February Wrap
The rigours of publicity (poor me *world's tiniest air violin plays*), book launching, group psychology, Volume 2 of Slow Crime Sunday, and the DL on the downsides of authorship.
I realise how utterly unenticing February wrap sounds as a post title, but honestly, we have so many choices to make in life that systematising small things like this can be the thin wedge between sanity and lack thereof. February has felt much more like a hurtle toward the middle of the year than January (world’s longest month anyone?). It’s observations like this which keep you hooked on my writing, yes?
Speaking of writing, I launched LIFE SKILLS with a spectacular greyhound fundraiser at Northside Wines. Greyt Greys rescue raised approximately $2800 for the hounds in their care! For independently funded rescues (i.e., no money from the racing industry) fundraising remains a huge task, especially given the vet bills many ex-racing greyhounds acquire due to neglect in the industry. Donations are welcome, and even $5 pledged per month makes a huge difference.
Thank you to Greyt Greys, Northside Wines, the ever-excellent George from Brunswick Bound, Chris Cheers, Houndtees, Dave and Adam (photographers!) and my favourite (and only) publishers, Scribe, for all their support with the launch (especially Josh, the SCRINGPIN, who has so ably stepped into the role of publicist and all round excellent organiser). Everyone contributed so much — time, expertise, labour, raffle prizes, giant posters advertising the launch, speeches, donations, happiness, hounds, stickers, a mad dash to find a microphone, attendance and donations! I’m so deeply grateful to all of you <3
We’ve also sold translation sub-rights for SKILLS to Slovakia, Turkey and Russia and I’m excited to see my words in different languages soon! The audiobook will be released in April — so keep your eyes peeled (ears tuned?).
The creatives world is a shit show (and let’s not forget that the world is still burning)
On a less pleasant note, this past month has been a bit of a WTAF in the arts and creatives world in Australia. First, we had the Robinsons books fiasco (they don’t stock my books, I checked), quickly followed by WhatsappGate, and the subsequent mass public naming.
I don’t even know where to start with the latter (I’m not wasting any words on Susan) except to say that the focus on what occurred in the group and after has been a red herring which has detracted from the urgent need for a ceasefire, and for humanitarian aid to flood Palestine. I spent some time absorbed in the minutiae of what played out (like every other human, I too find it hard to turn away from the emotional pull of drama) but then realised I felt gross about it, like I was slicked over with some yucky goo. This is the same corrosive feeling I get when working with a very troubling forensic client (e.g., someone who has sexually sadistic impulses) and is usually a sign that this thing I am doing and seeing holds some danger for my soul. It’s not hard to see why watching people try to cancel, de-platform, and shout at and over each other whilst ignoring/paying lip service to a humanitarian crisis should feel like witnessing something rather unappetising, something which doesn’t speak very well of humanity and of who we have become.
A lot of WhatsappGate and the aftermath was about feelings — feelings of hurt, fear, anger, isolation, sadness, bemusement, rage, intolerance, entitlement — and how we acknowledged, managed, or didn’t manage these. I recognise fully there are a number of troubling structural factors at play but my expertise lies in mental health and individual psychology — so that’s where I’ll focus my deconstruction efforts instead of giving you a half-arsed beginners guide to liberalism, white supremacy and racial justice for dummies 101 by some uninformed brown woman (i.e., me). It’s always important to consider key structural issues such as racism, economic power, the military complex, and colonialism even as we think about individual psychological factors, otherwise we fall into traps of oversimplification.
Nevertheless, I think we would be losing some useful information if we neglected human psychology as we try to understand and better respond to what is being asked of us as humans at this time and the factors influencing our behaviour. Wars have started because of emotions (hubris and pride are emotions too), and military strategies often utilise understanding of human behaviour and psychology in their efforts at beating the enemy into submission (such as the snuff Telegram channel run by some combatants from the Israeli army). I stumbled across this interesting paper while reading about emotions and military strategy (look, I have no idea if the Texas National Security Review is credible or biased, military strategy is not my area of expertise), and found the following quote especially pertinent:
“The practice of military strategy can hence be understood as a large-scale emotional manipulation conducted for the purpose of victory.”
The power of group think
As we think of WhatsappGate, we should also probably remind ourselves of the psychology which occurs in groups. Group psychology has often been discussed somewhat pejoratively, and Stephen Reicher has summed up the prevailing thinking as ‘Groups are bad for you, groups take moral individuals and turn them into immoral idiots’. Conformity, group think, in/out groups, deindividuation, the impact of anonymity, and insulation of a group from external influences can lead to troubling outcomes. Some accessible learning here about all this. None of this is to excuse any behaviour (explain not excuse tends to be my motto), but as always I like to understand and explain so we can try to work out why we have acted in a certain way and what forces might have influenced our behaviour.
Like many, I remain disappointed in those who participated in the WhatsApp group and publicly espoused far more justice-aligned views, while privately acting to de-platform other artists for pro-Palestinian views. I’ve also since seen the seething anger and hatred directed toward the group and have realised how difficult it must have been to inhabit the creatives world as a Jewish person with the moral purity often demanded in radical activist spaces. It can be easy to feel like we have to hide, deny or obscure key parts of our identity to be accepted by our peers, or to avoid the ire of some, but this will only ever provide us with an illusory and fragile sense of safety and belonging. It’s easy to then reactively move from one form of groupthink and identity absorption to another, without doing some of the difficult and emotionally demanding work of creating an identity and ethical and humanitarian stance informed by values and deep-thinking, instead of simple compliance with norms and the influence of others. Nevertheless, it’s important to remember that people had (and have) the capacity to make individual ethical choices about their actions in a group but many chose not to — and this is a shame, especially when you notice that the end point of relentlessly focusing on and centring white hurt feelings is often dead brown bodies.
Overall, I prefer accountability to punishment, action against or for a cause to agitation against people, and carefully calibrated action with a single question in mind, i.e., will this add to or take away from the final cause?
In a nicer take on groups, Reicher shares some thoughts about the positives of groups, including cooperation, solidarity, personal empowerment through collective action, and the generation of positive change. I was especially interested in this paragraph below:
“Now, we argue that, first of all, when you have intergroup violence, it’s almost impossible to explain it by just looking at one party to that violence, just looking at the crowd. We need to look at the intergroup interactions, the intergroup dynamics between crowd and police. Secondly, in a number of very different types of crowd events, student demonstrations, environmentalist disputes, and so on, you can see a common dynamic of escalation, whereby you get an initially heterogeneous crowd, some want to do more confrontational things, most people don’t, trouble starts, the police see them all as dangerous, clamp down on everyone. Then people who didn’t previously see themselves as anti-police, being treated as the opposition, see themselves as oppositional, and therefore you see a shift and an escalation. The real issue about crowd behaviour and crowd violence isn’t why a few people who came to be violent are violent, that’s a rather banal issue, it’s why so many people who came not to be violent, become involved in those dynamics, those dynamics of escalation. Now, that’s a tough message to get through, because of course, when there is trouble, the first thing any government wants to do is to admit that it, its policies, or its agencies might play a role in the creation of that conflict, that the police don’t just manage and control violence, they might be a party to the creation and construction of violence.”
There’s lots to think about as we consider our identities, who we align with, how we use our voices, what we act for, whether we act publicly or in secrecy, and the manner in which we gather together in pursuit of various causes.
As always, a reminder that these thoughts and conversations are red herrings which detract from the real work of trying to galvanise our governments toward taking action for a ceasefire. Action is essential, and we all need to do our part.
Three easy(ish) actions:
Follow the work of the Australia Palestinian Advocacy Network (APAN). APAN always have a range of useful and accessible actions you can engage in.
Set up a regular donation to MSF, UNRWA, UNICEF, or other grassroots organisations.
Attend protests, keep writing to your local representatives, as well as Albanese and Wong.
The AHPRA social media policy has been clarified (and what this means for you as a healthcare provider)
I can’t even believe this has to be clarified, but given the many reports made about health practitioners for social media posts (including some unpleasant public naming), AHPRA have clarified their social media policy and provided examples of the forms of speech which won’t attract investigations (e.g., advocating for the protection of health workers and civilians, peaceful resolutions) and those which will (e.g., sharing deliberately biased and incorrect political information).
I’m a health practitioner but have also in the past had to report one of my own health providers to AHPRA. It was an excruciating two-year reporting and investigation process. Investigations absorb a lot of time and resources and by flooding AHPRA with spurious complaints, real abuses of power by healthcare providers (including statements which are legitimately racist) are likely to be missed and investigations delayed. The weaponisation of any kind of complaints process has real impacts for the public and for providers. Spurious and vexatious complaints are not advocacy or activism.
As always, familiarise yourself with AHPRA policy, know your own organisation’s stance on social media posts (but keep in mind the importance of speaking up against needless censorship or inconsistencies in application of policies), seek support from your union if needed, and don’t be afraid to act for peace in a way which feels right for you as long as you moderate your speech (which tbh you should be doing anyway, AHPRA directives notwithstanding).
SLOW CRIME SUNDAYS
The Burari Deaths, folie a deux, and Ruby Franke.
(Disclaimers: As a registered psychologist, I cannot provide diagnoses or commentary about mental health unless I have seen a client, and if I have seen someone, then I cannot speak about them publicly for obvious reasons. What I present in this section are general thoughts only, and these musings are not intended to be seen as clinical advice. I’ll be picking out overseas or historical cases and using them as a way to springboard into discussions about relevant forensic issues. I have no specific knowledge of these cases, and my commentary is meant to be informational and educational in nature only.)
I learnt about the Burari deaths last year, when a friend told me about the Netflix documentary series, House of Secrets. Strongly recommend. The deaths occurred in 2018 in Burari in India and involved 11 members of a family. They lived in a multi-generational joint family, a pretty typical occurrence for India, and the members ranged from ages 15 to 80. They owned two businesses together and overall their lives appeared to have been enmeshed, with little separation and few outside influences. The oldest member of the family was found strangled and deceased on the floor, while the remaining ten were found deceased and hanging from the ceiling, with the doors locked from inside. All their faces were wrapped in cloth, and they were blindfolded with their mouths taped up and hands tied behind their backs. While a range of hypotheses were explored (including a very bizarre one about the pattern made by the hanging points echoing bolts in the wall), the police eventually concluded that this was a case of a shared psychosis, also called a folie a deux, which resulted in a suicide pact amongst the members of the family. The suicide pact was reflected in a range of writings in a diary by each member of the family, and appears to have been triggered by one of the members (the oldest son) believing he was possessed by his deceased father and that he was carrying out his father’s wishes. It’s unclear whether they intended this act to result in death or thought they would come back to life, but either way, this appears to have been an intentional, self-inflicted act.
Shared psychoses (also called psychoses of association) are incredibly uncommon, and indeed, I haven’t yet seen one in my forensic work (there’s time yet!). Essentially, in a shared psychosis someone with a primary delusional belief then has contact with one or more close people (secondaries) who then take on this delusional belief. People can have delusional beliefs without having a full-blown schizophrenic syndrome (delusional disorder is one such example) and this is the same with a shared psychosis — people may be very functional and continue their normal life and activities while still holding delusional beliefs about a specific subject.
Disorders like delusional disorder are difficult to treat and don’t respond well to traditional psychotropic medication or psychotherapy. They can also be devastating in impact. I’ve seen people sell houses, move inter-state multiple times and leave employment altogether because of delusional beliefs about persecution/attack. The few times I’ve treated delusional disorders I have noted strong links with past traumas, subsequent schema formation (e.g., ‘people are out to get me’) and personality functioning — and all these difficulties require long-term psychotherapy. Most people with psychotic and delusional disorders have poor insight (i.e., they believe their delusions and can’t see them as a facet of mental illness) which can make treatment very challenging, and can often set up an oppositional dynamic between a treating team and a client. This dynamic is even more prevalent in forensic settings where someone’s delusional beliefs may make them a risk to another (e.g., if they experience Capgras syndrome and then try to kill the perceived imposter). While people with mental illnesses are generally more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators, there are a small sub-set of people at greater risk of engaging in violent offending because of their mental illness (e.g., those who experience psychosis with symptoms such as command hallucinations, or voices telling them to hurt others).
Biological influences in psychosis are common (and it makes sense that a family would thus fall prey), as are other psychiatric morbidities. Social influences are also important to consider, and the fact that the primary person who instigated this plan appears to have been the oldest male son is a relevant cultural factor to consider. India is a very patriarchal society and men (especially the oldest sons) have a lot of power within the family. It’s typical that family decision making is led by men, and it would likely have been incredibly difficult for other members of the family to exercise agency and disagree with the plan, even if they did not share the delusions. While all members of the family died and cannot provide testimony, I am curious about whether this was a true shared psychosis, or if psychological coercion was a factor. Prayer rituals such as those the Burari family engaged in prior to death are common in India and many people accept spiritual influences/the concept of the afterlife/supernatural influences on behaviour etc. I always emphasise the importance of understanding cultural and social factors when understanding crime (or any phenomenon really), though probably (definitely) wouldn’t subscribe to supernatural explanations for crime or other phenomena myself. Another fascinating sociogenic culture-bound syndrome is resignation syndrome. I loved this book, and strongly recommend it.
Ruby Franke is another fascinating case where sociocultural influences seem to have contributed to the commission of a crime. You can read more about her here, but briefly, she was a ‘mommy vlogger’ (that term makes me cringe) with a massive YouTube following who was charged with and convicted of some pretty heinous child abuse, including withholding food, and inflicting severe physical abuse such as duct-taping children to their beds. Her parenting techniques were suspicious, even before the abuse came to light, and I am alarmed by the general intelligence of the population when I realise 2.5 million people were following her and possibly taking parenting advice from her! She appears to have been a Mormon with all the beliefs that entails, and engaged in the abuse of her children with the support and participation of a mental health counsellor/life coach (…lord spare me!) Jodi Hildebrandt. Hildebrandt initially worked with Franke on their online channel ConneXions. Their site/YouTube channel advertised itself as a “support group” for mothers that helped “treat those lost in the darkness of a distortion”. This highlights why pseudo-scientific mental health practitioners without appropriate training are so dangerous, especially when bolstered by the social forces of a voracious and desperate public with poor mental health literacy, and constant positive reinforcement via social media with no accountability, challenging or questioning. Franke has blamed her offending on Hildebrandt, though issues were highlighted with her parenting prior to the commencement of their work together. It does seem that Hildebrandt did facilitate and contribute to the abuse, and had a range of truly bizarre beliefs about mental health and parenting — but wasn’t solely responsible.
It’s unsure whether Franke would have been able to inflict her abuses in a different part of the world, perhaps one less beset by ideas of sin as Utah, or whether earlier intervention by others (aunts and uncles, dad, schools, neighbours) might have stopped this abuse sooner. While there was no shared psychosis per se, there was an implicit shared agreement to remain silent, to ignore the signs of abuse or openly demonstrated abuse (e.g., withholding food, locking a child out of his bedroom), and to continue supporting Franke’s work online. We are all culpable when something like this happens if we have followed/supported the perpetrator (though not legally responsible of course) and intervening in child abuse and domestic/family violence often requires a ‘see something, say something’ approach.
It’s useful to consider how often we choose to act when we see injustice and abuse, and how often (and why) we may instead choose to remain silent.
The common threads between this case and the Burari deaths involve the creation and use of social influence, the abuses of power and influence within the family, and religious/cultural influences such as concepts of sin and obedience (with Franke) and communication with the deceased (Burari deaths). It’s an interesting concept to tussle with, this dissonance between respecting cultural norms and ensuring people are kept safe from abuse, and requires finer nuance than ‘cultural/religious practices must be respected at all costs’.
Tl;dr?
Don’t accept anything at face value.
Be careful who you follow and support online.
Use your voice if anyone is being abused.
WHAT I READ (IN WHOLE OR PART) IN FEB
Horse - Geraldine Brooks
Deep in the Forest - Erina Reddan
Funny Ethnics - Shirley Le
Tipping Point - Dinuka McKenzie
The Shards - Bret Easton Ellis
A Therapeutic Journey - Alain De Botton (been slowly working through this for maxxo absorption since December, SO GOOD)
Enter Ghost - Isabella Hammad
Good Material - Dolly Alderton (why are there 32 holds on this at the library? I felt so much pressure)
The Circle - Dave Eggers
None of This is True - Lisa Jewell (I do love a frothy little crime book as a palate cleanser)
Question 7 - Richard Flanagan
The Great Undoing - Sharlene Allsopp
(also just started I Have Some Questions For You - Rebecca Makkai)
MEDIA WRAP
I spent a lot of time at the start of February doing various interviews. I did Breakfasters with 3RRR, taped a podcast for the US (the time zone difference took me about 24 hours of puzzling to work out…), and an interview and photoshoot for the April edition of Positive News magazine on life after a cult (talking about this publicly still terrifies me, but it’s in my book, so I probably need to manage that anxiety).
I wrote this piece for the Guardian on why we seek so much advice, and this piece for Griffith Review Online on how to decide whether to use our social media platforms for activism and speaking up.
I also have a piece in Griffith Review Issue 84, Attachment Styles (available in May), and have an upcoming piece with Psyche magazine. I’ve realised I very much enjoy longer-form essays/deep dives and hope to do more of this. Hit me up, editors!
UPCOMING EVENTS
8th March - In Conversation with Jill Stark for Queenscliff Literary Festival as an IWD celebration. Canapés! Conversation! I’ll probably say some acerbic things about girlboss pink feminism (but I’ll still eat cupcakes if they are offered to me, or perhaps even if they’re not)
Information here: https://www.queenscliffeliteraryfestival.com.au/
TICKETS SOLD OUT.
(Also, not my event, but here’s a plug for the Palestinian Film Festival at Cinema Nova from March 14-17th. I’ll be travelling, and am upset I’ll be missing it. Palestinian voices have been shut out of literature and the arts for a long time, and it’s important to familiarise ourselves with their work and lives so we can start to shift the narrative of Palestinians = terrorists.)
16th April - An In Conversation at Emerald Hill library in South Melbourne, keep an eye on their events page.
1st May - In Conversation at Bargoonga Nganjin (North Fitzroy library) - keep an eye on their events page. Karla will be in attendance! Bring treats (no chicken, she’s intolerant).
Also, if you think the life of a writer is all glitz and glam, I am here to tell you about the ignominy. My last royalty statement was -3000(ish) (yeah, the minus sign is not a typo), I’ve had many an entirely vacant book signing line at festivals, and not only have I NOT been invited to many writer’s festivals, I was also invited to one and then UNinvited (too many authors and not enough venues apparently, so they had to ‘let some writers go’). I’ve been invited and uninvited to a party previously (long story, work thing) and I DO NOT want this to become a life theme. While this would have been very schema-triggering in the past for me (am I not good enough? No one likes me!) I was very pleased that I was able to just laugh and chalk this up to a good story and the parlous state of arts administration in Australia — nature is healing, friends! There’s nothing glamorous about writing, it’s all downhill after the headiness of the book deal, but every insult and slight is also fodder for the next book (or a newsletter), so there’s that solace at least.
