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I’ve been in Bali so I just noticed the cover of People Magazine last night at the market. Just now I was talking to Mark Waldman who wrote the piece below and he said I should share the Brain Research from the University of Pennsylvania that suggests that Mel Gibson’s “Alcoholism Excuse” is false. Just the fact that Mel Gibson was behind the wheel while impaired by alcohol makes him a candidate for the Ugly Man Award. Because he’s been an admired celebrity is cause for him to get the first Ugly Man Award. Here is a copy of the article mentioned above:

Andrew Newberg, MD, and Mark Waldman are the authors of Why We Believe What We Believe: Uncovering our Biological Need for Meaning, Spirituality, and Truth, which will be released in September, 2006

Although we would not normally join in the feeding frenzy surrounding Mel Gibson’s arrest and defamatory statements concerning Jews, several alcoholism experts have logged onto televised discussions and have made claims that we feel are blatantly and dangerously untrue. In these interviews, Gibson’s responsibility for his behavior was reduced with the claim that alcohol can make a person say things that he or she really doesn’t believe. Recent neuroscientific evidence confirms that cognition is impaired by alcohol, but there is not a single study showing that people are more prone to lie or disparage others while they are under the influence. Instead, research shows that people’s brains hold many negative thoughts and feelings that they often are not aware of. Various parts of the brain automatically suppress such thoughts, especially when society or public opinion deplores such thinking. But those thoughts are real. At some point in time, they were imprinted into memory by conscious choice. Anti-Semitic thoughts are not generated by alcohol; the alcohol may distort those thoughts, but the thoughts were already well-established in Gibson’s brain. Furthermore, the majority of people, when drunk, do not automatically spew hatred. Alcohol only disinhibits, and this allows underlying feelings to become uncensored. Most people, when they drink, get mellow, but those that get angry should get help. But the underlying angry personality cannot be dismissed.
Gibson’s behavior exposes a larger question: why is discrimination and racism so prevalent throughout the world? Converging evidence from gene research, sociobiology, and evolutionary psychology show that humans are born with numerous aggressive, defensive, and prejudicial tendencies, and recently several brain-scan studies have shown that even the most liberal individual shows an alarm response when images of people from different cultures are seen. Although it appears that the brain is equipped with a negative “out-group” bias, most people (fortunately) can train themselves to interrupt these antisocial thoughts and replace them with constructive beliefs and behaviors. It’s not the alcohol that makes us prejudiced, it’s the person; the alcohol only serves to weaken our conscious control over emotional outbursts and feelings.

Our research demonstrates that people who are repeatedly exposed to any belief—be it religious or political—form stronger and stronger neural circuits that not only keep that memory and belief alive, but also provide a visceral sense of reality the longer such beliefs are held. Furthermore, once our beliefs are neurologically established, it becomes harder and harder to change them later in life. Gibson’s outbursts lend credence to the conjecture that his father and others have left a lasting impression that literally became burned into the circuits of his brain (children, by the way, are particularly vulnerable to the implantation of patently false ideas).

We applaud Mr. Gibson’s recognition that there is something wrong inside his brain, but we want to caution him, and the world, that it will take a gargantuan effort on his part to alter those destructive neural imprints (the same is true for any person who harbors feelings of hostility toward others). Sadly, our research suggests that it may take decades of intensive self-reflection before a person can replace racist beliefs with genuine traits of tolerance, compassion, and forgiveness. Even then, more work is required to translate constructive beliefs into effective behaviors that can benefit society. In an age where world violence seems to be escalating, I just hope there’s enough time to get so many people to change their negative beliefs.

* Andrew Newberg, MD
University of Pennsylvania
* Mark Robert Waldman
Associate Fellow, Center for Spirituality and the Mind
University of Pennsylvania

Another reason besides the anit-racial slurs is his comment to the female police officer about her breasts.

So, Mel Gibson, you are hereby our official First Ugly Man Award recipient. May you have success transforming your thinking about Jews and women.

With much disappointment in someone I previously admired,
Kara Oh

This post was so good I decided to put it here so everyone who visits would read it:

Hi Kara,
I’d like to log in as a couples therapist with 25 years experience. Yes, I agree that men tend to be particularly insensitive, and act as if they’re masturbating when making love. Sex is a dialogue between two people, and all dialogues depend upon verbal and nonverbal communication. Unfortunately, I find that women, who are clearly more communicative than men, clam up when it comes to talking to us about their needs, desires, and fantasies. Yes, women complain, and rightly so, but as a therapist, I can’t recall the last time a woman told me that she compassionately talked to her lover about how she likes to be touched. The key is “compassionately,” for many women just push their men away and say, with irritation, “That’s not how I like being touched; don’t stick your tongue in my mouth; go slower…,” etc. Well, this is poor communication. It’s filled with a bunch of “no’s” and commands, so the poor guy gets defensive and then he can’t hear. When I ask couples in my office to talk about how they want to be loved, it is the woman who becomes mysteriously silent. She gets embarrassed, or worse, has the fantasy that a many should read her mind. Men can barely read their own mind, let alone another’s! But if the woman lovingly explains what she desires, many men will listen (maybe because I’m there to make sure he does!). When I ask men to say back what they heard, they do a poor job, however, and this just means that they haven’t learned the art of communication. Women need to be patient and repetitive, but because they’ve been silent for years, all their frustration pops out. That’s unfair to men. Men, however, want to be rewarded if they do learn how to please their women, and here’s where another problem comes in. Lots of women only want to be loving in their way; they don’t like what men ask for, and many feel they have the right to say no. Well, it’s a double standard, and it hurts men’s feelings, at least those men who have feelings. I often send couples home with a homework assignment: give each other a kissing lesson, then take turns being each other’s sex slave for a couple of hours (you can only do what your partner tells you to do, and you can only ask your partner to do things they don’t find repugnant). This forces both couples to communicate in a loving playful way. But how many women or men follow a therapist’s advice when it comes to sensuality? Sadly, maybe only one in five or ten. In my experience, both men and women have a long way to go to learn how to listen and respond compassionately to others.

This is from Mark Waldman who is an Associate Fellow at the Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pensylvania. Mark is the author 9 books and anthologies, including The Art of Staying Together, Love Games, Dreamscaping, The Spirit of Writing, and the 4-volume illustrated collection, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious (Lover; Healer; Seeker; Shadow). He was the founding editor of Transpersonal Review, reviewing books on transpersonal and Jungian psychology, religious studies, and mind/body medicine. As a therapist, he has a private counseling practice in Woodland Hills and Camarillo, California. Most recently, Mark has just completed a book that he wrote with Andrew Newberg, M.D. (of What the Bleep fame) titled Why We Believe What We Believe.

Here’s a question I got today:

Dear Kara,

I am in the middle of a situation with my fiance. He wants to have a threesome and I know that this would satisfy him and bring him a lot of pleasure. However he knows the woman he wants to be with us and I’m leary of the relationship. He says that it’s all just sex and he wants to be with the two women who have satisfied him sexually. Now am I wrong to feel like I am really not satisfying him fully or is it just a fun thing that men go through?

Please respond,

Thanks and please keep my name private…

And my response:

Hi,

I have talked to a lot of couples who have dabbled with threesomes and open marriages and the bottom line of my research is that it gets in the middle of the relationship and erodes the trust, love, respect, and friendship that is so necessary for a long-term relationship to last. Most of them said it caused them to break-up. The goal needs to be to do whatever will deepen love, not dissipate it. Othwerwise, why be in a relationship, especially if you are planning to get married? Bringing someone new into the bed is not going to deepen love. If the woman is single and available, you are both looking for trouble. If she is an ex girlfriend or lover, that’s really dangerous.

Years ago, in the 70’s, my ex-husband and I hung out with a couple our age who also had kids. We made out in their presence, as did they in ours, and that was enough to cause my husband to go to her secretly. He just couldn’t get her off of his mind. I did not find out about it until over 20 years later, but it shows what can happen. Fortunately, they only got together once or they might have started a relationship that could have broken us up way back then when our kids were little.

You should never have to feel obligated to do anything that makes you feel uncomfortable. He should have gotten his desire for a threesome out of his system when he was a young carefree bachelor. I’m sorry you are being asked to do this. It puts you in a very difficult position.

Here is an article I wrote for my AliveWithLove.com site. It might help:
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It’s amazing how often people, mostly men, ask me what I think of threesomes. I have talked to a lot of people who have tried it, and have read and heard a lot of professionals give advice on the subject, and it seems that, overall, it’s not a good idea.

There are a variety of problems that arise when a couple moves into this arena. One that happens more often than you might think is the two women (generally a threesome is with two women and one man) become attracted to each other and the man, who frequently instigates the get-together, gets jealous.

Another problem is the breakdown of the special intimacy that had developed before the third party disrupted it. And finally, the fact that you need to go to that kind of extreme to lend variety to the relationship is a red flag that there are other problems to look at.

Many I have talked to and read about say the threesome broke up their marriage. Probably, things were going bad already, and this just moved the process along.
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I hope this helps you with your decision. Most important is that you follow your heart and don’t do anything you don’t want to do or that you know you will regret.

With much love,
Kara