340. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 64 (Weick & Roberts, pt. 1)

This week in physical therapy we started working on my upper torso and arms too, so it seems the weakness is also in my upper body.  It's really frustrating, because I feel like my doctors are being sort of stagnant but my options here locally are pretty minimal.  The thing is that there is this one neurology group that has offices everywhere and my experience is that they don't like you going to get second opinions if you've seen someone already at another of their offices.  So that knocks all of their offices out.  Then forget everyone that doesn't take my insurance.  And you want to get someone good for a second opinion, and there could well be good neurologists out there in small offices, but how am I to tell?

So for now I'm sticking with my current doctors hoping they come through in time before anything becomes too terrible or irreversible or something.  But I'm sure it's related to the g.i. problems and this is what I've been saying from the beginning, but I'm not sure everyone believed me.  But my physical therapist is seeing the upper body weakness now too.

At least we're seeing improvement from the Botox treatment for the migraine.  It's not going to cure everything though.

***

Yesterday I got a bunch of pictures in the mail from my dad's sister, in response to my Easter card I sent her and I told her about my magnetic wall with all the portraits on it.  That was very nice of her to send those pictures.  I still need to select pictures and have them enlarged (to 8" x 8" - approximately 20 cm. x 20 cm.)  for the room divider.  It holds 30 altogether, but I have a few already, so I need maybe about 25, so I'm sure that some of those will be nice ones to add.

***

I'm making crepes and blueberry sauce for the Easter brunch after service tomorrow.  I'm using the recipe from my Russian friend, Nina.  It's a yeast crepe.  Historically, crepes are a triditional Russian dish around Easter time.  I thought about making a Pascha, but I don't have a form for that, although I understand that you can improvise without one.  I maid the blueberry sauce already, a quart of it.  I tried pouring it out of a pitcher, but the berries didn't come out very well, so they'll just have to spoon it out of a bowl.  I'll make the crepes later today, and reheat both of them before I leave in the morning.

***

We're starting a new text, as I said last time, and the text is:

Weick, Karl E. & Roberts, Karlene H. (1993). Collective mind in organizations: heedful interrelating on flight decks. Administrative Science Quarterly, 38, 357-381.


Actually, although there are a lot of interesting things in this article, I'm just going to discuss one section.  Basically, the acticle discusses difference approaches to collective thinking, especially as pertains to work on flight decks, but the authors also refer to a lot of other contexts as well.  The text I'm using is in the "Discussion" section at the end.


"The combination of developed-group-undeveloped mind is found in the phenomenon of groupthink..., as well as in cults, ineractions at NASA prior to the Challenger disaster..., and ethnocentric research groups...  Common among these examples is subordination to a system that is envisaged carelessly, or, as Janis... put it, there is an overestimation of the group's power, morality, and invulnerability.  Furthermore, contributions are made thoughtlessly; as Janis... put it, there is self-censorship of deviations, doubts, and conterarguments. And, finally, representations are careless; ; members maintain the false assumption that silence means consent... In the presence of heedless interrelating, comprehension declines, regardless of how long the group has been together, and disaster results." (p.375)

Terms like "thoughtlessly", "undeveloped mind", or "carelessly" wouldn't seem to fit an organization like the Vienna mission, but when you think that the mission wanted onconditional trust, and, as far as I knew and experienced, there was not really any place for questioning and serious doubt in the mission.  If you did, they'd have a way to make you see things their way, which I'm not sure was always through standard logical means.  After all, your job was at risk if you didn't come around (defiance wasn't unacceptable).  I think the Vienna workers were maybe pushed to maybe make Kierkegaardian leaps of faith, if you will, in areas, where they otherwise might have spent more time assessing the situation, collecting information, etc.  So they come to see the people as trustworthy and take the leap based on their trust in the person.  This can be regarding any number of issues.  The new member might still not be sure about the issue, but becomes willing to so ahead and accept the mission's position based on the person's say-so because he trust's the person.

So this leads me back to my original statement that there was some thoughtlessness, undeveloped minds and carelessness on the way to socialization (if not nirvana)

Let's take a look at the Vienna mission's power, morality and invulnerability.   The mission was pretty powerful. It had some 15 missions behind it, including a few very large ones and most of the key players in Eastern Europe.  So as far as Evangelical missions, Easern European Evangelical missions, or just Evangelical Christianity, especially in North America, but also some European too, they had a fair a mount of clout.  One might want to think twice before taking them on in any of those arenas.  They also had to military chaplains, so it's possible there's another source of power.

I've discussed a fair amount regarding the morality of the mission here on this blog, so I won't belabor it here.  They did a lot of things that were contrary to Scripture and their focus on ends justifies the means (i.e., deception as a way of life)  seem rather strange for a Christian organization purporting to train others to be church workers. (i.e., do as I say, not as I do!).

The Vienna mission did not think it was invulnerable and neither did any one working in it, including any of the leaders. 

I wonder if in Vienna there was "self-censorship of deviations, doubts, and counterarguments."  I know there wasn't for me, but then I was never fully socialized either, so that's no surprise.  I had self-censorship because I knew what I could and could not say while there.  The thing was that I was living clear across the world and it was not like I could just white and go look for another job.  My doubts became clearer and clearer as time when on because I had more time to think about things, but also different things that happened brought new angles and thoughts to mind.  I had counterarguments from almost the very beginning, which is a sad thing to say.  One of the first things I remember is being overwhelmed by the welcome and then having almost now work to do and those stupid software manuals when I'd offered to take a class before I arrived even.  So right off the bad counter arguments about these things that didn't make sense just screamed for attention in my mind.  But I had these kinds of thoughts clear till the  day I left.  My send off wasn't much either.  I dought anyone else had those kinds of thoughts continue throughout their stay, so these thoughts weren't once you were socialized.  The problem with that, though, is that you and none of the other members are holding them accountable because you can't have these kind of thoughts once you've been socialized.

So who's going to speak out then?  It seem I'm the only one that maybe ever left with a fully active conscious.  And I didn't even go to seminary.

277. Reprieve: Family (What's Left of It)

My stimulator finished and I've finished breakfast and I've been trying to pen an e-mail to one of my brothers. Should I send it or not? The thing is, it will probably backfire, he will probably deny everything, but I'd like to think we can be open about our thoughts and have an "adult" relationship. My sense is we can't.

Using Transactional Analysis as a framework, this is how adult (age-wise) relationships between my (birth) family have worked:

1. Women are "children" in the transactional analysis sense, both abolutely and in relation to men.

2. Men are "adults" in absolute terms, and "parents" in relation to women.

3. The men like this relation vis a vis women, and might even feel less "manly" if the relationship were otherwise (e.g., "adult" to "adult").

4. I think my mother liked her position (although it's possible she didn't always like it).

5. I (a female) don't like it.

6. Growing up I didn't understand that women were supposed to be like "children," in relation to men especially.

Here's the e-mail so far (name's omitted):

***

I just wanted to say something in follow up to yesterday's interactions. I understand that you only want to help and you think you have my best interests in mind, but I really want to live my own life. You didn't need to send me your reserves study, because I already understood the issues and I really can take care of things on my own here. I don't want you and [our other brother] to be so intimately involved in my life. I'm an adult and I really can make decisions on my own.

I think this family is sort of too insular and dependent on each other. In situations like this you only need to express the basic issues and then you can step back. I don't want you to try to keep harping at this kind of thing, because it's my life and I'm going to live it as I see fit. Again, you are not my husband and don't need to keep at it and at it and at it trying to muscle your way into my life - that's how it feels, so no matter what your intentions, so please step back. If you don't know how to relate to me in any way other than trying to always help me, then I'm going to have to limit our relations, meaning limiting interactions between us, which I don't really want to do.

After so many years, I hope you understand my personality enough to know that I like my independence. If you don't know how to give advice and then let me make my own decision (that is not harp on it) and can't find some other way to relate to me other than on the basis of always just wanting to "help" me, then our relationship is going to be very rocky. I need to be very blunt about this to make sure you understand, and to be very honest with you I'm not sure you'll understand anyway.

In the current situation I have issues to keep in mind that I don't expect you to understand and it may not even be any of your business what some of the issues are. I don't agree with everything you've done, but I don't keep harping at it. I don't even go around saying that you made your bed now sleep in it, although there are things I could say that about both you and [our other brother] in that regard (as well as both of you being able to say that about me too). But do I go around butting into your business saying, oh, no you need to do thus and so? No, I don't, I let you live your own lives. If I disagree strongly enough with either of you, I just step back and let you live your own life.

As far as I see it, trying to help me can have different purposes, as to why you might want to keep helping me. Besides the possibility of just plain and simple trying to help me, taking a helping role might help bolster your self esteem or perhaps increase your standing in the family. But this basically is happening by trying to make me look somehow less than you in one way or another. That is, your self esteem is bolstered so long as your relationship with (certain?) others is a certain way, and/or your view of ideal family relations is hierarchical, so you have a need to position yourself so you don't come out at the bottom.

This ignores the male-female issue. You, [our other brother and his sons] can go ahead and have our male bonding thing, that's fine with me. But you leave it there. I am not accepting your attributions of female expectations, and if your bonding explicitly or implicitly means that there are different expectations for me as a woman and/or my role in the family is defined mainly (or completely) by my gender, then I opt out. So now is the time to make these things clear.

And before you get all huffy about these things, you should just know that there some people who understand the gendered aspects of our family relationships, people who have come to this understanding on their own.

It's been quite a while since I've dated much and my health precludes the likelihood of this happening much in the future (not that I necessarily want to date anyway, because I'm rather happily single), but my experience is that many men don't understand a middle ground; either they want an all-out relationship with a woman (i.e., dating vs. friend; "going together" vs. casual dating, etc. ), or they want no relationship at all with her. In our case, it would be something like, you-the-helper and me-the-needy or no relationship at all. You have to come out on top or there's no relationship at all. That's how it feels at this end of the relationship.

This is how I foresee the future relationship between me and you and [our other brother] : The only way I will see you again is by my coming to Seattle. It's possible I could never see [our other brother] and the boys again, but if I do or if I see you in a situation other than my coming to Seattle it will be under the circumstances that you are more powerful than me, such as in a situation where you are "helping" me. This is unacceptable, and as things stand, I see my options as either opting out of the family or accepting being strong-armed into a "needy" position vis a vis you and/or [our other brother].

I should send this to [our other brother] too, but the context is yesterday's interactions about the condo. I'm not going to tell you all the issues involved in my decision making about the condo, because I don't expect you to understand and also because I want to live my life. I appreciate your advice about the condo, but you've started overstepping your bounds. There's nothing more I need from you regarding the condo, including setting things up. You've got a lot of good skills and knowledge, and you shouldn't need me to tell you that... unless you're insecure. So, let me be and if you want to help someone, go find a place to volunteer your services. I'm putting it like this because 1) you don't seem to know your bounds as to how much help might be appropriate, and 2) I think you don't know how to relate to me apart from "helping" me.

Before yesterday's interactions, I was sort of thinking that you could come down here at some point to just relax. But now I'm thinking that might be a pipe dream, for several reasons. 1) You're more likely to go to New York, where you'll have more fun and it would be better for you in the long run to maintain those relations, and 2) if you came down here it would not be to relax but to help me and maybe also relax some. In any case, you don't need me, although you might need [our other brother] and the boys. The need between you and [our other brother] is probably mutual.

***

He won't be able to accept this. He will protest vehemently about my assertions here and he will only be able to accept an all or nothing relationship - meaning our relationship is parent-child (with him as the "parent") or we don't have a relationship. The same is probably true for my other brother, mainly because of his vulnerability with his boys and living on his ex-wife's turf in small town America. Otherwise the other brother would be more able to have an adult to adult relationship with me. Also, we have major disagreements that he can't risk blowing up through closer contact.

Should I send this e-mail or not? Or should communicate these sentiments but in a different way? If I don't communicate them things will just go on as they are, which I can't accept either. If I just step back he may well not let the issue drop and insist on continuing to play the "parent" role, especially since this is an area where he is knowledgeable (it's his profession, after all). I don't know what to do, so I think I'll sit on it. If it persists, maybe I'll send it.

***

Post Script:

This is what happened yesterday: In the morning my brother e-mailed me a copy of the reserve study where he works. Later, after work, he called me en route to an appointment to discuss it and also, apparently, to underline that the information in the report is confidential.

First of all, we'd already hashed this out and I had told him (more than once, I believe) that my last condo had a lot in reserve, although I no longer have copies of those summaries we got at our annual business meeting. I had absolutely no need to have that information from my brother as I already understood and had people (a lawyer, financial adviser) here who were likewise concerned and we didn't need his involvement at all.

I hope you see how degrading this could be - it's basically telling me that he doesn't think I can make a decision like this on my own.

First of all, it's my life and I'm an adult and able to make my own decisions. My value structure and priorities are also my own and I am under no obligation to divulge them to my brothers. While the financial considerations in my decision are important, there are also other issues at stake, and whenever my brothers weigh in on anything it is actually, as it always turns out, more for their benefit - to serve their interests - than it is for my benefit and to serve my interests. For the immediate time it may look like it's for my interests, but it always turns out otherwise, and I've been down that road too many times with my family.

But usually if I stand my ground, that means I'll just be isolated, although dad was probably the one who was least likely to act this way in the family. Dad's helping me might have included a desire to minimize fallout from anything to do with his work affecting me, but he wouldn't isolate me. Mom could isolate me, but this was probably at least in part due to being in a weak position herself and not knowing who to believe or if she believed me there would be a great response from the other family member (depending on what the issue was).

I hope you can begin to see how I'm in a dilemma about who to name as benefactor(s), who to have power of attorney (in case I become incapacitated), etc. I just would like to have straight adult-to-adult relationships with family members, but the more of these things you add to the mix, the more there is the problem of inequality of power and if power is a significant issue in relations, than these issues (naming of benefactors, etc.) are not an insignificant ones. Also, I think in this kind of scenario - how my birth family functions - naming someone a benefactor is tantamount to saying I'm willing to play the child in a parent-child relationship with the person named my benefactor. I would also add that I am no one's benefactor, power of attorney, etc. So it's very much stacked against me, and virtually my only recourse is getting out or just accepting it and somehow playing along. This is what I did in Vienna and was told at the end my my main mentor that I was like the little school boy who, when he was sitting down in response to the teacher's demand, said that he was standing up on the inside. I think it's hard to keep this conflict up indefinitely, though (disagreeing but going along anyway).

So then my choices, basically, are 1) to opt out of the family (maintaining my beliefs & values and have thought-action congruity), 2) maintain relations and continue to deal with these issues but try to maintain my independence of thought (maintaining my beliefs & values and have thought-action incongruity), or 3) just give in (adapting my beliefs and values and have thought- action congruity).

I can think of a myriad ways any of these could play out and it might be possible to partially do any of them, but that's dependent on whether my brothers (the other parties remaining in the family) agree, because relationships are usually not unilateral ones. I'm skeptical that there's anyway to combine these 3 options, as I'm having a tough time thinking of how that could happen. The place where there might involve some variance is when you consider that the other party(-ies) could also opt for either 1, 2 or 3. In this case if we all went for option 3, we'd all be willing to relate to each other as adults and deal with these things on equal terms and in a respectful way. Respect, I should mention, disallows bullying, use of any type of putdowns, inequality in relations, not taking the other person seriously, etc. Let's just say that it would be a major miracle (think parting of the Red Sea) for all parties to take the third option in relation to each other. Maybe my brothers relate to each other this way, but they don't relate to me this way... which I theorize is because I have a vagina. (Sorry to be crude, but that's really what it comes down to, although that's not to say that's the only difference between us.)

74. Defense & High-Reliability Firms File, Part 1 (Roberts et al., pt. 1/Belenk, pt. 1)

I chose this file because it deals with a broad range of issues pertinent to my situation. I may have to stop half-way through my Vienna experience to go through another file, though.

I don't know about you, but I'd never heard of "High-Reliability Firms" until I began this research. Since I was trying to make sense of my situation I started with keywords and then followed leads to other literature that seemed pertinent, and that led me to "High-Reliability Firms" among other things. Since I'm assuming you probably don't know any more than I did (although this may not be true for all readers) about this, I'm starting with an article from the file that helps define it.

***

Roberts, Karlene H., Rousseau, Denise M., La Porte, Todd R. (1994) The culture of high reliability: quantitative and qualitative assessment aboard nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. The Journal of High Technology Management Research, v(1), p. 141-161.

***

"At least two features differentiate high reliability organizations (HROs) from other organizations. First, the goal of process reliability equals or supersedes the goal of product reliability. Most organizations focus on product or outcome reliability, subordinating process reliability to it. HROs focus on process reliability without it, performance reliability is impossible to obtain. Second, HROs are expected to perform at high tempo for sustained periods of time and to maintain the ability to do so repeatedly (e.g., air traffic control). When danger threatens they often cannot stop performing until the danger passes, the error rectified, or the broken part fixed." (p. 141-142).

That's it in a nutshell, but I'm not going to comment yet. There will be some similarities with the mission in Vienna, but I suspect my dad was not unfamiliar with this kind of setting either.

***

"... [A]n important ingredient in the operation of 'excellent' organizations is their cultures. In HROs, numerous strategies are specified for insuring safe, reliable performance such as training, leadership, control functions, and rewards and punishments. Yet, not everything can be specified. Acculturation to operational norms is the process through which organizations transmit these more unspecified aspects (e.g., acceptable and unacceptable behavior). In today's vernacular, culture replaces the informal organization... as the conveyor of behavioral requisites." (p. 142)

Remember that in doing this research I was trying to make sense of my life and some things that had happened, particularly starting with Vienna. We're going to learn more about some of these different components as we go along here. Acculturation / socialization happens in most companies to one degree or another, but I think that the Vienna mission was run according to a philosophy similar to that of an HRO, in which acculturation takes on a whole new urgency and can possibly be used to include more of a person's life than in other types of organizations.

***

"Cultures yield predictable behavior patterns facilitating control in organizations. Though control is accomplished by cultural mechanisms, anthropologists... and group psychoanalysts... argue that control is a result rather than a primary purpose of culture." (p. 143)

I've already discussed control in the context of brainwashing and cults, but this is another approach to it, another dimension, if you will. In Vienna, though, I felt like control was a major (if not the primary) purpose of culture.

***

The references to technology in this next quote are not particularly relevant for the Vienna setting, but if you replace technology with hazards connected with working in the East Bloc there is a fairly good fit:

"HROs are not only charged with reducing hazards, they are also asked to reduce the larger public's fears, by managing hazardous operations at very low risk. Operators and their management face two kinds of pressures:

a) task demands based on comprehension of the technology, its risks, and the scope of possible catastrophes,

b) sociopolitical demands based on member perceptions and anticipations of consequences of failure from the social (e.g., work group, managerial) and political (e.g., public scrutiny) systems of which they are a part.

Demands rooted in the technology are addressed by managing operational requirements. Sociopolitically-based demands are addressed through political behavior, deference to authority, and approval seeking." (p. 143)

So here you have it, the explicit and the implicit, hard power and soft power. "The public" here could be supporters and churches back home, for example. If you take a risk management approach to missions in Eastern Europe (or other closed countries) then you end out with something like this, something like what I experienced in Vienna. But it still begs the question as to whether it is a biblical approach. I hold that it isn't, which I've already made clear in other places in this blog.

***

"[T]he predominant cultures of HROs should yield two distinct types of cultural content:

1. Elements promoting the security of the members by prescribing task-related behaviors, dominated by values and norms of perfectionism and criticism or opposition, that support the technology by focusing member attention upon detail, critiquing information systems and decision making with consideration of worst case scenarios and data quality, enforcing detailed plans and procedures regarding appropriate sequences of actions in response to problems. We label these Task/security cultures.

2. Elements promoting member security by prescribing interpersonal behaviors protecting individual vulnerabilities to the larger socio-political system in which high reliability technology is embedded. Winning the trust and support of fellow operators can involve more than just performing tasks safely and correctly. Members may find it easier to trust someone who appears to care about the work group and accept its conventions. Norms and values supporting self-protection in relation to others, seeking approval, behaving conventionally, and dependently, attempt to foster inclusion and make interpersonal relations safer, more secure and predictable. We term these Self-Protection cultures." (p. 143-144)

In the Vienna context, the "Country Heads" (i.e., heads of the teams working in specific countries) and their teams would be in the first culture, I think, what these authors term "Task/security cultures". Although I made a few mission trips, I was mostly in the second group, a Self-Protection culture part of the work. I knew before ever getting to Vienna that there was what is called a "high culture" and a "low culture". In societal cultures "high culture" would be dance, music, literature, things like that. "Low culture" is the norms, values, traditions, etc. For the most part I did not accept the "low culture" norms of the mission in Vienna, and you can see how that might be problematic for me. I hope you've gotten enough from my posts to realize that I probably never ever would have accepted their "low culture" as I don't to this day.

***

This methodology of this study included the administering of the Organizational Culture Inventory to approximately a thousand staff in a range of positions on 2 US nuclear aircraft carriers. This instrument was used to analyze the cultures according to this model of the two types of cultures in HROs. Most of the discussion and results aren't too relevant to my Vienna experience, but here's something worth discussing:

"Self-protection norms are significantly related to conflicting and low clarity of expectations, high accommodation (having to behave differently than one would normally), low satisfaction and recommendation (of this organization to a person similar to one's self), and low commitment to one's squadron." (p. 155)

I think this is very interesting, but I'm not sure I'd say that even though I think the "self-protection culture," as described here, was strong in Vienna. Perhaps this paradigm isn't a perfect one for my situation.

I would say that while this technology-centered HRO (albeit in a military setting) may have some similarities to Vienna, I think that espionage settings might fill in where the HRO paradigm, as described here, isn't a complete match.

***

The next source is chapters in an edited book:

Belenk, G. (Ed.). (1987). Contemporary Studies in Combat Psychiatry. NY, NY: Greenwood Press.

***

[Chapter] 4 An Investigation into the Value of Unit Cohesion in Peacetime, by Frederick J. Manning and Larry H. Ingraham.

In discussing the findings of their study of cohesion in 20 U.S. battalions the authors have this to say:

"Not only does the group member's commitment to the norms of the formal organization depend upon identification with the leaders, in the 'link-pin' fashion described previously, but persons who are made to feel like valued members of a group will feel far more attraction to the group than those who do not have much social worth. We would argue from this that building cohesion requires interaction beyond the work setting, where rank and duties so clearly delimit 'worth'" (p. 64)

I think there was a certain amount of this in Vienna, although I specify that identification especially to one's immediate superiors, but then also to those farther up the organization. The link to those in the immediate proximity to one's position in Vienna seemed particularly necessary in their way of doing things.

The part in this text about needing "interaction beyond the work setting" was certainly true in Vienna, but I would say it a lot strong vis a vis Vienna. Not only was simple interaction necessary, but pretty much complete and total involvement. It was as if if there was a part of your life that wasn't immediately a part of or for the benefit of the mission then it must be a deterrent to cohesion, which was close to absolute, or it was a potential deterrent by means of instilling distrust because of having a personal life not otherwise a part of the mission.

***

[Chapter] 8. Psychodynamic Considerations in the Adaptation to Combat, by Jon A. Shaw.

***

"A successful adaptation would represent an individual who is able to achieve sufficient mastery over the stress of combat so that he is able to function effectively in a combat situation. An unsuccessful adaptation is characterized by the psychological failure of the soldier to function in combat... Everyone has a breaking point, a point of heightened vulnerability...

Stress refers to an external stimulus impacting on the individual's nervous system in such a way as to evoke neuroendocrine and neurophysiological responses of arousal. The individual experiences stress internally as 'anxiety.'...

The stressful experience can best be defined as a process of adaptation, involving a dynamic interaction between the individual, his biological resiliency, his repertoire of defenses and coping behaviors, and the specific environmental stresses." (p. 117-118)

I don't want to say a lot about this yet, but this came into play in Vienna. I was told that a lot of the guys (there were more men than women that traveled, especially as a major part of their work... this was, after all, an evangelical mission, and as such was what some would term sexist) jogged as a way to deal with their stress, and I also picked up jogging there. I did more jogging there than I did at any other time in my life. I felt (and still do) like most of my stress, however, was artificially induced by the mission, but we'll get to that later.

***

"We know that individuals who are most resistant to stress often have a cognitive flexibility which enables them to cope with change. They experience stress not as a threat but as a challenge to be mastered." (p. 124)

At this point in my life I must be pretty high on the cognitive flexibility scale, having gone through so many tumultuous changes of various kinds in my life. I had some flexibility at the time I was in Vienna, but not near what I have now. I hope I've learned something along the way at least.

***

"The principles of treatment in combat psychiatry are well known and have been sufficiently stated to be known to virtually all practitioners in military psychiatry. These are usually referred to as: (1) proximity, (2) immediacy, and (3) expectancy. This essentially means that the individual soldier is treated as far forward as possible, as quickly as possible, with the expectancy that the soldier will return to his combat unit expeditiously. It is impossible to stress sufficiently enough the power of expectancy as the guiding therapeutic principle." (p. 130)

After returning home from Vienna devastated my journal that year shows how in the midst of my struggling through to make sense of things, I practically from the get go began trying to figure out another way to reach my dream of ministry in the USSR. Within a year I had started on a master's degree program towards that end.

Having that renewed vision and determination with concomitant reaffirming successes along the way did a lot towards helping me feel grounded. But I still felt isolated because I didn't think others understood what happened and the significance of it, and I still feel that way about it, although the distance from it in years now has decreased the importance of it. But it did put a strain on a lot of relationships. There are just too many things that I feel like people in the main can't really understand or don't care to take the time to understand. You have to admit, I'm a pretty complex person.

***

[chapter] 14 Combat Motivation, by Anthony Kellett

***

"Group formation is notably rapid in armies. From the first, the recruit is confronted with a strange, stressful, new environment which prompts him to associate himself with others in the same predicament." (p. 207)

I feel like this was true for the Vienna mission too. I think, after boot camp, that military recruits join pre-existing units, which would be more like how it was in Vienna, since it wasn't like there was a whole cohort of us together starting boot camp at the same time. We all came individually. But the experience really was a sort of baptism by fire. I don't think I felt an adequate sense of the "strange, stressful, new environment" to be prompted to associate "with others in the same predicament." t wasn't that I didn't want to associate at all with them, but I didn't have a felt need to limit my extracurricular life to socializing with them.

***

"'Cohesion' denotes the feelings of belonging and solidarity that largely occur at the primary group level... and results from sustained interactions, both formal and informal, among group members on the basis of common experiences, interdependence, and shared goals and values. 'Esprit' denotes feelings of pride, unity of purpose, and adherence to an ideal represented by the unit, and it generally applies to larger units, having more formal boundaries, than the primary group." (p. 208)

I don't think I ever had "feelings of belonging and solidarity" in Vienna. The closest I came was probably at the very beginning, sort of the honeymoon stage, but it never went past that, I don't think, and eventually eroded altogether, to where, at the end, I was actually being isolated.

***

I think that's all for tonight. Good night.

~ Meg