Adrian Scott Counsellor Supervisor MBACP Accred

Middle aged Opiate man is dying of accidental overdose beating suicide into second place for the first time.
Middle aged women are dying mostly of breast cancer. Apparently opiate users are aging and their bodies cannot  take the strength of dose.

Basically men are addicted to opiates and mis-manage their medication. But why are men addicted to opiates in the first place? Anxiety management? Pain management?  As ever with statistics the truth under the statistics is not clear. Another consistent point is the comparison with women who appear to live more positively with reality than men do.

Women don’t appear to need stimulants as much as men do to cope with the challenges of life. Perhaps we return to the same old argument. That men are generally not educated or nurtured to be with and express their feelings. Missing one of the secrets of life – Letting your emotional compass guide through periods of pain, stress and strain.

Men talking to men about feelings is unusual. Men do things with one another in a way that the focus is on the shared task. Even younger men appear to be educated and nurtured not to express feelings. Is this ever going to change? One day the statistics might show men dying of natural causes on a par with women.
Opiate Man

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2019
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Disclaimer: This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

Power Death. Is this the ability to choose when you die by a lethal overdose?
In this documentary three people’s stories are followed. A man and a woman with a terminal illness,
and a severely disabled woman.
The tension is clear between the dying person wanting to die to avoid the pain of an inevitable death. And the family who want the loved one around as much as possible. There was a difference between the perception of a natural death: and an un-natural death. One that lets nature including illnesses take it course. Or an un-natural death where the natural death is pre-empted by a decision to overdose.

It was more straight forward with the terminal illness. The audience was more satisfied that the person’s death was inevitable. There was no choice in death. But for the disabled widow who felt she had nothing to live for. She had no family, and had lost her husband.

Something about the right to end life when there is more life to live is disquieting. Especially when you have well meaning individuals offering to provide the means to end life with a lethal cocktail. This neo liberal 21st Century culture demands we take control of our lives. Become independent, live your life, be free.

But to have control over our death does not fully belong to us. Is this motivated by a biological force? The body and brain hard wired to live, to survive. Death has to be forced on us when there are no other ways out.

What would happen if the sanctity of life was not so precious? Or the fear of death normalised. Anyone going through a bad period in their lives thought that the option of death might be more acceptable. Would this mean many deaths across the world in the struggle of life?
How could governments and Elites predict and stabilise the economy? Death is too distabilising for us, economies, and profit?
Power Death

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2019
All rights reserved
Disclaimer: This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

Rutger Hauer a man defined by his role in Bladerunner, directed by Ridley Scott died this week.
He played roles in action films and low budget films. He rarely accepted roles for money: only roles where he was interested in the part.
He felt one of his most brilliant moments were in The Legend of the Holy Drinker (1988)

But what made him was the final rain scene in Bladerunner. The sililoquy humanised the robot replicants which he played & turns the sentiments of the audience in favour of them against Harrison Ford’s role. It was a cult classic film which moved into the mainstream and became a mainstream classic. The set was ground breaking which Ridley Scott had more and more time to improve due to an actors’ strike.

A man born in Holland in the middle of the second world war, he became a pacifist. But as an actor he played many violent film roles, such as in Hitchiker, and Nighthawks his Hollywood debut with Sylvester Stallone.
And he owned an old classic Porsche!  

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2019
All rights reserved
Disclaimer: This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

Rip Torn. The name, the man, the behaviour. He looked like he behaved. He didn’t care. Was it really him or just part of his mystique? You almost expected him to be living his life in a dumpster.

He was old school Hollywood. Equally at home with comedy, complex study characters and theatre roles.  Unusually he started by heading West and acted in a few films before returning to the theatre in New York . He developed a reputation for erratic behaviour culminating in the hammer incident which kind of defined him in that era.

He was cast as the main character in Easy Rider but he could not get on with another wildman of Hollywood Dennis Hopper. Things become heated at a dinner and a knife was pulled. A Court hearing followed. Claims and counter claims. Great marketing for Hollywood careers. But Torn felt the story hurt his career. But he reclaimed it in the Larry Saunders Show and Men in Black. There was a vulnerability to his characters along with the threat and irrascability, which made him appealing to watch.
Rip Torn 1931-2019

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2019
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Disclaimer: This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

Carole Kaye is a white female bass player who played on thousands of music recordings over her 50 year career. She worked for producers such as Phil Spector and Brian Wilson. She played bass on many recording sessions. Including Frank Sinatra, Simon & Garfunkel, Stevie Wonder, Barbara Streisand. The Supremes, The Temptations, the Four Tops and the Monkees.

Amazingly she played guitar until 1963 when a bassist didn’t turn up to a recording session. She turned to the bass instrument which she learnt to prefer.

There is some controversy about which tracks she played on. So she might have played on takes that were not used in the final version of the record. As a result Black labels such as Motown didn’t want its audience to know that a white woman was the bass player on their most famous records.
Click logo for youtube documentary “Pioneer and Session Legend Interview”

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2019
All rights reserved
Disclaimer: This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

Carole Kaye is a white female bass player who played on thousands of music recordings over her 50 year career. She worked for producers such as Phil Spector and Brian Wilson. She played bass on many recording sessions. Including Frank Sinatra, Simon & Garfunkel, Stevie Wonder, Barbara Streisand. The Supremes, The Temptations, the Four Tops and the Monkees.

Amazingly she played guitar until 1963 when a bassist didn’t turn up to a recording session. She turned to the bass instrument which she learnt to prefer.

There is some controversy about which tracks she played on. So she might have played on takes that were not used in the final version of the record. As a result Black labels such as Motown didn’t want its audience to know that a white woman was the bass player on their most famous records.
Click logo for youtube documentary “Pioneer and Session Legend Interview”

Populism is a political movement that favours the common person usually against an elite. It has no leaning to left or right but is usually anti business and its supporting institutions. In modern history it is linked with an authoritarian form of politics led by a charasmatic leader. This leader has a clever short message to bolster his own power through the will of the people. Pandering to the people’s fears and insecurities by focusing on one section of the population as a scapegoat.

It is a way of the people making a complaint against its institutions and systems. Cleverly the agenda is to increase the power of the leader by seeming to address the problem without addressing it. The scapegoat is blamed, while the underlying problem remains unresolved. Usually due its complexity and weight.

To see Brexit in this light. The leader, the scapegoat, the underlying issue which is not resolved. Who knows yet? Immigrants allowed in by the EU, market forces & neo liberalism. So create a leader with a short message
(on the bus), promise a return to an older time (with no immigrants!), leaving the problem of market forces untouched (but still providing profit for the leader and party)

A clever trick which works everytime. With a little help from the elite (EU) who did little to appease its population of the idea of waste, gravy train, and a lack of transparency. As ever groups of humans do nothing, hold on, until a crisis they are forced to change.

In the UK the elite is grown by a medieval system of private education. An elite form of brain washing creating and promoting an elite system including Parliament. What goes around comes around.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2019
All rights reserved
Disclaimer: This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

Alan Lomax made a life of recording and archiving american folk music in the United States.
He promotde the world’s folk music, for over 60 years. He completed his degree at the University of Texas in 1936.
He said “The main point of my activity, was… to put sound technology at the disposal of The Folk, to bring channels of communication to all sorts of artists and areas.”

Lomax interviewed Lead Belly which encouraged him to explore oral biography.
His conversations with leading jazz players spawned several books. Lomax recorded on film interviews and music.

In the hill country of Mississippi, he recorded styles of music close to their African roots. As a result he interviewed and recorded 29-year-old singer and guitarist McKinley Morganfield, aka Muddy Waters.
He then started to record music in state prisons which he thought were some of the best music he had ever recorded.
A sad indictment on race and incarceration.
Alan Lomax: A man, and a life with one task.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2019
All rights reserved
Disclaimer: This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

Disappointment is a common emotion when people let us down. Family and friends are supposed to alleviate our suffering. Before we know what our suffering is. As children our parents have to guess our likes and dislikes without us being able to communicate in words what they are.

Parents become so practiced at this, that we think they know us so well that we don’t have to explain to them what we want. Part of the fall from grace of parents is when children become adults and realise that they are not as unknown as thier parents are.

In Psychonanalysis as in any relationship when someone is disappointed in us, we immediately want to relieve their disappointment in us. We try and behave, do better, but the disappointment is sown. To sit with the disappointment of the other is hard work.
If we manage this it becomes more about the thwarted expectations of the other person. These expectations are motivated by values and thoughts planted in us early in our lives. We inherent them with little choice or influence. The adult life is to sort and muse on what we were given without our permission or reason.
The luck or unluck of the draw.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2019
All rights reserved
Disclaimer: This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

Indifference – so you’re not important. Millenials born in the 1980s/1990s depending on who you believe. In the 1990s the West created a generation of children who were told they were special, unique. The self esteem movement peddled ‘mollycoddling’ encouraging emotionally fragile adults who cannot take criticism. Also contributing to extreme political correctness.

To balance our own self importance expressed by the millenial generation we might do better to practice indifference on ourselves. Indifference the opposite of love?

To keep ourselves in check we might think of ourselves and our struggles as similar to everyone else’s. When we struggle. Everyone else struggles. You are not different. The philosophical practice of humilty. Instead of zooming in on ourselves: we could zoom out. To witness others and their struggles along side our own.

Humility doesn’t focus on our flaws but doesn’t really focus on ourselves at all. We are worthy of love but so is everyone else. Stop obsessing over yourself. You are not that big of a deal.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2019
All rights reserved
Disclaimer: This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

Scientists discover that humans feel no difference between a broken bone and an aching heart. In this experiment social emotional pain is collected by the experience of social rejection by others.

Peer rejection was felt the most keenly, then academic and romantic rejection. Rejection is most felt in poverty, and lower economic status: An implicit constant message of exclusion. The game of economic status can never be won. There is always someone abobe and below you. Status is a moving target where success can always be seen as failiure.

Scientists discover that humans feel emotional pain like physical pain. No difference between a broken bone and an aching heart. In this experiment social exclusion equals social pain.

“What is identity but the slow, lifelong accretion of gazes: us looking at ourselves being looked at by others?”

The more rejection, the more social exclusion and social pain is felt. The scientists were surprised when a person is subjected to social exclusion they become more aggressive and care less about other people. In fact they stopped feeling upset and start to feel numb.