May 12, 2007

Yesterday, I had quite an experience in court. I think the greatest mistake people can make is an error in perspective. Once such an error is made, it develops its own momentum, that is, judges who hear the case later on, will be less and less likely to regain the right perspective--and label everyone as incompetent, who tries to do this. The other alternative is seeing that a whole bunch of them had been incompetent. And people with self-critique are rare--probably the rarer the more power they hold.

Let me be a little more concrete: The lawyer of the ex-husband had convinced a whole row of judges that the father had a "progressive parenting-style," whereas the mother had a "regressive parenting style." The father was out for the development of the child, whereas the mother essentially held the child back in its development. And so, all previous judges and also the present judge had talked about potty-training, and use of pacifiers, all along, for many, many hours. I told them that they had been on the wrong track all this time: There was a vicious psychobattle going on beneath the surface. The four-year-old child was reacting to it with various symptoms, which showed only up at the mother's home because the child did not dare to show any of them in the father's home. Of course, then, I was taken apart--and declared as an incompetent because I had offended the Court's Infinite Wisdom. And it's true, I really don't feel and behave that self-assertive when I am exposed to institutionalized craziness because it can be very dangerous, not only for me, but also for other people, such as the mother and child.

The husband's lawyer is "excellent," working very hard for her client--and helping him getting his way. Nothing else counts. Well, she got one of her client's killed this way by the opposing party.

This is my advice of the day: If you want to see your ex suffer deeply and choose a good lawyer, who can help you with that, it might yourself get killed. For these people a have a consolation: At least it is now proved that your ex was really a monster.

Now, let me add another remark about the above case: Apart from myself, there was another counselor before, who also expressed concern. He was, as well, discredited by the husband's astute lawyer. It is, by the way, very easy for an experienced lawyer to undermine the testimony of a counselor or psychologist simply because they do not have the training to withstand the attacks of a shrewd lawyer. It is as unfair as putting an everyday man against a seasoned professional boxer. It is very clear, who will win. The cards are simply stacked against the untrained person. Even if the counselor lost the battle against the lawyer,  the counselor might still be right. In my opinion, the court should--if there are warnings about some potentially dangerous processes--try to actively exclude this alternative before proceding as if there was nothing.

May 14, 2007

Over the weekend, I found out whom I should inform about the whole case and the behavior of the judges in it: Attorney General Roy Cooper. However, I will have to wait until the last--and worst judge of all of them--will have made her decision. I do not expect it to be positive for her. The mother's lawyer cannot file a complaint because he has to work with the judges. He cannot do so because afterwards he will be dead professionally. I personally do not care. I have always been for the truth--regardless of the consequences. If they are tough, they will make you grow. You will get to know this world more and more. I have not come from Germany to bow before others, especially not self-appointed majesties. There are enough of them in Europe.

The case creates the feeling in me that I have entered one of the novels by Franz Kafka.

When I read his books in my teens, I always thought they had nothing to do with reality, although I was fascinated by them. Well, I learnt otherwise.

August 1, 2007

A few days ago, I got the following email:

I really wonder how other counselors can keep their clients for years. I do not mean that in a condescending way. In some ways, I really admire and envy them: They can convince their clients to keep coming, even though nothing much changes. Clients feel better after a session, but they need to counselor to do so. So, they keep coming back. It is almost as if you have to go to the bathroom: It makes you feel better to dump. But then, after a while, you have to come back. So, it seems to be some kind of positive conditioning: Counselor gets associated with feeling better--you get kind of hooked.

Well, I am so crazy and get most of my clients out after a relatively short period of time--and they rarely come back because they can take care of their own things now. Having clients for a decade never happens to me. I can be happy if they stay for half a year. It does not make sense in a financial sense. But doing it this way, is the only way that makes sense to me.

December 23, 2007

Sorry, I was gone for quite a while. Some updates: The "effective" lawyer, I was talking about, was fired by her own firm--I had nothing to do with this though. Her behavior was considered unethical by even the partners.

Progress report on the husband addressed in the email: The positve changes are so salient that people comment about them. The changes have financial consequences. They had little money before--and, therefore convinced me to accept substandard fees. Now, their businesses really seem to be taking off.

December 24, 2007

Let me explain why I was gone for quite some time. I am currently trying out a new project; the most difficult thing I ever did, namely trying to teach mathematics to high-school dropouts who want to obtain their GED. Some of them cannot even add; most of them do not know their multiplication table. Some of them have a bad attitude. Others really want to learn. The most difficult thing is to find out where they really are because they want to conceal from others how little they know. Most of them dislike mathematics and think they are too dumb to understand it. Few of them have the leisure or discipline to study at home. The other problematic thing is that new people constantly come to the classroom, some of them after weeks. Some of them drop out because they find work, because they are sick, because things are for them too difficult when they have entered late, some because I could not reach them, some of them because they go to jail, or so on. In addition, in all that chaos, you have to keep a folder for each one of them, have to fill in absentee forms, and document a lot of other things. And you know what? The teachers get paid very little--barely above the level of a qualified worker. The administration staff is buried in paperwork--and all of them are pretty nice and competent.

Everybody wonders why I am there. Well, it's a place for learning. The mathematicians and teachers of mathematics failed for hundreds, maybe even for thousands of years, to have students love mathematics. I hated it myself when I was in high school. You can forget all the modern math books. So, I went back in time...to the 1800s and then to the 1700s. The more I went back in time, the better the books became--until I met the master of them all: Leonhard Euler, probably the best mathematician of all times. His algebra book, a tome of about 500 pages with an additional 150 pages written by Lagrange in French, is in German and was never translated into English. In about 1765, he dictated it to one of his servants, a young tailor with mediocre abilities, who became very proficient at it.  Euler was blind at the time. The book is easy, very detailed, and very intelligent. Euler's other math books (29 volumes) are written in Latin. So, I have to relearn Latin. Well, but even Euler does not solve the above problem because he starts out at too high a level. However, his mindset can be applied to the lower level and take away the boredom that is connected with  elementary calculations. (By the way, only very recently have some American mathematicians begun to see how superior he is to today's scribblers and started to translate his precalculus and part of his fist calculus book.)

 But let me finish for today. Merry Christmas to all of you:

January 2, 2008

Increasingly, people come from some distance away in order to see me for an extended period of time. It seems that what I am offering is not available anywhere else. Actually, I am working on the same field like counselors and psychotherapists--but the background is highly different because it is not based on any psychological theory or approach.

When I had been reading through the Collected Works of Sigmund Freud at 17 or 18, I noticed that it was very easy to predict what he would be saying after introducing a new case. The client was just a special edition of a general theory. No new discoveries any more. Client were perceived from the psychoanalytic perspective only. There was an interpretation for everything. The doctor could feel wise. If the patient did not like the approach, then there was an interpretation for that, too: The client resisted because s/he was unwilling to face some facets of her/his personality.