My training and much of my professional life was spent as a Family Therapist. The whole point behind this kind of practice is to look at how family systems operate in order to better understand an individual’s behavior. In other words, most of what we do is not done in a vacuum, but is influenced by the behavior of those around us. Since our families are the people we spend the most time with, we tend to develop systems of response to one another that can be rather entrenched and difficult to change.
For years I worked with families as a way to address the needs of troubled kids. It was great work and I really learned alot. But I think that ultimately, my mind wanted to go bigger than just looking at individual family systems. I think our communities and culture are systems as well that operate much the same way families do. So, for example, these days, instead of just looking at the fact that we have an epidemic of seeing our children labelled with things like AD/HD, Depression, Eating Disorders, etc, I think about how our culture is AD/HD, Depressed and has an Eating Disorder.
So you might begin to see how my training and my interest in politics comes together. This led me recently to a look at the research that has been done over the last 60-70 years about the Authoritarian Personality. John Dean wrote a book about it titled Conservatives Without Conscience and by now most of us are somewhat familiar with the concept. But in case you’re not, I’ll give you a little overview.
