Brains On Purpose™

What is the biggest, scariest mediation monster of all?

Before I venture an answer to the question in the title of this post, let me put forth a definition of monster, one of which I am particularly fond:

Monster derives from the Latin word monstrum, which in turn derives from the root monere (to warn). To be a monster is to be an omen.

--Stephen T. Asma, On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears

Then let me tell you what got me thinking about monsters in the context of mediation. Recently I found an article written about a mediation training at which I assisted back in 1988. The lead trainer was Gary Friedman whom I had invited to New Mexico to conduct the seminar. In reading the article written so long ago, I was reminded of what is often missing in the mediation of today.

The article included several principles of the mediation model being taught at this Santa Fe seminar:

• "The most important aim of mediation, Friedman said, is 'empowering the parties.' He encouraged mediators to resist every attempt by parties to burden the mediator with the responsibilities that the parties themselves need to assume."
• "The voluntariness of mediation is one of its most empowering aspects, he said. The fact that either party may leave at any time is crucial to the process."
• "'Bringing in law relevant to a particular case requires the mediator to walk a thin line between, on the one hand, viewing law as determining outcome, and, on the other hand, viewing it as irrelevant,' he explained." The role it will play is up to the disputants.
• "The mediator needs 'inner freedom' to help the parties, Friedman indicated. That freedom is achieved by the mediator's awareness of his or her own reaction and biases." Both introspection and self-awareness are very important to the skill of a mediator and the success of the process.

Click to read the whole article: "Mediation Course for Lawyers Stresses Empowerment Of Parties" (BNA's ADR Report).

These four factors—party empowerment; voluntariness; law as, at the most, only one factor to be considered in resolution; and mediator self-awareness—probably have not increased in the field of mediation since 1988. In fact, there are many who would say they have decreased, and that the process has become more

Lessons from Poe: Detecting the Inner Mediator—Join us this May in Baltimore

I will be presenting three programs in Baltimore on May 2 and 3. They are being offered by the ADR Section of the Maryland Bar Association at Westminster Hall, site of the Edgar Allan Poe crypt. Below is the description of the day-long program being held on May 2. I will also give a keynote that evening.

And, if 20 people register by April 1, we will have a practicum on May 3 based on the day-long program from the day before. More information and registration for May 2 here. If you are interested in the practicum, please email David Simison. [Note added April 3: We are no longer taking sign-ups for the practicum.]

I hope to see many of you there!

Lessons from Poe: Detecting the Inner Mediator

Poe is acknowledged by many as the genius who invented the detective story and inspired the genre of science fiction. Over 150 years after his death, we can still learn much from the imagination of this author and poet.

A skilled mediator is a supreme detective. The foremost, primary, and threshold mystery to solve: What method of mediation is best suited to the individual conflict professional, the parties, and the conflict. We will use an assessment approach to facilitate that first solution.

The clues a mediator must be able to read with precision involve self-awareness and self-knowledge, discovery of purpose, theory of mind (or discovering what's in the minds of other people), and razor focus on solutions, not problems. We will take our magnifying glasses to those topics and sharpen those skills.

What's science fiction have to do with mediation? Currently conflict resolution training is full of neuroscience that is fiction. We will separate the facts from the fiction and hype. We'll look at

Learn about your brain from a comic book? Yep, this one's from an artist/neuroscientist team

Soon you will be able to read a neurocomic, a book created by a comic artist and a scientist who studies the brain. Click to learn more and watch a short video (The Verge) about the forthcoming graphic novel.

More about the book in this video from The Guardian.

36 cites in the new edition of MINDFULNESS RESEARCH MONTHLY

From the February, 2013, edition of the monthly newsletter: 

• 17 Interventions
• 6 Associations
• 2 Methods
• 7 Reviews
• 4 Trials

47 new cites in the current edition of MINDFULNESS RESEARCH MONTHLY

From the January, 2013, edition of the monthly newsletter: 

• 17 Interventions
• 18 Associations
• 2 Methods
• 8 Reviews
• 2 Trials

Is your clients' conflict water, ice, or vapor? Insights from the science of complexity

Reading the Executive Summary of a presentation that will be given this week in Davos* reminded me of some of the problems with the use of neuroscience in conflict resolution: reductionism, for example. And reminded me that mediators should be paying as much (maybe more) attention to complexity as they are to neuroscience. Why, you may ask? Take a few minutes to read these well-written, easily-understood 7 pages titled "Perspectives on a Hyperconnected World: Insights from the Science of Complexity" and I think you will understand.

Taking just one example, that of reductionism, here's an excerpt from those 7 pages:

Most present-day leaders have been trained to assume that the world behaves according to simple rules. This mindset reduces complex facts, entities, phenomena, or structures to some simple notion. Reductionism totally ignores the phenomenon of emergence, i.e. the fact that the whole has properties that cannot be reduced to the properties of the parts. As complexity scientist John Holland notes, "For the last 400 years science has advanced by reductionism. The idea is that you could understand the world, all of nature, by examining smaller and smaller pieces of it. When assembled, the small pieces would explain the whole".

Reductionism and water

Water has the property of being liquid, but none of the molecules out of which water is constituted has this property. Liquidity is determined by the way the water molecules interact and the patterns resulting from this. These patterns are different for ice and for vapor.

Can you think of any examples where reductionism has been applied to the neuroscience of conflict resolution? Or even to mediation without the brain science? Where a conflict is treated as if it is ice or water when it is probably in fact vapor? I can.

*The presentation this week at the World Economic Forum will be given by Geoffrey West and Laszlo Barabasi, co-chairs of the committee that prepared the report. The whole committee is listed on page 8 here. Click to read my interview of Irene Sanders, one of the committee members. See also this post.

45 cites in the new edition of MINDFULNESS RESEARCH MONTHLY

From the current edition of the monthly newsletter:

Contents

45 New Cites

15 Interventions

14 Associations

6 Methods

9 Reviews

1 Trial

Highlights

Announcements

Note: Once again, Typepad is being glitchy so I cannot indent the contents. Sorry. This periodic peskiness is getting tiring.

Neuro-nitwittery and brain aberrations: Why are people brain-crazed?

Why has putative neuroscience flooded the culture? And why don't some people recognize how much brain science is over-hyped? What is that people are really seeking when they buy the pop-science books or attend the neuro-this and neuro-that presentations? What do readers of these books (and articles) and attendees of these events think neuroscience can provide? Chances are high that whatever is being sought will not be delivered by brain science.

Everyday this neuro thing becomes more widespread; the number of pilgrims to Mount Brain grows; the promises of what the brain can tell us increase in outlandishness. Fortunately, articles and blog posts are being written to warn us about the growing brain silliness. Today I call your attention to two.

From "Your brain on pseudoscience" (NewStatesman):

An intellectual pestilence is upon us. Shop shelves groan with books purporting to explain, through snazzy brain-imaging studies, not only how thoughts and emotions function, but how politics and religion work, and what the correct answers are to age-old philosophical controversies. The dazzling real achievements of brain research are routinely pressed into service for questions they were never designed to answer. This is the plague of neuroscientism – aka neurobabble, neurobollocks, or neurotrash – and it’s everywhere.

...

Distortion of what and how much we know is bound to occur, Paul Fletcher points out, if the literature is cherry-picked.

“Having outlined your theory,” he says, “you can then cite a finding from a neuroimaging study identifying, for example, activity in a brain region such as the insula . . . You then select from among the many theories of insula function, choosing the one that best fits with your overall hypothesis, but neglecting to mention that nobody really knows what the insula does or that there are many ideas about its possible function.”

But the great movie-monster of nearly all the pop brain literature is another region: the amygdala. It is

Videos from Society for Neuroscience on neuroscience careers and teaching

Click to watch a number of videos from SfN. From the Web site:

Neuroscience Departments and Programs 2012 Annual Spring Conference: "Sustaining Training Program Vitality During Challenging Times"

March 30, 2012 in Washington, DC

The Annual Spring Conference of Neuroscience Departments and Programs brought together 70 neuroscience program directors and faculty representing 58 programs from the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean to discuss models and innovative approaches for preparing undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral trainees for careers both within and outside academia. The one-day conference covered current trends and issues in neuroscience training, including ways to enrich students' research experiences, providing professional skills training to better prepare students for nontraditional career paths, and approaches to using students as teachers to give them experience that will help them succeed in academia.

6 benefits of mindfulness which can support the resolution of conflict

If parties to a conflict were adept at understanding and practicing these states and traits, would the likelihood of mutually satisfactory resolution increase?

(1) [I]ntention and motivation; (2) attention regulation; (3) emotion regulation; (4) memory extinction and reconsolidation; (5) prosociality; (6) non-attachment and de-centering.

In the model of mediation I use, of course the presence of those 6 would facilitate resolution. That list was taken from a new article titled "Self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence (S-ART): a framework for understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness" (Frontiers in Human Neuroscience). In the article, the authors define the listed six states and traits, and explain how they are promoted by mindfulness.

I recommend this article both to those of us who already understand the way mindfulness of both the mediator and the parties can smooth the way to resolution, as well as to those diehards who still protest that mindfulness is not an important component of the way mediation is defined and practiced in the 21st century.

Note: Click to read the press release from Brigham and Women's Hospital issued about this article: More than Good Vibes: Researchers Propose the Science Behind Mindfulness. The release provides a quick overview.

"How to Inadvertently Learn Some Neuroscience While Preparing for the (Inevitable?) Zombie Apocalypse"

Learning about the brain through lessons about zombies makes neuroscience great fun. Here's another video of Dr. Steven Schlozman teaching us about the brain as he describes the behavior of zombies. (A previous video of Schlozman is here.) As always, he is entertaining while also being scientifically accurate.

Schlozman's zombie creds: His novel The Zombie Autopsies: Secret Notebooks from the Apocalypse has been optioned by George Romero for a movie coming out in the near future.

His most recent talk called  "How to Inadvertently Learn Some Neuroscience While Preparing for the (Inevitable?) Zombie Apocalypse" was given this month at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. 

Click now to listen to Dr. Schlozman teaching about zombies and neuroscience. And click to read many of my past blog posts about zombies.

Unhappy? Have unhappy clients? Iain McGilchrist may have some answers about why, what to do

Dr. Iain McGilchrist, author of the acclaimed The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World has written a new ebook, news that will make those who appreciated his last book very happy. Why an ebook? From Yale Books Blog:

Since the publication of The Master and His Emissary there has been an staggering amount of interest in a potential follow-up from McGilchrist, who is a former psychiatric consultant and has taught English at Oxford. However, as McGilchrist’s bestselling book drew on more than twenty years of research, a new full-length book would be a significant undertaking. Instead, to coincide with the new paperback edition of The Master and His Emissary, Yale invited Iain to write one of the first in a new series of short, lively e-books by some of our most popular authors, in which he draws on his research into the role of the right and left hemispheres to address the crucial question: just why are modern Westerners so unhappy?

Click to buy the ebook The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning for just $1.50. Click to read an earlier post about Dr. McGilchrist: Are you involved in half-brained mediations? Let's promote full-brained conflict resolution.