Hi TOK Society List,
I hope everyone is doing well. It has been a while since the list was "fired up" and that was in large part because it was summer and, I have been "out exploring new territory" in the world and have been waiting to bring things back to the list.
My plan for the list for this semester is to start each week with an idea or a topic or concept or quote, and I will be looking to draw out various threads and see where they take us. The general emphasis will be on us exploring the current state of affairs and the situation that we find ourselves in the 21st Century. The first topic I will be shooting out next week will be on the "Digital Identity Problem" as that is going to set the stage for much of what follows. If you are interested in being up-to-date, you can read through my "Elephant Sun God" letter, which I shared a month or so ago and serves as a reflective commentary on my falling into a rabbit hole over the past year and starting to really shift my attention and re-organize my worldview. Perhaps the best way to see this is by considering the fact that I was working on my next book, The Problem of Psychology and Its Solution. However, now I am basically concerned with The Digital Identity Problem and Its Solution. It basically means that I am shifting from being anchored into psychology and psychotherapy into being anchored into the global situation we are in and feeling the need to devote my life's mission to being part of the Digital Identity Solution-which I am increasingly seeing as necessary for the future of humanity.
Elements of this shift can be seen somewhat in a keynote talk I gave to the University of South Dakota's Annual Symposium put on by the Center for Brain and Behavioral Research last week (the slides of my talk are attached as a pdf). It was a productive meeting and I met a number of folks who I hope to maintain contact with, some of whom joined our list.
Let me also share here that I finished the What to Do If You Are Depressed Blog Series. The summary statement with links to each blog are attached. This final summary blog will go live on Friday, so that folks can get all of the blogs delivered to them in one link. The blogs have not gone viral, but have done well, averaging about 10,000 hits per blog (most of my blogs get about 2500). Hopefully, some folks were helped (I have received quite a few "thank you" notes).
I would also like to note here that as I finished writing up my blog, the APA just released the clinical practice guidelines for treating depression<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.apa.org_depression-2Dguideline&d=DwMGaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=wjF8cZoiFchamTuxBdDEmw&m=WLALLshSStYeD6rH5VMxVKaQo8kPJ72_u_bZmno-EEk&s=fuhf_OKtmjtPtV0CaVbHJ3mjXkw2KDCTV39cwwfUsRU&e=>, and just like the PTSD guidelines (which I critiqued in the Clinical Psychologist)<https://www.gregghenriques.com/uploads/2/4/3/6/24368778/clinical_psychologist_--letters_on_ptsd_guidelines.pdf> they reduced everything to Randomized Controlled Trials. In all honesty, from my vantage, the findings are almost worthless. Consider that for children, the essentially make no treatment recommendations. And for adults they recommend the standard list of approaches (i.e., Behavioral therapy; Cognitive, cognitive behavioral (CBT), and Mindfulness-based cognitive-therapy (MBCT); Interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT); Psychodynamic therapies; Supportive therapy). In other words, folks, after huge amounts of effort and work on one of the most central problems in mental health, the most learned panel we have comes back and finds the "dodo bird finding<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo_bird_verdict>" and the publishes them as the state of the art. Pause and let the sadness of that sink in.
Hopefully without sounding egotistical, I would then invite you to think about how the blog series I developed is arranged and make the comparison. And then reflect on the fact that you have panel of experts talking to experts spending enormous amount of time trying to build the state of the art. And contrast that to one person writing a self-help blog for a general audience on Psychology Today for free.
I think the only conclusion is that the field is essentially broken. This is important because means, perhaps, that the institution is so convoluted and confused that it needs an entire overhaul. And, at the same time, given what I have been experiencing personally, I (a) don't think the system can change on from the inside; (b) there are massive forces that are requiring massive changes in many areas, and (c) we don't have a huge amount of time. Indeed, when we consider the size of the problem and the amount of change we need to make, it is not clear we even have a window to make necessary changes happen in enough time.
All of this means my attention is shifting away from the basic institutional system and toward getting ahead of the wave of change that is happening. Indeed, I am here so say that I see a great wave on the horizon of our global civilization. This means the 2020s must be a time for a massive awakening. My vision is that we need to ride the wave (attached picture, which I developed years ago). So, I suggest you all fasten yourself to whatever grounds you in your personal "Garden" and get whatever surfboard you have to get ready to be flung about in the upcoming decades. We need as many people as possible who are mentally/socially/digitally prepared to ride it to a happy outcome, else we might all get washed out when it hits.
Best,
Gregg
___________________________________________
Gregg Henriques, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Graduate Psychology
216 Johnston Hall
MSC 7401
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, VA 22807
(540) 568-7857 (phone)
(540) 568-4747 (fax)
Be that which enhances dignity and well-being with integrity.
Check out my Theory of Knowledge blog at Psychology Today at:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/theory-knowledge
Check out my webpage at:
www.gregghenriques.com<http://www.gregghenriques.com>
############################
To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list:
write to: mailto:[log in to unmask]
or click the following link:
http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1
|
