The little Joys of June (+ the Maudlin Malaise of May)
On Writers' Festivals, when psychologists start to get a bit crispy around the edges, mid-life career planning, Farquharson and junk forensic science, and some excellent words on misogyny.
I know this wings its way into your inbox somewhat late (for May, but bang on time for June), but such is life really. If there’s anything I learnt during the pandemic, it is that time is an elastic and slippery being, with very little grounding in reality. When you really stop to consider it, time is a. a manmade construction with little bearing on the natural world, and b. very very vast indeed. A month without a newsletter is a good-enough space for a writer to sit in when the universe spans billions of years — and the Winnicottian good enough is all I aspire to.
May fled quickly largely because of my car debacle (it had a random arson attack inflicted on it), Karla being sick (she’s fine now — a few vet and dog physiotherapist visits later, peak millennial first world really), and writers festivals (Sydney and Brisbane to be precise). For those who have been following along on Instagram, you’ll know how the festivals went, but for the rest of you — very well indeed!
I felt somewhat tired, tiring, and tiresome before I went to Sydney and Brisbane, but was generally assailed by joie de vivre once there, and felt swept up in a glorious and beautiful writing community where people showed up simply to learn! Listen! And talk curiously! This is such a disconnect from the world as I usually see it, which tends to privilege accessing information in tiny nuggets, and only ever information which aligns with our already-formed views. It was a refreshing change to see so many people with open hearts and minds, a cool change for the soul. All of the panels I was on were absolutely fantastic, and so brilliantly curated and moderated. A good moderator makes all the difference, and I had some of the best —Carody Culver, Amber Gwynne, and Natasha Mitchell. I also got to spend some time with fellow Scribe authors — Laura Jean McKay, Jake Adelstein, Jenny Croft and her lovely sister Anne-Marie (all the way from Oklahoma!), caught up with Tina and Alice from the Scribe office, as well as finally (finally!) getting to see my very favourite editor — Marika — for breakfast. While Marika and I live in the same city teeing up schedules has been a disaster (I blame the black mould in the Scribe office), so amusingly, we managed to schedule a breakfast in Sydney instead.
These festivals came on the back of some heavy(ish) times for me. I was stressed (see car + Karla), was approaching a level of fatigue with clinical work and felt disenchanted with my forensic work. There’s been a lot of news about men killing women in the media and it’s hard to receive and process this, while also daily immersing myself in the world of violent men who often don’t really want to change their behaviours. Of course, there’s a lot more to forensic work than managing angry and violent men, but this is often a substantial daily part of the role, and it’s an especially hard task to approach as a woman without feeling occasional cynicism, fatigue, moral injury or simple tiredness. Psychology is not a profession which lends itself well to tiredness too, because despite your personal circumstances, every hour and every client needs (and deserves) your fully-present game face.
The festivals were a beautiful antidote for this tiredness, and also reminded me that I need to drag myself out of the pool of mental health and crime at times, and work to up-titrate my energy and immerse myself in fun and lightness. I sometimes forget that the window of tolerance is a window with an up and a down and that I need to do activating and connecting things (dance, play, laughter, seeing people), instead of simply focusing on the down-titration (yin yoga, baths, dim light). I can’t say I am out of the woods of tiredness yet, but I feel a lot more settled about it all. I especially loved Julia Baird’s words of advice about finding glimmers of joy, focusing on grace, and dancing. I’ve been deliberately turning to the light since my panel at BWF with her — and it’s been so helpful. Sometimes even a psychologist needs to be reminded about the basics. Thanks Julia, BFF (I jest, she won’t even remember who I am).
Why am I sharing this? Well, the ship of no-self-disclosure (generally considered verboten for psychologists, but very much a part of the daily grind for writers) has clearly sailed for me (in fact, it’s currently docked in Antarctica as we speak), and I think it’s useful to be honest about the hard work of therapy. I see too many young would-be psychologists/therapists entering the profession with glowing intentions and immediately burning out, and I think it’s helpful for everyone to speak frankly and openly about some of the difficulties we’ll all encounter in any type of helping or human services role.
I’ve been contemplating whether there is some type of ceiling on clinical work in the forensic field for me. I love doing therapy, but there are specific psychological challenges inherent in forensic work and with working within the policing/forensic system and I’m not convinced I’ll be able to sustain this forever — nor do I think I have the temperament to replace forensic work with private practice full-time without encountering significant exhaustion. Ironically, the qualities which probably (hopefully?) make me a good-enough psychologist — self-reflection, introspection, empathy — probably also predispose me to being more introverted and easily fatigued by interpersonal contact.
As I’ve considered my career options and have started to plan for this stage of life as a mid-career psychologist, I’ve made two big and brave decisions. First, I’m taking six months off forensic work next year on long service leave (I’ll still be doing private therapy for most of it) with the hope that this defers the ceiling I see looming, and second, I’ve applied for a Masters in Public Policy and Management to commence in 2025. Both of these have been on my to-do list for my forties, but it struck me that it was silly to sit around and wait to hit an arbitrary age. I may not get into the Masters of course, but I’m excited about the possibility of more learning and being able to use my strengths in writing and synthesising information for social good at a broader scale than 1:1 forensic interventions allow. I still want to remain working in the forensic/justice/DFV/child protection/disability spaces – perhaps just in a non-clinical capacity. Making a difference is really important to me, and I cannot think of anything worse than just working to contribute to the march of capitalism and someone’s bottom-line.
Outside of writer’s festivals, I’ve finished my third book (!) and have sent it off to my editor. More info here for those who want to know more about it. Yes, I know the link says HOW WE RELATE was going to be my second book, but LIFE SKILLS became an annoying brain-worm and HWR was thus relegated to third place. I’m currently planning my fourth and fifth books. I like keeping up a daily writing practise, and I can’t write freeform without a specific project as it turns out. I’m excited by baby-maybe books four and five, so watch this space.
Mental health in winter
For those who, like me, struggle with winter and the shorter days, here are some basic and helpful tips to survive this time with your mental health intact.
Dance. Just dance, ideally alcohol and substance free. For those who prefer going to bed at 8 pm (like me), can I recommend No Lights No Lycra? A beautiful, safe and holistic space.
Have fun. Children have a lot of fun and are always finding novelty and newness. How often do we do this as adults? What’s your fun? Fun is usually non-productive, not financially driven, and disconnected from competition/achievement.
Introvert. Winter is a time of withdrawal, entering inward and cocooning. How can you enjoy this instead of fighting against it?
Find fires. DON’T LIGHT THINGS ON FIRE OUTSIDE OF FIRE PITS OR BONFIRES (sorry, the forensic psych in me had to provide that warning). Without being too woo about it, I do think there’s something primal about how we interact with fire, especially in the depths of a cold, dark winter (an entirely untested, non evidence-based view FYI). We’ve lost the capacity to swing with the seasons, and tend to treat every season or time of life exactly as the time before, and the time after. Perhaps we need temporal markers and daily practises which embrace seasonal variations and fluctuations?
SLOW CRIME SUNDAYS
(Disclaimer: 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 cases and using them as a way to springboard into discussions about relevant forensic issues. I have no specific, privileged knowledge of the cases I discuss, and my commentary is meant to be informational and educational in nature only. All views are my own only.)
I’ve reduced my engagement with any crime-related material outside work, but I have been following a couple of recent Victorian cases with interest. The Greg Lynn case — the high country camping deaths. It’s still before the courts (i.e., he hasn’t been sentenced though he has been found guilty of one murder) so I’m not going to comment on this much. I am however, intrigued by the discrepancy between his usual reported style of functioning (perfectionistic, obsessive) and the impulsivity inherent in his account of the offences. While I have no thoughts about this at present except to note it’s an anomaly, this is the kind of thing I’d be focusing on in a pre-sentence report to understand the offending, or if I were to provide him with any form of forensic treatment aimed at reducing risk of violence.
I’m also very fascinated by the Farquharson case. There’s been a lot in the media about this recently, as he is launching an appeal (and I think there’s a podcast in the works?). I read Helen Garner’s ‘This House of Grief’ a while ago — such an excellent read. There were a few things I didn’t know about this case, such as the lack of any form of psychological/psychiatric report and the entirely untested assumption that his motivation was revenge. I also didn’t realise that some of the science used in relation to his steering trajectory was not evidence-based, or was based on scientific models which didn’t apply to his circumstances. I’m not saying that I believe or disbelieve his account — that is for a jury or court of appeal to determine — but this does raise an interesting set of questions around the use and evolution of forensic science and unsafe convictions.
Much forensic science (such as bloodstain splatter analysis) is untested junk science, and I wonder how many convictions are wrongful/unsafe because they have relied on this type of science. I’m not convinced that a psychological report would have made a difference either way in this case and the original verdict, because clinicians can’t investigate a crime and are led by the court findings, collateral information available and the account a client gives us of their offending. However, it seems like an over-stretch to conclusively determine a motive without any form of corroborating evidence. Everyone wants to understand why an offence happened — but motives are rarely as clear-cut as the media would like us to believe.
Much of our work in the forensic field (including risk assessments) are poorly tested and validated, and it’s so important to ensure we are not more certain in our findings than the evidence indicates. While there’s a strong move toward accepting allegations without evidence/finding of guilt in the advocacy space, removing the presumption of innocence and interrupting the rigorous legal processes designed to protect our liberty is something we will likely come to regret with time. Nor am I letting the legal system off the hook — the legal system aids and abets many miscarriages of justice and significant reform is needed (especially in the fields of the prosecution of sexual offences and DFV) to ensure victim safety during hearings, and better conviction rates.
Domestic and family violence
I’ve continued to follow the work being done in the DFV field, and admittedly, am struggling with the quality and utility of the research which is currently being generated. Much of it feels recursive and highlights things we already know. This article for instance, focuses on new research suggesting that 70% of men who kill partners have had contact with the court system. This information isn’t new to anyone in the field — antisocial behaviours are a risk factor for most types of offences and it’s very likely that people who commit murder or engage in DFV will thus have had contact with the court system. I’m big on translating research into practice and am always curious about whether we can do something with a piece of research to help us with mitigating risk/providing better interventions.
The answer here is no, because so many people go to court for DFV and other offences, that we cannot meaningfully use this as a risk marker and provide interventions to everyone going to court — without being absolutely swamped and intervening with many people who won’t benefit from interventions. We need more intelligent and sensitive risk factors if we want to identify who might be at risk of engaging in homicide, and the research to date tells us that there are no identifiable risk factors which are reliably associated with an increased risk of intimate partner homicide.
Misogyny
I read an excellent piece by Kate Manne (Author of Down Girl) in the Monthly. She addresses the difference between sexism and misogyny and intelligently discusses the role of misogyny and mental illness in the Bondi Westfield attacks in a nuanced and well articulated manner.
Recommend reading the whole piece, excerpt below.
“By itself, mental illness is a very incomplete explanation of violent actions. Mentally ill people are not disproportionately violent in general, and women disproportionately suffer from mental illness. We also get lonely and frustrated. Yet we almost never commit acts of mass violence, and commit a very low percentage of homicides (notwithstanding the proliferation of female killers in film and television). However, the specifics of Cauchi’s case make an important difference here: he lived with schizophrenia and, according to his parents, had recently discontinued his medication. And people with schizophrenia who experience severe hallucinations and delusions – as in a psychotic break due to such discontinuation – are known to be more prone to violence, if modestly, particularly in conjunction with substance abuse. This tendency may not be an inevitable result of this particular mental illness: interesting research has shown that the content of auditory hallucinations varies with culture, being more positive, playful and peaceful for people with schizophrenia in India and Ghana, and more intrusive and violent for patients in North America.
So, careful as we must be not to stigmatise the mentally ill, or to make assumptions about them, I think it would be quite wrong to deny that a mental health crisis may have played an important role in Cauchi’s lashing out when he did. But this is to enter a particular kind of explanation that philosophers call contrastive: why did he lash out now, rather than sometime earlier in his 40-year lifespan? Why did he lash out whatsoever, when such behaviour is fortunately so unusual, even among men who are aggrieved and lonely? These are the sorts of questions that can be addressed by a parent in the aftermath, and which Andrew Cauchi’s remarks did shed some light on.
But there are other questions that are not so much forensic as cultural – not psychological, but social and political – that also deserve answers. Why did Joel Cauchi lash out at women rather than men? And why is it invariably a Joel rather than a Jane who expresses their romantic loneliness and sexual frustration by murdering the very kinds of people whom they feel deprived of and frustrated by? These are the questions that invite feminist answers. It is because of misogyny that girls and women face these threats and forms of violence. And it is because of patriarchal ideology that men often feel entitled to our sexual, emotional, material and reproductive labour. Even if they erupt when they do because of internal precipitating or enabling factors, including mental illness and internet radicalisation, it is vital to understand that their actions only make sense against the backdrop of external, cultural forces. They are driven by the patriarchal idea that men such as them deserve the social and sexual services of women, and that life without a wife or a girlfriend is not just disappointing but unfair – even a crime against them. A crime that they are entitled to litigate with violence.
…
Often there’s a sense, in the media and public discourse, that misogyny is due to the belief that women are inferior. But this, in my view, is to mistake misogyny for sexism. I take misogyny to be the enforcing and policing of patriarchal norms and expectations, while sexism comprises beliefs that serve to naturalise and rationalise a patriarchal order: the idea that women are “naturally” caring and men are “naturally” dominant over us, for example. Misogyny in fact often kicks in at precisely the moment when the assumptions of sexism are proven incorrect and women show our brilliance, our creativity, our autonomy. We show that we are not so easy to control. And misogyny reacts badly, by doubling down on the attempt to curtail our hard-won freedom.
Feminism and misogyny are thus, unfortunately, all too often in lockstep as cultural forces. Misogyny is frequently a response to the anxiety that comes in the wake of feminist social progress. Sexism takes women to be inferior; misogyny may glean the reality we are not and lash out in anger at women being in every meaningful way men’s equals.”
(https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2024/june/kate-manne/future-misogyny)
WHAT I READ (IN WHOLE OR PART) IN MAY + JUNE
Clade - James Bradley
The Divorcèes - Rowan Beaird *
12 Rules for Strife - Jeff Sparrow & Sam Wallman
The Mountains are High - Alec Ash
Women of Good Fortune - Sophie Wan
Butter - Asako Yuzuki
Ghost Species - James Bradley *
Sanctuary - Garry Disher
The Fire This Time - Jesmyn Ward
Dead Weight - Emmeline Chen
Prima Facie - Suzie Miller *
Psalm for the Wild Built - Becky Chambers *
Best Wishes - Richard Glover
Muddy People - Sara El Sayed
Against the Loveless World - Susan Abulhawa *
The Cancer Finishing School - Peter Goldsworthy
Normal Women - Ainslie Hogarth
Green Dot - Madeleine Grey
A Bird in Winter - Louise Doughty
This is Not a Pity Memoir - Abi Morgan *
Breath - Carly Jay Metcalfe *
Immaculate - Anna McGahan *
Bright Shining - Julia Baird
Amma - Saraid De Silva *
The Art of Memoir - Mary Kerr
Sunbathing - Isobel Beech
Deep Water - James Bradley
Because I’m Not Myself You See - Ariane Beeston **
The Myth of the Untroubled Therapist - Marie Adams *
Songs for the Dead and Living - Sarah M. Saleh
It has been two very good reading months, and July and August promise to be the same because I collected a giant stack of books after Brisbane Writers Festival, and an even larger stack of recommendations.
*denotes the books I especially loved.
** BIG BIG love for a fellow psychologist who wrote such a brave, funny and heart-wrenching memoir. Mental health professionals often talk about the importance breaking down stigma, but still refuse to talk about our own mental health difficulties out of fear. So proud of Ariane for walking into this storm, head held high.
MEDIA WRAP (and an award nomination!)
I wrote this piece for Psyche on managing the emotions which arise when you are disliked and this piece for The Saturday Paper about the colossal policy failures in the field of mental health.
I also had this essay published in Edition 84 of the Griffith Review.
I spoke to Kayla Itsines about overcoming a dislike of exercise for her new podcast, Sweat Daily.
I also got long-listed for a Davitt Award! Not media per se, but wasn’t sure where else to fit it. More info here.
UPCOMING EVENTS
I am events-ed out after the festivals and won’t be attending any further public events for the foreseeable future. (Get in touch if you have something in mind though - especially if I can bring Karla - it’s been a while since she’s fallen off a stage or licked her bum in front of an audience).
I’ll also be running a webinar for the ASA in November, stay tuned.
This post led me to reading Reclaim - what a beautiful book, thank you for writing it.