Dragons - Chapter 48 (DRAFT)

The meeting with Dr. Lancaster was basically uneventful. I had never met him before, and he turned out to be a kind and pleasant old man who was simply distrustful of computers. I was obviously late getting to the speaker ready room, and when I arrived Dr. Lancaster was already deep in dialogue with one of our lead audio-visual techs.

“If you’re more comfortable with thirty-five millimeter slides, Dr. Lancaster, we can certainly accommodate,” the tech was saying. His name was Ray, a good guy, but he had the habitually droopy eyes of a regular weed smoker.

“You can?” Dr. Lancaster replied, the surprise evident in his voice.

“Sure,” Ray said, looking up at me as I joined their little circle. “I’ve got a few slide projectors on the truck. If Alan here gives the word, I can get one set up in the back of the ballroom and then use the i-mag camera to send your slide image to all the main and delay screens.”

Dr. Lancaster turned my way. “Are you Alan Larson?”

“I am, Dr. Lancaster,” I said, shaking his extended hand. “I’m sorry for being late.”

“No trouble at all. But I hope you can understand what this young man just said.”

I could and I did, and in a few minutes more the plan was approved and understood by all. It was a simple fix, really. Something that only required a little creativity and an AV budget in excess of six figures. My mind, however, was frankly not on Dr. Lancaster and his technology phobia, but on the conversation Mary and I had just had.

I was in trouble. That much was clear. I had challenged her leadership and, at least from Mary’s point of view, disrespected her. I had been with the company long enough to know what eventually happened to people who did that.

After the keynote session began, and Dr. Lancaster was satisfactorily embarked on his 45-minute presentation, I quietly stepped out of the ballroom and called home.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Jenny. It’s me.”

“Alan? Oh my god, what’s wrong?”

“What makes you think something’s wrong?”

“It’s the middle of the day. You never call home from the Annual Conference in the middle of the day.”

“You’re right. Something’s wrong.”

“What is it?”

I told her in as few brushstrokes as possible. Caroline’s desperate call. Amy’s cackling laugh. Gerald’s drubbing down. Mary’s suspicious ignorance. My fateful decision. It took a lot longer than I expected to get it all out. About halfway through I started pacing back and forth across the teal and green carpet in the ballroom foyer, but Jenny remained patiently silent throughout. Only when I was clearly finished did she offer any words of wisdom.

“Alan, honey. You’re fucked.”

I stopped pacing.

“I am, aren’t I?”

“You crossed the dragon. She’s going to roast you alive.”

I was nodding my head. “And not quickly. She’s going to make my life miserable.”

There was a strange silence on the phone. For a moment I thought the call had been dropped.

“Jenny?”

“I’m here, Alan.”

“What are we going to do?”

This time there was no hesitation.

“We’re going to get you that new job. Have you had a chance to call Quest Partners yet?”

“No,” I said, starting to pace again. “Maybe you should call for me.”

“I can’t do that, Alan. They want to talk to you.”

“I’m juggling a lot of balls here, Jenny. Can you at least find out if they want me to fly to Boston, or if they are going to send someone to interview me.”

“They want you to fly to Boston. They even said they would pay for the ticket.”

“They did?”

“Yes, I told you that last night.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did. I could tell you weren’t listening to me.”

I stopped. Now it was my turn to nurture a strange silence. Jenny often accused me of not listening to her when we spoke on the phone. And to be fair, I often didn’t. She had a habit of drifting off into the details of her day and I usually had the details of my own day on my mind. But this time there was something different in her tone of voice. Something hostile. And threatening.

“Alan?”

“I’m here, Jenny.”

“You need to find time to call them soon. Now more than ever. Do you or do you not have the name and number?”

“Text it to me and I’ll call and leave a message late tonight. I’ll have to look at my calendar and find a good time for a vacation day. Are there any days in the next two weeks I should avoid being gone?”

Jenny and I had long ago synchronized our calendars, but she filled hers up with so many tentative appointments and reminders that I could never tell what was adjustable and what was carved in stone. If she needed me to do something, the only surefire way of confirming that was to ask her, assuming nothing.

“I’ll adjust. Pick the day that works best for you and get it done.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Do you want to talk to your son?”

“What, are we done?”

“Alan, I’m in the middle of about twelve things right now.”

It was funny how easy and difficult phone conversations with Jenny were. We’re married, and have been for enough years that getting down to business is simple and straight-forward, but even so, there are certain things that never seem to get said.

“How are you feeling today?” It suddenly felt like the most important question on earth.

“I’m fine. Don’t you have to get back to your conference?”

“No, it can run without me for a few more minutes. I want to know how you are doing. I love you.”

“Well, I love you, too. And I really am feeling fine.”

“How’s Crazy Horse?”

“Fine. I have an appointment with Dr. Andrews this afternoon.”

“But nothing’s wrong?”

“No. Just a well baby check.”

“Okay. Let me know what Andrews says.”

“I will. But don’t you dare call me until after you’ve spoken to Quest Partners.”

Before I could respond one of the doors to the ballroom burst open and Bethany Bishop appeared. She looked quickly left, then right, and, spotting me, violently motioned for me to come inside.

“Got to go, honey.”

“Sure. Talk to you later.”

“Alan!” Bethany shout-whispered at me. “We need you!”

I was already moving towards her, tucking my phone back in my pocket. “What is it?”

“Dr. Lancaster is freaking out!”

That didn’t sound good. As soon as I stepped inside the ballroom, Lancaster’s amplified voice filled my world, it didn’t sound kind and pleasant like it had in the speaker ready room.

“Hello?” it said caustically. “Is there anyone there? Can someone please fix my slide?”

I looked up at one of the delay screens and quickly took in a complicated scatter diagram of some kind. Then I looked back to the AV riser and saw a flurry of movement and activity. Amidst the murmur of an audience interrupted, I practically leapt up the riser stairs.

“What’s going on?” I demanded.

“His slide’s in backwards,” Ray said. “I need to pull the carousel and reverse it.”

“Hello?” the voice continued to taunt. “Is anyone back there?”

“Go!” I said, and Ray leapt off the riser and practically sprinted over to where he had previously set up the 35mm slide projector.

I looked up and saw the perspectively diminutive form of Dr. Douglas Lancaster at the far front of the room, on our stage, standing behind our podium, his hand up to shield his eyes from our spotlight, peering with difficulty into the darkness for someone to help him.

“Give me the VOG mic,” I said to the AV tech stationed by a soundboard larger than my kitchen table.

Without question, he picked up a handheld microphone, switched it on, and handed it over to me.

“We’re attending to the problem now, Dr. Lancaster,” I said into it, my voice booming like the voice of God out over the ballroom sound system.

“Well, thank heavens,” Dr. Lancaster said. “It appears I haven’t been abandoned after all.”

A nervous chuckle rippled through the room, and suddenly all the projection screens went blinding white. Looking over, I saw that Ray had popped the slide carousel off the projector and was in the process of plucking the offending slide out of its slot so he could reverse it.

“Oh my!” Dr. Lancaster gasped. “That’s not better, that’s worse!”

“One moment, please,” I said as calmly as I could into the microphone, but Ray was already clicking the carousel back into place, and as quick as that the slide with the complicated scatter diagram was back on all the screens.

“Eureka!” Dr. Lancaster exclaimed. “That’s what we’re supposed to be looking at. Now, if I can bring everyone back to where we left off, I wanted to point out this large cluster of data points in the upper left quadrant -- and, indeed, now it is actually in the upper left quadrant!”

Dr. Lancaster continued his presentation, the audience quieted back down into its typical somnolence, but I continued to stand there on the AV platform with the live VOG mic in my hand. Ray returned and stood by my side, but made no other movements and spoke no words. We undoubtedly were both waiting for the same thing.

As quietly as I could, I clicked off the microphone, but did not yet release it. “Is that the only one that’s going to be backwards?”

“Beats me,” Ray said. “He’s the one who loaded them.”

We stood and listened to Dr. Lancaster describe at length and in great detail what he often described as the “surprisingly elegant” meaning of his small and scattered clusters of data. I can’t speak for Ray, but I know the elegance was lost on me. The population density of Rwanda, the emergence of diseased allele pairs in Hawaiian Geese, the frequency of dangling participles in 19th Century Russian literature -- he could have been talking about any or all of these things and I couldn’t have told you. I was simply waiting for him to advance to the next slide.

“And so,” Dr. Lancaster eventually said, “if we look at the same data set six months later, we see...” There was a flutter on the slide carousel behind us and the image on the screen switched in a flash of white light, a similar but different eye chart, the clusters of blue data points in an alternate configuration, but the words, the words on the x and y axes, fortunately, thankfully, and happily, in the proper orientation. “...that much has changed. What was dominant has now become sub-dominant, and what was sub-dominant has all but disappeared.”

I handed the microphone back to the guy behind the soundboard.

“Stay on it, Ray,” I said. “If he put one in wrong, there might be more.”

“Will do, Alan. Sorry, man.”

I shook my head. “It wasn’t your fault. I’ll stay close until his presentation is over.”

Ray nodded solemnly. He looked grateful, like I had just packed him a fresh bowl. I just sat myself down on one of the empty chairs on the AV riser. Something inside me told me the threat was over, that this one slide was the only one that Lancaster had loaded backwards, but that same thing told me to stick around regardless. It was only one slide, but one slide was going to be enough. There would all kinds of hell to pay.

+ + +

“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Image Source
http://lres.com/heres-why-amcs-need-to-pay-close-attention-to-looming-regulatory-changes/businessman-in-the-middle-of-a-labyrinth/

The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro

Sometimes, when I have a difficult time figuring out what’s going on in a piece of celebrated fiction, I find myself stepping out of my role as a reader and I mentally put myself in the role of the author. No longer concerned with enjoying the pleasure of well-formed characters and plot, I find myself open to the difficult and painful experience of writing, of creating something of meaningful value on our difficult and distracted world.

It was in this frame of mind that I came across the following paragraph in Ishiguro’s celebrated and frustratingly opaque The Unconsoled.

‘This is quite ridiculous!’ I had lost all patience. ‘I’ll find my own way. You’re obviously quite unable to appreciate that a person might be very busy, working on a tight schedule, and simply can’t afford to dawdle about the town for hours. In fact, if I may say so, this wall is quite typical of this town. Utterly preposterous obstacles everywhere. And what do you do? Do you all get annoyed? Do you demand it’s pulled down immediately so that people can go about their business? No, you put up with it for the best part of a century. You make postcards of it and believe it’s charming. This brick wall charming? What a monstrosity! I may well use this wall as a symbol, I’ve a good mind to, in my speech tonight! It’s just as well for you I’ve already composed much of what I’m going to say in my head and so am naturally reluctant to change things too much at this late stage. Good evening!’

In the context of the story, this is our narrator and protagonist, Mr. Ryder, complaining about yet another obstacle to his plans and desires: in this case a wall bisecting the city, impenetrable, and separating him from the concert hall where he is set to perform.

But in the larger context I believe that Ishiguro is here almost blatantly talking about the novel he is in the process of writing.

It is ‘ridiculous.’ It doesn’t ‘appreciate that a person (i.e., reader) might be very busy, working on a tight schedule, and simply can’t afford to dawdle about the town (i.e., the novel) for hours.’ It is full of ‘utterly preposterous obstacles.’ And what does the author do? Does he get ‘annoyed’? Does he ‘demand that it’s pulled down immediately so that people can go about their business (i.e., understand his novel and move on)’? No. The author ‘makes postcards of it and believes it’s charming.’ And he uses the wall as his symbol.

This, more than anything else, I think, explains what’s going on in this novel. Much of the Internet calls it Kafkaesque, and it is in the sense that it reads very much like that common dream we’ve all had in which we want to accomplish something but are thwarted at every turn. And that leads me to only one conclusion.

The Unconsoled of the novel’s title is actually none of its characters. It is, and can only be, the reader him or herself.

+ + +

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Dragons - Chapter 47 (DRAFT)

On the way out of the staff office, I physically bumped into Mary Walton. I was moving so quickly and with so much determination, I nearly knocked her off her designer heels.

“My god, Mary, I’m sorry,” I said, reaching out to catch her before she fell. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, Alan,” she said, clutching my arm in an attempt to right herself. “I’m fine.” Her hand brushed coldly over mine as she disengaged. “Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

“I have a ten o’clock meeting with Dr. Lancaster in the speaker ready room,” I said truthfully. I didn’t have to explain to Mary that Dr. Douglas Lancaster was our keynote speaker, a mentor of and personally selected by Eleanor Rumsfeld. “He wants to go over the technical requirements of his presentation.”

Mary looked at her watch, the sparkles of its diamonds flashing me as it came out from under the sleeve of her suit jacket. Although much more expensive than the one I wore, it undoubtedly told her the same thing mine would have. It was nine-fifty-six.

“I thought we had set this as the time to discuss the situation with Amy Crawford.”

I suspected that Mary knew we had said nine-thirty and that she was the one who was twenty-six minutes late, but her tone was challenging, daring me to call her out or contradict her. It felt like she was testing me. In a lot of my interactions with Mary lately, I realized, it felt like she was testing me.

“I thought we said nine-thirty,” I said simply. “Should we reschedule?”

“No,” she said quickly. “This shouldn’t take long.”

“Okay,” I said, and then stood there silently. After finding conviction among my recent introspections, I no longer wanted to have this conversation with Mary. It didn’t look like I was going to be able to avoid it, but I certainly didn’t have to initiate anything.

After a pause, Mary carefully checked our surroundings. “Is there anyone in the staff office?”

“No,” I said.

“Let’s go in there.”

“Okay.”

Standing safely behind the closed door, Mary got right down to business.

“First off, Alan, I want to let you know that you did the right thing bringing this to my attention.”

“I did?”

“Yes, absolutely. Our relationship with Wes Howard is a very important one. Had you decided to confront him last night, there’s no telling what kind of damage you might have done.”

The blank look on my face must have prompted Mary’s next response.

“Inadvertently, of course. I’m not saying you would do anything to intentionally harm the firm, Alan. You’ve always demonstrated good judgment in these matters and last night was no exception.”

Wait. She’s praising me? For doing nothing?

“Mary,” I said, my suspicions suddenly on full alert. “Have you already spoken to Wes?”

“Yes. Just now.”

So that’s why she was late.

“He has assured me that he will not bring Amy to any more of our events.”

It took about five seconds -- five seconds of me staring open mouthed at Mary -- for the full meaning of her words to hit me. When they did, I felt like the earth moved under my feet.

“He’s not going to bring Amy to any more of our events?”

“Yes,” Mary said, her voice already shifting to her this-matter-is-closed tone. “As you witnessed, it’s too disruptive. Amy is a former member of our staff, someone who left under difficult circumstances. Her presence brings the questions surrounding those circumstances back to the surface, and too many of our staff members, as young as they are, can’t be expected to parse them appropriately. It will inevitably cause them to compromise their professionalism, and that harms both the firm and the client that Wes represents.”

Mary stopped herself short. “What?” she asked me. “What are you looking at me like that for? Once I explained it to Wes he knew exactly what I was talking about.”

My mind was racing. Four minutes ago I had been ready to fight my way to the top of the pile, and now I felt like my legs were about to give out underneath me. But some of my piss and vinegar was still swirling around in my gut, and it was telling, daring, demanding that I tell Mary how utterly fucked up she and this whole sorry affair was. Mary, it wanted me to say, the problem isn’t that Wes Howard brought Amy Crawford to our event. The problem is that Wes Howard is a predator, and his prey are all the young women you hire to work long hours for little pay. You’re either oblivious to what is really going on or you are complicit in his crimes. All telling him he can’t bring Amy around is going to do is put other members of your staff in his crosshairs. Why the fuck do you think Caroline was crying and begging me to come get her? Amy Crawford isn’t the one who needs to be banned from our events. Wes Howard is!

“Alan? What is it?”

I realize now that this was one of those rare moments of truth. And to my credit, despite all the wrong turns I would take at so many other crossroads, this time I decided to ever so carefully proceed on the high road.

“Mary, I don’t think just getting Wes to agree to not bring Amy around addresses the real issue.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“Because, there’s nothing to stop him from…”

“From? From what?”

The words were there, I was just having a hard time saying them.

“There’s nothing to stop him from...from hitting on other members of our staff.”

“Oh, Alan! Don’t start with that, please! We’re talking about grown-ups here.”

“Yes, Mary, we are. And as grown-ups, we shouldn’t be afraid to admit what’s really going on.”

I’ve subsequently had a lot of time to think about those words, those words that came so blithely out of my mouth when I was alone with Mary in our conference staff office. And with the benefit of tremendous hindsight, I see that few words spoken have ever been more both the absolutely right and the absolutely wrong things to say.

Mary visibly paled. “Look Alan,” she said with sudden frailty. “I won’t have you speaking to me like that.”

“Like what?”

“With such disrespect.”

I put up a pair of surrendering hands. “I meant no disrespect, Mary. It’s just that people are talking, and they don’t see this thing the way you do. The problem isn’t Amy Crawford. The problem is Wes Howard.”

“You know, Alan,” Mary said, her voice shifting tone again, regaining most of the self-satisfied dominance she typically displayed. “People are talking about more than just Amy Crawford and Wes Howard. They’re talking about you. You and your inability to lead them effectively.”

It was probably meant to knock me off my feet. But these were the trenches, and despite the legitimate power Mary was able to wield over me, the trenches were where I was used to fighting.

“Is that so?”

“Yes,” she said icily. “Michael resigned because of you, and now Gerald is asking me to reassign him to another client.”

“He asked you what?” I couldn’t help it. I knew she was only trying to rattle me, but the idea of Gerald talking about me behind my back did exactly that.

“He doesn’t want to work with you anymore. He says you’re a terrible leader.”

I had a few choice words about Gerald, too, but I bit my tongue.

“Everyone is entitled to their opinion, Mary. What’s yours?”

Judging by the expression that passed over her face, I’d have to say I both surprised and impressed her with that one.

“Honestly, Alan, I’m no longer sure.” Now she was a mother, expressing her disappointment with an ill-behaved child. “You’ve shown so much promise in so many areas, but ever since this latest promotion your priorities seems to be off.”

“Off?”

“Yes, off. You don’t seem as dedicated to the client’s success as you used to be. I’ve opened several doors for you, but you’ve been reluctant to step through them.”

“What are you talking about?” I really didn’t have any idea. Her corporate-speak was like a foreign language I had forgotten how to speak.

“Even Eleanor has noticed,” Mary continued. “She thinks I’ve promoted you too soon.”

That didn’t answer my question. “Mary,” I said again, doing my best to keep my voice level. “What are you talking about? What doors haven’t I stepped through? I’ve been working my ass off, doubly so since Susan left.”

“You probably shouldn’t bring up Susan with me, Alan,” Mary said, her voice under better control than mine. “She’d still be with us if you would’ve handled that situation better. Both Don and I think you’re the reason she decided to leave, too.”

Now I was starting to feel dizzy. What the fuck are you talking about?

I will probably never know if those last words actually came out of my mouth, or if they only rang out in my enraged mind, because at that very moment the staff office door opened and Angie Ferguson came barrelling into the room, a balanced stack of empty registration boxes in her arms.

“Alan!” she practically shouted. “There you are! Dr. Lancaster is waiting for you in the speaker ready room. Did you forget or something?”

“I didn’t forget!” I snapped back. “I’m having a conversation here.”

The stack of boxes and the way the door opened prevented her from seeing Mary. She turned in place and, in her surprise and movement, tipped the stack of boxes in Mary’s direction, who had to bat them out of the way to keep them from hitting her in the face.

“Oh, god, I’m sorry, Mary. Didn’t see you there.”

“It’s all right,” Mary said in a tone that indicated it was anything but all right.

Angie kept moving into the room, tossing the few boxes that remained in her grasp into a corner of the room, the place we had already designated as the trash zone. “Should I tell him you’ll be late?” she said as she busied herself with retrieving the remaining boxes from around Mary’s feet.

“Mary?” I asked.

“Go,” she said, her attention seemingly more on Angie’s movements than anything that had been said between us. “Don’t keep Dr. Lancaster waiting any longer.”

I stood there for a moment, waiting for Mary to say something else. We’ll talk later. We’re not finished here. I’ll get you, you son of a bitch. Anything that would acknowledge the hostile and unprofessional exchange we had just had, but there was nothing more coming.

“Okay,” I eventually said and left the room.

+ + +

“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Image Source
http://lres.com/heres-why-amcs-need-to-pay-close-attention-to-looming-regulatory-changes/businessman-in-the-middle-of-a-labyrinth/

The Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory-Based Decision-Making by Sam Kaner

This is a remarkable book, with a lot of great insights into how to successfully facilitate discussions among groups in order to best reach sustainable agreements. Staying well within the book’s stated photocopying policy, let me provide a summary of the main takeaways that I can use in my own future facilitation work.

The diagram show below really sums up the entire strategy offered. It comes at the very end of the book, although the disparate elements have been thoroughly discussed and diagrammed previously. In his own summation, Kaner begins:

Sustainable agreements don’t happen in a burst of inspiration; they develop slowly. It takes time and effort for people to build a shared framework of understanding, and groups need different types of support at different points in the process. Facilitators who understand this will vary their technique to match the group’s current dynamics.

The following pages review the Diamond of Participatory Decision-Making. Each page summarizes the significance of one zone of the Diamond, with emphasis on issues that hold particular interest for facilitators.

The “Diamond” is, of course, the diagram I’ve reproduced above; and it’s a really handy mental tool for understanding the process. It was developed by the author Sam Kaner and his colleagues Lenny Lind, Catherine Toldi, Sarah Fisk, and Duane Berger. Refer to it again and again as we go through the following commentary.

Business As Usual

When a new topic comes up for discussion in a group, people normally begin the conversation by proposing obvious solutions to obvious problems. The emotional atmosphere is usually congenial but superficial. People refrain from taking risks that would put them in vulnerable positions. If an idea seems workable, it usually leads to quick agreement. “Sounds good to me,” people say. The facilitator’s main task during this phase is to pay attention to the quality and quantity of each person’s participation. Is everyone engaged? Does everyone seem comfortable with the discussion? If so, great! The facilitator then summarizes the proposals under consideration and helps the group reach agreement quickly.

But suppose some people in the group do not support the proposal -- as indicated by statements like, “I don’t think this will work, but I don’t want to stand in the group’s way.” The facilitator can support the group to see the implication of these comments -- namely, that more thinking would be useful. Then, the facilitator can help them break out of the narrow band of familiar opinions and move their discussion into the Divergent Zone.

Something I like about this is the acknowledgement that not every group decision requires a facilitated process to resolve. In many cases, perhaps most, the group is perfectly capable of making and supporting their own sustainable agreement.

The Divergent Zone

When a facilitator supports a group to move from Business as Usual to the Divergent Zone, the mood changes dramatically. Business as Usual discussions are tedious and stiff; people censor themselves rather than risk being embarrassed by criticism. In contrast, laughter and playfulness are common in the Divergent Zone. So are feelings of curiosity and discovery. (“Whoa,” said one group member to another. “You mean that’s your point of view? I had no idea!”)

What creates such a difference between the two zones? To a large extent, the answer is simple: the attitude of suspended judgment.

Suspended judgment is one of the most important thinking skills facilitators can teach their groups. Facilitators can provide groups with opportunities to experience suspended judgment through formats like brainstorming and go-arounds. By teaching suspended judgment and by modeling it whenever possible, a respectful, supportive facilitator can create a relaxed, open atmosphere that gives people permission to speak freely -- the very essence of divergent thinking.

I can’t stress that last paragraph enough. In referring to the Diamond, the author explicitly says that it can be used as a teaching tool to provide their groups with shared language and shared points of reference, and I think the Divergent Zone is one of the prime times to do that. Having everyone in the group understand that the start of the process relies on everyone’s ability to share thoughts and ideas without the judgment of others should avoid most of the pitfalls that groups typically fall into. In this regard, tools like brainstorming and go-arounds serve not just as ways to get a lot of ideas on the table, but to stake out the territory in which a shared framework of understanding can be built.

The Groan Zone

Once a group has expressed several diverging points of view, the members face a quandary. They often don’t understand each other’s perspectives very well, yet they may not be able to resolve the issue at hand until they do understand each other. This is one of the fundamental problems of working in groups.

Even in groups whose members get along reasonably well, the Groan Zone is agonizing. People have to wrestle with foreign concepts and unfamiliar biases. They have to try to understand other people’s reasoning -- even when that reasoning leads to a conclusion they don’t agree with.

The difficulties are compounded by the fact that many people respond awkwardly to this kind of stress. Under pressure, some people lose their focus and start rambling. Others become short-tempered and rude. Some people feel misunderstood and repeat themselves endlessly. Others get so impatient they’ll agree to anything: “Let’s just get this over with! Now!”

This is the crucial point, the place where facilitators really earn their stripes -- and another place where an awareness by all that the “Groan Zone” is normal and to be expected. The three reactions described above are all too familiar, at least to me. Some lose focus and ramble. Others get short-tempered and rude. Still others repeat the same point over and over again. It’s as if no one can see the forest for the trees. What is a facilitator to do with such open dysfunction?

Many facilitators, especially beginners, think their task is to prevent people from experiencing the pain and frustration groups face in the Groan Zone. This is a mistake. The only way to insulate a group from the Groan Zone is to block them from doing the hard work necessary to build a shared framework of understanding.

What, then, is the facilitator’s task in the Groan Zone? Essentially, the job is to hang in there -- hang in and support people while they struggle to understand each other. Support them to hang in there with each other; support them not to give up and mentally check out.

The facilitator’s tenacity is grounded in a client-centered attitude -- a faith that the wisdom to solve the problems at hand will emerge from the group, as long as people don’t give up trying. It is this attitude that allows a facilitator to tolerate the labor pains of authentic collaboration.

This summary is short on the actual practices that a facilitator can employ in order to do this, but the rest of the book is not. There are several key tactics described that can help groups accomplish the two main tasks that facilitators should help them focus on in the “Groan Zone”: Creating Shared Context and Strengthening Relationships.

Creating Shared Context refers to activities that directly advance mutual understanding. This can be done in a variety of ways: by acquiring shared experiences, by developing shared language, by surfacing background information, and by making efforts to put oneself in the other person’s shoes. In all cases the purpose is to enable people to think from each other’s point of view. The essence of this type of activity is understanding.

Strengthening Relationships refers to activities that support people to get to know each other. It is easier to listen to a person’s thinking when one has experienced that person’s humanity. The essence of this type of activity is interpersonal communication.

Whatever tactic is employed, the goal is to help the group build a shared framework of understanding. In other words, stop the group from talking about solutions to the problem, and start them talking about each other and their experiences.

The Convergent Zone

Once a group has developed a shared framework of understanding, everything feels faster, smoother, easier. The pace of discussion accelerates. People say, “Finally, we’re getting something done!” Confidence runs high during this period. People show up on time and stay until the end of the meeting. Between sessions, work that needs to be done gets done.

The experience of searching for an inclusive solution is stimulating and invigorating. People are surprised to discover how well they seem to understand one another. Members now perceive the group as a team. Years later, many people can still remember the joyful intensity of this phase.

Facilitators play a double role during this period of a group’s work: sometimes teaching and sometimes getting out of the way. It may be crucial for a facilitator to teach participants how to turn an Either/Or problem into a Both/And solution. Often the facilitator is the only one who recognizes that Both/And thinking is even possible. But for much of the time, a facilitator might be reduced to chartwriting and keeping track of time. When this happens, be happy! It means the facilitation is succeeding.

The reference to meetings and sessions raises a point that should not be missed. Frequently, often maybe, facilitation is something that takes place over a series of meetings. Driving all the way through the Diamond in one session is neither common nor desired. People often need time to move from phase to phase, and there are plenty of important tips and tactics to employ as you bring people together for session after session.

Here’s one that really jumped out at me.

Seven Types of Meeting Goals

Hopefully, the image says it all. The book defines seven distinct goals for a meeting to have. We call meetings in order to:

• Share information;
• Advance the thinking;
• Improve communication;
• Build community;
• Build capacity;
• Make decisions; or
• Obtain input.

That’s well and good. But the key point is that everyone at the meeting has to know what the goal of the meeting is. Otherwise, you risk having it go off the rails. A boss that calls a meeting in order to obtain input or share information, but has subordinates come prepared to advance the thinking or make decisions, is setting everyone up for a very dysfunctional conversation.

Always be clear from the beginning what the goal of each meeting is.

Closure Zone

In the Closure Zone most people are focused. They pay attention to nearly every comment -- and most comments are brief and to the point.

These experiences occur, of course, only when the group knows how the decision will be made. When a group does not have a clear understanding of how they are going to reach closure, the facilitator must look for the earliest opportunity to help the members clarify the decision rules.

The tools for reaching closure might be the single most important set of thinking skills a facilitator can teach a group. The Gradients of Agreement Scale helps members discern the actual degree of support for a proposal. Furthermore, a meta-decision procedure allows a group to use different decision rules for different circumstances.

Overall, when group members grasp the principles and mechanics of reaching closure, their group’s capacity strengthens dramatically.

Two things in there really deserve greater elaboration.

Gradients of Agreement

In many of the decision processes where facilitation can be helpful, giving participants only two choices -- support or reject a proposed solution -- is often limiting and counterproductive. A more granular scale can be extremely helpful in building consensus and advancing towards the best solution. In the gradient described in the book, everyone gets to express up to eight distinct levels of support for an idea:

1. Whole-hearted Endorsement - “I really like it.”
2. Agreement with a Minor Point of Contention - “Not perfect, but it’s good enough.”
3. Support with Reservations - “I can live with it.”
4. Abstain - “This issue does not affect me.”
5. More Discussion Needed - “I don’t understand the issues well enough yet.”
6. Don’t Like But Will Support - “It’s not great, but I don’t want to hold up the group.”
7. Serious Disagreement - “I am not on board with this -- don’t count on me.”
8. Veto - “I block this proposal.”

When faced with a decision point, the book advocates placing this gradient up on a piece of flipchart paper and letting people mark where they sit on the issue at hand. Doing so allows everyone to see the kind of support behind the issue and where there might be more work to do in order to reach greater consensus.

The more important point, I think, is that there are many situations were “lukewarm” support for an idea is good enough, and the old system of voting things up or down may never allow that level of support to emerge. Especially when the stakes are low, or the time-scale for impact is short, or the solution requires low investment from the group, getting most people to say “I can live with it,” may be all that is needed.

But the opposite is also true. When the stakes are high, the time-scale for impact is long, or the solution requires high investment from the group, you had better make sure most can at least say “Not perfect, but it’s good enough.”

Meta-Decision Procedures

Kaner accurately describes a situation that comes up all the time in groups:

At a certain point in practically every discussion, the person-in-charge has to decide whether to end the discussion and make a decision.

This is the “meta-decision” and having a clearly understood procedure for it is absolutely essential to consensus-based decision making.

To most people who play the role of person-in-charge, this fact is intuitively obvious. They recognize the situation because they deal with it every day. But it is not so obvious to the other participants at a meeting. They often don’t know how to interpret what’s going on. As a result of such confusion, people can become frustrated, angry, and passive…

Fortunately, it is easy to reduce the disparity between the perspective of the person-in-charge and the perspective of the other members. The solution is to show everyone what the person-in-charge is doing. Show a simple diagram like the one drawn above, and explain the options. When the choice point is made explicit, the confusion is removed.

Here’s a transcript of the diagram just referred to:

The Discussion Reaches a Stopping Point
Option A: The person-in-charge decides that the discussion has been adequate. S/he feels ready to bring the issue to closure by making a final decision.
Option B: The person-in-charge decides that important issues still need to be thought through. S/he wants the group to continue the discussion.

This awareness by everyone in the group is extremely important. It puts the appropriate frame on the discussion so that everyone understands their role. The decision will be made by the person-in-charge, as is the decision as to when to make that decision.

The Facilitator’s Four Functions

This helpful guide ends by reinforcing these final four points. In any discussion, it is the job of the facilitator to:

• Encourage full participation
• Promote mutual understanding
• Foster inclusive solutions
• Cultivate shared responsibility

The facilitator’s mission is to support people to do their best thinking. The four functions shown above are the guiding principles for enacting that mission.

Embedded in the four functions are the core values of participatory decision-making. They ground the work of group facilitation. They strengthen individuals. They strengthen the whole group. And they enable groups to tap the deep collective wisdom of their membership to develop intelligent, sane, sustainable agreements.

When we facilitate, we are the “delivery system” for participatory values. We embody them, we express them, we enact them. As such, we are keepers of the flame -- we’re the advocates, the teachers, and the midwives -- for the emergence of inclusive solutions to the world’s toughest problems.

It’s a final reminder, not just of the tactics, but the stakes.

+ + +

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Dragons - Chapter 46 (DRAFT)

At nine-thirty I went down to the staff office to meet with Mary. She wasn’t there. At that moment, no one was there, everyone else evidently out running some aspect of the conference itself. Behind them they had left scattered banquet chairs, piles of torn cardboard boxes, and paper plates smeared with the remains of breakfast danishes. I sat down on one of the chairs and tried to gather my thoughts.

Fuck, I was tired. That was the first and overwhelming thought I remember pouring through my brain. It was only the first day of the conference and I already felt exhausted. I put my face in my hands and tried to rub the fatigue out of my eyes.

I wondered what was going to happen. The situation with Caroline, with Amy and Wes Howard; I knew it was a major problem, but at that time I didn’t have any idea what could possibly be done about it. And then, unexpectedly, almost as if I was channelling her, I felt a sudden onrush of Susan’s fury coursing through my veins. It was the fury she had shown on her return from the education conference, where the problem that was Amy and Wes Howard had first revealed itself. For an instant I was as angry as she had been, my vision clouded by her desperate and wailing cry for justice. But just as quickly as Susan’s fury came it passed, and swelling up in its place was my own all-enveloping sense of foreboding fear. Fear that something awful was bound to happen, and that no one, least of all me, could do anything to stop it.

I looked at my watch. It was nine-thirty-six.

What quelled Susan’s fury and fed my own fear, I knew, was the memory of how Mary had reacted to Susan’s outrage. Where I could feel Susan’s anger, now as I did then, creeping in under my skin, raising the hair on the back of my neck, and compelling me towards some instinctive action, Mary, as she always seemed capable of being, had been simply cold, calm, and methodical. Despite Susan’s posture, a blustering dervish storming into her office, Mary, I remembered, had simply received the base information, pushed back on the accusations to test and understand them, and then decided on a direct course of action.

And what a decision it was. Susan had brought a problem named Wes Howard, but Mary had quickly and expertly turned it into a pair of problems named Amy Crawford and Caroline Abernathy. They were the ones who had acted inappropriately--disrespecting their supervisor and embarrassing the company in front of the clients it served. Susan, Mary had claimed, had no evidence of Wes’s misconduct, and therefore the smartest and safest thing to do was to discipline the employees who had been involved. Minutes later, a pair of meetings took place, Mary leaning heavily on Don Bascom to fire Amy and chew out Caroline.

I looked at my watch again. It was nine-thirty-eight.

I stood up. I was sweating. Wondering why it was so hot in the windowless room we had chosen as our staff office, I started pacing back and forth across the garish carpeting.

I saw the obvious parallel between that situation and the situation we were facing now. The scene was the same, only this time around, I realized with heart-skipping certainty, I had cast myself in the role of Susan Sanford. This time, it was me, not Susan, that had brought Mary the problem of Wes Howard and Amy Crawford. Did I really think Mary was going to do anything different this time? Why would she? The last time Wes caused trouble Mary pinned it on the involved staff. She would undoubtedly do so again. In fact, she may even gone out of her way to show me that was how she operated. What other reason was there for including me in both Amy’s termination and Caroline’s reprimand? I had no role to play in either meeting. Was that Mary’s attempt at a teachable moment? Was she coaching me? Showing me the way? Here, Alan. This is how we deal with problems around here. I felt my stomach drop to the floor as I realized that this might possibly be true.

At nine-forty-five I took out my cell phone and tried calling Mary. I listened to it ring four times and then her voicemail greeting kicked in. I hung up and tried redialing. This time it rang twice before the automated message picked up.

“Hello, this is Mary Walton. I can’t take your call right now, so please leave a message after the beep. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

I hung up again. Where was she? Now she was almost twenty minutes late, and I had to be somewhere else at ten o’clock. If she didn’t come soon, I would miss her, and then who knows when we would have another opportunity to connect.

I stopped myself short. The fear I had just been feeling helped put another idea in my head. Maybe it would be better if Mary and I did miss each other. Mary had already proven that she was not interested in solving the actual problem of Wes Howard, focusing instead on whatever was needed in order to preserve the relationship with the client. She was willing to sacrifice the careers or well being of her staff people for that objective.

Was I? A flurry of questions went racing through my mind. Weren’t there some circumstances where a client’s behavior was so egregious, so illegal, so wrong, that the right decision was to sever that relationship and protect the young and underpaid professionals who had been victimized? Was this one of those cases? And if so, did I have the wherewithal to do something about it?

Then I thought suddenly about the values project that Mary had put me in charge of, the draft statements still living unrealized on a forlorn document on my laptop. They had not yet been presented to our staff as official, Mary wanting everyone to get successfully through this conference before doing so. But I had long since committed them to memory. I was proud of them, or at least proud of the process we had used to create them, but now, some of those simple sentence fragments seemed to mock me.

Shows initiative.

Anticipates challenges.

Creatively applies resources to solve problems.

These were among the things we agreed were necessary for success in our environment, attributes it would be necessary for our staff to demonstrate. And they weren’t handed down from above, dictates from the mysterious figure in the corner office. They were developed by the very people who would need to embrace them in order to make them real. They were words on a piece of paper, of course they were, but they were also something more. Mary could pick and choose which ones she liked and which ones she didn’t, but they, in whatever combination she was comfortable with, were something larger than even her. They had a power, latent now, but there, and present, ready to be tapped when we needed them.

And now I realized with embarrassment that I had failed to live up to them. With regard to the problem that was Wes Howard, from the moment Susan had fatalistically brought it to my attention, I had done exactly the opposite of what our draft values required of me. What had I done instead? I punted. I had simply deferred the necessary decisions to Mary Walton.

I looked at my watch again. It was nine-fifty-five, and I was still all alone in our forgotten staff office.

To hell with it, and to hell with Mary Walton. I had to get myself to my ten o’clock appointment, and after that, I was determined to start taking matters into my own hands.

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“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Image Source
http://lres.com/heres-why-amcs-need-to-pay-close-attention-to-looming-regulatory-changes/businessman-in-the-middle-of-a-labyrinth/

Thou Shalt Not Be Aware by Alice Miller

In the maternity wards of Western civilization there is little chance of consolation … The newborn infant, with his skin crying out for the ancient touch of smooth, warmth-radiating, living flesh, is wrapped in dry, lifeless cloth. He is put in a box where he is left, no matter how he weeps, in a limbo that is utterly motionless (for the first time in all his body’s experience, during the eons of it evolution or during its eternity of bliss in the womb). The only sounds he can hear are the wails of other victims of the same ineffable agony. The sound can mean nothing to him. He cries and cries; his lungs, new to air, are strained with the desperation in his heart. No one comes. Trusting in the rightness of life, as by nature he must, he does the only act he can, which is to cry on. Eventually, a timeless lifetime later, he falls asleep exhausted.

These are not Miller’s words. She is quoting an excerpt from The Continuum Concept, a work by her fellow psychotherapist Jean Liedloff. Miller uses this excerpt as a kind of interlude in her text, positioned between one chapter and the next. The excerpt continues…

He awakens in a mindless terror of the silence, the motionlessness. He screams. He is afire from head to foot with want, with desire, with intolerable impatience. He gasps for breath and screams until his head is filled and throbbing with the sound. He screams until his chest aches, until his throat is sore. He can bear the pain no more and his sobs weaken and subside. He listens. He opens and closes his fists. He rolls his head from side to side. Nothing helps. It is unbearable. He begins to cry again, but it is too much for his strained throat; he soon stops: He stiffens his desire-racked body and there is a shadow of relief. He waves his hands and kicks his feet. He stops, able to suffer, unable to think, unable to hope. He listens. Then he falls asleep again.

Why Miller uses the excerpt in this way -- and why I’m going to quote it in full -- is because it is both dramatically moving and central to the entire thesis of Thou Shalt Not Be Aware.

When he awakens he wets his diaper and is distracted from his torment by the event. But the pleasant feeling of wetting and the warm, damp, flowing sensation around his lower body are quickly gone. The warmth is now immobile and turning cold and clammy. He kicks his legs. Stiffens his body. Sobs. Desperate with longing, his lifeless surroundings wet and uncomfortable, he screams through his misery until it is stilled by lonely sleep.

That thesis? Be warned. It says something dark about each and every one of us, and a vast conspiracy of silence and betrayal that has been perpetrated against us.

Suddenly he is lifted; his expectations come forward for what is to be his. The wet diaper is taken away. Relief. Living hands touch his skin. His feet are lifted and a new, bone-dry, lifeless cloth is folded around his loins. In an instant it is as though the hands had never been there, nor the wet diaper. There is no conscious memory, no inkling of hope. He is in unbearable emptiness, timeless, motionless, silent, wanting, wanting. His continuum tries its emergency measures, but they are all meant for bridging short lapses in correct treatment or for summoning relief from someone, it is assumed, who will want to provide it. His continuum has no solution for this extremity. The situation is beyond its vast experience. The infant, after breathing air for only a few hours, has already reached a point of disorientation from his nature beyond the saving powers of the mighty continuum. His tenure in the womb was the last he is ever likely to know of the interrupted state of well-being in which it is his innate expectation that he will spend his lifetime. His nature is predicated upon the assumption that his mother is behaving suitably and that their motivations and consequent actions will naturally serve one another.

It is this:

It has always been taken for granted that children are responsible for what was done to them, and it has been essential that when children grow up, they not be aware of the true nature of their past. In return, they are given the right to treat their own children in the same fashion.

And in that thesis, we see how mistaken Liedloff’s little infant is.

Someone comes and lifts him deliciously through the air. He is in life. He is carried a bit too gingerly for his taste, but there is motion. Then he is in his place. All the agony he has undergone is nonexistent. He rests in the enfolding arms, and though his skin is sending no message of relief from the cloth, no news of live flesh on his flesh, his hands and mouth are reporting normal. The positive pleasure of life, which is continuum normal, is almost complete. The taste and texture of the breast are there, the warm milk is flowing into his eager mouth, there is a heartbeat, which should have been his link, his reassurance of continuity from the womb, there is movement perceptible to his dim vision. The sound of the voice is right, too. There is only the cloth and the smell (his mother uses cologne) that leave something missing. He sucks and when he feels full and rosy, dozes off.

It is a radical thesis, especially in the world of psychotherapy, because it is in direct opposition to Freud, who would claim that Miller’s thesis, that children are responsible for what was done to them, is true (in fact, is the very basis of psychoanalysis) and not the sociological fraud that Miller claims that it is.

Freud called it his drive theory, which includes his concepts of infantile sexuality and the Oedipus complex. It is something he derived from his discussions and examinations of patients suffering from hysteria.

In his lecture, “The Aetiology of Hysteria,” published in 1896, Freud reports with great clarity, directness, and persuasiveness (at least for the reader of today) that in all eighteen cases of hysterical illness treated by him (six men and twelve women) he discovered in the course of the analytic work repression of sexual abuse by an adult or by an older sibling who had in turn previously been abused by adults. None of the eighteen patients was aware of this fact when treatment began, and Freud contends that their symptoms would not have appeared if these early memories had remained conscious. He is describing facts whose emergence came as a surprise even to him, and as a curious scientist of integrity he could hardly ignore this evidence; he seeks his audience’s understanding in spite of the moral indignation he feels himself. Sometimes one has the impression that he is trying to convince himself as well as his audience, because the facts in question strike him as monstrous. How was someone at the turn of the century who had learned to regard all adults as respected authority figures and who could not yet have any inkling of the knowledge we have today of ambivalence, the crucial importance of early childhood experiences, and the power of the repetition compulsion in the adult’s unconscious come to terms with such a discovery? Understandably, he was horrified and was inclined to pass moral judgment, something we as analysts of adults who abuse their children can perhaps not avoid until we have been able to experience with them the inner distress that goes with these acts. But Freud obviously had no knowledge at that point of the later ramifications of his finding, and he therefore had no choice but to consider these adults perverse. Since they were parents and therefore had to be respected at any cost, Freud was continually tempted not to believe what he discovered about his patients.

In other words, we are taught to trust authority, and under that banner authority abuses us, again and again. In the case of parents and children, that means for generations without end.

When he awakens he is in hell. No memory, no hope, no thought can bring the comfort of his visit to his mother into this bleak purgatory. Hours pass and days and nights. He screams, tires, sleeps. He wakes and wets his diaper. By now there is no pleasure in the act. No sooner is the pleasure of relief prompted by his innards than it is replaced, as the hot, acid urine touches his by-now chafed body, by a searing crescendo of pain. He screams. His exhausted lungs must scream to override the fiery stinging. He screams until the pain and screaming use him up before he falls asleep.

At his not unusual hospital the busy nurses change all diapers on schedule, whether they are dry, wet, or long wet, and send infants home chafed raw, to be healed by someone who has time for such things.

Miller will argue that from this first and simple inability to place blame on the authority figures that committed the abuse, the entirety of Freud’s drive theory was derived. When offered up to the psychological community, it was devoured in total, no student, like the innocent children of abuse, able to interpret the teachings of their betters outside any other context. It was true because those in authority said that it was. Miller calls this “poisonous pedagogy,” and much of her work is dedicated to illuminating its debilitating effects.

If it is an axiom of psychoanalytic training that everything that happened to the patient in childhood was the result of his drive conflicts, then sooner or later the patient must be taught to regard himself as wicked, destructive, megalomanic, or homosexual without understanding the reasons for his particular behavior. For those narcissistic traumas -- humiliation, rejection, mistreatment -- inflicted on the child and traditionally considered a normal part of child-rearing are not touched upon and thus cannot be experienced by the patient. Yet it is only by addressing these concrete situations that we can help the patient acknowledge his feelings of rage, hatred, indignation, and eventually, grief.

By the time he is taken to his mother’s home (surely it cannot be called his) he is well versed in the character of life. On a preconscious plane that will qualify all his further impressions, as it is qualified by them, he knows life to be unspeakably lonely, unresponsive to his signals, and full of pain.

But he has not given up. His vital forces will try forever to reinstate their balances, as long as there is life.

For some patients, this poisonous pedagogy becomes downright sadistic, something to be rebelled against rather than to buckle under and accept. Miller documents one such patient at some length.

In [this patient’s] report, the tragic traces of “poisonous pedagogy” are particularly striking. They can be seen not only in the approaches of the psychoanalytic training institutes, which often appear to have a veritable horror of originality, but, most tragically, in the years of wasted effort on the part of the patient and both [of her] analysts, all of whom were prevented from gaining access to the narcissistic traumas of early childhood because they were inhibited by the unspoken commandment to spare the parents and blame the child. For this reason, what [the patient] reports about her childhood, her parents, and her brothers remains sketchy and devoid of strong feelings … Now all [this patient’s] outrage is directed against psychoanalysis and her second analyst, who did not understand her. Would this woman have been able to struggle against her feelings for four years and bear such torment if she had not been brought up to ignore her inner voice and keep a stiff upper lip? The adults who figured in her early childhood are spared her rage, however. This is the rule, for the more or less conscious goal of adults in rearing infants is to make sure they will never find out later in life that they were trained not to become aware of how they were manipulated. Without “poisonous pedagogy” there would be no “poisonous psychoanalysis,” for patients would react negatively from the very beginning if they were misunderstood, ignored, not listened to, or belittled in order to be forced into a Procrustean bed of theories.

It is a vicious cycle. We are raised to ignore the abuse we have suffered, and when it causes a psychosis and we seek help, we are told that we are to blame for that abuse -- by someone who him or herself has been raised to ignore the abuse he or she has suffered, and taught to blame those abused for the abuse.

Home is essentially indistinguishable from the maternity ward except for the chafing. The infant’s waking hours are passed in yearning, wanting, and interminable waiting for rightness to replace the silent void. For a few minutes a day, his longing is suspended and his terrible skin-crawling need to be touched, to be held and moved about, is relieved. His mother is one who, after much thought, has decided to allow him access to her breast. She loves him with a tenderness she has never known before. At first, it is hard for her to put him down after his feeding, especially because he cries so desperately when she does. But she is convinced that she must, for her mother has told her (and she must know) that if she gives in to him now he will be spoiled and cause trouble later. She wants to do everything right; she feels for a moment that the little life she holds in her arms is more important than anything else on earth.

Because it is exactly this cycle -- the broken breaking the innocent because they are broken -- that Miller is primarily railing against.

Just as educators are convinced that their pedagogical measures are necessary for the child’s present and future well-being (and not for fulfilling their own needs), many psychotherapists honestly believe that their manipulative techniques are of life-sustaining importance for the patient and are not aware that they serve as a sometimes grandiose way of defending themselves against their own insecurity.

And it is this process that we especially see in the lengthy Liedloff excerpt -- all of it so much more painfully obvious because of how innocent a newborn baby has to be.

She sighs, and puts him gently in his crib, which is decorated with yellow ducklings and matches his whole room. She has worked hard to furnish it with fluffy curtains, a rug in the shape of a giant panda, white dresser, Bathinette and changing table equipped with powder, oil, soap, shampoo, and hairbrush, all made and packed in colors especially for babies. There are pictures on the wall of baby animals dressed as people. The chest of drawers is full of little undershirts, slumbersuits, bootees, caps, mittens, and diapers. There is a toy woolly lamb stood at a beguiling angle on top, and a vase of flowers -- which have been cut off from their roots, for his mother also “loves” flowers.

Because of course we are all innocent as babies and Freud’s drive theory is in error.

For if a child in the so-called phallic phase really had biologically determined, naturally sexual needs directed toward the parent of the opposite sex, there would not be any traumatic consequences if these desires were satisfied; then it would not be necessary to repress the experience of these needs so deeply that years of analysis are later required to uncover it. After all, how can a child have any knowledge of incestuous guilt? He or she comes to suspect it only because of secretive behavior on the part of adults. Only the adult knows there is an incest taboo, and only from the adult’s attitude does the child sense that something forbidden is being done to him. His own attitude is at bottom completely free of guilt. Why, then, should he experience any “drive conflicts”? The child seeks adults’ love because he cannot live without it; he meets all their demands to the extent that he is able -- for the sake of survival. He loves his parents, needs their presence, concern, and affection, and will learn to fit his attempt to win these indispensable treasures into the framework provided him by his parents from birth (e.g., by having his genitals massaged, tickled, or sucked, or by having orifices such as mouth and anus used for coitus-like purposes) may under certain circumstances come to regard this type of activity as love because he knows no other form of it. But to brand the child’s reactive desires as blameworthy, as implied in the drive theory, is undeniably a remnant of the ideology of “poisonous pedagogy,” which enables adults to delegate their guilt feelings to the child with the aid of various theories.

This, again, shows the value of the Liedloff excerpt. As adults, we view children through our own lens, never understanding theirs, nor how fundamentally different it is from our own, nor how our own oppressive viewpoint is what changes children into adults. Corruption preys on the innocent, not because it desires to befoul the innocent, but because it has no concrete way to see or understand the innocence that comes before it. Corruption corrupts the innocent, and blames the innocent for that corruption.

With that frame in mind, let’s finish with Liedloff before moving onto the next point.

She straightens baby’s undershirt and covers him with an embroidered sheet and a blanket bearing his initials. She notes them with satisfaction. Nothing has been spared in perfecting the baby’s room, though she and her young husband cannot yet afford all the furniture they have planned for the rest of the house. She bends to kiss the infant’s silky cheek and moves toward the door as the first agonized shriek shakes his body.

Softly, she closes the door. She has declared war upon him. Her will must prevail over his. Through the door she hears what sounds like someone being tortured. Her continuum recognizes it as such. Nature does not make clear signals that someone is being tortured unless it is the case. It is precisely as serious as it sounds.

She hesitates, her heart pulled toward him, but resists and goes on her way. He has just been changed and fed. She is sure he does not really need anything, therefore, and she lets him weep until he is exhausted.

He awakens and cries again. His mother looks in at the door to ascertain that he is in place; softly, so as not to awaken in him any false hope of attention, she shuts the door again. She hurries to the kitchen, where she is working, and leaves that door open so that she can hear the baby, in case “anything happens to him.”

The infant’s screams fade to quavering wails. As no response is forthcoming, the motive power of the signal loses itself in the confusion of barren emptiness where the relief ought, long since, to have arrived. He looks about. There is a wall beyond the bars of his crib. The light is dim. He cannot turn himself over. He sees only the bars, immobile, and the wall. He hears meaningless sounds in a distant world. There is no sound near him. He looks at the wall until his eyes close. When they open again, the bars and the wall are exactly as before, but the light is dimmer.

How Common Is The Sexual Abuse of Children?

As I read this book, this is the question that kept occurring to me, over and over again. I would read passages like this one...

It is quite natural for children to awaken sexual desire in the adult, because they tend to be beautiful, cuddly, affectionate, and because they admire the adult so much, probably more than anyone else does. If adults have a satisfying sex life with another adult, they have no need to act upon the desires aroused by the child or to ward them off. But if they feel themselves humiliated and not taken seriously by their partner, if their own needs were never allowed to unfold or mature, or if they were themselves seduced and violated as children, then these adults will show a strong tendency to impose their sexual needs on the child.

...and wonder, how common is this? And how much does it explain the dysfunction in our world? It seems clear that these cycles of abuse -- an abused child, grown to adulthood, abusing children, who grow into adults that abuse children…

Physical attraction and affection are always a part of love, and this has nothing to do with abuse. But parents who have had to repress the fact of having been abused and who have never consciously relived it can become very confused in this regard where their children are concerned. They will either suppress their genuine feelings of affection for fear of seducing their child or they will unconsciously do the same to the child that was done to them, without having any idea of how much harm they are causing, since they themselves always had to distance themselves from their suffering. How can these parents be helped? There is probably no possibility of curing their compulsion to repeat without extensive therapy. It is indeed difficult for people who as children were the property of their parents to realize when they are treating their own children like their property. Nevertheless, I see some hope if people become sensitive to the question, if they become conscious of these connections. This assumes that a person can at least admit that his or her parents were not gods or angels but often deprived and emotionally very isolated people for whom their child was the sole permissible object for the discharge of their affect; these parents, moreover, found justification for their behavior in various ideologies, including pedagogy and, not least of all, even psychoanalysis with its theory of “infantile sexuality.”

...but how common are these cycles? For how many of our friends and neighbors is this their sad and tragic fate?

Miller’s book never explicitly tells me. Near the end I stumbled across an uncited reference that “eighty percent of all female drug addicts and seventy percent of all prostitutes were sexually abused as children”, but that’s all the information it offers. Turning to Wikipedia, I find that the estimates for the sexual abuse of children in the United States vary widely. “A literature review of 23 studies found rates of 3% to 37% for males and 8% to 71% for females, which produced an average of 17% for boys and 28% for girls, while a statistical analysis based on 16 cross-sectional studies estimated the rate to be 7.2% for males and 14.5% for females.

Let’s go with the lowest numbers: 7% of males and 14% of females were victims of sexual abuse as children. With approximately 152 million males and 157 million females in the U.S. population (according to the 2010 census), that means that 10.6 million males and 22 million females have been the victims of sexual abuse as children. Put another way, for every 10 people you know, one of them was sexually abused as a child.

I don’t know that there is any other word for that than horrific. And it leads directly back to my previous speculation. When we’re confronted with dysfunction in our society, it seems reasonable to attribute some significant portion of it to the sexual abuse of children.

To Be Accursed

Miller’s last chapter, “Literature: Franz Kafka’s Suffering,” is a fascinating examination of several writers, Kafka among them, who, based on their writings, Miller suspects of having been sexually or otherwise abused as children. In this examination, Miller comes to the rational but troubling conclusion that their art was in many ways dependent on the abuse that they suffered.

There was much suffering in the childhood of all great writers because they experienced the wounds, humiliations, fears, and feelings of abandonment that are an inevitable part of that period of life much more strongly and intensely than others. By storing up the pain they suffered, by making it an essential part of themselves and of their later imaginative life and then expressing it in transfigured form, they guarantee the survival of their painful feelings.

My favorite example is the following story Miller tells about a young Gustave Flaubert.

At the age of fifteen, Gustave Flaubert wrote a story that he entitled “Quidquid volueris.” The hero of the tale is sixteen-year-old Djalioh, the offspring of an orangutan and a slave girl, a union that was planned and brought about in Brazil by Monsieur Paul, a young and ambitious scientist “with a cold heart.” Monsieur Paul takes the child and raises him, but he is unable to teach him human speech. Fifteen years later, when Paul returns to his native France to marry Adele, he brings Djalioh with him. The boy loves Adele, who regards him only as a poor, feeble-minded creature or a good-natured ape. Here are the final scenes of the story in the words of fifteen-year-old Flaubert:

It was in one of these city mansions that Djalioh lived with Monsieur Paul and his wife, and for almost two years much had been taking place in his soul, and the tears he had held back had hollowed out a deep cavity therein.

One morning -- it was that day I’m telling you about -- he got up and went into the garden, where a baby about a year old, wrapped in fine silks and linens, embroideries, and colorful ribbons, was asleep in a cradle whose top was gilded by the rays of the sun.

The child’s nurse was not there. Djalioh looked all around, approached the cradle, going right up to it, and quickly pulled back the covers; then he stood there a while -- looking at this poor, drowsy, sleeping creature, its chubby hands, its rounded contours, its white neck, its little fingernails. Finally he seized it with both hands, swung it round in the air over his head and dashed it with all his might to the ground, which reverberated with the impact. The baby cried out, and its brains spurted out ten paces away next to a gilly-flower.

Djalioh opened his pale lips and gave a forced laugh that was cold and terrible like the laughter of the dead. He immediately went to the house, up the staircase, opened the door to the dining room, closed it again, took the key to that room as well as to the hall door, and -- entering the vestibule of the salon -- threw them both out the window into the street. Finally, he entered the salon, softly, on tiptoe, and once there he double-locked the door behind him. What little light the carefully closed shutters allowed to penetrate into the room fell dimly upon him.

Djalioh stood still and heard only the sound of the pages Adele’s white hand was turning…

Finally, he approached the young woman and sat down beside her. She trembled suddenly and turned her troubled blue eyes to him. Her flowing dressing-gown of white chiffon was open at the neck, and her legs were crossed in such a way that in spite of her gown one could see the contours of her thighs. Surrounding her was an intoxicating perfume; her white gloves lying on the armchair with her sash, her handkerchief, her scarf -- all that had such a delicate and distinctive scent that Djalioh’s large nostrils opened wide to take in the aroma…

“What do you want of me?” she asked in fright as soon as she saw him.

And a long silence followed; he didn’t answer and fixed his devouring gaze on her. Then, drawing closer and closer, he seized her around the waist with both hands and pressed on her neck a burning kiss that seemed to stab Adele like the bite of a serpent. He saw her flesh redden and quiver.

“Oh! I’m going to call for help,” she cried in fright. “Help! Help! Oh! The monster!” she added, looking at him.

Djalioh did not respond, he only stammered and struck his head in rage. What! Not to be able to say a word to her! Not to be able to enumerate his torments and his sorrows and not to have anything to offer her but the tears of an animal and the sighs of a monster! And then to be thrust aside like a reptile! To be hated by what one loves and to be aware of the impossibility of saying anything! To be accursed and not be able to blaspheme!

It’s turgid, but powerful prose. It seems to sum up all that Miller and even Liedloff have to say about the impossible position and perspective of the abused child. To be hated by what one loves and to be aware of the impossibility of saying anything! To be accursed and not be able to blaspheme!

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Dragons - Chapter 45 (DRAFT)

The exhibit hall opened without a hitch, thanks in no small part to the efforts of Angie Ferguson. When I found her, thirty minutes before show opening, standing astride the main aisle with a walkie-talkie in each hand, periodically barking orders into one or the other, her blocky frame surrounded by a swirl of electricians, independent construction contractors, and booth personnel, I have to admit I had my doubts. There were still crates to be removed from the floor, aisle carpet to be put down, and trash to be picked up. I didn’t see how it could all get done in thirty minutes, and waited impatiently for Angie to complete one of her seemingly continuous radio dialogues to express that very concern.

Angie could tell I was anxious and held up one of her fingers in the hand that was holding the walkie she wasn’t currently talking into.

“Booth five-zero-zero-one, Earl,” she was saying into the other one. “Right at the front of the hall. They’ve been waiting for internet access since six last night. Get someone over there and get it taken care of.”

I tried to say something, but Angie wagged her silencing finger at me.

The walkie-talkie next to her face crackled, and then Earl’s voice came back. “Okay. Booth five-zero-zero-one.”

“And then get a scissor lift over to booth seven-five-one-five. The sign your guys hung above their booth is crooked and they want it fixed.”

Crackle. “Seven-five-one-five. Got it.”

“And then get all the empty crates off the show floor. There’s a whole pile of them back by the south restrooms. We can’t start dropping aisle carpet until all the forklifts are off the floor.”

This time the crackle was slower in coming, but I knew better than to interrupt. Angie and I stood looking at each other, waiting for Earl to acknowledge.

Crackle. “Copy that.”

“What is it?” Angie asked me suddenly.

“Are we going to be ready?” I asked, popping my arm out to look at my wristwatch. “We’re supposed to open the hall in twenty-six minutes.

“Yes, no problem,” Angie replied matter-of-factly, handing me one of the walkie-talkies she was holding. “Go man the front entrance. Keep the ropes up until I signal you.”

I took the black Motorola from her, looking it over and trying to remember the insufficient orientation I had received in its use.

I had no time to ask. Before I could say another word, an exhibitor inserted herself between me and Angie and started complaining loudly about malfunctioning lights in her booth.

“Earl,” Angie said into her remaining radio, as she began moving purposefully in the direction of the frustrated exhibitor’s booth. “Have an electrician meet me in booth two-six-eight-two ASAP. Those lights are blinking out again.”

If Earl acknowledged that last command, I never knew, since Angie had already moved out of my earshot. Earl, I knew, was our service representative at the company we had hired to set-up, coordinate, and tear down our exhibit hall. He was a hard-working man, someone with a thick Chicago accent, who frequently took his clients out for drinks and who always looked like he had slept in his clothes. Where he was, and how he was coordinating all the things Angie demanded of him over her walkie-talkies; I didn’t have any idea.

At the front entrance of the exhibit hall, a thin rope line had been set up, something to keep the gathering masses at bay while the sense-overwhelming experience of our exhibit hall was prepared for them. And the masses were starting to gather, at least a hundred milling about when I arrived at T minus eighteen minutes. A line of three hired security guards stood equally spaced immediately behind the rope line, guards who had let me pass minutes before on the evidence of my staff badge, but who didn’t know me from Adam. I waved my newly-acquired walkie-talkie at one of them as a symbol of my authority.

“Angie’s going to call me when it’s okay to open the hall,” I said.

The person I was speaking to simply nodded, his droopy eyes giving the appearance that he hadn’t slept in days. His uniform pants were too long for his legs and his coat was too big in the shoulders.

I looked at the other two in turn, repeating myself, waiting for someone to show a glimmer of recognition. I was not so rewarded, so I simply took my place among them. When they all silently adjusted their positions so that the four of us were equally spaced across the rope line, however, I couldn’t help but feel like I had been accepted, a little like an extra outfielder in the peewee leagues.

When they started rolling out the bright red aisle carpet, we had no more than five minutes to spare, and the crowd on the other side of the rope line had grown at least five fold. They were all pressed tightly against each other, forming a concentrated mass of humanity. Tall and short, fat and thin; they were there in strength. But they were, I realized, almost entirely old, or at least older than me, and all dressed in the same business attire one would wear to an interview. The men among them all looked like Paul Webster and the women all looked like Eleanor Rumford, certainly not in their skin colors and hairdos, but most certainly in their age, attire, and bodily presence. They were professionals, well established in their careers, and yet here they stood, willingly packed together like teenagers trying to get into a rock concert.

One of them met my eyes. It was a woman, the lanyard of her name badge hanging crookedly across her breast, and three bags -- a purse, a briefcase, and one of the throwaway convention bags we gave to each attendee -- hanging awkwardly from straps on her shoulders. She was pressed between two men, neither of them seemingly aware of her presence. For a moment a look of discomfort passed over her face, and then her eyes seemed to drift back into a kind of willing and learned obedience, like a beast of burden waiting for its turn at the feeding trough.

My walkie-talkie crackled. “This is Angie calling Alan.”

I looked at my watch. It was one minute before nine o’clock. I pushed one of the buttons on the walkie-talkie and waited for it to beep.

“Go ahead, Angie.”

Crackle. “You can open the hall now.”

“Ten-four,” I said, and without having to tell them the three security guards moved forward to unhook and remove the restraining rope. In an instant the crowd began flowing into the exhibit hall, exactly, I thought, like Christmas shoppers on the day after Thanksgiving, anxious to get their hands and their credit cards on the shiny baubles that the witch doctors in a hundred different marketing departments had been working all year to convince they could not live without. I stood like an unyielding boulder in a stream, the people flowing all around me. At one point I even closed my eyes, and focused solely on the breezy sensation of their passing.

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“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Image Source
http://lres.com/heres-why-amcs-need-to-pay-close-attention-to-looming-regulatory-changes/businessman-in-the-middle-of-a-labyrinth/