What Your Candidate's Body is Telling You

Did you wonder why Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were so cordial to each other when they were positioned side by side during the recent television debates, yet when they returned to the campaign trail they hurled verbal missiles at each other like Cold War enemies?

Julius Fast knows the answer. When you want to challenge people you face them; when you want to disarm them, you position yourself next to them. Today, political television shows feature psychologists specializing in analysis of the body movements, facial indicators and speech patterns of candidates. These specialists may not be aware of the debt they owe to Fast. His groundbreaking Body Language, published in 1980, popularized the concept that our posture and gestures, the angle of our shoulders and the tilt of our head, the unintended smile when one is supposed to be angry, or the faint scowl when one is supposed to be friendly, express truths in a code that belies what we are saying or contradicts the impression we are trying to communicate. In politics body language is particularly important because confidence and other subtle indicators of dominance can win an election, and unconscious submissiveness can lose one. Sincerity is a politician's stock in trade, but whatever he may promise at the podium, he may project hypocrisy if you know what to look for.

This is not just theory. Body Language can help anyone who reads it by making us aware of the signals we're sending out and those that others are sending to us. Next time you book a business lunch, decide what will accomplish your goals more effectively - sitting next to your guests or opposite them.

After reading Fast's book you'll be a better reader of faces, bodies and tones of voice. Indeed, you may even be ready to run for public office!

- Richard Curtis

About that Mother Ship...

When psychiatrists visit psychiatrists what do they talk about? I can guess what Freudian psychiatrist Herbert M. Stein discusses on the couch: his passion for movies. In Double Feature: Discovering Our Hidden Fantasies in Film, Dr. Stein makes his secret life public by revealing the subliminal themes, fantasies and archetypes underlyng such classic motion pictures as Jurassic Park, Forrest Gump, Field of Dreams and The Usual Suspects. You may not be aware as you munch popcorn that you're reliving childhood Oedipal fixations, undergoing castration anxieties, or yearning for your mother's breast. One reason why is that the people who produced the film may not have been aware of it, either. But one reason why some movies affect us so profoundly is that we are resonating to fundamental images buried deep below our personal and tribal consciousness.

Dr. Stein has managed to articulate these themes in a way that makes us want to rush to view these movies again to see what we missed the first time.

And the rental costs are a helluva lot cheaper than a session in a shrink's office.

- Richard Curtis

Do the Math

Tim O'Reilly is the founder of O'Reilly Media which publishes many technical and programming manuals for all the arcane branches of system management, specific languages, operating systems, design & graphics, databases, you name it. He has been around the tech business (and the publishing business, too) for quite a while and has probably forgotten more about some of today's "new ideas" than the people who think they've invented those ideas have ever imagined. Needless to say, he's worth paying attention to when he talks about matters technical and book-related. Not least among his accomplishments, O'Reilly was involved with GNN, the first ever commercial website and the place that ran the very first banner ad.

Fortunately, he sees blogging as a useful tool for plugging his product lines and his ideas and he also has a sense of humor since his corporate blog is named Radar. The M*A*S*H reference certainly tickles my fancy.

In a recent post, O'Reilly has some pointed, intelligent and business-like things to say about one of our favorite topics, the Kindle, as well as about e-book pricing, potential markets, making a profit and other relevant issues. He observes the enthusiastic and optimistic chat about how e-books need to be priced at no more than $5 each to broaden the market and how some writers have expectations, or at least hopes, that they will get rich, or at least make lots more money, selling updates to people who buy their book for the Kindle. ("I'll sell 40,000 e-book copies of my book and 25% of those people will pay me an annual fee for the updates and maybe I'll make some money by making my e-books ad-supported as well and...")

He applies hard-won knowledge of the ways of the marketplace (Think no more than 1%, not 25% as a likely subscriber ratio and don't forget that Amazon will take 65% of each sale since you're a solo content-provider...) and brings things down to earth. I can taste the reality in what he has to say because I've had my own versions of that glorious optimism and the inevitable sober reflection when the final picture doesn't turn out to be as rosy as the hopes that propelled the initial effort.

What he says may be discouraging on one level but it isn't intended to discourage. It's intended to make people think in terms that can actually be realized. It's intended to make people actually do the math and realize that if you sell too cheaply, you aren't necessarily going to make it up on volume. (Although that's an experiment that probably should be tried in multiple variations.) It's intended to make certain that rational planning and disciplined expectations rule the day and that massive disappointment down the line is less likely because "irrational exuberance" is not the order of the day.

By the way, not only does what O'Reilly say make sense, he elicits voluminous comments and a much higher percentage of them make sense than I'm used to seeing in most other blogs. I'm planning to add his blog to my must list.

-- John

ON KILLING by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman

(Updated 10/12, adding an interview w. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, following this introduction)

Of the thousands of books I have represented, there are very few about which I can say it was an honor to be associated with them. On Killing by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman is one of a handful that occupies a very privileged place in my heart. That it was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize validates my contention that it is an extraordinarily significant work.

By the time Col. Grossman submitted his manuscript to me in the mid 1990s, the Viet Nam War, from which he had drawn so many poignant lessons for his research, had been ostensibly over for two decades. I say “ostensibly” because, for the traumatized veterans that he worked with as a combat psychologist, the war raged on in their tormented memories. Even as he comforted and helped heal countless men in veterans’ facilities, he was also asking questions of them that few had had the courage to ask, and formulating insights that enabled him to understand the experience of killing in ways that historians and social scientists had seldom grasped. I remember his telling me that killing was the last intimate act between humans that had not been explored scientifically. How odd, that an evil to which humankind has forever been exposed, should be a black hole in our understanding.

Out of his intensive studies, observations and interviews Grossman formulated a science he calls “Killology.” It’s a disturbing term but it pins us to his topic like a bayonet and forces us to gaze, eyes wide open, at an act that is both obscene and profane. Yet at the heart of his thesis is the contention that humans have an innate aversion to taking life. Given the sad history of our race that’s a large pill to swallow, but if you suspend skepticism and grant him this assumption your journey into the heart of darkness will be rewarded with a note of hope. Whether you are willing to extend to perpetrators a fraction of the sympathy that you extend to victims is a question only you will answer when you finish the book, but you will certainly appreciate the torment of men in war and war’s aftermath better than you do now.

What makes On Killing doubly significant is its extension of the experience of war to that of peace. Are children who are exposed to violent movies and video death-games more susceptible to murderous hostility? Are they stimulated to killing rage? Do they become more tolerant of mayhem?

Read On Killing and judge.

--Richard Curtis

Interview with Lt. Col. Dave Grossman by E-Reads

E-Reads: As you've grown older and wiser, have you modified your views about the nature of killing? About human nature?

DG: No, not really. I've expanded the model a little, and have placed that in my latest book, On Combat.

E-Reads: In your dealings with veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq, is there a material difference between the nature of their stress and the stresses suffered by Vietnam veterans?

DG: Today we are rotating units into combat (as opposed to individual replacements in Vietnam) and they are all wartime volunteers. They enlisted or reenlisted in time of war. This makes for a significant reduction in psychological trauma and incidence of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).

E-Reads: You tour extensively. Who is your main audience? What are some of the most often-asked questions?

DG: Roughly 50% of my audiences are law enforcement. Another 30% are military units, and 20% educators.

The most commonly asked questions revolve around the incidence of PTSD in Iraq and Afghanistan. My best answer to that is in the 2nd edition to On Combat, which was released just this year. I've included a clip from On Combat (below) that addresses this issue.

"Sadly, it is not difficult to find people in the mental health community to support the thesis that anyone who kills, experiences combat, or witnesses violence (or any other fill-in-the-blank 'victim du jour') is doomed to lifelong PTSD and, consequently, needs lifelong mental health care. Too few mental health professionals communicate to their patients that 1) they can recover quickly from PTSD and that 2) they will become stronger from the experience. Yet that expectation must be there if there is to be hope of anything other than a lifetime of expensive counseling.

[ ... ]

PTSD is like being overweight. Many people carry around 10, 20, or 30 pounds of excess weight. Although it influences the individual every minute of every day, it might not be a big deal health wise. But for those people who are 500 pounds overweight, it will likely kill them any day now. There was a time when we could only identify people who had "500 pounds" of PTSD. Today we are better at spotting folks who carry lesser loads, 30, 40 or 50 pounds of PTSD.

I have read statistics that say 15 percent of our military is coming home with "some manifestation of psychological problems." Others claim it is 20 percent and still others report 30 percent. Well, depending on how you want to measure it, 30 percent of all college freshmen have some manifestation of psychological problems. Mostly what is being reported on today are people with low levels of PTSD (30, 40 or 50 pounds of PTSD) who in previous wars would not have been detected. We are getting damned good at identifying and treating PTSD and, when the treatment is done, most people are better for the experience.

PTSD is not like frostbite. Frostbite causes permanent damage to your body. If you get frostbite, for the rest of your life you will be more vulnerable to it. PTSD is not like that.

PTSD can be more like the flu. The flu can seriously kick your tail for a while. But once you shake it off, you probably are not going to get it again for the rest of the year. You have been inoculated. PTSD can kick your tail for a while (months and even years). But once you have dealt with it, next time it will take a lot more to knock you off your feet because you have been stress inoculated."

E-Reads: Do you feel your approach to killing has had a positive effect on our understanding of human behavior? Do you think human nature can be changed for the better?

DG: I don't think that our basic, underlying, innate nature can change much, but we can do a better job of warning and preparing people. And my books, On Killing and On Combat have proven themselves to be very valuable resources to help warn and prepare or GIs and their families.

On Killing and On Combat are both on the USMC Commandant's Required Reading list. (I think I'm the only author to have two books on the list.) Both books are also required reading at West Point and many other military and law enforcement academies. We have been at war for 6 years now, and we have learned a lot. All nonessential ideas and material have been jettisoned in the unforgiving 'acid test' of war. For these books to still be held up as required reading indicates that that they have something valuable and timeless to contribute, and it is a good feeling to be of service.

Perhaps most important of all, On Killing's final section (on media violence) has been supported with important new research. Sadly, that section has been validated by many tragic incidents of juvenile mass murders in the school.

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Lt. Col. Grossman continues the research that let to the writing of On Killing, does regular public speaking engagements on the subject and maintains a website, Killology Research Group, which constantly adds new information on the topic.