August 18, 2005
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Topic: a-ha?
So…I’m watching the movie Coach Carter last night…really amazing movie w/ Samuel L. Jackson. He plays a h.s. basketball coach, and is a mixture of Kurt Russell from the movie Miracle about the 1980 gold medal winning US olympic hockey team, makes players run sprints until they die), and Jaime Escalante, the lovable math teacher in the movie Stand and Deliver, who manages to teach calculus to a class of hispanice students can barely add-up their welfare checks.
Anyways…Coach Carter turns a 4-25 team into a 17-0 state championship contender, before locking them out of practics and games becaues of poor grades. A lot like my h.s. wrestling coach used to do to individual wrestlers who didn’t take care of their academics first. For some reason, this character really resonated with me. Being a coach. Pushing his players to excel in all areas of life.
I’ve always been drawn to the idea of doing something w/ my life where I’m directly helping people, but I haven’t really figured out how to do that professionally. This movie may have clarified things for me.
I’ve eliminated several professions that don’t particularly appeal to me for various reasons. Law, business, teaching, living in the woods, answering phones. But…one thing I’ve never really thought about was counseling. I mean…I’ve been a counselor before, and I think my Outward Bound experience was my attempt to be a “full-time camp counselor” but I never thought of being a “professional counselor.” And…by that I mean, some sort of mental health counselor.
Two real jobs quickly popped into my head:
1) Working as a mental health counselor on a college campus. I knew a few people who went to the school therapist for various reasons, and for anyone whose followed my blog long enough, you’ll know that I firmly believe it’s nearly impossible to not succumb to various mental health problems as a result of traditional schooling and the particular pressures found within the American system of higher education.
In addition…I counseled a depressed and suicidal friend while in college, I made my own trip to the health center to deal w/ my end of school anxieties, and more than any other topic, I’m somewhat obsessed w/ the idea of people’s personal happiness. I can 100% see myself going to work everyday, and spending a good deal of time talking to people, relating to them, advising them, and having the freedom and creativity to help these people.
2) For those of you who have seen the tv show “Brat Camp,” which is about a wilderness therapy program that takes troubled teens hiking to help them deal w/ their programs, these programs all have licensed therapists. Basically…my new thinking as of yesturday is to make the shift from the poor, nomadic, wilderness counselor, to the more professional, better paid, licensed mental health professional.
And…in one quick step, I may have found a way to satisfy my inner voice that has been mostly silenced for what is quickly becoming nearly a year now, and to also fit in comfortably w/ society.
I called one of my best college friends last night at about 1a.m. because this thinking was keeping me up. He commented how I’d made a bit of a 180 w/ my life, and I commented how it’s more of a 360. When I went to college, I was driven for professional and financial success, then I sort of gave that all up, because I thought I had to in order to pursue something I could live with. Now…I think I’ve found a way to pursue something I can live with, while also being driven once again for professional and financial success.
I’ve realized that those things are not mutually exclusive. If I had to take a college placement exam for grad school, I would happily study and try to get the best grade possible, because while I philosophically disagree w/ grades and testing, there is still a sense that’s instilled in me to “do well,” whatever the task.
And…now as I begin to do research on going back to grad school, (whether for educational psychology, counseling, or social work, I’m not sure) I need to keep in mind that although much of what I might learn and have to do won’t seem meaningful to me, I need to treat it as important, because it’s meaningful to those who are the gatekeepers to me beginning this new career path.
Also, while I was up late, I caught a PBS special, “Socialism: Utopia On Earth,” from about 1-3am. It’s the type of program I wouldn’t have watched a year ago, but I’ve begun to grow a context for history and politics that I should have had gotten in high school.
The show discussed how Marx’s idea for a utopian society, “where people would hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, and write poetry in the evening,” went awry w/ Hitler’s fascism, and Lenin and Mao’s Communist efforts. Where sociallism did find success included the kibbutzim in Israel, various collectives in what is now known as Tanzania, and Western Europe post-WWII. In the U.S., the strength of communism basically collapsed after WWI, as the socialist camp split between those aligned with the international socialist cause, and the US nationalist cause.
It was interesting to learn about Clement Attlee, who won a landslide election against Winston Churchill. I guess he’d be the FDR of England at the time, in 1945. He introduced the welfare state, national health care, and also nationalized certain industries. Meanwhile, national health care could also be found in N. America, only it was the result of American farmers who moved north to Canada, settling in their provinces of Manitoba, Alberta, and Saskatchewan.
I think…for me, the most interesting discovery I’ve made about politics is that what is considered progressive today in terms of public policy, has its roots in the policy of the poor. The farmers, coal miners, brick layers. Now…they’re the burger flippers, gardeners, and house keepers.
What was really interesting to me, however, was socialism on the kibbutz. The idea there that children were raised collectively, that they would spend their days surrounded by other children, and would be free of “bourgeious parenthood.” Even clothing was collectively owned, you wore the clothes that were given to you. What made the kibbutz special, was its use of democracy within the community in deciding what the needs of people were, rather than having them imposed by a central authority.
Comments (4)
If you can find a way to fit yourself into a job on a campus helping kids who are cracking up over the demands made on them, that sounds like a great idea. I’m partial to depth psychology myself and would gladly spend time sitting in a therapist”s chair if I could find a depth psychologist that insurance would cover. Unfortunately, I’ve always been disappointed by traditional therapy (and I’ve done my share, too). I won’t go anymore. I just read books by James Hillman. (Read an interview with him here: http://www.scottlondon.com/insight/scripts/hillman.html.) Specifically, see We’ve Had 100 Years of Psychotherapy and the World’s Getting Worse (written with Michael Ventura), ReVisioning Psychology, and The Soul’s Code. The site I’ve referred you to calls Hillman “a maverick psychologist, a visionary, a crank, an old wizard, and a latter-day philosopher king., “Who has been “been writing and lecturing about the need to overhaul psychotherapy for more than three decades.” He may be my all-time favorite author.
…. Not to give you another thing to overhaul, but I think psychotherapy needs it just as sorely as education. And the two institutions are becoming largely indistinguishable, with classrooms becoming more and more like therapist’s offices, and therapist’s offices becoming more and more like classrooms, to the detriment of both. But I’ll shut up and let you read Hillman, if you’re interested. I think he will hit a few cords with you.
Dan – I think you should go for it!
Thanks for asking more about James Hillman. Questions always help me get my own thoughts straight in my own mind. I always love questions more than answers.