Here is the start of the talk:

By way of introduction, I have to tell this story. A couple of weeks ago I was walking my two-year old daughter in the park. She was being impossible, she wouldn’t walk, she wouldn’t be carried. So I picked her up and carried her on my neck. She’s fighting and trying to claw my eyes out. So I snap. Put her down and give her a couple of firm smacks on her bottom. Then I look up to see who has witnessed this embarrassing incident of child abuse. Inevitably of course it’s a fellow staff member. One of my colleagues is walking towards me with her husband. I try to shrink into the shadow of a tree. And then the next day I asked this colleague (who is a lovely person, warm, very together, not judgmental) if it looked as bad as I thought it did. She said she was focused on her conversation with her husband and so she hadn’t actually noticed!

From there I was able to share some interesting research on anger and attachment before discussing anger in relationships, the Fear -> Anger -> Aggression cycle and some case material. I finished up with some anger management tips. I thought it was a pretty good talk and the feedback was positive. But going into the talk I was definitely feeling more stressed than usual. I have been fighting a cold over the past few days and was really worried about losing my voice. I managed to get through the talk without losing my voice but then I was croaking for much of the day. Today it’s a little better but I’m still battling.
It doesn’t help of course that Leah has been sick this past week and L was sick yesterday and today.

But after my talk yesterday I felt a bit ‘spacey’ for the rest of the day. I suppose part of this was that I was running over the internal tape of my talk to see if I had embarrassed myself. Had I offended anyone? Made a fool of myself? Did I reveal too much personal information? For example, I confessed that early in my teaching career I was ashamed to admit that I had been aggressive towards a Grade 8 pupil. The boy was seriously ‘pushing my buttons’ and I asked him to wait after class. Then when he carried on being cheeky, I grabbed him by his tie and spoke to him sharply. I knew I had crossed the line immediately that it happened. And I was cross with myself for losing it like that.

So today I’m still wondering about sharing that incident with the staff. I’m sure they probably took it in the spirit that it was meant and that they don’t think worse of me as a result. If anything, it probably opens up a space for them to reflect on their own ways of expressing anger.

But, as Brene Brown commented after one of her popular TED talks on Shame, I want to go into my house and stay there for a while until I’ve recovered. Brene Brown calls it a vulnerability hangover. Unfortunately I have lots of things to attend to here instead.

Pictures of Kirstenbosch this past Saturday. Late summer sun shining on Castle Rock. Red balloons in the trees. A quiet bench. I was in a bit of a mood. Still digesting turning another year older (43). Nothing to feel bad about really. Tea on my birthday with family two days earlier. Lovely presents (including some really interesting books, many of them chosen by me).

Admittedly Leah had a complete meltdown on the evening of my birthday. It was a good thing we hadn’t planned to go out. Screaming. Refusing supper, bath, bottle, bed. Climbing out of her bed. Telling L and I to “Go away!” It’s all relative of course. I told L that I thought our daughter had the beginnings of a mood disorder. “This is not normal! Our daughter will end up with Bipolar.” L in tears.

So to Kirstenbosch on the Saturday. By myself for an hour. A book (Bluets) to finish but I was disappointed. I loved parts of this book but as a whole it was disappointing. As a memoir there was so much she left out. As a meditation on the colour blue and what it meant to her in that period of her life it was amazingly powerful but also …. skimpy perhaps? It didn’t fit the mould of memoirs that I’m used to.

But as always, just thinking about this book makes me appreciate it more. And I know that when Litlove reviews it, I will see it again in a whole new light. But on Saturday I was grumpy. And the book didn’t help. I think she captured the intangibility of the colour blue and also the intensity of emotion. (Very crude plot summary: she was a bit depressed at the end of a relationship.) The result was a disturbing but also inspirational read. We love (people, colours, things) and then those things disappoint us. Life goes on.

I’d love to review The Innocents by Francesca Segal some time but first I’m going to let it simmer in my mind for a bit longer. And I’ll probably read a few reviews as well to check out that what I’m thinking corresponds to what others think as well. I really enjoyed it but I also have a few reservations. Which is not to detract from the fact that I think it’s a really excellent debut by a really talented novelist.

As for writing challenges, I’ve definitely fallen off the bus. But even if I have to revise my goals down quite drastically, the current plan is to stay with one case a month and write up my thoughts. It takes a lot of discipline, especially since there’s no-one else to keep me on track here.

We’ve just returned from Betty’s Bay where we spent a relaxing Easter weekend. The weather was mostly foul (wet and windy) but we made up for it with an abundance of chocolate, some reading, shopping and walking.

The Leah girl clearly loves chocolate. She had fun on the Easter egg hunt and also enjoyed her new keyboard. Hope you had a great Easter weekend too.

1. I’m seriously tempted to buy some more audiobooks. I know that I often don’t have the time or the energy to read so it might be easier just to listen instead.

Wolf Hall or The Examined Life? I’m really interested in Stephen Grosz’s account of 50,000 hours of being a psychotherapist. This is just the kind of book that I like. Purrr.

2. I enjoyed Netherland by Joseph O’ Neill but I also found it a bit boring in parts. However, since I finished it and read an interview with the author I’ve been thinking about it a lot more. There was the whole comparison with The Great Gatsby which completely passed me by but which now makes perfect sense. Chuck Ramkissoon and Jay Gatsby. Both self-made men embodying the American Dream. Both idealists who are brought down by their own greed. And the voice of Hans van de Broek has also stayed with me (and the comparison with Nick from the The Great Gatsby). I found the descriptions of cricket in the US charming. And I’ve warmed to the book a lot more now that I know that Joseph O’ Neill lived in the Netherlands and the UK himself. I presumed (quite wrongly) that he had decided to make his lead character Dutch on a whim.

Of course many men commit violent acts, and a lot of these violent acts are directed towards women. Athletes are no different from other sportsmen and paralympic athletes equally so. But there was something of the Cinderella aspect about Oscar. I think we wanted to believe that miracles can happen. That people can overcome huge obstacles and not pay the price that so often comes with success. Part of our shock, apart from the fact that another beautiful young South African woman is dead at the hands of her South African male partner, was the sheer enormity of the gap between the images of hero and villain. Oscar was, in the stereotypes of the media, a ‘super cripple’. A phenomenal athlete and an inspirational example for others. Now he is just another fallen sports hero, a ‘terrible warning’ of what can happen if you mix guns, aggression, fame and fortune.

Of course I am speaking from the available reports and it could still be proved that it was a tragic case of mistaken identity. Perhaps it really is true that Oscar thought that Reeva was a burglar and so shot her four times through the bathroom door. But given Oscar’s history, the reports of shouting and domestic disputes, it is just not believable.

Last week I was blogging about Anene Booysen and wondering how South African society would react. I am relieved that our society has reacted. There have been marches, silent protests, countless radio interviews, media articles. There seems to be a wave of righteous indignation that has reached far and wide. Even in our quiet corner of the Cape, our principal addressed the whole school on Friday on gender violence and led a minute’s silence. We were all encouraged to wear black for the day. And other consciousness (and money) raising events have been planned.

I’ve realized that Anene Booysen’s story has come to symbolize the fate of so many South African women who are victims of gender violence. And then along comes the Oscar and Reeva story and we are shocked and saddened even further. If it was still possible to imagine as middle class South Africans that we are somehow different from the ‘masses’ out there, then this story should have made us think again.

The media loves celebrities and Oscar was a much-loved celebrity. Yes, we knew he was a bit of a jerk but to fall to this level? Many South Africans identified with Oscar. He symbolized the plucky spirit of our young democracy. Just as our rugby team could win the World Cup (twice) and we could produce a world leader such as Mandela, so too could we produce a ‘triumph-over-adversity’ story such as Oscar’s. But as Justice Malala commented at the Guardian, Oscar’s fall is also our fall. If he can give into uncontrollable anger, what about the rest of us? His ‘craziness’ can make us confront our own demons.

And what about Reeva Steenkamp? By all accounts she was an intelligent, beautiful young woman with a promising career ahead of her. She had been dating Oscar for under three months. How can she suddenly lose her life just like that? What does this mean for South African women generally? Are South African men really that dangerous?

I was watching the SA versus Pakistan cricket test on television this weekend and the cameras frequently showed members of the crowd. Every time they focused on a pretty young woman I was reminded of Reeva. I wondered what those women made of what happened. Was it my imagination that everyone seemed more subdued than usual?

In our adolescent psychology group last week we were talking about knowing yourself and my co-facilitator was teaching them about Johari’s Window. The diagram below also provides a handy tool for discussing relationships.

I can’t help wondering about Oscar and Reeva’s relationship. Does the report of recent loud arguments between the two indicate that they were in the process of discovering the ‘hidden’ aspects of each other’s personalities? And what about the concept of the “shadow”, the unconscious parts of ourselves that both we and our partners are perhaps initially unaware of? As the relationship deepens, those hidden parts inevitably come out. And if one of the partners has a history of aggression, then this could help to explain aggressive outbursts, intimate partner violence and even extreme violence such as shootings.

These were some of the lines of thinking that were triggered by the Oscar-Reeva story over the past few days. Of course we bring our own projections and experiences to these stories. My own research into anger, aggression and violence is salient here. And, from a psychology point of view, it is interesting (and disturbing) how often the trail leads back to experiences of shame. It is relatively easy in Oscar’s case to speculate on the hidden shame of his disability. As I say, this is all my speculation. But the story is too important for me to leave alone.

Anene Booysen was a 17-year old girl from Bredasdorp in the South Western Cape. On Saturday the 2^nd of February she went to a bar and drank there until the early hours of the morning. She was then lured out of the bar by some men, who raped her and mutilated her body. Several hours later she was found at a construction site by a security guard and taken to hospital where she later died from all her injuries. Before she died, she named at least one of her attackers (her former boyfriend, Jonathan Davids).

Since then there has been a huge media outcry and somewhere in all the outrage and public statements and marches, the person of Anene Booysen has been, if not ignored, then overlooked. For stories on this, read Kate Stegeman in the M&G and Ranjeni Munusamy at the Daily Maverick. I’ve read several stories on this and heard radio interviews and commentary and all I know about Anene Booysen, other than her shocking murder, is that she was fostered by another couple after her mother died. On the night Anene was killed, her foster mother warned her not to stay out too late.

There is talk that this will finally highlight the appalling violence against women in South Africa in the way that the terrible gang rape in India of the woman known as “India’s daughter” highlighted gender inequalities and violence there.

Generally people have reacted to this story with a combination of shock, numbness, disbelief, sadness, anger and outrage. There have been calls for improved justice, calls for a sustained focus on gender activism, as well as calls for increased funding of NGOs such as Rape Crisis. The UN Commissioner for Human Rights called for a comprehensive approach to tackle the “pandemic of sexual violence in South Africa”. Other commentators have said that after the initial outrage, we as South African society will forget … until the next time.

Apart from making a quick donation to Rape Crisis, I spoke to one of my colleagues about what he thought should be done. He was all for stopping school for a morning and protesting outside Parliament. Since my colleague is a lot older than me (and a respected figure) I couldn’t forcefully disagree with him. But I was frustrated by this response. It’s all very well to protest at what government is doing, but what are we doing? Government would say that they have substantial social development budgets. The President condemned the incident and called for a end to violence against women (perhaps ironic given that he was himself charged with rape a few years back, a charge that was later dismissed).

As for what we as schools or community organisations can do, schools have the power to raise money for worthy causes. Schools as organizations raise money and awareness with all kinds of drives and initiatives. Of course we are all busy. But isn’t it time that civil society engaged around this issue? How do we as a country address these vitally important issues?

We often hear the statement that South Africa is the “rape capital of the world”. Just today I saw that about 65,000 cases of sexual violence are reported in South Africa every year. A small percentage of those result in convictions.

Munusamy quotes Saths Cooper, one of South Africa’s most prominent psychologists, who highlighted the complex nature of sexual violence in South Africa.

He said there were several root causes of sexual violence against women including power relations, socialisation and economic and social conditions.

“In most societies where there is economic stability and social security, incidence of rape is fairly low. But when social and economic conditions are unstable, and there is a high level of uncertainty and anxiety, there are concomitant levels of rape and other aberrations,” Cooper said.

“We don’t know to what extent the frustration of young and old males, at their wits end in a society that has discarded them, where they have no jobs and women tend to get things quicker exacerbates the situation. That is not a cause, but could be an underlying issue behind incidence of sexual violence.”

I hope this story runs and runs. We need to move past numbness and hand-wringing and finger-pointing and outrage and highlight the areas of this problem that need fixing. Then we can support the various organizations that are already working to address the various facets of the problem. Justice needs to be the first priority. Empowering women and young people is crucial. Rehabilitating men is also important. It’s time for the politicians and civil society leaders (and all of us) to come up with plans to address this massive problem.

• Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan is about Serena Frome, a young Cambridge graduate who gets groomed to work in the British Intelligence services (MI6) in the early 1970s. The sweet tooth of the title is a project to finance promising writers who have the right (that is, not pro-Communist) attitudes. Serena soon becomes romantically involved with her writer and I’m guessing that this sparks off all kinds of problems. McEwan is a masterful storyteller and there’s just enough intrigue to keep me engaged. The only snag at the moment is that her writer is not terribly good (although he does have a lot of promise).

• Susan Cain’s Quiet is brilliant. The blurb says it’s about ‘the power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking’. Cain has done extensive research into extroversion and introversion and she explains it all so well, and with so many relevant examples, that it is a pleasure to read. I’m quite taken with being an introvert at the moment and Cain reassures us that introverts are important and need to be nurtured. She also debunks the extrovert ideal without devaluing the values of being sociable. At the moment she’s discussing the genetics of high reactives versus low reactives and I’m guessing that it’s the high reactives (or the introverts) who will take great comfort in knowing that there’s nothing wrong with them, they just get over-stimulated quite easily by all the sensory input around them.

• Two years ago L and I got married and had a child. It’s been a wonderful two years in some ways and a really exhausting and frustrating two years in others. “No-one tells you about the tiredness” would be one theme from a post like that. And even if they did tell us, we probably didn’t believe them. Early parenting is not the best environment for nurturing a relationship. And a youngish relationship is probably not the best environment for nurturing a child either. Ah well, we muddle along.

• Leah has started playschool and is enjoying it. Yesterday she didn’t cry when her granny dropped her off, which was a bonus. She seems to have grasped the idea that after three hours someone will come and fetch her. The group is small, the people are kind and she has made a friend.

• I’ve been neglecting the psychology side of this blog. There are interesting books to discuss, interesting articles to explore and, as always, new psychology-related blogs to find. But I’ve been ignoring my own psychology journey and I’m not sure that this is the right place for me to talk about that. Should I stay or should I go? Perhaps the year will bring greater clarity on that.

We didn’t have a Lego Jesus and so the baby bunny had to stand in for him. And very sweet and angelic he looked too. Leah was quite taken with this and told quite a few people that “Baby Jesus was a rabbit”. My parents heard about this and were a little worried about their second grandchild who has not been baptized and who now thinks that baby Jesus is a rabbit.

They sprang into action and bought her a Nativity scene with the instructions that she was to look after it (Be Careful. It can break.) and one day pass it on to her own children.

It’s gorgeous. Leah doesn’t get to play with it very often but when she does, she rattles off the figures with ease.

Leah: There’s Joseph. There’s Baby Jesus. There’s Mama. There are the Three Wise Men. There’s the sheep. And there’s the Leopard.

Dada: A Leopard!? What’s a leopard doing there? Oh you mean a shepherd.

Leah: Be Careful. It can break.

And so she is well on her way to being a Christian. The three of us went to our local Carols in the Park where she concentrated intently on the singing and later gave us her own version of “Away in the Manger”. It’s the standard version except for a small change.

Away in a Manger / No crib for a Bed / The little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head / The cattle are lowing / The baby awakes … the little Lord Jesus asleep on the ham.

Well no wonder that the Leopard makes an appearance. If there’s ham to be had, the little Lord Jesus had better watch out!

***

Here’s a Christmas collage. Leah loved her water table so much that she climbed into it.

And another addition to our Christmas rituals has been a Gingerbread House. My brother gave Leah a kit and so after a few attempts and some roof repairs, we — or should I say L – produced this. I think it’s rather good.

Looking over the books read this year, a few stand out. The year started with Book 3 of the Hunger Games Trilogy and that was a quick and easy read. I haven’t felt moved to watch the movie though since I think I got quite enough of the story in three book formats. The year ended with Portnoy’s Complaint which I generally didn’t like at all. I’ve been meaning to review it properly here but I also wonder if it’s worth it. If a book is that bad, does it warrant a review? But in the week or so since I finished it (and this was a skim-read for the second half since I didn’t want to spend too much time with Alex Portnoy) I’ve softened my reaction a bit and I can appreciate the significance of the book for its time (1969). I’m prepared to give Philip Roth a second chance at some point since I hope that having got this book out of his system, it freed him up to write more significant material? I’m also interested in the premise of the novel, which is that the whole book is addressed to his psychoanalyst as if he was lying on the couch telling the story of his life. The book ends with a rather telling punchline:
‘So [said the doctor]. Now vee may perhaps to begin. Yes?’

Let me just say that my chief gripe with this book was that it was misogynistic and that Portnoy spent way too much time complaining and worrying about masturbation, his sexual relationship with his girlfriend whom he called The Monkey, as well as countless pages kvetching about his Jewish identity in a way that was very unproductive. The early chapters on Portnoy’s parents were hilarious but the rest of the book I found pretty dire.

Perhaps the most enjoyable read of the year was Sweet Talk by Stephanie Vaughn. In contrast to Roth’s vast output, Vaughn has published almost nothing but hers is the voice I would much prefer to hear telling her stories.

Also worth a mention in terms of fiction: The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Silver by Andrew Motion, The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides, The Night Circus, The Gift of Rain.

Non-fiction
Shoot the Damn Dog by Sally Brampton was very good at debunking the science around depression. What I took from this is that anti-depressants just don’t work for some people and what worked for Brampton was regular exercise (walking mostly), maintaining friendships, a bit of therapy and generally regaining a sense of balance in her life.

The Real Self by James Masterson was very insightful. Masterson is a revered figure in psychology for his work with personality disorders. I was particularly interested to read what he said about the importance of rage and disappointment in facing up to reality and to engaging our “real selves”. Quite enlightening also when dealing with a toddler. If rage and tantrums are part of the process then it’s OK to say “No”!

I also enjoyed The Dance of Anger by Harriet Lerner.

Finally, one of the finds of the year for me was A Death in the Family by Karl Ove Knausgaard. The level of detail that Knausgaard is able to access is phenomenal and I was pretty impressed with his insights and the courage that it took to write this memoir. I would be interested to read a follow-up.

Reading goals for 2013? A balance between fiction and non-fiction. More South African writing (e.g. Redi Direko from 702 has written an interesting memoir on her childhood, particularly her friendship with an older boy who turned out to be violent criminal). Perhaps a few classics. More Self Psychology. More memoirs if possible.

Have a great festive season and see in you in 2013.