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Interpersonal Communication & Human Relationships Mark L. Knapp
“Relationship Sanity is a roadmap to a thriving relationship. In their preceding book, Irrelationship, Borg and his colleagues located relationship insanity in couples’ mutual fear of intimacy and all the ways they defend against closeness and vulnerability. In this book, to help couples face and transcend that fear, they make available a rich, detailed, and ultimately simple and doable process that helps couples to become present to each other, thus achieving and sustaining intimacy. Any couple will be enriched by using the myriad insights and exercises, and any therapist will be empowered to help couples by using them in their practice.”
Harville Hendrix, PhD and Helen LaKelly Hunt, PhD, best-selling authors of Getting the Love You Want and Making Marriage Simple
“Borg, Brenner, and Berry have presented in this volume an accessible yet complex and sophisticated road map to assist couples, both those seemingly doing well and those in trouble, on the challenging journey to an intimate, rewarding, and sane relationship. Skillfully illuminating how early attachment strategies shape our adult assumptions about intimacy, the authors offer astutely designed exercises to be done by couples, alone and together, that will deepen understanding and awareness, for the self and for one another. Exposing and making sense of the hidden insecurities and conflicts most of us harbor about intimacy, the authors open up a compassionate path toward healing and growth. The wealth of knowledge and expertise here is immensely impressive and will certainly be of tremendous benefit to those couples ready to open themselves to the innate human potential for deeply satisfying intimacy.”
Daniel Shaw, psychotherapist and author of Traumatic Narcissism: RelationalSystems
ofSubjugation
“Filled with tips, exercises, and case studies, Relationship Sanity is a solidly researched approach to improving relationships through mindfully viewing your relationship as a third entity, separate from yourselves individually, which requires care and nurturing. It’s a valuable tool whether you are beginning a relationship with a new partner or have been married and assumed you knew everything about your spouse.”
Diana Kirschner,
PhD, bestselling author of Love in 90Days
RELATIONSHIP SANITY
RELATIONSHIP SANITY
Creating and Maintaining Healthy Relationships
Mark B. Borg, Jr.
Grant H. Brenner
Daniel Berry
Central Recovery Press (CRP) is committed to publishing exceptional materials addressing addiction treatment, recovery, and behavioral healthcare topics.
For more information, visit www.centralrecoverypress.com.
All rights reserved. Published 2018. Printed in the United States of America.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.
Publisher: Central Recovery Press 3321 N. Buffalo Drive
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Borg, Mark B., Jr., author. | Brenner, Grant H., author. | Berry, Daniel, author.
Title: Relationship sanity : creating and maintaining healthy relationships / Mark B. Borg, Jr., Grant H. Brenner, Daniel Berry.
Description: Las Vegas : Central Recovery Press, [2018] | Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018018096 (print) | LCCN 2018020441 (ebook) | ISBN 9781942094821 (ebook) | ISBN 9781942094814 (pbk. : alk. paper)
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018018096
Photos of Mark B. Borg, Jr., Grant Hilary Brenner, and John Daniel Berry by Eric Lee
Every attempt has been made to contact copyright holders. If copyright holders have not been properly acknowledged, please contact us. Central Recovery Press will be happy to rectify the omission in future printings of this book.
Publisher’s Note: This book contains general information about relationships, recovery, and related matters. The information is not medical advice. This book is
not an alternative to medical advice from your doctor or other professional healthcare provider.
Our books represent the experiences and opinions of their authors only. Every effort has been made to ensure that events, institutions, and statistics presented in our books as facts are accurate and up-to-date. To protect their privacy, the names of some of the people, places, and institutions in this book may have been changed.
Cover andinterior design andlayoutby
DebTremper, Six Penny Graphics
To Jonathan and Charlotte Rysanek, who have always lived in relationship sanity and have, therefore, shown me how to love and be loved.
Mark
For all who dare to love.
Grant
To Jack and Wilma, from whom I’m still learning about love.
Danny
Table of Contents
Introduction What Is Relationship Sanity?
Part One Relationship Sanity versus Irrelationship
Chapter 1 Not Wanting What We Think We Want
Chapter 2 Drilldown: How Irrelationship Works
Chapter 3 Compassionate Empathy in Our Everyday Lives
Chapter 4 Self-Other Help
Chapter 5 Self-Other Assessment: The 40-20-40
Chapter 6 The 40-20-40: Relationship Sanity in Action
Chapter 7 Practical Applications of Compassionate Empathy
Chapter 8 Performer and Audience: How It Works
Part Two The Way of Relationship Sanity: The DREAM Sequence
Chapter 9 The DREAM Sequence: The Technique of Relationship Sanity
Chapter 10 Discovery
Chapter 11 Repair
Chapter 12 Empowerment
Chapter 13 Alternatives
Chapter 14 Mutuality
Conclusion The Road of Relationship Sanity
Acknowledgments
Notes Bibliography About the Authors
Introduction
What Is Relationship Sanity?
Many of us believe we want an honest, open-hearted relationship, but who really knows how to go about building one? In reality, this is a challenge for anyone who tries it.
Our first book, Irrelationship: How We Use Dysfunctional Relationships to Hide from Intimacy, explored that challenge in depth. In this follow-up, we will focus on proven, practical techniques for learning how to build the antithesis of irrelationship, called relationship sanity.
Many of us know the experience of feeling alone even while in romantic relationships. This may be related to feeling that we’re doing all the giving while our partner is completely checked out or vice versa! What had been mutual, intense excitement somehow gave way to something else. Where did our love go? Can we get it back?
Here you’re going to read about couples who found themselves in that situation but learned to use the tools in this book to find their way back to a place of resurgent love—a place where love is able to thrive regardless of a history of disappointment, fear, and trauma.1
We have found in our work that there is a common but seldom articulated reality for many people: frightened as we may be of rejection and loneliness, many of us are even more frightened of what may happen if we’re discovered and accepted for ourselves as we really are. The interdependence this implies often becomes intolerable, driving us into an irrelationship song-and-dance routine. How this maladaptive technique works will be explained in the pages that follow, but, as mentioned, it is covered in greater depth in Irrelationship.
This book, then, is for those of us seeking relationships of greater depth, honesty, and openness to what happens when we become vulnerable to one another in ways we may have considered impractical or even undesirable.
Here are examples of the couples featured in this book whose relationships changed dramatically as they discovered the way of relationship sanity.
• Felicia and George had lived “alone together” for years, having mastered the art of avoiding one another while living in the same house. This so obscured their commitment to one another that a severe crisis nearly resulted in divorce. But the tools of relationship sanity reconnected this middle-aged couple in ways long forgotten, leading them to reclaim their deep commitment to each other.
• Ethan and Mia’s two-year marriage looked great to everybody around them, but they knew different. Somehow, each was aware of a growing distance that they didn’t know how to bring up with one another. By using the tools in this book, however, they rediscovered their early passionate connection and found themselves more in love and more intimate than they’d thought possible.
• Carol’s wife Vanessa was going through a period of deep pain and confused feelings about her own life. The worse Vanessa’s pain became the more Carol distanced herself—to her own puzzlement. Was she being intentionally cruel and insensitive? By using the relationship sanity tools, Carol discovered that her emotional shutdown was connected to emotions left over from her early childhood. As she shared this discovery with Vanessa, the couple was able to share one another’s history of unacknowledged pain, which brought new openness and joy to their marriage.
• Ravi and Kamala were in trouble, and they and everyone around them knew it. Then, one day during yet another argument about household finances, they unexpectedly started revealing to each other old, untapped feelings around money
that dated from their childhood years. This led to a new, deeper connection that completely revitalized their marriage.
Also in the pages ahead, you will learn how to implement following the relationship sanity tools:
• Compassionate empathy
• Self-Other Help
• The 40-20-40 Model
• The DREAM Sequence
Building and maintaining relationships may be considered an art; and though we have scientific backgrounds, we invite you to approach this book creatively as artists, jointly constructing a relationship landscape that is a third entity2—an us-ness based on a reciprocal balance of giving and receiving—in which each person values and cares for the other. This requires curiosity and openness to wherever the process takes you in the journey of self-discovery, which is indispensable to figuring out why and how you drifted into the distancing techniques of irrelationship.
Jim and Emma
Jim and Emma are a couple whose marriage had almost every appearance of deep commitment to one another. But in reality, unconscious choices led to more and increasingly painful distance from one another.
“I didn’t know where you’d gone,” Emma reflected. “It made me angry, but sometimes I wondered if it were my fault. Until one day, I finally said it out loud: ‘Jim, where have you gone?’ And then, after a moment, I added, ‘Where have we gone?’”
For his part, Jim believed he was doing everything he was supposed to do for his family, while at the same time feeling distressingly apart from them. When he and Emma talked about her two questions, he reflected, “If you hadn’t finally put it into words, I don’t know if I’d ever have been able to see how I’d put our whole
life on hold. Of course, I was shocked by your statement, Emma, because you said this at the very moment I thought I was making more room for us—for our family.”
So What Is Relationship Sanity?
Insanity has been defined as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” while sanity may be defined as “soundness of mind.” In the irrelationship lexicon, relationship sanity may be defined as a balance of giving and receiving— reciprocity, mutuality, and alliance in action—and is created by experiencing oneself as loving and loveable. The insane part comes in when we invest ourselves in relationships that allow us to feel neither loved nor loveable, implicitly cut off from this feeling by a usually less-than-conscious blockage in the flow of giving and taking. While not appearing as floridly insane in most cases, irrelationship is the imbalance a couple creates together that deliberately excludes space for the open-hearted, reciprocal exchange of love characteristic of relationship sanity. Simply put, relationship sanity is a balance of giving and receiving in any relationship that has the potential for intimacy, empathy, vulnerability, and emotional investment.
We can part ourselves increasingly from relationship sanity by getting better and better at irrelationship, rather than critically examining what’s actually happening in our relationship and seeking ways to curtail practices that don’t work by replacing them with interaction techniques that do work that promote mutual feelings of being loved and loveable.
“Something had started to change,” Emma recalled. “Even the kids started to mention how Jim was around more, as if he was trying to make up for how far away he’d gotten. I was glad, of course, but something about it didn’t seem quite right. He was being so in-your-face present and nice all the time that it made me nervous. But I was afraid of hurting his feelings, so I didn’t say anything. Sometimes I half wished he’d go back to being away from
home all the time; it was so weird. But the funny thing is we never really talked about it—not even to ask each other what we wanted from one another. Like we were afraid that would turn out to be a minefield. It finally turned into ignoring each other. It really wasn’t nice. And, regardless of whatever it was we thought we wanted from each other, something was missing, something just wasn’t right.”
“Yeah,” Jim responded, “I felt so guilty about being away all the time that I decided to make up for it by being the family hero. And I could tell that you didn’t like it, though you never said anything. Looking back, we’ve both figured out that it was just another way I kept myself in the driver’s seat. I dedicated myself to being present by working on and practicing being loving, kind, and generous to my family. I thought that was more than enough. I never considered how important it might be to allow others to offer these same things to me.”
“And after you got that promotion,” Emma said, “and were home every night, it wasn’t long before I felt I may just as well not be there. You wouldn’t let me do anything, interrupted every conversation I had with the kids, and wouldn’t even hear me out when I tried to discuss what was happening, how things had changed. It was like nothing I felt or said even counted. I was feeling so lonely, Jim, so left out.”
Irrelationship is a jointly created psychological defense system that two or more people maintain in order to avoid awareness of the anxiety that’s a natural part of becoming close to others—especially anxiety about letting people see and know us for who we really are (i.e., intimacy). In irrelationship, one person is a Performer—in this case Jim, who is doing all the overt caretaking—and the other is the Audience played by Emma in this relationship, who acts as if what the Performer as caretaker is giving is enough or is effective (even though it is not). Neither Performer nor Audience accept, take in, and make use of the care that the other is offering. In fact, each defends her- or himself from doing just that via what we call songand-dance routines—ways that compulsive caregiving is played out, or enacted, between people in a relationship.
“It was so odd to be doing so much for you, for our family, and still feel so left out—almost like you were working against me.”
“And I might have been, Jim—I believed that wherever you’d been was far worse emotionally than where I’d been I had the kids to keep me company, and I knew that I didn’t want to feel what you felt.”
“The ways that I experienced myself as being loving,” Jim went on, “had everything to do with the things that I do for other people —the things I give. It never occurred to me that not allowing you to do the same for me would create an imbalance and ultimately have me questioning my own lovability.”
“Right,” admitted Emma, “I knew that your intentions were good. But there we were having survived some stretch of time when you were essentially gone, and you reappeared accepting nothing that I had to offer not even the fact that I was still willing to accept you and work on fixing our relationship. I got it that you felt so unlovable, you made that very clear, but the ways that you were making up for it left no room for me, for us to really be you know us.”
“I just couldn’t see it, Emma. I think I was too scared.”
“Actually, the closer you tried to be with me, the more it scared me.”
Orbiting Our Partners
Is it possible to orbit around the heart of another in a so-called relationship in a position of either giving or taking care never taking in what others have to offer? Can we co-create a sustained orbit around each other where our positions never shift and never change?
In such a state, we cannot form a healthy interdependence;3 we are safe in the insecurity of knowing—feeling and believing—that we can count on no one. This is a tightly knit control and a dynamic wherein we never get in (to the heart of another person), a place where no one gets in (to our heart). The problem is not caregiving
or care receiving because in irrelationship we only caretake—even if we do so by acting as if someone else’s care is effective when it is not. Never accepting the offer, why would anyone resist loving and being loved? Perhaps because the invitation to accept care is also an invitation to empathize with our own history of love and loss.
We so often think about the high cost of giving—taxing us and exhausting our resources but rarely do we consider the rip-off of disallowing others to give to us. When we do not accept, when we reject what others offer, we do not acknowledge or affirm the value of what it is that they have to give. The psychoanalyst and social psychologist Erich Fromm wrote, “Giving is the highest expression of potency. In the very act of giving, I experience my strength, my wealth, and my power.… Giving is more joyous than receiving, not because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness.”4 The “protection” given us by irrelationship deprives ourselves and others of the pleasure of being both giver and receiver and the feeling of “aliveness” that’s essential to sharing that experience.
“Funny,” Jim said, “I never would have thought that being loveable was about anything other than believing that you love me— that you accept what I have to give. Now I can see that all the thinking in the world didn’t equal accepting and taking in what you were trying to give to me, Emma.”
Though in many cases, being loving and being lovable go together hand in glove, we see them as two separate and distinct directions that love can flow. In irrelationship, they don’t flow, they collide—or endlessly chase each other’s tails—and tend to create either a difficult-to-permeate boundary or a chronic chase scene. Either way, it is a defense, against what another seemingly “loving” person has to offer. In situations, like Emma and Jim’s, where we are threatened by love’s possibilities, as well as its anxieties and insecurities, it is easy to see how this hard-to-detect imbalance can simultaneously keep us safe anddrive us crazy.
“I needed you to want and need me to be there—to be here—for you, Jim, or it just wasn’t going to work.”
“I didn’t really understand,” admitted Jim. “I had to ask Emma to explain, to help me. Asking for help became a kind of first step in allowing others to love me, to help me, to become important— maybe even essential to me.”
Because these are unconscious dynamics, we are generally unable to tell where the pain—the feeling of being ripped-off—is coming from. Insistent, persistent giving without allowing reciprocation becomes the goal, leaving no room for others to experience themselves as valuable contributors. The net result is that though everybody feels safe, everyone also loses, and, ultimately, feels vaguely and inexplicably angry ironically, one is left feeling ripped off.
“I was more than willing to help,” Emma said. “It was the first time that I felt Jim’s presence even with all that mighty effort he was putting in to be a ‘loving, generous, and kind’ person.”
“It turned out that being loving—without accepting my own wish or need to be loved—was not accepting conditions as they are. Only now, with a lot of help from Emma, am I coming to understand how I tried to control others, and my responses to them, by not accepting their care and love. Only now can I understand why so many people I’ve known have been so hurt and angry. Only now can I see how crazy I’ve been how insane my relationships were.”
Ironic as it may seem, loving in an “everything-flowing-outward” way is really no more validating to others than contempt. Repeatedly having one’s desire to give triggers negative emotions, especially anger, as it did in Emma. Jim’s hermetically-sealed giving routine protected him from seeing and feeling what others wanted to offer him. Fortunately, he became able to gradually understand that this left him in a terribly isolated emotional state.
The same was true for Emma. “I just missed him,” she said, “and was beginning to believe he was never coming back.”
Jim continued, “I put myself in solitary confinement. It was insane. And while the first step to sanity seemed simple, it turned out to be much harder to change than I thought it was going to be. But I began to listen. Bit by bit I became open, willing, and finally
able to accept and take in what Emma was offering me and let her love me.”
“And,” admitted Emma, “I realized that Jim didn’t do this by himself: we’d allowed ourselves to drift further and further from what we now know is relationship sanity.”
To attain a baseline for where you are—and where you were when you began this process hit pause, reflect, and write down the very first thoughts, feelings, impressions, and reactions that you have to Emma and Jim’s jailbreak from isolation to relationship sanity.
• Do you recognize yourself in this story?
• Do you relate to this story? If you do relate, can you do so through compassion and understanding? If you don’t, what kind of assessment—perhaps even criticism—do you have for Jim, Emma, and their situation?
• What would you have done in Jim’s situation? How about Emma’s?
• What kind of recommendations do you have for Jim? For Emma? For their family?
Approaching Relationship Sanity from Irrelationship
Our previous book, Irrelationship, looks in depth at couples who, like Jim and Emma, jointly invested in irrelationship to avoid the anxiety related to the fear that their partners will learn too much about themselves in other words, they’re terrified by the prospect of intimacy.
In couples who use irrelationship, one party ordinarily acts as the Performer in this case Jim, who was “caretaking” his wife and kids while the other party, Emma, acts as the Audience by staying quiet
about how uneasy Jim’s distancing and caretaking made her. Together, they created a song-and-dance routine as a stand-in for the genuine opening of hearts that creates intimacy.
Irrelationship isn’t apparent to outsiders, or even to the participants for that matter. Nothing seems wrong, but the imbalance between giving and taking stands directly in the way of building feelings of mutual love and safety with one another. In short, for such couples, relationship sanity is impossible.
But if the authenticity inherent in relationship sanity meets our genuine needs, why do so many of us resist it? The answer, put simply, is because relationship sanity exposes our vulnerability to one another and the anxiety that vulnerability creates. Allowing this exposure is to surrender control. Not surprisingly, many of us instead opt for the apparent safety—and denial—of irrelationship.
“It never occurred to me,” Jim continued, “that trying to be nice to you and the kids would actually get in the way of feeling you loved me. But my performance as a hero was just driving a wedge between us.”
Jim and Emma both learned the hard way that this kind of loving was only a short step from contempt, which was how Emma ultimately viewed Jim’s heroics. Bad as his actions were, however, the feeling that she was losing had lost her life partner was even worse.”
“I just missed you—missed you horribly.”
“Yeah,” Jim answered. “And all I’d really accomplished was putting myself in solitary confinement. It never for a minute hit me that shutting you out was how I locked myself in.”
Self-sustaining, mutual isolation prevents our reaching one another’s hearts as well as our own. This shields us from knowing about our partner’s vulnerabilities, but it also blocks awareness of the pain as a result of our own histories of love and loss. This stalemate shuts down the possibility of giving and receiving. Thus it follows that irrelationship deprives our partners of the experience of aliveness that comes with true giving. Both partners pay a terrible price in choosing the safety of irrelationship.
And, Jim was surprised to learn how damaging this choice can be. “It never occurred to me that being loveable was about anything except what I have to give. And I sure never thought about how not letting you give would make you feel less loveable.”
In irrelationship, loving and being loveable seem to be mutually exclusive, and attempts to frame it otherwise are confusing and frightening to those involved. The result is that both parties either repeatedly collide with each other or uselessly chase each other’s tails. Either creates an impenetrable wall that prevents any gesture of genuine giving. This is the heartbreaking safety Jim and Emma lived in for years.
Emma summed up what she was feeling. “I needed you to want me to be there for you, Jim. Otherwise I couldn’t see any reason to be married to you.”
“Yeah. I was so wrapped up in my thing that I had no idea until you laid it out for me. Using you and the kids to prove what a great guy I was had nothing to do with being your partner.”
Self-Other Help
Self-Other Help is a new paradigm for life change, distinct from the well-known self-help paradigm. Self-Other Help creates a safe space for truth telling and forgiveness that allows us to be who we really are with each other and opens the way for generosity and gratitude. It’s no mistake that generosity and gratitude also represent the twin poles of a relationship: giving and receiving. The Self-Other Help Model is so profound that it dramatically reduces the likelihood of cover-ups, anxiety, guilt, and shame and creates a space in which the possibility of forgiving the unforgiveable becomes less remote.
When “you and I” have worked through irrelationship and reached relationship sanity, Self-Other Help takes account of that third entity—that third entity that is us. And, using the Self-Other Help Model as a means of achieving a living, breathing sense of usness in your everyday life is the primary task of this book.
Relationship Creativity and Play
Couples invested in irrelationship are stuck in rigid interactive roles that originated in relational patterns they developed with their earliest caregivers as a result of early childhood anxiety that threatened to become overwhelming. Even the idea of discussing anxiety-provoking issues is off-limits.
Probably the worst side effect of this rigid sidelining of feelings is that it shuts down the possibility of finding creative approaches to problem solving—especially when it comes to exploring interpersonal mishaps that could be defused with acceptance, mutual understanding, and even humor. The techniques of relationship sanity are a proven way out of this impasse.
Compassionate Empathy: The Key Ingredient of Self-Other Help
Compassionate empathy, the essential ingredient of relationship sanity, creates space for honest sharing that has the power to replace an anxiety-driven need for control. Compassionate empathy safely accesses the walled-off negative feelings that drove us into the irrelationship adaptation as small children.
Empathy can be compared to a powerful electrical source, while compassion acts as the regulator that keeps us from being electrocuted. Emma was afraid that if she allowed herself to feel empathy for Jim, she would herself become unsafe through loss of boundaries and perspective. Compassionate empathy ensures safety by promoting sharing of responsibility for what goes on in a relationship. When each partner maintains focus on his or her own feelings and experience without blaming or criticizing anyone else, compassionate empathy allows intimacy to develop in a way that defuses the fear of letting one’s partner know too much about oneself.
Compassionate empathy is the doorway to intimacy and births mutuality, which allows someone else’s experience—emotion—to
inhabit our consciousness. Allowing that experience and emotion to have life in our consciousness and permitting ours to be taken in— accepted and cared for—by someone else is a two-person process. Compassionate empathy is the royal road that we, together, can trudge to cross the impossible distance between the head and the heart. It is a way to give and receive, to love and be loved, and, therefore, it is synonymous with the very definition of relationship sanity. Its vehicle is active listening a practice that, in our connected world has become, at best, unnecessary and, at worst, obsolete. Another benefit of compassionate empathy is that it unlocks brainlock, i.e. the psychological, neurobiological, interpersonal, and social-contextual factors that keep us stuck in the habit of irrelationship.5
Relationship sanity is necessarily relational: since we created irrelationship with another person or persons, the antidote is sharing experience and exploring history using compassionate empathy. Healthiness thus includes a shared state of being in a reciprocal relationship with the world as represented by other people.6
Self-Awareness and Self-Other Help
Developing a sense of ourselves in context of relationships passes through several stages, as defined by Carnes, Laaser, and Laaser:7
1. Dependence: We need and want help.
2. Counterdependence: We need help but resist it.
3. Independence: We are self-sufficient and do not need help.
4. Interdependence: We both give and receive help.
Interdependence is obviously a vital aspect of relationship sanity, while compulsive caretaking can look a lot like the first three phases of dependence. Dissociation is the term psychoanalysts use for defense mechanisms that block, deny, and cut ourselves off from awareness of our need for help. The path of relationship sanity is a process of association or reassociation. Along this path, we learn to tolerate, accept, and finally embrace Self-Other Help as normal,
healthy, human experience. Compassionate empathy is the mechanism that opens this door to relationship sanity. Compassionate empathy ratchets down our need to use blame, cover-up, and shame when negotiating relationship issues, thus clearing space for gratitude, open-heartedness, and forgiveness— more constructive approaches. This doesn’t happen all at once, of course, but by using this book, couples can learn skills that completely change how they process issues, although those new skills probably won’t feel all that good at first, even when the couple shares a conscious desire to stop harming one another.
Song-and-Dance Routines
As mentioned previously, the mechanics of irrelationship are called the song-and-dance routine. These routines are basically enactments, a psychoanalytical term for acting out unconscious feelings in the form of behaviors that play out what is happening without the benefit of putting dynamics into words so that such patterns can be meaningful and transformative for those involved.8 Song-and-dance routines allow us to keep our distance from the anxiety we feel as we approach of the possibility of intimacy.
The Make-Up of Irrelationship
As illustrated in the diagram, a couple jointly creates and perpetuates irrelationship. Similarly, health and well-being are created in relation to others. Patterns of self-care and how we care for others are reflections of how our primary caregivers (usually our parents) took care of us as small children.
Irrelationship theory is grounded in Harold Searles’ hypothesis that human beings are natural-born caretakers.9 And John Bowlby, the progenitor of attachment theory, found that human beings have an inborn motivation to be care-seekers.10 Thus, we have an inborn desire to heal the wounds of those around us especially those of our primary caregivers on whom we depend for security and comfort. Ironically, when a parent is disturbed, a turning of the tables—a reverse caretaking—can occur that creates what can be considered a developmental trauma that creates a defensive caretaking operation that blocks genuine reciprocal giving and receiving. Once the defensive pattern is assumed, the individual carries it forward through life, playing it out in many types of relationships that, in some manner, represent security.11
Irrelationship exploits the ambivalence many of us feel when faced with the possibility of intimacy, especially toward someone to whom we’re genuinely attracted. Often the connection is allowed to progress to increasing attachment and commitment, despite our
ambivalence. Even in these cases, however, unresolved intimacybased anxiety doesn’t just dissipate: affected couples unconsciously create a song-and-dance routine that ensures that neither party is at risk for exposing their vulnerability to each other.
If, in addressing irrelationship, one of the members of a couple focuses only on her or his feelings and needs, she or he risks reinforcing defenses that stand in the way of intimacy. An added risk of not doing the work together is that if one person is making progress in individual therapy but the other person is not on the same track, the relationship will probably suffer when only one person’s communication skills improve. On the other hand, couples who work at change together are more likely to be successful.
Hiding from Relationships
The following is an exchange with an anonymous reader of our Psychology Today blog. The reader was responding to the blog entry entitled, “Hiding from Relationship—in Relationship.” The exchange illustrates how our collaborative model, the 40-20-40, works.
Reader: Thanks for your blog, but I have some questions. If irrelationship is an emotional defense system created by two people (and I believe that to be true), so too wouldn’t it necessitate the active participation of the two “creators” to resolve this block to intimacy? You’ve cogently described the reasons for, and behaviors of, participating in irrelationship. And you’ve also alluded to the fear (maybe even terror for some people) that is involved in the possibility of being and revealing one’s true self. I get all that.
I’m not sure I fully understand the steps toward achieving what one wants (as in “wanting out”), not necessarily wanting out of the partnership/marriage but wanting out of the song-and-dance. It’s fortunate when both parties desire change. But, in some cases, it may be unrealistic to assume both partners want change at the
same time. And therein lies the rub. I appreciated your comment about needing courage to forge ahead with one’s intention of reframing a painfully unhealthy partnership. How challenging it is, though, to be alone in the irrelationship, and, also, to be alone in the desire to change the relationship into something more real and intimate!
It’s not just “breaking up is hard to do.” When a person chooses to confront an emotional defense structure so deeply embedded in two lives, it becomes an excruciating confrontation with a life orientation built to protect oneself from that original pain that set the whole thing in motion. And if you really think about it, this terror is not about a marriage break-up; it’s about allowing oneself to feel that early experience that created an emotional lifestyle. It’s about tolerating what one most fears the “I don’t want you as you really are” blow to the heart.
Authors: Thank you for your thoughtful and thoughtprovoking response to our recent blog entry. We’ve been and are finding that recovery from the irrelationship routine, just like starting it up and keeping it up, as you suggest, is a process that requires the proverbial “two to tango.” And so we see that the development of irrelationship theory and working through its straitjacketfor-two suggest a new category: instead of a traditional self-help perspective, irrelationship requires work better described as Self-Other-Help.
One of the tools we’re developing for couples is called the 40-20-40 Model.12 It was inspired by and adapted from a practice called Group Process Empowerment. It creates a space for addressing each partner’s anxiety-driven contribution to the routine. For example, each party articulates what she or he contributes both to the problem and to the solution, and both parties take the opportunity to examine how their individual histories interlock to create a defense system. This process of self-inventory and
naming aloud what each partner finds begins the process of creating a new shared safety within which members can build genuine, reciprocal collaboration and ownership of relationship sanity.
Unfortunately, as you suggested, many people invested in irrelationship trip on taking the first “shot” at what seems like a Russian-roulette gamble to find out if, underneath their defense routines, they’ll find a partner who will accept them as they really are. But this is only the first dilemma. Another haunting fear of people who have depended on irrelationship is that we’ll find out how invested we are in shared life with our partner, all the while realizing that, no matter how invested we may feel, we have no guarantee of success. In fact, our history is probably a salient indicator of how easy it would be for us to blow it.
People who have relied on irrelationship for safety can become able to listen to the signals—sometimes longstanding signals that something isn’t right and agree to take on the work of recovery. Some people will, of course, flee at the prospect of disclosing their fears to one another. Others will opt to return to the denial and isolation of their song-and-dance routines, silently resigned to the gnawing apprehension that’s part of their everyday lives.
The primary task in irrelationship work, which your response to the blog brings us back to, is to expand awareness of the myriad ways irrelationship affects us and to point the way toward recovery. The Self-Other tools maintain our focus on the deficits inherent in irrelationship while keeping the door open for building genuine relationships. If we stay with the process we have a good chance of finding our way to true intimacy—and into relationship sanity.
Using This Book
This book is organized into two parts.
• Part One: Relationship Sanity versus Irrelationship reviews the anatomy of irrelationship, so you can understand how we sabotage the possibility of love and intimacy and how we can replace bad, old habits by using the Self-Other Assessment.
• Part Two: The Way of Relationship Sanity: The DREAM Sequence teaches you how to use the DREAM Sequence, a five-step model for recovery from irrelationship. The sequence leads couples through the process of opening their hearts in order to recapture what attracted them to each other to begin with, ultimately deepening their commitment to each other.
Anyone who is single or partnered, and has read this far or read our previous book or our blog, and is struck even slightly by what they’ve read is likely to benefit from the content of the following chapters. However, this book is framed as a guide for couples who have become aware of an unaccountable distancing in their shared lives that they want to undo.
The exercises in this book probe for a detailed relationship history. This part of the process might best be undertaken apart from one’s partner. Having your own copy of the book allows you to annotate, mark, and write freely as questions and issues arise. A journal may be useful for detailed recollections and reflection.
When a section or exercise has been completed, the couple shares their results as candidly as possible with each other. Becoming comfortable doing this may not be easy at first. When sharing, keep eye and ear open for complementary findings as well as conflicts that need further examination.
As you move forward as a couple, you can expect to relearn things about one another that you had forgotten and discover new significance to traits that you hadn’t considered previously. The goal is to forge a stronger bond and rediscover your excitement about being together using compassionate empathy. The learning tasks and benefits of compassionate empathy include
Another random document with no related content on Scribd:
“The principal defects may be presented under the following headings:
1. Insufficiency in the amount of food allotted.
2. Wrong relative amounts of different classes of food, making it difficult to serve balanced rations.
3. Unsatisfactory method of distribution of food among the prisoners.
4. Inadequate system of food allotment and estimates at the central office.”
Their observations at Sing Sing confirm the report of Warden Kirchwey.
“With a view to varying the daily menu as much as possible a new dietary was established early in the year by Dr. Emily C. Seaman, of Columbia University. A new kitchen was provided in what was formerly known as the old boiler room, with concrete floor, and walls and ceiling enameled white. New equipment was installed, including potato steamers, aluminum kettles, steam kettles, an electric meat chopper, electric potato paring machine, large gas range for roasting meats, and large coffee urns. Those employed in the kitchen and mess hall are dressed in white duck suits. Tables with white enameled tops and chairs with backs are being installed in place of the old tables and stools. The new arrangement is reported to have improved the quality and cleanliness of the food served.”
A Scientific Ration.
In order to make our contention clear, it seems necessary to impart some technical information.
The value of food is estimated in calories. A calorie may be expressed in terms of heat or in terms of work. In the laboratory and by experimentation with human subjects the value of all foods has been very scientifically demonstrated. Foods largely consist of proteins, fats and carbohydrates, which have the function of supplying the body with energy or the power to work. The proper
proportion of these constituents of food makes up a balanced ration which satisfies our physical needs in the way of nourishment. We get our carbohydrates from bread, fruits, vegetables, sugar and all grain products. Fats are derived from meats, eggs, butter, milk, nuts, etc. The proteins are derived from meats, eggs and some vegetables, especially beans.
A calorie in terms of heat is defined as the amount required to raise one pound of water four degrees Fahrenheit. In terms of work or physical energy a calorie represents the amount of food required to lift 100 pounds about 30 feet.
It has been ascertained that the average amount of calories required daily is about 3000 calories for a man who takes exercise. 2500 calories are regarded sufficient for a man who does not take exercise.
Now a good balanced ration for the average man who is working moderately may be estimated in the following proportion:
Carbohydrates 2000 calories Fats 800 calories
Proteins 300 calories
3100 calories
Dietary for a Prison.
At the request of the Prison Association of New York a dietary, with cost values, was prepared by Mr. William Golden, General Inspector and Dietitian of the Department of Correction, New York City, and Dr. Emily C. Seaman, Instructor in physiology and chemistry in Teachers’ College, Columbia University. They suggested a dietary for fourteen consecutive days and made an estimate of the cost. The average daily cost for each prisoner was 18.4c, based on prices February, 1917.
As a sample we present their proposed bill of fare for three alternate days:
W
Breakfast—Oatmeal with milk and sugar, fruit, bread, coffee with milk and sugar
Dinner—Roast beef, cornstarch pudding, rice, carrots, raisin sauce, bread, coffee with milk and sugar.
Supper—Vermicelli soup, graham bread, tea with sugar.
F .
Breakfast—Puffed wheat with milk and sugar, bread, coffee with milk and sugar.
Dinner—Bread, coffee with milk and sugar, salmon, scalloped rice and tomatoes.
Supper—Bread pudding with raisins, bread, tea with sugar.
S
Breakfast—Rice with syrup, graham bread, coffee with milk and sugar.
Dinner—Roast beef, baked potatoes, peas, graham bread, gelatine, coffee with milk and sugar.
Supper—Cornstarch pudding, gingerbread, tea with sugar.
Now the dietary given above was prepared with special reference to the physical requirements of the human system. The ingredients are in the correct proportion to insure health and happiness. Let no one think this menu is extravagant. The following table presents the exact amounts given to each person with the cost value. It will surprise many a warden to note that the total cost is little in excess of the usual monotonous and haphazard dietary.
Daily Amount and Cost for Each Inmate.
W .
Beef, 9 oz. .06283
Coffee, ⅔ oz. .00530
Fruit, 1 piece .01
Cornstarch, ½ oz. .00138
Raisins, 2 oz. .01016
Bread, 24 oz. .03375
Rice, 1 oz. .00219
Cheese, ½ oz. .00735
Vermicelli, 2 oz. .0084 $ .16113
Estimated value in calories, 3000.
F .
Puffed wheat, 1 oz. $ .00235
Milk, ½ pint .01743
Salmon, canned, 4 oz. .05313
Rice, 1 oz. .00219
Tomatoes, 2 oz. .00644
Bread, 24 oz. .03375
Raisins, 2 oz. .01016
Coffee, ⅔ oz. .00530
Tea, .11 oz. .00115
Sugar, 2 oz. .00741 $ .13931
Estimated value in calories, 2600.
S .
Rice, 1 oz. $ .00219
Syrup, 1 oz. .00226
Milk, ½ pint .01743
Sugar, 2 oz. .00741
Bread, 24 oz. .03375
Roast Beef, 9 oz. .06283
Potatoes, 10 oz. .025
Peas, 2 oz. .01087
Gelatine, 2 oz. .00375
Cornstarch, ½ oz. .00276
Gingerbread, 8 oz. .02
Tea, .11 oz. .00115
Coffee, ⅔ oz. .00530 $ .19470
Estimated value in calories, 3800.
The average cost for these three days for each inmate, 16½ cents.
Now this is an imaginary bill of fare, not supposed to be served in any institution in the world. It is a suggestion of possibilities. The new service at Sing Sing may approximate to this list of eatables.
Eats in a Michigan Prison.
In the report of the Michigan State Prison for two years ending June 30, 1916, we find the daily menu for every meal in a whole year. Twenty-six pages of the report are taken up with this schedule of eatables.
An extract from this report explains the unusual pains to publish the bill of fare.
“An old adage states that one of the avenues to a man’s heart is through his stomach. The now existing system of intensive farming, and of canning the surplus fruits and vegetables not consumed by the prison commissary has furnished the Michigan State Prison with unusual opportunity to supply food products. The opportunity is reflected in the following menu, showing the food actually served during the last fiscal year.”
We present the menu for a few days selected from different times of the year:
Complete menus are given for 364 days, or for 1092 meals. No, we were not quoting from the Ritz-Carlton cuisine, but from the culinary department of a western penal establishment.
Elmira Reformatory.
The daily bill of fare at the Elmira Reformatory shows that the question of the serving and the variety of food has had careful thought. We quote from a recent report of the State Commission of Prisons, N. Y
“This institution has one of the best equipped kitchens in the State. It is kept scrupulously clean and the waste has been reduced to a minimum. A physician makes frequent inspections which include an examination of the inmates employed in the kitchen and mess halls. Special white suits are provided.”
Breakfast—Rolled oats with milk and sugar, bread, coffee.
Dinner—Macaroni with tomato sauce, creamed potatoes, rice pudding with raisins, bread, coffee.
Supper—Creamed rice, bread, butter, syrup, tea.
Albany, N. Y.
From the same report we learn of a more modest menu at the Albany County Prison. Besides the conventional bread and coffee served every morning, there was always an additional article of food. Beginning with Monday in one week, these articles in consecutive order were oatmeal, hash, rice and syrup, cornbeef hash, oatmeal, hash, rice and jelly.
For supper the invariable ration was bread, beef stew and tea. For dinner, always bread and coffee, meat four times weekly, pea soup
one day, bean soup one day, and on Sunday beans and eggs. This menu is above the average for variety and quantity.
There are many institutions still serving bread and coffee night and morning, and a dinner of weak soup, with more or less meat and vegetables.
Buying for Institutions.
In the last report of the Board of State Charities, Ohio, Mr. Henry C. Eyman, of Massillon, makes some wise suggestions in regard to some economical variation of the dietary.
“By a little care in arranging the diet list a great saving may result. It is easy to reduce the total cost of your food supply 25%. Does that look unreasonable? Well, let us analyze some prices. We must use present-day prices because we know not what tomorrow may bring. Suppose you have potatoes on the bill of fare twice daily, or fourteen times a week, the cost for 1000 persons would be at present prices, $32.00 per meal, or $448.00 per week. Now substitute for potatoes, rice three times, hominy twice and corn meal mush three times, your total cost of potatoes will be six times $192.00; rice three times $6.00; hominy twice $4.00; corn meal mush three times $5.00, or a total of $207.00, as against $448.00, or a saving of $241.00 per week, or $12,532 per year. Now let us substitute evaporated peaches, evaporated apples and evaporated apricots for these same goods canned. Fruits should be used once daily. The canned fruits will cost an average of $14.00 a meal for 1000 persons, while the evaporated fruit will cost an average of $4.00 for same number, a saving of $10.00 per day, or $3,650.00 a year. Now you will admit that fish is a desirable article of diet for at least 32 weeks a year. Suppose fish be placed on your bill of fare twice a week for 32 weeks, or in all for 64 meals. Beef, pork or mutton will all cost about the same, or for 1000 persons $45.00. Fish for same number, $18.00 to $20.00, or a saving per meal of $25.00 to $27.00, or for the year, $1670.00. Now, in these three items just mentioned we have effected a saving of $16,000.00, or more than 25% of your entire
food cost. The entire food cost for 1000 persons will run between $40,000.00 and $45,000.00 per annum.
“It is an easy matter to take every article of food which makes your dietary, calculate food values and prices and make your bill of fare in accordance therewith. Entirely too much meat is used by all of us. Beans, peas, asparagus, milk, cheese and spinach make an excellent direct substitute. This is conservation, without loss in heat units or even in the tastiness of the food.”
Dietary in Illinois.
In the Institution Quarterly, published by the Public Charity Service of Illinois, Mr. Thomas Carroll, Traveling Steward for the Board, writes in regard to the waste which has been so prevalent in public institutions.
“The lack of proper distribution, indifference as to preparation, lack of proper knowledge of the amounts of food required, have been chief impediments encountered in some of the institutions. Non-utilization of food up to its fullest possibilities has also been a serious drawback in the past.”
Among the defects found in the institutions were:
1. Too much food of one kind. Entire lack of variety.
2. Poorly balanced menus.
3. An overamount of meat, occasionally an under supply.
4. Making of bones into soap instead of stock for soup.
5. Waste of fats.
6. Poor supervision in serving the food.
7. Inadequate chinaware or dishes in general.
8. Unsanitary conditions in the kitchen and in service.
“With the co-operation of managers, storekeepers, cooks and servers, nearly all these defects have been remedied to a large degree.”
One illustration will indicate the nature of the service of Mr. Carroll. “One institution which usually purchased 11,000 to 13,000 pounds of
cooking oils and lard annually has not purchased a single pound since the first visit of the Steward. Excessive fats are trimmed from the meats, and are rendered in a large caldron expressly made for that purpose, and there is at present a surplus of nearly 5,000 pounds on hand, notwithstanding the fact that every requisition for fats and oils have been filled.
“By saving all bones the same institution has an excellent supply of soup two or three times each week for the entire institution. It is of excellent quality, superior to that served in most restaurants.”
Dietary for 1000 Persons.
At the special request of the Secretary of the Society, Superintendent Eyman has prepared for our readers the following table, to which we call the attention of all superintendents, wardens and managers of public institutions. The estimates are based on the food requirements for an institution having 1000 inmates, and include the complete menu for every day in a week, with amounts, prices and food values. This table was prepared before the President had issued his request with reference to our abstinence from meats and white bread on certain days of the week. It can readily be modified to meet the present food conditions of the country.
His estimate of the daily cost for each inmate is only 16 cents and thus indicates that a considerable variety may be served without undue expense. It is not intended that any purveyor may follow the exact program, but his suggestions are highly interesting.
BILL OF FARE FOR ONE WEEK FOR AN INSTITUTION OF 1,000 INMATES
B H C. E , Superintendent Ohio State Hospital, Massillon, Ohio.
SUNDAY.
BREAKFAST.
DINNER.
MONDAY.
BREAKFAST.
DINNER.
SUPPER.
TUESDAY.
SUPPER.
WEDNESDAY.
BREAKFAST.
DINNER.
THURSDAY. BREAKFAST.
DINNER.
SUPPER.
FRIDAY. BREAKFAST.
DINNER.
SUPPER.
SATURDAY.
DINNER.
SUPPER.
Total cost Saturday for 1,000 inmates $150.29 Approximate cost each inmate
for each inmate, 2,730 calories.
It must be understood that in the preparation of this dietary for a week Mr. Eyman had in mind the food necessities for the general institution, not specializing for an establishment where men and
women are sent to repent. However, it is now recognized that a wholesome and appetizing bill of fare should be prepared for inmates of any home or institution in order for both health and economy. Most wardens would cut out the Sunday pie. Something more nutritious and wholesome could readily be substituted. The loaves of bread are reported to weigh 2 lbs. each.
Expert Opinion.
In this connection we are glad to call attention to a portion of an editorial from the Journal of the American Medical Association for November, 1916:
“So long as it was held that a prison is merely an institution for the safe detention of criminals, it was not to be expected that the hygienic conditions prevailing in such a place would be in harmony with the best experience or the newest schemes of sanitary science. Food in such an institution was intended solely to keep the prisoner alive and enable him to perform his allotted daily tasks. Penal institutions are beginning, however, to be the seats of active reform. With the acceptance of such a program as part of the function of our prisons, the problem of nutrition can no longer be neglected entirely. It may reasonably be contended that good housing conditions and suitable diet do not of themselves secure reformation of the misguided or the habitual criminal; but without some consideration of the necessity of proper food, the best ends of the imprisonment for crime cannot be attained. Malnutrition may or may not contribute to the production of criminals; in any event, the physiologic and psychic conditions attending the lack of palatable food and a well-balanced ration are not such as are conducive to those mental attitudes that lead to improved conduct and more wholesome life. It has been remarked that while a prisoner is not incarcerated for the purpose of being fed an ideal diet, nevertheless he should be fed so as to insure good health and a stable nervous system. * * *
“It seems extraordinary that so little judgment is shown by prison officials in varying and improving the dietary. The same unappetizing stuff is served day after day and year after year, with no variety in
food or manner of preparation. A large number of the prisoners have stomach troubles from this cause alone. Canned food is served when fresh vegetables would be just as cheap. The meat is cooked to death and is covered by a so-called sauce. The kitchen keepers are not to blame; it is the fault of the system.
“The remedy for this fault is to be found in the appointment of trained dietitians. So long as hospitals and other establishments which incidentally cater to mankind have been slow to appreciate the need of expert services in the planning and preparation of meals as well as in the purchasing of rations, we can understand the inertia of the prison management in this respect. But the time has apparently come for the introduction of such efficiency and supervision as will lead not only to economy of service but also to physiologic wellbeing. If the dietary is as important as the coal supply or the construction accounts, it deserves a dietitian rather than a stoker or a skilled mechanic to be placed in charge of the food problems.”
MICHIGAN STATE PRISON.
We have received the Report of the Board of Control of the Michigan State Prison at Jackson. It is a pamphlet of 140 pages, including 40 full page cuts. There are also four folders of the farm plots. It is a report which reports. We have already spoken of the 26 pages reporting the menu for every meal for a year. We may learn the names and duties of the 90 officers, and their salaries. One table gives the age, nativity, crime, sentence, residence and previous record of each inmate. The names are wisely withheld. The average population was 986. Twenty-five men had escaped in the last two years. We are informed of the date of the escape and the part of the farm and premises from which they absconded. The date of their return is specified. Ten were at large when the pamphlet was made up. They are confident of apprehending these ten. They have no barred windows, no locked doors, no armed guards. The men work over a plantation of more than three thousand acres, of which 2,137 belong to the institution. They rent 900 acres. They had 507 cattle when the report was made, having just sold 146 steers for $14,600. The dairy of 200 cows supplies the institution with abundant milk and butter. Horses, hogs, bees and poultry are also in evidence. “The banner record in poultry this year was made by an inmate * * * who without an incubator was responsible for hatching and raising more than two thousand chickens.”
By no means do they confine their attention to farming. To put a thousand men on a farm of three thousand acres and expect them to support themselves and have a surplus is an absurdity. There are various industries.
Brooms, product 1916 5,696.25
The net earnings in two years were $206,206.18 They had paid to the efficient workmen 65,009.35
In the year 1917 they were anticipating a canned pack of $100,000.00. Of the products of the farm “they eat what they can, and can what they can’t.”
Canning Factory.
“The intensive production of fruits and vegetables on the farms created a surplus which had to be cared for. * * * Hence the necessity for the canning plant. This industry * * * has accomplished more than any other one industry in the prison to insure the industrial success of the institution.
“From the standpoint of a prison industry it ranks first, inasmuch as the entire produce except the can is the direct result of prison labor. While other industries require the purchase of material for manufacturing, in the canning plant, the material, coming from the prison farms, is also produced by prison labor.
“The refuse from the factory in the lines of fodder, husks, etc., from the sweet corn; vines and pods from the peas; tops from the beets, and pomace from the apples press, furnish largely the ensilage ration for the large herds of cattle.
“The management is adding each year some new item to the pack of canned goods, until now it includes all varieties of fruits and vegetables, apple jelly, sorghum molasses, baked pork and beans, spaghetti, and the generation of pure cider vinegar. (They may soon rival the 57 varieties of Mr. Heinz.)
“The sanitary conditions in the factory are perfect. Any man, in order to be eligible to work in this factory, must have a clean bill of health from the prison physician. To further the sanitary conditions, the equipment and entire interior of the plant is painted white.”
Consumers and any one interested may inspect this plant at any time. Here they see the men, preparing the vegetables for canning,
in a white room, dressed in white caps, white coats, white shirts, and white aprons.
They have copyrighted the label “Home Grown,” and adopted as their slogan: “We grow, pack, sell and guarantee our own product.” Their goods are sold in the open market, being very popular throughout the State and in adjoining States.
They have long ago abolished the contract system which was really a system of slavery. They have gone beyond the policy of raising produce or manufacturing articles for State-use, but transact business on the State-Account plan, disposing of the product wherever they can find a market. They claim that under their system of employing convicts, outside labor has nothing to fear from competition. Contract labor may have been somewhat of a menace to labor on the outside, but these men earning wages are engaged in honest production and the product is distributed just as the fruits of any other industry. Let me illustrate. A man working on a farm, in a canning factory, in a cotton mill, commits a fault and is secluded from the community but continues his work on another farm, in another canning factory, in another cotton mill. He receives wages which maintains his family. Competition is neither increased nor diminished. When the man is released, he may return to his old job. High authority in the labor unions has stated that there is no objection to a system which affords fair play to the prisoner and also to the working man. Laborers have justly opposed the exploitation of prisoners under the lease and contract systems. They have not been opposed to the development of prison industries on a fair basis. They present no objection to a “State-Use” method, and we trust they will not oppose the development of a few industries organized under the State-Account plan which appears to have been so successful in the Michigan State Prison.
Fair Exhibits.
The products of the prison industries and of the farm have been shown at a number of County Fairs and also at the State Fair, and
the public has thus been informed of their activities and greatly pleased therewith. Nought has been heard but favorable comment.
Kitchen and Dining Room.
The culinary department is managed on the most approved sanitary scheme. None but healthy men are employed. They use every vegetable which will grow in Michigan, as long as the season lasts, and the canned product when the season is over. Every sanitary precaution is taken in the preparation of the meat from the pasturage and feeding of the stock, the slaughtering and handling of the carcass, in the cooking and serving the various viands on the dining table.
Objects.
It is not the object of the officers to exploit the men to the advantage of the State. In the last two years they may have returned to the State about $9,000, but in the same time they paid out to the men the sum of $65,000 in wages. They are spending their surplus in betterments. They have built dormitories, with rooms, not cells, avoiding particularly the menagerie appearance. They aim to supply the men with a wholesome and natural environment, believing that thus they may accomplish the main object of a penal institution which is the reformation and restoration of the offender.
A. H. V.
THE PRISON AND THE PRISONER.
A Symposium, edited by Julia K. Jaffray, Secretary, National Committee on Prisons and Prison Labor. Boston. Little, Brown and Company. 1917. $2.50.
A volume of 216 pages, containing eleven chapters contributed by fourteen men of high repute. Judge Wadhams, of New York City, comments on the Indeterminate Sentence, favoring a liberal application of the principle. Doctor Glueck and Doctor Salmon describe the necessity for psychiatrical studies of the convict in order to determine the best treatment for his welfare and also for the interest of the community.
Thomas Mott Osborne briefly delineates the self-government plan as instituted by him at Auburn and Sing Sing, and E. Kent Hubbard describes a similar system adopted in the Connecticut State Reformatory. “The Honor System” is condemned and there is no word in its defense.
We commend the book to all those who wish in brief compass to know what progress has been made in humanitarian ideals for the reformation of prisoners and what the scientific analysis of modern conditions indicates as the best measures to attain the cure and prevention of crime. Like other compilations, however, the various themes are not treated with equally judicial tone or comprehensiveness.
THE OFFENDER.
By B G. L , Commissioner of Correction, New York
City. Harper and Brothers. 382 pp. $2.00.
In this volume of 382 pages, Commissioner Lewis speaks from careful observation and from conscientious study The reader will soon perceive that a judicial treatment is applied to the various questions involved in dealing with penological problems. Various systems of government are considered, the differences between the Honor System and the Self-Government clearly indicated, and valuable suggestions made as to the classes of prisoners to which the various systems of government may be adapted. The subjects of Probation and The Indeterminate Sentence are fairly presented and discussed, the author coming to the conclusion that the Indeterminate Sentence is far preferable to the determinate system of the older penology.
The tendency today is to treat the offender in much the same way as the insane are now treated. Originally these unfortunates were dealt with as though possessed of demons. Gradually a reform was introduced. Special institutions were established, and these have been gradually improved to the extent that such afflicted persons are given such occupation and such freedom as compatible with safety. The result is that from 20 to 30 per cent. of them are either released as cured or may be released under the custodial care of their friends or relatives.
Mr. Lewis holds that the tendency to accord similar treatment after a careful diagnosis of each case to the delinquent is likely to produce a similar result. Each offender should be dealt with according to his special peculiarity, the treatment aiming at the substitution of good for bad habits, commitment to prison being used when it is not in the interest of the individual or of society to release the convicted criminal. Mr. Lewis advocates the retaining of old-established
methods as long as they are of service. These should not be discarded merely because they are old. He claims that the leaders in the movement agree that the new methods should be wisely tested before they are introduced generally. It is clear that there must have been good reasons for the adoption of any new method, but at the same time he is strongly in favor of studying the human equation, and of differentiating the treatment to suit each case.
In order to administer intelligently the large department under his charge he has “found it necessary to proceed carefully and to experiment widely before effecting a departure from the well-known methods of treatment.” The processes as well as the result of Mr. Lewis’s labors are given in the present volume. In Part I he rehearses the fundamental social forces upon which one must depend in order to check the development of the criminal. Among these are the home, the church, the school, health and sanitation, and the police.
In Part II are outlined the manner of utilizing the forces likely to improve the offender; in short, all the forces of law, order and social development in harmonious co-operation. The book is of serious concern to all interested in social science and in the best means of encouraging normal growth and development through a study of existing conditions.
PRISON ASSOCIATION OF NEW YORK.
We acknowledge the receipt of the Seventy-second Annual Report of our sister association in New York. It is a ponderous pamphlet of 648 pages full of information concerning Prison Progress in 1916. This Association was incorporated in 1846.
Our members will be interested in knowing that their Executive Committee, like our Acting Committee, has power to examine, and inspect all prisons of the State. Not only do they have the power but it is also enjoined upon them as a duty to make such visits and to report annually to the State Legislature the condition of the prisons and any circumstances “in regard to them as may enable the Legislature to perfect their government and discipline.” The charter also provides that the State shall print 500 copies of this annual report. Many additional copies are purchased by the Association for general distribution.
Their working staff contains twenty officers who are engaged in parole and probation duties, in the work of inspection and research, in securing employment and in affording relief.
The last 300 pages of this document are devoted to reports of the inspection of the various prisons of the State. The officers do not shrink from sharp criticism of undesirable features, and yet their criticism is of a constructive type. Recommendations are made, and the progress made since the last inspection is duly credited.
We have also received the Report of the New York State Commission of Prisons, a bound volume of 592 pages. 328 pages are devoted to description, recommendations and criticisms connected with the prisons of the State from the large State Prisons to the small village lock-ups. This appears to us a duplication of the
work of the Prison Association. Why should there be two organizations doing the same work?
The report of the Prison Association contains much valuable information with regard to legislation both recent and proposed, and to the success of the reformatory measures recently introduced into their penal system. Those who desire copies of the report may write to this Association at 135 E. 15th St., New York City.
NEW JERSEY PRISON INQUIRY COMMISSION.
This Commission was appointed according to the provisions of a bill of the legislature of the State passed in January, 1917. By January 1, 1918, the Commission had prepared an elaborate report of 822 pages giving a history and description of the prisons and penal methods of the State, and also presenting their recommendations. The historical record in general indicates a series of failures rather than of successes in penal administration. The so-called “Pennsylvania system,” the “Auburn Plan,” the method of contract labor, the State-Use plan, the Parole work, the efforts at Reformation, the partisan Boards, all have their share of more or less condemnation.
The student of penology, however, will discover in this record encouraging tendencies which may ultimately bring about a higher type of treatment of those who go astray.
The Commission believes in giving the largest opportunities for work in the open air and regards with detestation the “vicious rule of silence.”
Their discussion with regard to the merits and demerits of a Central Board of Control of all correctional institutions is deeply interesting and illuminating. They have come to the conclusion that a “system may be devised which will give to the State of New Jersey the benefits of a centralized control of its correctional system as a whole, but which will still leave to the separate institutions the advantages of the personal interest and devotion which have been such important factors in their development.” To accomplish this purpose, they recommend the appointment of a Central Board by the Governor, who without compensation, shall have a general power of supervision and visitation of all correctional institutions. The local
boards are to be continued with authority to manage the several institutions to which they are attached.
The principal recommendation of this Commission is to advise the appointment of this Central Board with whom should be vested the power to readjust, harmonize and improve the entire penal system of the State.
