This is....Sparta!

I just listened to the latest edition of In Our Time, on the history of Sparta. Interesting show. I was particularly interested in the experts' discussion of the agoge and the crypteia - the hardcore military training that Spartan boys hand to undergo.

Spartan childhood was fairly rough right from the beginning. If you were deformed or sickly, you had a good chance of being thrown over a cliff. Then, you were handed over to the state at the age of six. From the age of 10 to 18, you underwent the agoge, a severe military training that involved drills, gymnastics, fight-training, and food deprivation - you were given so little food you had to forage and steal, though you were beaten mercilessly if you were caught.

Throughout summer and winter, you wore the same small piece of cloth, and slept on a mat of reeds that you made yourself. At the end of the agoge, you had to take part in some weird ritual called the 'stealing of the cheeses' at the altar of Artemis, which basically involved being ritually flagellated, sometimes to death.

Then, the hardcore among you would be selected for the crypteia, where you were sent out into the wilderness to fight and kill. Perhaps you remember the famous scene in Frank Miller's book and film, 300, where Leonidas proves his worth by killing a wolf.

Well, actually, the crypteia involved the killing of helots, the local slave population. It was a method of ethnic cleansing to keep the helot population down. Nice, eh? Oh, and another thing, kings didn't have to undergo the agoge, so Leonidas won the thrown by marrying the King's daughter, not by proving himself in training.

The idea of the state training its young people to be incredibly tough, and incredibly obedient, has appealed to philosophers through the ages. Plato far preferred the discipline and conservatism of Sparta to the restless innovation of Athens. He took the idea of the state being solely responsible for the upbringing of youths and used it in his Republic. Rousseau, the father of totalitarianism, was another big fan. So was Hitler - he saw Sparta as the first 'volkish' nation, and praised its eugenics programme.

At the more acceptable end of the political spectrum, Spartan education was an inspiration for Kurt Hahn, the German (and Jewish) theorist of education, who founded Gordonstoun. Hahn liked the idea of sending young people off into the wilderness, to face danger and learn resourcefulness. The Duke of Edinburgh, a Gordonstoun old boy, tapped into that spirit with his Duke of Edinburgh awards. Geelong Grammer, the famous Australian school, also follows Hahn's neo-Spartan ethic - its pupils spend a year studying at Timbertop, an outdoor camp where they are sent off on outdoor expeditions.

And in our own day, Sparta seems to have a new cultural resonance. Think of Fight Club, and Tyler Durden's military training of his mindless black-shirted 'space monkeys', or Frank Miller's 300, which seems to celebrate Spartan 'civilization' as opposed to Persian / Iranian despotism.

Miller said in an interview: "For some reason, nobody seems to be talking about who we’re up against, and the sixth century barbarism that they [Islamic jihadis] actually represent. These people saw people’s heads off. They enslave women, they genitally mutilate their daughters, they do not behave by any cultural norms that are sensible to us."

While the Spartans, on the other hand...

Online guided meditations

I've been enjoying following some online guided meditations the last few mornings. Here are a couple of links:

This is a website called Free Buddhist Audio.

And this is a website called BuddhaNet, check out the guided meditation called Cultivating Peace And Joy With The Breath, it's good.

Wouldn't it be great to have a website loaded with online spiritual resources - with videos, MP3s, e-texts, online fora, webinars, and so on? I guess there's Rupert Murdoch's BeliefNet, but it seems to be the digitalisation of spirituality is only just beginning.

Hey, we just cured Asperger's!

We must have, right? Because it's not going to be in the new edition of the Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which is used by just about every psychiatrist to diagnose what exactly someone is suffering from.

So Asperger's has just...disappeared! Woohoo! That's progress, my friends. Here's Sacha Baron-Cohen's brother, Simon Baron-Cohen, who heads up the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University, to tell us more:

The Short Life of a Diagnosis

THE Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association, is the bible of diagnosis in psychiatry, and is used not just by doctors around the world but also by health insurers.

Changing any such central document is complicated. It should therefore come as no surprise that a committee of experts charged with revising the manual has caused consternation by considering removing Asperger syndrome from the next edition, scheduled to appear in 2012. The committee argues that the syndrome should be deleted because there is no clear separation between it and its close neighbor, autism.

The experts propose that both conditions should be subsumed under the term “autism spectrum disorder,” with individuals differentiated by levels of severity. It may be true that there is no hard and fast separation between Asperger syndrome and classic autism, since they are currently differentiated only by intelligence and onset of language. Both classic autism and Asperger syndrome involve difficulties with social interaction and communication, alongside unusually narrow interests and a strong desire for repetition, but in Asperger syndrome, the person has good intelligence and language acquisition.

The question of whether Asperger syndrome should be included or excluded is the latest example of dramatic changes in history of the diagnostic manual. The first manual, published in 1952, listed 106 “mental disorders.” The second (1968), listed 182, and famously removed homosexuality as a disorder in a later printing. The third (1980) listed 265 disorders, taking out “neurosis.” The revised third version (1987) listed 292 disorders, while the current fourth version cut the list of disorders back to 283.

This history reminds us that psychiatric diagnoses are not set in stone. They are “manmade,” and different generations of doctors sit around the committee table and change how we think about “mental disorders.”

This in turn reminds us to set aside any assumption that the diagnostic manual is a taxonomic system. Maybe one day it will achieve this scientific value, but a classification system that can be changed so freely and so frequently can’t be close to following Plato’s recommendation of “carving nature at its joints.”

Part of the reason the diagnostic manual can move the boundaries and add or remove “mental disorders” so easily is that it focuses on surface appearances or behavior (symptoms) and is silent about causes. Symptoms can be arranged into groups in many ways, and there is no single right way to cluster them. Psychiatry is not at the stage of other branches of medicine, where a diagnostic category depends on a known biological mechanism. An example of where this does occur is Down syndrome, where surface appearances are irrelevant. Instead the cause — an extra copy of Chromosome 21 — is the sole determinant to obtain a diagnosis. Psychiatry, in contrast, does not yet have any diagnostic blood tests with which to reveal a biological mechanism.

So what should we do about Asperger syndrome? Although originally described in German in 1944, the first article about it in English was published in 1981, and Asperger syndrome made it only into the fourth version of the manual, in 1994. That is, the international medical community took 50 years to acknowledge it. In the last decade thousands of people have been given the diagnosis. Seen through this historical lens, it seems a very short time frame to be considering removing Asperger syndrome from the manual.

We also need to be aware of the consequences of removing it. First, what happens to those people and their families who waited so long for a diagnostic label that does a good job of describing their profile? Will they have to go back to the clinics to get their diagnoses changed? The likelihood of causing them confusion and upset seems high.

Second, science hasn’t had a proper chance to test if there is a biological difference between Asperger syndrome and classic autism. My colleagues and I recently published the first candidate gene study of Asperger syndrome, which identified 14 genes associated with the condition.

We don’t yet know if Asperger syndrome is genetically identical or distinct from classic autism, but surely it makes scientific sense to wait until these two subgroups have been thoroughly tested before lumping them together in the diagnostic manual. I am the first to agree with the concept of an autistic spectrum, but there may be important differences between subgroups that the psychiatric association should not blur too hastily.

Simon Baron-Cohen, the director of the Autism Research Center at Cambridge University, is the author of “The Essential Difference.”

Cloud thinking

Check out this great article by John Brockman, editor of Edge magazine (which is the best ideas publication out there, to my mind)...OK, it's a bit of a pretentious opening...in fact, could you imagine a more pretentious opening...but still, some interesting thoughts in this article.

At a dinner in the mid-sixties, the composer John Cage handed me a copy of Norbert Wiener's book, Cybernetics. He was talking about "the mind we all share" in the context of "the cybernetic idea". He was not talking Teilhard de Chardin, the Noosphere, or any kind of metaphysics.

The cybernetic idea was built from Turing's Universal Machine in the late thirties; Norbert Wiener's work during World War II on automatic aiming and firing of anti-aircraft guns; John von Neumann's theory of automata and its applications (mid-forties); Claude Shannon's landmark paper founding information theory in 1948.

What exactly is "the cybernetic idea"? Well, it's not to be confused with the discipline of cybernetics, which hit a wall, and stopped evolving during the 1950s. And it's not your usual kind of idea. The cybernetic idea is an invention. A very big invention. The late evolutionary biologist Gregory Bateson called it the most important idea since the idea of Jesus Christ.

The most important inventions involve the grasping of a conceptual whole, a set of relationships which had not been previously recognized. This necessarily involves a backward look. We don't notice it. An example of this is the "invention" of talking. Humans did not notice that they were talking until the day someone said, "We're talking." No doubt the first person to utter such words was considered crazy. But that moment was the invention of talking, the recognition of pattern which, once perceived, had always been there.

So how does this fit in with the cybernetic idea?

It's the recognition that reality itself is communicable. It's the perception that the nonlinear extension of the brain's experience — the socialization of mind — is a process that involves the transmission of neural pattern — electrical, not mental — that's part of a system of communication and control that functions without individual awareness or consent.

This cybernetic explanation tears the apart the fabric of our habitual thinking. Subject and object fuse. The individual self decreates. It is a world of pattern, of order, of resonances. It's an undone world of language, communication, and pattern. By understanding that the experience of the brain is continually communicated through the process of information, we can now recognize the extensions of man as communication, not as a means for the flow of communication. As such they provide the information for the continual process of neural coding.

How is this playing out in terms of the scenarios presented by Frank Schirrmacher in his comments about the effect of the Internet on our neural processes? Here are some random thoughts inspired by the piece and the discussion:

Danny Hillis once said that "the web is the slime mold of the Internet. In the long run, the Internet will arrive at a much richer infrastructure, in which ideas can potentially evolve outside of human minds. You can imagine something happening on the Internet along evolutionary lines, as in the simulations I run on my parallel computers. It already happens in trivial ways, with viruses, but that's just the beginning. I can imagine nontrivial forms of organization evolving on the Internet. Ideas could evolve on the Internet that are much too complicated to hold in any human mind." He suggested that "new forms of organization that go beyond humans may be evolving. In the short term, forms of human organization are enabled."

Schirrmacher reports on Gerd Gigerenzer's idea that "thinking itself somehow leaves the brain and uses a platform outside of the human body. And that's the Internet and it's the cloud. And very soon we will have the brain in the cloud. And this raises the question of the importance of thoughts. For centuries, what was important for me was decided in my brain. But now, apparently, it will be decided somewhere else."

John Bargh notes that research on the prediction and control of human judgment and behavior, has become democratized. "This has indeed produced (and is still producing) an explosion of knowledge of the IF-THEN contingencies of human responses to the physical and social environment … we are so rapidly building a database or atlas of unconscious influences and effects that could well be exploited by ever-faster computing devices, as the knowledge is accumulating at an exponential rate." The import of Bargh's thinking is that the mere existence of a social network becomes an unconscious influence on human judgment and behavior.

George Dyson traces how numbers have changed from representing things, to meaning things, to doing things. He points out that the very activity involved in the socialization of mind means that "we have network processes (including human collaboration) that might actually be ideas."

What does all this add up to?

Schirrmacher is correct when when he points out that in this digital age we are going through a fundamental change which includes how our brains function. But the presence or absence of free will is a trivial concern next to the big challenge confronting us: to recognize the radical nature of the changes that are occuring and to grasp an understanding of the process as our empirical advances blow apart our epistemological bases for thinking about who and what we are. "We're talking."

Is CBT gimmicky?

I found an interesting show on Radio 4's website this morning, called All In The Mind, which is a weekly programme on psychology presented by Claudia Hammond. I guess it's the most mainstream regular show on psychology in the UK media.

Anyway, the show I listened to was on CBT, and looked at the roll-out of the Improved Access for Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme, in which the British government is spending £300mn to train "an army of more than 3000 therapists in CBT". This is "the biggest investment in talking therapies that there's ever been", as Hammond put it.

On the show, Hammond got two experts to debate whether the IAPT is a good idea - supporting IAPT was David Clark, from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College, who is the main organiser of the programme; and the sceptic was John Marzillier, clinical psychologist at Oxford University.

Marzillier's main criticisms of IAPT were:

(1) CBT is too focused on techniques, rather than on engaging with and treating the whole person. This is a variant of the criticism that CBT is too 'gimmicky', and doesn't delve into the deeper levels of the unconscious like other psychotherapeutic treatments.

(2) Because it is short-term, and teaches techniques, CBT loses the emphasis on the psychotherapeutic relationship that other forms of therapy have. And this is what patients most appreciate. This is particularly true of the 'low intensity practitioners' being trained by IAPT, who will only give short, eight-week treatments.

(3) CBT has all the 'evidence' supporting it mainly because it makes overly-rigid DSM-type classifications of illnesses, saying 'this person has social anxiety', for example, then testing them to see if they still have it after two months. It's symptom-focused, rather than approaching the whole person, like other psychotherapies.

I want to respond to these points.

(1) Yes, CBT teaches techniques of self-management. This is exactly what ancient philosophy, from which CBT evolved, taught its students. Ancient philosophy was less a rigid system of belief (like, say, psychoanalysis), and more a set of practices, exercises, and techniques designed to counter specific emotional problems. Read Pierre Hadot's excellent essay, Spiritual Exercises and Ancient Philosophy, for the classic introduction to this topic.

Stoicism, for example, which is the principle inspiration for CBT, taught its students to track their mental habits using a 'thought journal' (as CBT does), to train their attention to the present moment (as CBT does), to memorise short 'power statements' that come to mind automatically in situations (as CBT does), and to go out and test their new beliefs in real-life situations (as CBT does).

The advantage of this flexible, technique-led approach is that it isn't one-size-fits-all. Some techniques will be more useful for some people, others will work better for others. Different techniques will be useful at different times. It is not dogmatic or faith-driven - it doesn't demand that you accept the entire unwieldy edifice of orthodox psychoanalytic theory in order to get better. If this is 'gimmicky', then it is no more gimmicky than Buddhism, for example.

(2) Yes, CBT, like Stoicism, is more about learning how to manage yourself, rather than learning to depend on someone else (priest, parent, therapist) for your self-worth. Both CBT and Stoicism still emphasize the importance of the teacher / philosopher / therapist, who like Socrates would awaken you to your own thoughts, and your own responsibility for them. But the crucial step to health is taking responsibility for your own thoughts, and no one can do that but you.

By insisting on the inescapable mediating role of the psychoanalyst in patients' return to health, psychoanalysis is creating a priest class, and saying the only way for the unhappy or mentally ill to return to health is through them, through the Church of Psychoanalysis. This is self-serving, false and pernicious.

Stoicism and CBT are about learning to take back to yourself the power that you have given away to externals. It is about not looking to those outside of you for affirmation - including over-paid avuncular therapists. So CBT champions a DIY, self-help culture, which I support, rather than promoting a mediating, even parasitic, priest caste.

However, that's not to say you are completely on your own. While your CBT course might be relatively brief, the culture of Stoicism and CBT is rich, and involves really a lifetime of study. Stoics didn't study Stoicism for eight weeks. They studied and practiced it their whole lives, and constantly talked to and compared notes with other practitioners, as well as studying with various teachers. But they hardly ever had gurus who they worshipped and obeyed absolutely - unlike Christianity and Buddhism, and unlike psychoanalysis.

(3) What's the alternative to an evidence-based approach to therapy? The alternative is to rely on a handful of untested case studies. This is how Freud 'proved' that psychoanalysis worked. It then turned out he had fabricated or hidden the facts of his case studies.

Any therapy must be able to show that it has worked to be worth pursuing at all. What does that mean? It means a person feels noticeably better, stronger and more at peace after practicing the therapy. You can test this, by asking the person how they feel over a period of time. That's what CBT does. Why don't other therapies do that too?

Yes, CBT focuses on specific illnesses - that's because people with social anxiety have very similar thought-processes. Just look at a social anxiety website, such as www.social-anxiety.org.uk. Look at how similar the thought patterns expressed there are. It's the same with OCD, with depression, and other emotional disorders.

The spread of internet forums for these emotional disorders have allowed the layman to see, for the first time, quite how similar people's experiences of these emotional disorders are, and how similar are the head trips they get into. And that means you can actually tailor the cognitive exercises they are taught quite specifically to the head trip of their condition.

Sometimes, of course, people have more than one condition - I suffered from social anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder with comorbid depression, for example. But the CBT course I did for social anxiety still helped me, because it taught me basic skills to be aware of my thoughts, and to challenge my thoughts, and I could use these skills to challenge both depressive and anxious thoughts. And, in fact, a lot of my depression came from a low self-evaluation of my social skills, so tackling social anxiety also helped me tackle the low self-worth of depression.

Get into the EmoTrance, baby!

I've been sent this press release:

Nineteen Students from The Haydon School in Pinner, Middlesex have become the world’s first pupils to be taught EmoTrance, the much talked about Energy Therapy developed by Dr Silvia Hartmann.

In the project dubbed EmoTrance In Schools, the students have been trained to ‘Student Practitioner of EmoTrance’ level, which is fully recognised and licensed by The Sidereus Foundation. They will now use their skills to help other students overcome emotional problems, such as coping with bullies, exam stress and family issues.

EmoTrance stands for Emotional Transformation and is a practical system for energy healing and energy working. The ground-breaking, and perhaps, controversial project saw 19 pupils (5 boys and 14 girls) as well as 15 teachers take part in a 3 week EmoTrance course led by EmoTrance Trainer and spokeswoman Kim Bradley. The course was developed to help the students identify where emotions are held in their body. Emotions can build up like a pressure cooker and can lead to outbursts of anger, frustration or crying and which, if held deep within, can lead toward depression.

Haydon School is very forward thinking and proved an interesting choice to introduce EmoTrance into schools. They have a group of hand-picked children known for having caring qualities who are SOS Peer Mentors. These children run open clinics during break and lunch times where students can tell them their worries, share problems and seek advice.

During the three week period the students took part in 3 two-hour sessions. The course involved using the techniques on feelings of hurt and anger of being called names, receiving criticism and being insulted. One of the students said of the insults session, “it was like having a verbal detox. Knowing that from this point forward all insults and hurtful comments I receive need not affect my self esteem. It is very empowering.”

Following the success of the project, EmoTrance now plans to move the project into more schools around the country.

I'm wondering if this is a piss-take...Does Kim realise that 'Emo' is a playground abuse term for someone who is an introverted, over-emotional, histrionic Goth who takes themselves too seriously? And that anyone who does a school course called 'EmoTrance' is pretty much hanging a sign around their neck saying 'kick me'?!

Wait...I can feel myself slipping into an EmoTrance....Love, love will tear us apart, again...where's my hairspray...

Tremendous poise...I'm an absolute master

This has got to be one of my favourite movie scenes: