...what's your beef with Hartmann?

I'll tell you my story if you tell yours.

I stumbled across Thom's works/books on ADHD back in 2001. And all I could think was, "Here's a guy who gets it." He's a guy who sees this whole ADHD thing as more than what is being presented to the mainstream. I admire him for speaking up and out. I admire him for seeing beyond what is present and what is presented.

My member number is 141. I was one of the first "regulars" on this forum... ...way back in the day when Thom actively participated on the forums.

Anyway, after a few forum conversations and a couple of email exchanges Thom wrote a newsletter and acknowledged me and the other participant as sources of his information.

Then he wrote the book "The Edison Gene". Pages 126 and 127, (or maybe 127 and 128.. ..I forget now) of that book are nothing more than the same newsletter - word for word.

I openly admit the other source was far more active in conversations/exchanges with Thom. And I also openly admit she has a better understanding of certain things than I do not. She is an extraordinary and brilliant woman. She also has an intelligent and off-beat, (yet, with extraordinary timing) sense of humor. I consider my self lucky to have crossed her path and I will always admire her – no matter what.

Anyway, without knowing the "newsletter" was a part of the book - I when out and purchased it soon after its release. I skipped the "forward" and the "acknowledgments" as I often do and I skipped straight to chapter one.

When I got to pages 126 and 127, (or maybe 127 and 128), I thought, "Wait a minute, this is the newsletter." So I went back to the acknowledgments and saw I was not included.

I was heart-broken. And not because of any literary rules or regulations regarding acknowledgments. Screw that kind of crap. I do not care for such formalities.

It was because in that moment I was reduced back to the early elementary school student of the "brilliant stupid girl", I once was. You know, the classic gifted underachiever who was labeled as never being fully acknowledgeable for her intelligence and/or would most likely never live up to her potential.

At the moment I became, part and parcel, what Thom referrers to as "The Wounded Hunter Child". And in that moment I was reduced to a sobbing seven year-old. I cried and cried and cried.

I tried to justify it. I tried to tell my self it was because I hardly contributed to an entire book. I tried to tell my self, "Bonn... ...you are a bit a of radical on Thom's ADHD forum. He may not want to associate him self with you - and that is understandable."

And in Thom's defense - he did not know my past as a wounded gifted underachiever. Nor, did he know how much I sincerely admired him for his alternative observations and approach to what is currently referred to as "ADHD"

I tried to justify it in all kinds of ways. But, it didn't take away the hurt. I felt like my spirit had been crushed and I was emotionally thrust backwards into my wounded child.
Like I said, I sobbed. I cried on and off for days. Sometimes, I still cry.

I am a bit of an aloof person. Very few people strike me as sincerely creditable, much less admirable. I am not impressed by social or economic status. So when a person catches my attention and admiration... ...it is real. It is not something I dole out lightly. And my admiration for Thom was not because he was a “celebrity” or a radio “talk show host”. That was before all that. My admiration for Thom was real.

I guess I set him up on a pedestal. That was my mistake. No one should be placed so high. It isn't fair to them and it isn't fair to one's self.

Anyway, the real kicker for me was when all this was brought to his attention he couldn't apologize from his own email address - he apologized to me from one of Louise's email accounts.

And when I meet him face to face at a book signing he he couldn't acknowledge me. When I introduced my self by name and said, “It's nice to finally meet you in person.” He couldn't reciprocate. Even just a, “Bonnie, it's nice to finally meet you, too” would have sufficed. Any acknowledgment would have undone everything. But, well, anyway...

I am better than that. I am smarter than that. And my intelligence is not quantifiable or dependent on someone else's perception or say-so.

Wow – I finally said it. I finally said it all. Years' worth of therapy in one post. I am finally done.

Well, Bonnie, suffice it to say that your narrative looks very different from the one you gave on the other site with regards Hartmann. If you remember I stayed out of that debate.

With regards my story, I've already given it and see no need to repeat it now. But this is especially true given that by doing so, it will be used against me by the thought police running this site.

That said, my "beef" with Hartmann is very simple as it is with anyone who shares his view: I find it inauthentic for anyone willing to sell their soul to win an election. That is it!

But more to the point, as a Vietnam vet, it is appalling to me for people to endorse candidates who have an antiseptic view of the value and worth of human life, when they themselves never set foot on a battlefield. That is it. No more no less.

There is a great lesson in the Dalia Lama's book on forgiveness about his refusal to enter into dialogue with the Chinese government after the crack down on students back in the eighties. The lesson: don't sell your soul for political pragmatism.

For those who understand no explanation is necessary, for those who do not understand, no explanation will suffice.

I used to respect this place before Hartmann handed over control to a bunch of sheep with rubber swords, and I certainly respect a handful of people on this site. Beyond that, I try to present a view as a counterbalance to the problem I just offered.

Bonnie:
Thom Hartmann is a communicator, and being the guru of some internet discussion site is not considered an admirable source of psychological insight. He is out there preaching the gospel and his sources of material are best left unsaid. The main thing is that the ideas get publicized, not that we achieve notoriety for originating them. This place is not like some 1970s encounter group where we all get publicly praised and/or humiliated.

I understand that it is the denial of recognition that hurts, but that is leftover from your childhood, an exaggerated need at this point in your life. If it's any consolation, we all have unfulfilled needs, me, you and even Thom Hartmann. And since none of us is likely to write a book about it, or even be a talk-radio personality, whoever does the actual work gets the credit.

Having said that, I'm sorry for your feelings of disappointment. You will just have to accept those original words of thanks that extend into perpetuity.

quote:

I understand that it is the denial of recognition that hurts, but that is leftover from your childhood, an exaggerated need at this point in your life. If it's any consolation, we all have unfulfilled needs, me, you and even Thom Hartmann. And since none of us is likely to write a book about it, or even be a talk-radio personality, whoever does the actual work gets the credit.

Oh that's just bull shit, Gnarly. It wasn't like I just threw out some general ideas on the forum and Thom picked up on a couple. I did research. I provided specific information and links to various specific studies.

So don't tell me about, well, he did the work. Screw that. I did "the work" - even if it was just on two pages. I provided the information. He just wordsmithed it.

It was an injustice.

And I know your response is meant to be up-lifting or something but it doesn't come off that way. It comes off as condesending.

My feelings are not an "an exaggerated need at this point in <my> life."

As I said, it was an injustice - period.


Chris - the reason my narritive sounds different is I've gotten over the pissed off part.

But, now I'm back to pissed.

Anyway Gnarly, one thing I will agree with you on is - I do have to let it go.

quote:

I understand that it is the denial of recognition that hurts, but that is leftover from your childhood, an exaggerated need at this point in your life. If it's any consolation, we all have unfulfilled needs, me, you and even Thom Hartmann. And since none of us is likely to write a book about it, or even be a talk-radio personality, whoever does the actual work gets the credit.

I think you are very right about human nature. We all are striving to rid ourselves of our past without any success as it looks sometimes. I was just watching Noam Chomsky over the weekend, and he looked like a 5 year old as he was being praised. He still looks for favor from others and not a self-fulfilled person (as I see it). He also talks about that he (or what he says) does not get on the front pages of the national papers. It is like the world owes him a stage when he already is the most quoted intellectual living today. I know there is a lot of issues I would like spread across the front pages but I live in reality.

We had a talk (or least myself I explored) about how we all carry our baggage from childhood and much of that is unfilled needs and desires. Hopefully we all meet people that fulfill us as adults when we get older or at least they compensate for our weaknesses.

Well Bonnie, maybe you should have been an academic. If you had researched, written a paper, promoted it then publicly took credit for any original ideas you might have a legitimate gripe. This is why academics argue incessantly about these things, they are more concerned about who gets the credit than the relevance of their ideas.

Even if you had a website that explained your thesis you may claim yourself as the idea's originator. What really happened is that you expressed ideas on an internet forum, which is a public place, and left words open to "wordsmithing". It sounds extremely naive for you to accuse Thom of an "injustice". I think it was Einstein who said "Inspiration is 90% perspiration", and it was Thom who put the perspiration into your ideas.

Ronald... I think you are right about Chomsky. I have noticed the same behaviors in him. In fact, a lot of his ideas are about how authority figures oppress the precocious child, extending his anger forward into adulthood. He is of course a great intellectual, but quite often they are afflicted with obsessions and self-centeredness.

I feel like I see what you are saying, Bonnie. It's about honesty, and the lesson we all must learn about it.

To me, the lesson applies to our very representative form of "democracy" where we have folks who say what they stand for, what they will do, and we project our own sense of morals and ethics onto them, and in that way we set ourselves up to be disappointed. Because someone else is not likely to be what we want them to be, and are not required to be, even if the words they say sound like the same words we would use. The "weasel words," as it were, on another thread.

This is why I now take the eternal skeptic's position that we must be ever vigilant of those whom we've hired to represent us, or those who we listen to, who we may imagine in some way represent us. It's a lesson about how we can value and appreciate our own "selves," as it were.

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Chris - the reason my narritive sounds different is I've gotten over the pissed off part.

But, now I'm back to pissed.

Bonnie, I respect and admire everything you have ever contributed to this forum or the other. Most of the people on this site are monumentally smarter than me. My interests are mostly intuitive now. And my participation on this site has worn out its welcome. While change is the only constant, it is disappointing at the magic we created here years ago and what it morphed into...the end.

Chris, many here appreciate that you speak your truth.

I don't know what to say about this place, myself. It's not what it seemed to be once, but as you note, what stays the same?

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Even if you had a website that explained your thesis you may claim yourself as the idea's originator. What really happened is that you expressed ideas on an internet forum, which is a public place, and left words open to "wordsmithing".

Gnarly - you still don't get it. What I am talking about didn't occur on the forum. The information exchanges occurred over several private emails.

Anyway, you see it as you see it and I see it differently. All I know is I would not do the same to another person. But that's just me. And I think Ren hit the nail on the head about projecting our own sense of morals/ethics onto others.

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Gnarly - you still don't get it. What I am talking about didn't occur on the forum. The information exchanges occurred over several private emails.

I guess I really "don't get it". If these discussions had taken place in a therapy session it would have been unethical and possibly illegal to disclose their sources. If your therapist had included your case in a book or academic publication, you would have no right monetary reimbursement or academic credit. I don't really understand how your situation is essentially different from those.

I am sorry Bonnie, but I get the impression your experience of the world has been idealized, based on childhood fantasy. Obviously there is nothing I can do about it, except to explain that your expectations are unreasonable. As Thom Hartmann reaches the zenith of his career, I am irritated at the number of betrayals he is accused of. There are several on this site right now who are making a whole soap opera out of the betrayal of some ideal they perceived some time in the past. Nostalgia (they even have a site called Nostomania) is a sure killer of happiness, and so is anticipation. Free yourself from these neurotic emotions, and just be happy now.

And I'm quacked out?

Who the hell is talking about therapy, therapists or disclosure in that dyad?

Oh, and don't you dare try to psychoanalyze me. You have know idea what you are talking about there, either.

Bonnie, I see from your responses that you are focused on playing the victim, and projecting the betrayed devotee image upon us. There is nothing more I can do for you.

I have noticed two kinds of ADHD afflictees.
One type imagines themselves in a time continuum that is cursed by hindsight and expectation. They have almost no knowledge of actual history, which is the quickest way to identify them. These people can never be happy and productive because their imaginings have dictated their desires. The world, and other people, can never live up to their hopes, so they either regress to the "wounded child" role or live in an idealized science-fiction future. Since they preoccupy themselves with past and future, the present languishes. They can, however, be inspired fiction writers and storytellers because they easily adopt the mentality of past of future. They find it difficult to be productive and meaningful, because pragmatism is based on being here now.

The second type I have recognized requires periodic "re-engagement", and therefore flits from one project to another. They thrive on contrast and novelty. They have an excellent grasp of history and are rather literal-minded. Often their projects take a round-robin format as they focus well on immediacy and priority. These people can be very productive, even prolific. But they have difficulty being interactive and managing their output. Since change in any perceptions distracts them, they need tightly controlled environments to work in. Boredom is their enemy, and ideas often outpace their ability to communicate.

If you are still reading this, you may notice a contrast of styles where you fit into the first and Thom fits in the second. In a partnership arrangement, the two can be very creative. But invariably the second type has a much wider range of interests and abilities, and so must move on to rise to other challenges. There may be some gender specific behaviors here, I don't know.

Not that all this does you any good, but your gripe is not at all unusual. It is very common in social groups that envy and resentment happen over time. It is a very patrician sort of behavior, and reminds me of the class-conscious society of Europe. In that social model, your motivation was the people you aspired to emulate. Disappointment in yourself was a continual message the elitists sent you, because you could never achieve at the level of the establishment. This was before the modern society model of humanism arose, where anyone could be happy just by being individualistic.

Bonnie,

I'm sorry for the hurt related to your story, and I'm sorry to see it compounded.

Heroes die hard.

Take care of you.

Kate

Bonnie, I don't consider anything you have said to comport with a "victim" mentality. Stay well, dear friend. And keep the fires burning.

quote:

Originally posted by --Kate:
What's the line between "mine" and "yours" or the line between "then" and "now" and what's an evolved, and ever evolving, persona to do?

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As you may know, writers like Dashiell Hammett and myself have been widely and ruthlessly imitated, so closely as to amount to a moral plagiarism, even though the law does not recognize anything but the substantial taking of a plot. I have had stories taken scene by scene and just lightly changed here and there. I have had lines of dialogue taken intact, bits of description also word for word. I have no recourse. The law doesn't call it plagiarism. Against this background you must pardon me if I find it just a little ludicrous that you should object to my using what is mine in the way that seems to me most suitable and most convenient. If my early stories had been published in a magazine of prestige and significance, the situation would have been rather different, and I would have been much more reluctant to do what you complain of. But as it is, I wish I had carried the process much further and used more of my old novelettes as material instead of republishing them with all their crudities, some of which crudities I now find almost unbearable.

letter from Raymond Chandler to E. Howard Hunt

Bonnie, there's such a thing as moral rights. This is the right of the individual to their own ideas, which has to do with the legal, defensible right of each of us to develop our own sense of ethics and morality. In a sense the violation of that right is a deep violation of the principles of protection our private rights. Sometimes the codes of moral rights can protect us, sometimes not, but the violation we know in our hearts has occurred. No pseudo psycho rationalization can take that from us. Neuro Linguistic Programming is about how the experts in this use of our innate language features have learned to play on the surface with twisting what we think and playing with our sense of what we feel, and how we motivate ourselves. That's a superficial manipulation, especially if we learn to learn about how we think, and can observe it. We can learn in that process to stay true to our hearts and see, all the while, that the manipulation is only superficial if we stay true to our own continuity of self.

The most anyone can do is project their own rationales onto us. They cannot see into us. They can at best project a logical rational reason that they've come to and try to persuade us they are right and what we sense in out heart is an illusion. But if we are in touch with our "self" -- that which has continuity through our lifetime -- we know it's not our truth, it's their guess.

If this notion of therapy is to be of any use at all to anyone, it might be because the therapists don't do that sort of rational projection analysis, they try to help reveal an individual's own private, self constructed inner frames, mental models, and to find one's own truths and so that one can deal with them for oneself. That's a therapy based on respect. A therapy that tells you what you are from the therapist's point of view is an authoritarian based therapy, which is essentially disrespectful. That's a basic pattern I discovered long ago, because I had the benefit/misfortune of watching someone as close to me as anyone could possibly be, go through the worst of the authoritarian based "therapies" -- as such fraudulent measures of "help" have been misnomered. It's authoritarian because it's like an attempt by a person who claims authority to encage another in a rational set of ideas, and that's an attempt at a moral violation, I would say, just as using your original ideas without acknowledgment or permission would be. It's an important issue of personal and mutual respect that is the very foundation of a free society.

Nobody really knows your mind but you. No one has the right to claim they do. Ultimately, each of us is free to tell anyone who tries exactly where to put it.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: /rén,

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That's a therapy based on respect. A therapy that tells you what you are from the therapist's point of view is an authoritarian based therapy, which is essentially disrespectful.

Better be careful Ren, the BORG COLLECTIVE otherwise known as the thought Police might take umbrage with you; which then might lead to the guy with his little rubber sword banning you again.

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I would say, just as using your original ideas without acknowledgment or permission would be. It's an important issue of personal and mutual respect that is the very foundation of a free society.

Yes, when respect is a one way street all sorts of anomolies rear their ugly head. Yesterday I was in Borders Book store and directly in front of me was Hartmann's new book Cracking the Code. Well, I cracked the cover of his new book and read about his story with gooseolini and a phrase taken right off this site: the map is not the territory. Howard has been using that phrase for years on this site. I guess Howard's intellectual property now belongs to Hartmann.

quote:

Originally posted by ChrisDeGetmon:

quote:

That's a therapy based on respect. A therapy that tells you what you are from the therapist's point of view is an authoritarian based therapy, which is essentially disrespectful.

Better be careful Ren, the BORG COLLECTIVE otherwise known as the thought Police might take umbrage with you; which then might lead to the guy with his little rubber sword banning you again.

I walk a thin red razor's line, Chris.

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I walk a thin red razor's line, Chris.

Ah, the Razors Edge, the only place anything is really happening.

Also interesting how they interject into their vocabulary projections like "insecurity" to cast free beings in a negative light, so to reduce their own existential angst and make themselves superior to everyone else.

I am waiting for the boom to drop any day now.

I think we are still on that edge, Chris.

You may have missed "Luis Antonio Marquéz" yesteday, whose post was deleted. It said pretty much what you were just saying, only it was a little bit more personally directed in a way that's obviously less acceptable than others, who are also willing to say quite personal things in ways that can be very cutting. Apparently that's an example of getting off that very subtle and razor thin edge. The trick is to stay balanced.

For any bystanders, I found from a reputable source that the above mentioned poster was not Miles. There may be many ghosts floating around from the good ol' days. Occasionally one materializes.

quote:

the map is not the territory. Howard has been using that phrase for years on this site.

Sorry Chris, so has NLP, which is a likely place for Thom to have first gotten it, him being an NLP Trainer and all.

NLP copped it from Korzybski which is where i think Howard picked it up, from Korzybsky that is.

I picked up the phrase from NLP back in the late eighties, it being related to core linguistic ideas found in its models.

Is this the Psychology 101 room? Such a hoot!
It's interesting. I've been seeing quite a lot of this lately: people in so-called positions of power who claim to be doing noble and charitable work, but can't keep their own backyard clean. I reckon it's a guilt-versus-responsibility thing. Here's an observation:
These people feel bad about the state of the world. Or so they claim to some degree at least. They do feel miserable, it's true. They feel guilty. They know they're somehow connected to all the muck in the world. It makes them feel miserable. They want to push the misery away, away from themselves. Like Good Christians, they are longing for absolution. They want to pay some kind of ransom to feel better about themselves. And they do pay it. But they pay their stinking money to monstrous charities which are run like companies and do their thing far far far away. Or they are driven to politics, an abstract island in the ocean of life, an island filled with claims of representation and 'the real world' and exponential economic growth and democracy. Democracy's good, democracy's good, democracy's good, we gotta fight for democracy, make the world safe for democracy yay, happy! They send their stinking atonement money all over the world and they spend their atonement energy on misrepresentation and abstraction and murderous (ab)solutions. Why?
Well, starving black folks in Africa, with AIDS or without, are much less confronting than a homeless person sleeping in the alley near your house.*
Dealing with problems in a political way is less confronting than dealing with them directly. Commissions: aren't they brilliant?
So if it's far away, if it's abstract, they don't have to look at themselves and their real feelings and their real fears and their real frustration and their real history and their real selves and their real responsibility.
It is like waving your arm to scare away a mosquito who is going to taste your blood anyway and you know it. She's going to eat from your body, so that she may live. And the same is true for your fears. They're going to eat from your body, you're going to feel it, you're going to get sick and you're going to feel miserable and you're going to want to pay stinking money to make it all go away. But it doesn't go away. It's going to eat more of you until you’re reduced to a petrified pile of subhuman debris. And that you're going to project on other people. You must be in control. Therefore, you must be more than the others. Therefore, you're going to treat other people as if they're less than the petrified pile of subhuman debris. Because they remind you of your own humanity. What was that again? Shit.
Away with thee, you scary mirrors!
And the bedroom walls turn bare and dark and dead.
And so they kill people who turn their energy into proper, sincere, justified anger. They kill people like Bonnie, they kill people like Chris. These people are reduced to wallpaper: mere decoration, nothing fundamental, nothing concrete and absolutely vital; nothing to be reckoned with. Death.
The nightmares, though, they don’t go away. O no. They must be exorcised.
And so they kill the powerless. They kill blacks, animals, forests.
Not with their own hands, of course. Too close. They use machines.

BOOM!

…

ECHO!

…

They are really killing themselves.
Go on then, dollies, go on and praise your heroes.
Go on! Pretend there’s nothing going on.
The mosquito's going to suck you dry, baby.

Deflection, eh.
Tricky f*cking business.


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(* Of course this isn't the one and absolute truth. At the time of USA for Africa, for instance, no matter how horrible the music, people suddenly became aware of poverty in the USA (you know, the poverty that doesn't exist) and started acting in that department.)

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Incidentally, I thought it's usually the 'a' that's stressed in 'Márquez'. Hoo!