Jim

Dr Jim Byrne

Doctor of Counselling

ABC Coaching and Counselling Services

Email: jim.byrne@abc-counselling.com

Telephone: 44 1422 843 629 (from outside the UK);

or 01422 843 629 (from inside the UK).

Postscripts:

1. In order to be happy, you must learn how to re-frame your experiences so that they show up as being tolerable and manageable: See the Six Windows model of CENT.***

2. You must also be able to think rationally.  See the ‘What is REBT?' page.***

3. You could also benefit from studying Stoic philosophy: Stoic Philosophy in Counselling contexts.***

4. And meditation is an important daily practice: How to Meditate.***

5. And you should also study the Psychology of Happiness.***

~~~

If you like this Happiness Blog, please post a link to your favourite social networking site (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc) so your friends can also enjoy it.  Please click the button that follows:

 
~~~
Also, please support the work of the Equality Trust.***
~~~

Jim

Dr Jim Byrne

Doctor of Counselling

ABC Coaching and Counselling Services

~~~

Postscripts

1. Remember to write out three things you can be grateful for, every night before getting into bed.  Choose one of them, and try your best to focus on it as you fall asleep, in the hope of dreaming about it.

2. Choose happiness.  Remember to smile.

3. Take care of your body: healthy diet; regular physical exercise.

4. Take care of your mind: meditation; relaxation.

5. Take care of your relationships: Aim to maintain a 5:1 ratio of positive to negative moments in your important relationships, especially with your life partner.

If you like this blog, please post it to your profile at your favourite social networking site, so your friends can share it:

~~~

The Happiness Blog:

Understanding the UK Riots.  Plus a new video on loving relationships

Copyright (c) Jim Byrne, Saturday 13th August 2011

1. Introduction

I began this blog yesterday, and wrote four pages on the UK riots.  I also wanted to write about two other topics, but I am running out of time.

Of course, I must write about the riots in London and other British cities.  Why?  Because:

(1) A lot of people were very unhappy about the development of those riots, and:

(2) A lot of people do not know how to be happy in a world which is not permanently peaceful and orderly.

I was going to write Part 3 of my piece on the attitude of the Stoic philosophers towards social relationships, in order to maintain personal tranquillity and morality; but that will now have to wait till next week.

And finally, I want to write about my new video series on how to build a successful sex-love relationship, Part One of which is now available at YouTube.

2. Understanding the UK riots

Some people are mystified about where the rioters came from.  "How can people behave so badly?", they ask.  Well, the truth is, we can all behave that badly. Alexander Solzhenitsyn has said that we would all like to think that the good people are ‘over here', with us, and the bad people are ‘over there', with them.  But the truth is, he says, that the line between good and evil runs right down the middle of the human heart.  This is what I call the split between the good and bad sides of the individual, or the Good Wolf and the Bad Wolf.***

In brief, the theory of the Good and Bad Wolf comes from the Native American Cherokee people.  A Cherokee chief is speaking to his grandson, and he says: "There is a war going on inside each of us.  A war between a Good Wolf and a Bad Wolf.  The Good Wolf is driven by love, compassion, charity and other virtues.  The Bad Wolf is driven by hatred, greed, anti-social behaviour and a range of other vices".  The grandson thinks about this and then asks which Wolf wins?  The grandfather says: "The one that is fed!"

For decades now, the bad wolf of the British ruling class has been fed, with deregulation of the City of London, so casino capitalism can flourish; deregulation of the Bank of England, to take this further; ‘privatization' of all the major utilities: gas, electricity, water, public transport etc.  This amounted to plundering public assets for private gain.  We have also seen many examples of corruption in parliament, the police, the media, and so on.

In short, immorality - and especially greed and corruption - have been modelled for the deprived classes by the propertied classes and the political elite.  We know from various social psychology research studies, including those by Albert Bandura and his colleagues, that bad behaviour which is rewarded is likely to be copied by those who witness this connection.

In CENT, we postulate that the young infant internalizes the values, beliefs and behaviours of its mother as the first layer of its conscience (or superego, or over-I).  This is then augmented by the father, who Freud saw as ‘the reality principle'.  Then this is further reinforced and expanded by infant school teachers, and so on.

Each individual has an internalized conscience which corresponds to those early learning experiences.  However, that conscience can be suspended if it is not reinforced by external forces in the here and now.  The conscience of millions of German people was suspended by ‘permissions' from Hitler and the Nazi ideology which said it was okay to murder Jews, Communists, gays and gypsies.  We also know from modern American social psychology studies, by Milgram and Zimbardo, for examples, that ordinary American citizens can be persuaded to act without conscience in inflicting pain and suffering on others if they are given permission to suspend their conscience.

If you want to understand how evil emerges, you could benefit from studying ‘The Lucifer Effect', a major study of good and evil by Professor Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University[1].  In this book, he looks at how good people become evil.  And how they become evil is not an individual thing.  It's about the situational forces; and the pressures and permissions within the system!  To get an overview of what this book is about, take a look at this brief video clip by Professor Zimbardo:

....Professor Zimbardo on Good and Evil....

In CENT this is no mystery.  We hypothesize that people are born with innate tendencies towards both (1) pro-social, good attitudes and behaviours and (2) anti-social, evil attitudes and behaviours.  Not either/or, but both/and.  And, like the Cherokee grandfather, we say that the one that grows is the one that is fed.

In this book, Zimbardo reviews his own Stanford Prison Experiment, from the early 1970s, and its relevance for the abuse of prisoners by ordinary American troops at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay prisons.  It is a shocking analysis which suggests that most of us could be initiated into the ranks of evil doers if we are given permission by our environment.

But in what way were the rioters in the UK ‘given permission' to behave badly?  There are all kinds of possible answers to this question, which is why a formal public enquiry is absolutely necessary to arrive at a balanced view.  But let me suggest a few possibilities:

~~~
~~~

# Probably all of these rioters have grown up under the influence of neo-liberal ideology, which says there is no such thing as society, only individuals; and that individuals should be able to be free from the regulation of the state, so they can acquire whatever material rewards they can snatch.

# Many, though not all, of them may have grown up in communities in which there is very high permanent unemployment of the older generations.  So the older generations are disenfranchised as role models.

# Most, but not all, of them are now facing both increasing youth unemployment and the removal of the Education Maintenance Awards which allowed them to at least attend Further Education college in the hope they could acquire some skills for future employment, and also structure their time and keep them off the streets.

# Many (but by no means all) of them labour under the disadvantage of having had an ‘absent father', so they never received the moral injunctions of the ‘reality principle'. (Some single mothers do a fine job of being mother and father to their children, but it is almost impossible to do this without some kind of support.  Two parents are better, in principle, than one).

# All of the rioters will have seen the major banks get away with plundering the pension funds of this and other societies, to gamble them on crazy financial instruments which nobody could understand; thus bringing this society to the brink of total breakdown (not many months ago!)  And those bankers have received no penalty; and are back in action grabbing the biggest and juiciest ‘bonuses' they can get their hands on.  They operate on the basis that "we do it because we can".  (Isn't that what the rioters thought? "Let's do it, because we can").

# Didn't they also see their Members of Parliament cheating on their expenses - grabbing what they could, "because they could". (We could excuse them for this, since it was argued that this was Thatcher's way of letting them have a wage rise which would never be publicly announced, because ordinary citizens were not to be rewarded so highly.  But isn't this just more corruption?)

# Some of the rioters have a grievance against the police - some of which may be justified and some of which is quite definitely not justified.  Thus when the police came into one area, with a long history of conflict with that community, and shot an unarmed man, and then the media falsely claimed the man had been armed - there was bound to be trouble.  And that, remember, was the (understandable) spark that started the domino effect that followed.

There are high knife crime and gun crime traditions in some (but not all) of the communities in which these riots occurred.  Not surprisingly, in those areas, the police will use extensive stop and search attempts to stamp that out.  In the process, many young people will be stopped and searched because of their appearance, and that must build up a strong sense of grievance, especially if that is not handled sensitively by the police.  To avoid this happening, the police need to be a lot more sensitive; but to deal with knife and gun crime you do not employ nice, sensitive individuals.  Thus the nightmare of making things worse while trying to make things better!

Eventually, the rioters were brought under regulation by the robust police response, taking back the streets.

But when we think about the huge importance of modelling of moral behaviour - and the need to avoid showing models of criminal behaviour being rewarded - not only did the rioters need to be regulated, but the Houses of Commons and Lords needed to be regulated (to prevent expenses frauds); the bankers needed to be regulated (to cap their disgusting salaries and ‘bonuses', and to stop them gambling with our pension pots); the police needed to be regulated (to stop them being corrupted by newspapers and criminals); the Murdoch press needed to be regulated, and the press in general needed to be regulated; and Tony Blair needed to be regulated, so he could not con parliament into going into an unjust war (which was a hugely unpopular act of immorality for which he has been publicly rewarded with millions of pounds in annual income, since leaving public office!).  All of these failures of regulation are related.  The riots could only happen because all the little steps which allowed them to happen had already been taken, by the immoral Thatcher/Reagan gang, and onwards from them, through deregulation after deregulation, after deregulation.  And privatization, after privatization, after privatization.  And excusing of upper class crime, after excusing of upper class crime, after excusing of upper class crime.

We cannot have one law for the rich and one for the poor (no matter what Tony and George told us).  We cannot have gross inequality and a viable society.  Equality is better for everybody.***  As Martin Luther King said, "We're caught in a network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly".

If we abandon 70% of the population to a mixture of lifelong unemployment, or low pay in dead-end jobs, in a context in which we allow great wealth and conspicuous consumption for a minority, we are asking for the Bad Wolf to emerge.  If we allow the Bad Wolf of the bankers and the MPs to go unpunished, then the Bad Wolf of the dispossessed and the relatively deprived will also emerge.  

As one wise person commented recently, "We must bring ourselves into balanced relationship with one another and the Earth. This requires building economies with heart".  Our present economy is a heartless con trick designed to benefit a small minority of the population.

We are all citizens of one state.  We cannot condone the writing off of whole sections of this society so a few greedy pigs can gorge themselves endlessly in disgraceful excess consumptions and ego strutting.

The riots are a wake up call, to remind us of our common humanity - and our common animality.  If we do not figure out how to live well together in a more equal society, we shall perish together in the mindless rioting of the Bad Wolf.  (And a more equal society means a maximum wage/salary, as well as a minimum wage; and the maximum wage should be a small number of multiples of the minimum!  We also need to ensure an end to plundering pension funds for maket-gambling and fat bonuses!)

~~~

What can we do?

It is easy to offer a critique, but what can we control or change in order to produce a better future?

(1). Study Zimbardo's book on evil.  Train yourself and your loved ones to be ‘heroes' - to be ready to do the right thing when duty calls, regardless of the cost.  Also, to understand the role of ‘the situation' in determining the moral and immoral actions of individuals and groups.  We must get beyond seeing individuals as autonomous and separate from the groups and communities to which they belong.  Group mind sets are very powerful, and social situations - e.g. of exclusion and discounting - have powerful effects on those who are thus victimized.  Blaming and scapegoating individuals and gangs is a way to excuse the leaders and rulers of societies from their moral responsibilities towards all our citizens.  But this does not excuse the Bad Wolf behaviour of individuals and gangs, while it may go some way towards understanding it.

(2). Study the CENT perspective on the Good and Bad Wolf.  Find out how good and/or bad we are as individuals in our daily lives.  Commit to being better moral role models for those who see us and may be influenced by us.  "Be the change that you want to see in the world".  Do not be dissuaded from emphasizing the importance of morality just because some disreputable right-wingers are also talking about morality.  Morality is hugely important, and upper class immorality is just as important to target as the immorality of the dispossessed.

(3). Apply what we learn to improving our communities in those small ways we can. As Martin Luther King said: "The time is always right to do what is right".

(4). Hold our politicians to account.  Make sure there is a public enquiry into the detailed causes of these riots.

(5) Any group, community or society, like a marriage, is a house that is built every day.  Who is building the house of our fragmented communities today?  What can you and I do to build the house of our local communities?

3. My new video on successful relationships

Human relationships are centrally important to human happiness.  In the past I have presented several quotations on this subject.  I have now produced a 30 minute video on How to Build a Successful Sex-Love Relationship.***

Please take a look and see what you think.

That's all for this week.
Best wishes,

Jim

Dr Jim Byrne

Doctor of Counselling

ABC Coaching and Counselling Services

~~~

Postscripts

1. Remember to write out three things you can be grateful for, every night before getting into bed.  Choose one of them, and try your best to focus on it as you fall asleep, in the hope of dreaming about it.

2. Choose happiness.  Remember to smile.

3. Take care of your body: healthy diet; regular physical exercise.

4. Take care of your mind: meditation; relaxation.

5. Take care of your relationships: Aim to maintain a 5:1 ratio of positive to negative moments in your important relationships, especially with your life partner.

If you like this blog, please post it to your profile at your favourite social networking site, so your friends can share it:

~~~

[1] Zimbardo, P. (2009) The Lucifer Effect: How good people turn to evil.  London: Rider.

~~~

3. More on Stoicism and Social Relationships

Last week, and some weeks earlier, I wrote a little about the Stoic approach to social relationships.  In particular, I emphasized that Marcus Aurelius taught that we should prime our minds before meeting up with people each day.  Marcus taught that we should expect other people to frustrate us, and/or insult and abuse us, be difficult and awkward, and so on.  So do not foolishly expect that life will be ‘fun' when you get to work, or to your social events with family and friends.

But just because humans are difficult and annoying and frustrating to us, we cannot abdicate our responsibility to engage in social relationships[1].  For a Stoic, that is part of our duty - part of the reason we are ‘here'.  But we must choose our friends and associates carefully whenever possible.  And this is particularly so in the case of choosing our life partner.  We should ensure that our partner is broadly on the same ‘path' as ourselves: preferably on the ‘road less travelled'; the moral road; a road that is ‘dedicated to reality at all costs'. 

In particular, we should be selective about the social events we attend.  We should avoid parties that are thrown by ‘non-philosophers', or people whose values are very different from our own.  Why so?  Because of the concept of ‘enrolment'.  There is a very real risk that if you hang out with people who are feeding their Bad Wolf side, and thus growing their Bad Side, you will become enrolled into being like them - morally reprehensible and engaging in various forms of evil, both minor and major.  In any such gathering, if we are with people who talk about morally questionable subjects, we should remain silent, and not engage.  Even better would be to change the subject to something more appropriate. And better still would be to leave!

Next week I will look at what we should do when we have no choice but to relate to annoying people! :-)

4. Consciousness and non-consciousness in counselling and psychotherapy

If you are interested in the subject of whether or not counsellors function consciously or non-consciously in counselling sessions, then please read on.  However, if you are mainly interested in learning about happiness, then please give this item a miss, or take a look at the bottom line, below.

In recent weeks I have written about the fact that I learned a lot from Dr David Wallin's book on Attachment in Psychotherapy[1]; but that I was concerned about his descriptions of the theories of Mary Main and Peter Fonagy, and how he saw them fitting into his own theory of attachment.  My concern was that Main and Fonagy seemed to be unrealistic about the degree to which humans function consciously, using language-based distinctions.  My own perspective is that humans mainly function non-consciously, as I showed in a lengthy post last week. 

My awareness of the degree to which humans function non-consciously was raised when I was studying for my doctoral degree in counselling, at the University of Manchester.  I had interviewed two research respondents, and I was trying to make sense of their responses.  At the same time I was reading some books and papers which take radical perspectives on human consciousness, and in particular Gladwell's (2006)[2] take on the ‘adaptive unconscious', which I described last week.  This was the ‘bottom line' of my conclusions, quoted from my thesis:

"So my research respondents are probably unconscious (meaning non-conscious processors of information) for at least 95% of the time, including most of the time they are interacting with me.  Unfortunately for me, I was proposing to interview them about who they are, what they know, what they do, and why they do it (all in connection with ethical research functioning)?  And I was proposing to do that:

# Even though they take actions for tacit/nonconscious reasons, and can immediately make up plausible storiesto account for what they did. (Source: Gladwell, 2006: 69-71). 

# Even though they see themselves through ‘rose tinted mirrors'. (See Haidt, 2006: 66-69)[3]; and cannot see their own ‘faults' as easily as they can see the faults of others. 

# And even though Gray (2003: 81)[4]says: "We (including my research respondents - JWB) cannot get rid of illusions.  Illusion is our natural condition. ...". 

"These insights brought me to the point of virtual despair that I could ever find out anything, from any human respondent, anywhere, about anything."

Those insights also apply to all counsellors and psychotherapists, while working with their clients, and in all other contexts.  We are largely non-conscious beings, with a ‘pinnacle' of consciousness at the tip of our iceberg of ‘adaptive non-conscious' minds.  This is very different from David Wallin's view, which I (eventually) discovered was as follows:

"...contemporary intersubjective and relational theories (of counselling and psychotherapy) offer clinicians the most powerful tools available for working effectively with transference-countertransference enactments. These theories require that we consider questions such as the following: What is most emotionally compelling in the immediacy of the here-and-now interaction with the (client)? What is the interpersonal pattern that is presently being played out - and, in particular, what is the nature of our participation in it?  How can the jointly created enactment be understood?  Usually questions like these are answerable only in dialogue with the (client).  Such dialogue sometimes demands that the therapist ‘go first': To make the latent enactment manifest, it may be necessary for us to put our own experience of the interaction into words". (Wallin, 2007, page 123).

Later, David explains that these intersubjective and relational theories mainly focus upon the non-verbal content of the session, including looking at the ways in which the client might be evoking emotional responses in the therapist.

My objections to this approach are as follows:

1. According to Gray (2003), we are only consciously aware of about one millionth of the data we are processing at any given moment.  Therefore, it is ludicrous to rely upon what we can access consciously as our guide to what is going on with the client.

2. Gladwell's (2006) presentation of the nature of human non-conscious, tacit functioning, would suggest that it is better to rely upon our gut feelings and our intuitive sense of what is going on, rather than our conscious judgements.  This conclusion is informed by a wide range of convincing research, including the research by Maier (1931) which I quoted last week.

3. If a therapist is focusing upon the three questions listed above, then they are not paying attention to the signals that are emanating from the client.  They are dividing their already seriously limited bandwidth (Gray, 2003) and probably also interfering with their non-conscious processing of available visual and aural data.

~~~

What does this say about my approach to dealing with clients?  Does it mean I do not deal with "enactments of the unthought known"[1] in my psychotherapeutic encounters? No, it does not.  It means, instead, that I deal with all such enactments - which echo back to the earliest experiences of relationships in the infancy of my clients - from tacit levels of knowing, using my ‘adaptive unconscious'.

In ‘Blink', Gladwell (2003)[2] uses a number of very convincing examples of how professionals most often use their gut reactions to solve problems and guide their actions, and the serious consequences of not doing so.  Of course, those gut reactions are not infallible, and sometimes they mislead us, but most of the time, they are the guidance system that directs our problem solving and decision making. Our conscious minds lack the bandwidth to do that job.

One example given was of a fire department commander in Cleveland, Ohio, who took a team into a building from which smoke was billowing.  Inside the large room, over in one corner, a catering cooker was on fire. The fire chief sniffed the air and ordered his men to retreat from the room, back onto the street.  As they got outside, the floor they had been standing on collapsed into the roaring inferno in the basement, the location of the real fire.

Why did the fire chief act?  He did not know for sure.  He did not work it out consciously.  He apparently noticed the dryness of the air, and felt a gut reaction that drove him into retreat.  Once outside he reasoned that he must have somehow known from (non-conscious) experience that the fire in the corner could not have dried the air so much.  "At the time, though, the lieutenant made none of those connections consciously. All of his thinking was going on behind the locked door of his unconscious". (Gladwell, page 123). His gut reaction saved the lives of several fire-fighters.  If he had stayed to ‘figure it out consciously' they would all have died.

The locked door to the adaptive unconscious also concealed the problem solving process in the dangling string experiment by Maier (1931), which I described last week.  Basically, most of the research participants in Maier's research figured out three of the four ways in which is was possible to bring the two strings together.  The fourth one was more difficult - a real problem.  So they sat and mused about it, without any success.  The research organizer then brushed against one of the strings.  The resulting swinging action of the string was picked up subliminally by the research participants, who were in the room individually, not as a group.  Some time later, the solution "popped into their heads, fully formed".  They did not do any conscious work of refining the solution.  The problem was solved by unconscious thinking, behind that locked door to the adaptive unconscious.

Other examples used by Gladwell included:

1. A gambling experiment (which involved red and blue decks of cards) which demonstrated that experienced gamblers can figure out how to win a gambling game in far fewer turns of the card than non-gamblers, and that they work it out non-consciously, as demonstrated by monitoring their physiological stress responses (including sweaty palms).  They ‘know' how to win the game long before they can ‘explain' how to do it, or why.  The answer is divined by their adaptive unconscious. ("What the Iowa scientists found is that gamblers started generating stress responses to the red decks by the tenth card, forty cards before they were able to say that they had a hunch about what was wrong with those two decks.  More important, right around the time their palms started sweating, their (gambling) behaviour began to change as well".  (They had non-consciously twigged the winning formula!). Gladwell, pages 8-10).

2. A speed dating research project, run by two professors from Columbia University (Sheena Iyengar and Raymond Fisman) has demonstrated that humans have a story telling problem, in that they have conscious preferences, when asked what they like, but that their actual behaviour often contradicts those statements.  They did this by asking the volunteer speed daters to explain up front what they were looking for in a potential partner.  They then monitored who they actually chose during the speed dating activities; "...and what they find ...is that those two things do not match".  It seems the conscious mind has a story about what it would like: a "conscious ideal".  But the non-conscious mind - the adaptive unconscious - does the choosing! "That information is behind the locked door". (Gladwell, 2006, pages 61-66)

There are many other examples in Gladwell's book, illustrating the superiority of non-conscious problem solving, based on ‘thin slices' of experience, or quick snatches of information, rather than more elaborate, conscious processes.  One of the most dramatic involved a Greek statue (a kouros, or marble statue of a naked, male youth), which was almost bought by the J. Paul Getty Museum in California for $10 million.  It was a fake!  But the conscious, scientific inspections carried out within the Getty Museum did not discover that.  That was only discovered many months later, when it was shown to some experts who went off their gut reactions.  It did not ‘feel right' to one; it did not ‘look right' to another; and another ‘felt cold'; another felt there was ‘a glass' between him and the kouros; and another felt ‘a wave of intuitive revulsion'.  The scientists, who had measured and scraped and magnified, and tested and looked, and written reports at length had failed to spot that it was a fake.  They were not listening to their intuitions, and they had fewer of them because of their fields of work.  The management of the Getty were blinded by their desire to possess such a ‘rare find'.   Only the gut reactions of a handful of experts saved the Getty from a $10 million embarrassment.

~~~
 
The bottom line
David Wallin has been influenced by the views of Mary Main and Peter Fonagy, who maintain that to help your child to build a secure attachment to you, you must engage in high level meta-cognitive activity with the child, teaching them the word-labels for emotions, and how to think about emotional situations.  This is clearly wrong, as Mary Ainsworth spent at least one-third of her research time and energy working with illiterate mothers in Africa, and in that research, she found that most of the children had secure attachments to their mothers and carers.

Secure attachment, according to Bowlby, depends upon sensitive caring, and responsivenvess, between mothers and their children.  And the same could be said about building secure attachments between counsellors and their clients.

When I sit in a room with a client, I take full account of my gut reactions.  I fully utilize my intuitions, combined with my conscious awareness.  I do not try to be overly conscious about what is going on, any more than I would in conversation with my mother.  Of course, over time, I have studied extensively, and been trained thoroughly; and taught myself many skills, techniques, knowledges, insights, ways of being, models of mind, models of therapeutic intervention; and now I allow them to flow out of me in response to the client, in perhaps an analogous way to the way a musician in an orchestra responds to the arm movements of the conductor, and the notes on their sheet music, and the sounds of the surrounding players. There is no time to think out conscious scenarios of what is happening and what it means. 

I operate in automatic, tacit mode, and my performance is the better for it!  I am like the fire chief (described above) in a new burning building.  I respond to what is happening, with lightening speed (from my adaptive unconscious) and I do not waste time talking to myself, at conscious levels, about academic questions which can be considered later.

~~~

I will write a paper on this subject in the fullness of time.

~~~

Jim

Dr Jim Byrne

Doctor of Counselling

ABC Coaching and Counselling Services

~~~

Postscripts

1. Remember to write out three things you can be grateful for, every night before getting into bed.  Choose one of them, and try your best to focus on it as you fall asleep, in the hope of dreaming about it.

2. Choose happiness.  Remember to smile.

3. Take care of your body: healthy diet; regular physical exercise.

4. Take care of your mind: meditation; relaxation.

5. Take care of your relationships: Aim to maintain a 5:1 ratio of positive to negative moments in your important relationships, especially with your life partner.

If you like this blog, please post it to your profile at your favourite social networking site, so your friends can share it:

[1]Pages 122-123 of Wallin (2007).

[2]Gladwell, M. (2006) BLINK: The power of thinking without thinking.  London: Penguin Books.

[1]Wallin, D.A. (2007) Attachment in Psychotherapy.  New York: Guildford Press.

[2]Gladwell, M. (2006) BLINK: The power of thinking without thinking.  London: Penguin Books.

[3]Haidt, J. (2006) The Happiness Hypothesis: Putting ancient wisdom and philosophy to the test of modern science.  London: William Heinemann.

[4] Gray, J. (2003) Straw Dogs: thoughts on humans and other animals.  London: Granta Books.