TALKING DOWN- TALKING UP: EFFECTIVE HELP FOR DEPRIVED BLACK MEN

                 A RESPONSE TO THE JESSIE JACKSON/ OBAMA FLAP

Jessie Jackson was recently heard to say that Obama was "talking down to blacks." Clarifying his remarks Jackson said: "it can come off as speaking down to black people. The moral message must be a much broader message. What we need really is racial justice and urban policy and jobs and health care. There is a range of issues on the menu,..." Is Jackson right?

 Additionally, three black hecklers at an Obama speech want to know what is he planning to do for the blacks?

They have a point.

TALKING DOWN

Jackson believes that Obama tends to 'lecture" particularly black men who presumably should act more responsibly than they appear to do. Jackson, while agreeing in part with Obama, believes that what Obama refers to as a problem, Jackson views as symptomatic of a more complex set of underlying issues. The inference is that Obama is making too narrow assumptions about who is responsible for what. From this perspective, Jackson is suggesting that there needs to be a complimentary conversation concerned with talking up.

Talking Up

Obama's apparent answer is to expand faith based programs which aim to help blacks and other minorities to assume increasing responsibility for themselves and others. This is all well and good - as far as it goes - but there is a danger that their potential benefit is going to get enmeshed in political infighting concerning race, religion, and unfair funding.

First Some Mind Numbing Facts

• There are estimated to be 2.2 million prisoners in U.S. jails.

• More than one in 100 adults in the United States is in jail or prison, an all-time high that is costing state governments nearly $50 billion a year and the federal government $5 billion more... 02/2008

• Today, some 283,800 inmates are identified as having a mental illness. This represents 16% of the inmate populations of state and local jails. Jails have effectively become America's new mental institutions; they house a larger volume of mentally ill people than all other programs combined. However, these inmates rarely receive the treatment that they need and have a right to. The criminal justice system is overpopulated and under equipped to deal with those with psychotic disorders requiring mental health care...

• Minorities make up more than 60 % of the prison populations.

• It is estimated that 60 % plus prisoners are in prison for drug related crimes.

These statistics are a sad indictment of our failure to provide meaningful prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation for a large group of apparently neglected black men and women. Thus these statistics appear to validate the need for a special 'black agenda.'

So What to Do?

A key idea of Obama's is to promote and expand faith based programs. Although many are said to be successful there is a concern that some people may feel that the government might be getting too close to organized religion. Additionally there are many who believe that the 'blacks' should not be getting special treatment. For those who share these concerns what else is there to do?

THE NEED FOR AN ACCURATE DIAGNOSIS

My over forty year experience as a psychoanalyst on the front lines of the so called 'war on drugs' indicates that the core problem underlying substance abuse - as well as most addictions - is the lack of a solid self. The self is a structure which is at the core of ones being. It is operationally defined as the capacity to remain integrated in the midst of internal or external confusion. Those who have a solid self are able to make well informed choices. Those who lack a solid self are impulsive and can't learn from past experience. A solid self is equivalent to the concept of psychological infrastructure.

NEEDED IS A COMPREHENSIVE PROGRAM WHOSE CORE TASK IS TO BUILD PSYCHOLOGICAL INFRSTRUCTURE

Research indicates that a solid self spontaneously grows to the degree to which a person learns how to bear increasing dosages of frustration and other so called negative affects inclusing anxiety, depression, complexity, ambiguity, weakness, ambivalence, shame, guilt, and the likes. This is a most important finding. It follows that the most effective programs for those lacking a solid self are those that provide the optimum conditions for spontaneously growing a solid self.

MY EXPERIENCE IN TREATING DRUG ADDICTS IN A THERAPEUTIC COMMUNITY: Odyssey House

In 1966 as a budding psychotherapist I got a break in being invited to work as a psychologist at a pioneering therapeutic community - Odyssey House - treating heroin addicts. I worked there for 17 months. Despite the fact that there were abuses of authority the remarkable part was the fact that many of the long time drug addicts got significantly better over the course of a year. Many of them went on to become not only solid citizens but leaders of their own rehabilitation programs.

In short, this program was a cost effective program for providing the psychological tools that enable even the most hard core drug addict to grow a solid self so that they can become solid citizens and doing so within a year and a half.

The original Odyssey House had about 100 addicts in treatment at any one time. The sociological breakdown at that time in the sixties was one third white, one third Puertorican, and one third black.

We decided to go to Harlem to open a satallite program. In one day I personally rented a rundown building on 137th street that I called "the pressure cooker." In one week we- myself, a social worker assistant and two ex addicts - had twenty raw heroin addicts in treatment.

The structure was relatively simple and effective. In the morning hours the residents were assinged teams who were collectively responsible for maintaining the 'house.' Some cooked, some cleaned, some painted, some constructed, some drove cars to places like doctors appointments.

 The afternoon was dedicated to group and individual therapy sessions. At night there were classes in things such as making up course work to get a G.E.D. We envisioned that IBM might donate computers, Kodak might donate cameras, grandmothers and grandpas might become adviros and good guides. You get the point.

The pressure cooker served as an 8 week basic training program to act as a bridge between the mean streets and civilized behavior. Once the raw addict showed signs of "getting down with the program" they were sent to the Mother House down town for more of same.

Although we were pioneers and experimental the retention rate was about 50 percent over the course of a year which was then and now quite impressive.

My Conclusion - For the last 40 years I have watched in dismay as one after the other government commisions has come and gone - all of them passionate about their dedications to win the so called war on drugs. Yet - forty years later the war on drugs is an obvious failure. Why is this so?

I suggest the following reasons:

• A focus mainly on treating symtoms rather than focusing on causes
• A lack of knowledge as to causes of substance abuse
• A widespread entrenched attitude of punishing addicts rather than providing  meaningful rehabilitation
• A powerful lobby which has a priority in building more and more prisons rather than in funding adequate cost effective therapeutic communities
• A failure of the government to take the lead in implementing adequate treatment programs that have been proven to be workable, replicable, and cost effective

Back to Obama - What might he do?

Obama Should Be Obama

Perhaps the core appeal of the Obama run for the Presidency is his vision of uniting all major divisions in the country. Extending this core idea I propose that the black agenda - mainly consisting on helping legions of  wayward youths to become solid citizens - to  a multi cross cultural agenda including all youths who share this same problem. This core problem that transcends race, religion, rich, poor, whatever is a problem in creating conditions which are most conducive to building psychological infrastructure.

If Obama adopts this point of view he would be not only talking up to the blacks he would simultaneously be talking cross culturally to all those people in need of help in creating psychological infrastructure.

If not this program then I challenge all who are interested in this pressing problem to offer a better idea.