Mind Matters: It’s a new year

Posted by Dr. Kayta Gajdos on January 7, 2015

What is it about time and moving into a new year? For me, it is when I think about the past and wonder how the future may be different. There is a saying, I think, that we can make the future different if we make the present different. In other words, for change to happen we need to take action and start the process in the “now.”

Part of that process maybe simply contemplating, dreaming, imagining a better future. Before a house is built, there is an idea and then an image and a blueprint. Same for future plans whether they be for the planet or the individual. We can be guided by our visions of change and growth.

In the last column, I wrote about the WWI Christmas Truce of 1914. The further realization of a lasting peace was thwarted by the powers that be. Nevertheless, the desire for peace did well up in the hearts of those men in the trenches, and I believe the glowing embers of that desire remain warm within all our hearts, somewhere deep down.

Less remote to me — and more in the realm of my own personal experience — is considering my own past. I’ve just joined a women’s choir, Anna Crusis, which will celebrate its 40th anniversary this year. The question arose among the members as to what 1974-75 was like for women.

It actually wasn’t very good. I remember being told I wouldn’t get the raise or the promotion because my male colleague needed it more. In all aspects, suffice it to say, this had nothing to do with my competence versus his. Women couldn’t apply for their own credit cards or get a mortgage. Constantly sexualized and objectified, heterosexual women were demeaned. The plight of lesbian women was even worse. Of course, the plight of gay men was no better.

That was the 1970s, which, in hindsight, although a narrow minded and prejudicial world it was, was still light years beyond the 1950s — which brings me to the topic of Alan Turing who, during WWII, was the genius of the British Intelligence Agency, the Bletchley Circle, who broke the Enigma code of the Germans. Now there is a film, “The Imitation Game,” about his work. While I have yet to see the movie that depicts him as the hero he was, I have seen the documentary, “Codebreaker,” about his life in post-war England.

Alan Turing, a brilliant mathematician who blazed the path to computers and phones as we know them, was a man who probably suffered Aspergers and who was gay. Naively truthful in the midst of a bigoted and constricted British society (that was not unlike the U.S.) with brutal laws against the practice of homosexuality, Turing was arrested for his fraternizing with men and was given the “choice” of prison or hormonal castration. He “chose” the latter which destroyed his body and his mind. How different, one may ask, is this punishment from Hitler’s regime of likewise medical manipulation of those it deemed “defective” for dint of difference? In 1952, Turing committed suicide.

1914 1952, 1974; there are many times before and after these markers that indicate how unconscious and brutal we have been, or how conscious and connected we can be.

The choice is for each one of us to make. Do we choose to be on the side of the growth of human consciousness or do we choose to fear change and grasp onto what we thought was right only because it’s the only thing we ever knew. Consider slavery: Even something that had been around for two thousand years doesn’t make it moral.

Question yourself and what notions you might consider changing in the New Year. What have you already changed?

* Kayta Curzie Gajdos holds a doctorate in counseling psychology and is in private practice in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. She welcomes comments at MindMatters@DrGajdos.com or 610-388-2888. Past columns are posted to www.drgajdos.com.

About Kayta Gajdos

Dr. Kathleen Curzie Gajdos ("Kayta") is a licensed psychologist (Pennsylvania and Delaware) who has worked with individuals, couples, and families with a spectrum of problems. She has experience and training in the fields of alcohol and drug addictions, hypnosis, family therapy, Jungian theory, Gestalt therapy, EMDR, and bereavement. Dr. Gajdos developed a private practice in the Pittsburgh area, and was affiliated with the Family Therapy Institute of Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, having written numerous articles for the Family Therapy Newsletter there. She has published in the American Psychological Association Bulletin, the Family Psychologist, and in the Swedenborgian publications, Chrysalis and The Messenger. Dr. Gajdos has taught at the college level, most recently for West Chester University and Wilmington College, and has served as field faculty for Vermont College of Norwich University the Union Institute's Center for Distance Learning, Cincinnati, Ohio. She has also served as consulting psychologist to the Irene Stacy Community MH/MR Center in Western Pennsylvania where she supervised psychologists in training. Currently active in disaster relief, Dr. Gajdos serves with the American Red Cross and participated in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts as a member of teams from the Department of Health and Human Services' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.Now living in Chadds Ford, in the Brandywine Valley of eastern Pennsylvania, Dr. Gajdos combines her private practice working with individuals, couples and families, with leading workshops on such topics as grief and healing, the impact of multigenerational grief and trauma shame, the shadow and self, Women Who Run with the Wolves, motherless daughters, and mediation and relaxation. Each year at Temenos Retreat Center in West Chester, PA she leads a griefs of birthing ritual for those who have suffered losses of procreation (abortions, miscarriages, infertility, etc.); she also holds yearly A Day of Re-Collection at Temenos.Dr. Gajdos holds Master's degrees in both philosophy and clinical psychology and received her Ph.D. in counseling at the University of Pittsburgh. Among her professional affiliations, she includes having been a founding member and board member of the C.G. Jung Educational Center of Pittsburgh, as well as being listed in Who's Who of American Women. Currently, she is a member of the American Psychological Association, The Pennsylvania Psychological Association, the Delaware Psychological Association, the American Family Therapy Academy, The Association for Death Education and Counseling, and the Delaware County Mental Health and Mental Retardation Board. Woven into her professional career are Dr. Gajdos' pursuits of dancing, singing, and writing poetry.