Sociatry81907

[Adam Blatner]

    Dear Ed,  I certainly respect your social concern. I just question the value of 
re-stating the degree of  trouble we're in and noting all its permutations. It seems as if 
you're shouting, but as I say, my preference is to focus more on specific remedies. 
Really, we're talking about consciousness raising, and including  ecology as part of our 
circle of concern. The next question is, how can we best do this?
       My approach is to help people strengthen their capacity to address issues, to 
foster responsibility by increasing their
>> ability to respond. I hope to do this by broadening their role repertoire through 
>> including action, sociodramatic techniques, as part of learning. Most folks don't know 
>> how to role reverse, for example; there's a knack to extending the imagination this 
>> way.
       I hope to promote the use of role theory as a user-friendly language for 
psychology. The world needs to know how to integrate the best insights of psychology and 
this is more difficult if there's too much weird jargon.
      Other goals are noted on my website biography. All these are aimed at strengthening 
the infrastructure.
 Approaching it from another angle: I think people tend to avoid thinking about that which 
they cannot think about. Sretching more   than a little bit is experienced as overloading. 
This is true in sports physiology and psychology, too. In psychology, Vygotsky talks about 
learning at what he calls the Zone of Proximal Development. I call it the edge. Folks 
don't learn beyond that zone or edge-region. We can gradually expand that region. (This 
also relates to the principle of warming-up, but taken to a broader perspective.) We can 
strengthen the "infra-structure" of skills, knowledge, and attitude. That's where I see 
many of Moreno's contributions having a common denominator.
     Shouting about the urgency of the problem, though, may be counter-productive. Faced 
with the threat of what is experienced by the limbic system as threat, shame, guilt, 
punishment, the mind shuts down.
     So I focus on tiny steps, what can be done. This also partakes of (of all people) B. 
F. Skinner's principles of operant
conditioning as part of learning theory: Break it down into small steps, relatively easy 
achievements; and reinforce each step.
      What do you think? Warmly, Adam