|
|
|
|
Another case of
it's-not-actually-trauma, inflicted trauma by Al Franken
6 posts by 3 authors
 |
|
|
add tags
|
Assign
Set as duplicate
No action needed
 |
me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
|
12/6/17
|
Another case of it's-not-actually-trauma, inflicted trauma by Al Franken.
The former staffer said she mostly kept the encounter
to herself, not even telling her boss at the time. But she started to talk more
openly about it to close friends after the “Access Hollywood” video was aired
in October 2016. In the now infamous tape, Donald Trump is recorded saying his
fame gives him carte blanche to grab women’s genitals.
“When it really started impacting me in more of a ‘I’m
really angry about about this’ way was last fall when the Trump tape came out,”
the former aide said. “Hearing Donald Trump say essentially the same thing that
Al Franken said to me, which was ‘It’s my right as an entertainer,’ that was a
real trigger,” she continued.
The former staffer says she was particularly shaken
after seeing Franken on TV responding to the Trump tape last year. Franken
dismissed Trump’s excuse that he was just engaging in “locker room talk” and
joked that maybe Trump worked out with Roger Ailes, the now deceased Fox News
chairman who was forced to resign in 2016 amid allegations he sexually harassed
several Fox employees.
“It was a moment in time where I told a number of my
friends about my experience with Franken because I saw him on the news being
asked about the Trump tape and I felt like it was really hypocritical,” the
former staffer said. “It’s a power dynamic and the fact that Donald Trump could
say that was not much different from the fact that Al Franken could say it.”
Franken took pains to separate himself from Trump
earlier this year before he was accused of sexual harassment, saying just
because the two were “both in a branch of show business” is no reason to lump
them in the same category politically.
Click here to Reply
 |
Trevor Pederson
|
12/6/17
|
You're over-reaching in defensiveness Patrick.
Where is the claim of trauma here? She's saying that
she's angered by his hypocrisy:
“He was between me and the door and he was coming at
me to kiss me. It was very quick and I think my brain had to work really hard
to be like ‘Wait, what is happening?’ But I knew whatever was happening was not
right and I ducked,” the aide said in an interview. “I was really startled by
it and I just sort of booked it towards the door and he said, ‘It’s my right as
an entertainer.’”
“When it really started impacting me in more of a ‘I’m
really angry about about this’ way was last fall when the Trump tape came out,”
the former aide said.
“It was a moment in time where I told a number of my
friends about my experience with Franken because I saw him on the news being
asked about the Trump tape and I felt like it was really hypocritical,” the
former staffer said. “It’s a power dynamic and the fact that Donald Trump could
say that was not much different from the fact that Al Franken could say it.”
- show quoted text -
- show quoted text -
--
<><><>
To post to this group send to: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
Clio's Psyche is sponsored by The Psychohistory Forum.
For questions visit: cliospsyche.org
Digest is available on request and sends no more than
1 email a day.
---
You received this message because you are subscribed
to the Google Groups "Clio’s Psyche" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving
emails from it, send an email to cliospsyche+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Mark as complete
 |
me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
|
12/7/17
|
"Clio's Psyche" needs to have
members who encounter claims against Franken, hear how women felt when they
were made to feel like props for the powerful, hear of his repeated sexual
sadism, and who rejoice when women who've kept it stifled for years feel
they're empowered to finally say something. (This was my first reaction with
Weinstein as well.) This can't be a boys-club enclave for holdouts. We're
supposed to be ahead in progressive attitude and psychological reach, not
defensive rearguard. If we're disgusted at what is happening to Al Franken, if
our first reaction isn't to deeply involve ourselves in the situations of those
he predated upon (every person he accosted describes, first, their initial
shock and mortification [she does say she got angry later, as you say Trevor,
but do psychologists have anything to say about the full experience of an
attack really only manifesting in full at a later date?... strikes me that this
is essentially what Van der Kolk is all about, and so why aren't we working
with her story that way? why aren't we there?], and then a later experience
years on when once again they find themselves deeply humiliated by his ongoing
presumptions), we need to reflect more and consider what we ourselves might be
guilty of obscuring.
Would how we are reacting in aggregate
enable or retard further victims from coming out? Would they sense we'd rather
prefer they keep quiet? Not make quite such a big deal out of it? Would they
wonder if we're being self-protective... of note, it's now being revealed that
Matt Lauer repeatedly waylaid stories that involved spousal cheating. There's a
"Clio's Psyche" article in involving ourselves in what Al Franken has
been doing for years. The childhood experiences that gave birth to his sexual
sadism. Would any of us be inclined to want to write it? That's where we should
be. If not, we're rearguard. Arrive late to a story... which surely isn't
psychohistorical anyway; not about a concern for the why? about society at all,
and then only in hopes of taking it over so it can be managed so it doesn't
alarm and surprise us as much in the future.
Trevor, your reaction has been to call
his accusers oversensitive, and you've now called me overreaching... this as
half a Democratic senate realizes that there are perhaps hundreds more stories
that'll come out amongst Al's thousands of hugs, and that their dear Al is not
just a hapless happy hugger but a Trumpian predator of those he can presume
upon; those who'll feel fear and know they'll know "repercussions" if
they speak up against him. Brian's was to suggest I've been triggered
into losing my sane composure [Brian, if democrats can't automatically find
themselves in the full position of the victims, really relate to them, then
there will be a fauxness to their populism, and to some extent they'll be
revealed as monsters too, even if only historically... it's scary when every
protector is gone from the universe, and everyone has some unconscious agenda
to displace revenge against incurred childhood abusers upon some ensured
subsequent category of people], and also this: "Unless anything more
serious comes to light than what has come to light so far, they will not find
grounds for removing him from office. But apparently if you had your
druthers, he’d be out on the street. What is this about?"
I sensed Franken's sadism instantly,
what he was doing, and knew there were many victims, and that he had made many
people feel small and used -- a shame they'd have to suffer from for years,
which might indeed have been part of the subconscious plan. I know the
childhood causes. I know there is no such thing as evil, just repercussions of
child abuse. I know that the clear-headiness I ultimately seek (in appreciating
how after a mass-sacrifice-enabled golden age era has passed a society can only
further genuine growth by also ensuring a large class of victims and thus
designates/votes in the sorts of people who'll ensure it, and so coming to see
it ONLY as vile, that is, not as something that IS hugely vile but also a
product of a certain kind of childrearing and the sense of punishment that
genuine growth arouses, can mean not reading how the next era that follows is
worse -- "pure" fascist state of good folk) can only be guaranteed by
people who I recognize as able to function sanely. Sane people will react to
the experiences these and other women went through, with horror, with an
inclination NOT to protect the abuser. Of these, I would reason with them, and
tell them that the predators themselves could only have done this if they
themselves were victimized as children: that this is one of the likely things
that happens to a person after they've known abuse. They don't just stifle and
hopefully gain equilibrium later through people finally believing them. They
can grow into monsters. That's why it's so right to see people agreeing finally
with the victims (a category of people -- believers of victims, that is --
you'll only really find in a profound way amongst democrats, with republicans
really being a victim-ensuring entity [they will protect certain vulnerable
people, but only if it's known to be part of a movement which'll produce
multitudes more of them -- i.e., rightwing populism]).
It didn't happen in the 80s when
Frederick Crews et al. helped manage the child abuse scandals so they seemed
erroneous, a witchhunt and a crime against probably innocent parents. But many
more are finally not projecting their parents (imagos?) into those categorized
as empowered predators and seeking to gain love by agreeing not to fully see
their crimes and indeed to blame the accusers (representatives of their own
childhood selves).
And thus #metoo.
- - - - -
The second woman, who said she was
groped at a fundraiser, told HuffPost it took place in the fall of 2008 at the
Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. She was excited about attending the event
and meeting someone she wanted to support.
“I
had never attended anything like that,” she said.
She
and her friends found Franken and introduced themselves to him.
“I
shook his hand, and he put his arm around my waist and held it there,” the
second woman said. “Then he moved it lower and cupped my butt.”
“I
was completely mortified,” she added.
In
order to escape the situation, the woman excused herself to go to the bathroom.
At that point, she said, Franken leaned in and suggested that he accompany her.
She grabbed her friend and fled to the bathroom without him.
- - - - -
As
Kemplin, then 27, posed for a photo with him, she said, he put his arm around
her and grabbed her breast, holding onto her for up to 10 seconds.
“I
remember clenching up and how you just feel yourself flushed,” she told CNN.
“And I remember thinking — is he going to move his hand? Was it an accident?
Was he going to move his hand? He never moved his hand.”
“Looking
back at the picture, Kemplin said she recalls feeling frozen and numb: ‘I did
not process it in those split seconds.’ ”
Now,
many years later, Kemplin said that “I just feel so sorry for that young girl
in that picture.”
“You’re
immediately put on the spot. What are you going to do? What are you going to
do? Your mind goes a mile a minute. Who was I going to tell?” the 41-year-old
told CNN, saying she was too embarrassed to tell the other soldiers.
On
Thursday, Kemplin told CNN that when she saw Tweeden’s story, she “felt like
the rug was pulled out from underneath me.”
Kemplin
said she later contacted Tweeden and decided to speak out, too.
-
- - - -
The picture was striking. The military airplane.
The sleeping woman. The outstretched hands. The mischievous smile. The Look
what I’m getting away withimpishness directed at the camera.
On Thursday, Leeann Tweeden, a radio host
and former model, came forwardwith the accusation that
Senator Al Franken of Minnesota had kissed her against her will during a 2006
United Service Organizations trip to Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan. In a story posted to the website
of Los Angeles’s KABC station, Tweeden shared her experience with Franken. She
also shared that photo. “I couldn’t believe it,” she wrote. “He groped me,
without my consent, while I was asleep.”
I felt violated all
over again. Embarrassed. Belittled. Humiliated.
How dare anyone grab my
breasts like this and think it’s funny?
I told my husband
everything that happened and showed him the picture.
I wanted to shout my
story to the world with a megaphone to anyone who would listen, but even as
angry as I was, I was worried about the potential backlash and damage going
public might have on my career as a broadcaster.
But that was then, this
is now. I’m no longer afraid.
-
- - - -
The
second woman, who said she was groped at a fundraiser, told HuffPost it took
place in the fall of 2008 at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. She was
excited about attending the event and meeting someone she wanted to support.“I
had never attended anything like that,” she said.
She
and her friends found Franken and introduced themselves to him.
“I
shook his hand, and he put his arm around my waist and held it there,” the
second woman said. “Then he moved it lower and cupped my butt.”
“I
was completely mortified,” she added.
In
order to escape the situation, the woman excused herself to go to the bathroom.
At that point, she said, Franken leaned in and suggested that he accompany her.
She grabbed her friend and fled to the bathroom without him.
- show quoted text -
 |
Trevor Pederson
|
12/7/17
|
I'd like to ask who on this list didn't feel it was a
good thing when Roger Aisles or Weinstein, et al, were taken down? Please give
your opinion.
That was monstrous sexual sadism in my opinion.
I think it's very different with Franken. I'm willing
to give him a chance despite him being inappropriate, and if he can't show some
self-control, like Weiner, he shouldn't be allowed back in.
I have already pointed out Patrick, that you should
consider becoming a therapist yourself and see what is real. I'm giving my
opinion of what I've seen come up and what I haven't seen come up in the
clinic. The question is whether I'm a reactionary, am conservative in attitude,
unable to see whats really there or lying and covering it up for some agenda.
Then there is the question of whether you might be mistaken. Again, don't
listen to me, see for yourself. But don't bellyache that this list serv doesn't
have members who echo your unsubstantiated claims.
Go do the hard work and write the papers or books that
will change people's minds.
There are many lies in politics and I smell a rat,
Trevor
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
 |
me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
|
12/11/17
|
Al Franken, Eli Weisel, Garrison Keillor, Bill
Clinton, Al Gore, Woody Allen, Dustin Hoffman... are all more interesting to me
than Weinstein. No one is made uncomfortable hearing of Weinstein being taken
down, but with the others, yes. Weinstein isn't themselves, but the others--
Al Franken was a way in which a lot of people could
give licence to their inner bully, but because it was directed against
Republicans it was allowed to pass notice. This article by Salena Zito gets at that. I hypothesized a
resignation speech by him (and here's cnn video of how one of his accusers responded to his classless resignation speech,
where he seemed to want to blame them, and further ignored how he had made them
"profoundly uncomfortable"... this Trevor, I SAW) where he would
fully admit that he intended to degrade women in compromised positions
vis-a-vis himself, and there I mentioned he would also draw people's
consideration that a person who could do that could still end up proving solid
on issues like abortion rights (mind you, I seem to remember Socarides saying
that some predators alleviate guilt that way). Truly, even there I was being
soft on him... as I hoped I alluded to in that article from "Outline"
magazine, which pointed out how populists sometimes have this uncomfortable
habit of ending up forgetting about women's issues they were formerly so strong
on as they champion the working people. I felt that in the end he would end up
finding means to indulge in revenge against women (i.e. his mother), a la what
developed with the Bernie Bros. and their peculiar hatred of Hillary Clinton. I
was scared of him; of how he would ultimately end up serving the American
people.
I personally would love it I had some people on this
list admit just how jubilant they are to find this #metoo movement occurring
and for criminal physical assault not to be watered down into harassment or improper
conduct, not, that is, simply appreciative, but alarmed at it getting out of
control, and worried at women probably having misremembered things. I
personally see signs here of psychohistorical evolution, where abuses that were
once felt necessary for a society to obtain equilibrium are no longer as much
required. As I've argued earlier, out of people like that, we can start talking
widely about the societal damage incurred by mass difficulties during the
preoedipal period, and getting a listen... how do so many people become this
way, people we want to like, really?
There are many means to do good in this world, Trevor,
and I don't personally believe that tough love (bellyache? do the hard work?)
is one of them. Being amongst the ones who believe Franken is a serial predator
shouldn't mean finding oneself defined as fundamentally ignorant of the ways of
people. If that's what a career in counselling can do for you, offer this kind
of leverage, presume this kind of level of ignorance... shame people and get
away with it, it makes one want to do a Foucault on the profession. You can for
instance hope to sway people who are themselves therapists. You surely should
suss out venues to see if they're sincere in wanting your voice more broadly
heard, or just hoping you'll find yourself corrected... as Brian assumed the
hearings onto Franken's behaviour would have done to the field of accusers
"aligned" against him. DeMausian psychohistory has very little play
in the publishing world. Charles W. Socarides has very little sway as well...
outside of venues that are simply rancid. I get my thoughts out the way I am
able to now. With #metoo I'm seeing the possibility of venues opening up to me.
It'll be amongst liberals who are horrified at what their fellow liberals have
turned into, and who are ready to take in voices they previously hadn't felt
sufficient prompting to really focus on and deeply consider: they already had
buttressing that worked for them, so alien thoughts had to remain alien.
Do people at Clio like my ideas? If so, I could try
and publish something at this journal. I am proud of what I sent to JOP, but
I'm not sure that venue wants my work just now (and if they do, they have a
funny way of showing it.) I'm not doing this though if I'm mostly just an
annoyance... someone who's tolerated, to demonstrate the openness of the Clio's
Psyche project. It's hard work to be where I am right now, to insist on
fighting this kind of fight, and I expect a venue that appreciates that.
If someone knows of another venue that might be
interested in publishing work from me, please contact me at pmcevoyhalston@gmail.com. I don't expect to be published, but I
do expect a reader who if s/he has to reject, is in profound sympathy with my
voice.
- show quoted text -
 |
bdagostino2687
|
12/11/17
|
I am not shy about speaking up on this list when I
feel I have something worthwhile to say, but I don’t feel the need to say
something just because someone else thinks I should. We have aired
dissenting viewpoints on this topic. Reasonable people can disagree,
especially about something as complex as this. I don’t understand what
the problem is, but in any case I’m ready to move on unless I think of
something important about this topic worth saying that hasn’t already been
said.
Brian
917-628-8253
-----------------------------
|
|
|
|
Fwd: IPA 2018 Call For
Conference Proposals
2 posts by 2 authors
 |
|
|
add tags
|
Assign
Set as duplicate
No action needed
 |
Denis O'Keefe
|
12/12/17
|
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: International Psychohistorical
Association <dokeefe.ipa@outlook.com>
Date: Tue, Dec 12, 2017 at 1:22 PM
Subject: IPA 2018 Call For Conference
Proposals
To: Djo212@nyu.edu
|
Click here to Reply
 |
me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
|
12/13/17
|
Reading a bit of Daniel Shaw's work (his book), there
seems to be confusion as to why exactly he would believe Trump must be
understood as swaying a whole nation into becoming sadists. He is arguing that
children come to agree with their unloved parents' (he can reference the
existence of monstrous mothers -- on his facebook page, he insists on there
being "many" of them for instance -- but through what portions of the
book I was able to read, it has to be drawn out of him... not his preference)
perception of them as bad when they don't fulfill their emotional requirements
of them, that they develop inner persecutors and inner protectors that lord
over their psyche, watching over their "sinning" in this direction,
but doesn't conceive that this "badness" associated with attending to
one's own needs, one's own growth, could eventually lead to them USING
"leaders" like Trump to execute punishment against people understood
as behaving counter to their own parents' requirements for children, that is,
as behaving seemingly self-centeredly, selfishly, smugly, only because they
exist in the realm of "badness" they themselves had been cowed away
from much exploring. He refers to leaders like Trump forcing their will on a
populace. If enough children are of the kind he alludes to, they already have
inner persecutors forcing their wills on their own behaviour, and these drive
them to see individual growth as a sinful, as a bad, thing. Trump, in pursuing
his purpose of shaping society so that it ultimately feels guilt-free in
persecuting and destroying whole groups of people who well represent what their
early child selves conceived as parent-not-approved, seems more an executor of
perpetrators already installed in people's psyches.
His theories, in my early reading of his work,
strongly seem to suggest the problem rests in the people, not with
(charismatic, hypnotizing... both terms he uses) leaders. This matters. For if
it's a collective populace's overall childhoods that are the problem, there are
a multiple million number of "Trumps" that could be called into servicing
this, probably now, unaddressable problem, and we're wasting our time in trying
to show him up... or more accurately, pursuing some end actually apart from the
purported one of educating the American public. If this is the case, the only
time our work in unmasking him will prove "effective" is if he fails
to carry out a regressing populace's needs to destroy their split-off "bad
selves." Time would seem better put into making sure that we ourselves are
free of necessary illusions, to confront our own need to find sacrifices for
our own dis-ease at societal growth, and so be sure to function through this
period as strategically astute as possible.
He's written (on his Facebook page) that the problem
is the billions of dollars put into demonizing liberals, as the reason liberals
like Obama and Hillary Clinton accrue any sense of legitimately being seen as
deeply flawed. I don't know why he doesn't connect that the reason liberals are
hated isn't owing to billionaire rightwingers' media influence, or evil
Putinists', or Trump's ostensibly inherent hypnotizing charisma, but for the
sheer fact that, objectively, they're not people who can readily be cowed by
angry parental representatives... that is, because they very ably, very
noticeably, intrinsically represent their own "bad selves," whose
destruction will surely bring an end to parental abandonment and perhaps the
acquirement of their appreciation and love. Liberals are always for the
children, consevatives are always for the persecuting parent. That's the
dynamic even when "speaking for the children" has to come about in
very modulated form.
He denies on his Facebook page that Hillary Clinton
and Barack Obama were mostly adored by the press; given an easy ride. He refers
to a Salon article which emphasizes just how negative the press was against
Hillary (it was absolutely so in 2008 when she was running against Obama...
reporters could barely look at her in the eye, but vastly less so against
Sanders... though still some, yes). He points to the billions of dollars put
forth to demonize them by the rightwing and Russia. Yet, as incomparably
healthy as both Hillary Clinton and Obama are compared to Trump... compared to
all Republicans, Hillary Clinton is justifiably becoming seen as psychically
needing America over the last few decades to produce a class of victims whose
pain would find no address... she wasn't tortured into labelling the women
accusing her husband as scum of the earth; she may even have known he had
sexually predated upon them when she tried to manipulate them into being
politically docile, and thus served akin to Weinstein's assistants/enablers;
she wasn't tortured into believing in being "tough on crime," but
felt the ostensible righteousness of it. Legitimate criticism of her really should
have emerged -- then -- from all of us, even as I still believe we should have
voted for her. She represents that part of ourselves that participated in
making these last few decades a period of significant growth of the
professional class, but also one that depressed and stigmatized millions of the
less fortunate. I've argued before that there was no other way -- that this
doesn't show us up as evil, as someone like Chris Hedges would argue it does.
But it's sane to recognize it. Societal growth equals people sinning... has
been historically our greatest affliction. And Obama... good lord. I don't know
if we've projected onto him, or if we've kind of just decided not to look at
him and just consider him a shield at our side that hedges all self-accusers
safely to the side, but here mostly certainly is someone we couldn't bare to
denature and address in simple good faith. We have to examine that. It's
different than even it was with the Kennedy's, because we felt ourselves
reflected in him... something genuinely promising. With Obama, we don't
identify with him. We efface him; make him and his family convenient equipage,
accompanying external tools of the psyche... or so it strikes me.
- show quoted text -
---------------------------
|
|
|
|
when consent is retroactively
withdrawn
9 posts by 3 authors
 |
|
|
add tags
|
Assign
Set as duplicate
No action needed
 |
Trevor Pederson
|
12/16/17
|
there might be some people who agree with this, but
its going to start to hurt the cause
Click here to Reply
 |
Judith Logue
|
12/16/17
|
How will telling individual experiences and a
“personal truth” hurt “the cause?”
To me, truth - in all its varieties - IS “the cause.”
Judy
Judith Logue, PhD
On Dec 16, 2017, at 12:58 AM, Trevor Pederson <trevor.pederson@gmail.com> wrote:
there might be some people who agree with this, but
its going to start to hurt the cause
--
<><><>
To post to this group send to: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
Clio's Psyche is sponsored by The Psychohistory Forum.
For questions visit: cliospsyche.org
Digest is available on request and sends no more than
1 email a day.
---
You received this message because you are subscribed
to the Google Groups "Clio’s Psyche" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving
emails from it, send an email to cliospsyche+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Mark as complete
 |
Trevor Pederson
|
12/16/17
|
Hi Judy
It's hurtful because consent is the goal.
Lauer would be fired for the unequal power dynamic at
many companies even though there was consent. However, outside of working at a
company with a woman, many egoistic people are trying to make money, have
status symbols, and impress other with their accomplishments. Many hope to
impress younger "trophy brides" or partners that have less than them
in some ways but who have youth, beauty, or something else.
The power inequality is recognized with therapist and
patient and in many other situations and, again, in many companies in which the
power dynamic isn't forcing any personal intimacy. I wholly agree with this,
but outside of this, when so many egoists are going to be asked to be mindful
of power inequality and taking advantage of others, I don't see them changing.
Instead, I see them putting it back on women, and
saying that if your can still be a victim, even with consent, then we better
protect you from the dangers of the world. Maybe you should have your own dorms
and go back to having curfews on college campuses even though the men don't
have them.
Even though my situation with Matt was consensual, I
ultimately felt like a victim because of the power dynamic.
Even looking back now, at 41, I can’t envision a
scenario under these conditions where I could not have succumbed to his
advances.
I didn’t know what to do. He was obviously flirting.
But I’d never seen anything like that from Matt before. As a 24-year-old
production assistant, I had no idea how to interpret that. I could truly
embarrass myself if I said something like, “Where are you going with this?”
I have worked with many men who have patterns like
this with woman and there is psychopathology involved. Lauer isn't healthy and
I am not on his side at all. However, I don't think many egoists will
understand how she couldn't stand up for herself, her values, and how she isn't
a "nasty woman" who slept with a man who she knew was married.
You say the truth is the cause, and I am saying that
differences in psychology informs what truth people are capable of seeing.
I don't think the writer is being dishonest, but I do
think there are many who won't be able to see her truth, many who will be
defensive, and many who feel this as a further attack on their manhood.
I'm surprised that you don't have a sense for this,
Trevor
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
 |
Judith Logue
|
12/16/17
|
yup!
Judy
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
 |
mfbrttn
|
12/16/17
|
Trevor,
I'm still looking for your next book, and/or the book
that makes these powerful concepts accessible to the "general reading
public" as they say.
Best wishes as always,
Mike Britton
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
 |
mfbrttn
|
12/16/17
|
PS. This is not a comment on the discussion the
two of you are having, just a comment on the group of concepts of which egoists
is one that Trevor is so articulate about.
Michael
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
 |
Trevor Pederson
|
12/16/17
|
Thanks for compliment Mike.
I'm getting close to finishing the edits on the next
book, and I can say that I'm giving a lot clinical examples in it. This should
be helpful for many readers.
But, I doubt that I've become wise enough to speak in
a way that would capture the ears of the public- hopefully I'll still grow.
cheers,
Trevor
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
 |
mfbrttn
|
12/16/17
|
Great! I'm excited!
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
 |
Trevor Pederson
|
12/19/17
|
Today’s Fox News story
Ex-'Today' assistant who admitted to Matt Lauer affair
called 'whore,' 'homewrecker'
The former production assistant who revealed she
engaged in a sexual relationship with "Today" host Matt Lauer in 2000
is being called a "whore" and a "homewrecker."
Addie Collins Zinone divulged shocking new details
about her torrid affair with the now-disgraced talk show host in an explosive
interview with Megyn Kelly on Monday.
While Zinone was initially praised for opening about
her experience with Lauer, the former "Today" staffer is now facing
backlash online for coming forward. She was 24 and he was in his 40s and
married when they began their affair.
"Stop playing the victim! You are NOT a victim!!
You are a whore! Plain and simple," one person wrote on Twitter.
Another shared, "Addie Zinone just wanted some 5
minute attention... her affair with Matt Laurer was 100% consensual and she
honestly should have never brought it up. She made the choice to be a
homewrecker and gives a bad name to the real /#MeToo people."
"THERES A PHRASE FOR WHAT HAPPENED WITH THIS
WOMAN, ITS (sic) CALLED TRYING TO SLEEP TO THE TOP, THIS IS SO FREAKING
REDICULOUS (sic), ID (sic) EVEN BET SHE CAME ON TO HIM!!!"
Zinone told Kelly about the negative comments she was
already receiving since revealing her affair with Lauer.
"I understand that people are going to paint me
as a homewrecker, as a slut and a whore and those are things I have been
called. It was suggested yesterday to me that 'Please please go get hit by a
bus,'" Zinone told Kelly.
Their alleged affair lasted about a month and, even
though Zinone felt that Lauer steered her into the uncomfortable situation, she
said she takes full responsibility for her actions, calling them a
"massive mistake" that has continued to haunt her.
"These are very hard things to talk about,"
she admitted. "My family is shattered by this. They are afraid for me. This
all trickles down to a lot of people that are affected, so having these
conversations is really important, but also there's a lot of shame attached to
what I did."
Zinone said she struggled with hiding her story for 17
years and was fearful of opening up to the world about her shame.
You can find Sasha Savitsky on Twitter @ SashaFB.
This material may not be published, broadcast,
rewritten, or redistributed.
©2017 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved.
- show quoted text -
--------------------------------
|
|
|
|
the larger implications of Trump's
shithole incident
25 posts by 9 authors
 |
|
|
add tags
|
Assign
Set as duplicate
No action needed
 |
bdagostino2687
|
Jan 12
|
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.
The other really outstanding piece is a 20 minute
segment (including panel discussion) from Joe Scarborough, also on MSNBC:
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.
Brian
917-628-8253
Click here to Reply
 |
me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
|
Jan 13
|
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.
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
 |
Barney
|
Jan 13
|
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.
- show quoted text -
- show quoted text -
--
<><><>
To post to this group send to: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
Clio's Psyche is sponsored by The Psychohistory Forum.
For questions visit: cliospsyche.org
Digest is available on request and sends no more than
1 email a day.
---
You received this message because you are subscribed
to the Google Groups "Clio’s Psyche" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving
emails from it, send an email to cliospsyche+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Mark as complete
 |
Barney
|
Jan 13
|
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]
On Sat, Jan 13, 2018 at 8:56 AM, Patrick
McEvoy-Halston <pmcevoyhalston@gmail.com> wrote:
- show quoted text -
--
<><><>
To post to this group send to: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
Clio's Psyche is sponsored by The Psychohistory Forum.
For questions visit: cliospsyche.org
Digest is available on request and sends no more than
1 email a day.
---
You received this message because you are subscribed
to the Google Groups "Clio’s Psyche" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving
emails from it, send an email to cliospsyche+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Mark as complete
 |
bdagostino2687
|
Jan 13
|
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.
Brian
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
- show quoted text -
--
<><><>
To post to this group send to: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
Clio's Psyche is sponsored by The Psychohistory Forum.
For questions visit: cliospsyche.org
Digest is available on request and sends no more than
1 email a day.
---
You received this message because you are subscribed
to the Google Groups "Clio’s Psyche" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving
emails from it, send an email to cliospsyche+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Mark as complete
 |
Ken Fuchsman
|
Jan 13
|
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.
Sent from my iPhone
- show quoted text -
- show quoted text -
--
<><><>
To post to this group send to: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
Clio's Psyche is sponsored by The Psychohistory Forum.
For questions visit: cliospsyche.org
Digest is available on request and sends no more than
1 email a day.
---
You received this message because you are subscribed
to the Google Groups "Clio’s Psyche" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving
emails from it, send an email to cliospsyche+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Mark as complete
 |
Ken Fuchsman
|
Jan 13
|
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
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
 |
Judith Logue
|
Jan 13
|
Re: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of
Trump's shithole incident
right on- may I forward with
permission?
Judy
- show quoted text -
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
 |
drwargus
|
Jan 13
|
Re: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of
Trump's shithole incident
Brian, Patrick, et al
Thank you for sharing these interesting articles and
opinions. I watched both videos that you recommended Brian, 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 Brian, 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.
Sent from my iPad
Bill Argus
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
 |
bdagostino2687
|
Jan 13
|
RE: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of
Trump's shithole incident
Bill, I have never taken 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.
Brian
917-628-8253
From: 'William Argus' via Clio’s Psyche [mailto:cliospsyche@googlegroups.com]
Sent: Saturday, January 13, 2018 3:16 PM
To: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of
Trump's shithole incident
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
 |
bdagostino2687
|
Jan 13
|
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.
From: bdagostino2687@gmail.com [mailto:bdagostino2687@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, January 13, 2018 3:50 PM
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)
|
Jan 13
|
Re: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of
Trump's shithole incident
I
know they're not just domestic, Ken. 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.
- show quoted text -
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
 |
me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
|
Jan 13
|
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.
On Friday, January 12, 2018 at 11:28:18 PM UTC-5,
bdagostino2687 wrote:
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
 |
drwargus
|
Jan 13
|
Re: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of
Trump's shithole incident
Brian,
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, Brian 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?!! :-)
Sent from my iPad
Bill Argus
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
 |
me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
|
Jan 13
|
And this from the New York Times: Trump's Immigration Remarks Outrage
Many, but Others Quietly Agree.
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
 |
drwargus
|
Jan 13
|
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.
Sent from my iPad
Bill Argus
- show quoted text -
- show quoted text -
--
<><><>
To post to this group send to: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
Clio's Psyche is sponsored by The Psychohistory Forum.
For questions visit: cliospsyche.org
Digest is available on request and sends no more than
1 email a day.
---
You received this message because you are subscribed
to the Google Groups "Clio’s Psyche" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving
emails from it, send an email to cliospsyche+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Mark as complete
 |
bdagostino2687
|
Jan 14
|
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://bdagostino.com/middle-class-fights-back.php). Glad we clarified this!
Brian
917-628-8253
From: 'William Argus' via Clio’s Psyche [mailto:cliospsyche@googlegroups.com]
Sent: Saturday, January 13, 2018 7:31 PM
- show quoted text -
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
 |
arniedr
|
Jan 15
|
IPBOOKSIPBOOKS SPECIAL ONE WEEK OFFER FOR PRIZE
NOMINATED PSYCHOANALYTIC TITLES AND NYRB ADVERTISED BOOKS
--
<><><>
To post to this group send to: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
Clio's Psyche is sponsored by The Psychohistory Forum.
For questions visit: cliospsyche.org
---
You received this message because you are subscribed
to the Google Groups "Clio’s Psyche" group.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Mark as complete
 |
me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
|
Jan 16
|
Re: [cliospsyche] Re: the larger implications of
Trump's shithole incident
Barney,
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.
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
 |
Barney
|
Jan 16
|
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.
Barney
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
 |
binsightfl1
|
Jan 16
|
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,
Burton
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
 |
bdagostino2687
|
Jan 16
|
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 Ken
Fuchsman 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:
Brian
917-628-8253
From: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com [mailto:cliospsyche@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Burton N. Seitler
Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2018 10:47 AM
- show quoted text -
- show quoted text -
Attachments (1)
IPA_2018_1_winter.pdf
Mark as complete
 |
me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
|
Jan 17
|
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?
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
 |
Alan Mohl
|
Jan 17
|
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 Mohl
Sent: Tue, Jan 16, 2018 10:46 am
- show quoted text -
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
 |
me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
|
Jan 17
|
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 Franken 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.
-----------------------------------
|
|
|
|
RE: [cliospsyche] Re:
the larger implications of Trump's shithole incident
15 posts by 5
authors
 |
|
|
add tags
|
Assign
Set as duplicate
No action needed
 |
bdagostino2687
|
Jan 18
|
Burton, Alan, Patrick, and all,
On Burton’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 Psychohistoryarticle. 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://bdagostino.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://bdagostino.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 taken that punitive mothers can also be
implicated in this at the pre-oedipal stage.
Finally, regarding Al Franken, given that
the Republicans control the committees in both houses of Congress, I think it
is safe to assume that any inquiry into Franken’s misdeeds would have been
extremely friendly to his accusers. We saw this movie before during the
Bill Clinton presidency. There is no way Franken 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 Franken out before the Republicans could mount any such
spectacle.
Brian
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 Franken 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, bdagostino2687 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 Ken Fuchsman 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://bdagostino.com/resources/Militarism%2C%20Machismo%2C%20and%20the%20Regulation%20of%20Self-Image.pdf
Brian
917-628-8253
From: 'Alan Mohl' 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
Mohl
From:
cliospsyche@googlegroups.com [mailto:cliospsyche@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Burton 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,
Burton
Click here to Reply
 |
bdagostino2687
|
Jan 18
|
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: bdagostino2687@gmail.com [mailto:bdagostino2687@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)
|
Jan 18
|
Brian,
the way you refer to Franken 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 Franken 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 Franken 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)
|
Jan 18
|
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
 |
bdagostino2687
|
Jan 18
|
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. --Brian
- show quoted text -
- show quoted text -
--
<><><>
To post to this group send to: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
Clio's Psyche is sponsored by The
Psychohistory Forum. For questions visit: cliospsyche.org
Digest is available on request and sends
no more than 1 email a day.
---
You received this message because you
are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clio’s Psyche" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop
receiving emails from it, send an email to cliospsyche+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Mark as complete
 |
Judith Logue
|
Jan 18
|
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,
Judy L
- show quoted text -
- show quoted text -
--
<><><>
To post to this group send to: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
Clio's Psyche is sponsored by The
Psychohistory Forum. For questions visit: cliospsyche.org
Digest is available on request and sends
no more than 1 email a day.
---
You received this message because you
are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clio’s Psyche" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop
receiving emails from it, send an email to cliospsyche+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Mark as complete
 |
me (Patrick
McEvoy-Halston change)
|
Jan 19
|
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.
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
 |
Judith Logue
|
Jan 19
|
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)
|
Jan 20
|
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.
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
 |
Trevor Pederson
|
Jan 20
|
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
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
 |
drwargus
|
Jan 20
|
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
Mark
as complete
 |
drwargus
|
Jan 20
|
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
In a message dated 1/20/2018 7:33:35 AM
US Eastern Standard Time, pmcevoyhalston@gmail.com writes:
- show quoted text -
Attachments (1)
Keep Calm and Carry On -
An interview w...out Donald Trump - Chiron Publications_2.pdf
Mark
as complete
 |
me (Patrick
McEvoy-Halston change)
|
Jan 20
|
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.
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
 |
bdagostino2687
|
Jan 20
|
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.
Brian
917-628-8253
From: drwargus via Clio’s Psyche [mailto:cliospsyche@googlegroups.com]
Sent: Saturday, January 20, 2018 8:16 AM
To: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Re: [cliospsyche]
Consexuality?
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
 |
me (Patrick
McEvoy-Halston change)
|
Jan 20
|
Re: Re: [cliospsyche] Consexuality?
Brian,
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 t9/12hus
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.
-----------------------------
|
|
|
|
Masculinity and the #MenToo movement
2 posts by 1 author
 |
|
|
add tags
|
Assign
Set as duplicate
No action needed
 |
me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
|
Jan 26
|
Masculinity and the #MenToo movement: The Cut
Click here to Reply
 |
me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
|
Jan 26
|
And
also regarding worrisome aspects of contemporary expectations of masculinity,
here's my exploration of "bro"-culture in recent films:
I don't think there is any doubt that
for some time we will see what we saw happening with the Golden Globes this
year concerning the effects of #MeToo. Without doubt, we
are going to see women, who, even if they end up bearing characteristics we
might later use, in a slightly different climate, against them -- as slightly
monstrous, or overbearing, for example -- will pass our current smell test of
"strong, empowered women." Without doubt, these will be the films
that will win awards, and that everyone will show their eager association with.
But how will we know that this means that as a culture, at least we ourselves
have done the deep thinking into the matter of how sexual abuse has been
tolerated and hidden, how victims have been made out to be guilty ones, to
carry, even over much a lifetime, what is properly others' guilt, that for
example John Oliver claimed he couldn't actual hear out of Dustin Hoffman's own
claims of having done so?
Since it largely won't come from how
women are portrayed in film, perhaps what we ought to do is remind ourselves
that the #MeToo movement is as much about how everyone deserves to be treated
as feminism is. Neither of these movements is about enfranchising women and
ignoring any other group, but about making sure that no one alive anymore gets
to be waylaid in life by popularly held assumptions of how it is ostensibly
okay to treat people that has historically really meant cruelly holding back
development and crushing souls.
Thinking along these lines, we might
note whether or not there is in the developing film culture also a trend to
challenge, not how men seem permitted to treat women, but how for example they
seem permitted and encouraged to treat one another... of what is involved in
making a man become the best man he can be. Does all that hate that used to be
allowed onto women and that we used to justify as something they needed to
learn how to handle, or to excuse as just clumsy flirting on men's part that
women were oversensitive to, get re-allocated so that it actually inflates the
validity of the kinds of treatment that actually has shut down many a man? Does
it work to actually enhance male-bro culture, and pass our notice, because it
looks or can pass off as evolved because it's now some man, finally this time
ostensibly suffering the kind of abuse women have traditionally had to carry, a
justified turn of events? And might this re-allocation end up proving
temporary, as a culture that isn't as truly with #MeToo as it is pretending,
builds the scaffolding for an ostensibly justified reason to revenge against the
women that have temporarily resisted their previous uninterrupted and ongoing
efforts to make use of them as props in which to dispel their anxieties and
thereafter dispatch them.
In "Three Billboards," Sam
Rockwell's character, Dixon, becomes a strong patriot to the empowered female
avenger, but it comes through his willingly letting a man whom he could
otherwise destroy, beat him into a pulp. He is not someone who is mentally
broken by the abuse, someone whose intended plans, are actually thwarted thereby
as he proved incapable of maintaining the stoic stance through the extreme
effects of the torture, but someone whose intentions are fulfilled through them
-- a man of will.
In "Moonlight," the young man,
Chiron, who is repeatedly bullied through high school, ends up being
incarcerated for an act of physical violence -- yes. But this violence was the
successful annihilation of the very dominating man who'd been assaulting him --
and who quite frankly, scared us -- and seems a component of his being a pleasing
powerhouse later, making it hard at some level to really believe that the
bullying was actually not in the end helpful to him: it enabled his being able
to make a final triumphant turn against an enduring compromised state of
lasting fretfulness and fear.
"Dunkirk:" young men
demonstrating that enduring conditions of assault has worth, for it meaning
demonstrating that they were willing to endure experiences of apocalyptic
terror and helplessness... and therefore anything at all for a country that has
to have someone willing to feel all their own compromised emotional states, the
intolerable anxieties of suspected catastrophic attack that had come to haunt
them. Counting oneself amongst the abused for awhile has worth, for the country
will laud you for it -- you'll experience the delight of a thousand trumpets,
as a country in chorus cheers you unexpectedly as heroes and chases away any
shame you might have been feeling -- and so conversely denying them an
assemblage of abused young men is bad, for it means they'll hate you for
requiring it to double-back onto them.
"Get Out," a film where
conspicuously the main character, Chris Washington, does NOT become the
emasculated attendee that represented the fate of the first abductee, but one
who after torture, ably dispatches them all, dispatches his crazy user
girlfriend, and is back amongst the one person he can count on, his
"bro"-friend Rod.
"Logan," a man deteriorated in
terms of pain, but never really someone who has to wear the humiliation of
being reduced from superhero to limo driver -- it's all a chuckle, as it's
means towards an end -- and remains throughout a counter to the really
impossible-to-consider fate: being rendered akin to the albino
"truffle-digger," who not only is the one who dusts and cooks, and
insistently brings up -- that is, nags about -- household concerns the other is
ignoring, but who turns turncoat quickly once childhood tortures become applied
to him.
"Last Jedi": the pretentious
and preening, the full-of-themselves, Finn, newly joined in a pantheon of
heroes, who's suspect for perhaps getting off on his new status rather than
keeping faith with his common-sort roots, Bo, the cocky guy who thinks his
skill means everyone should bend to him, and that because he's special, he can bend
rules everyone else has to abide, Hux, the evil young commander who seems to
enjoy too much his being in the spotlight, and who doesn't understand that he's
just a mere vehicle that a greater power is using, get deflated back into
"proper" measure through instances of humiliation/ridicule and
torture we are encouraged to take humour in. They ostensibly needed to be taken
down a few pegs; it'll be good for them. Is this really a #MeToo film because
women in the film gain greater space? Are we sure we should let it pass as
bearing our new more evolved sensibilities, and not actually as hosting, with
its validating brutally taking down anyone who can be set up as someone whose
previous injuries are long past worth considering and who's now just verging on
being a pretentious ass, a Trojan Horse of retrograde sympathies?
Some would argue that the very
conditions that have served to destroy women -- environments of harassment and
abuse -- logically should be understood as doing no less to men. And if films
really are no longer for the kind of attitudes that have been applied to women,
if we're seeing reform in the portrayal of women built out of deep
consideration of the attitudes that previously sustained them, we should be
seeing in films an acknowledgement that shaming and humiliation turns men into
the kinds of reduced subjects that can make them prey to yet further assaults:
that in every way, it's all kinds of bad.
We should not in films find our being
drawn away from their fates, find ourselves through being able to identity with
some other stronger character in the film successfully defending against what
they were rendered into, so even as we ostensibly are only empathizing with and
regretting their position they actually function in carrying a dreaded fate we
actually enjoy seeing ourselves distinguished from.
We should register the assaults and
humiliations the male characters have to endure as evidence as to why we need a
therapeutic and caring climate nurtured for them as well. Men who are warm with
one another, as heroes: micro-effects of goodwill, building macro-change. Men
as those who are willing to do the REALLY unpopular thing, the thing that might
make them truly loathed -- acts which are genuinely heroic but bear no signs of
traditional bravado, like acknowledging that abuse hasn't tested and bettered
you but made you someone who's actually come to enjoy pleasing his predators (a
fate that often happens), and that it didn't come out of war, or some venture
that leaves your initial status as a man ostensibly incontestable, but
elsewhere, maybe some place humiliatingly domestic, making you actually akin to
the sad dish-washing albino gorilla in "War for the Planet of the
Apes," who, unlike his compatriot in crime, the gargantuan gorilla Red
Donkey, is allowed no redemption at the end through "masculine"
display of awesome strength and explosive violence.
Men shown breaking ranks in terms of
traditional expectations of how men are supposed to comport themselves that
leaves them unbearably blatantly exposing our own need for love, our own
vulnerability, but not allowed to be categorized for dismissal as pretentious,
as not-"I," but rather redeemed, so we are forced, as it is enabled
to stand out in broad daylight so we can't turn away, to endure full memory of
what had once happened to us too -- a first step towards stepping out from
being an advocate for the oppressor, for we're with "him," to avoid
our own shame, and if we're not destroyed in forced remembrance of it, we'll
have to face up to that fact.
(Note: #MeToo can be subverted, and
actually be used to further denigrate the women whose lives are now being
somewhat recovered. I'll get to that sometime in another post, as I think the
means towards it are already manifesting through certain links the are being
made, in popular culture, in film, that'll work to make them seem egotistical
-- as those who may know hurts but who don't ostensibly don't know what real
pain is -- and pretentious -- those who think society shares their victory when
they're earning the same number of millions their male compatriots do -- and
ungrateful: Paglia's, "the world women enjoy was built out of the
unregistered and unadministered, massive physical sacrifices of working class
men." As a hint, it involves all those stories we're now hearing of women
from war-afflicted regions risking life and limb for projects they'll never see
a cent from, and, à la "Downsizing," the downtrodden male's -- who
might himself know himself to have been a predator, and who's now ever-worried
his own time might be up -- urgent eager affiliation with them.)
----------------------
|
|
|
|
BRIAN
4 posts by 3 authors
 |
|
|
add tags
|
Assign
Set as duplicate
No action needed
 |
arniedr
|
Jan 25
|
Arnold Richards
Click here to Reply
 |
me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
|
Jan 25
|
By
successfully making psychohistory more sciencey, are we distracting ourselves
from other more fundamental problems? Brian's article does not explore the
possibility that the key reason men feel troubled by their feeling feminine
isn't because it's a highly suspect state to find oneself in in a macho
culture, but because what "feeling feminine" really is is having
experienced enveloping, incestuous, lengthy contact with isolated and
love-denied mothers: it's feeling a victim of abuse by one's mother, a much
bigger concern that if society might seem it might shun you because you spent
quite a bit of time around your possibly very decent mother, and so felt a bit
of a traitor (poor self-reference) to the ideal. It's rather a worse thing to
feel an object of incestuous use than to feel like you don't properly fit a
preferred social standard, which one would think might not even amount to much
at all if you didn't have "authoritarian" parents (not yet discussed at
that point in the article) but actually rather splendid ones who gave you
plenty of support and love within your own particular "pre-odipal
dynamics," and, to me, much more convincingly associated with macro things
that involve either denying millions the resources they need to survive or
squashing an equally countless number to death. (For those who read the
article, do you experience the same sense I had that "militarism" at
first looked like it would be built entirely out of boys feeling compromised
owing to society's expectations of macho, a temporary escape from the
double-bind through loud declarative displays of pure macho, to be repeated
over and over again, but then that it seemed as if it required the additional
component of "authoritarian parenting" to seal the deal? Once
"authoritarian parenting" gets discussed, one dips back into the
article and wonders how it all works if the mother and father involved in
socializing the children in "proper" gender dynamics weren't
authoritarian ogres but actually sublimely wonderful and kind people, simply
doing as society has indoctrinated them into... which seemed nevertheless
sufficient to cause huge macro disorders like war.) I remember Masterson saying
that the science was in regarding the importance of the mother in the formation
of the personality disorders, but considered that the lack of impact of this
fact on other researchers "may be [because they are] under the sway of the
almost universal tendency to hold on to the positive image of the 'mother.'"
Here he echoes deMause's complaint against Clio, by the by.
I
do think that some readers might be in for a surprise when they hear Brian
account that militarism cannot be reduced to individual psychology
("Militarism only exists in relation to states and large-scale
political-economic processes, and cannot be reduced to the psychology of
individuals and their psychobiographies in families and small groups"),
for it appears the kind of statement that lends weight to the preferred
conception of societies being a wholly different beast from individuals -- and
that they do all the important "causing" -- only to find that what he
actually does mean for us to understand IS ACTUALLY THAT individual psychology
determines such grand and lofty things like domestic and foreign policy goals;
determines the macro. So militarism not being reduced to individual psychology,
doesn't mean aggregate childrearing -- individual psychology -- doesn't mostly
determine whether or not your nation functions as a great angry he-man beast,
as it pounds other smaller countries to smithereens. And whatever this means,
and however that works, somehow "psychology of individuals and their
psychobiographies in families and small groups" seems to stand a bit
taller after the article, and the "states and large-scale
political-economic processes," a bit more pulled back; less stately and
"serious."
Helping
make this conception bear fruit, might actually be of more use to psychohistory
(and to society... and to people) than if Brian succeeds in
making the discipline function more as a science. It might indeed help our
science: Does this mean that
psychohistory reduces all of its subject matter to “psychological motives?”
Yes. Only a psyche can have a motive, a group cannot, a factory cannot, a gun
cannot. Is psychohistory, then, “history reduced to merely personal motives?”
Yes again. All motives are personal, though the “merely” is a denial of their
importance. And the charge of “reductionism,” often leveled against
psychohistory, is simply misplaced, since it is not a failing but a scientific
goal to reduce seemingly complex and disparate processes to simpler and more
basic forces and principles. MI other sciences long ago learned that the
universe of available “facts” is near infinite; only historians still believe
they can learn something just by conti-nuing to pile up more and more narrative
“facts.”
Anyway,
that's my go. Anyone else?
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
 |
bdagostino2687
|
Jan 25
|
RE: [cliospsyche] Re: BRIAN
Arnie, thanks very much for posting my article on
International Psychoanalysis.
Patrick, I have never purported to reduce
psychohistory to science (in the sense of measurement, quantitative data, and
statistical hypothesis testing). Like Freud, I believe it is potentially a
science, but not ONLY a science. I am not challenging you and other
humanists to abandon the humanities and become scientists; psychohistory has
traditionally been and always will be part of the humanities. It is
nothing if not an interdisciplinary enterprise, and that includes neuroscience,
Perceptual Control Theory, Terror Management Theory, and much more.
Psychohistory cannot be reduced to any one of these approaches, or to any
humanistic approach, given its interdisciplinary (or transdisciplinary?)
character. I adopted perceptual control theory in this article and
connected psychoanalytic ideas to a theory of how the brain may be organized,
but that doesn’t preclude humanistic approaches, and in fact I also
appropriated Nancy Chodorow’s The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis
and the Sociology of Gender, which comes out of the humanistic tradition.
Why can’t we walk and chew gum? Why can’t things be “both/and”
rather than “either/or”?
I should not have to, and will not, apologize for designing
survey research, collecting data, and doing a statistical analysis, especially
in an academic discussion group. Lloyd deMause liked to say that
psychohistory is a science, but he never did any of these things or any other
kind of systematic, empirical research and limited himself to arm chair
speculation, which he equated, by fiat, with “science.” You also seem to
be more comfortable with speculation than with reasoning about data. So
be it. This group and the field of psychohistory is big enough for all of
us! You raise some interesting and important substantive issues that I
don’t have time to respond to right now because I’m juggling a lot of other
balls. But thanks for taking the time to respond, and I plan to comment
further when my time permits.
On the question of whether and in what ways
psychohistory can be considered a science, I also refer members of this
group to a pair of articles in Psychohistory Newsthat distilled some of
our previous conversations on this listserv: “How Much Does Child Rearing
Really Impact History?” (Spring 2015) and “Is Psychohistory a Science?” (Winter
2015); these and other back-issues of the newsletter can be downloaded from: http://www.psychohistory.us/archive.php
Brian
917-628-8253
From: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com [mailto:cliospsyche@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Patrick
McEvoy-Halston
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2018 1:19 PM
To: Clio’s Psyche <cliospsyche@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [cliospsyche] Re: BRIAN
- show quoted text -
--
<><><>
To post to this group send to: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
Clio's Psyche is sponsored by The Psychohistory Forum.
For questions visit: cliospsyche.org
Digest is available on request and sends no more than
1 email a day.
---
You received this message because you are subscribed
to the Google Groups "Clio’s Psyche" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving
emails from it, send an email to cliospsyche+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Mark as complete
 |
me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
|
Jan 26
|
Re: [cliospsyche] Re: BRIAN
"You also seem to be more comfortable with
speculation than with reasoning about data."
This is no doubt sincerely meant, but speaking of
erroneously reinforcing norms of masculinity, socially reinforced fit
self-perception, doesn't this fit type?
What
I thought I was doing was pointing out that if what we are studying is the
effects of our mothers upon us, we can't just produce scientific studies and
presume we'll have an audience that will naturally cowtow to whatever the
results so long as they're valid. We need to "speculate" as to
whether most of our audience is still lorded over by their predatory terrifying
maternal alters, and if this seems likely, work, perhaps through attention to
our rhetoric, to nevertheless speak to the courage in a person to resist Her
and not find some way to disown the findings if one sensed she wasn't liking
the direction the results of studies would seem to portend.
The
angry maternal alter, by the way, would have little trouble with your
experiments, for it's patriarchal culture and authoritarianism (which in common
parlance, common understanding, is currently safely identified with the
patriarchal father, with patriarchy, rather the pre-oedipal mother, no matter
how much you point out that it could be either mom or dad who was the
authoritarian -- an allowance which actually grants nothing) that gets
targeted. Changing child-rearing norms, your advice, scares no one, because it
makes people seem simply under tutelage of what they were taught. If it was
phrased differently, like saying, we need to provide more social support for
mothers because, one, they deserve it, and two, because it will mean they are
much less likely to end up changing the brain structures of their boys so they
carry, not "maternal introjects," but Terrifying Mother altars within
them, which will later drive them to want to war against "guilty"
vulnerable children in other countries, then we'd of had to contend with some
part of ourselves informing us that, no matter the proof of it, "you
accept this study and you'll be rejected of my love forever." My sense is
that would quail acceptance of the study, with people ostensibly finding all
sorts of flaws built in to the study which show it up as fraudulent, even if
they're aren't any, or they're minor.
We
have to make sure we have the superior scientists we need, before we dig into
data, is my sense. (We must test this.) You don't just offer scientific proof
to medieval magicians and alchemists; you create the scientists first. Try
re-writing this, yes, difficult article in actually a more substantially less
of a people-pleasing way -- the suggestion that we need to learn to be more
comfortable with androgyny, is another of these that goes down so easy -- and
we might have gotten to whether we've got a larger fight on our hands than
securing proof.
Comments
Post a Comment