Divorce Balance

Negotiation > Recovery > Enhancement

Saturday, February 26, 2005
Hearing Scotomas

"We all heard the same objective reality. That's a fact. I've got it on tape, and I can play it back for you."

End of story—?

Well, let's listen in on a recent divorce support group discussion and find out.

Close to a dozen people attending: Separated, in the process of divorce, and divorced. Men and women. And, as is the case with so many elucidating interactions, the topic had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with divorce.

Or so it seemed.

Hummer is currently running a radio spot promoting its H2 Sport Utility Truck here locally on WJR during the morning and afternoon drive times. It's a Detroit thing. I'd heard the commercial myself before a 43-year-old woman, 14 months out from her Judgment of Divorce, brought it up in one of my groups.

Doorbell sounds. Father answers, greets his daughter's would-be date with particular mention that he's just come from sharpening his knives. While they wait together, Father shows "Brian" the family Hummer H2.

Features and benefits are cleverly rolled out by a paternal figure who describes himself as, "...the kind of man that accepts absolutely no compromise whatsoever."

According to the ad, this vehicle also has a 72-inch bed that could accommodate Brian, himself, as cargo — with the tailgate closed. And it's been made abundantly clear to us, as listeners, that this is a vehicle that can go anywhere, including "right to the middle of nowhere."

That established, Father asks: "What time will my first-born be home tonight, Brian?"

Back to my Divorce Reality Group. You're somewhere in the tumult of divorce, you hear this on the radio, and you've made your way to my office.

What did you hear?

In the divorce support group I was leading, opinions were strong and varied.

• This ad pushed the buttons of one person who recounted the thankless role of parents in our original dating experiences, now apparently obsolete in our post-divorce dalliances.

• Another person "informed" my group that the father was "disturbed," "emotionally abusive," and likely predisposed to dangerous violence.

• Our resident "consequence" expert deeply admired this fictional dad as someone who "finally stands for something and isn't afraid to back it up."

Three people experienced the same objective reality with no sense of common ground because of a mechanism called the "scotoma." I first heard this term from Louis Tice of The Pacific Institute in the mid-1970s.

"Scotoma: A sensory locking out of the environment.... We develop scotomas to the truth about the world and ourselves because of our preconceived ideas and conditioning, and this causes us to

• See what we expect to see

• Hear what we expect to hear

• Think what we expect to think

"with the result that we develop scotomas to the 'truth.'"

Divorce mediation is full of scotomas.

Say you're looking for evidence favoring and evidence against some particular hypothesis you hold. Maybe adultery. Your mind then starts sucking up information you hear about adultery like a pair of Hoover vacuum cleaners. If something agrees with your thinking, you place the air-conveying wand of Vacuum 1 over that bit of data. Contrary data: Use the other Hoover.

Except — this second vacuum is mis-wired in your head. It functions more like a leaf blower. So, at the end of the day, when you compare what you've picked up, anything in Vacuum 1 will always be more than (reversed) Vacuum 2, since it will always be empty.

That's how scotomas work.

You might think that outside expertise would compensate for this. But as Psychology Today notes in a side bar to "Should You Leave?" by Peter Kramer, M.D., "...the advice you get may be more of a reflection of your [advisor's] personal values than a scientifically valid assessment of the 'correct' thing to do."

Scotomas are ubiquitous, it seems.

Thus, the real question we need to ask ourselves when hearing commercial "realities" is this.

How do my options change if I accept, as Freud might say, that a Hummer is sometimes just a Hummer?

—posted by Dell Deaton @6:00 AM EST 2/26/2005 [675]

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