As Doug acknowledges, and Hugo knows, there is indeed a strong personality
component to denial. In many cases this will be so strong as to prohibit a
healthy examination of our own psychological defence mechanisms, which, as
Doug and Hugo will both recall, are the basis for much individual denial. I
fancy that Bud Holland (subject of Tony's excellent case study) had a heady
element of denial and potent mix of a few other very strong ego defences
operating in the lead up to his accident.
While I support the view that individual self assessment and focus on the
self is the preferable way to deal with undesirable behaviour from
operational personnel, in practice, this is difficult to engineer. Doug is
correct in saying that powerful motivation (ie., career on the line) can in
many cases produce the desired result, but in my experience there is a lot
of heartache involved in communicating this type of bottom behavioural line
to individual crew members. Of course, this means that Hugo is correct in
suggesting that a cultural change is required (yes, another one...), and
Doug's idea of innoculating future generations is a starting point.
However, even if we do reach a stage where assessment of deeper
psychological mechanisms are a requirement for licencing (this is, I
believe, in current contexts a distant proposition), denial of denial is
likely to forestall much self help behaviour by the operators. As the man says:
> When the denial 'switch' is activated, the person
>denying is unaware they are doing it. How can you ask someone to
>correst something they don't know they are doing? Impossible.
To close, at the risk of sounding repetitive, no matter how effective our
CRM training, the best place to ensure that we get appropriate behaviour
from operational personnel is not in the class room, but at the recruiting
point. Well-researched, appropriately targeted selection systems can save
many administrative headaches and mountains of training dollars for our
cash-poor but assett rich industry.
Good afternoon.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Brent Hayward ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Aviation Psychologist
e-mail: brent_at_melbpc.org.au Tel: +61 3 9690 4258; Fax: +61 3 9690 7070;
AAvPA www: http://www.nasma.com/aavpa
__________ PO Box 217, Albert Park VIC 3206, Australia __________