Upon arrival in my first Human Development class, I had no specific expectations beyond learning something new, as I had not given much thought to development. Absent a formal, everyday learning environment, though questions and issues regarding development surround us at work and in our personal lives, we pay them scarcely little attention, consumed as we are in the hectic workaday world. It quickly became clear, however, that observation of, reflection on, and nurturing development are key to virtually every human activity. A small percentage of the population are genetically predisposed to excel in the evolution of their fellows; those rare teachers, managers and other leaders spring to mind when one reflects on their own development. However, the majority of us must “develop” our ability to nurture.
Speaking of nurture, the age-old debate “nature vs. nurture” entered the classroom parlance almost immediately, and though we did not have to take sides, I leaned heavily toward the notion of nurture as the primary driving force in development. However, once one begins to delve into research, one can find any number of theories that challenge his/her beliefs and inclinations, which is eminently useful in one's development. My first revelatory moment came in the discovery of the theories of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
“Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Maker of the world but degenerates once it gets into the hands of man.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Returning to a term used earlier, inclinations, reveals the thrust behind Rousseau's work. He advanced the theory that children are best developed through a “naturalistic education” where a child would have “no other guide than his own reason by the time he is educated”(Gianoutsis, 2008) and that this education is derived from “inclinations, not from habits” (Gianoutsis, 2008) Where I stand in accord with Rousseau is in the notion that inclinations, much like the biology of a plant, for example, are what guide a child in early development, and as they acquire reason they are then able to merge with adult society while maintaining the tools to “ignore society's ills” (Gianoutsis, 2008). Where I differ with Rousseau is his insistence on isolating the child in nature. Of course, communing with nature is clearly desirable, and today's youth do not spend enough time in natural pursuits. However, what Rousseau proposed would be labeled “home schooling” today, and despite the benefits of pedagogy and curriculum specifically designed for the individual child, the pitfalls of social isolation are too great to dismiss. I shudder to think of a world where everyone, or even a majority of the population, is home-schooled. In the early years of the twenty-first century, we already observe the implications of the insulating nature of technology; adding to these difficulties a sequestered educational environment seems a recipe for further societal breakdown. So, on the whole what we are discussing here is Rousseau's belief in the strengths of a child's natural inclinations against the limitations of her/his early development, or the inability to reason. In a sense, Rousseau believed that only when a child could match the experience of the reinforcement of rewarding responses with the association of ideas could they be prepared to face the big, scary outside world. Within his theories I tend to focus primarily on the natural inclinations, which include play. Rousseau states, “I felt before I thought, which is the common lot of man” (Gianoutsis, 2008). He posited that children learn best “through their senses, through investigating and exploring the natural world” (Gianoutsis, 2008). After reading Rousseau and the theorist I will discuss next, I came to realize that I was in fact more firmly in the “nature” camp in the nature/nurture debate.
It is my belief that Rousseau's naturalistic theory of development aligns with at least one aspect in the design of contemporary pedagogical theory; that of the approach employed in the educational system in Finland. The Finns believe that children should not begin their formal education until the age of seven, because before that age they learn best through play. Though Rousseau believed that his subject “Emile” should begin his traditional schooling at age twelve, when presumably he would be at that cherished “age of reason,” I am certain he would be a strong proponent for the methods and biological time line adhered to by the Finns, who are universally regarded as having one of the best educational systems in the world.
My second revelatory experience came while researching for a paper in early childhood development, attempting to find contemporary developmental theorists who were ensconced in the natural or genetic end of the eternal debate. Though Noam Chomsky is hailed as the country's preeminent linguist, he is rarely viewed as an expert in child development. He is also seen by some to be a philosopher, though others would argue, quite sincerely, that he is not a philosopher at all, that linguistics is an entirely different discipline, albeit a neighboring one. I am not going to argue that point; it is little more than a question of definition (Though I hasten to add that Rousseau was viewed first as a philosopher). Nonetheless, I believe that to dismiss his masterful work as having no significant implications for child development is a grievous oversight.
The central focus for my argument for Chomsky as a vitally important developmental theorist comes in the form of his theory of a “Language Acquisition Device.” Chomsky first put his ideas forward in the late 1950s, as part of a critique of behavioral psychology. He argued that the way we actually acquire the use of language, its relationship to experience, and therefore its relationship to the world, is quite different from what traditional contemporary philosophy has always maintained. Behavioral psychologists have tended to characterize the human individual entering the world as an undifferentiated lump of malleable stuff, to be molded and shaped by its environment; through processes of stimulus and response, penalty and reward, the individual developed and learned, including the learning of language. I would dare say that the acquisition and use of language is the most important aspect of our development; this I believe to be self-evident.
Chomsky further argued that the accepted wisdom surrounding development and its characterization as almost entirely environmental could not possibly explain how virtually all human beings, regardless of their intelligence, do something as amazingly difficult as master the use of a language, even when they are not deliberately taught it, as most people surely are not. Also, that they do this at such an extraordinarily young age and in such an extraordinarily short period of time. He explains that for this to happen we must be genetically pre-programmed to do it, and that all human languages must have a basic structure that corresponds to this pre-programming. This is what he calls our “Language Acquisition Device.” Perhaps neuroscientist Terrence Deacon explains it best; “Infants are predisposed to learn human languages, acquiring within a few years an immensely complex rule system and a rich vocabulary at a time when they cannot even learn elementary arithmetic” (Chomsky, 2002). My personal discovery of the ideas of Chomsky has proved a life-changer; not only is his work in philosophy and linguistics so vital to our understanding of human development, but also his scholarly research and writings on backdoor political machinations in the Western world, all part of the public record but largely neglected by mainstream media and suppressed as inconvenient to the powers that be, as well as the use of propaganda as an advertising and public relations tool, add to our understanding of development in ways both enlightening and disturbing. I will address these issues later, as an entirely different form of human development (or, perhaps more accurately, practices that might be an impediment to development). Needless to say, Professor Chomsky has become the singularly influential developmental theorist of my experience.
After studying the work of Rousseau and Chomsky, I felt that I was firmly planted in the natural, biological ways of development. It would be easy for one to argue that both biology and environment contribute to our understanding of the world, how we behave, and how we learn. However, this is a cop-out; we can all agree that we learn naturally AND are nurtured, but we must lean one way or the other, or so I thought. Then, in our Mid-Child/Adolescent development course, we read “A Tribe Apart” by Patricia Hersch. I was completely blown away. These were kids from middle class families who were having sex, taking and dealing drugs, and committing crimes, the types of acts that I have always assumed were committed by children from poor or broken homes; and all came from families that claimed to be Christian. What we discover when reading a book like “A Tribe Apart” is even children from Christian homes can have their growth severely stunted if their parents are neglectful. I thought about what it must be like to be brought into a hyper-competitive world like ours when generations of your family have struggled with poverty, addiction, mental illness, or just poor parenting. Imagine you are one of the millions of people in this country who are unable to find a job commensurate with your education and abilities, and all that is left for you is work that pays just above minimum wage, or at best $8-$9 dollars an hour. In order to pay the bills, you must work two, or perhaps even three jobs. None of these part-time, and in some cases even full-time jobs have health insurance. Because your hours vary with each job, this leaves no time for you to improve your situation by going back to college, or even vocational/trade school. Even if you made all the right choices in terms of cutting expenses, you still might not have any money left to enjoy even the least expensive leisure activities, and even if you did, you would not have the time. There are no funds left after living expenses to save for retirement, and now your elected officials are talking about cutting what little retirement you have been paying into, social security. Owning a home is out of the question, and if you already own one, you would be in danger of losing it if you lost even a little of your meager income, if you were able to hold onto a home with what you make. Even keeping up adequate transportation puts you in a precarious situation month to month, but you are willing to sacrifice and use public transit, if it is available in your area to get you where you need to go. If you have other mouths to feed, well, you are hanging by a thread. And I'm speaking of people who have some education beyond high school; millions more have no choice but menial labor at minimum wage. This is called “living for work” - would you want to live like that? Are you a paycheck or a layoff away from being there? Millions of us are on the precipice.
Now imagine you are a child born to parents who must live for work and, worse yet, they are indifferent in their parenting. The sort of parents who do not read to their children; parents who do not take the time to nurture and truly care for the needs of their kids. Or your parents were abusive, emotionally or physically or both. Perhaps your parents are also not able to maintain their own relationship, and their struggles are magnified through conflict, abuse and eventual break-up of the marriage. Add to this the economic difficulties that so many folks experience in this country and you have a recipe for disaster. These are the teens and young adults that we see on the streets of Portland every day. These are not children born of privilege; they are neglected and abused.
When I decided I wanted to become a teacher, I had no illusions that it would be an easy vocation, or that I would be paid handsomely to do it. However, when I contemplate what people like the ones I have just described go through every day just to live, with little hope for the future in the face of the greed and avarice that surrounds their existence, I not only knew for whom I was devoting my life's work, but also that perhaps I would be asked to serve in a capacity with more responsibility to society at large. Regardless of what path I choose in my quest to serve others as humbly and faithfully as I can, Patricia Hersch's book has crystallized for me the importance of parental nurturing in the development of children: it is not unfair or an overstatement to say that parental nurturing can be the difference between a life of relative comfort and a life of struggle; one of an abundance of health or an early death. But what of those who are left to teach and counsel the neglected and abused children in our society? How are we best to support them?
We as a nation are, to put it kindly, enigmatic when it comes to the education of other people's children. Hilary Clinton was reviled in many circles for suggesting that it might “take a village” to raise a child. For some, particularly in political opposition to Mrs. Clinton, this was akin to socialism. Yet year after year we expect our public school teachers to essentially “babysit” troubled children, while giving them fewer and fewer resources to do it, let alone support. Then, when punishment becomes necessary, these neglectful parents are up in arms about outsiders interfering with the raising of their child. Rick Weissbourd, a Harvard University Graduate School of Education lecturer, in an article in Educational Leadership, seems to resign himself and his fellow educators to the notion that “the public believes that schools are largely responsible for remedying the problems associated with the steady increase in delinquency, disrespect and greed among today's students” (Weissbourd, 2003). He goes on to say that “the moral development of students does not depend primarily on explicit character education efforts, but on the maturity and ethical capacities of the adults with whom they interact” (Weissbourd, 2003). So the question remains, does it take a village to raise a child? And if it does, how can we expect educators to bear the brunt of the moral education (and by extension, the educational development) of our children, while simultaneously slapping their hands and tying them behind their backs through lack of funding and support? We know that classroom discipline is essential in order to develop the minds of students, yet we send teachers to the schools with the most severe discipline problems ill-prepared to keep order, thus ensuring that these schools and their students remain trapped in a vicious cycle of falling educational standards and the concomitant dearth of funding. Because many other countries, with nowhere near the financial wherewithal of the United States, can achieve success in education that surpasses us in virtually every meaningful measure, one can only conclude that it is a matter of priorities and the development of our children is not a priority. The study of human development has solidified my belief that the American way of life will wither and die if we do not find the will to provide every child with a well-rounded education.
Previously I stated my intention to address impediments to human development. I believe these are issues that need to be addressed in order for us to continue to evolve as a species. In my discovery of the work of Noam Chomsky, I found in his book “On Nature and Language’ a chapter discussing the “project of keeping the public uninformed, passive and obedient” (Chomsky, 2002) or another way to view it is the use of propaganda to train the public to become mindless consumers. It started in this country during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, who established the Committee on Public Information, for which the aim was to win support among a passive public for joining the First World War. As Chomsky discovered, the effort “had enormous success, including scandalous fabrications that were exposed long after they had done their work, and often persist even after exposure” (Chomsky, 2002). This form of propaganda caught the attention of Adolf Hitler, who employed similar practices leading up to and during the Second World War. However, it was the American business community's discovery of the potential for propaganda to “shape attitudes and beliefs” (Chomsky, 2002) that had grave implications for the course of the American century, and perhaps the whole of humanity. Chomsky quotes one of the founders of the PR industry, Edward Bernays (who belonged to Wilson's propaganda agency): “It was the outstanding success of propaganda during the war that opened the eyes of the intelligent few in all departments of life to the possibilities of regimenting the public mind” (Chomsky, 2002). What the business community and political leaders feared more than anything was a true democracy. They viewed the general public as “meddlesome outsiders” who are to keep to the sidelines when it comes to democracy; “spectators, not participants” (Chomsky, 2002). Walter Lippman, arguably the preeminent journalist of the twentieth century, was brought into the fold by industry and government to help in “the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses” (Chomsky, 2002). The task of the media, government and the public relations and advertising industries, as manuals of the time period explain, is to “impose a philosophy of futility” and “lack of purpose in life” (Chomsky, 2002). They further explained that they must find ways to “concentrate human attention on the more superficial things that comprise much of fashionable consumption” (Chomsky, 2002). In other words, for the better part of the last century, Americans have been brainwashed to be mindless consumers; first through the print media and radio, then through television. In a real sense, one could argue that our development as a species was short-circuited. Can we evolve beyond this?
Former President Jimmy Carter thought we should try. In 1979 Carter, his presidency in turmoil and his conscience heavy, spoke to the American people from the Oval Office, in a speech that many analysts, then and now, judged as political suicide. Ironically, the immediate positive reaction gave him a tremendous boost in the polls; however, it was a very short-lived moment in the sun. Carter spoke of “a fundamental threat to American democracy” and “the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives” (Carter, 1979). He called this a “crisis of confidence.” Carter was not just speaking of energy consumption when he said “too many of us tend to worship self-indulgence, and consumption” (Carter, 1979). He added, “Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns” and “we have discovered that owning things, and consuming things, does not satisfy our longing for meaning” and “piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no purpose” (Carter, 1979). More powerful words have rarely been spoken by an American politician. And I think it is no small irony that these words reflect precisely what our government officials, along with the PR and advertising industries, hoped to engender in us generations ago so that we would be nothing more than passive “spectators” in the democratic process. This process has continued unabated for decades.
The introduction of television, with its insidious emphasis on advertising, has profound implications for human development, and is a technology that aligns perfectly with what the powerful government and business interests hoped to achieve all those years ago to stifle participatory democracy. In his groundbreaking but now largely forgotten 1977 book, “Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television,” Jerry Mander posits that television “places in our minds images of realities that are outside our experience, causing changes in feeling and utter confusion as to what is real and what is not’ (Mander, 1977). He goes on to make the case that technology does not always support human development; in fact, particularly with television, it may cause devolution of the species. Mander reminds us that “pre-technological peoples were surrounded by nature, and they developed an automatic intimacy with the natural world” (Mander, 1977). This connection with nature forms the core of our development as a species (and this correlates with Chomsky's theory of a Language Acquisition Device and Rousseau's naturalistic education). Twentieth and twenty-first century Americans were “the first in human history to live predominantly inside projections of our own minds” (Mander, 1977), mostly because of television. When we rely on technology to lend form to our experience, we short-circuit our development; thus, when we encounter nature, we must refer to technology to confirm that what we have experienced is real, a negative feedback loop that is perpetuated by still more technology. More recent studies have shown how images and voices from television enter directly into our unconscious minds, unfiltered. Mander showed us that not only is television sensory deprivation, which causes, among other things, hyperactivity, but also that the very nature of the technology, “with the light constantly flickering upon our retinas” (Mander, 1977), causes a state of hypnosis; not in the usual sense of a catatonic feeling, but much like a passive mental attitude; or as Mander says “Since there is no way to stop the images, one merely gives over to them. Thinking only gets in the way” (Mander, 1977).
Aside from the obvious implications for subliminal manipulation in advertising (such as creating “needs” that were not there before), the best example I can find for television's (and technology's) interruption of human development is in propaganda. When a political pundit tells us, despite all evidence to the contrary, that France's health care system is “a disaster” (and provides no facts to support this statement), the viewer is taking that statement into their unconscious mind, unfiltered, and ultimately are much more likely to cast their ballot for a candidate who espouses the same beliefs. I challenge anyone to explain to me how that sort of manipulation, through a medium which has proven to be so effective in shaping the attitudes and opinions of the masses, does not stand in the way of human development and societal progress. “Thinking only gets in the way.”
One can easily make the case that technology, which employs imagery that far too often promotes oversexualization, with particularly important implications for women, stands in opposition to human sexual development. It is alarming how devoid of understanding boys and even men are regarding female sexuality. Given that we are naturally sexual beings, one would think that we could have evolved beyond our patriarchal history and embraced the mysteries of the sexual female, for the benefit of both sexes. Though I believe that religious dogma plays an enormous part in our inability to evolve and develop as sexual beings, it is the objectifying images that we create, through all forms of media but especially effective through the hypnotizing effects of television, which cause the most harm. This is where the quote from Rousseau regarding “everything degenerating once in the hands of man” comes into focus. In “The Second Sex,” Simone de Beauvoir probably put it best as to the lot of women in an oversexualized, male fantasy-dominated culture: ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic destiny explains the figure that the human female assumes in society; it is the whole of civilization that creates this product that we call feminine” (de Beauvoir, 1948). In other words, just as we have created unreal environments that cause confusion when we are finally confronted with reality, we have also created images of ourselves as sexual creatures that do not match our natural inclinations. To say that our pre-technological ancestors would not recognize anything that we call humanity today, sexual or otherwise, would be an understatement. And de Beauvoir made these observations before the advent of television!
The controversial psychiatrist R.D. Laing once said that “the growing incidence of mental illness these days may be explained in part by the fact that the world we call real and which we ask people to live within and understand is itself open to question” (Horwitz, 2003). Personally, I believe that increases in mental illness can be attributed to the hyper-competitive nature of our society, which attaches status and meaning to financial success; when you are one of the losers in that competition, and invariably there are many and can only be more as the reality of economic stagnation plays out, you may find it a struggle to find a purpose for your existence. Allan Horwitz, commenting on misconceptions of mental illness in “Creating Mental Illness,” believes that “much of what we regard as mental illnesses today are simply cultural constructs” (Horwitz, 2003); this parallels Jerry Mander's theory that television has caused people to create realities in their minds that are actually another person's imaginings, real yet not real. Perhaps we are all correct, on some level. Regardless, facing reality seems to be a problem for many in our culture; the reasons are numerous and varied, but it would be difficult to argue that the instances and theories I have presented play a great part in this problem. The inability to face reality can be found in our numerous forms of escapism (television and movies, even sports) and in our mainstream media, which report distortions as fact. When determining what method of therapy aligns closest to my beliefs, as well as what I have learned about human development and counseling theory, and what I believe will be of most benefit in today's mental health environment, I found myself gravitating to Gestalt therapy.
The films of John Cassavetes, my favorite film director, are, in my view, an excellent example of Gestalt filmmaking. Cassavetes' work was often misinterpreted as improvisation, so real were the characters and situations. Cassavetes viewed every frame in his films as a journey of discovery. Gestalt therapy's emphasis is “on what is being done, thought and felt at the moment rather than on what was, might be, could be, or should be” (Yontef, Simkin, 1981). The comparison of Cassavetes' work to Gestalt therapy is an instructive and worthwhile endeavor, which I will continue as a theme for my integrated therapy.
Gestalt therapy is a phenomenological-existential therapy introduced by Frederick and Laura Perls in the 1940s. It teaches therapists and patients “the phenomenological method of awareness, in which perceiving, feeling, and acting are distinguished from interpreting and reshuffling preexisting attitudes” (Yontef, Simkin, 1981). As with existentialism, Cassavetes felt that people are continuously remaking and discovering themselves. Possibly the best example of how Cassavetes' work parallels Gestalt therapy is this observation from biographer Ray Carney in “The Films of Cassavetes”: “His films can only teach us new understandings by forcibly denying us old ones” (Carney, 1994). This is precisely what the Perls were bringing to the world with their theories; understanding the difference between what is “residue from the past and what is actually being perceived and felt in the current situation” (Yontef, Simkin, 1981). Cassavetes never worked in the “what was” or “what should be”: Characters in a Cassavetes film were never static; we never knew their motivations or character fully coming into a scene, as they were always evolving. Whether we want to face it or not, this is who we are as humans, perpetually reinventing ourselves, consciously or unconsciously. One of my favorite quotes, of unknown origin is: “When we seek permanence, this is when our troubles begin.”
It is not at all inaccurate to describe Gestalt therapy as reality-based. This is why I appreciate making the connection to the notion of permanence; we may be able to find some sense of permanence in material things (such as a house or car), but there is nothing permanent about who we are. That is our reality. Gestalt therapy aims to separate us from our longing for permanence, unless of course we are talking about a permanent state of thoughtful self-knowledge. Only in this way can we come to grips with our ever-changing moods and work within that reality to become the people we want to be.
As Gary Yontef illustrates,“the Gestalt therapist works by engaging in dialogue rather than by manipulating the patient toward some therapeutic goal” (Yontef). Unlike Cassavetes, who wanted to shake people out of their vegetable torpor with real-life dialogue and situations, most conventional Hollywood movies are constantly out to manipulate our emotions and present us with characters whose motivations are clear from the start to the finish, and whom have goals that are set and achieved. The manipulation of our emotions often comes in the form of music; particularly so with technology that allows someone to take two often wildly divergent forms of music and create a third. In contrast, the music in a Cassavetes film (if there is any) is purposely disorienting, which is how we encounter music in our daily lives and, more to the point, how we interact with others in the real world. We never know how an encounter with another human being is going to play out, until it happens. As Yontef stresses, “The Gestalt therapist allows contact to happen, rather than manipulating, making contact, and controlling the outcome” (Yontef). Similarly, as Carney shows us, “Cassavetes' characters don't have identities, until they discover themselves and their possibilities in this process of exploring their differences, through dialogue interaction” (Carney, 1994).
Am I suggesting that viewing the films of Cassavetes could be therapeutic? Perhaps, and there is absolutely no doubt that his work makes for an uncomfortable experience for most; I have seen people actually squirm in their seats trying to comprehend all that they see in his films. However, this is precisely what Gestalt therapy purports to do for us; it forces us to extricate ourselves from our past and work within the here and now. But how are we to do that when most of us spend so much our lives trapped within the unreal environments of constructs created by others? It would seem that, first and foremost, all of us need to spend more time in the experiential world and less in the passive, one- dimensional world.
It is indeed a paradox; we possess natural inclinations which are nurtured, or, far too often, not nurtured, in our environment. In concluding this paper, I submit that because we have natural inclinations for development, which can then be nurtured only through the proper environmental circumstances, yet we are operating within environments that are constructed primarily by others and their imaginations and through a medium that distorts what is real, that technology, which has been presented as an important part of our evolutionary process and subsequently our development, is instead an impediment to our development. While I would not necessarily go as far as to say that we should return to a full communion with nature, and reject the whole of technology, I do believe that most of us could benefit from a dose of therapy that wakes us to the reality of who we are, helps us to find meaning and purpose beyond the trappings of consumption, and, for those of us fortunate enough to have abilities in the spheres of helping and leading people, to show others that throughout our lives, at every age, it truly does take a village to develop a human being.
References
Speaking of nurture, the age-old debate “nature vs. nurture” entered the classroom parlance almost immediately, and though we did not have to take sides, I leaned heavily toward the notion of nurture as the primary driving force in development. However, once one begins to delve into research, one can find any number of theories that challenge his/her beliefs and inclinations, which is eminently useful in one's development. My first revelatory moment came in the discovery of the theories of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
“Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Maker of the world but degenerates once it gets into the hands of man.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Returning to a term used earlier, inclinations, reveals the thrust behind Rousseau's work. He advanced the theory that children are best developed through a “naturalistic education” where a child would have “no other guide than his own reason by the time he is educated”(Gianoutsis, 2008) and that this education is derived from “inclinations, not from habits” (Gianoutsis, 2008) Where I stand in accord with Rousseau is in the notion that inclinations, much like the biology of a plant, for example, are what guide a child in early development, and as they acquire reason they are then able to merge with adult society while maintaining the tools to “ignore society's ills” (Gianoutsis, 2008). Where I differ with Rousseau is his insistence on isolating the child in nature. Of course, communing with nature is clearly desirable, and today's youth do not spend enough time in natural pursuits. However, what Rousseau proposed would be labeled “home schooling” today, and despite the benefits of pedagogy and curriculum specifically designed for the individual child, the pitfalls of social isolation are too great to dismiss. I shudder to think of a world where everyone, or even a majority of the population, is home-schooled. In the early years of the twenty-first century, we already observe the implications of the insulating nature of technology; adding to these difficulties a sequestered educational environment seems a recipe for further societal breakdown. So, on the whole what we are discussing here is Rousseau's belief in the strengths of a child's natural inclinations against the limitations of her/his early development, or the inability to reason. In a sense, Rousseau believed that only when a child could match the experience of the reinforcement of rewarding responses with the association of ideas could they be prepared to face the big, scary outside world. Within his theories I tend to focus primarily on the natural inclinations, which include play. Rousseau states, “I felt before I thought, which is the common lot of man” (Gianoutsis, 2008). He posited that children learn best “through their senses, through investigating and exploring the natural world” (Gianoutsis, 2008). After reading Rousseau and the theorist I will discuss next, I came to realize that I was in fact more firmly in the “nature” camp in the nature/nurture debate.
It is my belief that Rousseau's naturalistic theory of development aligns with at least one aspect in the design of contemporary pedagogical theory; that of the approach employed in the educational system in Finland. The Finns believe that children should not begin their formal education until the age of seven, because before that age they learn best through play. Though Rousseau believed that his subject “Emile” should begin his traditional schooling at age twelve, when presumably he would be at that cherished “age of reason,” I am certain he would be a strong proponent for the methods and biological time line adhered to by the Finns, who are universally regarded as having one of the best educational systems in the world.
My second revelatory experience came while researching for a paper in early childhood development, attempting to find contemporary developmental theorists who were ensconced in the natural or genetic end of the eternal debate. Though Noam Chomsky is hailed as the country's preeminent linguist, he is rarely viewed as an expert in child development. He is also seen by some to be a philosopher, though others would argue, quite sincerely, that he is not a philosopher at all, that linguistics is an entirely different discipline, albeit a neighboring one. I am not going to argue that point; it is little more than a question of definition (Though I hasten to add that Rousseau was viewed first as a philosopher). Nonetheless, I believe that to dismiss his masterful work as having no significant implications for child development is a grievous oversight.
The central focus for my argument for Chomsky as a vitally important developmental theorist comes in the form of his theory of a “Language Acquisition Device.” Chomsky first put his ideas forward in the late 1950s, as part of a critique of behavioral psychology. He argued that the way we actually acquire the use of language, its relationship to experience, and therefore its relationship to the world, is quite different from what traditional contemporary philosophy has always maintained. Behavioral psychologists have tended to characterize the human individual entering the world as an undifferentiated lump of malleable stuff, to be molded and shaped by its environment; through processes of stimulus and response, penalty and reward, the individual developed and learned, including the learning of language. I would dare say that the acquisition and use of language is the most important aspect of our development; this I believe to be self-evident.
Chomsky further argued that the accepted wisdom surrounding development and its characterization as almost entirely environmental could not possibly explain how virtually all human beings, regardless of their intelligence, do something as amazingly difficult as master the use of a language, even when they are not deliberately taught it, as most people surely are not. Also, that they do this at such an extraordinarily young age and in such an extraordinarily short period of time. He explains that for this to happen we must be genetically pre-programmed to do it, and that all human languages must have a basic structure that corresponds to this pre-programming. This is what he calls our “Language Acquisition Device.” Perhaps neuroscientist Terrence Deacon explains it best; “Infants are predisposed to learn human languages, acquiring within a few years an immensely complex rule system and a rich vocabulary at a time when they cannot even learn elementary arithmetic” (Chomsky, 2002). My personal discovery of the ideas of Chomsky has proved a life-changer; not only is his work in philosophy and linguistics so vital to our understanding of human development, but also his scholarly research and writings on backdoor political machinations in the Western world, all part of the public record but largely neglected by mainstream media and suppressed as inconvenient to the powers that be, as well as the use of propaganda as an advertising and public relations tool, add to our understanding of development in ways both enlightening and disturbing. I will address these issues later, as an entirely different form of human development (or, perhaps more accurately, practices that might be an impediment to development). Needless to say, Professor Chomsky has become the singularly influential developmental theorist of my experience.
After studying the work of Rousseau and Chomsky, I felt that I was firmly planted in the natural, biological ways of development. It would be easy for one to argue that both biology and environment contribute to our understanding of the world, how we behave, and how we learn. However, this is a cop-out; we can all agree that we learn naturally AND are nurtured, but we must lean one way or the other, or so I thought. Then, in our Mid-Child/Adolescent development course, we read “A Tribe Apart” by Patricia Hersch. I was completely blown away. These were kids from middle class families who were having sex, taking and dealing drugs, and committing crimes, the types of acts that I have always assumed were committed by children from poor or broken homes; and all came from families that claimed to be Christian. What we discover when reading a book like “A Tribe Apart” is even children from Christian homes can have their growth severely stunted if their parents are neglectful. I thought about what it must be like to be brought into a hyper-competitive world like ours when generations of your family have struggled with poverty, addiction, mental illness, or just poor parenting. Imagine you are one of the millions of people in this country who are unable to find a job commensurate with your education and abilities, and all that is left for you is work that pays just above minimum wage, or at best $8-$9 dollars an hour. In order to pay the bills, you must work two, or perhaps even three jobs. None of these part-time, and in some cases even full-time jobs have health insurance. Because your hours vary with each job, this leaves no time for you to improve your situation by going back to college, or even vocational/trade school. Even if you made all the right choices in terms of cutting expenses, you still might not have any money left to enjoy even the least expensive leisure activities, and even if you did, you would not have the time. There are no funds left after living expenses to save for retirement, and now your elected officials are talking about cutting what little retirement you have been paying into, social security. Owning a home is out of the question, and if you already own one, you would be in danger of losing it if you lost even a little of your meager income, if you were able to hold onto a home with what you make. Even keeping up adequate transportation puts you in a precarious situation month to month, but you are willing to sacrifice and use public transit, if it is available in your area to get you where you need to go. If you have other mouths to feed, well, you are hanging by a thread. And I'm speaking of people who have some education beyond high school; millions more have no choice but menial labor at minimum wage. This is called “living for work” - would you want to live like that? Are you a paycheck or a layoff away from being there? Millions of us are on the precipice.
Now imagine you are a child born to parents who must live for work and, worse yet, they are indifferent in their parenting. The sort of parents who do not read to their children; parents who do not take the time to nurture and truly care for the needs of their kids. Or your parents were abusive, emotionally or physically or both. Perhaps your parents are also not able to maintain their own relationship, and their struggles are magnified through conflict, abuse and eventual break-up of the marriage. Add to this the economic difficulties that so many folks experience in this country and you have a recipe for disaster. These are the teens and young adults that we see on the streets of Portland every day. These are not children born of privilege; they are neglected and abused.
When I decided I wanted to become a teacher, I had no illusions that it would be an easy vocation, or that I would be paid handsomely to do it. However, when I contemplate what people like the ones I have just described go through every day just to live, with little hope for the future in the face of the greed and avarice that surrounds their existence, I not only knew for whom I was devoting my life's work, but also that perhaps I would be asked to serve in a capacity with more responsibility to society at large. Regardless of what path I choose in my quest to serve others as humbly and faithfully as I can, Patricia Hersch's book has crystallized for me the importance of parental nurturing in the development of children: it is not unfair or an overstatement to say that parental nurturing can be the difference between a life of relative comfort and a life of struggle; one of an abundance of health or an early death. But what of those who are left to teach and counsel the neglected and abused children in our society? How are we best to support them?
We as a nation are, to put it kindly, enigmatic when it comes to the education of other people's children. Hilary Clinton was reviled in many circles for suggesting that it might “take a village” to raise a child. For some, particularly in political opposition to Mrs. Clinton, this was akin to socialism. Yet year after year we expect our public school teachers to essentially “babysit” troubled children, while giving them fewer and fewer resources to do it, let alone support. Then, when punishment becomes necessary, these neglectful parents are up in arms about outsiders interfering with the raising of their child. Rick Weissbourd, a Harvard University Graduate School of Education lecturer, in an article in Educational Leadership, seems to resign himself and his fellow educators to the notion that “the public believes that schools are largely responsible for remedying the problems associated with the steady increase in delinquency, disrespect and greed among today's students” (Weissbourd, 2003). He goes on to say that “the moral development of students does not depend primarily on explicit character education efforts, but on the maturity and ethical capacities of the adults with whom they interact” (Weissbourd, 2003). So the question remains, does it take a village to raise a child? And if it does, how can we expect educators to bear the brunt of the moral education (and by extension, the educational development) of our children, while simultaneously slapping their hands and tying them behind their backs through lack of funding and support? We know that classroom discipline is essential in order to develop the minds of students, yet we send teachers to the schools with the most severe discipline problems ill-prepared to keep order, thus ensuring that these schools and their students remain trapped in a vicious cycle of falling educational standards and the concomitant dearth of funding. Because many other countries, with nowhere near the financial wherewithal of the United States, can achieve success in education that surpasses us in virtually every meaningful measure, one can only conclude that it is a matter of priorities and the development of our children is not a priority. The study of human development has solidified my belief that the American way of life will wither and die if we do not find the will to provide every child with a well-rounded education.
Previously I stated my intention to address impediments to human development. I believe these are issues that need to be addressed in order for us to continue to evolve as a species. In my discovery of the work of Noam Chomsky, I found in his book “On Nature and Language’ a chapter discussing the “project of keeping the public uninformed, passive and obedient” (Chomsky, 2002) or another way to view it is the use of propaganda to train the public to become mindless consumers. It started in this country during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, who established the Committee on Public Information, for which the aim was to win support among a passive public for joining the First World War. As Chomsky discovered, the effort “had enormous success, including scandalous fabrications that were exposed long after they had done their work, and often persist even after exposure” (Chomsky, 2002). This form of propaganda caught the attention of Adolf Hitler, who employed similar practices leading up to and during the Second World War. However, it was the American business community's discovery of the potential for propaganda to “shape attitudes and beliefs” (Chomsky, 2002) that had grave implications for the course of the American century, and perhaps the whole of humanity. Chomsky quotes one of the founders of the PR industry, Edward Bernays (who belonged to Wilson's propaganda agency): “It was the outstanding success of propaganda during the war that opened the eyes of the intelligent few in all departments of life to the possibilities of regimenting the public mind” (Chomsky, 2002). What the business community and political leaders feared more than anything was a true democracy. They viewed the general public as “meddlesome outsiders” who are to keep to the sidelines when it comes to democracy; “spectators, not participants” (Chomsky, 2002). Walter Lippman, arguably the preeminent journalist of the twentieth century, was brought into the fold by industry and government to help in “the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses” (Chomsky, 2002). The task of the media, government and the public relations and advertising industries, as manuals of the time period explain, is to “impose a philosophy of futility” and “lack of purpose in life” (Chomsky, 2002). They further explained that they must find ways to “concentrate human attention on the more superficial things that comprise much of fashionable consumption” (Chomsky, 2002). In other words, for the better part of the last century, Americans have been brainwashed to be mindless consumers; first through the print media and radio, then through television. In a real sense, one could argue that our development as a species was short-circuited. Can we evolve beyond this?
Former President Jimmy Carter thought we should try. In 1979 Carter, his presidency in turmoil and his conscience heavy, spoke to the American people from the Oval Office, in a speech that many analysts, then and now, judged as political suicide. Ironically, the immediate positive reaction gave him a tremendous boost in the polls; however, it was a very short-lived moment in the sun. Carter spoke of “a fundamental threat to American democracy” and “the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives” (Carter, 1979). He called this a “crisis of confidence.” Carter was not just speaking of energy consumption when he said “too many of us tend to worship self-indulgence, and consumption” (Carter, 1979). He added, “Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns” and “we have discovered that owning things, and consuming things, does not satisfy our longing for meaning” and “piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no purpose” (Carter, 1979). More powerful words have rarely been spoken by an American politician. And I think it is no small irony that these words reflect precisely what our government officials, along with the PR and advertising industries, hoped to engender in us generations ago so that we would be nothing more than passive “spectators” in the democratic process. This process has continued unabated for decades.
The introduction of television, with its insidious emphasis on advertising, has profound implications for human development, and is a technology that aligns perfectly with what the powerful government and business interests hoped to achieve all those years ago to stifle participatory democracy. In his groundbreaking but now largely forgotten 1977 book, “Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television,” Jerry Mander posits that television “places in our minds images of realities that are outside our experience, causing changes in feeling and utter confusion as to what is real and what is not’ (Mander, 1977). He goes on to make the case that technology does not always support human development; in fact, particularly with television, it may cause devolution of the species. Mander reminds us that “pre-technological peoples were surrounded by nature, and they developed an automatic intimacy with the natural world” (Mander, 1977). This connection with nature forms the core of our development as a species (and this correlates with Chomsky's theory of a Language Acquisition Device and Rousseau's naturalistic education). Twentieth and twenty-first century Americans were “the first in human history to live predominantly inside projections of our own minds” (Mander, 1977), mostly because of television. When we rely on technology to lend form to our experience, we short-circuit our development; thus, when we encounter nature, we must refer to technology to confirm that what we have experienced is real, a negative feedback loop that is perpetuated by still more technology. More recent studies have shown how images and voices from television enter directly into our unconscious minds, unfiltered. Mander showed us that not only is television sensory deprivation, which causes, among other things, hyperactivity, but also that the very nature of the technology, “with the light constantly flickering upon our retinas” (Mander, 1977), causes a state of hypnosis; not in the usual sense of a catatonic feeling, but much like a passive mental attitude; or as Mander says “Since there is no way to stop the images, one merely gives over to them. Thinking only gets in the way” (Mander, 1977).
Aside from the obvious implications for subliminal manipulation in advertising (such as creating “needs” that were not there before), the best example I can find for television's (and technology's) interruption of human development is in propaganda. When a political pundit tells us, despite all evidence to the contrary, that France's health care system is “a disaster” (and provides no facts to support this statement), the viewer is taking that statement into their unconscious mind, unfiltered, and ultimately are much more likely to cast their ballot for a candidate who espouses the same beliefs. I challenge anyone to explain to me how that sort of manipulation, through a medium which has proven to be so effective in shaping the attitudes and opinions of the masses, does not stand in the way of human development and societal progress. “Thinking only gets in the way.”
One can easily make the case that technology, which employs imagery that far too often promotes oversexualization, with particularly important implications for women, stands in opposition to human sexual development. It is alarming how devoid of understanding boys and even men are regarding female sexuality. Given that we are naturally sexual beings, one would think that we could have evolved beyond our patriarchal history and embraced the mysteries of the sexual female, for the benefit of both sexes. Though I believe that religious dogma plays an enormous part in our inability to evolve and develop as sexual beings, it is the objectifying images that we create, through all forms of media but especially effective through the hypnotizing effects of television, which cause the most harm. This is where the quote from Rousseau regarding “everything degenerating once in the hands of man” comes into focus. In “The Second Sex,” Simone de Beauvoir probably put it best as to the lot of women in an oversexualized, male fantasy-dominated culture: ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic destiny explains the figure that the human female assumes in society; it is the whole of civilization that creates this product that we call feminine” (de Beauvoir, 1948). In other words, just as we have created unreal environments that cause confusion when we are finally confronted with reality, we have also created images of ourselves as sexual creatures that do not match our natural inclinations. To say that our pre-technological ancestors would not recognize anything that we call humanity today, sexual or otherwise, would be an understatement. And de Beauvoir made these observations before the advent of television!
The controversial psychiatrist R.D. Laing once said that “the growing incidence of mental illness these days may be explained in part by the fact that the world we call real and which we ask people to live within and understand is itself open to question” (Horwitz, 2003). Personally, I believe that increases in mental illness can be attributed to the hyper-competitive nature of our society, which attaches status and meaning to financial success; when you are one of the losers in that competition, and invariably there are many and can only be more as the reality of economic stagnation plays out, you may find it a struggle to find a purpose for your existence. Allan Horwitz, commenting on misconceptions of mental illness in “Creating Mental Illness,” believes that “much of what we regard as mental illnesses today are simply cultural constructs” (Horwitz, 2003); this parallels Jerry Mander's theory that television has caused people to create realities in their minds that are actually another person's imaginings, real yet not real. Perhaps we are all correct, on some level. Regardless, facing reality seems to be a problem for many in our culture; the reasons are numerous and varied, but it would be difficult to argue that the instances and theories I have presented play a great part in this problem. The inability to face reality can be found in our numerous forms of escapism (television and movies, even sports) and in our mainstream media, which report distortions as fact. When determining what method of therapy aligns closest to my beliefs, as well as what I have learned about human development and counseling theory, and what I believe will be of most benefit in today's mental health environment, I found myself gravitating to Gestalt therapy.
The films of John Cassavetes, my favorite film director, are, in my view, an excellent example of Gestalt filmmaking. Cassavetes' work was often misinterpreted as improvisation, so real were the characters and situations. Cassavetes viewed every frame in his films as a journey of discovery. Gestalt therapy's emphasis is “on what is being done, thought and felt at the moment rather than on what was, might be, could be, or should be” (Yontef, Simkin, 1981). The comparison of Cassavetes' work to Gestalt therapy is an instructive and worthwhile endeavor, which I will continue as a theme for my integrated therapy.
Gestalt therapy is a phenomenological-existential therapy introduced by Frederick and Laura Perls in the 1940s. It teaches therapists and patients “the phenomenological method of awareness, in which perceiving, feeling, and acting are distinguished from interpreting and reshuffling preexisting attitudes” (Yontef, Simkin, 1981). As with existentialism, Cassavetes felt that people are continuously remaking and discovering themselves. Possibly the best example of how Cassavetes' work parallels Gestalt therapy is this observation from biographer Ray Carney in “The Films of Cassavetes”: “His films can only teach us new understandings by forcibly denying us old ones” (Carney, 1994). This is precisely what the Perls were bringing to the world with their theories; understanding the difference between what is “residue from the past and what is actually being perceived and felt in the current situation” (Yontef, Simkin, 1981). Cassavetes never worked in the “what was” or “what should be”: Characters in a Cassavetes film were never static; we never knew their motivations or character fully coming into a scene, as they were always evolving. Whether we want to face it or not, this is who we are as humans, perpetually reinventing ourselves, consciously or unconsciously. One of my favorite quotes, of unknown origin is: “When we seek permanence, this is when our troubles begin.”
It is not at all inaccurate to describe Gestalt therapy as reality-based. This is why I appreciate making the connection to the notion of permanence; we may be able to find some sense of permanence in material things (such as a house or car), but there is nothing permanent about who we are. That is our reality. Gestalt therapy aims to separate us from our longing for permanence, unless of course we are talking about a permanent state of thoughtful self-knowledge. Only in this way can we come to grips with our ever-changing moods and work within that reality to become the people we want to be.
As Gary Yontef illustrates,“the Gestalt therapist works by engaging in dialogue rather than by manipulating the patient toward some therapeutic goal” (Yontef). Unlike Cassavetes, who wanted to shake people out of their vegetable torpor with real-life dialogue and situations, most conventional Hollywood movies are constantly out to manipulate our emotions and present us with characters whose motivations are clear from the start to the finish, and whom have goals that are set and achieved. The manipulation of our emotions often comes in the form of music; particularly so with technology that allows someone to take two often wildly divergent forms of music and create a third. In contrast, the music in a Cassavetes film (if there is any) is purposely disorienting, which is how we encounter music in our daily lives and, more to the point, how we interact with others in the real world. We never know how an encounter with another human being is going to play out, until it happens. As Yontef stresses, “The Gestalt therapist allows contact to happen, rather than manipulating, making contact, and controlling the outcome” (Yontef). Similarly, as Carney shows us, “Cassavetes' characters don't have identities, until they discover themselves and their possibilities in this process of exploring their differences, through dialogue interaction” (Carney, 1994).
Am I suggesting that viewing the films of Cassavetes could be therapeutic? Perhaps, and there is absolutely no doubt that his work makes for an uncomfortable experience for most; I have seen people actually squirm in their seats trying to comprehend all that they see in his films. However, this is precisely what Gestalt therapy purports to do for us; it forces us to extricate ourselves from our past and work within the here and now. But how are we to do that when most of us spend so much our lives trapped within the unreal environments of constructs created by others? It would seem that, first and foremost, all of us need to spend more time in the experiential world and less in the passive, one- dimensional world.
It is indeed a paradox; we possess natural inclinations which are nurtured, or, far too often, not nurtured, in our environment. In concluding this paper, I submit that because we have natural inclinations for development, which can then be nurtured only through the proper environmental circumstances, yet we are operating within environments that are constructed primarily by others and their imaginations and through a medium that distorts what is real, that technology, which has been presented as an important part of our evolutionary process and subsequently our development, is instead an impediment to our development. While I would not necessarily go as far as to say that we should return to a full communion with nature, and reject the whole of technology, I do believe that most of us could benefit from a dose of therapy that wakes us to the reality of who we are, helps us to find meaning and purpose beyond the trappings of consumption, and, for those of us fortunate enough to have abilities in the spheres of helping and leading people, to show others that throughout our lives, at every age, it truly does take a village to develop a human being.
References
Carney, R. (1994). The films of john cassavetes. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Carter, J. (Artist). (1979). President carter's address to the nation. [Web Video]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCOd-qWZB
Carter, J. (Artist). (1979). President carter's address to the nation. [Web Video]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCOd-qWZB
Chomsky, N. (2002). On nature and language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
de Beauvoir, S. (1948). The second sex. Paris: Vintage.
de Beauvoir, S. (1948). The second sex. Paris: Vintage.
Gianoutsis, J. (2008). Locke and rousseau: early childhood education. The Pulse, 4(1), 1-19. Retrieved from http://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php?id=37670
Horwitz, A. (2003). Creating mental illness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mander, J. (1977). Four arguments for the elimination of television. New York: William Morrow.
Mander, J. (1977). Four arguments for the elimination of television. New York: William Morrow.
Weissbourd, R. (2003, March 31). Moral teachers, moral students. Educational Leadership, 60(6),
Yontef, G., & Simkin, J. (1993). Awareness, dialogue and process: essays on gestalt therapy. Gouldsboro, ME: Gestalt Journal Press.
