John Gilligan

 John F. Gilligan, Ph.D , a licensed clinical psychologist, is President Emeritus of Fayette Companies. He is the past chairman of the Peoria Area Chamber of Commerce, the Employers' Association of Illinois, and the Central Illinois Workforce board of directors. He currently serves on the on the board of directors for the Creve Coeur Club, the Workforce Development Network, J.C. Proctor Endowment, the Institute for Principled Leadership in Public Service at Bradley University, Quality Quest for Health, and the Drug Prevention Network of the Americas/Red Interamericana para la Prevencion de las Drogas.

He was a founding member of the Leadership Development Center and has provided managerial training and consultation to managers representing more than 200 of the Fortune 500 corporations. He has taught in the School of Business Administration at Bradley University and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.

In addition to published professional research and presentations, he has written numerous editorials. His most recent books were The Adversity Challenge (with Charles Stoner, Ph.D.) and The Library of Congress: An Embodiment of the American Identity (with Congressman Ray LaHood).

PageOneLit.com: Where did you grow up and was reading and writing a part of your life? Who were your earliest influences and why?

John Gilligan: Writing came late in life. It's a new identity that was forged in my 60s toward the end of my professional career as a clinical psychologist. A quick historical context will help to best answer this question.
My formative years through college were in New England, primarily Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The one exception was the first and second grade in Clinton, Iowa during WW II.

Reading was very important. My mother insisted on it. When I was a child, she read to me every evening before I went to sleep. Writing, however, was an alienating experience. I hated it and avoided it whenever possible.

That started to change upon entering college (Stonehill College, North Easton, MA) when I was drawn to English and American Literature. In my senior year, I risked taking a creative writing course. I enjoyed it immensely; yet it's the only writing course I have ever had.

Immediately after college, I had the good fortune and opportunity to study four years in Europe. In Paris I took a few French literature courses at the Sorbonne, but my writing was more to master the French language than an occasion to express ideas.

My real interest was in psychology and sociology accompanied by an initiation into art and architecture. It was the same for my years in Italy. Reading, learning languages, and visiting the Grand Tour sites occupied my interests. Writing, on the other hand, had little interest.

Returning to the United States, I pursued a professional career in psychology. All writing was related to my studies. Upon finishing post doctoral studies in clinical psychology at the University of Illinois' Medical School's Psychiatric Institute in Chicago, I began my professional career.

Eventually, I became president and CEO of Fayette Companies, one of the largest mental health, drug, and alcohol treatment centers in Illinois. Given my position, I was frequently asked to make presentations on these subjects as well as being interviewed by the media.
My involvement in a variety of community issues related to mental health and drug prevention resulted in a few related informational op-ed pieces as a community service. This began a 20 year tradition of writing op-eds that evolved into a focus on cultural issues affecting the well-being of our local communities.

I used national holidays: Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Thanksgiving, and Labor Day as the occasion for an op-ed. The theme of each op-ed was embedded in an historical context related to that particular holiday tied to a cultural issue of the day.

After 20 years of writing on these topics, there was little I didn't know about these holidays and a few others like Lincoln's and Washington's birthday. The experience forced me to become more knowledgeable about American history. And as a clinical psychologist I automatically wrote about these events from a then and now cultural perspective.

I received much positive feed back about the articles and how well they were written. Yet I never conceived of myself as a writer never mind writing a book.

That changed when a friend of mine, Chuck Stoner, asked me about writing a book on adversity and leadership. We had run managerial training programs for a dozen years or so. He's a professor of management at Bradley University and I had taught a course for a number of semesters in the MBA program.

And he said: "If you can write all those op-eds, you can certainly write a book, let's do it!" It was my first book, but he was the lead author, which was the only way I would undertake such an enterprise. It's called the Adversity Challenge and was published in 2002.
"Maybe," I thought, "when I retire I can write a book on my own." As I said, writing as a career and as a professional identity has come to me late in life. But it also means that I have a lot of experiences and knowledge upon which to draw and share.

 

PageOneLit.com: Briefly discuss your new book THE SOUL OF AMERICA: ESSAYS ON THE FOURTH OF JULY? What does the 4th of July mean to you? What will you be doing to celebrate the 4th this year?

John Gilligan: The Soul of America is divided into three parts: the Birth of America, Cultural Strife, and Patriotism.

Birth of America describes how the truths that "all men are created equal...endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights...life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" became the foundation of American identity and the guiding principles of American life.

Cultural strife illustrates how conflicts in American life resulting from different and opposing understandings of the concepts of liberty, freedom, equality, independence and what it means to be American deepened and expanded—matured—our understandings of these ideas.

Patriotism, the last section of the book, addresses the kinds of behaviors and expectations that flow from our American belief system. Remember: We were, at the time, the only nation in the world that was founded on a belief system based in our common humanity and not race, ethnicity, or religion.

 

PageOneLit.com:  What does the 4th of July mean to you?

John Gilligan: For me, the Fourth is a community event of civic friendship in which we share and celebrate our common identity as Americans. It's similar to family reunions; organizational anniversaries, etc. It's just neat to get together with fellow Americans and recall how it all began 233 years ago.

 

PageOneLit.com:  What will you be doing to celebrate the 4th this year?

John Gilligan:Our family tradition is to gather with our kids and grandkids along the Illinois river that runs between Peoria and East Peoria along with 100,000 fellow Americans to watch some of the greatest fireworks displays in the country. It's a fantastic celebration of patriotism and good will..
 

 

PageOneLit.com: Describe your title THE SOUL OF AMERICA as it relates to the book. What is the 'Soul" of our country? What 'holds' our country together?

John Gilligan: The books major proposition is that America consists in a set of beliefs—truths—that bind us together. It's what makes us Americans.

I took the title from Abraham Lincoln's claim that the Declaration of Independence is the soul of America. It's the moral force that keeps America straight or straightens America when it gets crooked.

Every human event occurs within a cultural context. So too with the Declaration of Independence.

And so when the people of 1776 talked about the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness they understood those ideas, not as fully as we understand them today, but within the limitations set by their cultural belief systems of the time.

Take freedom, for example. The idea or concept of freedom was understood within a larger belief system of a natural order. This was not some abstract concept but a set of beliefs expressed in a social structure of hierarchy, patriarchy, and dependency.

At the time, however, it was believed that only certain people were capable of freedom. In particular, men of wealth and property since they were not dependent upon other people. Furthermore, the more rational should govern the less rational. Women were seen as less rational, and non-white races were seen as less rational than the white. This was the context in which freedom and liberty were understood.

All this would come tumbling down as the result of the American Revolution. But it didn't happen in one fell swoop, but over time.

For the very statement that "all men are created equal," would become the key to opening the doors of freedom to more and more people. Lincoln saw it clearly when he praised Jefferson for inserting in a purely revolutionary document "an abstract truth applicable to all men for all times."

And that truth has served as a corrective force to the injustices and unfairnesses occurring in American life spurred on by the lesser angels of our nature.
Personally define Patriotism.

Patriotism is what you do to make a better community, state, and nation. It's the action we take to promote the common good that becomes the concrete expression of our devotion to our country.

Patriotism is another name for commitment to the common good. It is the counter balance to our individual pursuits for happiness. It rarely demands that we risk our lives for the good of the country, but always demands that we do something to take care of or better our communities and the nation.

 

PageOneLit.com:  Describe how much historical research went into THE SOUL OF AMERICA: ESSAYS ON THE FOURTH OF JULY?

John Gilligan: I must say that there is hardly a work produced by noted scholars related to the Fourth of July that I haven't read over the past 20 years. Everything that I have written is based in solid historical research and scholarship.

In addition to articles and historical journals, my library contains four shelves of books on American history, all read and annotated. So I do consider myself to be very well read and informed.
 

PageOneLit.com: What do you hope to achieve with THE SOUL OF AMERICA: ESSAYS ON THE FOURTH OF JULY?

John Gilligan: It's my hope that the readers of The Soul of America will come away with an understanding about our nation that makes Americans a different breed of people. We really are different from all other countries of the world.

We are the only nation founded on the concept of a common humanity—all men are created equal—with sacred rights—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The implications and ramifications of the American foundation have played out and continue to play out over the centuries. We are always discovering new meanings and understandings of freedom.

Americans are the only people in the world who as a whole want to make money and do good at the same time. That's part of our character as a people. It makes for one hell of an exciting country.
 

PageOneLit.com: What was the last book you read?

John Gilligan: The Rise of American Democracy by Sean Wilentz.

PageOneLit.com: What's next?

John Gilligan: I have two books in the hopper. One is a Guide to Rome for the American Tourist. What I try to do in this book is tie together the great historical ruins in Rome with American history. Few realize how much our Founders drew upon the Roman Republic as the conceived a new nation. I try to make that ancient history come alive and present the wisdom derived from the past to better help Americans understand our own present.

The other is the American Culture. This is a much bigger project and more difficult, but I am into it. Here I attempt to cover how the habits of the mind, heart, and action from the 1620 to the present have formed the American character, the challenges we face in the 21st century, and whether our culture can maintain itself in a new global economic and world order never experienced before.

 

PageOneLit.com: Do you have any hobbies? What are they? How do they enhance your writing?

John Gilligan: Yes, I used to do quite a bit of running, 30 plus years. I now do biking, 75 to 100 miles a week. It helps me reflect and let my mind float free. All kinds of ideas and clarity occur and then I return to writing having a better idea of what I really think and feel. I also practice martial arts, which helps me to focus intently.