Diane G writes: (speaking to Jim and myself):
Jim: As someone who spent 16 years
as Chief Psychologist in one of the largest prison systems in the country
supervising others and directly involved in diagnosing thousands of men with
psychopathic and antisocial traits and attempting to treat them, I can
assure you Jim that I know exactly what I am talking about. In all
likelihood, the only way to deal with this man, who unfortunately is at the
helm, is to reverse the projection and "lock him up". But, as I
said, this is not about him only. His entire party in Congress is
problematic. And its notions about women's health as well as science and other
matters is archaic and self serving. Your condescending comment to me is
emblematic of the helplessness involved in not being able to engage in mutual
dialogue without being reduced to ad hominem attack and a need to dominate and
control, which rather proves my point re the suppression of women and factors
that contribute to it. More women voted for Clinton though not a vast
majority of white women did. The identification of some white women with
their mate and her own phallo centrism is a complicated process. There is
a type of self abnegation, isolation and a loss of selfhood that is involved
reminiscent of the type of thing we see in domestic violence. I would
expect that white women with low information who are further out west are much
less likely to identify with women having advanced education and experience. Black
women tend to be a bit more sensitive to the kind of man Trump is. Interestingly,
an informal poll this summer at the major opening plenary of the APA
meeting by Johnathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by
Politics and Religion) had hundreds of attendee psychologists raising their
hands in support of Clinton and less than 10 who were voting Trump.
Patrick: I do not see your point
with regard to black people in the south. Child abuse is rife throughout
the US. Matter of fact, the vast majority of sex crimes against women and
children in the US are committed by white men of which a representative portion
go to prison. Still, since this crime is under reported (as one can
easily see from the President elects history), it is difficult to get an
accurate figure of how common it is. While we have plenty of evidence of
the harms of spanking, it continues here but I imagine it is more prevalent in
some poor and uneducated groups than others. I was surprised at an
informal poll in a psych group here that showed so many spanking their
children.
This list does not show the
material I am responding to so that is it for now.
Patrick, I am presenting a
psychoanalytic paper this Sunday in part showing how the US is mirroring the
suicide-mass homicide mission with some cites from de Mausse. Child abuse
in general is a foundational element of the thesis. However, the
suppression of women is a part. Of course, this is not just about the
actions or deprivations but about the mental representations. There are
many parallels. It is eerie. Another piece that I think is eerie is
the NY Times book review of a new bio on Hitler. I have not looked at the
Atlantic Monthly article The Mind of Trump though I have heard it is pretty
good. I expect Mr. Trump will become increasingly more isolated and
paranoid and dictatorial as time goes on and he loses the over idealizing
support of his followers, or he will just quit or be impeached by Congress
within a reasonable period of time. In the mean time, he can do quite a
bit of damage to existing structures and, and because of the low degree of
authentic empathy, will not be someone we can count on to do the right thing. I
think the over identification with his rage by the supposedly newly
disenfranchised blue collar white male will fade as we still are a system of
law and there will be no Krystalnacht (sp?) without just consequence. For
blacks it is easier to figure out. They are used to dealing with the
phallocentric white and will appear more compliant and acquiescent to humor
him. But the rage will only be suppressed for a time. The master
slave identity is a survival technique that can be re introduced temporarily.
Perhaps we needed to have this
period so we can empathize better with some of the victims we have amassed here
and overseas.
Women's rights is a big deal for me because of what I went thru as a
young woman. Perhaps as our rights are gradually eroded millennial women
will take up the flag and realize what Madeline Albright and Gloria Steinem
were trying to tell them. BTW I just noticed in my state the Dems are
still trying to get pay equity for women at .77 to the dollar for men but
Republicans continue to stop it. For people who think this a zero sum
game I guess they will be happy about that and the idea of locking down
borders. Meanwhile, I am trying to figure out how long i have b4 I need
to get out of the market.
Gloria Steinem is also
the one who argued that people wouldn't vote for Hillary because she reminded
them of their scary moms. Hers' was actually the most acutely
"Freudian" (or Jungian: Dragon Mother) assessment I've seen. I
personally think that even if you had a man as the Democratic candidate --
Sanders, or whatnot -- it wouldn't have mattered, because what ought to be
automatically inferred when someone argues that the nation is still ruled by
"mother issues" is the politically more consequent fact that people
who had mothers who were unloved enough themselves that they required their
children to meet their own unmet needs, and punished them when they
individuated and self-actualized for their crime of "abandoning"
them, is that they can only handle society progressing in self-actualizing ways
for so long. Eventually, as Lloyd argues, they need to put an end to the
growth, fuse with their nation as a motherland, split their own
"badness" onto other peoples, and then war against them.
My response:
My own opinion is that Trump will
be way more successful than people realize. Right now I'm hearing educated
people come to the conclusion that Trump won, not actually because so many
people are racist but because they have been economically abandoned by elites of
both parties who didn't give a shit about them. They envision people returning
to the left as soon as the left goes more Sanders... becomes more economic
populist. I'm also hearing lots of talk about Trump losing the popular vote,
and how that shows how he actually is beginning his presidency a bit
isolated, not empowered. When I think of this I think of the Bernie Sanders
supporters during the campaign, many of whom are millennials who genuinely are
society's most emotionally evolved, but many of whom were actually
misogynistic, and loved the fact that under cover of ostensibly irrefutably
being motivated to support the most progressive candidate out there, they were
with him because it let them fully enjoy vilifying Hillary, overtly enjoy their
hating "the witch," which they'd clearly been wanting to do for some
time. Some of these might still have voted for Hillary over Trump, but it won't
take long before they're entirely his camp.
And how you're depicting the black
population -- which is how Brittney Cooper portrays them as well, I admit, even
as I think it's pretty obvious she's deluding herself so she can keep her own
birch-wielding mother and grandmother superhuman angelic -- is I think going to
set us up for more disappointment. We the left saw the white American populace
as racist just moments ago, but are now in unison pulling back because it is
psychically discomforting to be drawn to hate those whom we are more and more
being forced to acknowledge as having been economically abandoned -- by us. Previously
we didn't allow ourselves to really see their deprivation, focused as we were
mostly on our own professional lives and polite and commercial havens. And as a
result, we were in a sense -- and even if we were using them as our own
"poison containers," that is, convenient places we deposit aspects of
our own selves we need to disown -- more "fair" to them: their
problem is really what it was that spawned their racist, homophobic,
anti-feminist ways -- i.e. terrible childrearing -- not us for so long not
really giving a shit about them. Rather than cast a romantic glow on struggling white Americans what we really needed to do is be more aggressive in
attributing regressive psychological states outside the white population (where
it certainly still is aplenty), and begin to recognize them better in all
peoples whose childrearing is as abusive and abandoning as it is in Hillbilly
Nation... and apparently in all the Rust Belt states... and maybe also--. If we
could do that, we won't be surprised when Trump continues to gain support,
which he will, and when members of the press, the judiciary, seem caught up in
the same spell as everyone else, and institutions we thought were sure blocks
against him are not only not effectual but in some cases, have morphed into
building blocks for his cause.
The American left constitutes the
most emotionally evolved people who have ever lived. They have not however
outgrown two things their children will
eventually completely outgrow. One, they did not outgrow the need to disown
unwanted aspects of themselves onto other people. They did project some of
their own "badness" onto the white working class -- their
vulnerability, their rage -- and disconnected all feeling towards them. This is something akin to
what regressives do all the time and to a much greater extent. And it does not mean that there was any other
societal group or party still better able to stick up for them out there, but
it is of the same mien. Second, as Steven Pinker points out, they have taken
every group that white bigots hate and cast Rousseauian makeovers over them.
This was entirely unnecessary, and it's going to hurt as we organize to fight
Trumpism and find that a surprising number of minorities actually kind of like
the hypermasculine leader who's now in charge, even if they didn't originally
vote for him, and wonder why we're always defending societies' "weakest" when
like Trump we could we making the nation invigoratingly strong again. Fearful
of progress, because as Brittney Cooper says, it made them grotesque
"Columbuses," "manipulating and ordering the universe to our own
liking," they've regressed to scared children again, imagined to be
encircled by terrifying parental tormentors. And, they think, here we are bringing the
softer side when Trump could make us steel!
We're Jews in a Nazi society.
That's how we've got to think, prepare ourselves. Not the temporarily mislaid
who still have many friends and who espy in the horizon the moment when Trump
will falter and we'll be able to assert ourselves again. For the
"crime" of genuinely wanting the best for people and wanting people
to grow Scandinavian-like self-actualized and independent from life-inhibiting, regressive traditions, we won't have many friends, because
when most people get on this train it leaves them feeling like they've lost all
chance at their parents' love. And when they war against people like us, it
makes them feel the parental favourite, the mommy's favorite, they perhaps
never were in real life. For them, there won't be any greater kick than their
stomping on our faces because they'll be imagining their mothers smiling down
upon them for it. Good for you! Pick on the one who'd lure you away from me!
Best of luck with your paper.
- - - - -
Diane G writes:
Patrick, I did finally hear
amongst the noise and rattle, the reason for the lost election, on a major news
channel. Everything was thrown at this woman in the end. It is not
only that we have a psychopathic male running for office with frequent reference
to racism, sexism and oddities of discourse, extreme and almost murderous
projections throughout the time and a history of exploitation of just about
everyone he has come into contact with for any length of time, but how
others directly and indirectly helped his cause. This was about misogyny.
Beginning with the Republican
outrage about emails that caused an 11 hour badgering and harassment, then
morphing into a democratic candidate who decided to excoriate her based on all
manner of so called "offenses" regarding money which offended his
socialist soul but which men have been involved in for more than 200 years and
someone who has his own issues historically with women, then the
hammering from the press for the perception of not being more forthcoming, for
"hiding" something which is a typical womb envy motivated accusation.
Then she is "too sick". Compared to what? Followed by a
circus performance by Trump was a disgrace and should have been taken as an
insult to any decent physician. Then we have FBI Comey who said she is
not guilty, then lets look again, then there's nothing there. This is
pretty awful in itself but the back drop is hacked emails which were evidently
orchestrated by Russia, often distorted and taken out of context and emptied
upon the media and public in a measured way throughout the entire period. Finally,
and this was something many did not see . . . Several days before the
election Pope Francis issue a statement and threw it out to the public and to
the U.S. "Women can never be priests". Why did he choose
that moment? Why did he even mention something that Catholics are well
aware of? It was code to all religious people that women are to be
submissive and not take power. Calling her a demon is part of this last
motif.
But all of this could be put down as simply campaign mud if it weren't
for the determination, despite by now much walking back, that Roe v Wade
is to be overturned. Unfortunately it will take quite a bit to go against
this problem because, as we can see, even women themselves have to overcome
their own internalized misogyny which has developed over millennia. I say
these things to sensitize you and others who may be reading. Most
informed women, including the young, want to be partners and not objects. Being
reduced to cutesy sex objects without minds like Sarah Palin or Melania Trump
is not what intelligent women are all about. These are insults.
My response:
Re: "Internalized misogyny
which has developed over millennia."
James is right to direct us to the
fact of so many married... of so many educated women voting for Trump. Only, I
think that his "rejecting left-wing politics" isn't a sensible choice
that'll save our nation, as he presents it, or your believing that women have
succumbed, understandably, given that they're having to struggle for whatever
inadequate gains they've made against accumulated millennias of teachings that
they are evil, vile, selfish creatures, and it's a slipperily held
thing. I think women Trump voters, like everyone else who voted for Trump, will
vote for things that will curb the capacities for true self-actualization (e.g.
Roe vs. Wade) because it is thereby that they feel they can reclaim their
mother's approval. Of course, they very much plan to hate on their mother too,
which is what Pope Francis was doing, which is what Comey was doing, which
is what Bernie Bros were doing. But this mostly will involve a split.
"Hillary" carrying the bad aspects, mother country America, the good.
In my judgment, you can be
informed and educated to the tilt, but if you had an emotionally immature
mother who was neglected and abused by her own caregivers, and who needed you
for her own emotional homeostasis more than she actually loved you, as you and
your sisters accumulate progress for yourselves you'll come to feel like your
mother has turned away from you, like she did when you were an infant and
you first learned to walk, like she did when you were a teen and you began your
course on your own life journey, and suddenly you'll start reducing
yourself to something degraded to save yourself from the apocalypse of her complete
abandonment. You'll have Lloyd's (and Van der Kolk's) "persecutory
parental [read: maternal] alters" yelling in your heads, and you'll heed
their call, even if you have a whole assembly line of PhD knowledge otherwise filling up
the space there.
I really hope the cities are as
powerfully cosmopolitan as some are suggesting they are. It is not
just the dumbing down of women that makes me sad -- reducing them to something
harmless and uninteresting -- it's it happening to everyone as we turn
nationalistic and stupid.
As female Trump supporters start
screaming for the blood of their feminist sisters, I really hope that some
scholars out there will come to the conclusion that something other than
misinformation is involved. If they see other women as demons who need to be
destroyed, have they been taught this? You can teach this? Or could it owe to their being
possessed... maybe by their killer moms?
None of this should sound too outrageous here. It's pretty much straight
deMausian thought. I weep for all the women who didn't get their full chance to self-actualize
and be very much opposite of cutesy sex objects, as I weep for all the boys who
didn't get their chance to fully self-actualize as well. I'm in the fight to
help ensure this fate for everyone, but I think we have to be smarter as to the
actual causes for misogyny, for DeMause's way will help us understand why men
and women will feel so incredibly righteous as they target empowered, feminist
women. It means their mother's love has returned to them. And it will be
lost again if you somehow manage to get through to them again. We're too late
in this time period's growth phase for this sacrilege to be tolerated.
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