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Keith E Rice's Integrated SocioPsychology Blog & Pages

Aligning, integrating and applying the behavioural sciences

‘counselling & therapy’

Good Boys gone bad…?

Updated: 29 October 2016 Some years ago I encountered ‘Johnny’ and his younger brother, ‘Harry’, at a school I taught at in a run-down town in East Yorkshire. Their behaviour tended towards the extreme – although I have come across worse in my time as a teacher! – but was not that far removed from the behaviour of many boys (and some girls!) in secondary schools in deprived areas. As I taught both boys and had Harry in my tutor group, I learned a fair amount about their backgrounds and factors which influenced their attitudes and behaviours. I developed this diagnostic case study and recommendations from those experiences. My experiences in schools since, my conversations with other educationalists and my readings in Sociology and Psychology leave me still convinced that schools and society in general fail this kind of child. The case study is updated with more of my understanding in Integrated SocioPsychology. ‘Johnny’ was an ‘interesting’ 11-year who came to the school I was teaching at to start Year 7. He was bright, enthusiastic, eager both to learn and to show off his knowledge – almost always the first to have his hand up to answer a question. He was often ahead… Read More

vMEME Stacks

Updated; 25 May 2016 In terms of Integrated SocioPsychology a vMEME stack is simply the spread of vMEMES influencing the selfplex and their strengthening and weakening – brightening and dimming, flowing and ebbing – across different domains of life and relative to the life conditions impacting upon the individual, group or organisation and what their focus is. In their 1996 book ‘Spiral Dynamics’ Don Beck & Chris Cowan introduced what became known as ‘the fried egg’ to illustrate how different vMEMES formed a stack. Always, of course, BEIGE is at the core. If BEIGE stops functioning, we lose our will to live! In the higher fried egg the person is primarily PURPLE-centred but with a large dose of RED and some emergent BLUE. This person is very likely to be narcissistic and family-oriented. With PURPLE dominating in that environment, family, in fact, is a huge part of their life. It’s quite likely that extended family – grandparents, cousins, aunts/uncles – will feature quite markedly on their social calendar. They are also likely to be very defensive of their family and family members. There may be other forms of belonging that are extremely important to them – eg: church/synagogue/mosque/temple, club, women’s organisation or work colleagues. This person’s… Read More

Diagnosis of Depression

Updated: 30 April 2019 In ordinary, everyday discourse, nearly any mood with some element of sadness may be called ‘depressed’. However, for depression to be termed Clinical Depression, it must reach criteria which are generally accepted by clinicians; it is more than just a temporary state of sadness. Generally, when symptoms last 2 weeks or more and are so severe that they interfere with daily living (failure to function adequately), someone can be said to be suffering from Clinical Depression. Clinical Depression affects about 16% of the population at one time or another in their lives.  According to the World Health Organisation (2018a): “Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide, and is a major contributor to the overall global burden of disease.”The mean age of onset from a number of studies is in the late 20s. There is a gender difference in incidence as roughly twice as many women as men report or receive treatment for Clinical Depression, though the gap is shrinking and this difference disappears after menopause. Up to 25% of females will be diagnosed at some point in their life and up to 12% of men. At any one point in time it is estimated 9% of… Read More

Career

Updated: 5 December 2020 1988-1996    1997   1998     1999     2000     2001    2002      2003     2004     2005     2006     2007     2008     2009     2010     2011     2012     2013     2014      2015     2016     2017     2018      2019     2020    2021-2023 21st Century Group     HemsMESH     Humber MeshWORKS     Humberside MESH Network A middle class boy, born to parents from the upper working classes who had worked their way up into the lower professional grades, I was privileged to have parents who both cared for me and drove me – especially my father. My parents – like most! – had many faults and left me with more than a few issues – see: The Counsellor gets counselled! Yet overall they gave me a good start in life, pushing me through the 11-Plus and the grammar school system to do what had been almost impossible for upper working class teenagers of their generation: to go to university. I was raised mostly in the Lancashire (now Merseyside) town of St Helens…but the bulk of my family were in nearby Liverpool. And Liverpool, in the early-mid 1960s was the epicentre of the musical and social revolution that began with The Beatles and expanded through ‘Merseybeat’. A tremendously exciting… Read More

Tuition: AQA Psychology/Sociology

Updated: 28 August 2020 PLEASE NOTE THAT, DUE TO THE COVID-19 CRISIS, ALL MY WORK IS CARRIED OUT ONLINE UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE I have been providing – and thoroughly enjoying! – private tuition for students who benefit from a little extra help since early 2007. I am an ex-Head of Psychology at Woodhouse Grove School in Bradford (2011-2014) and a former teacher of Psychology, Sociology and Health & Social Care A-Levels at Rossett School in Harrogate (2007-2013). Both jobs were part-time, thus allowing overlap and time to pursue my work as a private tutor, trainer and counsellor/therapist. I have also taught Psychology at Vermuyden School (Goole) and Sherburn High School and twice had extended periods of supporting the Psychology department at Guiseley School. For a term in 2014 I took a temporary post teaching Psychology and Sociology on a university access course at Leeds City College. I gave up classroom teaching in 2014 to fulfil the increasing demand for my tutoring services following our move to Bradford in 2012. I thoroughly enjoy working with bright young people interested in the behavioural sciences and find that my work as an adult trainer, as well as my previous experience in counselling/therapy and consultancy, enables… Read More

Services

These pages describe the 2 services I still offer both to individuals and to organisations. (I ceased offering consultancy in January 2017 and announced in September that I was taking no new counselling & therapy clients, with a view to ceasing that service completely by the end of March 2020.) Please get in touch via the Contact page to discuss your needs. Training An illustrated overview of the Integrated SocioPsychology courses I deliver – training can be tailored bespoke to your needs Child page: Learner Perspectives: Recent Workshops (workshop participants’ comments and photos) Tuition: AQA Psychology     14/04/20 Private tuition for students taking AQA specification A-Levels in Psychology and Sociology Case Studies These are case studies from my days as a consultant and counsellor/therapist. They are provided as historical examples of my approach to clients in the hope that readers can learn and benefit from them. (My approach to counselling & therapy is outlined in The Use of SDi in Psychotherapy.) All case studies are told with the client’s approval. Those concerning individuals have the client’s name and identifying details changed to protect confidentiality. The later case studies are at the top and the earlier towards the bottom. ‘Jay’ Individual counselling & therapy… Read More

Writings

In addition to most pages of this website, I have written one book, had several articles published and contributed to a compendium of applications of Spiral Dynamics integral. These are all available via this website – either as pages of the site itself or as PDFs downloadable from the site. The most recent pieces of writing are at the top; the oldest at the bottom. If you don’t know, PDF (portable document format) is an international standard (developed by Adobe Systems) for publishing online documents independent of application software, hardware or operating system. Which makes them perfect for publishing to a web site from which they can be downloaded and read. Adobe provide a free, downloadable ‘reader’ which you will need to view PDFs. Click the Adobe logo below to get their free PDF reader! The most recent pieces of writing are at the top; the oldest at the bottom. A 2nd Tier Approach to a 1st Tier World Commissioned by Robin Lincoln Wood for the August 2018 special issue of Integral Leadership Review, following on from the Spiral Dynamics Summit on the Future. Click here to read the article in a marginally-different format than it appeared on the ILR site. The Use of SDi… Read More

The Counsellor gets counselled!

Only a few years ago I would never have undergone counselling or therapy. My RED  vMEME’s pride would never have let me submit myself to be helped by someone who couldn’t possibly be as knowledgeable or skilled as me. When a close member of my family elected to go to someone else for counselling rather than come to me, I was mortified. What did it say about me that I couldn’t give them what they needed? I knew the argument that prior relationship dynamics could cloud the judgement of both the counsellor and the client…but, to me, that argument paled into insignificance compared to the vast knowledge and skills I could deploy. In fact that counsellor did a good job and the family member was a lot less troubled afterwards. Yet the counsellor, from what I could make out, knew nothing about the Gravesian approach and didn’t exactly espouse NLP. My wife Caroline had suggested for several years that counselling might benefit me but I had always demurred, convinced that there wasn’t really much wrong with me. I could acknowledge intellectually that I had problems because everyone has problems. To paraphrase Ichak Adizes (1999), the only people without problems are dead people!  But to… Read More

The ‘Gay Cure’: was Spitzer right to recant?

Robert L Spitzer is one of the giants of modern Psychiatry, a scientific philosopher as much as a hands-on medical man. He’s been a fearless opponent of too-easily-accepted givens, notably challenging some of David Rosenhan’s conclusions in his 1973 study, On Being Sane in Insane Places. However, Spitzer really made his mark by leading the campaign to have homosexuality removed from the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual (DSM) as a psychiatric disorder – which it was in 1973. So the news last week that Spitzer had ‘recanted’ a study he had carried out in 2000-2001 and had published in 2003 caught my eye – especially as I had referenced that same study in a lengthy letter I had published in Therapy Today, the journal of the British Association of Counselling & Psychotherapy, in 2009. My letter, titled ‘An Imposed Etic’, was published as ‘An Imposed Ethic’ – presumably the editor thought ‘etic’ was a spelling mistake and didn’t get the sense I was trying to convey through the use of the term ‘imposed etic’. My point was that particular, localised values and norms were being applied as though they were universals, without empirical justification. I had been somewhat concerned by John Daniels’ article,… Read More