Archive for December, 2021
Happy New Year: Say Your Prayers!
December 31, 2021
Officer Potter: Guilty!…of Enforcing Law
December 28, 2021Meet Officer Kim Potter.
https://www.theroot.com/ex-police-chief-who-resigned-after-daunte-wright-shooti-1848233262
Meet Officer Potter’s Chief of Police.
https://www.fox9.com/news/kim-potter-trial-day-7
Meet Daunte Wright, the criminal (who should have been in jail) that Officer Potter shot, by accident.
This case is a miscarriage of justice.
As a psychologist, with a specialty in police and first responder psychological assessment and treatment, I have provided psychotherapy to numerous police officers who have had to shoot in self-defense, or the defense of others, and other officers who have been shot and wounded. I have conducted therapy with officers who had been forced to shoot with lethal effect and others who had been stabbed and beaten. My police clients have also been fresh on the seen of horrific murders of fellow officers, and in one case a mass murder, triaging those he should try to help and others beyond hope of saving.
Given my experiences with police departments and their officers, I remain greatly impressed with the quality of work that they consistently do under the worst of circumstances.
Yes, there is a very small minority of “bad officers” (as there are a few bad performers in any profession). After working 25 years with police departments and their officers: Without question, until proven otherwise: I strongly support the police.
Here are the reasons I object to the jury finding Officer Potter guilty of Manslaughter 1 & 2, that could put her decades in prison. Decades in prison among prisoners, some of whom who would like to kill her.
As reliably reported, Daunte Wright violently resisted arrest in a way that directly threatened the life and limb of another officer who was half into Daunte’s car trying to prevent him from speeding away. Had Wright been able to flee from the police, as he was fighting to do, that officer could have been killed or maimed as a result.
I know through my work with police departments and officers that police are authorized to shoot perpetrators under these circumstances. I have seen this occur at least twice in my own region, and provided therapy with some of the officers involved.
The police were authorized to shoot Daunte Wright under the circumstances that he had perpetrated against the arresting officers. The Chief of police stated that this was the truth. When he was asked to fire Officer Potter for this shooting he refused to do so and resigned from his position. The Chief was a man of great integrity.
With the other officer hanging into the car, Officer Potter should have shot the perpetrator until he stopped trying to accelerate the car. Never mind that she though she was tasing him. Tasers are less reliable than a quality handgun. With a taser, two barbs must hit the person and penetrate clothing to embed in their flesh or the perpetrator will not be immobilized. Furthermore, the taser can only fire one time. In the case of a taser miss or penetration failure, precious seconds would pass before an officer could release the taser and then draw and fire their handgun. In a potentially lethal situation, such as Officer Potter faced, the result would then be more likely lead to the death, or serious injuries of officers and citizens.
The Chief of Police correctly defended officer Potter.
Finally, if the defense failed to discuss the physiology of high stress and resulting Autonomic Nervous System Arousal in a police officer in life and death struggles, they were incompetent in their defense of Officer Potter. I have not learned if they did, or did not do so. But, this defense would have been an honest and essential component of Officer Potter’s defense.
Traumatic events cause the “Fight, Flight, or Freeze” segment of our nervous systems to reflexively fire-up. This reflexive physiological response dumps adrenalin into our bodies, greatly increases the speed of our electrical impulses (our body is run by about 9 volts of chemo-electrical impulses), and causes our vision to “tunnel-vision”-focus upon the threat. Threatening vents then are often perceived to occur in “slow motion”. Fine muscle skills are impaired and larger muscles are super-charged. In this state, the most practiced muscle memories occur automatically, and hearing is dulled to the point that gun fire may not be heard (even by the shooter).
There is much more that happens during reflexive autonomic nervous system arousals, that Officer Potter was certain to experience. But, those physiological changes that I have mentioned can easily account for her accidently drawing her weapon and not immediately knowing that she shot the perpetrator. As a 26 year veteran, we can safely assume that she had practiced drawing and firing her handgun a great many more times and her taser (a more recent side-arm), much less often.
That Officer Potter thought she was firing a taser, is a mental error. But it is an irrelevant mental error. Shooting a criminal who was engaging in an illegal and potentially lethal automobile escape from apprehension was a perfectly legal and appropriate thing for any police officer to do.
Finally, and most egregiously, it appeared that many demonstrators waited outside the court house, clamoring for a guilty verdicts while a hung jury was ordered back into deliberation. This, at a time of their great fatigue and frustration, as well as the Christmas Holidays fast approaching.
Furthermore, any informed citizen would certainly know the terrible riot damages to cities in which police were accused of killing a black citizen and were not found guilty to a degree that satisfied those preferring revenge to justice! If fact there were riots in his city and elsewhere following this police shooting.
There are enough dispiriting and intimidating factors impacting the jury in the two paragraphs above to induce guilty verdicts.
According to widely accepted police protocol Officer Potter certainly was not guilty of two counts of Manslaughter.
Forgivable mental confusion about the taser or gun….or not: Officer Potter was only “guilty” of enforcing the law.
V. Thomas Mawhinney, Ph.D., 12/28/21
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Spirit of Christmas and Secular Humanism: Not!
December 24, 2021This article is just in time for Christmas. Wonderful!
There is an increasing backlash against Secular Humanist’s attempted stigmatization of all sayings and symbols that reflect America’s religious traditions.
For example suddenly, many more of us are saying “Merry Christmas!” once again. And with this, comes an interesting sense of “liberation”.
This is an odd feeling for people to have; given that our liberty has always been in our own hands!
The appearance of these (currently waning) “social prohibitions” on happy or reverent talk about this nation’s Merry Christmas’s, Thanksgivings, Easters and other religion-based celebrations might be hard to understand. The Following article is sure to enlighten many readers.
Knowledge is power….so please read-on and behave accordingly!
This article is by one of my favorite authors.
V. Thomas Mawhinney, Ph.D.
Merry Christmas! Dec. 25, 2021
The Religion of Secular Humanism
James A. Watkins is an entrepreneur, musician, and a writer with four non-fiction books and hundreds of magazine articles read by millions.
Secular Humanism is a Religion
“The purpose of a man is like the purpose of a pollywog – to wiggle along as far as he can without dying.” ~ Clarence Darrow, Secular Humanist
Secular Humanism is a religion. The American Humanist Association has a religious tax exemption status approved by the federal government. Nine times, the Humanist Manifesto calls Secular Humanism a religion.
The Humanist magazine featured an article in 1983 that boasted: “The battle for mankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom. The classroom must and will become the arena of conflict between the old and the new, the rotting corpse of Christianity and the new faith of Humanism.”
Paul Kutz, a signatory of Humanist Manifesto II, wrote in its preface: “Humanism is a philosophical, religious, and moral point of view.” Kutz calls for the establishment of secular humanist churches.
Secular Humanism is the Religion of our Public Schools
The day God was kicked out of our government schools by the Supreme Court in the 1960s is the day the government schools should have been closed down and replaced by private education. We the People are supposed to be running this country, not nine unelected men in black robes.
For fifty years, Christians have been forced to fund the destruction of their society due to the indoctrination of our children into the secular humanist religion. Advocates for Secular Humanism have been quite clear and explicit about using government schools to promote their faith and undermine Christian beliefs and values. Secular humanists should fund their own schools.
Oh, it has been a neat trick, so give the Devil his due. The sinister ideas of Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud are taught to our children unopposed by the teachings of Jesus, John, Paul, and Luke. In other words, the almighty state’s authority forbids a worldview with God in it, but a satanic worldview is authorized.
Suppose our federal government must fund education. In that case, it should give parents $10,000 for each child to spend on their local secular humanist government school, or a Christian school, micro school, home school, or any other mode of education the parents prefer. School Choice.
A Cosmic Battle Between Truth and Lies
The motto of Secular Humanism is “Good without God.” The primary identifying characteristic is its disbelief in God and disdain of any worldview with God in it. So, even though secular humanists claim their views are the opposite of religion, they are devoutly religious.
Scientific materialism is the cornerstone of Secular Humanism. Calling it ‘science’ and not the dreaded ‘religion,’ it has become the religion of our government schools. The so-called ‘separation of church and state’ has been diabolically used to brainwash our children into the religion of Secular Humanism by calling it science.
Secular Humanism indoctrinates our children into four big lies that undergird the rest of its religion: 1) The progress of humankind is all because of science. Christianity has worked against it all along. 2) Science has proven religious beliefs are false. 3) Educated people believe in science, not in the Christian faith. 4) Only science presents the whole of reality as it is.
The secular humanists approach the study of the Cosmos in a manner that purposefully and systematically excludes the divine. Not because this approach is natural but because they IMPOSE it on the Cosmos, refusing to consider anything but a godless universe.
That is not as ‘new’ as its disciples would have you believe. Epicurus promoted the idea that the world’s study should have as its aim to ‘liberate’ the human race from belief in God, immortal souls, and the afterlife—2300 years ago. And a couple of hundred years later, Lucretius promulgated the idea that the universe was the result of pure chance without guidance or purpose.
This is a cosmic battle between truth and lies. The existence of God and the Truth of the Bible are what’s under attack. Secular Humanism has no answer to the questions, “What is evil?” “Why is their order instead of chaos?” “Why is there something instead of nothing?” “Where did the Universe come from?” “How was it created?” “What was there before the Creation?”
“Only Christianity provides a unified answer for the whole of life,” wrote Francis Schaeffer.
Priscilla Presley plastic surgery pictures – before & after
The Clash of Moral Views Underlies our Culture Wars
Every worldview necessarily entails a conception of morality. The secular humanist religion makes Adam indistinguishable from an animal, stripped of anything that would make him distinctly human. Therefore it follows that the purpose of a man’s life can mean no more than the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain; hedonism undisturbed by any desire or fear beyond self-gratification, with sexual gratification the highest aim. It requires a denial that our sexual organs are designed for any purpose above making us feel good. In this view, the fact that children are the result of sexual intercourse is a horrible burden, not a blessing.
We have a clash of moral views that underlie our culture wars. Since human beings are nothing more than a random conglomeration of atoms in the secular humanist religion, there is no basis for any morality. It follows that no sexual act can be intrinsically wrong—which is a strong attraction of this religion. Every pleasure can only be good; no one can be wrong about what feels good to them, and no one may make moral judgments about what makes someone else feel good. If it feels good, do it.
‘Humanist’ has become a word for those who have abandoned belief in God. Some refer to such people as ‘secularists.’ They tend to gravitate to education, entertainment, media, and government careers. That is how they have ascended to positions of authority in these fields, by which culture is formed and transmitted. However, having abandoned God, their true spirituality and morality are skewed, making their influence anti-God. We cannot provide a sound foundation for morals and behavior when everyone’s guess as to what is right or wrong is as good as anyone else’s. People gradually believe that they have the freedom to engage in any behavior they choose. In effect, they make themselves gods.
Real Science vs. False Science
B. Alan Wallace defines real science as “a discipline of inquiry entailing rigorous observation and experimentation. Its theories characteristically make predictions that can be put to the empirical test, in which they may turn out to be wrong.”
False science cloaks philosophy or ideology in scientific authority to support beliefs using biased interpretations of evidence that you cannot test. In other words, in textbooks, classrooms, scientific journals, and television, a godless view of the Cosmos is presented as the scientific view, which it is not.
The heartless core of this religion is that nothing but physical forces exist. Therefore, there is no God, especially no God who intervenes in the world, making prayer worthless and our minds and souls nothing but brain activity.
But science has no instruments or methods to detect the non-physical world. And saying that human beings have no souls or minds contradicts how we experience life. To teach the young that our consciousness, beliefs, desires, and intentions are all an illusion is not based on scientific facts but a demonic worldview.
The ‘principal architect’ of the field known as ‘social science’ is Emile Durkheim. He wrote that scientific thought would eventually take the place of religious belief entirely because it is “only a perfect form of religious thought.”
Many people equate their newfound atheism to a religious conversion, declaring, “Science is a religion and its philosophers are the priests of nature.”
Albert Einstein said: “In this materialistic age of ours, the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people.” What is the essence of this religion? Science provides the only actual knowledge.
Nothing is Real
According to Secular Humanism, Christianity, capitalism, and social conservatism are the enemies of progress. This ideology includes the belief that courts, bureaucracies, and schools should be used to accomplish goals that would never be approved by We the People.
Taking the secular humanist worldview out to its logical conclusion, nothing but matter is real. If it makes the shape of a dog, cat, or human being, that means nothing. The whole is less than the sum of its parts because only the components, the atoms, are real.
That is opposed to the way humans naturally interpret reality. A house is a real thing that existed first in the architect’s mind. The builder decided in advance what material was to be used to create it—the material follows form. In the secular humanist view, things only appear to be designed.
Secular humanists once taught that atoms were eternal, but now we know that is not true. Therefore, nature cannot be its own cause since if particles are not immortal, they could not have always existed. Physical reality exists and must have come into existence—must have been created—at some time. In this material universe that we temporarily inhabit, nothing cannot cause something. A cause other than nature must have created nature. Isaac Newton grasped that atoms alone could not produce an orderly universe without divine aid from a Grand Designer.
The Objective of Secular Humanism is to Eliminate Moral Boundaries
The objective of Secular Humanism is to eliminate the moral boundaries that God created. Morality is, in fact, the ultimate conflict between God and Satan.
If this plane’s sensual pleasures increase, the belief in and worries about the hereafter will decrease. To dissolve the assumption that you have an immortal soul would help remove belief in Godly morality. To convince your fellow man that the universe is nothing but materials would help diminish faith in God. The concept is to redefine what is real and what is not real. That method is not based on scientific truths but theories of men—the priests of Secular Humanism.
Naturally, if you buy into the secular humanist worldview—that all is but an illusion (eerily similar to Buddhism in that regard)—politics becomes your means of salvation. Since the Cosmos is purely the result of chance and is entirely amoral, what is fought for is the maximization of your rights to pleasure and the minimization of any barriers to your gratification. Sexual desire is easily aroused and more easily satisfied without the impediments of love, marriage, family, society, or any moral code. With good and evil out of the way, we can dispense with the very concept of vices and virtues.
Secular Humanism requires enormous faith that Evolution occurred. No experiment can demonstrate that it is more than a nightmare. Darwin knew that every view of morality entails a picture of the Cosmos to support it. Only a secular humanist worldview can think nothing of the slaughter of hundreds of millions of innocent human beings—we build abattoirs for animals, don’t we?
Only such a religion as that can make a hero out of Alfred Kinsey and Mr. X., his satanic subject. Kinsey believed that adult-child sex was natural—why would it not be if we were nothing but random chemicals? Kinsey also thought it was childlike to oppose bestiality: “To many persons, it will seem axiomatic that two mating animals should be individuals of the same species. Such beliefs are immature.”
There are no moral standards in a universe defined by chance. Ethical principles, therefore, are nothing more than individual preferences. Remember that Hitler, Stalin, and Chairman Mao never thought killing tens of millions of people was WRONG. As the militant atheist Richard Dawkins said, “We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous—indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.”
The Christian faith teaches us that God outlines right and wrong. We are free moral agents who personally choose to do one or the other. Secular Humanism dominates public discussion and our public school dogmas. Its philosophy is all about societal sin—not personal sin. That enables the most immoral and irresponsible among us to assuage their guilty consciences by supporting the politically correct public stances regarding society’s crimes. Virtue signaling.
The Supreme Court Imposed Secular Humanism on our Children
Secular humanists infested the Supreme Court. In the 1960s, for the first time in American history, they would cast God, the Bible, and prayer out of our public schools. That was a sharp blow against the traditional values that had formed the bedrock of America.
As a result, we suffer from an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases, fractured families, and millions of children with no idea who their daddy is.
The people behind the deconstruction of the American Way of Life are known by many names. They may be called atheists, progressives, secular humanists, or social liberals. Regardless, their goal is to replace belief in God with faith in Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, with the state as the new God, and people as mere animals. These progressives rightly calculated that the easiest way to overcome the will of the people in a democratic republic was through the nine unelected, appointed for life, Supreme Court Justices.
Scientism
Scientism is the view that science and science alone has anything meaningful to say about the human condition. It explicitly rejects belief in God and the supernatural; it rejects boundaries for science. Scientism—not science itself—leads some people to think that religion and science are at odds.
Modern science is, in fact, the child of the Christian faith. The Bible shows us that God created a rational world organized by natural laws that we can discover with the rational minds He gave us for this purpose. The universe, designed by God’s supreme intelligence, can be investigated by the cognitive abilities of human beings created in His image.
I am amazed at the number of politicians who claim to be Catholics but support abortion and homosexual behaviors. They claim to have erected a wall between their private beliefs and their public stances. No other group engaged in public policy does so. Why should only Christians do so?
Secular humanists certainly do not. Man is a cosmic accident; he has no purpose; his life has no meaning. This is the philosophy of the godless existentialist. It comes from a lethal combination of the four most influential atheists: Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, and Darwin.
Moral Relativism
Relativism forbids distinguishing between moral codes and fosters self-indulgence. Don’t be judgmental! Out go civility, manners, and morals—mere shackles on our freedom. Nothing is revered. Permissiveness, pleasure first, no criticism allowed, the praise of the crude, vulgar and sordid. It is not good to eliminate the boundary between what men can do and what they should do.
Secular Humanism accepts paganism, occultism, and various other New Age beliefs. It is under the influence of communism; its creed is all things anti-American. Secular Humanism is hostile to tradition, custom, orthodox religion, crèches, crosses, bible studies, any mention of God on school property. But witches are OK.
Secular humanists have changed the traditional school holidays from Christmas break to winter break, spring holiday in place of Easter, fall break in place of Thanksgiving.
Knowing that God is watching us creates self-control. Wisdom and virtue create human happiness in society. Vice and wickedness are destructive.
Secular Humanism is anthropocentric: Man is the center of the universe. This view is decidedly opposed to the wisdom of our Founding Fathers. Liberty was not for individuals to pursue every whim or instinct. Secular Humanism promises individual freedom without limits, most of all, freedom from the Christian faith’s moral strictures. We can see the results all around us: moral poverty, moral anarchy.
Progressives are moral relativists, which means they do not believe that concrete right and wrong exist or that anything substantive can be said about morality.
In Closing
Progressive atheists suffer under the delusion that social science can perfect human societies if only they could relieve people of their belief in God. They took control of our school systems and taught generations of children that they were random cosmic accidents raised from primordial goo—rather than the Image of God, as the Bible teaches. Ridding the public schools of God, the Bible, and prayer were the keystones that the progressive atheists needed to push their worldview on our children.
Over the past several decades, progressives would work through the courts to prohibit public expression of our constitutional right to Free Expression of Religion. Christmas carols and manger scenes began to disappear from the American landscape. Even “Merry Christmas” came under prohibition in many parts of American life. The ACLU has advanced most of all this evil.
Secular Humanism will continue to grow like cancer if we do not cut it out. It is a parasite so bent on destroying the Christian religion that it will destroy itself and its host nation and bring down the world if it must, in the effort.
As the darkness creeps over our land, haters of wisdom take command. They spread false values, filth, and decadence. At the same time, they assault America’s moral and religious foundations. It is insane to give government absolute power when it has no fundamental absolutes by which to govern.
“Skepticism is the sadism of embittered souls.” ~ Emil Cioran
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The Psychology of Separation and Divorce: Know and Limit The Damages!
December 22, 2021I have learned the following during my work as professor of psychology and a practicing psychotherapist. I first authored this post in 2012. I hope that my repeating it in 2021 will be a service to my readers.
V. Thomas Mawhinney, Ph.D., 12/22/21
I recommend that you do your best to avoid separation or divorce by entering therapy sessions with a skilled and experienced marriage counselor. I do not advise that you let serious relationship problems continue for long periods without resolution, thinking that they will not affect your children adversely. They most probably will most likely cause emotional problems for your children.
If a divorce or separation is inevitable, a good marriage counselor will be able to help you to minimize the damages to your children.
In all such matters maximizing benefits and minimizing harm to yourselves and to your children should be your main focus: Both in the short and in the long-run.
The following are some of the problems that occur when children are involved in separations or divorces. It is your responsibility to decide if any of these damaging events are happening within your own family and what you will do about them.
The Kids:
1. Kids often act-out to gain the attention they miss because parents are angry, depressed and withdrawn. Their bad behavior not only gets them attention, but it brings mom and dad together to solve the problems. This reinforces the kids’s bad behavior and often adds to the conflict between their parents. Things get worse.
2. They often obsessively immerse themselves in activities that take their minds of the misery that they see and feel in their home. Music, video games, friends, sex, drugs, rock and role, self-abuse, etc. (Much like adults do when they are depressed and anxious).
3. Each kid’s personality is different, so each is likely to develop their own unique problems. One may become hyper-involved in pleasing others, giving love and affection, trying to make others happy, taking responsibility for trying to stabilize things…being inauthentic. Another may just withdraw and become mute and emotionally blunted. Another may become the angry oppositional one. In rare cases, some will consider suicide. Children often suffer depression, anxiety, school under- achievement, anger problems, concentration and memory problems. If they are being treated for ADHD, it is likely to grow worse and their medications may need to be adjusted. They may need counseling and medication for depression.
4. Many develop some method to escape the bad vibes or feelings in their house. They may stay away with friends, stay out after curfew, and in other ways withdraw and become unavailable.
5. Kids often take sides in parental conflict and this further damages them and the family, even after separation or divorce. They can become alienated from not only one, or both parents, but also from one set, or both sets of the grandparents, and other extended family members involved.
6. Kids sometimes become overly attached to one parent or both parents, at the expense of their own social and emotional development. They become the male or female nurse for a parent and their emotional care-taker.
7. When the father withdraws from the family, both sexes (but more often the boys) attempt to dominate the mother. This causes the father to take the role of the disciplinarian and then the parents frequently fight over the father’s more stronger disciplinary style. This teaches children how to get parents sidetracked into fights and gives greater control to the children. This can increase in severity until the that child or adolescent is thought to need to live with the father, or outside authorities need to become involved.
8. Once the separation or divorce has happened, kids frequently play one parent against the other to get what they want. This probably was already happening, but it can intensify after the split. Kids tend to take advantage of a lack of communication and the conflict problems between parents.
9. Kids often side with the parent who is the most fun, who’s rules are more lax, who have more money and who buys them more things, etc. Sounds bad, I know, but even good kids are naturally self-centered under some conditions.
10. They often request to live at the fun house and avoid the disciplined house. They may try to switch back and forth as the parents get tired of their actions and begin to clamp down on them.
11. Much of the damage done to children will only be seen in the future, when they enter their own relationships. Too often the psychological deficits present in their family of origin play-out like a video tape in their own new family lives. Sometimes the trauma of their parent’s problems cause them to be anxious and reticent about committing to solidify intimate relationships of their own.
All of these things either brings their parents together to cope with the problems (this can reinforce the problems and thereby worsen them) or it causes more conflict between everyone (again, worsening the problems).
The parents:
1. Parents dealing with the stresses of a dysfunctional marriage often turn to drugs, sex, alcohol, gambling, or outside relationships, to emotionally cope (blunt, distract, escape or avoid) their distress.
2. Frequently a “third party” enters the equation. It can be an actual sexual affair or only an emotional attachment which involves a fantasy of how “wonderful it could be with someone else”. An actual affair, or a fantasy, is devastating for several reasons. Nothing old and troubled can compare with new “love” and it is difficult for a troubled reality to compete with a fantasy. When an affair occurs individuals frequently emotionally invest heavily in it, because if they do not it is easy to feel it was a “cheap and unprincipled” thing to do. If they see it as “true love”, “special”, “legitimate”, “wonderful” and “meant to be”, it eases the conscience for many.
However, the facts are, these relationships, started during a troubled marriage, most often do not work out after the separation or divorce occurs. Approximate divorce rates are 50% for the first marriage, high 60’s for the second and 74% for the third marriage.
Subsequent marriages (or cohabitations) are less likely to work than the first one, because adults commonly do not change what it is about themselves that contributed to the ruination of their past relationships. The additional strains of new step children, remaining responsibilities to their biological children, the new mate’s increasingly revealed imperfections, conflict with extended family members and unresolved ex-spouse/partner problems all contribute to these negative outcomes.
3. Separated or Divorced parents frequently bring new (or old) lovers into the lives of their children. Emotional attachments may be formed between these individuals and the children are again damaged when that relationship falls apart, which it is most likely to do.
Also, it is critical for parents to know that children are statistically at greater risk for sexual and physical abuse from step parents than from biological parents.
4. Parents often times vilify each other to their children. They can do this in very subtle ways by showing disdain, disgust, and other negative attitudes to their mate, or while making reference to them. Parents often tell their children the about the bad things the other has done. This “splits” the kids and can cause them to not only turn against the other parent, but also each other as they take sides in the conflict. When parent spit their anger and hatred through the children at their mate, it poisons the children. The outcome of all of this is now referred to as Parental Alienation Syndrome.
5. Parents can begin to use the children as their emotional support system, sharing physical and emotional intimacies that they should not. This burdens their children with adult problems and demands that they cannot understand, solve or meet. While many children do the best they can to take care of their parents, it eventually takes its toll and can cause them to feel increasing anxiety, fear, worry, and a growing sense of incompetency.
6. When parents don’t communicate, they place their children in the role of the “go-between communicator” and peace-keeper, or negotiator. In this role, no matter what the children do, they loose. They are forced to be a mouth-piece to try to keep peace and it seldom works. They are stressed, to the max, by being forced into this roll and this will very likely show in their own maladjustment.
7. Children are ego-centric by nature. So it is normal that when things go bad in their family that they will assume too much personal responsibility for the various problems. It may not be something that they readily admit to, but they often have negative judgements and feelings about themselves, as a result. This is another important reason for the adults and children in troubled, separating, or divorcing families to get professional help.
8. Parents often develop negative attitudes toward the child or children that reminds them the most of their alienated, separate or divorced mate. They may consciously or unconsciously mistreat that child as a result. They may also develop negative expectations of the child or children that can then become reality, as a result.
9. Parents often purposefully mistreat a child because they think the child is an Ally of the other parent. In some cases, this may be true. But problems are compounded when a parent takes retribution on the child.
10. Parents often put their children in “no-win” situations by making them choose between one parent or the other (“Would you rather go with me or him/her”?; “How do you like my new boyfriend/girlfriend”?, etc.). No matter the choice, the child risks disappointing one or the other parent.
11. When separation or divorce happens each parent loses some, much, or nearly all of the practical support of the other (“help me”, “cook it”, “clean it”, “do it”, “get it”, “fix it”, “mow it”, “shovel it, take it/me/ or them somewhere”, etc.). This is a major stressor for both the adults and the children.
12. When separation or divorce happens, generally the female is the custodial parent. The female and the children then commonly experience an economic loss. This loss can plunge the children into a lower socioeconomic level, or cause them to drop into near poverty circumstances. All parties are hurt by the economic losses involved. Often, kids attach to new peers with lower expectations and values that do not lead to higher education and greater economic/social opportunities.
13. The recovery of damaged relationships between mates is often complicated by the fact that committing to work hard to improve their situation is inhibited by fear of failure. If a mate makes a commitment to try again to appreciate and give their love to their partner, their heart may again be broken and their hopes and dreams of a happy life together may again be dashed. These are normal fears and insecurities that often defeat individual’s motivation to save troubled marriages and families before serious efforts to do so even begin.
14. Most sadly, sometimes one or both adults are unable to bring themselves to make the difficult decision of ending their relationship, so they consciously or unconsciously increase the conflict in their relationship to greater and greater levels. This way they destroy what is left of their relationship without having ever to take responsibility for “making the decision” to do so in a rational manner.
Couples who go to an experienced therapist (experienced with both children and adults in marital stress), absolutely can resolve many issues, and live more happily than ever. It takes hard work and dedication, but the rewards are great. About 75 percent who do counseling report improved relationships and about 65 percent report significantly improved relationships.
I have also seen parents who separate, finally reconsider, and return to work-on and to improve their marriage, but it does not happen often.
I have also seen parents divorce, but in doing so, get counseling from a marriage counselor experienced with both adults and children. In doing so, they have minimized to the greatest extent possible, the damaging consequences of that outcome. Children are shaken and confused by the massive changes in their lives. They are afraid of what will come. It is important to sit with a professional and determine when and how parents will discuss all that is happening with them.
Whatever the outcome, I hope that parents will seek experienced professional guidance together as they make their very big and difficult decisions and seek the best outcomes available for themselves and their loved ones.
God Bless,
Dr. Tom, 2/2/12, Posted by vtmawhinney .Labels: Divorce and Children, Divorce Counseling for Families, Dr. Tom, Limit the Damage of Divorce to Children, The Psychology of Divorce and Separation, V. Thomas Mawhinney Ph.D., VTM
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Democrat Buffooneries
December 17, 2021
How is America Doing?!
December 13, 2021It is time to revisit this question, as American voters should do often.
We should decide this question from our adult-lifetime’s vantage point! The more World and American history we read, the better equipped we will be to make an accurate assessment of today’s America.
No matter what our conclusion, we may be told we are wrong, perhaps even scolded, insulted, or shunned by our critics.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson once warned, and I paraphrase: The world will whip you for your nonconformity. So it can be, if we do not go along with the crowd.
We will need the courage of our informed convictions to stand our ground against those who may assail us, just for telling what we think is the truth.
In some cases, it will be best not to debate such issues with others. This can be particularly true with members of our families and others who we love. Strong disagreements can create more harm than good. There may be others less important to our happiness, who will not respectfully consider our reasoning. To continue the debate with them can also be self-defeating; raising our blood pressure and frustration. With them, as Dale Carnegie preached, it is also best not to talk religion or politics.
It is important to take time to assess the reality that we see and feel, when we ask ourselves good questions about present life in America, and evaluate these assessment against our past our past ones. including actual data about such matters is time-consuming, but is a powerful source of confirming evidence.
But, for this few minutes, let us ask ourselves the following questions.
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Is the home life for our children more safe and secure?
Are our families more stable than in the past?
What has happened to two parent families with children?
Is marriage as popular as it once was?
Has cohabitation and children out-of-wed-lock increased or decreased?
Are our children safe and secure in our schools?
Can we trust our teachers to care for our children’s welfare (making this their top priority), as they once did?
Is America’s student’s academic performance better than it has been in the past?
Do our children know America’s history well and understand our Founding Father’s dream of an enduring Constitutional Republic?
Are our children taught their civic responsibilities in our schools? Do your schools still teach Civics Classes within their curricula?
Can our children, adolescents and college students intelligently discuss the pros and cons of Capitalism and our Constitutional Republic in contrast to other available forms of government?
Is our popular media helping or hurting our children’s normal development?
Are our children less drug and sex involved?
Is our media less sexualized, violent, profane and more respectful of others than in the past?
Is our population as dedicated to morality and personal responsibility as it once was?
Are you safer in your homes, communities, and during travel that you once were?
Are moral and religious influences growing or diminishing?
Doe our churches have more or less influence in or society and lives
Are we placing more or fewer citizens in our jails and prisons?
How is our economy doing?
Are our poverty rates for adults and children increasing or diminishing?
Is America’s fertility rates increasing or decreasing?
Is our fertility rate at, or below, population replacement levels?
How do citizen fertility rates affect the health and longevity of a culture?
How can a welfare state care for the infirmed, poverty-stricken, homeless and aged survive without a large, intelligent and energetic youthful working class?
Do we enjoy more personal freedoms now than before?
Are American citizens more cohesive and dedicated to mutual respect and support than before?
Are our immigration policies mostly helping or hurting America?
Is America’s place as a leader in the world as strong and secure as it has been?
Is the American dollar as strong and secure as it has been?
Is our Military strong enough to defend our homeland in the event of war?
Are our first-responders (police, fire, and medical) as respected, supported and as well-off as they once were?
Can we trust our political leaders and our news media as much as we once did?
Is religion as much of an influence in American life as it once was?
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My list of things-to-consider when evaluating the state of America’s society and culture is not exhaustive. I hope you will add to this list as you wish. Then please, do not “Cherry Pick”, as you take time to gather data, pro and con.
Then, please vote your convictions at every opportunity!
V. Thomas Mawhinney, Ph.D., 12/13/21
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Pearl Harbor: 2021
December 7, 2021It is essential to remember the trauma suffered when the Japanese savagely bombed our, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Naval Base on December 7,1941.
Younger generations may wonder why this event is so important that America memorializes it every year on this that day: “A day which will live in infamy!”, as FDR stated it. After all, it happened 80 years ago.
In a “historical blink” it soon will be 100 years ago!
This horrific event killed 2,336 of America’s finest soldiers, marines and sailors. 1,143 civilians were wounded. The of pain of this tragedy still lingers for countless Americans and their families.
This event plunged America into World War II. A war that cost America the deaths of 405,399 of our precious fighting forces to win. Freedom, wherever it existed around the world and, certainly in America, hung in the balance of our (and our allies) victories in Europe and Japan.
However, the reason’s that we solemnly remember that fateful date should include more than those mentioned above.
We had better believe that something similar to Pearl Harbor, perhaps soon and much greater, will happen again to America, and we damn-well better be prepared!
Today our weak President Biden is conferencing with Russia’s very strong President Putin who is poised to attack Ukraine. Biden will try to persuade Putin not to do that.
China is attacking our satellites, our military, intellectual property and governmental secrets through espionage and computer hackings. It is building a superior military, forbidding the use of international waters, building islands in international waters, it has developed intercontinental hypersonic missiles (that we have no defense for) and is threatening to invade Taiwan.
North Korea (a nuclear power) is developing and testing its intercontinental missiles. Following our disgraceful, poorly planned, military pull-out, radical Islamic Jihadists in Afghanistan will almost certainly again launch terrorist attacks on us within the near future. The Biden administration’s wide-open border policy will facilitate these terror initiatives.
Iran, that funds Islamic terrorism around the world, is making steady progress towards developing nuclear weapons and plainly states it will destroy Israel, our ally in the Middle East.
All of this is now happening at a time that we are in the midst of an American Socialist Revolution, perpetrated by corrupt governmental political and deep-state operatives, as well as internal and external billionaires who are funding this socially and culturally destructive juggernaut.
A Roman General once said: “If you want peace, prepare for war!”
Wake-Up America! Are you ready?!
V. Thomas Mawhinney, 12/7/21
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Psychology of Smash and Grab
December 6, 2021You will find the following articles on the causes of the recent “Smash and Grab” lawlessness exploding in our big cities very enlightening.
It is essential that we citizens know and understand why this started and how to stop it. We citizens are the “cultural planners” who must act to avoid such travesties. It is up to all of us to stop them. We voters, ultimately, are the only ones that can do anything about these and a myriad of other social and economic problems in America.
It is our duty to shop amongst the political platforms and their subscribing candidates, at all levels of government, to elect our representatives who’s job it is to prevent and solve our nations internal and external problems. It is our job to see to it that our representatives do their jobs as they promised; and to fire their butts, via recall, impeachment or the ballot box, if they do not live up to their promises.
Additionally, we must take the responsibility to be the best citizens we can be. Part of this challenge is to learn the political platforms that have always failed through history and the ones that have lead to social and cultural success and longevity.
This last matter is an educational one, and this is what my over 2000 postings on this blog have been about.
Our elected representatives make new rules and amend old ones that we all, for better or worse, live under. Sometimes our representatives break the rules that the rest of us are expected to live by, and they must be fired. Sometimes they make bad rules, or surreptitiously weaken the good rules that have sustained America, and they must be fired.
I judge that it is also essential that we elect representatives that will, unselfishly and patriotically, support term limits on their own tenure. Thus, putting an end to extended (20,30,40-year political careers) rife with cronyism, great wealth and and corruption. Our current President ,Joe Bidden, is a powerful example of this sad and destructive American tradition.
When it comes to a society’s survival, it is all about the rules and consequences and the voters ability to govern its own government’s behavior via the Ballot box.
Our governing rules, (laws), have outcomes that are good or bad. Some laws have fairly immediate consequences (i.e., raising taxes, requiring inoculations for employment, reducing “red tape” for businesses, etc.) Some laws have somewhat delayed consequences for us all (i.e., hiring 80,000 additional IRS Agents, funding or defunding the police, or appointing liberal or conservative judges, etc.). There are laws that can lead to distant consequences (i.e., conserving or squandering our natural resources, funding or defunding science and space exploration, strengthening or weakening our military, or incrementally conforming-to, or disregarding our Constitutional mandates, etc.)
There are governmental rule-changes that can have consequences all three time periods; short, intermediate, and long-term. The following are some that have, and will continue to damage people, families and the structure of our society: legalizing pornography, gambling, recreational drugs, abortion, or opening borders to millions of unselected and unvetted immigrants.
Rule changes, and their consequences, can damage or strengthen societies. They increase or decrease the likelihood that societies and their cultures will live long and well, or fall into decline.
America, arguably began to vote for, or tolerate bad rule changes, starting somewhere in the 1960’s. The slippery slope and snow-balling effects of our own ballet box failures have led to the decline of America we all now suffer.
Contemplating all of this is a very challenging task.
The Sciences have made great progress starting somewhere around 300 BC. But, when it comes to the purposeful and successful design and evolution of societies and their cultures, human kind remains in the dark ages.
Perhaps the recent sudden appearance of smash and grab flash mobs will highlight one, among other countless examples, of what we and our representatives must not do.
Psychologist B.F. Skinner taught us that learning what we must not do, can help us learn what we must do.
Many fields of science will have things to say regarding this startling, smash and grab break-down in law and order. But, I judge that the one science that most basically informs us about the shaping of perceptions, thoughts, beliefs, emotions and behaviors in humans, is the science of psychology.
Applied psychology’s premier Law, is called the Law of Effect. The Law of Effect simply states that: Consequences and Expected Consequences Control Behavior.
There are are other valuable psychological principles that influence the evolution of societies and their cultures. But, what is now known is far beyond the scope of this posting.
The following are only a few “nuts and bolts” of this massively complex matter.
In order to influence the quality and rate of occurrence of good and bad behaviors in a population, generally agreed-upon well-known rules of conduct (and laws) of human behavior are essential. But, rules and Laws will only be effective if they are accompanied by rewards for conformity to them and punishments for non-conformity or a lack of rewards. To be effective, rewards and punishments should be immediate enough, big enough, and certain enough to motivate rule-and-law following within a population.
Of course there are other considerations. For example, it helps if parents, extended families, schools and religious organizations teach the advantages of good rules to individuals and their society. It is also critical to teach the individual and societal harms that follow breaking good rules and laws.
Regarding the influences of Religion: Great societies have generally displayed powerful organizing spiritual rules and consequences for conforming to, or breaking them. For example, within Judeo/Christian religions, as well as others, God is believed to know our thoughts and actions and his rewards and punishments are believed to certain and unavoidable in the after-life. These spiritual consequences can dramatically increase the likelihood of rule and law conformity among faithful populations. For the faithful, these spiritual consequences (for example, heaven or hell) can be very delayed; but they are devoutly expected, and they are hugely rewarding or punishing….lasting through all eternity!
However, no matter what is done to increase rule and law conformity within societies around the world, a certain percent of any population will resiliently deviate from cultural rules and laws.
The Law of Effect dictates that if such behavior is rewarded, it will increase its rate of occurrence.
See for yourself in the following short articles.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/11/30/perverse-incentives-behind-smash-and-grab-wave/
V. Thomas Mawhinney, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Psychology
Health Services Provider in Psychology
President: Behavioral Psychological Family Services
Cultural Survival Skills 