Community Psychology for At-Risk Populations

Beloveds:
I have posted an article titled "Taking Therapy to the Streets: Wraparound's Response to James Hillman" at www.academia.edu. This text provides an overview of a community-based mental health treatment planning process for at risk youth and their families. This is the model in which I have been engaged for almost 12 years. My intention is to write a book on the topic and situate it within the field of community psychology which impacts the two lower quadrants of social and cultural psychology as well as the upper right quadrant of self psychology for the individual client.

You can download this article at www.academia.edu
Love, light and shadow,
Jalaledin Ebrahim, LMFT, Ph.D

Angst about Aging

Beloveds:

Having studied the literature on Aging for the requisite CEUs (Continuing Education Units) for renewal of my state licensure in marriage and family therapy, I noticed the absence of any discussion about community psychology. It is just assumed that as we age in California, there will always be a social safety net for the baby boomers. But the public discourse about making cuts in entitlements tells another story. For those of us who are single and have no children, what will the aging process look like in the next 20 years, especially if there are major cuts in medicare and social security?

From an integral perspective, I think we can expect more angst about aging in the next two decades. We can expect higher levels of Depression in the aging population, despite the optimistic narratives about successful aging. Living in a culture that values youth over the elderly, is there reason for optimism in the future for our aging populations? I understand that in Europe, Canada and Japan, the elderly are more resigned to the aging process, given the assurance of a social safety net. What must aging be like for those who live in societies that have no promise of a social safety net? The Chinese and Indians have much cause for concern in this area, not to mention all the undocumented residents in the USA and elsewhere.

Clearly, the greater need for self-care and personal responsibility for self-sufficiency will be the cause of much angst, if the societies in which we live do not guarantee reliable social safety nets. From an integral perspective, those of us who are aging will need to take full responsibility for our physical, mental and financial health.

Love, light and shadow,
Dr. Jalaledin Ebrahim, LMFT

Lil JaXe's story is an amazing example of how to heal the voice. To overcome his stuttering, this Canadian boy from Toronto found a new form in which his voice mattered. Years of speech therapy did not work. He is now a popular rap artist whose voice is heard and appreciated by thousands!

FINDING OUR VOICE

Beloveds: Finding our voice is an all-quadrant-all-lines experience because we work through our personal issues, our relationship with - and in - society, our unique cultural expression, and we make contact with our spiritual source. This psychological principle is embodied in the video clip of Bobby McFerrin doing his magic - see the video bar! In addition to the four quadrants of self psychology, social psychology, cultural psychology and transpersonal psychology, my model of integral psychology adds the central fountain of Salsabil (from the Gardens of Paradise), otherwise known in diverse traditions as Sophia, the Immaculate Mary, Quan Yin, the White Tara or what I call the Imaginal Eve. It is the embodied feminine principle that connects and flows through all the four quadrants with Wisdom, Grace and Compassion. Love, light and shadow, Jalaledin

INTEGRAL PSYCHOTHERAPY

This blog is a re-invention of the Quantum One Life Coaching blog, occasioned by my licensure as a psychotherapist in the state of California and the completion of my doctorate in Depth Psychology with an emphasis in Psychotherapy. I defended my doctoral dissertation at Pacifica Graduate Institute on August 13, 2012. Henceforth, as a licensed psychotherapist, I will not be using the language of Quantum life coaching per se, even though coaching is very much an aspect of Integral Psychotherapy.

Another look at the Law of Attraction

Beloveds:

Interesting video on the Law of Attraction:

http://www.habitofattraction.com/?ref=313

CRISIS AS INITIATION

As I am in the midst of making some major life decisions, I thought this excerpt from Joan Borysenko's book "Fire in the Soul" might inspire us all to look at our crises as initiations:

"What a difference it would make if a person in the throes of a life crisis were called, as in the Ndembu tongue, a mwadi - an initiate - and then skilfully led to a rebirth. Instead our psychological initiates are often labeled neurotic, psychotic, addictive or character-disordered, labels that create helplessness and low self-esteem. These labels reinforce the fearful story that we are damaged and less than whole, a belief that prevents accessing the First Stories of initiation that the universe provides to help us move out of liminality into rebirth.

Some of the power of twelve-step recovery programs comes from the context in which addiction is placed - the new stories that Bill W. created that echoed the truth of the First Stories. In anonymous programs, addictions are transitions between a life where the person was out of touch with a High Power and one in which the reality of that Power becomes not only the force for recovery but also a renewal of the meaning of life. Addiction as a mwadi experience, for those who are willing to see it in that light, creates a context of excitement, empowerment and even gratitude for the addiction as a conduit to a new, more self-aware and fulfilling role.

Psychological problems and addiction are not the only challenging life-events where context effects outcome. Psychiatrist Victor Frankl, in his moving book Man's Search for Meaning, talks about life in the Nazi death camps during the Holocaust. In those most terrible of times some people succumbed to the inevitable epidemics that swept the camp, dying before the brutality of the Nazis and the fire o the ovens could consume them. Others, those who were able to find some meaning in their suffering, were more likely to hold onto life. Frankl himself survived four death camps before liberation, and it was in those camps that he conceived of logotherapy, a system of psychological growth and healing based on the apprehension of meaning.

Frankl and others like him created ritual out of horror, growth out of destruction, by choosing to believe that there was some transcendent meaning to their suffering. When we set our sights on a higher meaning, we automatically cast ourselves in the role of a dweller at the threshold, an initiate in a Great Story. We are not powerless, trapped or worthless. We are passing through the fire on the way to a purification of sufficient value that our suffering becomes worthwhile when weighed against it. Part of the value of suffering and dwelling at the threshold is that it initiates or intensifies the search for what is most sacred, for only in placing our minds on the promise of that sacredness can we emerge from the liminal period not only intact but healed.

The late American psychologist Abraham Maslow spoke of the deep need to find in our lives not only personal meaning, but transpersonal or spiritual meaning. A need is like a biological drive, an instinct. It's part of the genes, part of the racial memories that form the collective unconscious that all people share. When a biological drive is thwarted the organism suffers in some way. The particular kind of suffering that accompanies a thwarted drive for transpersonal meaning is a feeling of emptiness, of meaninglessness about life that can progress to depression if the need is not attended to." (1993, pp. 57-58)

~Excerpted from "Fire in the Soul - A New Psychology of Spiritual Optimism" by Joan Borysenko, Ph.D