the larger implications of Trump's shithole incident
25 posts by 9 authors
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bdCharles2687
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Jan 12
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There has of course been an unprecedented outpouring of verbiage and commentary about Trump’s racist immigration comments yesterday. One of the best analyses and discussions I have heard was Lawrence O’Donnell’s on MSNBC. The following link takes you to his ten minute setup, but be sure to stay connected because after a brief commercial you get a really outstanding panel discussion.
http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/lawrence-on-trump-sh-thole-comment-hating-is-what-he-does-1135262787517
The other really outstanding piece is a 20 minute segment (including panel discussion) from Joe Scarborough, also on MSNBC:
http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/joe-scarboroug-how-does-gop-not-immediately-condemn-trump-s-language-1135448643586
These items raise of number of larger issues. First, it would appear that Stephen Miller and other hard liners of Bannon’s ilk are running the show in the White House and derailing any effort at bipartisan compromise on immigration. Second, it would appear that, notwithstanding their efforts to control the president, Trump is as out of control as ever and saying things that are not only destroying his own political career but destroying the Republican Party and doing long lasting damage to US relations with the rest of the world. Third, this state of affairs is so dysfunctional that the pundits in the Scarborough panel found themselves having to resort to essentially psychohistorical explanations. Not well informed explanations, to be sure, since this is entirely new terrain for these folks, but they realize that they are confronting a phenomenon that requires new conceptual tools.
Tim
bdCharles.com
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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
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Jan 13
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Where is the evidence that this is hurting Trump's political career? The response I read at New York Magazine is that Trump is essentializing countries that are poor and war-torn -- ostensibly entirely owing to our own foreign policy towards them -- as actually owing to something intrinsic about them. This is the discussion the Right wants, that the people want, for it prompts people to start exploring whether or not there is something essentially foul about the people in "shithole" countries, and this is no longer debate territory where the Left holds all the cards, and is in fact territory people are eager to use to buttress their own sense of European "fineness" and to demonstrate masculine rejection of ostensibly manipulative ideological positions that they now want to believe have long kept them tamed.
Previously, if you wanted to demonstrate any virtue at all, you would demonstrate yourself anti-racist, anti-homophobic, and for every country out there whose poor were shown as people of great dignity... if you weren't like that, you weren't modern, and everyone in keeping up with the latest music hits and Apple tech wanted to be that. Believing yourself like that, you were all welcome to count yourself a friend of Steve Jobs; to be with it. The Left is fooling itself into thinking that this is the way people still want to see themselves, for they're not sure they can be persuasive if they have to get in the muck and fight out for a dignified status of people from these places, afresh. They're worried -- with their own blatantly obvious powerful new interest in the habits, ways... in the intrinsic nature of everything Dutch, Swedish, Scandinavian these days -- that they'll show in the debate a lack of heart over the issue. They're worried that they might expose, to themselves, the absolutely intolerable fact that they're for some strange reason not as interested in demonstrating themselves akin to, say, the lost boys of Ethiopia as they were even just a couple of years ago. In the debate, they'll show lack of heart, and the Right will pounce on this as a demonstration that they've always being hypocritical in their positions (which before, they actually weren't), while the Right rejoices in the Left being emasculated by coming to know that every protection they've put in place to ensure that there was no take on the peoples from "shithole" countries that wasn't actually flattering to them that wasn't stigmatized, have completely lost their power, as "Steven Pinker"-ish thinking comes in and completes supplants it. They'll rejoice in the supplanting, of decades of closed thinking on the issue in respectable circles being eradicated in an instant, and they'll rejoice in having used the over-confidence of the Left to make a sloppy mistake that will be used to greatly wound them... "Spotlight's" "Garabedian manoeuvre: now an excuse for all the facts in and of themselves to be reintroduced to the public.
I think he wins on this. If we insist he's losing, it might be because we have to believe this or face revealing to ourselves our own developing sympathy for his position. Can't do this, so we pretend to ourselves we are ourselves as we were a few years back. What the Left never did is demonstrate that they were able to allow dignity for people who'd traditionally been denigrated, without romanticizing them, without making it so that in evaluating them, there wasn't a level they weren't allowed to be dropped into -- every single one of them would be more highly dignified than any troll of the American right, heaps above them, in fact, was always the first order of business.
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Sam
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Jan 13
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Re: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of Trump's shithole incident
Dear Cliofolk,
As a reporter who has traveled and written about many of the darker-skinned "shithole" countries in question, I believe almost all of them are essentially beautiful, mysterious, and often grand nations. The shitholes are those in a position to steal the nation's wealth, usually by creating chaos and fear so that the most gullible are duped by "nationalist" propaganda into following the tyrants.
The true shitholes are in the minds of the Trumpists and their ilk, who exist throughout the world in powerful positions for the purposes of greed, luxury, and self-aggrandizement.
Interestingly, the most Trump-like dictator I've known (and I've got to know quite a few) was Francois Duvalier of Haiti, who rose to power by preaching "negritude", the black species of racial supremacy, and blamed the Americans and the light-skinned Haitians for the plight and poverty of the underclasses.
Trump is going almost precisely by the Duvalier book. And so is the brilliant Vladislav Surkov, the Putin right-hand man who has orchestrated the chaos in the USA .
He and the Russian intelligence teams spotted Trump early on when he was in Russia begging for money. They recognized a self-centered, sadistic pervert who failed at almost every enterprise he took on, knew a useful fool when he saw one, and now can claim, as Surkov has done, to have put their fool into the White House.
It is probably the most successful espionage caper in modern history, and astoundingly you seldom if ever read a word about Surkov in mainstream or even backstream media.
The "shithole" hub-bub is merely another chaos tactic, which the excellent psychologists associated with Putin understand better tnan alomst anyone.
Face it: Trump is Putin's "passed pawn queen" (as they say in Russia, which means in chess an almost certain victory).
Trump is a Russian-made traitor, and he probably doesn't even know it.
Sam
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Jan 13
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Re: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of Trump's shithole incident
A bit more about Surkov from Wikipedia:
In an editorial for the London Review of Books quoted by Curtis, Peter Pomerantsev describes Putin's Russia thus:
In contemporary Russia, unlike the old USSR or present-day North Korea, the stage is constantly changing: the country is a dictatorship in the morning, a democracy at lunch, an oligarchy by suppertime, while, backstage, oil companies are expropriated, journalists killed, billions siphoned away. Surkov is at the centre of the show, sponsoring nationalist skinheads one moment, backing human rights groups the next. It's a strategy of power based on keeping any opposition there may be constantly confused, a ceaseless shape-shifting that is unstoppable because it's indefinable.
— Peter Pomerantsev, in "Putin's Rasputin", London Review of Books issue of 20 October 2011 [8]
Curtis claims that Trump used a similar strategy to become president of the United States, and hints that Trump's Surkovian origins caused Putin to express his admiration for Trump in Russian media.[89][90]
bdCharles2687
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Jan 13
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RE: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of Trump's shithole incident
Patrick, one major form of evidence is opinion polling data on Trump’s approval and disapproval ratings. His approval rating has remained steady in the low thirties, but his disapproval rating has spiked to around 60%. Both of these measures are among the worst if not the very worst for any American president since such data have been collected. Trump’s “base” probably represents 30% or less of the electorate. He didn’t win the popular vote in 2016, and probably would have lost the electoral college as well if not for Russian intervention (e.g. well documented pro-Trump campaigns on US social media) and James Comey’s decision to reopen an FBI investigation into Clinton’s email practices on the eve of the election. (Unlike Putin, I don’t think Comey was engaged in deliberate political manipulation, but the damage was done anyway).
In summary, except for these special circumstances, which have nothing to do with the electorate, Trump would not be president today and we would not be having this conversation. Note also that Hillary Clinton was one of the weakest candidates that the Democrats have put up in many years. Had the choice been between Biden and Trump, Biden probably would have won by a landslide. Not only are our institutions not really democratic (in the sense of one person, one vote), the electoral college being only one of the more blatant examples, but the electorate can only choose between the alternatives generated by the electoral system, which is a kind of Rube-Goldberg machine. Nor have I even touched on the elephant in the room, namely, domination of the electoral system by the rich. So much for simplistic, psychologically reductionist explanations that attribute Trump’s election to mass psychology.
Tim
bdCharles.com
917-628-8253
From: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com [mailto:cliospsyche@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Patrick McEvoy-Halston
Sent: Saturday, January 13, 2018 8:56 AM
To: Clio’s Psyche <cliospsyche@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of Trump's shithole incident
Bob Stringer
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Jan 13
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Re: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of Trump's shithole incident
Patrick,
You are discussing Trump's shithole remarks purely as a domestic political event. They are not. This remark fits in with his dangerous ineptitude in foreign affairs. Trump is unwelcome in Britain, which had been our closest ally for a century. He was condescending to Germany's Angela Merkel, argumentative with Australia's Prime Minister, plays school boy verbal confrontation with North Korea, has now offended most of Africa, and ignores Russia's violations. In less than a year in office he has done more to undermine America's position in the world and national interest than any President in our history. Unlike Theodore Roosevelt, he talks loudly and foolishly and does not know how to use a big stick strategically.
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Bob Stringer
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Jan 13
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Re: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of Trump's shithole incident
We would not have Donald Trump as President if Hillary Clinton had not blown the election. Still in getting 48.2 percent of the popular vote, she received a higher percentage than did 12 men elected President since the popular vote started being recorded in 1824. I have discussed why Hillary lost and Trump won in the Journal of Psychohistory and Clio's Psyche.
Sent from my iPhone
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Jane Bree
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Jan 13
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Re: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of Trump's shithole incident
right on- may I forward with
permission?
Jane
drsmith
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Jan 13
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Re: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of Trump's shithole incident
Tim, Patrick, et al
Thank you for sharing these interesting articles and opinions. I watched both videos that you recommended Tim, and I think they are both accurate. We all know Trump is who he is, but Patrick is also correct. None of this is hurting Trump. This only strengthens his base, and Patrick is onto something. The Liberals have failed.
Patrick points out:"Previously, if you wanted to demonstrate any virtue at all, you would demonstrate yourself anti-racist, anti-homophobic, and for every country out there whose poor were shown as people of great dignity... if you weren't like that, you weren't modern, and everyone in keeping up with the latest music hits and Apple tech wanted to be that. Believing yourself like that, you were all welcome to count yourself a friend of Steve Jobs; to be with it. The Left is fooling itself into thinking that this is the way people still want to see themselves...."
It was 15 years ago that by accident I came across Lloyd's emotional life of Nations, and I was exposed to this academic group. It has been a great pleasure to interact with this group, but have we forgotten that it's all about Emotions! Emotions drive reasoning, and we seem to forget that. Jonathan Haidt drives this point home well in his book, The Righteous Mind. He points out that we do not use reason to determine morality but rather the reverse: we use our reason to rationalize our already established moral beliefs.
May I share a story from my office that I think is enlightning. I work with about eight or 10 women. They are good people with varying degrees of education and life experiences. They do not tend to be politically involved and are probably conservative. Nonetheless, you would think that they would be concerned about women's issues. I was surprised at this time last year when not a single one of them was aware of the women's march on Washington to be held the following Sunday. Not one! Furthermore, they are not very sympathetic to the #MeTo movement. And if that is not shocking enough, within a few days of Colin Kaepernick being selected as a man of the year by GQ magazine, They all knew about it. They were quite emotionally upset about it as well. Without even reading the article, they knew it was an immoral idea. And yet they were unaware of Roy Moore! That's right. three weeks before the Alabama election, they were unaware of a misogynist homophobe running for the Senate, but they were all very aware of someone being unpatriotic.
So Tim, although your reasoning is perfect, you can throw it out the window. No Trump supporter will listen to anything you have to say. What's worse, his supporters just dig in deeper. I think that the crux of the matter is that people vote their values, not their self interest. The women in my office are not voting in their self interest when they vote for conservative choices. They are voting their values. I came across a book that explains this quite well I believe. it is as profound as Lloyd's insight in the emotional life of nations. The book is called "everything I have learned about values" by Richard Barrett. our minds have operating systems. Richard Barrett states "since values are the basic operating system for the human being, the energetic drivers of our aspirations and intentions, you are sitting on the source code of human motivation." values are not just what we think are important – they are what drive us. Values drive our emotions and our emotions drive our politics. FOXNews speaks to a certain set of values and MSNBC speaks to a different set of values, a different operating system. Patrick is speaking to some of the failures of the liberal operating systems, and we don't like to think about the failure of our values anymore than FOXNews listers like to be told that their values are racist, etc. So if we really want to analyze and decipher what is going on, we need to understand the multiple different value systems that are operating and overlapping in our society.
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Bill Fine
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bdCharles2687
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Jan 13
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RE: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of Trump's shithole incident
Bill, I have never taBob the view that people are entirely rational actors motivated by self-interest (whatever that means). To say that people are entirely motivated by emotions is the opposite position and is equally extreme and untenable, in my view. I am not a reductionist, and for that reason I cannot endorse deMause’s views on political psychology, which, though making some contribution to psychohistory were also reductionist, self-contradictory, and not based on any empirical research that I know of. I agree with the aphorism, “Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler” (attributed to Einstein by some but in any case a good summary of Occam’s razor).
This is an forum for the exchange of scholarly ideas. People are free to express whatever opinions they want, but if you don’t believe that logic and evidence matter, then you have dispensed at the outset with the only criteria that can be brought to bear in adjudicating scholarly disagreements. Then all you can say to me is “I feel differently than you.” If that is what you really believe, then so be it. And I also feel differently than you.
Tim
bdCharles.com
917-628-8253
bdCharles2687
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Jan 13
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RE: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of Trump's shithole incident
P.S. In my post on this list, I was not addressing myself to Trump supporters and was not trying to change their opinions. I think that trying to change ANYONE’S opinions is a waste of time, much less people who are entrenched in their beliefs. Some of the people who voted for Trump no longer support him, proof that at least some people do process information. His hard core supporters will very likely go to their graves being Trump supporters, no matter what he says or does.
So what? I have a brother who is a hard core Trump supporter, and when I talk to him about politics I have an exchange of ideas with him like I do with anyone else, but view it primarily as an opportunity for me to learn more about how someone with a belief system very different from my own thinks, not as an opportunity to change someone’s opinions. Sometimes we find common ground in surprising ways and if I change some part of own opinions or if he changes some part of his, fine, but that is not the purpose of the exchange. The purpose is improved mutual understanding and relationship building, not persuasion.
me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
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Jan 13
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Re: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of Trump's shithole incident
I know they're not just domestic, Bob. There is nothing "fit" about Trump at all, not domestically, not in foreign policy. He is catastrophically inept, if ineptitude is measured in terms of what makes a country progressive and prosperous and kind and well-received, but he is not inept if ineptitude is measured in not making a regressing populace feel like they're becoming masculine again, and in not situating the American Left -- the good guys and gals, who've been helping make our country a genuinely better one for decades -- as self-centred people who don't care about their country, who don't even really care about facts, but only about manipulating, quote unquote, good honest Americans into agreeing to pretend to believe in things they really don't, so they can displaced out of positions of power and effectively gotten rid of. As far as how the rest of the world perceives him... I don't know. There's Austria, there's Brexit, there's whomever is contending with Angela Merkel... there are all sorts of Trumps in other countries who want to talk "honest talk" about "shitholes," and they can't be the ones who are pissed off with him. I don't think of him as any kind of strategic genius at all, but I don't think that's my point of concern -- it's whether or not he's behaving in a fashion that fits with what most Americans want, and if he is, he's going to be perceived as genius regardless, inflated, perhaps, for borrowing the power of the Mother Nation, of whom he is, chief son. Your facts are frustrating. They're objectively right... but of course they are, of course they were going to be. Whatever one thinks of Lloyd, perhaps they'll see that there really is something to the fact that the single most important thing about a president is that he serves our fantasy needs, and though there are times when a public is at its most rational, its least fearful of progress, and these will be times where delineating the accomplishments of a President really matters for it will play a big part in determining whether or not s/he remains in, there are times -- like the one we're in now -- where if s/he actually delivered in making America universally prosperous, in being well-respected by remaining CIVILIZED European leaders, the American populace would abandon him/her to be gotten rid of by any effort to do, for the possibility of electing in someone who will better deliver on meeting their regressed emotional needs. We still seem to believe that Trump barely got in, that that's the proper to view our current situation. A grotesque accident based on the fact of an ostensibly weak opposition candidate -- Hillary Clinton. If we'd had Biden, Trump would have been Trumped, is how we're thinking. This is said, despite our awareness that rightwing populism is a problem everywhere, and this alone should make us demonstrate more fear that the American base, the 52 percent that actually voted for Hillary, can be counted on to be the voters they might have been even just a few years ago before all of this was happening in the world. To me this is dubious; I expect that a good number of them will show regression as well, and surprising and depressing us in their eager willingness to cast doubt on progressive stances and support for semi-Trumpish ones, on immigration, on "free speech" in universities, on inward foreign policy vs. interactionist foreign policy, that we know are not about a public demonstrating a moderate stance but about them beginning a maybe wholesale slide to a very rightwing way of seeing the world. The average Democrat voter is counting David Frum a friend, one of them. This is trouble.
me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
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Jan 13
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And here in this link to an article from a student of Evolutionary Anthropology at UC Davis, from his twitter account, Steven Pinker, proud to be a descendant from an immigrant from a shithole country, is also doing his very best to make clear that, in truth, there really are a lot of shithole peoples out there in the world.
drsmith
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Jan 13
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Re: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of Trump's shithole incident
Tim,
I have always found your arguments to be logical, well thought out, and presented with evidence. Logic and evidence do matter, especially to the scholarly people in this forum. But very few scholars and pundits, with all of their evidence and logic, predicted the rise of Trump. Indeed we are all struggling to figure this out. I have a lot of conservative friends who are otherwise very good people and very successful businessman and doctors. But they believe in creationism, deny climate change and economic inequality. They are absolutely immune to facts and logic. And to your beautiful arguments, as well as mine!!
People are not all rational or emotional. And not everything is caused by spanking. But Jonathan Haidt's point is that people use their reason to justify their morality. This is another form of confirmation bias as people only accept evidence that conforms to their preconceived ideas about the world. Lloyds great insight was that child rearing does establish a person's world views and values. Barrett's point is that these closely held values are not just things that are important to us. These values drive our behavior. Indeed, Tim why do you take this psychohistory work so seriously? Because you care. You care very deeply about knowledge, psychology, and our world. This forum is filled with conscientious people, people that accept climate change and evolution, and see great harm in economic inequality. However, these facts simply bounce off Trump supporters. Why? It is because of their value system will not allow them to see these facts, so none of our arguments sink in. Furthermore, speaking from experience, these naysayers get even more entrenched in their belief systems after arguing with them.
The only explanation I have is values. People's values limit what they can see. If we are going to reach these people, we need to speak to values that they can understand and relate to. As for more evidence, I give you Kathryn (sp) Schulz Ted talk on being wrong. Three reasons are given for people who disagree with us – bad information, stupidity, and immorality. None of these explain our differences. My friends are not stupid or immoral, but the information that we give them just bounces off. The information bounces off because we have different values and worldviews, and we use our reason to justify these worldviews, often in an emotional way.
I would also argue that when you and I disagree, the source of that disagreement has to do with disparate values. And we each know which one of us is right, don't we?!! :-)
me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
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Jan 13
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And this from the New York Times: Trump's Immigration Remarks Outrage Many, but Others Quietly Agree.
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drsmith
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Jan 13
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Re: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of Trump's shithole incident
Patrick,
You are right on. Just because Trump's approval rating is 35% doesn't mean another 15% won't find some truth in what Trump says and the Republicans will maintain their majorities. To be sure, even though conservatives don't believe in evolution or climate change, That doesn't mean that they're wrong about everything else. And tens of millions of immigrants cannot be assimilated into Europe and America. It is not clear how all of this will be resolved, but if liberals want to have their say, they will need to come up with better solutions than they have so far. Liberals will have to speak to the values of more than just their own progressives. If we have learned anything from Trump, it is that his base is larger than we thought.
For example , Most of you know that I am a doctor. I think that I am compassionate and empathetic and I think that basic healthcare is a human right. But there are responsibilities to being a citizen as well. The other day I was called into the operating room to see a 23-year-old woman who weighed over 400 pounds. Conservatives rightly point out that this is ridiculous and there is no way that society should have to take care of this person for the rest of her life.
bdCharles2687
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Jan 14
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RE: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of Trump's shithole incident
Bill,
Misunderstanding is easy and very common in everyday communication, including on this listserv. In my experience, authentic dialogue (such as we are having) either exposes apparent disagreement as misunderstanding or clarifies what the disagreement is really about. As a result of our dialogue, it appears I misunderstood what you were saying or trying to say and vice versa. I do not disagree with anything you have said here, and in fact have said much the same thing in the appendix of my book, in which I built on cognitive linguist George Lackoff’s Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think.
In fact, I related Lackoff’s “strict father” and “nurturing parent” types, which he views as the source of the divergent values of liberals and conservatives, to deMause’s concept of psychoclasses, which in my view is one of Lloyd’s most important and enduring contributions to psychohistory. This appendix, which was published in an earlier form as an article in The Journal of Psychohistory, is available at: http://bdCharles.com/middle-class-fights-back.php). Glad we clarified this!
Tim
bdCharles.com
917-628-8253
arniedr
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Jan 15
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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
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Jan 16
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Re: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of Trump's shithole incident
Sam, this bit, "I believe almost all of them are essentially beautiful, mysterious, and often grand nation," would be considered "othering." Someone like Trump might one day despise a nation as a "shithole," but on another admire them for their "proud exotic beauty." Orientalism. The idea about gullible but intrinsically good coloured people, is also the narrative that sustained/s the idea of the white saviour.
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Sam
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Jan 16
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Re: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of Trump's shithole incident
Dear Patrick,
As you probably know, I believe it makes no difference what pathology festers in Trump. He is simply a tool of people who recognized the pathology, knew that he was a stupid and desperate low life, invested some money in him to keep him afloat, and let him run his course. Whatever he does will be destabilizing to America, which is exactly how the Russians want it. Russians are masters at projection, and so is Trump and Bannon. Chaos is their game and they are masters at it.
Many thanks for the bit.
Sam
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binsightfl1
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Jan 16
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Re: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of Trump's shithole incident
Hi,
I have been reading what everybody has been saying--
in great depth, and I might add-- I think each of you has
distilled important aspects of this negative turn in our
country's travels. (Perhaps the trek could more properly
be called travails).
For me, what you all have stated (in more comprehensive
and thoughtful ways) can be simplified (at great risk of being
reductionistic and naive) by my view that---
emotion trumps reason.
And, in as much as this is might be true it can explain why
being rational has not worked and simply won't work. It also
begs the question--so if being reasonable makes no sense,
what then can we do? Should we fight fire with fire by being
as regressed and out of control as we have stated the
"The Donald" and his followers are? Shall we invoke the
invectives of hate and project these feelings onto others?
Shall we split off and engage in "othering?"
Paradoxically and unwittingly we have done some of these
things here. Liberals are the "good guys," the "smart ones,"
the ones who are compassionate and in the "right." They,
those "others" are wrong.
Here's where we really get ourselves into trouble--we sincerely
believe that we will win merely because we are good and good
triumphs over those evil, ignorant Trumpites. If that isn't evidence
that emotion trumps reason, what is, except "we" are the ones who
are guided by delusional ideas or our "savior complexes."
Emotion does not guide reason, it trumps reason! It is only when we
get in touch with our irrational sides that we have a chance to utilize
our drive states in a socially acceptable and powerful way. Otherwise
we are merely the "flip" side of the Trumpian id impulses coin. And, as
we know, in the language of the unconscious, opposites lie side by side
in equivalence.
So-- the great philosopher King, Pogo the opposum once said, "we
have seen the enemy and he is us!
Warm Regards,
James
bdCharles2687
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Jan 16
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RE: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of Trump's shithole incident
Speaking of emotion and reason, I also refer members of this group to Dorothea Leicher’s article in the current issue of Psychohistory News (attached). (This newsletter also contains an article by Bob Stringer on a recent book party for The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.) Part I of Leicher’s article covered much the same ground as Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents, but updated with recent findings from neuroscience and diverse other literature. It is available at:
http://www.psychohistory.us/archive.php (scroll down to the Fall 2017 issue).
Page two of the attached newsletter is the conference flyer and call for proposals for the upcoming IPA 2018 conference (May 30 to June 1 at NYU), which will include as featured speakers Drs. James and Carol Gilligan, Bandy Lee (editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump), and more. If you might be interested in presenting a paper at this conference, please note that the deadline for submitting proposals is February 10 (details in the attached newsletter, page two).
Finally, I refer interested readers to my article in the current issue of The Journal of Psychohistory, “Militarism, Machismo and the Regulation of Self Interest.” This is not exactly light reading, but does bring theory and empirical research to bear on a possible psychological/neurological mechanism by which unconscious complexes get displaced onto political symbolic objects. The article is available on my website at:
http://bdCharles.com/resources/Militarism%2C%20Machismo%2C%20and%20the%20Regulation%20of%20Self-Image.pdf
Tim
bdCharles.com
917-628-8253
From: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com [mailto:cliospsyche@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of James N. Seitler
Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2018 10:47 AM
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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
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Jan 17
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Re: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of Trump's shithole incident
My suggestion has been that we be very sure, we're ourselves still operating within the realm of reason. Take the left, the more sane-ish people: Glenn Greenwald argues that everyone against him has made Russian into an opponent, outside of reason, the people against Glenn Greenwald are arguing that Glenn is and has always been a Russian spy. Where's Waldo? See if you can find the sanity. Then there's those articles this year suggesting that though, again, the rightwing of America is insane, the left is losing their marbles as well, suffering from an extreme degree of confirmation bias, making their science dubious: Science Denial Across the Political Divide (Social Psychological and Personality Science). Take that article I linked to which explores how the NewYorker persists in imagining peoples Anthropologists study, vs. the one that is emerging once again -- but this time with a larger community of scientists behind it, scientists who, a few years back, wouldn't have been -- that says, well, actually what we're encountering here are the least emotionally evolved people on the planet, the people who practice in abundance pretty much everything we've all been trying to edit out of how we behave for it being torture and abuse. I've said before that the people who tend to be the most sane, in my judgment, are those who still hold the NewYorker's point of view on the matter, who hold it because they've reached the limits of what this previous generation's best childrearing would permit in terms of lack of a need for projection and a lack of a need for there to be people in society who function to carry everything about oneself that one must discard in order to maintain psychic equilibrium, that is, a need for "poison containers." The people deflating the myth of the noble savage are using superior science, are more accurate, but their intentions are retrograde. The problem for peoples the NewYorker has been diligent in respecting is that they seem to betray in themselves a future traitor: if the peoples they esteem and protect are not as they have been romantically portrayed, and the NewYorker crowd find themselves having to acclimatize themselves to this fact, does this mean they'll have been pinned into a position where they too must now acquiesce to an ostensibly necessary position and start blaming and accusing and denying support to these people/abusers who, regardless, still very much deserve ongoing respect and support? If they're not being strategic but must associate their support of these peoples with their being the noble savage that is an absolute counter to America's deplorables, will they aggressively persist in maintaining their attitude in spite of rising scientific acceptance of the "sick societies" theory and thereby lose scientific respectability because they sense a worse fate, that there is within them another them, a retrograde one, that is trying to gain control of their consciousness, and this one is the troll who cannot see weakness and the adult results of child abuse and simply blame and hate and discard? Are they trying to fight what they suspect might prove true: that they might not be immune to some of the regression that is afflicting the planet, that they might themselves become true trolls, however adapt they'll be at making this invisible to themselves and find justified reasons to hate and attack those who point out their mal-transformation out to them? How many liberal parents do you know who in their attitudes towards today's university students, to their activism and points of view (Woody Allen, safe zones, trigger warnings), seem to be turning against their young?
Alan Stein
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Jan 17
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Re: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of Trump's shithole incident
Hello all:
On CNN, there was a round table discussion concerning Trump. The meeting was held in a city within Wisconsin. The people at the table all voted for Trump. The only thing that mattered to them was that the economy had improved and they were doing well financially. Thus they feel that Trump is doing a great job. In America, money is our God. Trump's personality defects, his frequent lies ,, his bigotry and his xenophobia are irrelevant. The only thing that counts with his base is the economy.
Allan Stein
me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
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Jan 17
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Re: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of Trump's shithole incident
I read your article. The compromised state of the boy you get at -- that they first identify with the mother, but belong thereafter to a culture which denigrates feminized men -- brings to mind Charles Socarides, but for him, if one has, not an authoritarian mother, but a overwhelming one who won't let a boy individuate from her and isn't okay with his exploring his otherness, his masculinity, the social attitudes of the day are neither here nor there: it won't really matter, as regardless of them he'll find some way to repudiate all women or, going Hemingway, become some kind of atrocious he-man. The article pounds heavy on the authoritarian father, but is very light with that first few years of female-mother identification we all experience that is to you so critical. This bit:
This same person also has an internalized image of the father they experienced as a small child—awesome and all powerful, always right, free to do whatever he wants, and getting what he wants by threatening to use force or actually using it.
well, honestly, that could just as easily be the mother, who, after all, spent a hell of a lot more time with him. They seek to break free from her because they bloody well couldn't move their limbs.
Another thought: the reason he-man culture hates the welfare state is because they associate it with maternal tending, which for them, wasn't so much authoritarian as it was physically incestuous. They're triggered by the memories of being used as puppets, and thus strike down a mechanism whereby very genuinely they might receive treatment that would help alleviate the results of their atrocious childhoods. IT IS associated with the "punishment," that is, whose concern wasn't so much the spanking and yelling as it was the envelopment, the physical and emotional crowding of their highly precarious space... all imagined by the mother as "expressions of their profound love." So when they're seeking to strike it down, they're not just identifying with the persecutor, they're rejecting a powerless childhood condition they very much are recalling.
This said, I also agree that they know that in further striking a blow against the welfare state, against means for alleviating the amount of child damage out there, they're pretending to be (or rather, switching into the alter of) the parent (I think always maternal) who scorns the child's weakness (were you doing that when you said that accusers against Al FranBob should be made to face a committee, where they would surely be shown to be of little account -- certainly not enough to take down a senator?... that sounded like the kind of machismo, the support of the empowered position and anger at the weakest, that could make a lot of wounded people hoping to gain justice against their own predators, shrink in retreat).
This said, they also scorn the weak because, as deMause argues, they believe that they deserved the mistreatment they received at the hands of their mothers for the very fact of being vulnerable. Because that was the strongest self-concept they had, and their mothers seemed to find them so wrong they would threaten then with apocalyptic abandonment, they had to be sure to never be or associate with the single greatest wrong thing out there: being vulnerable. Being vulnerable is an affront to the move whose love you must, must, must find means to achieve, and so no fidelity with anyone evil enough to demonstrate it.
Anyway, first thoughts. Thanks again for the link.
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RE: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of Trump's shithole incident
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bdCharles2687
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Jan 18
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James, Alan, Patrick, and all,
On James’s idea (below) that “emotion trumps reason,” there is surely truth in this, but doesn’t this require some qualifications? Does emotion trump reason equally for all people under all conditions? If not, what do individual differences look like in this domain and under what conditions, if any, does reason prevail? I know of two books worth mentioning on these questions. First, Milton Rokeach’s The Open and Closed Mind: Investigations into the Nature of Belief Systems and Personality Systems (1960), which is a classic in the field of political psychology. Rokeach devised a “dogmatism” construct intended to measure openness to new information and was careful to make this construct independent of political (left-right) ideology. Rokeach also originated the very helpful two dimensional typology for political ideologies, the two dimensions being how much one values freedom and equality:
Low EQUALITY High
Low Fascism Communism
FREEDOM
High Capitalism Democratic Socialism
The second book is Victor S. Johnston’s, Why We Feel: The Science of Human Emotions (1999), which deals with the relation between cognition and emotion from the neuroscience and evolutionary perspectives.
As for Alan’s point, I think preoccupation with money applies to a large extent to all voters, not just Trump voters. Electoral outcomes in capitalist societies largely track the business cycle such that elections held during a booming economy generally favor incumbents while voters during recessionary times generally succumb to a “throw the bums out” mentality. There is a literature on this in political science; I can’t review this literature off the top of my head, but I believe I just summarized the gist of it. I also believe it is this phenomenon to which James Carville’s dictum “It’s the economy, stupid” referred. Had Hillary Clinton heeded Carville’s advice (originally given to her husband’s presidential campaign) instead of working the identity politics angle, she might have defeated Trump.
Patrick, I greatly appreciate your taking the time to read my Journal of Psychohistory article. You express a lot of ideas about the role of the mother and quality of mothering that merit further thought, exploration, and research. Somehow we need to move this discussion from the realm of armchair speculation into research. Melanie Klein did this through clinical observations, Bowlby and the attachment school through experimental research, etc. My own contribution was to devise a way of measuring personality independently of ideology by using a two-part survey instrument; see http://bdCharles.com/resources/PolPsyc95.pdf My personality measure was a list of trait adjectives (drawn mostly from Jack Block’s The Q-Sort Method in Personality Assessment and Psychiatric Research), which survey respondents ranked from “most characteristic” of oneself to “least characteristic.” My measure of ideology was a list of 25 sentences expressing hawk and dove policy preferences and related beliefs, which they evaluated on a Likert scale.
My prediction (which was borne out strongly by the data) was that self-image would predict militarist beliefs and policy preferences. I did not know in advance WHICH personality items would predict militarism, and indeed there were many alternative theories about this. What came out of my data were machismo (for males) and authoritarianism (for both sexes). This was originally my doctoral dissertation research and was published in a 1995 article in Political Psychology:
http://bdCharles.com/resources/PolPsyc95.pdf The data, presented in this article, can be interpreted in many ways, but there are many more theories that are not supported by the data. For example, the pre-oedipal nature of the machismo complex is indicated by the fact that the typical male hawk does not describe himself as “masculine” but rather as “not feminine,” using a total of ten stereotypically masculine and feminine trait adjectives that also appear in the Bem Sex Role Inventory. This is an important empirical finding and it was new because before my research, to my knowledge, no one had measured personality and ideology separately in the same survey.
Having established this empirical relationship, I then set about to find existing theories that might account for it, which led me to Nancy Chodorow’s classic, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (1978/1999). I wrote up my findings on machismo using Chodorow’s theories (and not, say, deMause’s) because my data pointed me to Chodorow’s theories. However, deMause’s ideas were very relevant to my second factor—authoritarianism—which both Adorno et al and more recently Michael Milburn et al associate with punitive parenting. And yes, the mother can be the dispenser of punishment as much as the father. So there are two factors operating here—sex typing (which appears to be rooted in pre-oedipal dynamics) and authoritarianism. On the latter, you are right that I focused on the oedipal roots and the role of the father, and your point is well taBob that punitive mothers can also be implicated in this at the pre-oedipal stage.
Finally, regarding Al FranBob, given that the Republicans control the committees in both houses of Congress, I think it is safe to assume that any inquiry into FranBob’s misdeeds would have been extremely friendly to his accusers. We saw this movie before during the Bill Clinton presidency. There is no way FranBob could have prevailed in such a process if his misdeeds were as serious as you (and the Republicans) claim. But we’ll never know because the Democratic Party establishment acted to push FranBob out before the Republicans could mount any such spectacle.
Tim
bdCharles.com
917-628-8253
From: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com [mailto:cliospsyche@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Patrick McEvoy-Halston
Sent: Wednesday, January 17, 2018 3:06 PM
To: Clio’s Psyche <cliospsyche@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of Trump's shithole incident
I read your article. The compromised state of the boy you get at -- that they first identify with the mother, but belong thereafter to a culture which denigrates feminized men -- brings to mind Charles Socarides, but for him, if one has, not an authoritarian mother, but a overwhelming one who won't let a boy individuate from her and isn't okay with his exploring his otherness, his masculinity, the social attitudes of the day are neither here nor there: it won't really matter, as regardless of them he'll find some way to repudiate all women or, going Hemingway, become some kind of atrocious he-man. The article pounds heavy on the authoritarian father, but is very light with that first few years of female-mother identification we all experience that is to you so critical. This bit:
This same person also has an internalized image of the father they experienced as a small child—awesome and all powerful, always right, free to do whatever he wants, and getting what he wants by threatening to use force or actually using it.
well, honestly, that could just as easily be the mother, who, after all, spent a hell of a lot more time with him. They seek to break free from her because they bloody well couldn't move their limbs.
Another thought: the reason he-man culture hates the welfare state is because they associate it with maternal tending, which for them, wasn't so much authoritarian as it was physically incestuous. They're triggered by the memories of being used as puppets, and thus strike down a mechanism whereby very genuinely they might receive treatment that would help alleviate the results of their atrocious childhoods. IT IS associated with the "punishment," that is, whose concern wasn't so much the spanking and yelling as it was the envelopment, the physical and emotional crowding of their highly precarious space... all imagined by the mother as "expressions of their profound love." So when they're seeking to strike it down, they're not just identifying with the persecutor, they're rejecting a powerless childhood condition they very much are recalling.
This said, I also agree that they know that in further striking a blow against the welfare state, against means for alleviating the amount of child damage out there, they're pretending to be (or rather, switching into the alter of) the parent (I think always maternal) who scorns the child's weakness (were you doing that when you said that accusers against Al FranBob should be made to face a committee, where they would surely be shown to be of little account -- certainly not enough to take down a senator?... that sounded like the kind of machismo, the support of the empowered position and anger at the weakest, that could make a lot of wounded people hoping to gain justice against their own predators, shrink in retreat).
This said, they also scorn the weak because, as deMause argues, they believe that they deserved the mistreatment they received at the hands of their mothers for the very fact of being vulnerable. Because that was the strongest self-concept they had, and their mothers seemed to find them so wrong they would threaten then with apocalyptic abandonment, they had to be sure to never be or associate with the single greatest wrong thing out there: being vulnerable. Being vulnerable is an affront to the move whose love you must, must, must find means to achieve, and so no fidelity with anyone evil enough to demonstrate it.
Anyway, first thoughts. Thanks again for the link.
On Tuesday, January 16, 2018 at 1:06:35 PM UTC-5, bdCharles2687 wrote:
Speaking of emotion and reason, I also refer members of this group to Dorothea Leicher’s article in the current issue of Psychohistory News (attached). (This newsletter also contains an article by Bob Stringer on a recent book party for The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.) Part I of Leicher’s article covered much the same ground as Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents, but updated with recent findings from neuroscience and diverse other literature. It is available at: http://www.psychohistory.us/archive.php
(scroll down to the Fall 2017 issue).
Page two of the attached newsletter is the conference flyer and call for proposals for the upcoming IPA 2018 conference (May 30 to June 1 at NYU), which will include as featured speakers Drs. James and Carol Gilligan, Bandy Lee (editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump), and more. If you might be interested in presenting a paper at this conference, please note that the deadline for submitting proposals is February 10 (details in the attached newsletter, page two).
Finally, I refer interested readers to my article in the current issue of The Journal of Psychohistory, “Militarism, Machismo and the Regulation of Self Interest.” This is not exactly light reading, but does bring theory and empirical research to bear on a possible psychological/neurological mechanism by which unconscious complexes get displaced onto political symbolic objects. The article is available on my website at: http://bdCharles.com/resources/Militarism%2C%20Machismo%2C%20and%20the%20Regulation%20of%20Self-Image.pdf
Tim
bdCharles.com
917-628-8253
From: 'Alan Stein' via Clio’s Psyche [mailto:cliospsyche@googlegroups.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 17, 2018 2:54 PM
To: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of Trump's shithole incident
Hello all:
On CNN, there was a round table discussion concerning Trump. The meeting was held in a city within Wisconsin. The people at the table all voted for Trump. The only thing that mattered to them was that the economy had improved and they were doing well financially. Thus they feel that Trump is doing a great job. In America, money is our God. Trump's personality defects, his frequent lies ,, his bigotry and his xenophobia are irrelevant. The only thing that counts with his base is the economy.
Allan Stein
From: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com [mailto:cliospsyche@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of James N. Seitler
Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2018 10:47 AM
To: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of Trump's shithole incident
Hi,
I have been reading what everybody has been saying--
in great depth, and I might add-- I think each of you has
distilled important aspects of this negative turn in our
country's travels. (Perhaps the trek could more properly
be called travails).
For me, what you all have stated (in more comprehensive
and thoughtful ways) can be simplified (at great risk of being
reductionistic and naive) by my view that---
emotion trumps reason.
And, in as much as this is might be true it can explain why
being rational has not worked and simply won't work. It also
begs the question--so if being reasonable makes no sense,
what then can we do? Should we fight fire with fire by being
as regressed and out of control as we have stated the
"The Donald" and his followers are? Shall we invoke the
invectives of hate and project these feelings onto others?
Shall we split off and engage in "othering?"
Paradoxically and unwittingly we have done some of these
things here. Liberals are the "good guys," the "smart ones,"
the ones who are compassionate and in the "right." They,
those "others" are wrong.
Here's where we really get ourselves into trouble--we sincerely
believe that we will win merely because we are good and good
triumphs over those evil, ignorant Trumpites. If that isn't evidence
that emotion trumps reason, what is, except "we" are the ones who
are guided by delusional ideas or our "savior complexes."
Emotion does not guide reason, it trumps reason! It is only when we
get in touch with our irrational sides that we have a chance to utilize
our drive states in a socially acceptable and powerful way. Otherwise
we are merely the "flip" side of the Trumpian id impulses coin. And, as
we know, in the language of the unconscious, opposites lie side by side
in equivalence.
So-- the great philosopher King, Pogo the opposum once said, "we
have seen the enemy and he is us!
Warm Regards,
James
Click here to Reply
bdCharles2687
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Jan 18
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P.S. If you’re trying to read my last post on a smart phone, the Rokeach typology might not have displayed properly, so I’m resending it in smaller font, which should work (at least it does on my smart phone):
Low EQUALITY High
Low Fascism Communism
FREEDOM
High Capitalism Democratic Socialism
From: bdCharles2687@gmail.com [mailto:bdCharles2687@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2018 7:14 AM
To: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of Trump's shithole incident
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
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Jan 18
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Tim, the way you refer to FranBob is as someone who grabs someone's butt, not as someone engaged in predatory sexual assault. This is the kind of thinking that might shrink a lot of victims from ever bothering reporting crimes, is my judgment. A culture of machismo, that makes light of the victims and shames their defenders... "someone grabbed your butt and suddenly you're all over CNN and bringing down a senator... whilst serving Republican' ends, I might add." And by the way, did you ever get that sense, now that it proved not a once-only, that FranBob was engaged in something very serious... that he was in a way akin to Weinstein, that is, someone whose guilt over his serial predations on vulnerable women was dealt with by becoming a foremost crusader of liberal causes?
At this psychohistory conference, I'd be curious to know where people are on #MeToo, which I'm sure will be discussed. Are most people taking Masha Gessen's (and Woody Allen's) argument to heart, that it's become a witch hunt? Or are they with the Naomi Wolfs in the world, who delight in that behaviour that was once blown off and excused are now being understood as the micro aggressions that keep patriarchy intact. Are they people who delight in these ongoing exposés of how what some would call, for example, a bad date, are actually not matter to be normalized, but rather are replete with exercises of shaming and assault... and it's important for us to see it exposed for such since it's the kind of behaviour many of us have witnessed or perhaps ourselves engaged in, within an environment that had previously defused its importance? It's the way we get educated, for it's close to us, not Weinstein-serial-rapist far away. I need to know. Because as I've argued here before, the kind of psychohistory I'm interested in cannot be one that is defending against understanding the profound ongoing influence trauma has had on most of our lives, and how it has almost entirely formed how we've constituted society. We can't be people who maintain our own emotional homeostasis by finding some group of people whose genuine injuries we get to discount, and even make light of.
I'd still be interested in knowing if there are people on this listserve who are appalled by Woody Allen and encouraged to hear that many people will no longer be watching his films, felt FranBob was a sadist, serial predator engaged in sexual assault, believe Aziz Ansari was not just a bad date but a predator. Or does everyone believe this is a witch hunt.
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
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Jan 18
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Are we with Naomi Wolf, or with Harold Bloom's wife Jeanne: "Beauty Myth" Writer says Yale Blocked Harassment Claim
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
bdCharles2687
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Jan 18
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Whew! Do I agree with Patrick or do I still beat my wife? Tough choice. I'll just have to plead the Fifth Amendment on this. --Tim
Jane Bree
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Jan 18
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Consexuality?
Patrick and All,
Like world peace, until all genders who are adult and conscious (not inebriated) understand and are able to take responsibility for feeling and saying yes or no about sexual encounters - on a continuum from flirting to aggressive physical contact, this debate will continue. Or know and even have resources to stop predators.
And until men and women protect one another and write and talk publicly about protctuing each other as a goal — and especially children and disabled people of any age — from drugs, alcohol or anything — from sexually aggressive harms, we will perpetuate the trauma , then I fear all we will do is blame, accuse and obsess on gerbil wheels as to who did what to whom, who should do what with whom and how to punish.
Frankly, focus on how to raise and sustain healthy sexuality in all people would be time and effort better spent.
As someone who actually and naively believed, not just hoped, people would improve with the insight and sexual liberation of the 60s and 70s, I have to accept we are all more human than otherwise.
Most of us have personal and professional “stories” that can be put in a psychohistorical frame.
But my sense is that not many of us are fortunate enough to have evolved in this area of living and life.
Our leaders reflect our culture and our culture reflects and responds to our leaders.
Progress? Not so much in my 75 years on the planet. Different yes. Better? In some ways yes. In many, no.
But we sure are able more than ever to communicate, talk, write, film, video and interact in new ways about the subject of sex!
Mother would be interested and analytical and have ideas from her history (1917-2002) but Daddy (1910-1981) would prefer another massive heart attack to talking about sex that is “dirty.” In case you did not know, “Sex without love is dirty!”
Since a young age, learning about all things sexual has fascinated me .
I am not alone.
So, I guess
Whether the present cultural shift is a witch hunt (traumatizing the alleged perps) or help for the traumatized victims, so long as one is a nonpartipatory observer, discussing it makes the obvious plain... and hopefully more good than bad will come from it.
Thanks for thought. - provoking threads as always,
Jane
me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
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Jan 19
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Re: Consexuality?
Thanks for the feedback, Judy. Taking responsibility for saying yes or no is facilitated, I think, when a culture has your back... that is, when a culture helps bulwark you to stand up for what you really want so that a particular situation doesn't recall you to a stance that at some level you know you really don't want to be taking. A culture of "no means yes," or a culture of "no doesn't really apply, once you've agreed to be in a situation," undermines a braver and truer stance people might be prompted to take.
Isn't blaming and accusing very much part of protecting? #MeToo is blaming an awful lot of men -- there's a lot of hate -- but isn't this how it inevitably feels when you've had a chance to release what you'd been forced yourself to contain -- all the self-hate, all the shame -- because a culture told you they were going to totally discount the crime against you? Not just a person but a culture, did perpetuate a crime against you, so that they in some way could rest easy... it is right to be enraged at this. And helpful: it articulates for the rest of us that something was very wrong in how were defining ostensibly innocuous behaviour perpetrated one sex upon the other; it does so in a more convincing way than if we turn quickly to listening to those who prompt us to be above blame and think mutual protection, the evolved, non-blame stuff... for it seems a trick, a quick lure to "maturity," that gives one a queasy feeling that it's being prompted by people who are reluctant to have us really sit for long with the full experiential reality of the degree of crimes that had gone on, and that, once "handled," they are maybe due to be ignored, once again. I think we need a long, long blast of empowering anger. Afterwards, when we've recovered our truer self, it'll be time to admit that those who perpetrate were once perpetrated upon. Crimes repeat, as you say.
Jane Bree
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Jan 19
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Re: [cliospsyche] Consexuality?
Question, Patrick : Standing up - telling truth to power loud and clear ... is it the same as blaming and accusing? I have some doubt.
Little girls empowered to stand against and also tell about bad behaviors somehow give off a message to would be predators ... and are less attractive to them.
But seems that too few girls and boys, too, are taught how.
Shame in parents about sexuality is often transmitted - as are healthful and responsible attitudes.
Not so sure blame and accusation fit with my idea of a protective superego or conscience. More in the realm of a punitive one.
Judy
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
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Jan 20
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Re: [cliospsyche] Consexuality?
Historically, every time there is real progress in the world, the voice blames and accuses what once was normalized but now finally has become a crime. The first abolitionists, the first female-right activists, animal-rights activists, way back in the 18th-century, bringing such good into the world, for the first time, were as I remember, hugely angry, blaming all over the place. Is it, then, absolutely required? I doubt it, but given the history of how progress was brought into the world we need to be careful that in advising/admonishing it to be less blameful we're not actually working with the conservative forces in the world that immediately arise to suppress hopeful movements by suggesting there's something emotionally awry in the protestors themselves. If in our time it's the David Frums who carry the anti-Trump message and the Masha Gessens who carry the ostensible ideal degree of #MeToo, both of whom seem so "decorum" compared to some of the others, this will in my judgment amount to, not a demonstration of how we've evolved passed blame towards change, but towards suppression of the progressive essence of both movements.
Trevor Pederson
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Jan 20
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Re: [cliospsyche] Consexuality?
It's nice to see that you can predict the future, Patrick, and you know your movement is the true, genuine advancement.
What about all the times in history when seemingly progressive movements totally backfired (i.e. the USSR, prohibition, etc.)?
Your model of history is much too simple here, and I've read your film reviews and know that your capable of more than this,
Trevor
drsmith
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Jan 20
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Re: Re: [cliospsyche] Consexuality?
Here is an interview about Trump with a psychoanalyst with Jungian training. I thought that it would be of interest to this group. A pdf file is attached. Sorry but I couldn't seem to be able to paste it
Bill
- show quoted text -
Attachments (1)
Keep Calm and Carry On - An interview w...out Donald Trump - Chiron Publications_2.pdf
1005 KB View Download
Mark as complete
drsmith
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Jan 20
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Re: Re: [cliospsyche] Consexuality?
Here is an interview about Trump with a psychoanalyst with Jungian training. I thought that it would be of interest to this group. A pdf file is attached. Sorry but I couldn't seem to be able to paste it
Bill
Keep Calm and Carry On - An interview w...out Donald Trump - Chiron Publications_2.pdf
1005 KB View Download
Mark as complete
me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
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Jan 20
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Re: [cliospsyche] Consexuality?
Thanks for the feedback Trevor. And I really appreciate you letting me know that you've both read and enjoyed my film reviews. I feel greatly encouraged, and that's a measure of my respect for you for certain. (I would be glad to write film reviews and post links to them here on a regular basis, if people don't judge this spam but something they'd like to see me do.)
There are witch hunts. Hays Code coming in and narrowing creativity for a generation. A super-ego, enlarged, and spasmed out of control. Political Correctness did keep a lot of people from expressing themselves honestly, did encourage people to associate with a punitive force so that they could prey on "bad boy" self-representatives that were helplessly categorized and caged as trolls. So isn't progress in shucking this off... finally calling what had passed as simply the progressive voice as really the voice of a suppressive, even perpetrating, parent?
No, it isn't, and the reasons for it are complex but maybe can be boiled down to the fact that of the associates I know who I consider the most emotionally evolved, the ones whom I feel the greatest sense that they want a world where no one is punished and where everyone fully individuates and discovers their true selves, are with the Naomi Wolf side of #MeToo, not the Masha Gessen side. What may pass as society no longer letting itself be cowed by oppressive, dictatorial movements, who view all subjects not akin to themselves with massive suspicious, detecting in each one of them a deep degree of deplore-alism, is known only through feel of their language, their temper, their countenance, as those who are opposed to a movement which is going to make it that much harder for society to maintain its homeostasis by making sure that some huge group of peoples out there will experience pain and humiliation that has no hope for redemption. It's no longer okay to be racist, no longer okay to be homophobic, and now its no longer okay for society to keep themselves from experiencing their own childhood humiliations by making sure that most victims of abuse out there will themselves be targeted for censure if they make "too big a stink" about their experiences. More and more, society isn't looking like it's going to handle all the stuff out of our childhood that society exists in part TO HANDLE, and if it continues, we'll cease to be able to go on normally and "crazy" will fully infiltrate our everyday lives.
The reason political correctness WILL eventually, though not now, be rejected, is that -- and here's the complicated, or remote, part -- DeMause is correct that after about two or three decades after a period of massive sacrifice of lives and hopes, permission can't go on in its unafflicted manner anymore... it can continue, but only compromised. We feel this within political correctness, but when we're rejecting it now, unfortunately, we're not just junking the compromised part of progressivism but progressivism itself. I'm not sure I can demonstrate this just now. But it's my feel... the best young people I know -- and as the NYT has discussed, #MeToo has a generational divide -- are on the Naomi Wolf side, and I'm worried as hell for them. We will succeed in crushing what is actually our greatest threat -- a young generation that will further raise Mother's ire by arguing against Her stance that individuation must be hampered by some means, so more and more people dance off freely into the world rather than remained chained to her -- without any guilt at all, for we'll simply be speaking up against a reckless witch hunt, against activists who hate the common man and woman, trying to make us believe that everything we know to be self-evidently true -- like nature -- are delusions we need to be cured from.
If you look at my posts I've mentioned a number of times that there are a whole hosts of truths that I really regret have been shut down for discussion. But my way too exploring them is to work with people who most profoundly understand how trauma has determined society's course, and these people just happen to be -- I can't deny it -- more on the "gender" side of things than on the "nature." They would seem opposite to me, but the sensitivity of them, the dexterity and care and intricacy of their language, tells me they're not.
I've got work on a bit, so I can't check this over. Hopefully I said here my best response.
bdCharles2687
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Jan 20
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RE: Re: [cliospsyche] Consexuality?
Thank you, Bill, some good insights from Jungian psychology in this interview. Yes, the Trickster archetype is highly relevant to understanding Trump, and in personality he is more like Mussolini and Stalin than Hitler. Would that Jung himself had exercised better political judgement in the 1930s. That gets to Patrick's point about the need to take a stand while history is still being made and our choices can shape the outcomes.
I also agree that anger (and even blame, in the sense of directing anger at perpetrators) has an important and legitimate place in the progressive movement. But Aristotle’s caveat applies here: “Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.” (from the The Nicomachean Ethics, quoted in Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence.
Tim
bdCharles.com
917-628-8253
me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
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Jan 20
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Re: Re: [cliospsyche] Consexuality?
Tim, I hope you get some really involved explorations of your recent article, especially ones that I think you'd look forward to, where the modelling, the science of it is examined in close detail. It wasn't something I was up for.
But if you don't mind, there was another thing that came to mind about your article, concerning phrasing. Concerning this paragraph:
In societies that assign infant and baby care almost exclusively to females, such as our own, the earliest attachment figure for both boys and girls is a female. By virtue of such infant care arrangements, these societies by definition practice sex stereotyping, and the infant and baby care providers are thus typically “feminine” females. Having all internal- ized these feminine objects, boys and girls are then subjected to differen- tial gender socialization. Here the developmental trajectory of the sexes diverges, with the “feminine” self-ideal taught to girls and the “mascu- line” ideal taught to boys.
I think most people would this phrasing perfectly fine, perfectly appropriate, but I wish they wouldn't. This is not quite true to your theories, but here would be a possible re-write that I wish there was more open to being accepted:
In societies where the mothers grew up so unloved they need their children to satisfy their own unmet needs and therefore castigated and abandoned them when they attempted to individuate from them, and where the fathers weren't much interested in the children, and even hated them for drawing attention away from them, children end up feeling like parts or components of their mothers, a state that can't be ended outside of dramatic and terrible means. For boys, whether or not the society they were in currently favoured or scorned masculine he-men, whether it was intent to teach them to be like this or not, this means they'd adopt this aggressive "Hemingwayesque" solution regardless, and in sufficient numbers society would immediately thereafter carry this as their norm for proper masculine displays of self and even misleadingly appear as the key agent in ensuring the next generation follows the same course, ostensibly dictating to mothers their role in childrearing, as if there was emotionally any other option for them but to isolate their children all to themselves. Similarly, the men might appear to be allocated a more distant role in childrearing until later, when there was emotionally no capacity to do anything other than that, for the interest in the young children wasn't there, and the mother and her abode, too greatly feared in any case.
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