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To: Lane3 who wrote (633)	8/24/2001 7:54:59 PM
From: Poet	Respond to of 51717

Oh! Now here's an issue I can sink my teeth into, without all that silly Elizabethan crap. You may know, Karen, that I trained as a clinical psychologist at NYU, a hotbed of things psychoanalytic. I loved the theory behind psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapy, planned to go on to become an analyst, but life waylaid me. I was happy for the detour, as the advent of managed care has essentially wiped out the chance for that kind of therapy to thrive. It takes years of dedication on the part of therapist and patient, much of which is no longer covered by insurance. Studies have consistently shown that behavioral therapy, specifically cognitive behavior therapy, with its focus in changing thought patterns through challenge and introspection, is the most effective form of psychotherapy practiced today. So your choice would be a good one.

To: Lane3 who wrote (633)	8/25/2001 12:10:46 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 51717

I know I've mentioned before that simply smiling at people can change your brain pathways. And I remember someone somewhere went on and on about how faking it was worse than not smiling- or something to that affect. I am not trying to quote exactly and I can't remember who said it (nor is that important- so please- DON'T research it). But what is interesting to me is that people would care enough to argue with the idea of trying to smile at more people. Because for WHATEVER reason you smile, it has the physiological effects of a smile. And that is good I think. And it wears a groove in the neural feedback path for smiling- and by making yourself smile, you set up a continuing pattern for smiling, which at some point, I bet, becomes automatic. And I think the same happens if we make an effort to be civil. It wears a groove in our neural pattern of behavior. We act civil so we become civil. Finally it becomes second nature to be civil. We parents KNOW this from rearing our children. Our children gradually internalize the behaviors that are strange to them. Using your knife and fork instead of your hands is, at first, not very easy. And it seems unnatural. But we parents insist that our children use the knife and fork and spoon.. And gradually the repeated use of the utensils makes the child easy with those utensils. Civil behavior is probably quite similar. I notice this with "please" and "thank you". At first - when the kids were very small- constant reminding was necessary. Now they are totally automatic. When we go out and the waiter refills the glasses with water there is a little chorus of thank yous as he goes around the table. No hint needed from me. The civility pattern is in place. What we practice, we get good at. I have emphasized different aspect of my personality at different times on SI. I have found that focusing on the conflict loving side has not made me more peaceful, more fulfilled, or a better person. It certainly was a rush- an adrenaline rush, but that isn't what I live for. It was a novelty, but it was not what I consider civil. I suppose civility is not the ultimate value for me- if I had to choose only one value I'd rate compassion highest, but civility is right up there, because it allows people with different hierarchies of values (and I'd say it is pretty evident from SI that many of us have different hierarchies of values) to live together in peace. Is that a facade? Well of course. Society is a facade. We are animals that wear clothes and use little pieces of paper we call money to represent food, shelter and other necessities. We use a symbolic alphabet, which represents spoken sounds, and we communicate via machines to other human animals using this symbolic coding of our speech. Could life be any more ritualized and highly derived? Could it be more unreal? So the fact that civility may be a gloss doesn't really matter.. Many of our most precious enjoyments are glosses. Written language, something that brings me great joy, is very much a facade. It is imperfect, it is highly derived - after all it is thought, translated first in the brain of the thinker, then put down on paper and retranslated in another brain. Isn't it AMAZING we get anywhere near any kind of understanding of each other???? It is to me. Civility is like that too. Isn't it amazing we can say please and thank you, and good morning, to people we have nothing in common with? I think that is quite, quite wonderful.