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26/6/2014
Why Would Suarez Stop? The strangest headline I’ve seen in relation to Suarez has to be:
Bruce Springsteen on Luis Suarez: 'Biting has no place in sports' All the World Cup means to me is that the streets suddenly become silent and I can enjoy an evening with the windows open. I don’t understand the hysteria and I know there’s nothing to be done about it – the urge to take sides and pour all the passion a beating heart can muster into a game is too primitive and hard wired, and there are worse ways of blowing off steam. But the Suarez hoo haa has been so big that it’s reached even me. I’ve heard other psychs discussing why and how and what Suarez can do to get help and frankly they all end up as flabbergasted as everyone else. No, an adult man biting other adult men is not an oral fixation. No, he does not have a split personality, whatever that may be. He may well have been humiliated as a child but which of us has not? Suarez is not losing control, he is absolutely in control. He expertly measures the distance between him and the person he intends to assault then makes a series of highly calculated moves in order to get his teeth around a part of them, and then he assaults them. He doesn’t run around biting people randomly, he chooses someone to assault and then he assaults them. If a man bites you while you’re waiting for a bus you call the police, the man is arrested, gets a psychiatric evaluation and a criminal record. I’m not sure why this isn’t the case with Suarez, who has done this 3 times now. Perhaps that’s where the answer lies. He’s got away with it 3 times and he’s being rewarded for it. He’s trending on twitter, he’s in all the media, he’s getting a massive amount of attention, so much so that it’s entered my football-free world where Gary Lineker is a nice man who likes crisps. Bruce Springsteen is talking about him. It’s a safe bet that more than one ad agency is swiftly creating a commercial for Suarez to sell something with ‘bite’ in it. * Biting is his trademark, he is rewarded for biting. Apparently he’s had ‘anger management’ for his previous assaults. It hasn’t worked. For it to work the person going to anger management therapy has want to stop being angry. He has to feel shame, humiliation and a pressing desire to stop acting out. Why on earth would Suarez feel that? He’s getting loads of attention and being paid for it. Why hasn’t he spent at least a night in a cell? You would, if you bit someone in the street. If the police were able to curb their excitement at having a famous footballer in their charge and treat Suarez as they would a vagrant who had assaulted someone (or like Mr Tribble up there in the picture who was held for rather longer without bail.) it might bring him down to earth with a bang and he might start taking himself seriously. The chances of that are infinitesimal. Instead, he’ll still be paid huge amounts of money that he can spend while he’s banned, and the attention won’t stop and he’ll be handled with the kid gloves that rich, famous people get. He’ll have therapy and it won’t work though it may educate him in the language of contrition. In the long run he may even stop biting but he won’t stop being violent in other ways, because there are no meaningful consequences for his violence. If you place bets, put one on Suarez biting someone again within 12 months. There was 28 months between his first and second assaults, 15 months between his second and third. It’s his trademark; people are waiting for him to do it again. Why would he stop? * Specsavers, McDonalds, Nandos and Snickers got there within 4 hours.
7/2/2012
Groupthink And A Good Life. Roger Boisjoly, one of the engineers of the fatal Challenger explosion, died last month at the age of 73. Before lift-off Boisjoly and his peers argued with NASA who wanted Challenger up in the air for PR and economic purposes and because individuals within NASA were under pressure from the media and central government. After the entirely avoidable catastrophe Boisjoly was shunned by former employers and his peers because he spoke out.
He had paid the stiff price often exacted of whistle-blowers. Thiokol cut him off from space work, and he was shunned by colleagues and managers. A former friend warned him, “If you wreck this company, I’m going to put my kids on your doorstep,” Mr. Boisjoly told The Los Angeles Times in 1987. He had headaches, double-vision and depression, he said. He yelled at his dog and his daughters and skipped church to avoid people. He filed two suits against [his employer]; both were dismissed. He later said he was sustained by a single gesture of support. Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, hugged him after his appearance before the commission. “She was the only one,” he said in a whisper to a Newsday reporter in 1988. “The only one.” It’s a useful time to look at the concept of Groupthink. Here are a couple of definitions: A mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive ingroup, when the members' strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action” Janis, 1972. “Collective optimism and collective avoidance,” T Hart 1998 The Stamford Prison Experiment is a classic demonstration: some nice young men were randomly divided into Prisoner and Guard roles and abuse began within minutes. The psychologists involved – highly qualified and experienced professionals – became caught up in the drama and perpetuated the abuse. So did the ‘prisoners’ parents, lawyers and a chaplain, all brought in to authenticate the experiment. http://www.prisonexp.org/ I see any number of clients who are successful, optimistic, positive and increasingly disturbed by their own consciences. It’s none of my business what decisions a person makes, my job is to provide the environment in which a person can discover for themselves what they believe to be best. In other words, to give clients the space to step outside of Groupthink. The most recent Groupthink research suggests that groups that contain more positive disagreement are less likely to experience disaster than everyone whoopdedooing in agreement. Individuals know what is right and wrong, we just learn expedience and all too often that results in other people and ourselves suffering. Eventually Boisjoly went to see a therapist and soon after began a new career in engineering ethics, expanding this work into other fields and organisations. The Challenger disaster is now standard ethics teaching including business ethics. “He always stood by his work,” [his wife] recalls. “He lived an honourable and ethical life. And he was at peace when he died.” Whether you’re a part of a team with huge power and influence, or a member of a group under increasing financial pressure or a person stuck with a peer group that punishes dissent, having the space to consider what you really want from your own life, rather than someone else’s idea of a good and bad, may save you more trouble than you know. |
CategoriesAll Abandonment Abuse Ancestors Anger Anxiety Ash Wednesday Attitude Banking Bereavement Birthday Bravery Breivik Bystander Effect Camila Batmanghelidjh Carnival Cbt Challenger Charlotte Bevan Childbirth Childhood Children Christmas Coaching Compassion Contemplation Control Counselling COVID 19 Culture Dalai Lama Death Death Cafe Democracy Denial Depression Domestic Violence Dying Eap Earth Day Empathy Employment Eric Klinenberg Ethics Exams Existential Failure Family Annihilation Fear Founders Syndrome Francis Report Gay Cure Genocide George Lyward Goldman Sachs Good Death Greg Smith Grief Grieving Grooming Groupthink Happiness Hate Hungary Illness Interconnectedness Jason Mihalko Jubilee Kids Company Kitty Genovese Life Light Living Loneliness Love Mandatory Reporting Meaning Men Mental Health Mid Staffs Mindfulness Money Mothers New Year Nigella Lawson Optimism Organisational Collapse Oxford Abuse Panama Papers Panic Panic Attacks Parenthood Petruska Clarkson Pleasure Politics Positivity Post Natal Depression Power Priorities Priority Productivity Psychotherapy Ptsd Red Tent Reflection Rena Resilience Riots Rites Of Passage Ritual Robin Williams Sad Sales Savile Scared Seasonal Affective Disorder Self Care Self Preservation Self-preservation Shock Sin Singletons Sport Spring Status St David St Georges Day Stress Suarez Suicide Support Talking Terry Pratchett Time Transition Trauma True Self Truth Understanding Unemployment Valentines Day Viktor Frankl Violence Whistleblowing Who Am I Winter Blues Women Work Archives
August 2021
CategoriesAll Abandonment Abuse Ancestors Anger Anxiety Ash Wednesday Attitude Banking Bereavement Birthday Bravery Breivik Bystander Effect Camila Batmanghelidjh Carnival Cbt Challenger Charlotte Bevan Childbirth Childhood Children Christmas Coaching Compassion Contemplation Control Counselling COVID 19 Culture Dalai Lama Death Death Cafe Democracy Denial Depression Domestic Violence Dying Eap Earth Day Empathy Employment Eric Klinenberg Ethics Exams Existential Failure Family Annihilation Fear Founders Syndrome Francis Report Gay Cure Genocide George Lyward Goldman Sachs Good Death Greg Smith Grief Grieving Grooming Groupthink Happiness Hate Hungary Illness Interconnectedness Jason Mihalko Jubilee Kids Company Kitty Genovese Life Light Living Loneliness Love Mandatory Reporting Meaning Men Mental Health Mid Staffs Mindfulness Money Mothers New Year Nigella Lawson Optimism Organisational Collapse Oxford Abuse Panama Papers Panic Panic Attacks Parenthood Petruska Clarkson Pleasure Politics Positivity Post Natal Depression Power Priorities Priority Productivity Psychotherapy Ptsd Red Tent Reflection Rena Resilience Riots Rites Of Passage Ritual Robin Williams Sad Sales Savile Scared Seasonal Affective Disorder Self Care Self Preservation Self-preservation Shock Sin Singletons Sport Spring Status St David St Georges Day Stress Suarez Suicide Support Talking Terry Pratchett Time Transition Trauma True Self Truth Understanding Unemployment Valentines Day Viktor Frankl Violence Whistleblowing Who Am I Winter Blues Women Work |
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