(@ 1998-2001, Dr. Yanina Shapiro)
While other Principles of Mental Fitness® are still under construction, I want to dwell on its first
principle:
Mental
Fitness® is about Your own Effort,
about the Work You do to Prevent your Mind from ever Needing the help of Mental Health
Professionals (psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, therapists, psychoanalysts, etc. -
the folks who are in the business of diagnosing and treating minds by various medical
means).
To prevent
Mental Health Problems, Brain-Flex® for Successful
Intelligence and Mental Fitness®
Mental
health is really a misnomer, because it is all about mental illness and its testing,
diagnosing, and labeling. It is about prescriptive cures for The UN-Healthy mind. Mental
health therapy and other treatments involve manipulation. A health professional decides
what your best condition is to be and how it is to be achieved. A mental health
professional decides whether a treatment is to be only psychotherapy or only Prozac or a
combination of psychotherapy and Prozac or other psychoactive drugs.
The field
of Mental Health is very much unlike other fields of medicine, where healthy people are
never called "patients" and never given therapy. You do not go to doctors or
hospitals or physical therapists until and unless you become un-well. Not so in the field
of Mental health, which is the health achieved through psychoactive drugs, psychotherapy,
electrical shock, neurosurgery or a combination thereof.
Mental
Health Therapy is based on the assumption that if you dig your unconscious long enough and
deep enough to re-live the problems and fears of your childhood, you will uncover and
understand your true self and, thus, will be set free of all the problems you are facing
today. But how? If you are permanently stuck in analyzing your childhood and tracing its
problems to your parents, to your environment, to your church, to your football coach, to
the neighborhood bully, etc, when will you reflect upon your present life and your present
self?
The fact
that your present self has a past does not meant that your present problems must begin in
the problems of a child, whose pictures you now identify as continuous with your present
self. Do you really feel that the child in an old photograph, of you, at a tender age of
5, is somehow hidden inside your present self, just as pop-psychology books say it is? As
if each of us were a set of Russian dolls, a smaller doll sitting inside the bigger one -
a doll per a year of life, forming the line of 48 dolls that stretches out in front of the
biggest one, yourself at the age of 49. Why should that child, whose survival was
completely and totally dependent on his/her caretakers, be the cause of your today's anger
with your boss or your office mate? In the years that have elapsed since then, have you
not began taking charge of your own life? Have not people other than your parents touched
your life and influenced you? Have you not touched and influenced other people?
Well, if
you prefer to feel doomed by your past, then you may want to stick with your psychotherapy
and/or Prozac. Otherwise, give a try to a different philosophy. Philosophy? - you ask.
Yes, philosophy, because the choice between whether you are in charge of your future or
your future is at the mercy of your past is a philosophy.
Among many
a myth scientific psychology has produced none has been as pervasive as Sigmund Freud's
idea that the past determines the present by leaving undeletable traces on "the
unconscious", whose excavation, via psychoanalysis, is supposed to be a royal road to
mental health and well being. Freud never explained how the conscious phenomena turn into
"the unconscious", but he endeavored to explain how "the unconscious"
comes undone. That is supposed to happen through psychoanalysis. Freud believed that only
his brand of psychoanalysis was a legitimate cure. Later on, other schools of
psychoanalysis emerged and gave birth to new therapies. But whatever other differences
between psychotherapies, they pretty much agree on being able to trace the patient's
present problems to their roots, in childhood.
Incidentally,
psychoanalysis was not Freud's chosen profession. By training, Sigmund Freud was a medical
doctor, who intended to do research in neuroscience. However, his being Jewish was not
conducive to obtaining a university research position in Vienna, Austria. And so he became
a psychoanalyst and eventually became very famous. Suffice it to say, at the turn of the
last century, Freud was much more famous in the United States than in Europe.
Although
until this day, in the USA, many people rate Freud's discovery of the
"unconscious" as one of the greatest achievements of the 20-th century science,
he made no such discovery. Rather, he simply postulated "the unconscious". Since
it is a mere postulate, "the unconscious" cannot be either proven or disproven.
Meantime, we are invited to believe that there is the UN-conscious that somehow may turn
conscious. Yet, we know not of any other instances of the unconscious phenomena becoming
conscious. Stones do not do it. Sticks do not do it. Skeletons do not do it.
At the turn
of the last century, another MD, William James, who had studied philosophy and psychology,
and then taught psychology and then philosophy at Harvard University, was not in the least
impressed with the lectures on psychoanalysis that Freud delivered at Clark University.
William James, who by then was a famous philosopher, much admired both in this country and
in Europe, thought that the whole idea of "the unconsciousness" was a humbug.
Given his philosophy, he could hardly have thought otherwise. William James was not a
determinist; he believed in the "Will", which, simply put, means that we can
improve upon our brainwork. **
At that
time, in the absence of experimental proof, William James thought the "Will"
could be no more than a philosophy, but he hoped that eventually it will be proven by
experimental evidence. By now, the supporting experimental evidence has began emerging.
And while the word "will" had gotten a bad reputation, because of its incorrect
interpretation as "free will", i.e. something independent of the brain, it is
now recognized that our thought patterns affect our brains' activity (which was precisely
the argument advanced by William James).
It is from
James's idea of "will", or mental effort, that the idea of Mental Fitness® stems.
Mental
Fitness® Training is neither a
therapy nor a treatment, but athletics for the mind, a mode of prevention of mental health
problems. Mental Fitness® Training involves no
manipulation. It is you who is training your brain and making it work better and better.
You decide what results you want to achieve and a Mental Fitness®
coach or
trainer helps you achieve those results, perhaps faster and more efficiently than you
would on your own. Mental Fitness® is about Your Own Effort,
about the Work You Do, about the exercise and training for your brain and body.
Mental
Fitness® is about training your brain
to fare well today, tomorrow, and in the years to come, despite all the difficulties and
unhappiness of the past. It is about exhaling today's anger, stretching the muscle of
memory, mastering the aerobics of problem solving and the gymnastics of reflection, and
about learning to balance personal and professional growth on the beam of satisfactory and
pleasant daily living. Mental Fitness®.
Mental
Fitness® Training is about creating a
set of individually tailored strategies for increasing mental agility and cognitive
productivity of people's minds, which are as different and unique as their bodies are.
Because each brain is different, each brain has its own optimal cognitive potential. So,
we do not promise to make you as smart as Einstein or as business savvy as Bill Gates.
However, we can help you reach your own cognitive/intelligence potential.
Cannot exercise alone? Brain-Flex® for success at our
on line
Mental Fitness Gym®
Even the
best fit minds are sometimes overwhelmed with the problems of today. At such times a
personal Mental Fitness® Trainer/Coach could help.
And so s/he could in tuning up your memory, risk taking, and decision making skills.
Everybody needs a coach, the sounding board that asks thought provoking questions, keeps
track of your answers and goals, holds you accountable for your decisions, and delivers,
upon your request, straightforward and honest opinions.
Need a
coach? www.coaching365.com
* The ideas
of Mental
Fitness®, Mental Fitness® Coach/Trainer and
of Mental Fitness Gym® and Mental Fitness® Training have been
developed by Dr. Yanina Shapiro and are the registered trademarks of Corporate Psychology
& Mental Fitness, LLC and Brain-Flex Inc While we cannot disclose our proprietary
information, what we can say, and what we want you to remember, is that Mental Fitness® is just as
trainable as physical fitness is.
** If you
are interested in Dr. Shapiro's academic publications on the psychology of William James
and the nature of consciousness, please see her list of publications at www.corporate-psychology.net/ceoresume.htm
Use
PayPal to make a safe and secure payment. Once your payment is processed,
PayPal will inform us, without ever disclosing you credit card information.
