Clio's Psyche, after conference, #1

me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)

Jun 3

Lovely meeting you all. Very rewarding time for me. Cheers.

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Denis O'Keefe

Jun 4

Patrick,

It was great to meet in person and hopefully you can join us again soon.

Denis

On Sun, Jun 3, 2018 at 9:02 PM, Patrick McEvoy-Halston <pmcevoyhalston@gmail.com> wrote:

Lovely meeting you all. Very rewarding time for me. Cheers.

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binsightfl1

Jun 4

Hi Patrick,

I too enjoyed meeting, speaking with,

and hearing you in person. Hope to

continue the conversation.

Warm Regards,

Burton

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arniedr

Jun 4

JASPER

VOL 2 WHEN?

Arnold Richards

arnoldrichards.net

internationalpsychoanalysis.net

ipbooks.net

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bdagostino2687

Jun 4

Patrick,

I appreciated your contributions to the discussions. Hopefully these dialogs helped you formulate your ideas and are giving you grist for a paper to present next year. Glad we finally got to connect in person.

Brian

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binsightfl1

Jun 4

Busy working on it.

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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)

Jun 5

Lovely meeting you and your family. Kudos to the all the help they provided; they made for intriguing guardians of the primal gateway: with presence too! You referred to deMause in your presentation and a bit from "Origins of War" came to mind. To deMause, concerning Hitler's first order of business, not immigrant expulsion, not splitting, but fusing with the nation:

Jews were not made the target of violence, since when Goebbels called for a nationwide boycott of Jewish shops he had to call it off after a few days because “it had failed to arouse popular enthusiasm." The initial central task of the Nazis was not persecuting Jews; it was creating a powerful Killer Mutterland, a Volk that made Germans feel they were fused with the Killer Mother alters in their heads. This fused state was termedGleichschaltung, a “total national unity.”

Important, I think, because if to spot a Hitler we are looking for persecution and targeting, for splitting, only/primarily, Ann Coulter would suggest he can't be that, that this is mostly a liberal's forced narrative, because in her opinion he's been way soft/slow on this. If however we're on the lookout for something else... like making one's nation first!, we might find that there are Hitlers that will eventually appear, even in nations where all we're seeing now is increased nationalism. In Canada, for instance, anti-immigration is not yet that strong, and deemed by some impossible, but is polling more for an "ordered" culture rather than an "open" one. DeMause would argue that this all you need to know: a Hitler of a kind will emerge here, and follow the sequence. (In the article I refer to, note how the study explains that non-white Cdn cultures are polling, too, more for "ordered" than for "open.")

Speaking of forced narratives, I heard repeatedly at the conference that Trump has conned the working class (I appreciate your explaining that he is not only a working class phenomena), because there is no way he's doing anything for them. Yet if the last few decades of economic hardship owes to something Lloyd also discusses, of masochism, that pulls leaders, that forces them, into depriving people who need to be deprived to maintain any sense of self-equilibrium, and if this period is over as we switch into another phase, Trump could prove akin to Hitler (the historian Gotz Aly explains how Hitler served as a genuine provider to his Volk, in "Hitler's Beneficiaries") and actually function as a good provider, as the mass's DESIRE for masochistic treatment is over. Again, if Lloyd is right, and liberals continue to maintain Trump as someone who will betray those he says he speaks for, they will be shown up and seem even less worth listening to. Liberals may be hammering home at something they cannot reconsider because there is a particular set-up they require of who Trump is (exploiter, not -- as Lloyd would argue -- slave), who the "people" are (fundamentally good, but näive), what their own relationship to "the people" are (i.e., protectors, liberators, not zookeepers, suspicious of their "flock"), so they don't have to consider that at some level they are themselves so close to becoming people who fear apocalyptic attack/abandonment for their life acquisitions, their ongoing growth/self-realization, that much of their daily activity might be about shoring up defensive "spells" so to keep themselves seeming mostly as serving and deferential to duty/public cause... the old script of public servant.

Depressions are economic anorexias, where people starve themselves to avoid being eaten up by the Dragon Mother, the maternal vulture of infancy. The nation begins to look for a Phallic Leader with whom they can merge and regain their failed potency and who can protect them against their growing delusional fears of a persecutory mommy. (Emotional Life of Nations)

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bdagostino2687

Jun 5

If mass psychology were sufficient to explain Trump’s or Hitler’s hold on power, then neither of them would require an elaborate propaganda machine or an institutional base of support.. You don’t need to pump the mass public full of lies if they spontaneously support an authoritarian leader. In the case of Trump, he would not need (1) the Fox News/Sinclair/Breitbart propaganda machine and (2) a Republican party that is essentially now a fascist party, if he enjoyed the spontaneous support of a majority of Americans. In fact, he lost the popular vote and is less popular now than when he was elected.

I believe there may be some truth in what Patrick says, and that it would help explain the enduring support that Trump has with some of his hard core supporters, for whom the propaganda machine just reinforces what they would believe anyway. However, this is not the case for even some who voted for Trump in 2016 and are having buyer’s remorse, and completely ignores the fact that the majority of voters opposed Trump and still do. I believe that what Patrick is saying may be valid for a segment of the electorate, but not for the majority. In the case of Hitler, he had not only the support of a fanatical minority, but more importantly of the army, the industrialists, and the landowners. We have no opinion polls from Nazi Germany, and considering that the majority of the German electorate voted against Hitler when the last free elections were held in 1932, and he maintained power thereafter with the help of both a propaganda machine and a terror apparatus, there is no reason to believe that Hitler ever enjoyed majority political support. –Brian

From: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com [mailto:cliospsyche@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Patrick McEvoy-Halston
Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2018 8:00 AM
To: Clio’s Psyche
Subject: Re: [cliospsyche] Conference

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Denis O'Keefe

Jun 5

Patrick,

I’ll send along your kudos to Christine and Aiden.

Brian and I have been talking for some time now about a research program to better provide empirical footing for the psychogenic model, which relies on phenomenology, case studies and anecdotal clinical encounters. All of which are equally important, in my mind, in answering ‘how do we know what we know?’ My study was really ‘low hanging fruit’, to borrow Brian’s term, in this regard and an extension of previous research seeking to integrate the contextual, psychological, ideological and interpersonal factors that seem to fuel or thwart xenophobic tendencies in the US. The topic of immigration is highly politically salient since the events of 9/11 and given that the research demonstrates that American beliefs about immigrants, especially those who are anti-immigrant, do not match reality (indicating some level of projection) and immigrant threat narratives have been used to solidify political power and policies that have created a severe humanitarian crisis in detention centers and treatment of refugees, provides for a good subject to test the basic premise of the psychogenic model. That being, very simply stated, systems of belief (group fantasies) and the actions they motivate service basic defensive needs against childhood conflicts. Milburn’s research on affect displacement theory provides good evidence for this possible reality. Particularly split off rage in the development of authoritarianism. Terror Management Theory as a field has produced many hundreds, possibly in the thousands (who can keep up?) of empirical studies demonstrating the use of world view defense or belief systems to defend against existential fears. My research was simply testing whether having experienced childhood adversity in the forms of physical and sexual abuse and punitive parenting predicts authoritarianism and social dominance tendencies which then predicts anti-immigrant sentiment. The findings support both psychogenic and affect displacement hypothesis.

Experience in psychotherapy was added to the model to see if it moderated or provided some level of mitigation in the relationship between childhood adversity and stated personality factors. These findings suggested that it does, but the effect is small. If I was to do this again, I would include more pre-oedipal factors such as attachment, reflective functioning/mentalization and epistemic trust, among others as potential moderators, although staying away from mother bashing, as Lloyd was often easily misunderstood (IMO) to be doing. These factors are so much more difficult to measure and why my research is low hanging fruit.

I use Lloyd’s paper on the Childhood Origins of the Holocaust in my Psychohistory I class to demonstrate the application of his psychogenic model to a historical subject. The level of abuse and neglect suffered by the Nazi cohort that he writes about is far beyond what typical Americans experience today. If we take his model seriously, there isn’t the psychosocial context for another Hitler to rise. Only wannabes, which Trump is.

Denis

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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)

Jun 6

This is a fair comment. I have a couple of replies. One, there is context for a situation to occur where to us it FEELS exactly like Hitler's rise, even if it doesn't reach that level. Pinker, in one of his better bits, explores in both of his most recent two books why being alarmist about world violence is irrational, in a sense, because it just keeps on decreasing, but rational, in a different sense, because to those whose sensibilities have evolved a spike in violence nevertheless can be experienced as apocalyptic, as it is a marked increase from what they've ever known. (I of course believe -- after fusing with the nation -- that the level of violence is about to spike to an astronomical level, and that Pinker is at work discrediting the very people who'll put the best resources into keeping it as reduced as possible.)

Second, Lloyd has always pushed too hard on how far we've evolved. He insisted that evidence showed that the generation after the ww2 gen in Germany had actually done what was required for their childrearing to evolve to such an extent, that another Hitler was impossible. I always thought this was implausible, and to a certain extent, here, was simply speaking to a crowd who want to crown themselves (he always praises his own "advanced psychoclass" children as well, yet, if so advanced, why is there nowhere from them any of their own promotion of their father's work/theories? Their silence in this regard makes their father seem like a quack to get distance from; it's harsh, and psychologically ungenerous to today's generation... to me, not what an advanced psychoclass member would do: we would have heard from them, somewhere, as their father was getting targeted, if they came out as advertised. He got the 1960s Growth Phase lift; they go the Manic Phase... and it's showing). Not him at his best. I personally don't think it has evolved all that sufficiently. Even the current research into authoritarian parenting worries me, for I sense even amongst the researchers some dissociation from all that harms children within the family context. Indeed, we're even hearing how spanking can be a sign of a parent's love... it's what saved black children during the times of slavery, don't you know! Lloyd's writing, not about the Nazi cohort but the German aggregate, is about medieval instruments and constant sexual abuse... so it's ready-made to be dismissed as belonging to the medieval cauldron of the yesteryear. I personally suspect that might be smart use of deMause to defuse his ability to keep us woke to how another Hitler, not a wannabee Hitler, is arising, in multiple places, around the world right now. The number of years of ongoing social progress has stretched several decades now. Lloyd, if I remember correctly, argued that the reason ww1 was so colossal in terms of mass sacrifice, owed not only to level of childrearing but the number of decades of ongoing progress that preceded it. I think we might find we've found ways to hide the real extent of child abuse that has been occurring, that the #MeToo movement has not yet happened for the full extent of accepted child abuse in society (indeed, we collectively prevented it from breaching into pedophilia, where it was beginning to enter... and thus sexually abused children were further silenced), and the reason we've done this is because we sense that very soon, in fact, actually already beginning, right now, that we can play out the child abuse we experienced early in life onto the social stage and so don't need to reckon with it in a harder, more confrontational and honest sense, that would pit us against our inner parental (read: maternal) alters, pit us directly against mom, that threaten total abandonment of us, total lack of love for us, if we show we recognize their sadistic intentions towards us. The cost of this is that we will not evolve into healthier individuals, but become the "good sons and daughters" who won't stand in the way of the "bad sons and daughters" being transmogrified into threats to our civilization, and punished for it.

I suppose I have a third response. Your response makes Trump seem... not so great a concern. To me this gives him room he cannot be allowed to be given. It also makes the people who say he's a Hitler seem alarmist, not so much to be listened to (it also makes Clio seem not crazy, for saying Trump voters shouldn't be maligned, and for including Trump student voters amongst its published essays... how moderate and inclusive!). If we are entering a Hitlerian era, which I think we are, the context will become so mad that only the insane will be in control of themselves. For them, the outside will nicely fit their inside, as Lloyd says. Many people who currently argue that Trump isn't as bad and dangerous as his opponents claim, are I think explaining their viewpoint in a way which seems moderate now. How they will be explaining him 2, 4, 8, perhaps 12 years from now, as he remains in power, would seem outrageously horrible, if expressed now, but will be the moderate position subsequently. They'll never not know themselves as fully reasonable.

I think the universities will be purged and that there will be camps, and that when this happens, for the huge majority, it will be excused as regrettable but absolutely necessary for our civilization not to expire. I think, very soon, it will difficult for those who identify as moderates not to see what are in truth our most psychological advanced citizens, as not having moved into some land of dire hysterical crazy. People to be herded up.

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Denis O'Keefe

Jun 6

Patrick,

I cannot address all your thoughts with my limited time. Just a few things.

I don't mean to minimize the potential dangers and destructiveness already underway compliments of the Trump administration and the neo-liberal and alt-right backlash against Obama. Nor the human potential for destructiveness in groups given certain contextual stressors.... one of which you note... massive social change i.e. anomie or deMausian (Masterson) growth panic. These massive changes in American society including, but not limited to a persistent war on terror, demographic shifts, economic hardship and a changed economy, gender and racial equality, technological advances, etc. have certainly played a role in the creation of the regressive Tea Party politics which made the Trump Presidency possible. Social psyche research is indicating that context does prime different aspects of the self which can have strikingly different motivations, level of defense mechanisms employed and perceptions paving the way for non-sociopaths to fully engage in sociopathic behavior/movements. This could be common (but arguably more destructive) forms of structural violence such as our health care system leaving hundreds of thousands of people dying of treatable illness every year or more overt like genocide as you seem to be fearing. I think we must stay vigilant to the reality of what is happening as well as potentialities. The recent rise of authoritarianism around the globe, even in Europe has certainly been alarming and may also be partly explained by rapid social change. The problem with focusing too much on potentialities is that it can easily become a Rorschach of sorts. My conservative friends (I live in upstate NY so I have quite a few) railed against fascist Obama. Trump gets elected and my liberal friends are railing against a fascist Trump. There are fundamental differences in the reality of both their actions. Quantitatively or objectively, Trump wins every race toward fascism I could imagine, but the question of perception of potentialities too often seems to tell more about the personal than the literal reality. I am much more cautious than you in my projections about the future, although I certainly admit what you suggest is possible. I just don't find it as likely as less severe outcomes. That said, anyone who knows me, especially my social work students, know that I will not suffer guilt through silent collusion with social injustices and agree with your fears of complacency. You've said so much more I wish I could dialogue with you about. At the moment, I have to prepare for my next appointment. I do hope we can keep up the conversation.

Denis

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drwargus

Jun 6

Group,

On the lighter side, this sports article from Politico suggests that the NBA finals are a metaphor for the polarization in America. The difference between the Golden State Warriors (West Coast modernism) and the Cleveland Cavaliers (Rust Best Traditionalism). Both teams represent different parts of America. Interesting stuff, but I especially liked the conclusion and how it relates to this discussion about child rearing stages. "...to understand the value system that motivates our neighbors is the first step toward understanding the actions they take." Lloyd's stages are important because they help to determine what people value, and those values determine behavior. The stage of child rearing does not by itself determine peoples' behavior, but it effects what people value and their perceived needs (Maslow).

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/06/05/2018-nba-finals-how-lebron-james-and-stephen-curry-explain-politics-218595

Bill

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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)

Jun 6

Clever article. Has me thinking. To what extent is "players agreeing to let Lebron absolutely run things as other players experienced enough [which should read, broken enough] to know their role, stay out of the King’s way," a "value system"? One reads "childrearing stages" as differing levels of incurred parental abuse, and it's tough to work, from there, to anything like the neutral sounding term, "value system." "Your" "value system," built out of most of you being bullied by your parents, means you support Great Leaders, because you read them as the abusive parents whose love you try to claim by being "accomodating" to them. The Golden State' "value system," built out of greater support and genuine love in childhood, means a whole team feeling disappointment if each player didn't feel as valuable and important as any other. "Value systems," the sociological term, to me, privileges the idea that we have something to learn from one another. We don't. This is about knowing the opposition so we're less apt to be eaten as they accrue strength. A guy doing it for the forgotten fan vs. corporate oligarchy, indeed... right there, is someone in our opposition.

Thanks for the post. I valued the read.

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bdagostino2687

Jun 8

agency vs. fatalism

Patrick, you are talking as though you are a spectator of history and not a participant. No one can predict what will happen in public affairs because that is the total outcome of decisions that innumerable people make, including all of us on this list. No one knows what these decisions are going to be, so let´s dispense with the crystal balls. We cannot afford to be fatalistic about Trump or anything else. Too much is at stake. We need all hands on deck. If someone feels fatalistic and does not believe they have effective agency, they need to examine where these feelings originate and not conflate their childhood circumstances with the present state of the world. Millions of people in the world are stuck in group fantasies. It is our task as psychohistorians to hold these fantasies up to the light of consciousness, not to succumb to them.

Not everyone needs to be a political activist, but if you have the time or money and are feeling powerless, it might help to take some action, however small, to change the world. That will remind you that you are an agent and bear some responsibility for the state of the world. We are all in this together, but every person´s contribution matters. The most powerful contributions are the ones that come out of our own individuation. My personal task is to write peer reviewed articles and another book. That work puts my own unique gifts and passions to work helping to change the world. Because of this mission, I have a limited amount of time to spend on this list and only participate sporadically. I´m sure everyone on this list has their own unique contribution to make to our common project of creating a more humane, just, and sustainable world.

Brian

On 6/6/2018 9:13 AM, Patrick McEvoy-Halston wrote:

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Judith Logue

Jun 8

agency vs. fatalism

Brian, this is a most inspiring message - and reinforces and validates how we all can (and must, I wish) use our individual strengths and talents to make the world a kinder, more mature and better place.

You start my day on the right foot!👠

Judy

Judith Logue, PhD

Port St. Lucie, FL 34987

www.judithlogue.com

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bdagostino2687

Jun 8

Re: [cliospsyche] agency vs. fatalism

Thanks, Judy. :-)

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mfbrttn

Jun 8

Re: [cliospsyche] agency vs. fatalism

Brian, I second Judy: I found this very inspiring and encouraging. Thanks so much!

I'll be in New York later today (Friday). Are you free early this afternoon?

Michael Britton

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Judith Logue

Jun 8

Re: [cliospsyche] agency vs. fatalism

🌹👍🌹

Judy

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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)

Jun 8

Re: agency vs. fatalism

Not fatalistic. Just aware. It's good when you reach the young that you not blow smoke. You instead say, my science of psychohistory predicts that there will be no escape for about ten years, and then, suddenly, when the amount of wasted lives and sacrifices seems about right, about enough... when mommy's angry appetite is gauged, full, there will be another very lengthy period of huge allowance again. Make sure you keep intact to enjoy that. I think they'll find that more encouraging than to be told that hope exists now, that there is avenue and reception for their "effective agency," and then come to find, again and again and again, that it doesn't. This will lead to a much more rather gruesome fatalism, I think. By the by, Ontario just elected themselves their own Trump... I sense a lot of youth near about to strangle the adults who told them there was... hope.

That's the great thing about deMause. He informs you so that your agency doesn't go wasted... you don't have to play the Freud who almost lost his daughter; you know the lost cause. He also informs you that you don't have to adulterate/administrate everything you write/think so that it's moderate enough for today's preferences, which is a good thing, for most of today's is about keeping everyone's very precarious mental equilibrium intact, so it sparks only of tiny full truths. Another age ahead is not so far enough distant that it can't be imagined scooping down to already collect and recover the ingredients one is providing which mesh better later. In this time, the role is to be the Howard Hawks and the Hitchcocks who provide enough of what the 30s wanted that they succeeded then, but that had substantial contents that actually only a subsequent era really could chow down on. This is what I advise and am doing. I worry about flight to action... I think that this is what the Democrats did with the Russian scandal: they went into vigilant action rather than reflected.

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bdagostino2687

Jun 8

Re: [cliospsyche] Re: agency vs. fatalism

Patrick, you cannot have it both ways. If you want to invoke the predictive power of science, then you have no business shitting all over the spirit and methods of science. Unfortunately, Lloyd deMause set a bad precedent in this regard, and it behooves us to confront this contradictory legacy and decide once and for all whether we really believe in science or not. If we believe in science then we need to test our theories against evidence and discard them when they don´t measure up. We also need to take care that our theories are not self contradictory. Lloyd did neither of these things and therefore I have no use for his pretensions to be practicing science. Some of his ideas are worth testing, as Denis did with his study of child abuse and anti immigrant sentiment. To my knowledge, this is only the second effort to ever test any of Lloyd´s theories, not an impressive track record for the IPA if we really imagine that we are practicing science. The first effort to test one of Lloyd´s theories was a systematic content analysis of media images that preceded the 1990 Gulf War, undertaken by Ted Goertzel and published in 1993 in the peer reviewed journal Political Psychology. See Is Psychohistory a Science, Psychohistory News, Spring 2015 http://www.psychohistory.us/archive.php

It also needs to be said that not every science is predictive, a fact that chaos theory and quantum mechanics make abundantly clear. Physics cannot predict individual events at the quantum level. Meteorology is only predictive on short time scales. Biology and geology are not predictive with respect to the history of life on Earth, which is subject to innumerable random shocks such as the asteroid that apparently wiped out the dinosaurs. I would argue that psychohistory is also not a predictive science because complex systems are inherently chaotic and there is no more complex system than the real time interaction of some 200 political systems, representing 7.6 billion people, each of which is a complex and unpredictable psycho-physical system.

This brings us to the central contradiction of Lloyd´s thought. On the one hand, he recognized that national psyches are not monolithic, but in fact consist of psychoclasses in conflict. On the other hand, he frequently contradicted this truth by talking about national group fantasies. It was this latter kind of thinking that led him to imagine that he could predict the outbreak of wars. As I mentioned above, Goertzel showed that one such claim, that the supposed national group fantasy preceding the 1990 Gulf War provided a basis for predicting the war, proved to be incorrect. If you still believe this theory and claim to also believe in science, then I encourage you to read Goertzl´s article and engage in a scientific debate with him on this list, since he is a member as far as I know. By scientific debate, I mean a discussion of deMause´s and Goertzel´s claims with respect to the data and methodology at issue. If you have no interest in doing this or learning how to do it, then I respectfully recommend that you stop using the word science to legitimize your deMausian version of psychohistory.

Brian

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drwargus

Jun 8

Re: [cliospsyche] Re: agency vs. fatalism

Brian et al

It is always interesting to try to predict the future. We have our own world views and have some sense of what is going to happen. And while I agree that if we are truly scientists, we should be able to make some predictions, when a science is in its infancy, I would suggest it is more observational. All academic departments started out as ideas that needed nurturing. For example, leading economic indicators are such an it an intrinsic part of our financial lives it is hard to imagine that 100 years ago none of them existed. There was no gross national product or unemployment rate. Economics departments did not exist but were soon to branch off in many schools from the political theory departments. Naturalists had to make observations about the environment before ecology could become a science. Many observations needed to be made before the theory of ecosystems could have any predictive power. And we must not forget that the pioneers in any field are always highly criticized for the irrelevance of their ideas and the unpredictability or lack of usefulness of their ideas.

So we have Lloyd‘s idea of different psychoclasses. I think that is a profound idea. He tried to predict too many things and made some mistakes. But people like Cambridge Analytica used similar logic and developed algorithms that are highly predictive. Those algorithms can predict what type of ads trigger people and alter elections. The science isn’t perfect, but after about 50 Facebook likes and dislikes, they know more about what motivates each one of us more than we do! Cambridge analytica knows an awful lot about the emotional life of elections and what type of group fantasies are out there.

Bill Argus

Sent from my iPhone

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bdagostino2687

Jun 8

Re: [cliospsyche] Re: agency vs. fatalism

The predictive power of Cambridge Analytica's models is based on MASSIVE, MASSIVE amounts of data, and computer modeling methods, not on Lloyd's theories as far as I know. Some prediction in experimental psychology is possible, because you can largely control the information to which people are exposed, such as Cambridge Analytica did with Facebook. However, predicting complex historical events like wars is IN PRINCIPLE a fool's errand because there are so many variables that no one can control. Bill, I don't think you are coming to grips with what I said about chaos theory and quantum mechanics. You seem to be operating with a classical Newtonian/Einsteinian paradigm of linear, predictive science that is no longer tenable. --Brian

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binsightfl1

Jun 8

Re: [cliospsyche] Re: agency vs. fatalism

Hi,

My goals are much more modest. Essentially they are:

do what you can do. Don't do what you cannot do (by

definition, you can't). The Talmud says, if you save one

person, you have saved the world. Modest, but, I hope,

meaningful.

Burton

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drwargus

Jun 8

Re: [cliospsyche] Re: agency vs. fatalism

Brian.

We are largely on the same page. I am not suggesting that Cambridge analytica was familiar with Lloyd. Rather, we all have assumptions about what causes behavior, whether it is Freudian unconscious, Skinner’s carrots and sticks, or psychoclasses. To my knowledge, Cambridge‘s idea was that people vote based on their fears – the emotional life of voters is about what people fear. They tapped into that data and from all of that chaos came some reasonably predictive models. But I agree with you, Lloyd took his predictions just too far.

So where do we take psycho history from here.? I believe that nations do have emotional lives. Nations and cultures have collective interiors, thoughts and feelings, that are promulgated by group fantasies. The fact that we still can’t predict wars and many other things is simply a sign that psychohistory is not yet a mature field

Bill Argus

Sent from my iPhone

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david

Jun 8

RE: [cliospsyche] Re: agency vs. fatalism

Hi Patrick,

My condolences re Dougie, I agree that things are looking pretty grim in a lot of places, and there are dangers in encouraging false hope.

David

From: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com <cliospsyche@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Patrick McEvoy-Halston
Sent: Friday, June 08, 2018 7:46 AM
To: Clio’s Psyche <cliospsyche@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [cliospsyche] Re: agency vs. fatalism

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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)

Jun 8

Re: [cliospsyche] Re: agency vs. fatalism

What I think what we should do is be very modest in what we predict. The radicalness should leave us and people should leave our conferences delighted in how it has slipped out of its juvenile past into a more mature state, more fully informed of how things, how life, is much more complex than we had guessed. I think at that point someone should take a picture of us, operating in refined and wizened form as we are -- such a contrast to the crazy alt-right phenomenon that is eating the world! -- ... maybe, also, we could all be on a yacht, and wearing fine Piaget watches... yeah, that'd be good... so even as we've neutered our field of the radical thinking that would offer us an unsurpassable angle of perspicuity on world affairs -- and at least some legitimate show, from the good side, of actually having resources of sufficient surprise and notability that they could maybe even turn around an age due by fate to grow dark -- maybe the universities will accept us and we'll feel, life-fulfilled, properly encapsulated for all time, before the age has an opportunity to complete its great purge on our venues of self-completion. Who knows? Maybe this self-completed state will persist into the afterlife, and we'll catch advance site of this wonderful due fate so strongly that we'll never really have to be out of focussing on it, even when the world brings the ghouls, the dirt, the claws, that we weren't up to really countering, probably because doing so would help rescue the young... and there DO have to be sacrifices -- someone's been "improperly" spoiling themselves -- don't there?, within the trespasses of our doors, our sight, our skin, our reality.

The future can be predicted. Lloyd's reach was appropriate. He did only what we should expect for the norm. Claims of modesty almost always mark people as those informed by a fear of being pretentious, a fear so powerful the "truth" of the world is absolutely to be manipulated, if it'll grant a final say of simply how things are and go, and the more presuming amongst us, become less effective in their applications for being made juveniles or madmen. Zaretsky and Lloyd mark the 1930s and 40s as an age of people agreeing to being misbehaving sons and daughters, ready, now, to defer and pledge service to their Mother Nations... the misbehaving sons and daughters, were their previous, unrestrained, pretentious selves. During the 30s and 40s the like of Lloyd's radicalness would be out, but not owing to being disproven -- though that would be how it would be presented -- but because it lent one the wrong look, when everyone was ruled out of a fear of appearing spoiled (i.e., populism).

On Friday, June 8, 2018 at 3:28:35 PM UTC-4, drwargus wrote:

Brian.

Bill Argus

Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 8, 2018, at 11:55 AM, Brian D'Agostino <bdagostino2687@gmail.com> wrote:

On 6/8/2018 11:31 AM, 'Bill Argus' via Clio’s Psyche wrote:

Bill Argus

Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 8, 2018, at 10:11 AM, Brian D'Agostino <bdagostino2687@gmail.com> wrote:

Brian

On 6/8/2018 7:46 AM, Patrick McEvoy-Halston wrote:

On Friday, June 8, 2018 at 4:54:02 AM UTC-4, bdagostino2687 wrote:

Brian

On 6/6/2018 9:13 AM, Patrick McEvoy-Halston wrote:

me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)

Jun 8

Re: [cliospsyche] Re: agency vs. fatalism

Hi David. Thanks for the input. I appreciate hearing from you. Doug will get his 12 years and total destruction, but then his time of following through, quite genuinely, with the people's orders, will be done... so there's that.

On Friday, June 8, 2018 at 6:10:51 PM UTC-4, david wrote:

Hi Patrick,

My condolences re Dougie, I agree that things are looking pretty grim in a lot of places, and there are dangers in encouraging false hope.

David

On Friday, June 8, 2018 at 4:54:02 AM UTC-4, bdagostino2687 wrote:

Brian

On 6/6/2018 9:13 AM, Patrick McEvoy-Halston wrote:

bdagostino2687

Jun 9

Re: [cliospsyche] Re: agency vs. fatalism

This responds to Bill and to Burton. Bill, you seem to be assuming that a ``mature`` science is necessarily predictive. But that assumption is precisely what chaos theory and quantum mechanics call into question. Scientific determinism is dead. No science is more mature than physics, and it is now indisputable that physics cannot predict individual events at the quantum level. Nor can the implications of this be ``quarantined`` to the quantum level. Most notably, random mutations are now know to be the driving force in biological evolution. Random events are by definition unpredictable.

The old way of thinking was to say that mutations are only apparently random, and that once we dig deeper and deeper into the microscopic processes that underlie mutations we will eventually reach a deterministic realm in which mutations are actually found to be the predictable outcomes of measurable physical processes. Similarly, the outcome of tossing dice, according to this way of thinking, is only apparently random because if we measure the initial conditions accurately enough and the exact forces acting on the dice, the outcome will be completely predictable according to Newtonian physics. Quantum mechanics throws all this out the window. If you go to the most minute atomic and sub-atomic levels of the forces that govern mutations or the tossing of dice, the familiar determinism of cause and effect breaks down and you find yourself in the INHERENTLY unpredictable realm of quantum mechanics. So the upshot of all this is that mutations and the tossing of dice are FUNDAMENTALLY AND INHERENTLY random events, not just apparently random. No amount of "maturity" of the sciences involved will get us back to determinism. Scientific determinism is dead, which to old fashioned materialists is just as traumatic a discovery as that God is dead.

It is easy enough to apply the above analysis to neuroscience and psychotherapy. The brain is a physical system and every neuron is a complex physical system unto itself that ultimately operates according to the laws of quantum mechanics. So the notion that the thoughts and actions of a single human being can ever be fully predictable is not tenable. If we knew everything down to the most minute details about the early childhood conditions that shaped the personality of a certain person, no amount of maturation in psychology and all the other sciences will ever enable us to predict how his or her life will unfold. For psychoanalysts, this requires a break from the scientific determinism in which Freud's thought was rooted. This brings us to Burton's point, with which I completely agree. The relationship between therapist and client is a universe unto itself and how things unfold in this relationship is, in a very real sense, of cosmic significance. For more on this, I recommend Gerald J. Gargiulo's book Quantum Psychoanalysis: Essays on Physics, Mind, and Analysis Today, which recently won a Gradiva Award. --Brian

-------- Forwarded Message --------

Subject:	Re: [cliospsyche] Re: agency vs. fatalism
Date:	Fri, 8 Jun 2018 12:33:37 -0400
From:	Burton N. Seitler
Reply-To:	cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
To:	cliospsyche@googlegroups.com

Hi,

My goals are much more modest. Essentially they are: do what you can do. Don't do what you cannot do (by definition, you can't). The Talmud says, if you save one person, you have saved the world. Modest, but, I hope, meaningful.

Burton

On 6/8/2018 3:28 PM, 'Bill Argus' via Clio’s Psyche wrote:

Brian.

Bill Argus

Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 8, 2018, at 11:55 AM, Brian D'Agostino <bdagostino2687@gmail.com> wrote:

On 6/8/2018 11:31 AM, 'Bill Argus' via Clio’s Psyche wrote:

Bill Argus

Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 8, 2018, at 10:11 AM, Brian D'Agostino <bdagostino2687@gmail.com> wrote:

Brian

On 6/8/2018 7:46 AM, Patrick McEvoy-Halston wrote:

On Friday, June 8, 2018 at 4:54:02 AM UTC-4, bdagostino2687 wrote:

Brian

On 6/6/2018 9:13 AM, Patrick McEvoy-Halston wrote:

Mark as complete

Howard S

Jun 9

RE: [EXTERNAL] Re: [cliospsyche] Re: agency vs. fatalism

Other recipients: Howard-Stein@ouhsc.edu

Dear Brian and Everyone in the CliosPsyche Listserve,

I have been reading the conversation on agency and fatalism with great interest -- our lives and the earth do depend on how we choose -- and find that Brian's argument drawing upon chaos theory and quantum mechanics to be persuasive.

If I may, I'd like to contribute a poem that is the concluding poem in my 2016 book, Light and Shadow , a poem called "Life is not a straight line." https://www.doodleandpeck.com/adult I think that it shares the Spirit of Brian's insights.

Warm regards to all,

Howard

Life Is Not a Straight Line

for Karam Adibifar

Life is not a straight
line; few paths are direct.
Contingencies rock our intentions.

Euclid is not all there is to life.

An asteroid here, a large meteor there,

a long volcanic night, an ice age –
an amoeba might wonder

how we got here at all.

Life makes wide spirals,

lurches far, then halts,
curves in upon itself.

“Man thinks, G-d laughs,”

goes an old Yiddish saying,

as our line from plans
to results is at best roundabout,

as our plans change in the middle,
and our outcomes stray far from our will.

“Life has no meaning,” I said

out of ignorance and arrogance,

when the dots failed to connect the
way I wished
and when I wished them to.

Then, in a moment of grace,
I surrendered to amazement and wonder; the dots spread out
before me like the Milky Way.
I yielded as an observer
of my own life, and for a moment

no longer needed to connect the dots
into a line of any kind.

Author of Light and Shadow (poetry): https://doodleandpeck.com/adult

Listening Deeply (Second Edition): https://www.amazon.com/Howard-F.-Stein/e/B001HCZ62C/ref=ntt_dp_epwpk_0

The Dysfunctional Workplace (with Seth Allcorn): same url as above, amazon.com

Howard F. Stein, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus

Department of Family and Preventive Medicine

University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center

Oklahoma City, OK USA;

howard-stein@ouhsc.edu

Phone: 405-787-6074

Poet Laureate, High Plains Society for Applied Anthropology

Home address: 1408 Oakhill Lane, Oklahoma City OK 73127 USA

From: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com [cliospsyche@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Brian D'Agostino [bdagostino2687@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, June 09, 2018 10:03 AM
To: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [cliospsyche] Re: agency vs. fatalism

- show quoted text -

Mark as complete

Judith Logue

Jun 9

Howard’s Poem “Life is Not a Straight Line” and Agency and Fatalism

Other recipients: Howard-Stein@ouhsc.edu

This is beautiful, Howard.

I missed you in NY... your talk in 2017 was riveting and your presence today on Clio’s is so appreciated.

Your poetry never fails to get to the heart of the matter - and I love not having to read it a gazillion times to get it (or feel like an illiterate

unsophisticated dumbf-k as I do when reading some poets).

Please post again soon.

Warmest wishes and all good things,

Judy Logue

- show quoted text -

Mark as complete

bdagostino2687

Jun 9

Re: [cliospsyche] Howard’s Poem “Life is Not a Straight Line” and Agency and Fatalism

I echo Judy's sentiments, Howard. Thanks for posting this to the list. Also, Judy, as a registrant in the conference, you will soon be able to access Howard's GoToMeeting presentations at the 2018 psychohistory conference as videotapes. --Brian

- show quoted text -

Mark as complete

Howard S

Jun 9

RE: Howard’s Poem “Life is Not a Straight Line” and Agency and Fatalism

Other recipients: Howard-Stein@ouhsc.edu

Thank you so much, Judy, for your many affirmations. I missed you also. Take care and keep in touch.

Warmest regards -- to you and Everyone at IPA 2018,

Howard

Author of Light and Shadow (poetry): https://doodleandpeck.com/adult

Listening Deeply (Second Edition): https://www.amazon.com/Howard-F.-Stein/e/B001HCZ62C/ref=ntt_dp_epwpk_0

The Dysfunctional Workplace (with Seth Allcorn): same url as above, amazon.com

Howard F. Stein, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus

Department of Family and Preventive Medicine

University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center

Oklahoma City, OK USA;

howard-stein@ouhsc.edu

Phone: 405-787-6074

Poet Laureate, High Plains Society for Applied Anthropology

Home address: 1408 Oakhill Lane, Oklahoma City OK 73127 USA

From: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com [cliospsyche@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Dr Judith Logue [judith@judithlogue.com]
Sent: Saturday, June 09, 2018 9:10 PM
To: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
Cc: Stein, Howard F. (HSC)
Subject: [EXTERNAL] [cliospsyche] Howard’s Poem “Life is Not a Straight Line” and Agency and Fatalism

- show quoted text -

Mark as complete

Howard S

Jun 9

RE: [EXTERNAL] Re: [cliospsyche] Howard’s Poem “Life is Not a Straight Line” and Agency and Fatalism

Thank you, Brian.

Author of Light and Shadow (poetry): https://doodleandpeck.com/adult

Listening Deeply (Second Edition): https://www.amazon.com/Howard-F.-Stein/e/B001HCZ62C/ref=ntt_dp_epwpk_0

The Dysfunctional Workplace (with Seth Allcorn): same url as above, amazon.com

Howard F. Stein, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus

Department of Family and Preventive Medicine

University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center

Oklahoma City, OK USA;

howard-stein@ouhsc.edu

Phone: 405-787-6074

Poet Laureate, High Plains Society for Applied Anthropology

Home address: 1408 Oakhill Lane, Oklahoma City OK 73127 USA

From: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com [cliospsyche@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Brian D'Agostino [bdagostino2687@gmail.com]

Sent: Saturday, June 09, 2018 9:18 PM
To: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [cliospsyche] Howard’s Poem “Life is Not a Straight Line” and Agency and Fatalism

- show quoted text -

Brian.

- show quoted text -

Mark as complete

Judith Logue

Jun 9

Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: [cliospsyche] Howard’s Poem “Life is Not a Straight Line” and Agency and Fatalism

Wondeful... thank you. I am so happy I was able to attend this year.

Judy

- show quoted text -

Mark as complete

bdagostino2687

Aug 13

Omarosa and the Cult of Trump

Hi, folks,

I just read on CNN the best analysis yet of the Trump phenomenon, a piece about Omarosa by Michael D'Antonio, author of Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success. I've copied and pasted it below. Tonight I also heard an interview of Omarosa by Judy Woodruff on the PBS Newshour in which Omarosa showed herself to be far more thoughtful and credible than the ditsy reality TV show star I had imagined her to be. She nails the cult of Trump the way only an insider can. I suspect her book is going to be VERY damaging.

Brian

bdagostino.com

Omarosa is the latest defector from Trump's 'cult'

By Michael D'Antonio

(CNN) Some of the juiciest bits from Omarosa Manigault Newman's "Unhinged: An Insider's Account from the Trump White House" include allegations that the President is a bigoted, emotionally abusive man in mental decline.

Trump and his surrogates are already challenging the accounts offered by the former White House aide who, fittingly, first met him when he was a reality TV show host and she was a contestant. However, they won't be able to refute her conclusion about the relationship between Trump and his most avid allies, because it's a judgment based on the sum of her experiences and not one lone anecdote.

In describing the events that made it possible for her to write her tell-all, Manigault Newman notes that she had "escaped from the cult of Trumpworld." If a cult of Trump exists, the woman he helped become a household name -- say "Omarosa" and everyone knows who you're talking about -- is a prime example of the rapt and dependent believer who becomes an outspoken apostate.

Turn to the video of Omarosa speaking to PBS's Frontline in 2016 and you hear a woman who sounds like Ma Anand Sheela, the spokesperson for the 1980s cult leader Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Sheela was a highly visible Rajneeshi, speaking often on his behalf, until she fled to Europe after law enforcement broke up the cult. Similarly, Omarosa was a very public figure in the Trump campaign and White House and, prior to politics, boosted him over many years as a veteran of Trump's TV show, "The Apprentice."

In all seriousness, Omarosa declared on PBS, "Every critic, every detractor, will have to bow down to President Trump. It's everyone who's ever doubted Donald, whoever disagreed, whoever challenged him. It is the ultimate revenge to become the most powerful man in the universe."

Omarosa spoke as if Trump's very being justified his will to power, in a contest where his victory would apply across the vast and unknowable universe. Only after she was cast out of the White House, and from Trump's orbit, did Omarosa began to air her criticisms and frame her expulsion as an "escape."

Many experts have warned that the President and his devotees exhibit the hallmarks of a cult movement. The similarities begin with a man who has built a following based on personality and little else. In business, he focused on selling the Trump name. On TV, he pitched a character whose success far exceeded reality. In politics, Trump promoted himself over policies. It was "I alone can fix it." Now, as President he says things like, "I'm the only one that matters."

Trump isn't necessarily deliberate in using cult leader methods, but he does seem to tick many of the boxes. He draws others in by emphasizing that they have been treated unfairly and need to be protected from a world full of dangers. And those dangers range from immigrants to Muslims to terrorists to our very own government agencies. He promises that he will reward their loyalty. Then he demonstrates that he will punish dissenters in a cruel and ruthless way.

The big campaign rallies that Trump has continued to conduct offer grand displays of the cult leader at work. When he ridicules protesting NFL players as "sons of bitches" or mocks the likes of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, or Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California, he's serving up enemies the crowd can regard with contempt. By stirring this hatred, he revs up believers and rewards their commitment. He also reminds everyone that enemies -- and presumably this would include defectors -- can be treated roughly.

Of course, there is no cult without top apostles who use their skills to help keep the system humming. Before he became Trump's legal apologist, Rudy Giuliani was a respected former mayor of New York. Now he is a human pretzel, contorting himself to protect the President from a special counsel who has shown that some of the individuals who worked on the Trump campaign have questionable ethics at best -- and have committed criminal acts at worst.

Inside the administration, as Attorney General Jeff Sessions endures Trump's mockery, he exhibits the resignation of a weary believer who fears being excommunicated. Vice President Mike Pence looks every bit the sycophant as he praises Trump at every turn, and Press Secretary Sarah Sanders displays a classic us-against-the-world cult attitude as she insults reporters.

For a time, Manigault Newman was a top member of the Trump cult, too. Although many had criticized the President for his handling of the Charlottesville tragedy, she came to his defense -- telling ABC's Nightline, "he is not a racist." Now she is reversing her position and alleging that she was offered a $15,000 per month job to work on the President's re-election campaign in exchange for her silence. She chose instead to speak out and, as an apostate, threatens to do serious damage to the cult leader.

Other apostates, including former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, alleged former sex partners Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels, and campaign operatives such as Rick Gates and George Papadopoulos threaten to do even more damage. This is generally how cults are brought down -- from the inside.

If the pattern holds, the revelations will be ever more shocking, and the response will be ever more intense, until the truth overwhelms the leader's spell. The time can't come too soon for a nation in Trump's thrall.

Michael D'Antonio is author of the book "Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success" (St. Martin's Press). The opinions expressed in this commentary are his. View more opinion articles on CNN.

Mark as complete

binsightfl1

Aug 14

Re: [cliospsyche] Omarosa and the Cult of Trump

Hi,

The article reads well, but it omits the elephantine,

yet unspoken question in the room, namely, if this

is how Amarosa truly feels, then why did she stay

until she was fired. Why did she not quit when she

"realized" who the Donald really is? While, I do not

doubt that her book will make a stir, her credibility

will still be in doubt to many. Regarding whether it

will topple the Donald, I think it would have to have

to have reached critical mass for Trump to implode.

Perhaps that time is near-when all of the malignant

tumors start to metastasize-no longer to be denied.

Perhaps that additive admixure has arrived. Still, I

must remind everyone that we thought the Planet

Hollywood,or whatever it was called, interview with

Billy Bush would have been sufficient to sink him,

but it did not. He has fired his metaphorical pistol

down Fifth Avenue many times now, in full view of

everyone, yet no one has disarmed him yet. Let's

see what becomes of the "witch hunt."

Burton

- show quoted text -

Mark as complete

bdagostino2687

Aug 14

Re: [cliospsyche] Omarosa and the Cult of Trump

Yes, Burton, that is the question Omarosa's critics are all asking--why didn't she quit? But I think the answer is straightforward--she was in a cult and as long as it was working for her, she rationalized the questionable things she was doing in the name of the leader, like most cult members. She didn't leave the cult voluntarily, but was kicked out. Under those circumstances, of course, we have to assume that her book is self-serving and rationalizes what happened to her, rather than serving as a paragon of authentic self-reflection. However, there is ample independent evidence that Trump is indeed presiding over a cult and so far Omarosa is the only insider who is willing to publicly blow the whistle, knowing that the cult is going to respond with a no-holds barred campaign of character assassination. This is quite laudable considering that she could have instead cashed in her White House experience and her role as a Black apologist for the Republican agenda and made a successful career in the world of conservative media/entertainment/politics. Michelle Goldberg's column in the New York Times yesterday pointed this out and noted that this distinguishes Omarosa from all the others who have left the Trump White House; see

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/13/opinion/columnists/omarosa-unhinged-book-trump-cult.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

Having said all this, I completely agree with your point that Trump's presidency is proving more resilient than any of us predicted, and no one event such as this book will be a fatal blow all by itself. What I found interesting and important about D'Antonio's article is that he brings to bear exactly the right sociological/psychological paradigm for understanding Trump's resilience--that of cult dynamics. The last featured speaker at the IPA conference on May 30--Daniel Shaw--presented on this exact topic.

- show quoted text -

Mark as complete

binsightfl1

Aug 14

Re: [cliospsyche] Omarosa and the Cult of Trump

Yes, Brian, I agree that Amarosa is no dummy.

Even if I were to regard her as slimy, I still will

acknowledge how canny she is. I'm sure that's

why she made and kept the tapes to begin with.

I do like the "cult" explanation. It makes sense,

at least insofar as having a strong resemblance

to ones that have been described before. And,

it is true, the very act of "ratting out" the boss,

even after being unceremoniously discharged,

is very dangerous, yet that's exactly what she

has done. I don't think she will get enough $$

simply from the sale of her book to mitigate

against the damage she will experience post

Donald, or even from the exposure/publicity

she will assuredly garner. So, yes, it takes a

certain amount of street-fighter instincts to do

what she did--self-serving notwithstanding.

- show quoted text -

Mark as complete

me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)

Aug 14

Re: Omarosa and the Cult of Trump

If the American public likes what he's doing, then nothing that is exposed about what he has done won't be made fodder for a narrative that actually endorses him and villainizes those who expose him. There is no super-ego censor to back the crowd down, for they understand that what Trump is up to is stopping people from individuating too much from their parents, that he is for stopping all real progress and making an example of those who've progressed too much (i.e., ostensibly left their parents behind to attend to their own selfish needs) which is more a parent-loyal task than anyone else out there could possible match. He is the "super-ego's" favourite son.

- show quoted text -

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