The Gorilla in the Room

Peter Kinderman you're offending against the state in that sense, when you're offending against the n- the notion of that form of state, then the state wants to do something unpleasant to you.

Hilary Jeffs Hello, and welcome to Experience, the weekly podcast where we get to psychoanalyse the news. If like us, you're obsessed by what happens in the headlines, but also about why people behave the way they do, then this is definitely the podcast for you. And do not forget to tell other people about the podcast so they can enjoy it as well, and like and subscribe as you're up to it. Now, coming up this week, we are gonna be talking about, I'm really sorry, but we're gonna have to cover the execution that is going to be live streamed. Oh, lordy, we're just going back to the Middle Ages. What joy. We're also gonna be talking about ADHD, and is it on the rise? And indeed, is it just about being forgetful? And last but not least, we will be talking about the plague. No, not the pneumonic plague, not the Russian plague, because literally no news outlet is talking about that plague. We'll be talking about the orange plague that has just been in the European courts. Find out more in a little bit. But before all that, I couldn't do it without the practically perfect Peter Kinderman, professor of psychology. How has your week been?

Peter Kinderman Oh, well, my, the past seven days have been, actually quite busy and stressful and kind of like lots of hassle. So I've been hassled by things that I would rather not be hassled by. I would rather have been reading.

Hilary Jeffs Do you know, I pretty much would always rather be reading than be hassled. Now, if you've been watching The Traitors, I need you to keep it zipped up because I am employing a little bit of deferred gratification. I am saving them up as a birthday treat 'cause it's my birthday later this week. Frankly, when you get to my age, that is the only joy you get

Peter Kinderman So have you seen none of the traitors at all?

Hilary Jeffs Not one. I'm gonna do a

Peter Kinderman can't say anything.

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, no, don't. But we will do a full debrief later on. Is it worth it? Am I gonna enjoy it?

Peter Kinderman Oh, I think the, I think the show's total nonsense. Yeah. Utterly nonsense. It strikes me that you've got loads of people on the show and loads of people at home watching a game which involves one rule. And, you know, we used to do Wink Murder when we were about four and thought it was hilarious, but I've grown up. Sorry, I don't wa- I don't wanna, I don't wanna be negative or, but, you know, it's kind of like, have you seen the thing that's utterly childish and that everybody is obsessed by it? I go, "mm,

Hilary Jeffs Okay.

Peter Kinderman Basically you've got fif-

Hilary Jeffs difference in intellectual capabilities between Peter and I. I'm on the

Peter Kinderman You've got 12 people in a castle.

Hilary Jeffs Yes

Peter Kinderman two of them have a thing, and the other, the other 10 have to guess whether they're the thing or not. And yeah, yeah, it's kind of, you know, get that game. Sorry, apologies,

Hilary Jeffs you're living and you do not know all the people around you. When you're in unfamiliar circumstances, you do not know if they're lying to you or not. And what makes me laugh every year is that they take the fact that they like someone to mean that that person is being truthful, which

Peter Kinderman And again, I'm, I'm... Hilary, I'm really, really sorry, and I realise that this is the wrong thing to say, and I, but one of my many failings is that I'm unable to censor myself from saying the thing that I know as I'm formulating the sentence is a bad thing to say. But if you go through life, y- you know, I'm, I'm 60 years old. I've been through life, and I've watched people at work go into meetings, and because I've been their line manager, I know that they've had a conversation with me earlier where they've said something completely different. So they've said things like, "I'm really sorry about this, Peter, but I've got a job offer." And I've said, "Well, can we do something to keep you?" And they went, "Well, if I get X, Y, and Z, then I'll stay." And I go, "Okay. Well, leave it with me. I'll take it to management. We'll see what we can do. Anyway, we've gotta go into the meeting." Then we're talking about making a grant application. They're going, "Yeah, yeah, I'm up for that." And I'm thinking, "You lying git. You're not up for that at all. You wanna go to Durham. You've just told me you wanna go to Durham, and now you're lying to them." So yeah, I've, I've also got people and I've, you know, been talking to my mate, and I'm saying, "how is it going?" And they go, "I don't know. I think we're heading for divorce 'cause, like, there's this woman at work." And I'm thinking, "Hmm, okay." And then I go out for dinner, and you think, "Actually, it's not quite what it seemed." That's real life. And then you've got somebody on TV going, "a woman with a really, really bad haircut has given me a little piece of paper with the word traitor on it." And I, and I'm thinking, "It's much more fun in real life. Much more fun in

Hilary Jeffs the fringe. That is, you've gone beyond the pale now, Peter, frankly. The fringe has to stay. You know, divisive as it is

Peter Kinderman Hilary, it isn't a fringe. It's an affectation, and you know it is

Hilary Jeffs I know, but I love all of Claudia's affectations, and you can just sue me for that. We'll be coming up to suing a bit later on.

Peter Kinderman Sorry, I've, I've, I've started off in super grumpy mode and I apologise. I'll get that out of my

Hilary Jeffs all right. You've had a hassled week. You know, we all have them. It's one of those things. And when it does hit you, it sometimes does make you a little bit grumpy. You are not perfect, although practically perfect as I introduced you. So try harder to be more practically perfect please, Peter. Actually, we like you warts and all, so do whatever you need to

Peter Kinderman C-c-can I just, can I just say one thing?

Hilary Jeffs As long as it's not about the fringe

Peter Kinderman No, it's about the cat, 'cause the cat is just over there scratching to get out, and I need to let him out, otherwise, otherwise it's terrible. So I am just gonna

Hilary Jeffs But I wanted to know what the cat's gonna do if you don't

Peter Kinderman continue to talk to you, but come on, Oscar. Come on. Out the cat, out the way

Hilary Jeffs It's a good name. My cat's called Toulouse. We didn't

Peter Kinderman but my cat has a cat flap. He has a cat flap, but he doesn't use it, and

Hilary Jeffs He's a cat, that's why. Yeah, no, of course. Of course the cat doesn't use the cat flap. You know, they're not here to do any of our bidding. That's just the law of being a cat.

Peter Kinderman No. And now he's look- looking at... Right, I'm back. I'm focused.

Hilary Jeffs Wailing in a minute.

Peter Kinderman Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hilary Jeffs Yeah. Right. Before we move on to the headlines, I need from you the concept of the week. Da da da.

Peter Kinderman The concept of the week, actually bizarrely, it relates to Oscar and the [unclear], whi- whi- which is attentional blindness. There's quite a famous experiment where a psychology experiment has a video of some people playing basketball, and then as they're playing basketball, the task is how many times does the ball pass from one player to another? And the class looks very intently at them. And in the background, a guy in a gorilla suit walks back-- walks past them. And then the professor says, "What did you notice?" And they all start talking about... Nobody says the guy in the gorilla suit. It's actually quite funny. Now, now if you watch it, you'll see the guy in the gorilla suit, but you can do it with your friends. You can find it. Gorilla, gorilla suit, attentional psychology experiment. It's brilliant. So people don't notice things that are in plain sight. It's also, you know, how pickpockets and so forth work. So attentional blindness, if you're not paying attention to something, it's because-- it's partly because the brain constructs an image of reality. So what we've got is a picture of reality in which the thing that you're not thinking about simply isn't painted into the picture that your brain constructs of the world, and therefore you don't see it

Hilary Jeffs Yes, but actually I'm presuming this is, I'm going into peak sexism right now. I'm thinking a man did that experiment because every woman knows there is attentional blindness from whenever a man opens a fridge, and that's when they are thinking of the object and they still can't see it

Peter Kinderman Most of academic psychology is taking stuff that we've already known and then putting an academic name to it. So stuff that really pisses you off about your, the behavior of people in your world is just then simply taken by people with testicles and given a name, and that's what they, that's what they do with it. So yes, you're absolutely right. But, you know, giving a name to something is a good, is a good thing,

Hilary Jeffs Well, and we shall look forward to the finding out how that fits into our life other than just when my husband can't find anything in the fridge, even when it's, like, literally right there in front of him. Attentional blindness. Good one.

Peter Kinderman Attention awareness

Hilary Jeffs The first headline is one that fills me with disgust. It is Hegseth's announcement that he is going to live stream a public execution in December. Now, the guy who's being executed did murder 13 people. He was an army major. He went on the rampage with a gun, and 32 other people were injured. It was a heinous crime in a heinous way, and a real, you know, betrayal of trust of someone who is your, your colleague, especially in that environment. But live streaming an execution, the whole Christa Pike thing was just a week or two ago. She's now up and walking. They tried to execute her. It didn't go so well. And that story filled me with sadness and upset, but this actually disgusts me. What is the difference? Why, what is going on with me to feel such disgust at this story?

Peter Kinderman Oh, I think it's plugging away at loads of important psychological dimensions, and my guess is that that's why they're doing it. So, I have to admit that one of the emotions that this story triggers in me is fear, which maybe is something that's triggered in me quite a lot in the world. It just strikes me again as very, very reminiscent of N-Nazi Germany in the '30s, which is if there is somebody who is offending, especially somebody who is offending against the Reich. So the-- this murder or these murders by, by this guy who's apparently going to be executed I think that one of the reasons why they're regarded as particularly heinous by the Trump regime is that they were crimes against the military. They were acts of, in effect, acts of warfare. They were acts of asymmetrical warfare, possibly acts of terrorism. That's the category in which they fall. And that all looks like Nazi show trials. The na- you know, the Nazi judges screaming at people, the extraordinary forms of execution that states do. It reminds me of the regicide being torn apart by horses in the, in the early, French medieval French period. W-when you're offending against the state in that sense, when you're offending against the n- the notion of that form of state, then the state wants to do something unpleasant to you. And so they're, they're, they're playing with those sorts of emotions. They're making it horrible. There is this thing in the American Constitution of cruel and unusual punishment, and it's certainly unusual to be... It's unusual to be executed by firing squad. It's unusual to be, to have your execution live-streamed. It's clearly cruel because if you ask any person, would you pref- It's a horrible choice, but would you prefer to be executed or executed in public? I think most people would say, "I'd rather it not be public, please." So it's ticking all the horrible

Hilary Jeffs this particular perpetrator. Certainly one of the surviving victims has come forward and said that this guy wants to be a martyr, and by doing a live stream makes him into a martyr. And that is actually quite a powerful thing that you're giving someone actually the death perhaps that will make them feel cleansed or give them a reason as to why it was so powerful that they did the act in the first

Peter Kinderman Yeah. I think that's entirely possible, and in that case it makes it even wronger than it was before. I mean, you know, I'm laying my cards on the table. I think that... Personally, I think that using the death penalty is wrong per se. I think there are all sorts of arguments for it being wrong, from principles and from practicalities and from the, you know, the practice of jurisprudence and so forth. There are lots and lots of good arguments, very, very powerful arguments against the death penalty. I think then if you, if you do take the terrible step of saying in a world in which your principles have overridden Peter and there is the death penalty, were you given the job of making the death penalty, you know, choosing the method of it, then that's absolutely not the method I would choose. Then once you've chosen that, would you like... I mean, it take... And I think it feeds into discussion. I have to say one of the other things is that it's particularly, I think your choice of word disgust I think is very interesting because it is one, a thing where even for myself I can imagine the lure of wanting to watch it. You go, "Well, that would be an extraordinary thing to see."

Hilary Jeffs Mm. I, you see, I have hard lines with things like that where I just won't allow myself to do it, because to me,

Peter Kinderman But

Hilary Jeffs streaming it

Peter Kinderman but you said allow yourself to

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, I won't allow

Peter Kinderman I think we know that there's this... It's a little bit like when you're a kid, maybe not with you, but I know it's not only me, where you have a discussion about have you ever seen a dead body? And yeah, when was the first time you saw a dead body? So this idea of being attracted to the horrific, I think is true. I think people are attracted to horrific things, extraordinary things, things that talk about death, things that talk about cruelty. We want-- We're, we're human beings with very curious minds, and therefore we are wanting to send our dendrites out to explore those territories.

Hilary Jeffs Well, and also

Peter Kinderman Trump administration know it,

Hilary Jeffs is just like the sort

Peter Kinderman us with something.

Hilary Jeffs It's just like the kind of shoot 'em up games, you know, the internet games that people are having. It just stops it being real to my mind. And it's so much like those sort of ISIS beheading videos, you know, that being live-streamed. Like, I couldn't go anywhere near that, and I really did try and ensure that my children didn't, but I don't know whether they did or they didn't. But it- the reason there was a last, there's been 90 years since the last public execution in America, was the last one was deemed to be, like, just the worst carnival that you could possibly have. 20,000 people turned up, and it was just seen to be so disgusting that people were interested in it. And this is nothing new. I mean, we still have public executions in other parts of the world. In Iran,

Peter Kinderman it's all horrific.

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, they do it as a mark of political violence to try and keep people from protesting, you know? And in Afghanistan they do it in sports stadiums and have people ripped apart in front of live crowds. It's, yeah,

Peter Kinderman It's horrific. It's not good. I think that also... See, I think embedded in it and embedded in your use of the word disgusting, and therefore unquestionably in my mind, embedded in the decisions made by the Trump administration to live stream this execution or even to talk about live streaming it. I have a sneaking suspicion that they probably know that it's not gonna happen or think, or maybe even hope it's not gonna happen, but they want to talk about it. And I think one of the reasons why they talk about it is for the reasons of disgust, which is I think that they know that there are large numbers of people who will tune in to watch it. It- it's an horrific thing that people will do, and I think what they're therefore doing is that they're, they're playing to the lower common denominator of human nature. They're-- It's like the demonization of people who are different. It's like taking... It's like punching down. It's like taking people who are weak. It's like being horrible to homeless people. It's like the contempt you have for the victim. It's like thinking, "Well, we can join in in the bullying." It's all of that. And I think that the fact that these things do, I suppose, titillate, and more to the point that we know that there are people who will be attracted to it's horrific because we know that they know that, and yet they're, they're doing it anyway. So I think that, yeah, the whole, the whole thing is particularly horrible. And what they're doing is they're saying there are, there are traits within human nature that... Yeah. So I would like... On the whole, I would like to be somebody who would not give in to those parts of my personality which I know exist, but which are bad for me and the people around me. So if you say to p- to me, that, you know... I go out for a drink with my mates, and they'll say, "Well, you know, come to the pub." And I go, "Yeah, all right. I'll just have one, though. I'll just have

Hilary Jeffs one

Peter Kinderman And that's the point. I would like it to be the case that I would resist. So what I don't want is to give in to those tendencies within myself, which are ones that I would regard as deplorable. And what the Trump administration are doing is they're deliberately... They are, they are enshittifying the human species. That's what's

Hilary Jeffs word. That's what I need to have. Once again, I'm feeling that I'm living in a time that historians of the future will just liken to the Dark Ages. It- I'm, I'm actually ashamed of this time. You know, I grew up quite hopeful. You know, it seemed to be the end of racism, the end of, you know, kind of homophobia. The, in my own little mind, I was sort of seeing this marching towards progressiveness, and it's not. It's

Peter Kinderman No. So

Hilary Jeffs going straight back to horrible times

Peter Kinderman the point of democratic leadership of the human race, but of nation states is out of the people who could be potential lead... And leadership's a skill. Leadership is a, is a thing which entails many skills, and you look at the different forms of leadership, judgment, and forming a coalition, and building consensus, and seeing the bigger picture, and taking advice, and moving between perspectives, all of this. What democracy should do is it should be a process whereby those people with the traits that are most suited, suited to leadership should be in a position to assume leadership. And once those admirable people are in place, it should be the case that they are making decisions that improve the human species. What we've got is the worst of all possible people in positions of leadership, who then are making decisions which make the world a shittier place.

Hilary Jeffs Well, wasn't it the ancient Greeks who thought that actually having elections wouldn't be in the best interest of the people because it would encourage people who wanted to enhance their own self-interest and to forward their own benefits rather than doing it for the good of other people? And that's why they used to have some kind of ballot, I think, where you would... I mean, imagine that. Imagine just waking up one day and it's like, "Oh, I've won the lottery. No, I haven't won a million pounds. I'm gonna be queen for the day." Quite an interesting idea. Maybe we should try it. I mean, it can't do any worse, let's face facts

Peter Kinderman I think that about what my analysis of the situation is I mean, and I'm not, you know, I'm not a political scientist, but my analysis of the situation is that the voting business, the idea of putting a mark next to the party or the person that you want to be leadership is fine. It's, it's obviously a flawed system, but I don't like quoting Winston Churchill 'cause I think that he's probably somebody whose flaws probably outweigh his... Anyway, but I think Winston Churchill said that democracy is the least bad system. It's a bad system, but it's the least bad

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, that is, that's pretty much where I've come to

Peter Kinderman I think that what's happening in democracy is that as with many other things, as with Brexit, as with food quality, as with food labeling in restaurants, all of this stuff, I think that as with, you know, Amazon purchasing, you've got a system and then you've got regulation, and the regulations and the counterbalances are flawed. So one of them, and I think this is particularly true with the rise of the internet, is there's about the fourth estate, about the press, about information, about access to journalism, about holding people to account, about questioning their judgments and about facts. There's also about debate. So what we don't do anymore is we don't have an issue like live streaming of an execution and then a discussion about the issues. I-- you and I are having a discussion about the issues, but we don't generally in life. What we do is we get an algorithm fueled by billionaires who wish to make money from maximizing their advertising revenue that feed you information that confirms the things that you're already thinking about. You're not exposed to alternative perspectives. And so what's happened is that we haven't got people where the democratic process is being challenged by journalism, is being te- challenged by science, is being challenged by the judiciary. What you've just got is individuals, who use far too much orange makeup pandering to their own whims and not being challenged

Hilary Jeffs it certainly highlighted so many shortcomings in the system in America about holding people to account, and it'll be really interesting to actually see what changes come about as a result of this period in their history to, you know, try and sharpen things up so that you do actually have an opposition that can be effective at holding people to account. I'm minded with this story about a quote from Nietzsche from Beyond Good and Evil, which is, "He who fights monsters should see that in the process they do not become a monster." even JD Vance thinks it's beyond the pale. He says he's not gonna watch, so you know

Peter Kinderman JD Vance did des- did describe his boss as America's Hitler, so you know, JD Vance... I mean, a stop, a broken clock is right twice a day. J- J- JD Vance was, I think, correct on that, and then decided that he'd sell his soul to Hitler. Oh, great. I mean, that vote of confidence in JD Vance, eh?

Hilary Jeffs Oh, yeah. No, it's wonderful. W- how that Republican Party just embraced Trump right after the whole January the 6th nonsense, just they are really reaping those rewards of that decision right now,

Peter Kinderman Brings, it brings us back to Albert Camus. Why on earth did we think that the universe would be anything other than absurd?

Hilary Jeffs I like it. I like it. Now, if we go onto our second headline, we have Sharon Burns. She's been in the news this week because she has won a tribunal that has said that indeed she has been dismissed unfairly from her job, which is paying £220,000 a year, plus a 70-odd thousand pound bonus, because they have discriminated against her, not for being a woman, but for being disabled. Because she had declared that she had ADHD, and they failed to make the proper adjustments that were needed. But what we saw in the headlines was that she had fallen asleep in the sauna, and had won a payout as a result. Now, there's quite a lot of misinformation about ADHD. I mean, I'm pretty scatterbrained. A completer finisher naturally I am not. I've had to learn that skill. Have I got ADHD? Can anyone be a, have ADHD? And really, you know, it just seems that there's quite a big proliferation of the diagnosis of ADHD. In fact, there's been a report out about it where they haven't been able to rule out the fact that there may be over-diagnosis. What's going on? Tell us more. Tell us about this condition, 'cause it isn't just about being a little bit scatterbrained, is it?

Peter Kinderman So, right. I've written a few books, and I've outlined my ideas in those books, and my ideas in those books are considered to be incorrect by many psychiatrists and indeed psychologists, and people disagree with me. So I won't tell you the facts about ADHD. In my opinion, the facts are disputed.

Hilary Jeffs Right

Peter Kinderman If you get somebody on and you interview them about the facts about ADHD, there are experts, indeed there are experts who've been commissioned by the government to write reports who will say, "These are the facts." I personally disagree with their interpretation o- of it, and I see things differently. So I'm not gonna tell you what the facts are, but-- And rather than kind of run through what they think and bl-- I'll, I'll tell you what I think. What I think is that there are psychological phenomena and that there are things that we've got to do, and this relates to the concept of the week, which is one of the things that we do is we pay attention to a whole variety of stuff in the world. And just earlier, as I was talking to you, I noticed that my cat was trying to get out of the house because he was scratching at the door, and that caught my attention. It may well be the case that in some both moral universe and in some objective universe, I should have been focused on our conversation and I should have ignored Oscar. Or...

Hilary Jeffs Can't ignore a cat. They make it impossible

Peter Kinderman Well, they do make it impossible, and here's the thing. So if I had ignored Oscar, if my brain had been wired such that I was not only able to but I was making a choice or in some way I did in fact focus on our conversation and I did in fact ignore the scratching of Oscar, I would have had scratches on my new door, and I paid a lot of money for my door, and I don't want it scratched. And secondly, he would have done a massive shit on the f- on the kitchen floor, and I don't want that either. So

Hilary Jeffs I'm not worth a massive shit on the floor. That's, that's definitely the case

Peter Kinderman I cannot possibly respond by saying, "Hilary, you are definitely worth a massive shit on the floor." I've, I've caught myself in a, in a, in a chess game of my own language. I mean, it would be a claim to fame, wouldn't it? Pete says that I'm worth a shit.

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, I don't know what that would say about our working relationship.

Peter Kinderman We're, we're-- It's gone, it's gone off on a tangent. But my point is, we're, we're always balancing attentional focus. And one of the things that I've really annoyed a lot of people, including people I'm very close to in my personal life by, by talking about mindfulness, where occasionally when I'm in a really, really bad mood, and I can often get into a bad mood and I'm probably not pleasant company. But I'll be talking to somebody and they'll go, "You should come to our Buddhist center." And I'll sit there and I go, "Yeah, I've done a bit of meditation." "Have you really done me-- yeah, I've really done meditation." "But have you really done medication-- meditation where you can kind of remove all the focus and it's just focus?" And I go, "Don't, don't you have rubber sheets on the floor?" And they go, "Of course not, no. Why, why would it?" And I go, "But if your focus is that good, surely you'll just be wetting them." "No, no, no." So I go, "Right. So you are dividing your attention." "No, we're not." And I just think, "Oh, this is..." We're always dividing our attention all of the time, and attentional focus is something that we do. I do not believe that the concept of ADHD is best expressed as some people have a disorder and the rest of us don't. I think all of us are playing... Not playing. All of us are managing our attentional focus, and that depends on possibly a little bit of individual difference in the sense that some of us might have attentional processes which are more scattergun, and some of us have attentional processes which are more laser-like. I think that's possible. I think that those individual differences between us, you know, do you veer towards the scattergun or do you veer towards the laser, might exist. But I have reason to believe that even that isn't quite how it works because if I say something like that, you'd think, "Ah, so maybe what Peter's getting at is the scattergun approach versus the laser-like approach. Maybe that's a dimension on which ADHD is at one end of the spectrum, and maybe something else that we could label with another disorder label is at the other end." I don't believe that. That's not how I would do it. If that were true, I would simply have it as a dimension and not label one pole as an illness. I would just say that's-- But I don't even th-think that's true because, you know, in the course of my career, I have talked to people who've got-- have had labels of ADHD, and I also have talked to friends, and I've talked to colleagues, and focused on these things, and this is what one researches. A lot of people who find the label of ADHD very useful describe a phenomenon where some of the time, in some issues, they're very focused, and at other times, with other issues, they're very scattergun. And actually, if you talk to teachers, what they often say about kids w-in quotes, "with ADHD" is, "He doesn't pay any attention at all in class. It's completely in-- I'm completely incapable as a teacher of persuading him to focus attention. He's just focused on Roblox. He's focused on his screen. So he can focus. He's focusing on the things that you genuinely and absolutely believe are unwise to focus on, and he's not focused on other things. You get the classic thing of, you know, kids who are, again, in quotes, these are labels which are probably bad, but, you know, obsessed with football to the extent that they don't concentrate on anything else. You get kids that will, will have their headphones on in order to reduce external stimulation and focusing on the thing that they're focusing on with laser-like intensity, to the extent that the focus of their attention itself is seen as a manifestation of the disorder which they supposedly have, which is a disorder where they're not... So maybe the issue then is what they're not good at is shifting attention. That, you know, as we, as we develop our attent- our ability to manage our attentional focus, and of course it gets better from childhood to adulthood, so you wouldn't really would expect kids to be very good at it, so labeling kids with ADHD where they just haven't learned it yet is also a bit silly. Maybe what we're talking about is the central issue is to what extent are you able to focus your attention on the things that are necessary for living? And that in itself raises all sorts of questions. Like it's conceiv- it's conceivable in my world that some of us are better at that than others at an earlier age. And, you know, the kid that's able at the age of three to focus their attention on maths homework, I probably wouldn't want to be friends with them when they're 24. But the other thing is,

Hilary Jeffs I bet you were good at doing your homework. No

Peter Kinderman Well, it was very good. I mean, the story I tell about going to university is that I worked out at an early age the best way to leave home was to, was to do well in exams, and I looked at doing well in exam, 'cause then you get to university and they give you a grant. And the way to do well in exams is you, they give you a bit of paper with questions and put the correct answer to the questions, and then you get an A. It seems pretty simple to me, which is obviously a joke, and it's a rude joke. But, you know, if you get a kid who's turning up at school and then the teacher goes, "I give him English, and I give him maths, and I give him science, and he's always on his phone talking about football," that's a disorder. I'm thinking, well, only if you... Anyway. So I think it's conceivably possible that A, that the concept of ADHD reflects relative differences for people in terms of how they are able to focus their attention. And if that's true, then you're talking about, about a psychological trait and not an illness. That's my point. So I wouldn't have approached it at all like this. I would have to- approached it in terms of people's psychological and practical needs. I wouldn't have approached it in terms of diagnosing or not diagnosing a disorder. That's not the way that I would have entered the room

Hilary Jeffs Right, I need to ask you a question, and I need to ask you one right now because it seems to me that there will be a lot of people very angry right now listening to you because they will be feeling that you are denying their experience of extreme difficulties in being able to live a life to the extent that you or I are able to live our life, where we do not have that as a diagnosis, or as a condition, or as an experience even, even if we're not going down the label. Now, I am someone who has always been label-averse. I'm always like, do you know what? You don't, shouldn't need a label to be able to make the adjustments to help that person, either in your workforce or in your school. Actually, we should be inclusive in how we approach other people in our lives. However, we do know that people do have a great deal of difficulty. I've got a friend who has, ME, and actually, as an adult, and she's always... You know, her house is always immaculate. She's always been someone who's worked really, really hard. So when all of a sudden she stopped being able to do those things, it was like, okay, ME actually is real. And she's now, as an adult, been described as having ADHD, and she's been diagnosed that. And I won- she's wondering if the two, I think, are related, that she's had this burnout because of the ADHD over all these years. Are you, are you saying that there are h- if we don't have a diagnosis, how do we help people who have these difficulties? And how do we get employers to make the right adjustments, unless you do have a condition?

Peter Kinderman I have to throw in, first of all, I don't think that if you say we'll give somebody a diagnosis, then magically everything's helpful. It's not. The whole P- the point of Pe- Peter Fonagy's review into ADHD is

Hilary Jeffs to account like this lady's

Peter Kinderman that, you might be able to win an employment tribunal, yeah. But Peter Fonagy's review is all about it's shit, it's getting shitter, it's enormously expensive, we're letting people down, everybody's unhappy. So that approach has not worked. The second thing is, you know, I, you know, I would pride myself on I've written books, I've done communication. I would pride myself on I would like to think I was reasonably good at communication about these issues. I would also argue that my communication style, I think you have to understand that everybody thinks of those sorts of psychological ill- issues in terms of illness. That's the narrative. If you type it into ChatGPT, it comes back with, "Oh, I think you're talking about the illness of depression. Oh, I think you're talking about the illness of anxiety." And I go, "No, I'm talking about the psychological phenomenon of depression." And then ChatGPT goes, "Oh, that's different." Yes, it is different. So I think my communication style is also predicated by the fact that the entire world has been taught to think of these things as illnesses, and therefore, if you're denying that the illness frame is a useful frame for these problems, people assume that you're saying they're not problems. I never said that. I think if you talk to people in my life and you say, "Peter," and they go, "Yes." And they go, "ADHD checklist." And they go, "yeah." And they'd go, "If Peter were to ever meet a psychiatrist and sit down and have an interview about adult late diagnosis ADHD, would he meet the criteria?" And they would say, "Without question, absolutely." And that's true for me. I have never been diagnosed with a mental disorder, and I would absolutely withdraw consent from any medical professional who did. I've been very clear with my medical practitioner. I've, I've used mental health services, but on each occasion, I've said, "I am not going to approach you for a diagnosis, and before we even have that discussion, I want you to give me an absolute guarantee that you will not make a diagnosis because I think they're inappropriate." Also, I wouldn't be able to travel, I wouldn't be able to get a visa. There's all sorts of legal implications of it. So-- And that's always happened, and I have been able to get services. So I would not do it, but if I were to, I absolutely meet it. I mean, I know the criteria for ADHD, and I'm not being dishonest. If you apply those criteria to me, I would get the diagnosis in a heartbeat. I think the second thing is, if you ask people close to me, let's, let's take Peter's perspective. Let's say that there is an issue with attentional focus, with the ability to focus your attention onto one thing and not be distracted by a cat scratching at the door. Does Peter First of all, do you think Peter is able to focus his attention in a way that makes life easier for him and the people around him? And secondly, does he? I think you'd get a difference of opinion about the first question, whether I'm able to or incapable of it, and every single person that I have ever met in my life would say, "Peter is utterly shit at that. He is the least focused in his attention. He can't keep his mind on one issue for a moment." Now, I've written about this. I've written blogs about it. There's a blog that I've written called "Me, My Brain and Baked Beans," and part... So when I was doing my PhD, I was struggling with data. I've, I've done it now. My brain's gone off on a tangent, but I think it is a relevant tangent. I was struggling with data, and it didn't make sense. So I had a at- I was using attributional theory to explain why people were getting paranoid, and I was looking at this spreadsheet on [unclear], and I was doing stats and that. And at the time, my daughter... I w- I was sitting there on the laptop, and at the time, my daughter was toddling, and she was toddling towards the radiator, and I saw her out the corner of my eye, and I go, "Don't touch, it'll bite." And I thought, "That's the answer," because I had ascribed agency to the radiator, and I thought, "Bloody hell." And so I went back to the data, and I looked at the answers that people were giving on the questionnaires, and I divided them into answers which implied agency and answers that didn't imply agency, and the data fell out, and the stats were beautiful.

Hilary Jeffs Yeah

Peter Kinderman So my brain being able to reduce focus, shift, being tangential has been useful to me. I'm also a heterosexual or Cambridge-educated white male in a middle-class job, therefore I'm very privileged. So if I'm wandering down the road and I suddenly think about, " God, it's planting season for wildflower," g- I'm, I'm, I'm less likely to be attacked in the street than other people, right? So I've got away with being unfocused. I've got away with being kind of... I've had jobs where I could go to a meeting and come up with it, right. But my point is, I

Hilary Jeffs you are very intelligent, therefore you've got a brain that works very efficiently anyway? So the fact that you can cross-reference all this stuff and hold it all there together means it's not a disadvantage to you. But maybe that is a disadvantage to other people

Peter Kinderman And it's a disadvantage to me. And this-- I went off on a tangent, but you ask other people, you know, does Peter do that? 100%. Is it a disadvantage to Peter? No, it's a lucky because he's white and middle... Like, does it, does it cause distress to the people around you? Absolutely it does. Absolutely it does. I won't show you my outhouse that's full of crap, but I am disorganized. I am forgetful. I try really, really hard to use modern technology to set myself reminders. I've got reminders about what time my wife's coming home from work. I've got reminders about what we're eating for dinner time. I'm trying really hard to combat this. And here's my point, which is if people interpret what I'm saying as saying that issues to do with focused attention and sustained attention on tasks relevant to survival is not in any way a problem, I have not said that. I'm just saying it's not an illness. So I'm not a man with the illness of ADHD. We are human beings dealing with how our attention works all the time

Hilary Jeffs we talk a lot about how our capitalist society is not helping the everyday person on the street, and that these organizations do put profit ahead of people's wellbeing. Without, let's just be practical now, without a diagnosis, even if, you know, I don't like them any more than you do, but without there being something that you can say you need to make extra concessions or help me be able to deliver the diversity that will do your company good, how is it ever gonna happen? It's just not. These people will not be employed, or they'll be trampled over, or they will... Like this lady, you know, she was given a whole list of reasons as to why she was dismissed by the company. And the sauna was only one little part of that. But actually, the tribunal found that they didn't make the proper adjustments. Without her label, how would they ever have been able to find in her favor? Whether you agree with the enormous payout she's wanting or not, which is, like, 76 million or something she's asking for

Peter Kinderman so you and I at this moment are working from home.

Hilary Jeffs Yes.

Peter Kinderman Yeah?

Hilary Jeffs Yes

Peter Kinderman the government has introduced tax rules that include things like if you use a laptop primarily for business, then the tax issues associated with purchasing and using a laptop for business are different from ones that you use in your personal life. My advice to my friends would be go and have a look at what the tax loopholes are What I would also say is I think we should have a society where we have a redistri- redistribution of tax away from the wealthy and towards the poor.

Hilary Jeffs Yes. Okay, so

Peter Kinderman my advice about it... Right, so my advice to individuals

Hilary Jeffs if they're treated badly because of they're not, then the individual needs are not met because there isn't a diagnosis, how, how

Peter Kinderman So I, so,

Hilary Jeffs in

Peter Kinderman I think we should start... I think we should s- I think we should do two things simultaneously. We should change the system and we completely, and we should reform the system. So I think that the idea of increasing the availability of diagnoses and increasing the availability of drug solutions... Look, let's be, let's be serious. I've had several cups of coffee this morning, and my ability to focus my attention, actually, paradoxically, it's a well-known phenomenon. Paradoxically, my ability to focus my attention increases when I've taken stimulants than when I've not. And most of the medical treatments for the medical diagnosis of so-called ADHD are stimulants. And the reason for that is that if people are seeking, if their brains are, are seeking, the dendrites are going outwards, if it's the case that you're looking outwards for stimulation, but you've taken a stimulant which is giving you internal stimulation, it seems that your brain therefore doesn't seek external stimulation quite as much, and you're able to focus attention. So people who take stimulants are able to focus their attention for longer. You know, th- there's lots of things from, from people passing exams in American high schools to people fighting in wars, to the idea that you take a stimulant and you could increase the focus of your attention is not a new phenomenon, right? So, but I think the idea that we should increase the availability of medical solutions for this phenom- to the problematic consequences of this phenomenon, no, I don't think so. And I think what we should do is, I don't think we should deny people services, I don't think we should deny people diagnoses, I don't think we should deny people access to medication, but I think we should change the system. And we should start off with looking at education, and the idea that a kid who isn't paying attention to the classroom environment should be diagnosed and changed such that they can fit into the classroom environment, but under no circumstances are we going to change the classroom environment, that's wrong. I think we should invest, literally invest, we should invest in a different understanding of educational practice as it applies to the concept of ADHD and the funding of support for kids.

Hilary Jeffs There was a really,

Peter Kinderman approach. One of the things we should do-- Sorry, I'm wa- wagging my finger at you, which is very masculine and unpleasant thing to do, so I shall, I shall sit on my hands,

Hilary Jeffs I

Peter Kinderman getting excited by it. One of the things that we should do is we should start the school day later. I mean, especially for adolescents, but even for kids. So, you know, what we should do, this is the way that we should work it, is we should open the doors of the school at 7:00, and we should have funded childcare between 7:00 and about 9:00. And at 9:00, we should start funded, structured activities for kids that are not straightforward education from 9:00 until 11:00. So if kids want to do sport or they wanna do art or they wanna play Roblox or they wanna Do drama. Y- y- and we shouldn't start formal education until 11:00 in the morning because cortisol, because adolescent brains, because all of that. Also, if you've got a kid and you're doing maths and the kid isn't concentrating on maths, then give them something different to concentrate on. And if what they really, really wanna do is watch videos of people being executed, well, we don't do that. But what we do do is we send them out and get them to play cricket or whatever it is that we want to

Hilary Jeffs for a minute.

Peter Kinderman I know,

Hilary Jeffs understand, not just about

Peter Kinderman we

Hilary Jeffs day starting later, perhaps the school years should start later. That we start our education very early. In other, other countries, they don't start a formal education where you're sat down at a desk till you're older. And we know that boys, you know, it's a generalization, they do all their whole macro big stuff first, and the girls do all their little nice sitting around making

Peter Kinderman W- in,

Hilary Jeffs we

Peter Kinderman in what world should we

Hilary Jeffs a ver-

Peter Kinderman absolutely, 100% agree. I'm getting excited by it. I'm not trying to disagree with you or talk over you. I'm, I'm excited by agreeing with you. So here's the thing, right? You're sitting down with kids at the age of whatever, and it's really young these days, and you're trying to teach them the times table. And in order to learn the times table, these 30 kids, even though, you know, at the age of four, one of them in the class is 25% older than one one of them, other in the class, and that's a massive neurodevelopmental step. But if you've got kids of different developmental ages coming from different socioeconomic backgrounds with different expectations of learning, and you sit them all down and you say, "All of you, for the next period of time, I want you to focus only on one thing, and I'd like you to focus on an abstract concept for long enough for you to learn it." But, and here's the, here's the rub, I'm not going to do any educational input to teach you how to focus your attention. I'm just gonna start with the times table. You have no practice in focusing your attention, dividing your attention between different tasks. I'm not gonna teach you how to defer gratification. I'm not gonna teach you to wait. I'm not gonna ta-teach you to put a task on hold and then come back to it later. I'm just gonna slam in with maths. It's utterly maddening. So I would n-- and then the kids that can't concentrate, they do have a problem. They are suffering. They do get distressed. But I think that's a failure of the system and that I don't think there's

Hilary Jeffs And I would agree with you. There was a

Peter Kinderman and I would not start from there at all

Hilary Jeffs Well, there was a really interesting program on Radio 4, and if anyone can find a link to it, please send it to me, because actually this is something that I've not been able to find since I heard it ages ago. And it was talking about the rise of ADHD, and they put it back to the Space Race. So when Russia got the dog Laika into space, this freaked out the Americans. They could not believe that Russia of all places had got a dog into space, had gone into space before them. And so they started this formal education process where all of a sudden kids were having to sit behind a desk at an earlier age and have a curriculum that was sort of standardized across everywhere, and that's when we started having a problem with people having a difference in attention. I don't know, I haven't seen the studies that sort of back that up, but to me, having raised three children, I thought it was an actual ridiculous situation to be having them sitting down doing formal learning. Because actually, if you'd wait till they're seven or eight and stop having that stupid SATs, which I think they have stopped now in year one or two, whenever it was,

Peter Kinderman Mm-hmm. I don't know.

Hilary Jeffs Then... They soon catch up, because all of a sudden everyone's much better able to sit down and have some attention and to learn in different ways, you know, once you're a seven or eight. I really think that we are going about it the wrong way, and we'd actually

Peter Kinderman We are a-absolutely going about it the wrong way. And then it comes back to Peter F- I mean, I like Peter Fonagy. And he'd probably be really angry at what I've said and probably point out that the message will land

Hilary Jeffs So this is the guy who's done the government report,

Peter Kinderman guy who's done the government report. But part of the thing, me is thinking, look, you know, if you're a parent, then my advice to you as a parent, a bit like the tax thing is use those systems that are best able to provide support for your kid. So if a diagnosis is working for you and your kid or you alone, then, then use it. If the judge in a tribunal requires a diagnosis, then, you know, the-- not even the judge is wrong. The judge is probably, in a judgy fashion, interpreting the law in a manner which is m- exactly appropriate with the law, but the law is wrong because the law isn't reflecting at least my personal understanding of the neurobiology of the phenomena that we're talking about, because it's not an illness. It doesn't work this way. It's a psychological phenomenon. And the thing about Peter Fonagy's review is yeah, of course, we should live with the system that we've got, and we should improve the system in-incrementally, and we should advise individuals to use the system appropriately, but we should not continue with the system. And the Fonagy review goes, "Ooh, well, we could be over-diagnosing ADHD, and at the same time, we're probably

Hilary Jeffs be under-diagnosing ADHD

Peter Kinderman So the

Hilary Jeffs That made me laugh so much

Peter Kinderman yeah. So we've got the-- So the answer, no, no, no. There he goes, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. What we need to do is be accurate in our diagnosis of what, in my opinion, is not a diagnosis.

Hilary Jeffs Can we,

Peter Kinderman of the way in which the human brain

Hilary Jeffs in the future, can we go through the whole of the diagnosis of, ASD and ADHD, the right to choose all those pathways? Because actually I've had some experience of that and some of it is quite scandalous. So, we should definitely touch on that. Right. Last headline, 'cause we're running out of time, Peter. We've had a good old romp today, haven't we? It's the plague, the orange plague, the Trump plague. This is the

Peter Kinderman I just, I really do need to, I really do need to go back, and I need it to be clear. I am not saying that there aren't problems. I'm not saying that people aren't suffering. There are problems. People are suffering. People need help. But they need the right help for... Not the wrong help.

Hilary Jeffs This conversation is not over.

Peter Kinderman Yeah.

Hilary Jeffs Not s-

Peter Kinderman Trump statue, yes

Hilary Jeffs Yes, so this orange plague is indeed a statue of Trump. Last week it was in the European Parliament in Strasbourg. It's a, it's huge. It's like two and a half meters tall, this statue of Trump. It's in 23 karat gold leaf. He's carrying a golf club. Crucially, the man is naked, and he is sat on the shoulders of a much smaller clothed person, and there's such a brilliant plaque inscription beneath this statue. We've got all the links so you can see this statue in the show notes as well. The plaque reads, "I'm sitting on the back of a man. He is sinking under my burden. I would do anything to help him except stepping down from his back. The king of injustice." I love this, but... And I laughed out loud when I first saw it. However, I then had a little bit of a, "Oh, is this really where we're at now?" Even sensible lawmakers now just feel that we can treat people with such disrespect. He is, after all, the President of America. Michelle Obama famously said, "When they go low, we go high." Those days are gone, and actually, I feel a bit sad for that

Peter Kinderman possibly. I think that I'm a little bit more positive about it. I think the man is contemptible, and I think that holding him in contempt is therefore logically appropriate. What should one do with a contemptible man? One should con- could hold him in contempt. I also think that-- I remember, I-- Yeah, I don't wish... Oh, God, I can't finish the sentence. I was going to say I don't wish ill on anybody, but I can't actually finish that sentence. I,

Hilary Jeffs I'm the

Peter Kinderman I don't want

Hilary Jeffs to think that I would never want someone to be hurt or that I really thought political violence was bad, and then Trump came along and I'm like, "Hmm, okay."

Peter Kinderman So I do not want this outcome to happen, but I do remember that when Ceaușescu fell and was executed by firing squad in very short order, the thing that happened was that somebody in the crowd started laughing. That's-- that was the trigger. Because he held people in fear, and for some reason it just started to fall apart, and then the crack, and then, then the dam broke and... The thing about Trump is that it-- I suspect the Republicans will do badly in the midterms.

Hilary Jeffs We hope. We can't, we do not know

Peter Kinderman we don't know. They, you know, pe-people are selfish, and vicious, and nasty, and racist, and people living in a country which has for many years possibly post the Soviet space race positively valued selfishness and bitterness and the exclusion of others. And a nation built on slavery is unlikely to be one that smoothly moves towards democracy. But anyway, let's hope that the midterms result in the Republicans

Hilary Jeffs You're right. He is a laughing stock. It is embarrassing. We are wanting for it to be over. The midterms are coming. We can only hope that he gets the metaphorical kicking that they deserve, but there are no guarantees, are there?

Peter Kinderman No, and, but I think that the statue and related kind of artworks and so forth, the sort of cultural the-- I said earlier

Hilary Jeffs There's the one with Trump and Epstein at the, doing the Titanic on the bow of the ship, and then there's also the toilet, which is a throne fit for a king, all in gold. These are all gold statues,

Peter Kinderman and I think that,

Hilary Jeffs Trump, or, you know, ridiculing

Peter Kinderman ridiculing. I think that if we, you know, there are two possible negative outcomes. One, one is the Republicans do well under Trump, and then, and then things get worse for the rest of the world, and indeed get worse for America. The other possibility is he does badly in the midterms and declares a state of emergency and declares himself president for life and it turns into a fascist state, which

Hilary Jeffs yeah, well, that is

Peter Kinderman But,

Hilary Jeffs a possibility

Peter Kinderman if what happens is that one, one of the possible positive exit strategies is the Republican Party decides that Trump is more of a liability than a, than a vote winner. Now, I think that any rational person hearing his speeches would decide that he's more of a liability than a vote

Hilary Jeffs clearly

Peter Kinderman but it hasn't happened yet. But maybe if, maybe if literally everybody is laughing at him, maybe that'll shift the Republican Party into finally ditching him. So I think this is probably a positive thing. I did come up incidentally with my own version of an art ins- you know, a performance art type thing that I think would be ab-absolutely brilliant, which I'm not gonna do 'cause I can't afford it. But what I was thinking is that what we could have is three robot lawnmowers. They're, they're not terribly expensive, little round lawnmowers out there on the lawn. And we have three of them, you know, three of them, one with a papier-mâché Donald Trump on, one with a papier-mâché, mâché Vladimir Putin on, and one with a papier-mâché Andy Burnham on. We give them all lances, and then we just let the robot vacuum robot vacuum cleaners in an installation or v- robot lawnmowers just move

Hilary Jeffs far too much time watching Robot Wars in your life. I loved that program. Really, I did. I suppose what we also can see is that the world leaders themselves are starting to really take the mick now out of Donald Trump. We've had Mark Carney talking about, you know, how they don't want to create another world power just with better manners. Peter, we need your tip to try before we wrap up for the, for the week. What is the triple T this week?

Peter Kinderman So this relates to attentional blindness. It relates to attention. It relates to not seeing things because if you're not aware of how you're using your attention, the thing that's right in front of you will not be seen. Your brain will, will make a mask of it. And so the tip to try is basically look at it from a different angle, and I mean that both literally but also metaphoric. Yeah. But also, I mean, the-- But Brian Eno apparently had a pack of cards. I'd quite like to get a set of these cards that I think are relative-- completely available. But where he was teach about, thinking about, thinking about things differently from a creative point of view. So yeah, you could literally stand on your head and think about the same issue and look for it. But yeah, look at, look at things from a different perspective. I mean, the whole point about the gorilla thing was that if you're focused on the basketball, you will not see the gorilla. So there might be a gorilla out there. There might be all sorts of things out there. So look at things from different perspectives. If you're trying to find your keys, think about it from a different perspective. Look at it from a different perspective. Think about, you know, if I was a cat, where would I look to find, find the keys? If I was smelling my keys,

Hilary Jeffs It's always the cat's fault

Peter Kinderman it's always the cat's fault. But also just, just generally in life. I mean, there's, you know, you c- you can argue from the contrary point of view. You know, if I was a senior member of the Republican Party, what would I do about Donald Trump now? And it might give you some advice about where you might go in life. So look at things from a different perspective, see things from a different angle. Try to look at things differently, and you might overcome this attentional

Hilary Jeffs When I had art lessons, that was one of the top tricks was to turn your picture upside down and start painting upside down and looking at it from a different angle. Or to paint... My dad was a painter, and it was like paint around the objects rather than paint the object, and then things just come together in a different way. When I'm looking for my keys, I have to say to myself, "Keys, keys, keys," because my brain, if I'm looking for my keys, will suddenly go, "Hmm, fudge. I fancy some fudge." And then I'm not looking for the keys

Peter Kinderman Exactly so. I, these days I can, I can leave a room, go through the door and forget what it is I left the room for. So yeah.

Hilary Jeffs Yeah. And again, we come back to our age. My birthday in the week. In fact, I had a delivery driver the other day, and they had to ask for my year of birth, as they do with some things that are being delivered. And when I told them, they said, "Oh dear, I am sorry." Cheeky buggers. I tell you. I said to them, "It's better than the alternative." It is at the moment, so we'll keep it that way

Peter Kinderman Good.

Hilary Jeffs Thank you very much. I'll see you next week The Experience Podcast is hosted by Hilary Jeffs and Peter Kinderman, produced by James Jones at Granary Digital. You can find us on social media, and you can get in touch via email at hello@experiencepodco.com with any questions, comments, or topics you'd like us to cover, and don't forget to leave us a review