{"id":286,"date":"2011-06-12T06:13:37","date_gmt":"2011-06-12T14:13:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=286"},"modified":"2011-06-12T06:13:37","modified_gmt":"2011-06-12T14:13:37","slug":"considering-socio-cultural-factors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=286","title":{"rendered":"Considering Socio-Cultural Factors"},"content":{"rendered":"

We should consider the socio-cultural factors operating in a situation. (Some of the factors in human development<\/a> are discussed on another paper on my website. In the future, I\u2019ll explore in another paper some of the factors in adulthood, too, including socio-cultural factors—but of course I won\u2019t pretend to be comprehensive.) Considering the socio-cultural factors might add another dimension in taking stock of one\u2019s own life, writing an autobiography, self-development, philosophy, or psychotherapy, among other endeavors. Considering the socio-cultural factors at play in one\u2019s life might include a wide variety of themes:
– gratitude for what we have or know now that we didn\u2019t have or know earlier
– including factors that arise because of continuing progress, technologically, culturally, and these include phenomena that may offer a mixed blessing, having disadvantages as well as advantages.
– lingering traditions, social norms, subtle oppressions, gross oppressions
– unrealistic expectations from false or misleading norms of the past or present
– \u201covershoot\u201d\u2014ways that we may individually or collectively have gone a bit too far in this or that direction, sometimes too much, sometimes too little
…and so forth. <\/p>\n

Avoiding Feeling Overwhelmed <\/strong><\/p>\n

First of all, actually naming all the relevant environmental elements in any given situation is in fact quite impossible. There\u2019s no way we can know many of them, and in the future we may realize that there are certain dimensions or elements that were relevant that were not known about or appreciated in our own time. Thus, the challenge of considering socio-cultural factors can seem overwhelming. Relax! Any attempt to include these in your thinking is already better than avoiding do so. You don\u2019t have to feel obliged to be complete in your assessment\u2014that\u2019s why the term \u201cconsidering\u201d was used. All I\u2019m suggesting is that we open our mind a bit, include this wider context and its many variables. I think that people too often have avoided such considerations out of fear, and some of the reasons for that fear include the following:
– not wanting to experience being a victim, helpless, out of control, the product of an over-determined cultural and historical process
– intuiting that we may never be able to entirely get a grasp on it all, it\u2019s just such a big topic
– not wanting to use excuses. (Of course, we are aware that there are those who seem to use excuses too much, to shun responsibility\u2014and they do it so flagrantly that we feel embarrassed; we don\u2019t want to be like them.)
– not wanting to blame too much (these are related feelings)
– the problems and influences are so big that it almost hurts to have to think about it
– it feels disrespectful towards all the people I felt were authorities in life, parents, teachers, people I knew were trying to help\u2014but if I think about it\u2014and I don\u2019t really want to\u2014they were limited: sometimes their approach lacked certain elements we now realize (or are beginning to realize) might have been good for us; sometimes their approach included elements that we now realize might have been actively bad for us! It is uncomfortable to think this way
– … and so forth. <\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a price to be paid by not including these elements: Avoiding thinking about this category adds to the sense of personal burden. There\u2019s a balance to be struck here. I want to help people to take up the optimal level of responsibility. Only thus can we engage personal and collective problems effectively. But responsibility is like muscle tone and exercise. If you stretch or push beyond a certain level, the pain rapidly escalates and you\u2019re in danger of stress injuries if you continue. (I am definitely against the no-pain-no-gain thesis!) On the other hand, in body exercise, there is a range of mild discomfort that, if you don\u2019t engage, you lapse into over-laziness that leads to a flaccidity of the body, a lack of optimal tone. There\u2019s that middle level with many psychological tasks, too, from trusting and loving to responsibility-taking. There\u2019s too much as well as too little. More, each person needs to discover that optimal balance for him- or herself. <\/p>\n

Back to the theme: We\u2019re talking about widening our perspective, daring to get past the aforementioned resistances to thinking about what\u2019s going on. It occurred to me that psychiatric diagnoses don\u2019t do this enough, include the socio-cultural factors. Perhaps they can\u2019t, really\u2014in terms of listing and putting it on paper. It would be unrealistic for a number of reasons:
  – some of these factors are as yet unclear
  – how to weight the influence of any given factor is certainly unclear
  – the good\/bad ratio of many factors is unclear or controversial
  – compared to what? That also makes an evaluation difficult.
  – social controversies abound about many of these factors
  – the whole ambiguity of \u201ccan\u2019t help it\u201d and individual responsibility versus accountability comes up. We want to encourage the optimal level of effort and taking responsibility, and want to discourage offering excuses that will undermine this effort\u2014in ourselves and others\u2014
  – it would take hours of philosophy, history, cultural criticism, and so forth, and perhaps also a great deal of background reading and personal experience to do this halfway adequately
  – …so, this is another way it\u2019s all \u201coverwhelming\u201d and thus avoided. <\/p>\n

Use in Life Review <\/strong><\/p>\n

Given that I would not expect a colleague to do anywhere near a complete analysis of sociocultural factors in a write-up still what occurs to me is that neither should this category be completely avoided. For people who want to know what\u2019s going on with them in life, it helps to put things in perspective. It need not be complete\u2014even taking a stab at socio-cultural analysis adds a good deal of depth to the situation. More, it accounts for what we all know are active operating factors. We are indeed in part determined by historical, political, regional, geographical, ethnic, and other socio-cultural themes. This awareness need not rob us of our recognition that we need to take an optimal degree of responsibility for what we can do to cope. <\/p>\n

Being Too Much a \u201cVictim of Circumstances\u201d<\/strong> <\/p>\n

Some people in certain roles over-do their victim-hood, but for most others this tendency seems morally weak and near-repulsive. There\u2019s also the tendency to be too much a victim in certain roles while taking on too much responsibility in other roles. The point is that rejecting any thoughts about relative helplessness can be a form of repression, a neurotic refusal to cut oneself  any slack. All intuitions of dysfunction are taken on as a personal moral weakness\u2014that is, for lots of people, we blame ourselves too much, beat ourselves up without really being able to back up what it is we should have known by now, why we shouldn\u2019t have forgotten to do this or that, and so forth. There is in fact a more realistic balance that should ensure a relatively accurate distribution of \u201ccauses\u201d for our sense of challenge.  (I have a paper on my website that addresses the value of seeking an optimal balance in a wide range of qualities in life<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Again, trying to assess all the relevant socio-cultural factors will be overwhelming because the actual whole situation is far too complex to be fully grasped or accurately quantified. However, if we avoid such unrealistic expectations\u2014and the expectation itself is a sociocultural stress\u2014i.e, the unrealistic expectation that anyone can fully and accurately grasp the nature and extent of the many forces operating within and around his existence\u2014, then we may perhaps find the optimal balance between self-forgiveness and taking responsibility. <\/p>\n

A Theme for Psychotherapy <\/strong><\/p>\n

Depending on the timing and situation for the client, it might be worthwhile dipping into this category for a while: Some people are so into hating themselves for their inadequacies that this obscures much in the way of taking stock. Too much judgment. Some recognition of the way we are all products of our environment offers a cognitive structure for the relatively accepting attitude of the therapist. <\/p>\n

I imagine this exercise also being used towards the end of therapy, because recovery, in my thinking, also includes a marshaling of the client\u2019s interest in doing more than being relieved of symptoms. I think there\u2019s healing that comes with finding that one can meaningfully help in the greater good. (Alfred Adler is unique in developing a model for optimal mental health through an attitude of wanting to participate in the advancement of the collective. He called this \u201cGemeinschaftsgefuehl,\u201d which means a feeling for the community, also translated as \u201csocial interest.\u201d) <\/p>\n

If the client can\u2019t get out of himself enough to accept his duty to the larger \u201cwe,\u201d in my thinking the client hasn\u2019t truly gotten \u201cwell.\u201d (I heard that Fritz Perls, a pioneer of the method called \u201cGestalt Therapy,\u201d once sourly observed: \u201cMost patients don\u2019t really want to get better; they just want to get better at being neurotic.\u201d My interpretation of this is related to this shift of attitude from me to we, from personal mastery to some sense of duty to be useful to the collective.) <\/p>\n

Summary<\/strong> <\/p>\n

While it may seem overwhelming, an effort to consider, analyze, and weigh properly the many types of socio-cultural factors at play in our lives is an activity that should be done. I suspect that too often it tends to be avoided, for reasons mentioned, and avoiding it in turn tends to add to the personal burden of shame and guilt. I don\u2019t object to a certain degree of owning shame and guilt \u2014 in small doses I think these are bracing for the building of our character. As I\u2019ve noted elsewhere, problems arise when people experience too little shame or guilt! But too much isn\u2019t good, either, and a socio-cultural analysis may help to put things into proper perspective. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We should consider the socio-cultural factors operating in a situation. (Some of the factors in human development are discussed on another paper on my website. In the future, I\u2019ll explore in another paper some of the factors in adulthood, too, including socio-cultural factors—but of course I won\u2019t pretend to be comprehensive.) Considering the socio-cultural factors […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,12,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literacy","category-psychotherapy","category-wisdom-ing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}