Jeremy R. Butler

Cliche

I don’t write much here about being a psychiatrist.  The reason is entirely self-preservative—as much as I yearn to self-indulge, I fear that anything I write could be used against me in a  court of law.

And so, until courts of law are done with me, a brief word about cliche. The hallmark of cliche is predictability—the lack of surprise, the expected outcome, the ordinary, the banal.

As a shrink, there are too many days where I’m confronted by the banality and stereo typicality of human dynamics. Labels are legion and well distributed in pop psychology:  the hysteric, the borderline, the psychopath, the narcissist. Or, if you prefer others, GAD, OCD, ODD, BD II, MDD, and PD NOS.  

I sit in my chair, ask my questions, get my answers, and the brain I’ve been granted does its best to squeeze the answers into categories, diagnoses, labels. It does so, so effectively, that many days I am left with little pleasure in human encounters.

But, I am by no means alone. I could be writing this as a salesman, a stripper, a front desk worker at a cheesy motel, a former Goldman Sachs manager, a cashier, a hostess.  Each has a paradigm, a situation, a set of questions, and to each, the interaction can be squeezed into a number of labels, dealt with, and abandoned.

I think the danger in any job is to know when the labels define interaction, and when they define the limitations of experience.  That may be conjecture, but I hope not.

On Flying

This passage still lingers in my dreams and the recesses of my mind:

There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy suggests, and try it.

The first part is easy. All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and the willingness not to mind that it’s going to hurt.

That is, it’s going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground. Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard.

Clearly, it is the second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties.

One problem is that you have to miss the ground accidentally. It’s no good deliberately intending to miss the ground because you won’t. You have to have your attention suddenly distracted by something else when you’re halfway there, so that you are no longer thinking about falling, or about the ground, or about how much it’s going to hurt if you fail to miss it.

It is notoriously difficult to prize your attention away from these three things during the split second you have at your disposal. Hence most people’s failure, and their eventual disillusionment with this exhilarating and spectacular sport.

If, however, you are lucky enough to have your attention momentarily distracted at the crucial moment by, say, a gorgeous pair of legs (tentacles, pseudopodia, according to phyllum and/or personal inclination) or a bomb going off in your vicinty, or by suddenly spotting an extremely rare species of beetle crawling along a nearby twig, then in your astonishment you will miss the ground completely and remain bobbing just a few inches above it in what might seem to be a slightly foolish manner.

This is a moment for superb and delicate concentration. Bob and float, float and bob. Ignore all consideration of your own weight simply let yourself waft higher. Do not listen to what anybody says to you at this point because they are unlikely to say anything helpful. They are most likely to say something along the lines of “Good God, you can’t possibly be flying!” It is vitally important not to believe them or they will suddenly be right.

Waft higher and higher. Try a few swoops, gentle ones at first, then drift above the treetops breathing regularly.

Brilliant, Mr. Adams.

Story Rationing

I know that parents fear for their children for many reasons.  

Will they have a job?  Will they be happy?  Will the climate change?

My daughter’s now two. Yesterday I was telling her about Jack & The Beanstalk (or what I could remember of it), and she said “Mommy and Daddy and Nic jump into the story.” So basically, two years old and using metafiction. 

Of all the things in the world, this scares me. I probably should bey more concerned about drinking water in the mid-21st century, but instead I worry that, as a culture, we’re consuming story at too fast a rate.

Where does it end?

Unreliable narration by age four?  Myth modernization tapped out by age six?  The heat death of cross-genre pollination by age ten?

Current media numbers look like what, twenty-five half-hour story lines consumed a day? Add in YouTube punchline story forms, sketches and memes as intermezzi and over the course of a week, what kind of story tolerance will she have built up?

At age twenty, how much plot will she be mainlining, just to keep the withdrawal at bay?

Westerners or just Canadians?

I’ve been routinely confronted by this experience of late…

I say:  ”You seem angry.”

In response:  ”I’m not angry, I didn’t raise my voice.”

Alternatively:  ”I didn’t swear.”  ”I didn’t go crazy.”  ”I wasn’t rude.”

The premise is that anger is a behavior, not a feeling. Therefore, it would follow that as long as I don’t believe that I am behaving angrily, I have no resentment, frustrations, or irritations.

Oh, dear.  If it were only that easy…

In the Land of Sticks

When listening, I’m always on the lookout for words that are defined by being the opposite of something else.

Nice, is a prime example. What does it mean to be nice? Isn’t it just the explanation for the enjoyment of the bland? Someone is nice by default. They’re not offensive. Not mean. Not hurtful. If you mean generous, say generous. If you mean funny, say funny. If you simply mean non-offensive, then re-consider whether you’re saying anything at all. Or more importantly, can we even really like something without qualities?

Why does this have my hackles up today? Many reasons, but chief among them is life itself.

When listening, I often hear people speak aloud goals or ideas that sound to me like a tabulation of nots.

I want a good career.  [Translation:  I don’t want to work at McDonald’s]

I’m looking for a guy I can trust.  [I don’t want to be cheated on again]

Be a good neighbor.  [Don’t upset anyone around you]

So, from my all-knowing, all-seeing chair, I’m listening for the goal, the dream, the boon, the carrot.  Carrots provide direction, they help make decisions, they infuse motivation. If there are no carrots (sexy, challenging boyfriends or CEOs) then there’s just trying to avoid the stick.

And there are always sticks.

I’m not a big self-help/cult of personality guy, but their collective advice usually boils down to this:  setting out to avoid sticks is the single best strategy to find more sticks. Of course, the path to carrots is lined with sticks too, but at least there’s a possibility of a meal…