Instantly, I understood how the same quality that deepens one’s contentment in aging is also linked to the sustaining, pre-verbal relationship between infant and parent. Under Winnicott’s model, the infant’s own object seeking is met—- through what is called “good enough” mothering— with the object’s willingness to be used—that is, assimilated to the infant’s needs. So too in Csikszenthmihayi’s “flow” model: where the adult’s competency and skill meets its object of challenge; and where the immediacy of feedback and the sense of a future outcome instills hope as it inspires confidence in competence. “Flow”, together with the individual’s preparedness, corresponds to a “transitional space” of creative growth and competence.

Not bad for an afternoon’s nap!

Mid-life underemployment attacks the hard-won foundations of personal identity. We forget not only the pride of accomplishment, but also our thrilling consolidations of learning necessary to achieve our former career goals. How do we reverse the trend? It becomes necessary to labor toward two goals: the first is external; the second is internal.

Externally, we need to detach from the firm resolve to find work in our own fields. Prolonged waiting in silence to hear a positive response from our applications for new positions is toxic.  We need to re-examine all of our skillsets, not just the ones which  have once productively defined us. And we need to relax our pride, in order to find something- anything- that produces cash flow.

Internally, we need to invest in psychological “flow”. We must find avenues of self-generated activity that not only challenge our capabilities but also locate these activities both within our own control and with concrete, immediate feedback. Playing an instrument, meditating, writing a poem, embarking on a course of weight training—- each of these represents the subjective reclamation of one’s purpose and worth.

A paradox of contemporary life is the appearance of connectivity. How is it we don’t “get through”? Because no one is reading. Perhaps our key words are incorrect?

What frustrates is the naive belief that if posted, the posting will be read. Silly entitlement. Yet, for those individuals who keep trying to get noticed, especially when its about supporting themselves and their families, the fiction of connectivity is another painful modern reality.

Not getting through: it becomes a therapeutic issue when the attempts have been numerous and the silences deafening. Somehow, it is impossible for individuals to concede that with all these apparently fruitful possibilities,  something is not happening for them.  The problem is our credulity: how can the difficulty not be “me”, we ask. Hard to believe simply: it’s not. Why do we disbelieve? Because, in believing that the problem is not in me, we have to relent and admit our injured sense of entitlement— we want to believe that we can connect. It is easier to believe that the problem can be solved by rewriting the resume again.

Much tougher to believe that no one is reading our revision.

Decreasingly, the investor is aware of the decisions and events characterizing value determination both of 1) corporations and 2) markets. The problem is not simply the self-interested nature of the corporation as it externalizes liability; but lies too in the long/short nature of investment in equity shares, coupled with uncertainty in the absence of market-relevant “information”.

My own experience of this disconnect occurred with a 40% drop-off in price, of a stock I’d long followed. True, the original P/E of the stock had been inflated by investor expectation of rosy tomorrows; but the sudden, unexplained loss of its largest customer, dropped the price to levels unseen since before securing that customer— that is, the increased value of the stock relative to its price in earlier years was a function of advances, fostered, in part, by collaboration with the now-lost customer. The stock was a real “value” buy.

But the market’s response was vicious: aggressive short selling plunged the share price another 50%, despite re-assessments of value based on current knowledge. These were driven, in part, by threatened class action suits, a restatement of annual earnings hampered by legal difficulties between corporation and customer, and corporate silence- extending for months- as the stock plummeted. Only six months later, when multiple successful lawsuits were announced, did it appear that non-disclosure had hidden much negotiation to which shareholders were not immediately privy. Still, the stock remained at more than 80% discount to its earlier levels.

My earlier conviction of the firm’s ability to negotiate in difficult foreign markets, cast into doubt with the loss of its customer, was reaffirmed months later, with announcements of new business in those markets. Despite its silence, destructive of shareholder value, management seemed competent and forward looking.

Yet, the disconnect between these serious vicissitudes in customer-firm relations and the interests of shareholders underlined the perilous position of retail investors. While corporations’ first imperative is survival, the precipitous slide of share-price resembled corporate self-destruction; and indeed, equaled a suicidal self-destructiveness for investors during the period of silence when retaining the stock in ignorance of corporate affairs was a matter of faith rather than fiduciary responsibility.

Informational clarity required a very long timeline: and for the individual holding the stock throughout this entire period, required absorbing asset losses of 88% before the possibility of future repair. For the individual with an initial $50,000 position, only $6000 remained six months later: a sickening drop, doubling the depth of the 2008-9 financial crash. During this period, the only available information was of dubious quality: of supporters and detractors of these shares, found on dedicated Internet message boards. Increasingly, the writing resembled the defense of religious zealots against spiritual detractors as disillusioned “longs” battled smugly triumphant “shorts”.

What did I learn? That long-term investment may be considered only with a highly diverse portfolio- with its outer limits approaching a market-based ETF. Only in this way, does the retail shareholder minimize the potentially destructive possibilities to personal assets of informational non-responsiveness by organizations competently (or incompetently) conducting their daily business beyond clear and responsive communication with shareholders.

Yet here, the investor becomes subject to a different dynamic: of large shifts caused by market volatility. The operative question becomes: what is the timeline during which money is to be “tied up”? And, even assuming a long timeline, does it make sense to place money at risk assuming some multiple year regression either to a market mean or better? Would it not be a better idea to withdraw funds from markets during market highs, with investment only upon statistical dips? However speculative, this tactic is based on the long-term nature of markets, rather than on the fantasies of long-term asset

Not so unusual, perhaps. But the technical analysts, holding charts high as if warding off their daily vampires of uncertainty, were scratching their heads (having predicted an “up” week- especially because Bernanke was due to surprise well beyond his “twist and shout”….).

No, it was something else: two of the multiple market seers writing this morning were saying something a bit different: 1) following weeks of frustrating uncertainty for investors, there was no clear path; and 2) folks were beginning to blame the Greeks for default (which had not yet occurred).

This signals a new moment: the birth of consciousness in panic, and with it, blame: we will of course, stay tuned as we buckle up for the ride.

We chart the markets daily. We hitch our finances to its mercurial course. We become excited by our own schemes for “beating” the market- as if they were Aladdin’s Lamp, becoming excited by our own enthusiasms, and too frequently winding up with Pandora’s Box.

Mostly, our desire to take “from” the market powers our enthusiasms: we want to remain attuned, to know it, as if to anticipate its capacities to give its bounties, as well as to avoid its ability to hurt and punish. Here, we imagine the market as an inconsistent parent.

The market is an electric, moving constant:  traceable on our monitors as its traces are felt in our pockets. Even turning from it, we are aware that its actions continue as dramatic and powerful influences.

Earlier this summer, after presenting a paper about the markets’ fearful responses to the Deepwater oil spill,  it occurred to me that we were beginning to see a different variation of the same dynamic. I formulated hypotheses, began observing, and last week, reading Martin Wolfe’s “Struggling with a great contraction” in the Financial Times, recognized anxiously, that I was on the right track.

Wolfe’s observations parallel my own on emotional finance: however, unlike the BP incident last year, when markets had a concrete object of FEAR, today, we suffer from multiple ANXIETIES- US and Eurozone debt, unemployment, Western decline— together with the heightened ups and downs of market volatility. Together, this awful mix poses for investors, a situation of open-ended anguish- without resolve at this point, barring decisive leadership in political action.

What will be? No bottoms until the markets recognize an object of fear, realized; and my own hunch, watching the accumulation of chart-watchers and pundits, is that a test of 2008-9 bottoms will suffice. Until we build again. Til then, it is passive research, our only available course of action.

Just having finished my earlier post, “Psycho-Economic Depression“, I came upon this by Fritz Schumacher, from “Small is Beautiful” (pages 203-204). It seemed to fit:

If the nature of change is such that nothing is left for the fathers to teach their sons, or for the sons to accept from their fathers, family life collapses. The life, work, and happiness of all societies depend on certain “psychological structures” which are infinitely precious and highly vulnerable. Social cohesion, cooperation, mutual respect, and above all, self-respect, courage in the face of adversity, and the ability to bear hardship- all this and much else disintegrates and disappears when these “psychological structures” are gravely damaged. A man is destroyed by the inner conviction of uselessness. No amount of economic growth can compensate for such losses….

It is true, there is not one of us who can create a pencil. There is one problem though- each of the skills which we might supply requires a demand. The component actions that miraculously eventuate in a pencil must be organized by some desire: society must want its pencil.

In the absence of this demand, this desire, the multiple skills involved in production wilt and die, unused. From the human standpoint, this makes each of us as workers dependent upon a world, a society, that values what we have to offer. Absent that demand, our supply capability is meaningless.

It corresponds psychologically to the young child’s need for reciprocal parental care in the absence of such care; and its absence leads, individually and societally, to depression.

Absent demand for the work we do– both in economic terms and in affirming personal self-respect- the 2d Great Depression we face will be more than economic:  but a psycho-economic depression—- the very opposite of the “can do” entrepreneurialism that we are told by politicians, will raise us from this mess.

Entrepreneurs “can do”; if no one responds, it doesn’t matter.

Markets, like groups, struggle through long periods of anxiety, attempting to reach some momentary closure that brings sense— at least temporarily— to interactive flux.

A perfect example has been the elevation of the Fed’s Ben Bernanke: from Rick Perry’s recent derogation of Bernanke on the one hand, to the general market’s genuflection before the altar of Jackson Hole: whether demonized or sainted, the market wants to find its footing and has temporarily tethered itself (always a mistake in groups!) to one prominent figure.

As an assumption of group life, it is called “pairing”.