Showing posts with label apology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label apology. Show all posts

Richie Cox, Rest Easy Now

Any story worth telling is worth improving.

Richie had a fisherman's philosophy when it came to story telling.  He inspired, or provoked, or was co-conspirator in many of the Bar Tales of Costa Rica.  The following excerpt is my tribute to this cowboy/hippie/mystic who will be sorely missed.

Apology

There is one particular table at the Pato Loco where deals get made over American breakfast.  Mama, who has overheard a lot of deals being made, said, “It gets so you can tell the real ones from the ones who are all talk.  Paul, he never talks about his deals.  He’s one of the real ones.  But that Jerry who reneged on the house, you could tell he was all blow.”

The Power of Apology

First, a nod to our excrutiatingly polite neighbors to the north, on the Power of Apology from Scott Stratton:



Next, inspired by Scott and in honor of Magna Carta Day - a rerun of last year's Entitled to an Apology?

Perhaps because a central feature of both hypomania and depression is irritability, and because a characteristic of the "bipolar temperament" is a certain tendency toward an attitude of entitlement, interpersonal disputes tend to be common in this patient population. -- Ellen Frank, Treating Bipolar Disorder

Entitled to an Apology?

Perhaps because a central feature of both hypomania and depression is irritability, and because a characteristic of the "bipolar temperament" is a certain tendency toward an attitude of entitlement, interpersonal disputes tend to be common in this patient population. -- Ellen Frank, Treating Bipolar Disorder

Frank goes on to explain how this attitude of entitlement plays out in the clinical setting.  Unlike the usually self-effacing patient with Major Depressive Disorder, grateful for any scrap of attention, people with bipolar get irritated at imagined slights, such as when the therapist cancels an appointment, or is late.  Sometimes, the only way the therapist can maintain the therapeutic relationship is to go ahead and apologize for these imagined slights.

Yup, stick that fork in the 220 volt socket again.

Apology?

So Robert Spitzer's Apology struck a nerve: apologies made or received, or not.  More like, Robert Spitzer's apology stuck a fork into a 220 volt socket, the nerve labeled Apology in the Clinical Setting, Or Not.

I have long been curious about this issue.  Fork in the 220 volt socket kind of curious.  I watched with wonderment as a therapist handled my complaint, which was, to me, about a life-threatening experience, steering the conversation away, time and again, from what I thought was the simplest, most natural direction, I'm sorry.

Now, I trusted this person.  Her avoidance of those words, her downright circumlocutions confused me.  My brain has long practice in making sense of the nonsensical behavior of people I trust.  So I decided there must be a rule, a therapy rule, that says a therapist shouldn't apologize, because it diverts attention from the real issue, which is about the client's mother, and not about the therapist at all.  Or something like that.

Robert Spitzer Apologizes

Robert Spitzer -- some people call him the Father of Modern Psychiatry.  In 1980 he took the DSM II, widely criticized for unreliability and lack of validity, and as editor of the DSM III, turned this obscure publication of the American Psychiatric Association into the standard reference work that defined every psychiatric disorder we've got.  It was research-based.  It listed objective criteria.  It was honkin' big, but it could be understood, not only by researchers, but also by practitioners.

Spitzer's acolyte, Allen Frances edited the DSM IV, which added a lot of information, but did not change Spitzer's basic framework for how these diseases are characterized.  Frances was a consultant for the DSM V, until he quit, basically because the new editors started to rethink things.  Frances now leads the charge against the DSM V, which has delayed its publication.  I won't develop that theme right now...

Robert Spitzer is the Man.

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

Popular Posts