Dr. Kenneth Silvestri
Psychotherapist | Certified Homeopath

How can improvising, an action that isn't planned and emerges from a hidden place in our psyche, be a skill that explores new possibilities? Mary Catherine Bateson described it as a ". . . high order of skill,” one that should be practiced by the hour.”

Every moment and each conversation is an opportunity to make a profound difference in your life and simultaneously in your relationships. Intimacy offers harmony and a way to reconcile relationships, especially given the existing anger and polarization in our society and world.

Anger happens. In my mind, it is neither bad nor good, and it does not have to be one or the other. It is just a human emotion looking for an understandable context. It is confusing as Carol Tavris described in her classic book, Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion. Why is this so?

To be human is to be vulnerable and strive to survive. We are designed to deal with inevitable threats by activating our autonomic sympathetic nervous system into a fight-or-flight response. Maria Popova; in her brilliant weekly online blog, The Marginalian (March 22, 2020), weaves together her insights and those of others about how hope is an antidote to helplessness and disorientation.

I have been involved with couples/families as a systemic psychotherapist for the past forty years. They usually come to make a difference in their significant relationships, although they seldom initially understand how it is to be “within” those relationships. Having been trained in cultural anthropology to look at how change comes about, I have “learned to learn” to help them recognize the tipping point or readiness to make that difference.

In the mid-seventies, I applied to the interdisciplinary department of Family and Community Studies doctoral program at Columbia University, intentionally submitting a poem in lieu of the formal application at the suggestion of the beat poet Allen Ginsberg. My soon-to-be mentor Paul Byers, (who had a working relationship with Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson) convinced admissions not to pass on me while my application was “not familiar" he urged them to accept me on probation.

A recent press release from the U.S. Census Bureau (September 17, 2023) stated that 46.4 percent of U.S. adults are single and a 2021 Pew Research Center report that there is a decrease in those looking for meaningful relationships. The resulting media takeaway from these reports is that Americans are moving towards being more independent and less interested in relationships.

I have found from working for the past forty years as a family therapist a simple but profound prerequisite to having a rewarding relational experience, one that is beyond what we are accustomed to and seldom recognize in our everyday interactions.

We all think about making changes, whether it be dieting, new year’s resolutions, relationships or a myriad of desires to alter life's challenges. This brings up the proverbial question; how did the consequences of your efforts relate to what you wanted to change?

Pushing back when one is pushed is a cultural habit that stops us from recognizing different ways to minimize conflict. Gregory Bateson described this process as "schismogenesis” which means creating a division. It can take a “complementary” form or behavioral one e.g., the arms race resulting in escalating outcomes as each side attempts to improve their advantage. 

We all agree that there are mental and physical benefits from attaining happiness. Don’t get me wrong, being happy, awestruck, optimistic and positive has real value. Yet, it is important to start by recognizing that the word e.g., "happiness" is not the "thing," like the map is not the territory. If this is not understood, it can lead to frustration or happiness interruptus.

In honor of April's designation as Poetry Month, I would like to share what I have experienced using poetry for my own solace and with others in my practice of psychotherapy. Poetry is an aesthetic segue to sharing personal narratives beyond certain cultural constraints. There is always a tension between our natural abilities of intuitive thinking and how we are forced in many instances to deny that capability.

I would like to share a process from my forty years of practicing systemic therapy that has enabled me to help those who want to create “differences that make a difference,” as the late anthropologist Gregory Bateson would say. It is not a model or map, which lacks context, but a guide to better experiencing traveling your unique journey.

Life is full of paradoxes, the source of humor, enlightenment, and, unfortunately, unenviable double binds. As an example, Partner A asks Partner B, "Do you love me,?" Partner B responds, "Yes," Partner A says, "Why do I have to ask you?"

A commonly held belief about being mindful in our relationships, attributed to Zen philosophy, is to have a "beginner's mind," especially when dealing with conflicts. This is no easy task, given that we are dealing with a multitude of increasingly adversarial standoffs threatening us and our world. Most individuals try to avoid conflict, or at the least view it negatively.

My poem at the beginning of this article was motivated by the inspiring Unpsychology magazine’s summer 268-page issue about warm data. I highly recommend it (free download: https://www.unpsychology.org/). Included in this issue is an article of mine that is a response to the shared concerns of many families I am counseling, as well as my own social networks.* It addresses the many hurdles facing us regarding the intense polarization in our society, for which there seems to be little solution.

"IF YOU CAN RELATE TO OUR WORLD being an ecological process, one

where we and all non-human entities are interdependent, then it makes sense

to view the totality of nature as more than the sum of its parts — all have a

role in supporting our planet. Yet at Public School in Paterson, NJ, I was

taught that the whole was merely equal to the sum of its parts."

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Anyone who wishes to download (for free) the whole 268 page issue, please use the link below.

In the mid-1970s, when I was a doctoral student in Columbia University's graduate program of Family and Community Studies (Anthropology and Psychology), my original research proposal was on how mindfulness and creativity can enhance relationships.

After 50 years of facilitating communication as an educator, therapist, and community organizer, I have witnessed many contexts where people merely maintain and/or sabotage relationships. Being a systems thinker interested in helping make a difference, I look for the relationships between those in any social system that may be experiencing discord.

I am currently seeing an increasing interest with friends and those I work with to revisit family narratives. In my practice for the past forty years (which I recently figured out consists of over 50,000 sessions with several thousand individuals), I have been blessed to have had the opportunity to be part of facilitating many profound family narratives.

In this collection of poems and images, Cat Weaver, Ken Silvestri, and Natasha Rabin explore the enchantment trains can bring. Trains share in the big and small events of people's lives, and remembered moments in them are depicted here as haunting, bittersweet, quietly nostalgic, and gently comic.