I personally find this to be difficult when publishing essays with which I disagree in this Library of Professional Psychology (where I serve as curator) and in the Library of Professional Coaching (where I serve as co-curator). I don’t want the perspectives that are being offered to “win the day” in fields about which I care deeply (psychology and professional coaching). Yet, I know that a diversity of perspectives makes for a viable and vibrant system–as the evolutionary biologists teach us (Bergquist, 2012).
I read with distain and disappointment about a professional being drummed out of their professional circle because they offer a viewpoint that differs from those who control this profession (and protect the existing and dominant paradigm). I have written a set of essays about a psychiatrist (Wilhelm Reich) who faced expulsion from his profession because of “unpopular” and “unacceptable” perspectives and practices (Bergquist, 2023d; Bergquist, 2023e, Bergquist, 2023f, Bergquist, 2023g).
I return to the balance between challenge and support. I rely on the insights offered by Nevitt Sanford (1980) who suggests that all significant learning requires a balance between challenge and support, as well as the insights offered by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990) who writes about the highly motivating state that he calls Flow which resides in the threshold between anxiety (excessive challenge) and boredom (excessive support).
All of this balancing, in turn, requires the kind of feminine leadership of the chalice (support) that Rianne Eisler (1987) proposes—leadership that balances off the more masculine leadership of the sword (challenge). By example, Abraham Lincoln teaches us a fourth lesson: it is possible for a male leader to provide a chalice of support that is needed to balance off a challenge of the sword which is required in leading any army into battle (including the battle for preservation of a union and abolition of slavery).
Collaboration and Truth
There is one final lesson that Abraham Lincoln seems to be teaching us. It concerns our access to “reality” in the midst of differing perspectives regarding reality that are held by people with whom we wish to retain a relationship. If Leslie Brothers (2001) is correct in proposing that our access to reality is found (or perhaps created) in our relationship with other people, then how in the world can we gain a clear sense of reality when interacting with someone who has a different take on the real world. This struggle regarding access to reality is likely to be particularly intense when seeking to grasp something about the reality of a war that is raging in our own backyard.
As we see in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s (2005) account of Lincoln’s leadership during the American civil war, it was particularly difficult to get a clear sense of what was occurring on the battlefields of Antietam or Gettysburg or in the cities of Atlanta or Charleston. Often relying on the brief written accounts coming over the telegraph located at his war office, Lincoln had no access to 21st Century media which better convey something about the “realities” of war. Furthermore, all of the in-person accounts he was receiving were inevitably biased—for no one was “neutral” about the war or about how best to conduct this new (“modern”) form of warfare.
