of Proverbs states: “As a man thinketh, so is he.” This sentiment is also found across many other world religions, is a basic presupposition of psychoanalysis and is being verified by research in the neurosciences. Indeed, how we use language, logos, to understand ourselves, others and the world helps create the parameters for how we define ourselves. History sets an additional set of limits, often out of our direct control, however from the vantage point of the self, the individual has incredible, almost magical power – for logos is not just words but an entire way of perceiving oneself within the world.

Too often our self-identifications and familial or culturally inherited assumptions can result in the creation of behavioral symptoms that, while recognized and seen as inhibitive to our heart-felt desires, seem outside of our control. In such contexts, people will refuse their own agency in the causal chain of such maladaptive behaviors by claiming “That’s just how I am” or “I can’t help it.”, totally unaware that in classical Greek and Roman times, someone might have similarly said that they were possessed by a god or goddess.

In a journal, divide a piece of paper into two with a line and write down some of the aspects of your self that you wish to improve on the left hand side. After spending some time to examine some of the values that you currently hold which play a role in the manifestation of these reaction and habits, write down their opposite. Try to be as general as possible. For example, say you find your happiness and ability to enjoy situations limited by other people’s lack of adherence to your standards of behavior, fashion, or some other aspect. The inverse of this generalized would be to not be judgmental, to simply accept others as they are.

After you have completed this you now have a general outline of the ways in which you can start creating yourself into being a happier, healthier person. However, do not feel the need now to wholly reform/rephrase your self over night. Attempting to do so will overwhelm you and very quickly the past habits, behaviors and internal language will return. Freud called this the repetition compulsion. Instead, pick one and make a commitment to stick with it for a period of time. Doing so not only gives you an easy win, something which should be embraced if one wants to alter habits of thought as from these it’ll be easier to scaffold on larger changes, but as this small change will begin to affect other in ways you can not immediately foresee. As you begin to become comfortable with this, commit yourself to another self-edit. What you will soon begin to notice is that your consciousness will begin to spend less time correcting itself in situations that once caused upset or anxiety and the re-organization of your self-assemblage will result in your feeling increased satisfaction. The journal you keep to write down these transformations, regardless of how banal the outside appearance is, inside will begin to give the impression of a magic tome. After all, with only your intent, a few words and their voicing through your mind and body, you can enact sorcery on your self.

Review of "The Untethered Soul"

Michael Singer’s book The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself is basically old wine in a new skin. It offers up various aspects of Vedic philosophies without the terminology so that this old knowledge on how to live a life liberated from needless suffering can be easily digested and propagated for a new generation. These relatively simple answers on how to live a better life by gaining increased control over your thoughts, releasing the identities that have latched onto you and were mistaken for immutable truths and gives practical advice on how to achieve such freedom. Singer uses metaphors that are often quite compelling and while at times redundant, this does the effect of really driving the material home to the reader.

Singer first encourages us to examine our the manner in which our thoughts and emotions affect the structure of our inner energy. The are in a near constant state of vacillation, moving around from one thing to another depending upon what it is that we decide to lay our attention on at that moment. Some of the effects of this lack of disciplined thinking include fear, jealousy, insecurity, anxiety, and a sense of disconnection from one’s self and one’s environment. By putting faith into the illusion that we can have control over the events of our lives, we become disillusioned with the world.

One of the practices that Singer promotes is the immediate release of any sort of energy caused that may be evoked by other people’s words or actions. Such energy patterns, which might also be called reactive emotional states, which fail to process themselves within and stay rather than flowing through will create inner conflict. An analogy of the denial of it’s flowing through via resistance can be found in the plugging of a dam. The force continues to push, leading to increased stress upon the structure, which will cause it to eventually burst. Instead, after recognizing the energy that is created, one should immediately let it go through and if there are still traces of resistance return to the position of Watcher. Once there these impressions, called Samskara in the Vedic tradition, will dissipate. If we are able to choose and successfully practice staying always open to our experiences then we will, in essence, never be closed off from a limitless source of enthusiasm and high energy. No longer having to maintain the extreme physical and psychic state of judgment and fear of a situation, out happiness, joy and presence increases markedly.

As simple as this practice sounds, the ego has devised many a complex means of avoiding just such a practice. Instead of removing the source of their pain, people will often instead struggle to be the same. They don’t want to change, the just want the discomfort associated with their actions to be nullified. This can become quite a problem as the denial and avoidance of these samskaras will often lead you to use people as, places and things as protective shields from your awareness of this issue. Thus what was claimed to be done in order to avoid certain patterns of thoughts and behavior actually results in one devoting a constant aspect of their life to it. By letting our awareness alight onto something we find disquieting and then simply let it go back to whence it came we find a true freedom. Doing otherwise merely puts a veneer on our consciousness which hides the true inside that’s been made more fetid and abominable due to our false claims that these issues have been genuinely dealt with.

While I’m supportive of a majority of the analysis and proscriptions which Singer lays out in order to obtain increased peace of mind and spiritual wellbeing, I do find his chapter 15 and 16 to be problematic for reasons that I’ve written about in my response to Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth. While it is eminently practicable to generally withhold from making judgements based upon preferences lest they upset your internal bearings on an individual level of abstraction and to refrain from resisting certain experiences outside of one’s control, on the societal level I find such a position to be criminally permissive. In quasi-democratic societies that allot for a certain amount of citizen’s input to social, economic and political policy proscriptions, such detachment from the political process disempowers the individual while claiming it to be a “higher” form of spiritual empowerment. A simple rejoinder to such a criticism that could have been pre-empted would have been that one can engage in action designed to fix perceived injustices as long as it does not upset one personally, however this seems to go against the spirit of Singer’s previous exposition that all non-currently existent in the world social relations that are held up as a source for comparison should be ejected from consciousness. Reality to Singer is just something that “is” and we should “Learn to stop resisting reality, and what used to look like stressful problems will begin to look like the stepping stones of your spiritual journey.” I say reality “to Singer” as, like Tolle in A New Earth, the book is seriously lacking any interlocution with materialist considerations and as he ends up conflating the Tao Te Ching, the Christian Bible, Freud, various Buddhist texts and Ramana Maharshi. This misprision of these texts ends up providing a false conception of those work and indeed of “reality”. Despite what Singer wants to convey, reality doesn’t go away because you stop believing in it and even the most cursory examinations of the Tao, the text which he grants the authority to close the book, shows that such the notions of categorical disconnection of individual action from the world is neither implicit or explicit within the text.

Bio-energetically Reterritorializing Psychosomatic Terrain for Optimum Operationality

An astute observer of human interaction will note the small number of authentically creative choices that people make in a typical day. Numerous scientific studies have recently been popularized in books such as The Power of Habit and relate the potentially problematic effects of our behaviorally coasting on automatic.

Habit loops not only inhibit our ability to deal with novel problem-solving needs in the workplace, but can also be deleterious to our inter- and intra- personal relationships as well. Emotional-reaction routines often direct us along well-trod terrain to a destination that, while comfortable due to its familiarity, is potentially not what we actually desire. Repetition compulsion and it’s obverse can lead to what Freud called endopsychic conflict. The reason for this is that formulating a novel response to a new and distinct set of circumstances that would likely better serve us requires reflection and commitment that, in the heat of the moment, can be difficult to consider and hold to. However, failure to adapt and relying instead upon the smoothness of habit can lead to feelings of fear, depression, isolation, anger, generalized anxiety or social discord.

One of the problems in addressing these disempowering habits on a personal level and in relation to other people is resistance to logical interrogation. Intra-personally our inchoate “others” advocating for a different path are often weak and quickly silenced. Inter-personally people often take offense when someone claims that the presuppositions under-girding our response-patterns may be faulty in some manner. Talk therapy seeks to surpass these limits through the transference of aspects of the therapist’s consciousness to the patient, but relying solely upon this dynamic to help engender change significantly limits the possibilities for positive affective adaptation. Another manner for creating the conditions for reterritorializing unwanted and undesired thoughts and behaviors involves something that you already know but have just not considered in the right light – your body.

Studies on the components of human interaction have definitively proven that the body’s placement and gestures compose the majority of any given communication. No wonder than that when you or someone else is literally embodying upset, anger, or depression that it can be difficult to get them to alter their emotional state. And yet to rid oneself of this feeling requires your to simply shift your attention, change your body’s position and engage in energetic cleansing.

To accomplish this, first take a deep breath and bring your attention to the sensation of your lungs filling with air and your feet pressing against the floor. As you continue to breath in and out slowly move your focus upward to your knees, your hips, your heart, your throat, the space just above the center of your eyeballs and then a few feet above your head. Doing this will give you increased control of your energetic state and thus make it more difficult for habit to control you. Chances are after doing this you will feel yourself standing taller and immediately feeling more at peace. The energy you felt before will still be present, but it will no longer have a specific label associated with it and you can thus direct it in a manner more appropriate to maintaining peace. This shift in breath and scanning of your body’s meridians, to use a clichéd phrase, breaks the mold. A fitting turn of phrase considering in many ways that’s precisely what the labels are, affective tropes which limit freedom. Engaging in this practice that shifts your body’s state will allow you to regain it.

Review of "The Supreme Court"

As an introductory text to the institution, The Supreme Court by Lawrence Baum does an excellent job of covering every major aspect of how the court operates. Baum delineates the decision making processes that play into the setting of the court’s agenda, periodizes the trends in rulings and charts the various developments of court norms and practices in an almost conversational, politically neutral manner. This last quality ought not to be taken to mean that Baum does not point out some of the potential problems of the court, but that they are left to the reader to research further into those subjects on their own.

One example of this is in his charting of evolving court norms. Baum points out that new standards of professionalism has meant that those lawyers not adhering to them are looked upon with disdain by the court and interrupted by the judges more frequently. By itself it could be seen as a logical adaptation of an institution, however it’s pointed out by the author that this has had the effect of making it more difficult for various interest groups to be able to argue at the Supreme Court level. The reason for this is because large amounts of money must be spent on lawyers who specialize in arguing in front of the court. Another issue linked to the increasing divergence of SCOTUS rulings from populist pressures is the large growth in the submission of Amicus Curiae briefs to court. As I said earlier though, Baum is not interested in arguing so much as he is expositing in a functionalist manner that does not isolate the court from it’s place within society and acknowledges that the special interest groups will attempt to sway the court or mobilize their base for donations.

Additionally Baum devotes a significant amount of attention to the current court’s occupants. Prior to biographical insights that may affect the current court’s jurisprudence, Baum charts the social background of the judges over time, showing how it is that once the children of elite were the only occupants of the robes and how it is now more, ostensibly, of a more meritocratic nature. Baum sagely points out, however, that the conservative nature of the institution, the social interaction with elites concomitant with such a career path is likely to make any sympathies with the “lower-class” to be negligible.

Throughout Baum is keen to downplay the role of the court as a policy making institution, especially as it relates to modern times, and focuses more on the aforementioned procedural issues. In this emphasis on the court’s “indirect impacts” I think we come to one of the books few weaknesses. Their lack of their capacity to enforce certain actions, their reactive nature and the manner in which laws alter social relations amongst actors in manners that are often difficult to quantify are just some of the issues that, while alighted upon, seem to me to be emphasized unduly. This is not to say that he completely ignores counterfactuals, touching briefly as he does on NLRB v. Mackay Radio & Television Company and Marquette National Bank v. First of Omaha Service Corp. Recent SCOTUS rulings have drastically altered the economic, social and political landscape and if not wholly emanating from the court are at least legitimized by their pronouncements. As I said in the beginning though, these are issues to which Baum is not actively seeking to analyze. I’d purchased this books in hopes of finding something that I’d be able to assign as supplementary reading for my American Government class for those interested in law and for that end find the book to be ideal.

Review of "The Mandarins"

After writing and publishing The Mandarins, Simone de Beauvoir won the Prix de Goncourt for her work. It is a not so subtle look at many of the people within Parisian intellectual society following the Second World War. Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Arthur Koestler are just some of the luminaries whose names have been changed for the sake of fiction. Through their conversations amongst each other and the dalliances they have we obtain an interesting insight into some of the more brilliant minds of the time as they try to sustain a certain level of authenticity and integrity as they wrestle with the circumstances in which they find themselves.

That said I was, however, generally disappointed with the book. The fault is not, however, with the writing itself but the story. The problem with the story, however, is not the fault of the author but of the historical situation in which the book is set. Following the Second World War, an exhausted France is trying to come to terms with it’s now apparent global insignificance, recover from the destruction wrought by the German army as well as those that had collaborated with them during the occupation. The streets of Paris are anything but gay and several of scenes of reverie which de Beauvoir writes about has an air of escapism to them. Understandably so, the only people with enough money for such distractions are either foreigners or those that are quite well to do.

While lacking the historical distance to be able to foretell where the then current trends in international geo-politics would go, many of the significant divergences between the socialist and communist parties and a more general humanitarian movement are brought to the light through the interpersonal conflict and conversations. While not always going into great depth, it does hint at the different values operant with the groups. As a reader familiar with the ideologies as well as the historical situations I didn’t find myself swimming in confusion, but I think that someone without this base would find this to be alienating. Perhaps, however, this is de Beauvoir’s point, however. That rather than being able to come together in a meaningful manner small variations keep these people together from uniting to become a significant political force. This infighting amongst strong egos for leadership of “the people” thus becomes one of the reasons that the right is able to come to power.

Besides these overtly political considerations, de Beauvoir also reflects on the nature of the intellectual, writing life, the nature and form of reconciliation following a war that had many collaborators, friendship, death and to a lesser extent sex. While filled with many pithy, quotable statements, I also think that at times she can overly swarm the reader with non-essential information. Sometimes it is of the sort outlined above, which I enjoy reading for it’s edifying nature, but sometimes I knew in advance that it had little to do with much else. Simone de Beauvoir’s side story of her dalliance with American writer Nelson Algren, for instance, while highlighting Sartre’s lack of possessiveness and her alienation and desire for excitement also seems to drag on at times. The little mind games that they play with each other appear spurious. While highlighting the desire for love even in a country turned upside down by war, it is perhaps longer than necessary.