Stuart Shanker - Reframed: Self-Reg for a Just Society

Self-Reg Schools: A Handbook for Educators, co-authored by Susan Hopkins (2019)

Self-Reg: How to Help Your Child (and You) Break the Stress Cycle and Successfully Engage with Life, with Teresa Barker (2016)

Calm, Alert, and Learning: Classroom Strategies for Self-Regulation (2012)

Human Development in the Twenty-First Century: Visionary Ideas from Systems Scientists, co-edited by Alan Fogel and Barbara J. King (2008)

The First Idea: How Symbols, Language, and Intelligence Evolved from Our Primate Ancestors to Modern Humans, co-authored by Stanley I. Greenspan (2004)

Apes, Language, and the Human Mind, co-authored by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Talbot J. Taylor (1998)

Wittgensteins Remarks on the Foundations of AI (1998)

REFRAMED

Self-Reg for a Just Society

Stuart Shanker

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London

University of Toronto Press
utorontopress.com

V & S Corp., Inc. 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

ISBN 978-1-4875-0631-5 (cloth)

ISBN 978-1-4875-3382-3 (EPUB)

ISBN 978-1-4875-3381-6 (PDF)

Printed in Canada

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Reframed : Self-Reg for a just society / Stuart Shanker.

Names: Shanker, Stuart, author.

Description: Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200157124 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200157140 | ISBN 9781487506315 (cloth) | ISBN 9781487533823 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781487533816 (PDF)

Subjects: LCSH: Self-control. | LCSH: Self-control Social aspects. | LCSH: Stress management. | LCSH: Child psychology. | LCSH: Self-management (Psychology) | LCSH: Stress (Psychology)

Classification: LCC BF632.S53 2020 | DDC 158.1 dc23

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario, for our publishing activities.

To Ginny, my besherta

Contents

Shortly after I came to York University, I was invited to give a public lecture to the university professoriate. After the lecture a number of my new colleagues took me out to lunch, and all said very nice things about the lecture. But then one, a political philosopher, piped up that he had thoroughly enjoyed hearing all of Pierre Trudeaus old ideas once again.

I confess that I was taken aback but also curious why he should have levelled such a charge. When I got home, I dug out my copy of Towards a Just Society. Sure enough, the book was heavily highlighted, and I was shocked to see how many of the things I had said in my lecture were taken almost verbatim from Trudeaus writings. I hadnt just been reading; I had been absorbing Trudeaus thinking, incorporating it into my own to the point where I couldnt have distinguished between who had said what. And I realized that it does not matter, but it makes writing an Acknowledgments section fiendishly difficult.

We are living in a period that constitutes a new Renaissance. The profusion of articles and books flowering every week is mind-boggling. But what makes it even more overwhelming is the quality of the research involved. As I write this, I am looking at my library shelves, and I hesitate to open up any of the books to see how much highlighting is in each. In truth, I know what I will find and know also that I cannot even begin to acknowledge all the wonderful ideas that I have absorbed.

So, this must be only a partial list of acknowledgments. To all those who have contributed to this paradigm revolution but are not cited, I offer both my gratitude and my regrets. There are a number of individuals, however, who cannot be overlooked.

It is almost pointless to mention Stanley Greenspans impact on Self-Reg; it is obvious on every single page. Nor can I do justice to the influence that Paul MacLean, Jaak Panksepp, Stephen Porges, Allan Schore, and Robert Thayer have had on me.

Over the years a number of people have been especially influential on my thinking: Teresa Barker, Beatrice Beebe, Jerome Bruner, Jeremy Burman, Jeff Coulter, Roger Downer, Alan Fogel, Norah Fryer, Ross Greene, Peter Hacker, Louise Lamont, Marc Lewis, Andrew Meltzoff, Fraser Mustard, Darcia Narvaez, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Brenda Smith-Chant, Digby Tantam, Talbot Taylor, Michael Thompson, Ed Tronick, and, of course, Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

It is those who have not just helped but, in truth, pushed me to do this work that I especially want to acknowledge. But here too must go unmentioned a large number of people: all those teachers, professors, students, and colleagues who are the backbone of this book and, I suspect, of every book.

There are simply too many people involved with TMC for me to mention them all by name, but I do need to single out Jamie Barker, Frederica Black, Stephanie Cudmore, Dylan Doyle, Aviva Dunsiger, Travis Francis, John Hoffman, Paula Jurczak, Cathy Lethbridge, Ashley Marcoux, Tania Moher, Stephanie Pellett, Stephen Retallick, Liz Shepherd, and Taylor Wilson. For a full list of our presenters and other staff members, see https://self-reg.ca /about-us/.

Louise Beard has had a profound effect on my thinking. The school that she runs, Venture Academy, inspired the very last line of the last chapter: the motto that I hope will be placed over the doorway of every single school.

Barbara King has been with me from the start. We have long been working on the same issues from opposite ends of the spectrum. It is exciting for me to see how, after all these years, our work has met up in the middle.

Last or perhaps first there is Susan Hopkins. She has single-handedly created in The MEHRIT Centre the organization that Milt Harris and I dreamed about. She has created the army of Self-Reggers for whom I have written this book and to whom I am indebted for so much of the content. She has taught me far more than she has ever learned from me.

I would never have been able to develop Self-Reg had it not been for the support that I received from Milt and Ethel Harris; David, John, Judith, and Naomi Harris; Kenneth Rotenberg and Doris Sommer-Rotenberg; and York University. My experience at MEHRI was life changing. To this day my thinking continues to evolve as a result of the work of the DIR community, the therapists at MEHRI, the families involved in the study, and, above all, Devin Casenhiser.

All I can say about Colleen Dickinson and Heather Wesley is that my wish for everyone involved in this kind of demanding intellectual work is that they have a Colleen or Heather by their side.

My editor at the University of Toronto Press, Meg Patterson, is the kind of editor that every author dreams of having.

I worship the memory of my parents, while my sister gets my never-ending gratitude and love; she has always been and will always be my doppelganger.

Finally, there are my wife and children. Everything I do is because of and for them.