We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
If there is an epidemic of drooling pedophile lechers hanging around the beaches, it's news to me, but maybe Maine is different:
York Police Chief Doug Bracy said the statute would represent a fairly minor change that would help keep the public safer, especially children. He noted that York police respond fairly regularly to reports of public peepers on the town's beaches.
Our editor wants a comment about this insanity in which, as Van Helsing puts it, "the government wishes to regulate your eyeball movements."
People are sexual beings. We are many other things too, but that's one thing that we are. We have been given a strong dose of it, and it isn't seasonal like most animals. Is human sexuality "appropriate"? No, often it is not. Nor is human aggressiveness, nor is human fantasy in general.
That's why we learn to keep fantasy in fantasyland, and to keep our behavior in the real world, where the real consequences happen.
One thing that bothers me about the neo-puritanism of the radical feminists is the disingenuous blurring of sexuality with aggression (the wording of the Maine law is a perfect example of the perverse blurring).
At the risk of sounding perhaps too non-traditional for Maggie's, unconscious and sometimes conscious erotic fantasies know no bounds of gender, age, morality, law, or social appropriateness. Everybody knows this and everybody has experienced this, on some level. Socio-cultural taboos, conscience, mental mechanisms like repression, laws, consequences, judgement, the balance of normal impulses, and conventions prevent most of us from behaving like monkeys. Not to mention the fact that we have other interesting or necessary things to do.
However, people who sexually prey on kids are not so much sick as they are simple criminals. Unlike the ancient Greeks, and for better or worse, we have laws about these things.
Break a law, become a crim. It's your choice. But this Maine law, designed to make it easier to prosecute "peepers" as felons satirizes itself. Obviously, the potential for abuse by paranoid Moms is part of the issue here. How does anyone discriminate a peeper from a looker? Everybody likes to look at cute kids, and that is what the neo-puritans can't tolerate.
Is "looking" an action? Not in my book. If it were, I'd be on death row for all of the visual daggers I have thrown.
Most of our lives are guided by gut feelings (aka "unconscious thought") and not by deliberate logical heuristics: just consider merging onto a highway, making friends, picking a mate, tennis, or shooting - or consider how Spaniels catch frisbees or how Labs mark the distant fall of a Canvasback. Our brains can do Multivariate Calculus even if we got a B in Trig, confuse left with right, and were dropped on our heads by our Moms.
Those of us who know the flaws of our mental autopilot systems have to compensate by deliberate thought. That means work.
Gert Gigerenzer is good, and his speech here is relevant to law, investing, medicine, sports, and to life in general. "Knowing" too much can sometimes be a handicap (and we all know how much "data" can be wrong). It's a bit long for our ADD readers (over 1 hr), but it is a paean to the brilliance of the irrationally rational intuitive human brain and a credit to Gigerenzer's logical mind, and well worth the time:
I read compulsively. I read fiction and non-fiction. I read shrink-related stuff also, but less so than other stuff. I read plenty of history. I read 2 books per week. I do not watch TV because it interferes with my reading and my family, and because TV is idiotic. Yes, I am proudly snobbish about many things, and I happily know little-to-nothing about pop culture.
Do I have a Reading Addiction?
Some of my fellow shrinks seem to want to make a diagnosis out of everything people like to do: Internet addiction. As you all say, Good Grief.
Thought I might share the data from a meeting tonight about vitamins, health, and cancer. The short version:
- Do not take folate-containing supplements unless you are bearing babies. (Unfortunately, the government in its infinite wisdom mandated its addtion to bread and other foods for the benefit of child-bearing women who eat terrible diets.) - Adults should not bother with vitamin supplements, except... - it's probably a good idea for most people to take 2000 iu of Vit D3 daily (which is actually a hormone, not a vitamin) even if you spend time outdoors, and... - 20 minutes of daily exercise is a good thing.
The essay, Are We Really That Ill? (in which the author notes that, according to that Psychiatric diagnostic manual "DSM", half of us are mentally ill) in the NY Sun has been referenced frequently this week. And regrettably so, because the author is a Professor of English and knows little of the practice of Psychiatry. I only have the time to address one of his statements:
With over a million copies in print, the manual is known as the bible of American psychiatry; certainly it is an invoked chapter and verse in schools, prisons, courts, and by mental-health professionals around the world.
Yes, it is invoked often - but it is no bible. No well-trained Psychiatrist uses it as a tool for understanding or treatment. It was designed as a research tool, so that researchers would share definitions. It rapidly became a tool for filling out the "diagnosis code" space on insurance forms so that patients might be eligible for some medical reimbursement.
Many of the "diagnoses" listed are not illnesses in any usual sense: nictotine addiction, insomnia, alcohol abuse, post-traumatic stress, personality disorders, ADD, and "adjustment disorder" are just a few examples of the listed items which are common parts of the human condition, but which are subjects of medical research and which are things for which people often ask for help. But they aren't illnesses - they are insurance codes.
As I have discussed frequently here, people in America who fall into the poverty income stats (which significantly do not include govt and charity help - or take assets into account like our Maine blueberry famer with a 200-acre farm) because:
1. They do not function well or adjust well in civilized society, for whatever variety of reasons. 2. They don't care and are content with - or at least not motivated by - their economic condition (eg organic farmers in VT, moonshiners in the Kentucky hills, starving artists and actors, people following their hearts, blueberry farmers in Maine, Maine Guides, Indians on reservations where there is little work, ski bums, real bums (including San Francisco runaway kids), welfare and disability addicts, Vermont farm hands, people who remain in the old town after the jobs have left, old hippies in N. Calif., etc.). 3. They don't report their income (there's a huge cash-only economy in the US - not to mention "real" crime). 4. They are the temporary poor - students, new immigrants, people between jobs or people starting out in life or new careers. 5. They ran into some bad luck or made some bad financial decisions and life choices (eg getting over their heads in debt, crushed by medical problems, being single moms, having no savings and living on Social Security, drug addicts, folks in jail, etc.).
Furthermore, as long as poverty income stats are based on the lowest X%, it will never go away - even if, as it appears now, American poor have large-screen TVs, air-conditioned homes, and cars - and tend to be overweight.
Somebody - not a sociologist - should go out there and interview some poor people and get their real stories. It would be revealing. I know plenty of their stories and know what poverty is about because I work one day a week, pro bono, at a charity medical clinic in Boston - but I cannot tell those stories here.
The subject comes up because Steve Malanga has written the definitive report at City Journal: Getting Poverty Wrong, and it turns out that family structure accounts for the main problem. One quote:
The Census Bureau’s study on the living arrangements of American children appeared in mid-February. The data show that the number of children now living in two-parent families has dipped just below the 70 percent mark for the first time since the Census began collecting data on family formation nearly 130 years ago. After peaking in the 1950s—when about 87 percent of all children lived with two parents—the traditional family went through a rapid decline beginning in the 1970s and has continued to shrink over the last three decades, though the rate of decline has slowed somewhat. As part of this sweeping change, the percentage of children living with married parents has fallen more rapidly, down more than two full percentage points, to 66.6 percent of all kids, in the last 10 years alone. Consistent with these decreases has been a sharp rise in the number of children living with single parents and with unmarried parents.
The economic impact of this breakdown has been profound. Researchers estimate that the entire rise in poverty in America since the late 1970s can be attributed to “changes in family formation,” a euphemism for the decline of families headed by two married parents. The latest Census data illustrate the problem. Only one out of ten American kids living in two-married-parent families is in poverty—and about one-third of these families are recent immigrants whose poverty is temporary. By contrast, 37 percent of children living with single mothers are impoverished.
A couple of interesting links. First, Dr. Helen asks "Is therapy the new 21st Century punishment?" It's a refreshing perspective. I cannot tell you how many badly-behaved and obnoxious kids are sent to therapists these days, partly because parents cannot give them a whuppin' anymore or they could end up in jail. The moral the kids learn, of course, is that there are no hard consequences for behavior.
Partially, it's the crusade against Hollywood Rationality, the concept that understanding the rainbow subtracts its beauty. The rainbow is still beautiful plus you get the beauty of physics.
and
It is a Hollywood Rationality meme that "Science takes the fun out of life." Science puts the fun back into life.
Getting as close as possible to reality is what shrinks think about all the time.
That's the sort of thing that Freud, a Neurologist by training, aspired to do, but the data wasn't there at the time and he gave up on the effort.
I know of Dr. Shore, and I will read the book. The reviews are impressive. ("Affect" is a fancy shrink word for emotions.) I think the reason it had not attracted my attention is because I react against any title with the word "self" in it. That word turns me off because it makes no sense to me, and neither do the theoretical constructs referring to it.
The family has always enjoyed The Cloister on Sea Island for cozy, comfy getaways. We will miss the old Cloister which felt like home to us, but the new building has opened and it looks good (photo). Their relatively new "Lodge," where I have also stayed, is splendid, and its bar is huge and plain wonderful for an apres golf gin Martini or two.
Their azaleas will be in their full glory soon, if not sooner.
For decompression mental-health short and relatively inexpensive vacations (with great golf), it often comes down to a choice between The Cloister and Cambridge Beaches in Bermuda (assuming you know somebody with a Mid-Ocean Club membership).
Both places guaranteed glitz-free zones - leave your jewelry at home - and thus Maggie's Farm types of places. Pearls at dinner are OK, but no tacky gold.
This interesting Viamontes essay might be tough sledding for those without some knowledge of the brain, but it is of great interest to those who try to understand people. Neural Substrates of Psychological Change.
In this paper, Viamontes and Beitman consider their concept of the "default brain" which, it seems to me, is relevant to Freud's notion of regression - and the idea of developmental arrest/delay.
The adult executive functions (judgement, information, conscience, decision-making, delaying gratification, learning from experience, weighing consequences, etc.) of the mind, when interfered with, abandon parts of their functioning to their Default Brain, which operates on a more animalistic, gratification-and-survival level.
Many things can interfere with the achievement and maintenance of the adult executive functions: bad genetics, bad wiring, fear, low IQ, personality weaknesses, emotional problems, drugs and alcohol, illness, emotional trauma, lousy role models, plain old human frailty, etc. etc.: it's such a long list that it's always a wonder to me that so many folks function pretty well in life, well-above our inner reptile most of the time.
We re-post this 2006 Dr. Bliss piece on the UCC because Obama's church, much in the news today, is UCC
Reasons to Quit the UCC
Bird Dog just faxed me an info sheet on the United Church of Christ, which his church, like mine in New Hampshire, is considering abandoning. If you aren't familiar with this organization, the UCC is an umbrella organization, created in 1957, which includes many Congregational, Dutch Reform, and German Reform churches. Because of American history, many of these churches are in the Northeast.
The Pilgrims were Congregationalists, and had been welcomed by like-minded Dutch churches when they fled Anglican (now called "Episcopalian" in the US) persecution by the English government in the late 1500s and early 1600s - a very trivial piece of history which resulted in a major consequence - our Constitution included the forbidding of a State-enforced sect. Of Christianity, of course, at the time. (Jews, in England, were tolerated and not subject to persecution, on the whole. Freud, genius that he was, happily termed that kind of thing "the narcissism of small differences" - we are more likely to make a fight with those with whom we have small differences than those with major differences.)
These churches have a unique history - they are bottom-up churches without hierarchy, in which the individual congregation itself choses, by vote, its clergy, its beliefs, its mission, the organizations they support, and its mode of worship. God is the only Boss, and understanding His will is a matter for individual prayer. That makes for a powerful individualistic tradition, and for the direct mankind-God link that we aspire to.
However, like many innocent and well-meaning non-profits, the UCC has been "captured" by theologically "liberal" and politically activist state and national HQs - and that is a very bad thing for many of the congregations that contribute money to the organization. The HQ people appear to have walked away from their theological support mission and done two things I do not like: 1. They have begun constructing dogma and, 2. They have become political operatives with political agendas. In other words, they are seeking power - theological authority and worldly power. That's fine for churches and denominations that wish to do so, but we don't.
For example, believe it or not, the Connecticut UCC actually has a lobbyist in Hartford taking all sorts of radical positions of which most contributing congregations are probably totally unaware, including opposing Charter Schools in alliance with the CT Teacher's Union! You can't find this on the website, nor will it be found in church bulletins. These activities are done in the name of the UCC congregations, on the nickel of God-seeking folk who dutifully, and often sacrificially, put their hard-earned dollars in the basket. (We have tithers in our church - always the old joke - "Before or after taxes?".) It reminds me of what unions do with their dues.
What happens when unwanted leaders try to lead, but no-one follows? Congregations are rebelling, or simply voting with their feet because of the political or just strange positions the HQs have been taking. It seems likely that many will vote with their feet, and form or find another umbrella organization to help with pensions, insurance, and publications.
As you can tell, I am strongly in favor of old family Congregational church's abandoning the UCC's leaky bucket, and it looks like we will. We will pray and vote! And it will not be Left vs. Right - it will be about what the role of a religious support organization is. Which, I believe, is to help mankind connect with God by helping churches with practical problems. The mission of saving souls is plenty big enough! D'ya think? (as my daughter would say).
2008 update: Both Bird Dog's and Dr. Bliss' Congregational churches voted to leave the UCC and to regain their independence.
I was introduced to this book by a lovely but rather innocent and sheltered patient who was seduced away from her husband and three kids by a man who, she realized, lived by the principles espoused in this book. She came to see me for help in rejoining her family, but it was too late for that.
(Dr. Scott Peck wrote one of the best popular books about sociopathy and narcissism, People of the Lie, which has helped many to become alert to some of the personality types one might wish to avoid.)
Of the 48 Laws book, Publisher's Weekly said in 1998:
Greene and Elffers have created an heir to Machiavelli's Prince, espousing principles such as, everyone wants more power; emotions, including love, are detrimental; deceit and manipulation are life's paramount tools. Anyone striving for psychological health will be put off at the start, but the authors counter, saying "honesty is indeed a power strategy," and "genuinely innocent people may still be playing for power." Amoral or immoral, this compendium aims to guide those who embrace power as a ruthless game, and will entertain the rest. Elffers's layout (he is identified as the co-conceiver and designer in the press release) is stylish, with short epigrams set in red at the margins. Each law, with such allusive titles as "Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy," "Get Others to Do the Work for You, But Always Take the Credit," "Conceal Your Intentions," is demonstrated in four ways: using it correctly, failing to use it, key aspects of the law and when not to use it. Illustrations are drawn from the courts of modern and ancient Europe, Africa and Asia, and devious strategies culled from well-known personae: Machiavelli, Talleyrand, Bismarck, Catherine the Great, Mao, Kissinger, Haile Selassie, Lola Montes and various con artists of our century... Although gentler souls will find this book frightening, those whose moral compass is oriented solely to power will have a perfect vade mecum.
In other words, those without a functional moral compass and lacking in human empathy: those for whom people are just tools. Everybody has his dark side, but fortunately most of us are not ruled by it.
Books like this can let people be aware of what sorts of people there are out there in the big world - even if it is not the intent of the book. As I have said, I trust people who pursue money more than I trust people who pursue power because, best used, money gives you power over your own life - not the lives of others.
Lately I have been thinking about the difference between learning things and learning about things.
The difference operates on several levels, I think. In the end, learning things is effortful but rewarding, while learning about things is effortless and much more fun.
I have always held that, if you cannot reconstruct a Chemistry equation from scratch, from pure reasoning, you really do not know the thing at all: You just know about it. (Yes, I am thinking at the moment about the Gas Laws.)
Had I a hundred free hours today, I would go on about the implications for psychotherapy, blogging, education, God, and life in general. But I don't.
Believe it or not, that question has been the biggest controversial undercurrent in modern neuroscience, and it remains an unanswered question among brain researchers, many of whom adopt a hard-core mechanistic view of the brain-mind issue. Like Scrooge, they might view dreams as a result of "a bit of undigested potato," but that does not do justice to the depth of their thinking on the subject.
There are plenty of good books on the subject written by wise and knowledgeable people. I won't write the essay here, but I am convinced that the idea of "mind," "self", "consciousness", and free will are so useful that they must mean something. In normal language, I believe people, or at least most people, have souls. However defined.
The subject arises because of an excellent review by Kenneth Silber of two books in Reason, entitled Are We Really Smart Robots? Mr. Silber has an impressive grasp of an immensely complex subject which involves neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, and culture.
One quote from the piece:
"Mind: A Brief Introduction and On Intelligence are thought-provoking and, no less important, anxiety-reducing. By dispelling overstated mechanistic claims arising from recent trends in neurobiology and philosophy, these books serve to combat public fears and forestall a possible backlash against science and technology. Humans can be part of the natural world without being mere machines, and without being outdone by our own machines. "
I recommend his piece to you as an impressive and succinct overview of the issues.
Neoneo takes on Barry Obama's pablum about "sitting down to talk with anybody." A quote:
I think some of the current faith in talk comes from the popularity of “the talking cure”—therapy. Much of the rest of this post will consist of me quoting myself from an earlier piece; no need to reinvent the wheel. As I wrote some time ago:
But even therapists must acknowledge that there are times when talking does no good, when therapy is inappropriate, and when the tools of the trade not only don’t work but can be harmful. But Pelosi and Lantos and so many others [such as Obama] seem to think of dialogue as something magical and universally appropriate [the following is a Lantos quote]:
“…however objectionable, unfair, and inaccurate many of [Ahmadinejad’s] statements are, it is important that we have a dialogue with him.”
Why? Why is it important? In order to feel that we are peaceful and good people? In order to empower him to think that we are fools? In order to allow him to buy time while he develops his nuclear weaponry? In order to give him greater prestige in the eyes of the world? In order to afford him propaganda opportunities and photo ops?
As I understand it, the goal of the management of international relations is to advance the interests of one's nation and of one's allies. If it is anything else, then we Americans should not be paying your salary. That's one reason I am more than dubious about the UN.
The Chinese and the Russians do not give a damn about Western virtuousness. It's nothing but weakness, in the big leagues. Tony Soprano would understand it.
“There is an inverse relationship between reliance on the state and self-reliance.” - William F. Buckley Jr.
I have read a number of comments and reviews of Dr. Lyle Rossiter's book The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness. I suppose I should read it, but I wish I had taken the time to write it myself, because the themes of the book seem close to much of what I have posted here about liberty.
"A social scientist who understands human nature will not dismiss the vital roles of free choice, voluntary cooperation and moral integrity – as liberals do," he says. "A political leader who understands human nature will not ignore individual differences in talent, drive, personal appeal and work ethic, and then try to impose economic and social equality on the population – as liberals do. And a legislator who understands human nature will not create an environment of rules which over-regulates and over-taxes the nation's citizens, corrupts their character and reduces them to wards of the state – as liberals do."
Dr. Rossiter says the liberal agenda preys on weakness and feelings of inferiority in the population by:
creating and reinforcing perceptions of victimization;
satisfying infantile claims to entitlement, indulgence and compensation;
augmenting primitive feelings of envy;
rejecting the sovereignty of the individual, subordinating him to the will of the government.
"The roots of liberalism – and its associated madness – can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind," he says. "When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious."
I know exactly what is meant here, but I have reservations about terming it "neurotic," which implies internal unconscious conflict. I think Dr. R. means "irrational."
When we talk about the beliefs of others, everybody tends to views those who disagree as irrational or uninformed. The fact is that peoples' convictions and attitudes can be based on any mix of emotion, experience, emotional tendencies, fantasy, personality type, logic, self-interest, intelligence and amount of information they have, emotional maturity, and so forth. There are many recipes that end up with a bowl of Chili.
For example, I know some Liberal types who are as benevolent, independent, intelligent, and high-functioning as can be, and who want nothing from the government. And I have met (and often read) Conservatives (and Liberals too) who seem driven, in part, by a paranoid undercurrent and sense of grievance.
Thus I think that the psychology of beliefs is complicated. As readers know, I prefer to use individual liberty as my starting point in political discussion, rather than psychology. Individual liberty is what my ancestors fought, died, and lived for and the realization of it, and the reverence for the idea, is what differentiates the US from the rest of the civilized world. I believe that life in a world of individual liberty is risky, often difficult, often daunting, filled with failure, but offers endless opportunity to pursue the realization of dreams. Still, liberty is obviously not for everybody, as voting patterns indicate. Not even a majority of Americans supported the Revolution.
The failure of modern "Liberalism" to maintain the ideals of personal liberty associated with classical liberalism is discouraging for me. Modern Liberals seem to celebrate leftist dictators, and, as I have posted, How Come Liberals never talk about Liberty? Clearly it is because they do not revere the founding ideas of America. I do revere them as the highest and most noble expression of the human spirit.
Image: Trumbull's painting of Cornwallis' surrender.
For at least 100 years, there has been a slow, steady flow of power from the individual to the state in the US. Despite American history, American ideals, and some parts of the Constitution which have grown weak with disuse, these flows of power have been approved by voters. Both liberals and Republicans have played roles in this trend, and even Reagan was (unwillingly) in the grip of this populist, quasi-socialistic trend which, in my view, amounts in the end in little more than a series of power grabs from people to government, with little to show for what was bought with that bowl of lentils other than more financial security for the poor and the removal of government-supported racial discrimination.
“A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling "Stop!"” - William F. Buckley Jr.
This trend has been driven by Leftist populism, and opposed, especially in the past 30 years, by Conservative populism. (Both populisms are interestingly discussed here in the WSJ.) Populisms sell dreams, usually with an "us vs. them" theme as an emotional hook. Paul at Powerline takes a gander at Obama's populist dream-marketing (my highlighting).
It goes without saying that Barack Obama will end the hardship and "struggle" in our daily lives. Under the Yes We Can Man, folks (other than conservative bloggers) will be able to quit their second jobs, the price of gasoline will plummet, and Ivy League grads will never again have to work for hedge funds to pay off their college loans.
Nor does Obama's magic end at our borders. Last night, he said he would solve our immigration problem in part by improving the economy of Mexico to the point that illegal immigrants will have no need or desire to enter the paradise Obama will create here.
Most magically of all, Obama will fix Mexico's economy even while refusing to trade with Mexico unless it complies with U.S. labor and environmental standards.
I know the competition is fierce, but Obama may turn out to be the most intellectually dishonest Democratic presidential nominee of my lifetime.
As the nurse-anesthetist said to me before they put me out for my last colonoscopy, "Pick a dream." My dream for America is to reclaim the best of our pre-60s, pre-1930s historical character and ideals. But, OK, I am rambling, and posting truisms. I'll stop for now, and close with this:
“I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth.” - William F. Buckley Jr.
"Mirroring" is about our mental reflection, or replication, of the behavior of others, usually of our own species or tribe.
Whenever neuroscience finds something which might connect the brain with the mind, folks in my line of work get excited and tend to over-react, as if needy of validation. As Dr X says:
...recently, there has been a backlash against the overselling of mirror neurons, it is clear that researchers who are studying the role of interactional synchronization (and desynchronization) are onto something very powerful. Gallese wrote an interesting paper connecting this research with a number of psychoanalytic and clinical constructs including "unconscious communication, projective identification, attunement, empathy, autism, therapeutic action, and transference-countertransference interactions."
As a Psychiatrist and Psychoanalyst, I have always been fascinated with the neurosciences even though I hated Neuroanatomy in med school. (I think I have some LD when it comes to 3-D mental imaging.)
The good Doctor links to a Gallese scientific essay on mirroring and interpersonal attunement, which may or may not be an over-interpretation of the neuroscience.
In the end, though, the neurosciences offer me nothing in understanding the human mind and human behavior, and probably never will because when we talk about brain and mind we are talking about different levels of organization. The neural operations are assumed, so, when I talk with a person, I am going to be more interested in where they decide to drive their car than in how the carburetor of their car works and, if I see a play, more interested in expression than I am in the physiology of the actors' vocal cords.
Early in his explorations of the human mind and soul, Freud had great hopes of correlating his discoveries with neuroscience. He was, after all, a Neurologist, not a Psychiatrist. I think that, were he alive today, he would still find such correlations difficult.
Editor:The Alan Parsons Project with I Am A Mirror (lyrics here). Echoes of I Am A Camera:
We Psychoanalysts know how much a person's memory is a story, and a story which evolves over time, both in detail and in theme. In psychoanalysis (and in analysis only - not in life!), we take the difficult and disciplined - but also luxurious - position of receiving memory (and everything else) as "text" or "narrative" in the pomo sense (although the technique far precedes pomo), and do not worry about its historical factuality because our job is to address psychological "facts" (see Spence and Wallerstein, or the wonderful Roy Schafer whose talk I attended in NYC last month).
In analysis, the potential power of that stance exceeds the power of truth-seeking in the everyday sense. We call it "psychic reality," and we confuse it with reality at our peril: in the human mind, belief, wish and fantasy often trump facts. Sanity lies in making those distinctions. My wise supervisor told me "When patients talk about the past, they are talking about the present. When they talk about the present, they are referring to the past. And they are always talking about the transference."
But that is analysis. In real life, as opposed to the somewhat strange "analytic situation," we analysts tend to be drawn to real hard human facts, like thirsty people on a desert.
That is why we often prefer Dickens and Melville to psychological studies or the New York Times.
The post yesterday with the photo of Brooklyn reminded me that I have wanted to post a free plug for Peter Luger's Steakhouse.
Manhattan has the best steak houses in the world, and many of them. I have been to all of the great ones over the years, but Peter Luger's in Brooklyn - a short cab ride from midtown Manhattan, is my favorite - the best and the most fun. They select and age their beef themselves.
T-bone for me, please.
The same wait staff has been there since 1887, it would seem: serious men. And Luger's now has valet parking for the "bridge and tunnel" crowd.
Up to 2 billion people on the planet are infected with tuberculosis - one third of the earth's population. That doesn't mean that they have contagious pulmonary TB, just that they contain the bug which has the capacity to attack them viciously at any time, especially if something weakens them, such as HIV, other illness, or malnutrition.
Most of the cases are in Africa and Asia - the so-called TB Belt which, in Africa, overlaps with the HIV Belt. (The combination of HIV and TB is termed "the perfect storm" of infectious disease.) However, over a million Americans are infected with TB.
I learned during my Yale Continuing Medical Education series this weekend that most HIV in the Northeast is transmitted by sharing needles, not via homosexual activity. I also learned that man-to-woman HIV is on the rise in the US. Woman-to-man transmission remains essentially impossible, apparently. I have been told that the rare reported cases were probably guys lying about their IV drug use or their homosexual activities.
In our New England cities, drug addiction, mental illness, HIV and TB is a common mix and a huge challenge to the dedicated docs who try to take care of these people, not only because of the medical difficulties but because these people are not reliable patients. Throw in a pregnancy too and you have a case that could take up half your time taking care of just one of these poor souls, who usually have few-to-no social supports in their lives but who also avoid, or will not cooperate with, government help.
Often, these folks break appointments as often as they make them because their lives are out of control, and nobody has the power to fix that. You send a visiting nurse, and they have moved out. "Lost to follow-up," until they reappear feeling desperately ill again.
During one of the talks, a famous clinical researcher on infectious disease just could not resist gratuitously throwing in a snarky Power Point slide mocking George Bush's intelligence (implicitly comparing it to his own, and "ours"). It always bothers me when these Ivy types (of which I happen to be one, along with Bush with his Yale BA and Harvard MBA) just assume that everyone in their audience has the same view of things...because we are, of course, the elite bien pensant folks, aren't we, all thinking alike?
Speaking of Moonbats, that reminds me of an email from a medical friend attending a medical conference and giving a talk in San Fran last week. He said that a young and lovely California doc approached him after his talk and said "I just needed to tell you that you have a special, beautiful aura."
I emailed back and asked "Was she hitting on you?"
He replied "I don't think so. I think it's just that California is a different planet."
I said "Guess so, because I think your aura is rather ordinary."
Photo:Robert Koch, the great man of infectious disease and historic benefactor of mankind, who discovered the TB, Anthrax and Cholera bugs, and created "Koch's Postulates" which made possible the conquest of most of the diseases that ravaged man through history.
I don't know the Clintons. Never met them, and would not presume to speculate about their personal issues - other than the patterns of behavior which have been made public over the years, and now the repeat of their familiar patterns in the primaries. (Who is really running?, I wonder. It's kind of strange, isn't it?)
So I cannot glibly claim that they are sociopaths, or narcissists, or anything. They might just be old-fashioned, take-no-prisoners, slippery money- and ego- and power-hungry pols with typical politician holes in their superegos (assuming they have functioning superegos). If I were a left-wing Dem, that's probably what I would say in their defence: "National politics is hardball. Everybody does it."
Everything I read in the news illustrates their ruthless and "uncaring" approach to political warfare, but even I would never have expected them to play the race card against a fellow Dem. They have now branded Obama as the "black candidate," and now clearly want him to return, repentantly, to the plantation with Jesse and Al...or they will let the hounds loose to chase him down in the swamp. Mr. Charlie, the boss-man, has warned him.
Their protestations of virtue and "caring" are, and always have been, cloying to me, and so obviously manipulative. They give every impression of having replaced personal conscience with a political pseudo-caring for others - as if the latter could redeem the weakness of the former. (As readers know, I do not want a "caring" politician. I am an American, and can take care of the caring myself, thank you, without a sovereign or a nanny.)
What I do notice, now that Obama has a tiny bit of traction, is how quickly those who do know them and have worked with them are leaving the ship. Already Kerry has, and Gore would if he had the nerve. This tells me that their past loyalty was based on fear and/or convenience - nothing more. These people know what the Clintons are really like.
I suspect that Obama's success has offered a chance for many to come out of the closet and make public the fact that few in politics really care for, trust, or wish to work with these people very much. That says more than any opinion of mine can say. Watch for a flood of Obama endorsements, and watch Sidney Blumenthal taking down their names in his little black book.
Is the MSM-manufactured and -supported Clinton veneer finally cracking? Maybe, but the MSM will plaster it over when the time comes, followed by a fresh coat of pinko paint. (I think it would be a kick to run against the Clintons, but not to run against Obama: he seems likeable and approachable and decent, despite being just another socialist Dem who would like to run my life for me.)
I suspect we have many readers who either live in New York City or who commute to the city daily by train. As an ex-New Yorker, living in Boston and New Hampshire, it is now a special treat for me to hop the train to New York three or four times a year to stay for a few days, usually with the excuse of giving a talk or to attending a medical meeting (which I did this past week and this week-end). I change from Amtrak to a Metro-North express in New Haven, and sometimes spend a day visiting my New Haven friends. I do not shop in NY (well, not very much), but I like to visit my old haunts, and to find new ones.
I got up to the front of the train, next to the driver, just after we took the train bridge from the Bronx to Manhattan:
Coming from Boston, I am greeted by the magnificence of Grand Central Station instead of the execrable Penn Station or the idiotic, government-designed JFK airport. Somehow, this lame snapshot managed to eliminate every bit of the grandeur and scale of Commodore Vanderbilt's creation:
Something new: The Grand Central Market. Wonderful food stalls, and perfect to pick up some stuff on the way home: rare cheeses, imported Italian sausages of every variety, 200 types of olive oil, a bread bakery, a patisserie, pre-cooked goodies and dinners, etc. etc. All of the old, bleak empty spaces of the Station have now been put to good use, and the whole place is like an upscale mall, and busy as can be:
And something old on the lower level: The good old Oyster Bar, with the best oyster stew in the world, and a larger selection of oysters - and fresh seafood in general - than you can find anywhere in the world. The entire Lower Level is now a food court, and good enough that I think people come in off the street for a snack. No chain restaurants - good stuff.
“We learned from these experiments that an individual will intentionally seek out an aggressive encounter solely because they experience a rewarding sensation from it,” Kennedy said. “This shows for the first time that aggression, on its own, is motivating, and that the well-known positive reinforcer dopamine plays a critical role.”
I cannot speak about mice, but every psychiatrist - and every person - knows that this is a fact for human beings. Freud, who thought harder about these things than most people, found it necessary to hypothesize a "death instinct":"an urge inherent in all organic life to restore an earlier state of things" (SE 18:36). It is a drive towards destruction. He could not make sense of human behavior and human thoughts without it.
Indeed, Freud mocked critics of that instinct theory as “…little children [who] do not like it when there is talk of the human inclination to ‘badness’…”.
The trick to a sane life is to keep all of these "instincts" on a tight-enough leash that they do not senselessly destroy one's life. Ideally, our conscience does that job for us, to help maintain our self-respect, if not the respect of others.
This piece from Obama's website indicates that he and others like Barbara Boxer support the notion of government benefits for military employees discharged due to Personality Disorders. (the link came to me via Opie via our Editor)
Being politicians, this is probably pure pandering rather than ignorance. Fact is that Personality Disorders cannot be acquired. They generally become evident in adolescence, if not earlier - but they cannot be created by military service or by anything else.
Since the most common seriouspersonality disorder in males is the untreatable Antisocial Personality (known to laymen as sociopaths, or people with no conscience, who lie easily, believe themselves to be above the rules of civil society, treat others as useful objects, and have minimal capacity for guilt - those without souls, as they used to say), one must wonder how many of these discharges are of people who did not belong in the service in the first place, would not follow the rules, and created problems for everybody else.
In the sane, good old days, they were known as "trouble-makers." Now they have a diagnosis. And, God knows, if we get Hillarycare, somebody equally sociopathic will probably try to make money pretending to "treat" these folks - on my nickel.
Wacky as it may sound to some, the only "cure" for this problem I have ever seen is for them to find God and to be deeply changed. And, even then, sometimes they just convincingly fake it to get out of trouble.
If there is an epidemic of drooling pedophile lechers hanging around the beaches, it's news to me, but maybe Maine is different:
The family has always enjoyed 
This interesting Viamontes essay might be tough sledding for those without some knowledge of the brain, but it is of great interest to those who try to understand people. 
Reasons to Quit the UCC
Neoneo takes on Barry Obama's pablum about "sitting down to talk with anybody." A quote:
The post yesterday with the photo of Brooklyn reminded me that I have wanted to post a free plug for 
Up to 2 billion people on the planet are 
I don't know the Clintons. Never met them, and would not presume to speculate about their personal issues - other than the patterns of behavior which have been made public over the years, and now the repeat of their familiar patterns in the primaries. (Who is really running?, I wonder. It's kind of strange, isn't it?) 
Vanderbilt researchers, studying mice, claim that