Re: In
the midst of the Greece turmoil, his shared feelings are of particular
significance to make sense of the deep psychohistorical factors underlying the
current crisis. Three years ago, in an ABC News 24 interview by Leigh Sales,
Varoufakis stated:
This is our Great Depression. Not only
in an economic sense, but also in a psychological sense. Greeks are in a
catatonic state. One moment in a state of rage, another, this is a typical case
of manic depression. There are no prospects. There is no light at the end of
the tunnel. There are sacrifices, but nobody gets a feeling that these are
sacrifices that take the form of some kind of investment in turning the corner.
This is the problem when you are stuck in a Eurozone which is really badly
designed, which is collapsing and which does not give opportunities to its
flimsier parts to escape through some kind of redemptive crisis[2].
Such a public statement carries strong
emotional overtones resulting from the close interweaving of past and present
sensations—a regressive process Dr Vamik Volkan has termed “time collapse” in
his many books and articles[3]. Fears and intra-psychic defenses associated
with a past traumatic experience tend to resurface when triggered by a
contemporary menace such as social unrest or economic downturn, often
reactivating a sense of victimization. In such a case, current perceptions and
traumatic memory become inextricably interwoven into a seamless totality.
- - - - -
Enjoyed the essay. Thank you. Wanted to
mention a concern I had about this particular section. DeMause's argument is
that economic upswings and periods of peace are actually much more scary to,
produce much more unhappiness in, people than periods of depression and unrest.
Happiness is the significant trigger
(of trauma) because it reminds people of how their mothers abandoned them when
they first felt the pleasure of self-individuation. I mention this because
DeMause's take on economic depressions is actually really very interesting and
needs to kept fresh as a vital potential counter to everyone presuming that
we're in a period of revolution owing to how stressed out everyone has been
during these economically depriving years. DeMause, we remember, would have it
that economic depressions... that periods of severe austerity, actually reflect
the wishes of a populace. They're experiencing growth panic, owing to
prosperity, and at this moment find more emotional peace than distress by the
quieting down of life possibility.
We assume that everyone would be so much
the happier if during the last twenty years they'd had full employment and
living wages. But the DeMausian take would be that essentially for all nations
outside that blessed locale of advanced childrearing, Scandinavia, you'd be in
error about this. They'd actually be feeling worse. They'd be absent an effective
means of atoning for previously incurred societal growth, and they'd feel
guilty as all hell... have inner maternal alters haranguing them and driving
them insane. As is, they now feel rather virtuous for being able to show off
how little they've prospered, and so now they can't be balked from the period
of revenge that we all sense will define our upcoming age.
They
can't be effectively targeted as "deplorables" because they feel so
spare of what actually makes them feel guilty and bad -- namely, riches,
prosperity, self-actualization. The ones lambasting them as deplorable tend to
be liberals who have prospered and who have richly developed individualized
selves, and so seem to to the lower psychoclasses like people who abandoned
their obligations to others (read: parents) to tend selfishly to their own
interests, and never looked back. And for such are clearly the highest ranking
deplorables society has to offer.
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