Fake Wedding

Whatever you think about pop music it is one of our most powerful cultural forces in the 21st Century. Seductive, manipulative and giving joy to millions its influence on people’s lives is immeasurable.

Blatter Affect
Sepp Blatter continues to play down criminal proceedings against his associates. For years Fifa has known to be   a corrupt institution which nobody until now has gained proof or wanted to do anything about.

Say what you like about Mr Blatter but he has remained remarkably consistent in the face of adversity. You could say that his manner is arrogant and defies belief in that he can still continue the charade that his organisation will benefit from his excellent leadership.
Blatter Affect

With a leader like this, the affect on others around him is to split them into good and bad. You are bad if you do not follow the leader and will incur the leader’s wrath if ever you try and challenge them. You are good if you schmooze and pacify the leader and make them feel good. You will also gain substantially by their methods of leadership. It can be no coincidence that countries playing along with the leader also benefit from how the leader benefits. Not clear? Its not meant to be. If it was clear then arrests would be made and prison sentences given out. Blatter Affect

The brazenness with which Blatter continues the exploitation of his positive leadership style is because he genuinely believes it. There is no fakery or duplicity here. He is being genuine. Some leaders of organisations find themselves free and unfettered to narcissistically feed their own wishes and desires at the expense of colleagues and the organisation itself. Narcissism in the Boardroom is not uncommon. Blatter Affect

Something in a primary relationship has gone deeply wrong. A sense of deep mistrust, and paranoid fear of others trying to destroy them pushes the leader along to ever more flights of unreality.

The inside world is the reality: the outside world is twisted and bent to fit this inside world.
One day we might learn about Mr Blatter’s early years and have our dislike and disbelief turned into sadness and empathy.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2015
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This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

Primary Affect Hunger is a concept created by David Levy to describe the impact
on young children who are deprived of the mother’s love. This goes onto create an adult who in or out of a relationship hungers for something or someone to satisfy the love hunger.

This hunger is not an acute starving but a low level yearning for something that cannot be had. Some have described it as an emptiness that underlies their lives that is not obvious but motivates the person to lead a life of hunger which cannot be assuaged.

Adults can drink alcohol, take drugs, enter into repeating unsatisfactory relationships to try and satisfy this emotional hunger. According to John Bowlby “the infant and young child should experience a warm, intimate, and continuous relationship with his mother (or permanent mother substitute) in which both find satisfaction and enjoyment” If this relationship is compromised in anyway then a love hunger will develop in the baby and continue into adulthood.
Primary Affect Hunger

This mother / carer relationship was formed in the first two and a half years of the child’s early life: if it had gone wrong it meant that there was a difficult life ahead for the adult.

It seems that the capitalist market place assumes that adults will be hungry for something that cannot be satisfied. Why else is the modern world made up of consumption of stuff that is wanted but not needed. The love in early life is what is needed, the distraction and filling up of the emptiness is what is wanted and what we get.
Primary Affect Hunger

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2015
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This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique.

In Residence: Xavier Corbero from Aeon Magazine 

The Catalan sculptor on the home he has been perfecting for decades

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2015
All rights reserved Disclaimer:
This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique.

Porn Boys
Psychologist Philip Zimbardo reckons we are breeding a generation of young men who will be unable to socialise or fully contribute to society. Addicted to porn and gaming they resort to an online world of security and comfort which is safe & predictable. Boys can dominate the online world with impunity, which gives little back to them.
Fatherless families contribute to boys and their reliance on the online world. Fathers when they are around give love and attention on their son’s performance: not who they are. To be the warrior and breadwinner are what they are expected to be. Men are told what they should not do: but there is little guidance on what to do. Families sit down together less to eat and discuss what has happened in the day.

There are few role models for men who have not been tainted by vice or scandal. Footballers, Musicians, Film Stars  live in the gold fish bowl of fame intensely scrutinised by the media waiting for them to screw up.

In the secular world of the 21st Century rituals have been replaced with screen events. The passage from boyhood to manhood remains unnoticed and uninitiated. There are no elders to consult in our society: only older people who moan and groan! Is this another lost generation traumatised from the experience of war? The lost older generation creates another lost generation of the future.

Porn encourages a very mono view of sex and relationships. There is no romance or enquiry in porn. It is men with large penises instantly gratifying women. This is the NORM in porn. There is no idea that porn is edited to the point of creating a fantasy over a reality. Scarily boys use porn as a break from games! Boys have been trained up and become accustomed (as we all have) to accept a TV reality. This reality is then applied to real life increasing the chance of rejection and inexperience relating to real people in real life. For example Hollywood encourages the girl  not fall in love with the guy unless he achieves something heroic.
Porn Boys

Young men online never learn to communicate: particularly with women. They cannot practice eye contact, personal space, or the art of handling rejection from women. Instead of asking “Would you like to dance?”  and setting up 50% possibility of rejection you might ask: “do you feel like a dance?” If the person says no then you can say you don’t feel like it too!
Zimbardo pointed out that to be shy is the norm! And it takes practice and faith in yourself to work at not being so shy.
Porn Boys

Video games are centred on male orientated values around heroes, villains and violence. The outcomes are challenging, need skills, but are clear and simplistic. These boys choose the screen over people. And why not. It is freely accessible, instantly gratifying and anonymous.
Porn Boys

Is this all too much? Too exaggerated? Perhaps it is the feeling that the Western World is sleep walking into a self destructive age of youngsters unable to be in the real world? Like all wake up calls there has to be an element of drama to attract attention. There are many young men able to act in the world with pride and self-confidence! But it still does not make the problem disappear!
Porn Boys

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2015
All rights reserved Disclaimer:
This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique.

Love Delusion
Two people – a man and a woman walk into a pub on a dark, cold, November’s winter evening.
They order comfort food fish and chips to fight the freezing cold outside. They have strong feelings for one   another which some might call being in love. The love is intensified as the woman is relocating to another country to a new job the following summer. As they eat the man jokingly suggests that they will lose contact with one another and that eventually neither will mind this happening. The woman falls silent and does not finish her food. She feels betrayed and angry but cannot say so. Six months later the relationship has drifted apart.

There is something dreadful about thinking of someone you love today and who you would do anything for, but who might in the future not merit you calling them on the phone or crossing the road to say hello.
In fact you would avoid them. Love Delusion.

Love is a delusion. What is the truth? Does this person who you love actually exist? Are they really that perfect? When you introduce your love object to a friend they just see them as an average person. Is it simply your over active in love imagination that creates the perfect mate? The only way love can flourish and exist is if the other person has a similar reciprocating delusion. As long as both people have a similar love delusion about one another then the love can continue. It seems lovers would prefer to be wrong about the other person and be in love, rather than disbelieve the other and not be in love.

This disappearance of love haunts us, but still does not stop us looking for love. This can also happen when our parents die. The unconditional parental love dies too. In resolving our need for love we do not necessarily resolve our need to long for love. If we have been well loved in childhood our longing for love desire might be satisfied. If not –  whatever our relationship situation the longing for love continues. Love Delusion.

To be in love and to be loved – fully understood for who we are is a delusion. The other always has a version of us that is not the same as our own. This becomes more pronounced the more realistic and everyday the love becomes. But we also expect this from our parents even as mature adults. In a good parenting relationship in the early years of life the baby’s needs are so primitive that perhaps the parent can fully understand the baby more than the baby can. Is this the repeat we wish for? To be fully understood is what we long for: to be loved unconditionally.
Perhaps the best we can do is to understand who we are, and communicate this to the other so that they can love us from this understanding.
Love Delusion.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2015
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This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique.

No Pre-empt
800 people drowned trying to find work and hope in Europe. Summit called to discussed what Europe can do. The Prime minister, Chancellor, President are all blamed for not doing something to stabilise Libya, and break up now    established smugglers’ routes. Up until now 2.5 thousand souls have died in the Earthquake in Nepal with the risk of continuing tremors. Local people fight for a pedestrian crossing as child is killed crossing a well known dangerous road.

To start a preventive measure to stop something unpleasant happening before it happens seems difficult. All the signs are there. Everyone knows what is going to happen. The syndrome of a car crash waiting to happen. In cinematic slow motion the car inches its way forward to the collision which is inevitable and we can do nothing about.

Is this the politics of money and infrastructure? There is never enough money so the money that is to be spent has to be seen as valid. Imagine being in a meeting to argue for two new pedestrian crossings: one where the crossing is going to be built where somebody has been killed, another where the crossing needs to be built on a dangerous bit of road before somebody is killed.

Perhaps under all the pessimism and cynicism of modern life we are all eternal optimists. It will never happen, only to someone else in the news.  The Dunbar number claims we can only cope with knowing 150 people at one time: contrary to the Facebook Community! If nobody is hurt in this group of 150 we can see our lives as being safe and manageable.

There is so much to do and be distracted by that we are all over whelmed. The rush of life helps us to avoid pain and hurt. We can only deal with what comes up: not what we can imagine might happen!

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2015
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This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique.

The Bog is a Nature Reserve, and area of outstanding beauty near Bishops Castle in Shropshire. The information centre in the middle of the reserve is staffed by knowledgeable and helpful volunteers.

It is dominated by the Stiperstones a hill of formed of quartzite 480 million years ago. The summit suffered from continuous freezing and thawing in the last Ice Age which crushed it into pieces which you can see in the reserve. From the Stiperstones you have a fine vista of the Shropshire Hills including the Long Mynd and onto the North Shropshire plain and the Welsh hills.

There has been a reclaiming of the reserve back to its natural form. The pine tress and conifers have been removed and replaced with the original heather seedlings. Grasslands rich in herbs, meadows and natural woodlands have been restored to their natural habitat.

The bog lead mine in the village of Snailbeach is a site showing lead mining beginning in the Roman occupation of Britain. The rocks known as the Devil’s Chair have many stories associated with it. It goes that ghost of Wild Eric a Saxon Earl defied the Normans in the 10th Century rides the hills whenever the UK is threatened by invasion.

The Stiperstones provide a backdrop for the literature of Mary Webb who named it the Diafol Mountain in her novel The Golden Arrow in 1916.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2015

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This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.

This article is designed to provoke argument and critique.

Don’t Know

A pilot flies a plane into the Alps killing himself and 149 passengers. What would make a person do this? Did he have   on going psychological problems? Did he have a grudge against his employers? Was he going to be made redundant? Was he depressed about the end of a relationship? Did he want to become notorious? Notorious for what?

Malaysian Airline flight MH370 disappeared into the sea on March 8th 2014 killing 239 passengers on board. The plane was miles off course with no explanation. Nothing has been found of the plane. Could this be a similar type of incident?

A young woman accused of murdering a flat mate in Italy is finally declared innocent in Italy in a Court of Appeal. Nobody really knows what happened on that night. Out of 3 possible perpetrators only one is in prison. Nobody really knows the circumstances in which the victim died.

The problem is we don’t know – and probably will never know. Our culture at the moment is centred on knowing. It makes us secure. This has happened through time. If something wasn’t known something was made up to explain it. Now we have the new truth of science and technology. Anything can be taken apart, digitised, and understood. If it isn’t understood science labels it undiscovered and put on the list for further exploration and discovery.

Don’t know is difficult. Yet it seems people with their unique characteristics, talents and blind spots come close to don’t know. Marriages fail, lovers leave, children rebel. We don’t know how people even those close to us will react.

The love of history, nature, and animals might be in some way a reaction to don’t know. They don’t talk back or let us down.

How do we accept the don’t know? Notice it? Pay it attention? Practice living with it?
Develop a familiar, closer relationship to it? Don’t know.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2015
All rights reserved Disclaimer:
This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique.