Transcript www.ccmeonline.org

Transformative
Learning and
Moral Injury:
Developmental
Strategies in Higher
Education for Healing,
Transition, and Growth
References for the key concepts are included in the notes section.
Barton D. Buechner, PhD
Professor, Military Psychology MA Program
Key Points
(1) Veterans are oriented by culture and training to value
and embody Warrior Strengths
(2) The APA definition of PTSD has changed –public
perception and therapies have not
(3) “Moral Injury” is experienced as a different
phenomenon than PTSD – but appears similar
(4) Transformational Learning Theory is a specific form of
adult education that helps make meaning
(5) This is facilitated by a mentoring community as a
process of personal development or Posttraumatic Growth
Communication and Education
in Veterans’ Transitions
“Better than any other kind of
experience, schooling can restore
the veteran to the communicative
system of society”
- (Waller, 1944)
Source: Presentation by G. Vaillant, at Fielding Summer Session, July 2013
Developmental Mentoring
READJUSTMENT:
“Better than any other
kind of experience,
schooling can restore the
veteran to the
communicative system of
society” (Waller, 1944)
HEALTH AND
GROWTH:
From the Harvard Grant
Longitudinal study:
Education was the single best
predictor of overall future
health (Vaillant, 2012)
Source: G. Vaillant (2014)
Did you know there are over 1,200 veterans
A Cultural
Disconnect
attending
Solano Community College???
USING YOUR GI BILL…
EXACTLY HOW IT FEELS
Philosophical underpinnings:
The educational line of thought is
Transformational Learning – the
psychological line of thought is Constructive
Developmentalism … which attends to the natural
evolution of the forms of our meaning-constructing”
- Robert Kegan
…. And the Communication line of thought is
Cosmopolitan Communication
Androgogy vs. Pedagogy
(Malcolm Knowles)
•
•
•
•
Mentor-led
Cohort-driven
Collegial and individual
Diversity and Social Justice
PROGRAMS: Clinical Psychology, Human and Organizational
Development, Media Psychology, Educational Leadership
Invisible wounds of war….
PTSD, Moral Injury, or Both?
PTSD
“Startle”
reflex
Memory loss
Fear
Flashbacks
BOTH
Anger
Depression
Anxiety
Insomnia
Nightmares
Self-medication
with alcohol
or drugs
Moral Injury
Sorrow
Grief
Regret
Shame
Alienation
Source: David Wood: http://projects.huffingtonpost.com/moral-injury
WHAT is the phenomenon?
The Lifeworld (Schutz)
“The lived experience of human beings and other living
creatures as formed into more or less coherent grounds
for their existence. This consists of the whole system of
interactions with others and objects in an environment
that is fused with meaning and language (for human
actors) and that sustains the life of all creatures from
birth through death. It is the fundamental ground of all
experience for human beings.”
- Bentz and Shapiro (1998)
Transformative Learning Concepts
•
•
•
•
•
•
“Disorienting Dilemmas”
Reframing of Narratives
Interpersonal relations (with Mentors)
Individual and social implications and meanings
Communicative learning
Values of freedom, equality, tolerance, social
justice, civic responsibility, and education
- Jack Mezirow
Posttraumatic GROWTH
“What Does not Destroy me Makes Me Stronger”
- F. Nietsche (1888) Twilight of the Idols
ENABLING FACTORS:
•Social Support
•Deliberative Cognitive Processing (Mental Discipline)
•Positive meaning-making (vision and hope for future)
OPPOSITE:
•Social Isolation
•Perceived Burdonsomeness
•Loss of power, Identity and self efficacy
SOURCES: Kanako Taku, Oakland University; Jeffrey Bird, SVSU
Posttraumatic Growth:
Relating to Others
New Possibilities
Personal Strength
Spiritual Change
Appreciation of Life
Tedeschi and Calhoun (1995)
Similar to outcomes of Transformative
Learning
An Interpersonal Theory of Suicide
Source: Jeffrey Bird, GVSU
Moral Injury
“The Marine Corps is like a machine. People are
like spark plugs, and the plug has one purpose.
Nobody cares about it anymore when you take it
out of the machine. People who were my friends
now do not care, because I am not able to be a
part of that. Marines are all about being the
‘first to fight,’ but now I can’t. It’s like after all of
this, I am once more “not one of the cool kids” …
People ask how you are, and how you are is that
you are dying….not physically, but mentally.”
- Rocky
Identity formation and re-individuation…
When you’ve met one veteran,
You’ve met one veteran…
- Mike Carrell, Ohio State University
HOW is a Worldview Constructed?
• Consider communication as a “primary” social force
• How we “make” and “remake” our social worlds
• Looking at communication, and what gets “made?”
- relationships, selves, groups, cultures, etc.
• When communicating, we engage simultaneously in:
• COORDINATION (of joint actions)
• COHERENCE (sense-making, intentions, interpretations)
• MYSTERY as an important reminder (that we could have DONE
otherwise; TOLD ourselves different stories)
• COSMOPOLITAN COMMUNICATION offers a way to
communication between cultures while respecting difference
Moral Code
“A Theory by which a group understands its
experience and makes judgments about proper and
improper actions”
• A set of concepts and system of rules
• A tradition of truth and propriety
• The basis of “common sense”
(Pearce and Littlejohn, 1997)
“Re-examine all you have been told...
Dismiss what insults your Soul”
- Walt Whitman
“MORAL INJURY” is not
the same as Moral Judgment
The Coordinated Management of
Meaning (CMM) Theory
“How can we structure
our Institutions so they
support the evolution
of consciousness?”
- W. Barnett Pearce (2007)
Transformation and Social Construction
•Understanding that we live in multiple social
worlds
•Can draw resources from several social worlds in
constructing new ones
•Able to make conscious choices about what forms
of life we wish to enact in given situations.
W. Barnett Pearce
“...Engage the Whole Human Critter…
…Brain, Mind,
Society, Culture, and
Dynamics of
Mental Health ….”
- Jonathan Shay, MD, PhD (at ISTSS)
“Achilles in Vietnam” (1994)
“Odysseus in America” (2002)
Domains of Human Experience
Cosmopolitan Communication
In Four
Quadrants
“All Quadrants,
All Lines” (AQAL)
model from
Integral theory
(Wilber, 2006)
and
Cosmopolitan
Communication
model from
CMM theory
(Pearce, 1989)
Source: Arthur Jensen, Ph.D. presentation at SIETAR Berlin, Sept. 2012
Constructing a Culture
Coordinated System of the
Inspector General
• Teach and Train
• Inspect
• Fact-finding
• Assist (Social Justice)
Emergent Properties:
•Self-confidence
•Loyalty to each other
•Acountability
•Leadership by example
Sharing
the
Moral
Code
“Contextual Mentoring”
• Coordinated effort, led by someone who “gets” veterans’
experience, and cares (empathic) at the personal level
• Builds bridges between military social and future worlds.
• Brokers “loose-tie” connections to others
• Integrates elements of Family values (primary
socialization), Peer support, Formation, Mental Health,
and role models
• Orchestrates existing lifeworld resources and aspects of
advising, counseling, coaching, tutoring, social support with intention
• Individual attention to help veteran find their own path or
“quest”
Re-builds moral codes through Mentor Communication
Towards Deliberately
Developmental Communities:
• Organizations can develop everyone every day.
• They can turn student and employee struggles into growth
opportunities to create a new kind of competitive advantage.
• A new way of working that can be transformational for
organizations and all of their people.
• Research and practice about understanding how such cultures
work and making more of them possible.
Robert Kegan, Lisa Lahey, Andy Fleming, and Claire Lee
• Shift in focus from performance to growth and capacity-building
• New ways to measure personal growth outcomes in Higher education?
Development and our Organizations
Super Integral - witness self, being-centric view, (emergent)
Integral - holistic, autonomous, worldcentric,
“Cosmopolitan” 4% of US pop, evolved 50 years ago
Pluralistic - sensitive self, individualistic, idealistic, 10% of
US pop, 100 years ago
Rational - scientists, data-driven decision-making, logic,
reason, 25% of pop, 300 years ago
Mythical - hierarchical religions, conformist, good/bad,
ethnocentric, 40% of US pop, 5000 years ago
Egocentric - 'me'/'I want it now', evolved 10,000 years ago,
20% of US pop.
Magic - tribes, clans, gangs, superstitious, safety/survival,
10% of US pop.
Archaic - Basic survival, <1% of US population
Loevinger’s (Integral) Stages of Development
The Universal Mono-Myth:
•Hero Leaves home
•Departs on a quest
•Defeats a strong adversary
•Returns by a perilous journey
•Brings back a “boon”
or gift to humanity
Warrior Quests
The American Mono-Myth:
• A peaceful town is
threatened by great evil
• The local authorities
are powerless to stop it
• A mysterious hero comes
and saves the town
• The hero cannot stay,
and leaves alone
Warrior Quests
“System” Mentoring
“…if you change one person’s
viewpoint, save one life, it’s
kind of worth it in the end.
You can't change the big
things in life if you don’t
tackle the little things: that’s
how they got big in the first
place.”
- TJ
“Culture” Mentoring
“I think of this as the hub. They go to
class and learn they get to have their own
opinion about things that they are
allowed to say out loud; and then they
come back here and recharge. Then they
go to another class where they learn to
speak in public, in front of other people;
and then they come back here where it’s
safe. (The Student Veterans Lounge is)
the midpoint between collectivism and
individualism.”
- Pat
“Mind” Mentoring
(CMM and ACT therapy are) very much based
around constructing meaning for oneself, figuring
out what your values are, and then constructing a
life that very much adheres and moves forward
with those values…
…I’m more comfortable with the spirituality that
resonates with me, and it is starting to integrate
my experience. That is particularly interesting to
me, combined with the spiritual focus I have had
which is a self-directed, personal gnosis…
- AJ
“Brain” Mentoring
“I have never had a bad experience with a
psychiatrist or anything, but it seems like they
just ask one question after another after
another, and then saying things like, ‘well, it
sounds like you keep mentioning this, or it
sounds like this is what’s really bothering you.’
But it seems like they are too passive. Being
passive limits your effectiveness, especially
when you are having a conversation with
someone, especially about something they are
struggling with.
- TJ
How do you fix a “worldview”?
“PTSD isn’t a disease, it’s a worldview.
War, disaster response, police work,
these things force a person to live in the
spaces where trauma happens, to spend
most of their time there, until that world
becomes yours, seeps through your skin
and runs in your blood. Diseases are
discrete things. But how do you treat a
change in perspective?”
- AJ (Blog post)
Transformative
Learning and
Moral Injury:
Developmental
Strategies in Higher
Education for Healing,
Transition, and Growth
Barton D. Buechner, PhD
Professor, Military Psychology MA Program
CMM “Storytelling” Model
As humans, we all have
stories and tell stories
stories told
untold stories
unknown stories
storytelling
Our relationships and social
worlds are built in
communication
stories lived
This Model helps parse out
the different levels and types
of stories that co-exist
unheard stories
untellable stories
Maps out what you know, and still need to know
CMM
“Daisy”
Model
Used to analyze
groupings of
mentors over
different
lifeworld
contexts and
their level of
influence at
various times.
CMM “Serpentine” Model
Helps to reveal
how reality is
costructed or
meaning is
made in
episodes of
communication
Constituted in
at least three
”turns,” or
conversational
triplets
CMM “Strange Loops”
“Catch 22”
situations are
common
experiences for
veterans. The
Strange Loop”
model helps reveal
the contextual
factors underlying
them
CMM “Hierarchy” Model
Helps to reveal
the “logical
forces” that lead
us to “act into”
situations in our
lifeworlds in
different ways,
depending upon
frame of
reference or
context
Formation and Development
(OTOM) – Developmental
Psychoeducation and Therapy
(OTMM) –Behavior
Individual
PTSD
Mystery
Phenomenological
Lived Experience
Cognition and
Neuroscience
Plasticity
MIND
Affect and
Emotion
BRAIN
Interior
Observable
Behavior
Exterior
Adult
Learning
CULTURE
SYSTEM
Social World
Resources
Family Influence
Somatics
MORAL
INJURY
Student Veteran Organizations
(MTMM) - Peer Mentoring
Social
Justice
Engagement
and “quests”
Bridging
Collective
Veterans Service Office
Organizational Support
(MTOM) - Advocacy