Good morning, students! I can see by the expressions on your faces that you are surprised to see me empty-handed this morning. After all, you took a test last class meeting and probably expected your results back today. But, don’t worry one little bit. I have a good reason for not grading your exams. I simply didn’t feel like doing it.

That's a quote from Mike Adams' piece titled I Feel, therefore I am at Town Hall, and in his satire it is clear that he really does "let his feelings out."

Complaining about "the kids these days" has been going on at least since Socrates and, no matter what you say, it tends to sound like a fuddy-duddy talking. Furthermore, how many of us were paragons of character in our youths?

Still, as a psychiatrist, I have to agree with Adams that the extent to which people feel entitled to elevate their feelings above the time-honored virtues like duty, discipline, consideration of others, and loyalty is a sign of the times. Most of us are lazy, at least some of the time; self-indulgent, some of the time; chose instant gratification over long-term goals, some of the time; and avoid challenges and hard things, at least some of the time. However, with good moral and character guardrails, we don't let ourselves get away with those kinds of infantilism for too long, partly because it doesn't work, and partly because it makes it impossible to respect oneself.

Blame it all on misunderstandings of Rousseau and Freud. If we are guided by emotion, rather than informed by emotion, we aren't much more than monkeys.

Read Adams' piece, and I will try to dig up an essay I wrote a few years ago on the subject, and I'll post it when I find it, buried somewhere on some hard drive.

Two noted economists, Kahneman and Krueger, think they can solve the "problem of human unhappiness" using their "U-index." Not only that, they believe policy-makers should listen to them.

If it were satire, it would be pretty funny. If they were psychologists, it would be ridiculous, because no psychologist or psychiatrist or psychoanalyst would claim to have the key to happiness, much less claim to be able to define the word - much less claim happiness to be the goal of human existence: defining the meaning of life is not their/our job. (Not to mention the fact that lots of folks are quite happy being grumpy and unhappy, while lots of others seem to be insatiable.)

And one secret known well by psychoanalysts is that the way folks feel has mainly to do with their relationship with themselves, not to their material or life circumstances - unless their circumstances are dire, which is rare in the Western world.

Thus, in the end, reading about these two guys feels a bit like reading a speech by Kim Il Sung, or something in Brave New World. Creepy. No-one wants government messing with our souls: we will deal with our own souls, thank you very much. Delivering the mail, killing terrorists, and leaving me alone are all that I ask of them.

A quote from Kling's usual fine essay at TCS:

My point is that -- with the exception of the Austrians -- economists have been going down a slippery slope of interventionism for a long time. Krueger and Kahneman are simply further down that slope.

another:

Perhaps the original sin here is to think of the economist's role as that of policy advocate. The policy advocate combines the job of a technician with that of a preacher (Robin Hanson made this point to me during a discussion that we had after hearing a talk from the economist Deidre N. McCloskey). The technician predicts the consequences of a policy. The preacher argues for the policy.

With research into subjective well-being, economists are making statements about what constitutes the good life. In doing so, we are encroaching on territory once claimed by philosophers and theologians -- and, more recently, by self-help gurus. In the 70's, it was I'm OK, You're OK. Now, we are saying "I have positive net affect, you have positive net affect."

Someone should tell these arrogant jokers and closet utopian totalitarians to stick to their knitting: I don't trust people with power who obtain their happiness by figuring out how to make me happy. Read Kling's entire piece here.

It is a cliche that the definition of neurotic person is someone who keeps doing the same thing, while expecting a different result. There is surely a good lesson in that expression. However, I often find it useful to think about things from the outside, in ... instead of inside, out. Especially with stubborn minds.

What do I mean? Erik Erikson famously said that "Psychotherapy begins where common sense ends." I like that. Despite being a psychoanalyst and thus by definition a happy diver into the human depths, I rarely take anyone deeper than is necessary. You don't want people to run out of air on the way down, or to get the bends on their way back.

This is why I like the idea of Reality Therapy. You may call it God, or Life, or Reality, or Chance, or whatever you chose, but It has a funny of way of teaching, and re-teaching us whatever we need to learn until we finally learn it, or die first. For me, this is analogous to the image of Christ at the door of our heart, knocking and knocking until we open the door.

Life is always trying to teach us something, and we all have problems and weaknesses and blind spots and areas of stupidity and of emotional immaturity where we can improve our mastery of life and of ourselves.

Sometimes, all we need to do is to stop, look, and listen to find what it is that life is trying to teach our stubborn minds. While I would rather piously - but truthfully - say that the red buds now emerging on my antique French Roses are teaching me that God is in his heaven, instead I will offer a timely but trivial example from my own life. I will quote myself:

An area of life in which I do not function well is with paperwork and book-keeping.  I could find plenty of excuses for this, and plenty of fancy psychological explanations, but I was raised to never make excuses. The truth is that it is a character flaw, a flaw which is thrown in my face every tax season. I procrastinate - which is precisely what I am doing right now by writing this piece. I love Quicken, but I don't enter my checks. I save business receipts, but they collect dust in piles and drawers and and pocketbooks. I have delivered three Suburban loads of good outgrown kids clothing to Goodwill this year, but God knows where those lists are. In the glove compartment, maybe? And what about cost basis for stocks bought in 1987? The computer those numbers were on died years ago. No clue. And since then, I have changed brokerages and the old guy retired.

I try to pretend that April 15 is an absolute deadline, or I would never get this chore done. And I cannot rely on the hubbie, because he will have nothing to do with my mess, so we file separately.

The lesson is just not the annual miserable last-minute hassle to get everything together. Last year, I had a fine of over $3000 for errors and lateness. Ouch. There is just nothing like reality to hit you over the head and force you to learn.

Life is the real final exam, but you get to take it over every day. I will never forget my favorite Neurology professor in medical school who overheard me and a friend bitching about an exam in the hallway. "This is nothing," he said. "Every patient you will ever have is the real exam. These exams are just for you to find out what you don't know, before it's too late."

Keep knocking, Reality. Eventually, we will get it. Thanks to God that every day is a new chance to learn and change.

Marriage is for White People. WaPo, H/T, Instapundit

At the same time, Morse posted a piece at Town Hall titled Marriage: A Social Justice Issue. She points out, as has been done before by others, that most of black poverty is due to the absence of marriage. Marriage creates wealth and social stability, among other things. One quote:

Marriage is a protective factor against social pathologies. Marriage generates and preserves wealth, unlike other family forms which dissipate wealth. A recent publication by the Boston-based Seymour Institute, "God’s Gift: A Christian Vision of Marriage and the Black Family", spells out the case for marriage as the most important next step for the future of black America. The report cites the fact that married families in the black community have twice as much income as unmarried black families.

The founder of the Seymour Institute for Advanced Christian Studies is the Rev. Eugene F. Rivers, III, the black Pentecostal minister whose work with poor urban youth has been widely celebrated. In the introduction to God’s Gift, Rev. Rivers states his case. "The impact of the decay of marriage among black people has been enormous, resulting in higher poverty rates among black families, school failure among children, and the intergenerational transmission of high teen pregnancy rates and female-headed households. Sociological research has implicated fatherlessness in violence, drug use and criminal behavior, especially among young black males."

To those who might argue that marriage is somehow alien to the black experience, linguist John McWhorter has an answer in the most recent issue of The American Enterprise. McWhorter observes that the high proportion of single parent families among blacks is a relatively new development, and not something that can be attributed to some amorphous "legacy of slavery."

And a comment from one of our readers, re the News Junkie post:

What a depressing article. Marriage was ordained by God for the procreation and rearing of children in the service of God. Spouses are supposed to be helpmates to each other not playmates. Marriage is for grownups, not hedonistic children.

Psychoanalytic theory isn't really very complicated. We only have three or four basic concepts, from which a myriad of fascinating ideas derive.

One of the key basic concepts is Transference. At the risk of annoying readers who hate fashionable words like "template," I have to use "template". To keep it simple, a transference is a relationship template, usually molded during youth, and mostly unconscious - by which we mean that we aren't aware that it is acting on us.

Transferences distort our relationships as our brains attempt to apply the template of prior relationships, or, more often, our distorted versions of prior relationships, onto current ones.

Most common are paternal and maternal transferences, but sibling transferences, grandparent, friend and avuncular transferences are common too. (What's the female version of avuncular? Avauntuler?)

Because our transferences tend to be beneath our awareness, they are usually only evident to analysts when observing behaviors or feelings which do not seem to fit the real current-life situation. Thus the less transference-driven our relationships are, the more mature and in reality they tend to be.

As psychoanalytic concepts have been integrated into everyday thinking over the past 100 years, there has been a degradation of the technical terms. Thus we can talk about a "maternal transference" towards government, for example, when someone experiences their government as "need-fulfulling", or a "paternal transference" towards government when it is experienced as "opportunity-providing, demanding, and challenging."

Even if such uses of the concept may not fit the technical usage, they are sometimes useful ways of thinking. For example, it is commonly stated that people tend to view the Democrats as the Mommy Party, and Republicans as the Daddy Party. It sounds like a ridiculous simplification when you hear it, but there is something to it: politics is not rational.

I was moved to write this post because of a couple of items on the blog this week. Pieces about Europe: the passivity of Britain and Norway in the face of their enemies within; the economic irrationality of French socialism, etc.

Such things represent what we would term "regressions" to "transferences."  In other words, backwards developmental steps to more immature and less realistic ways of experiencing the world. When a kid privileged and smart enough to attend the Sorbonne feels he needs to rebel for job security, you know you are dealing with people who have reverted to a child-like, maternal experience of their government. It does not bode well for a nation whose youth seeks security over challenge, and comfort over life adventure.

Similarly, in Britain, with their willful denial of the social cancer they have welcomed, we see a "regression" to a "nicey-nice" childish view of the world in which evil and unpleasantness do not exist - a Mommy World. They tried that before, didn't they?

Despite all of the push in the direction of the Mommy World since Franklin Roosevelt, the US has never fully succumbed to the fantasy that government can make everything "nice." Thank goodness for that. In the US, many people tend to more annoyed when the government does something than when it doesn't.

Thus the US does, indeed, tend to have less transference towards government - eg a less emotionally distorted relationship with government. Most of us want it to just drive away our enemies and to leave us alone, but we do have our share of those who wish the government could make all of our dreams come true.

Lots more to say but this is getting too long. If you like my ideas, click our Psychoanalyst category and read more and get smart.

Eisenhower was the last Republican president not to be subject to rage unto paranoia, press hostility, and continual assault, disrespect, and contempt from the political opposition. (However, it is a fact that the leader of the war that saved the "free world" from fascism was widely viewed as a dunce by the Adlai Stevenson supporters.)

If you are old enough to recall, Nixon was subject to what we would now call a "Nixon Derangement Syndrome" which finally brought him down. So were Ford and Reagan and Bush 41. All were demonized, called "stupid," and intensely hated by the opposition.

Having learned this unfortunate lesson, the Republicans finally decided to try that same game with Clinton, who they managed to handcuff politically via relentless ankle-biting, but were never able to rally intense hatred against him - probably partly because of press sympathy but also because the foundations of hatred were not present.

Where does this hatred come from? I think the Left believes that they are the "good smart guys," and any Repub a "bad dumb guy." I do not think that Conservatives tend to use such a black-and-white view of politics. Most Conservatives I know do not see themselves as the good guys, but as having better ideas. Thus, amongst Liberals, you rarely see the kind of social stresses that people like neo-neocon go through in being a neocon in a Left-liberal community.

(Take me, for an example. I do not believe that I am "smarter" or "better" than Leftys and Liberals. I do believe that the ideas I hold about the relationship of the individual to the State are better ideas, that offer to bring out the best in people, but "some of my best friends are liberals," and it doesn't bother me at all. Friendship and shared interests should trump politics. When my Liberal pals are willing to discuss issues rationally, and not emotionally, I think it can be fun to debate and that it can add something to a friendship.)

Along with the good guy/bad guy syndrome comes a sense of entitlement, I believe. If we are the good guys, then we deserve to be in charge. If we aren't, then something has gone terribly wrong, or something nefarious has occurred, or Americans are idiots. Feeling powerless when you "know" you are right makes some people nuts. (Never forget, though, that if American voters are idiots - it's the same idiots that vote when you win an election.)

I find the hatred that is generated by this disappointed sense of entitlement to be very destructive. Debating ideas and world views is great, but hatred, lying, tantrums, and attribution of malevolence to other public servants is not the civil society I want to live in.

(I also believe that not everything about this subject is psychological, per se. Liberals care more intensely about politics, because they are more invested in the role and power of the state. As a rule of thumb, except in the case of war, Conservatives tend to want to lessen the power of the State over the individual, Liberals to increase it. And yes, I think Bush is a conservative at heart, but a politician in practice....and I mean in "practice".)

My message to the Bush-Deranged: there is no good vs. bad here. There are simply differing ideas and differing views of human nature - all deserving of rational debate. Let's debate - not hate.

"Dane-geld" was the money you paid the Vikings to leave you alone, a bit like "protection" money in Brooklyn, or the way companies give money to Jesse Jackson. It's called "legal extortion".  Horsefeathers remembered these lines of Kipling:

It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
    To puff and look important and to say:—
“Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
    We will therefore pay you cash to go away."

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
    But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
    You never get rid of the Dane.

Indeed. And ultimately, after hundreds of years of raiding and pillage and rape and murder and destruction, the Danish Vikings, from Sven Forkbeard, to various Canutes, etc, ruled England for many years before the Norman Invasion in 1066.

My free-association to these thoughts about appeasing an enemy leads to an excellent and, for me, very influential book: Hannah Arendt's Eichman in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. I will not try to summarize all of the wisdom in this book, but one of her many points is that Eichman did not have horns - he was a bureaucrat who wanted to get ahead and please his superiors. An average schlemiel, you might say.

Part of the book refers to how the trusting and possibly overly-civilized, or innocent, Jews cooperated with German authorities. From an Amazon review by Egolf: 

That's enough for now. This isn't a lecture. You connect the dots. Or let us show you modern-day civilized, humanitarian, humble, sensitive submission - let Gateway do it for you, - in Denmark!!! - with pictures... These are not the Danes who rescued the Jews: these are the Danes who submit, by reflex, to aggression. We all have people like that.

Few like to admit that hate and anger are enjoyable for human beings. From a psychiatric standpoint, hate and anger are "pleasurable" emotions, and righteous anger and hate are among the most satisfying of human emotions.

I had planned to write Part 2 on Depression this week, but this is more pressing. Our News Junkie put his finger on it yesterday when he referred to the "Hate Party" going on in the Middle East. Indeed it is a party. What we are not permitted to report, in this modern-day New Puritanism world, is how much fun they are having.

Those Moslem haters of the Western World are having a great time. Adrenaline flowing. Peer-sanctioned excuses for disinhibition of emotion, leading to destruction. Mobs led by instigators getting everyone high on regressive group-think. Riots, fights, and mayhem run deep in human nature. Don't we enjoy watching it on the news, and in movies?

This is not unique to extremist Moslems, by any means. The NJ referred to the KKK's fire-lit Parties of Hate, but I can simply point to yesterday's Coretta King funeral for the most recent American Hate Fest, or the Kos website. People, sad to say, do enjoy opportunities for free expression of hate and anger. It is common, in Psychiatry, to find patients who refuse to let go of it, it is so satisfying and enjoyable. (I know, this truth is not supposed to be stated. People are just so nice at heart, aren't they, Jimmy Carter?)

It is not necessary to be a paranoid to be looking for a fight. All humans are energized by a battle, but generally the guard-rails of culture and civilization contain the expression of these impulses. But humans welcome socially-sanctioned opportunities for it. Paranoid individuals, and those from paranoid-tinged cultures, have an easier time finding those opportunities, especially when led by clever manipulators. Europe, and the Middle East, now are filled with such folks who are like the half-in-the-bag guy at the bar saying "What you lookin' at?"

Spoiling for an exciting fight. And dangerous, because they haven't signed the Social Contract. It's one of the reasons we need civilization: not to repress such emotions, but to contain our base human nature so we can pursue more worthy goals and more benign relationships.

In this New Age of psychology run amuck, we all give too much validity and credibility to emotion. Since when are we expected to "understand people's feelings"? That is pop psychobabble, for the most part. It's very odd that a revolution of Reason, The Enlightenment, has led to this idealization of emotion. Can we blame it all on Rousseau? As irrational biological instincts which really cannot be controlled (although behavior in response to them can be, by normal sober adults), emotions deserve no particular respect, and they are meaningful data only in a shrink's office (or, if the emotion is passionate love, to your beloved). How come on this blog we constantly feel the need to repeat the AA Mantra: "Feelings aren't Facts."?

How to deal with out of control anger, tantrum, and mayhem? In my profession, with firm limits. In the big world, with the firm limits of force. Such things wake people up to an anti-regressive reality. Nothing else will. Reason does not work with the regressed, with the paranoid, or with those intoxicated with the barbarian, yet human, joys of rage and destruction. Fight for free speech? With great pleasure!

I have never thought that it made much sense to talk about "happiness."

 For one, I do not know how to define it. For another, I suspect that joie de vivre is probably more of an inborn talent than something which can be sought. For another, I think people were made for work and responsibility and to find God - not for happiness. Self-respect is a tall enough order, in itself. And "self-esteem" is psychobabble: I have yet to meet the person who deserved it.

I still blame Jefferson for being a weeny and giving in by replacing the words "pursuit of property" with the vague and new-agey "pursuit of happiness." (Yes, that did happen.) I think that set a crazy standard for a life which is in many ways a vale of tears, confusing, mysterious, and an endless challenge.

It is much easier to talk about what doesn't make us happy, or makes us unhappy, or upset, angry, disappointed, fearful, or pained.

As our readers know, I rarely refer to pop, or especially "lite pop" psychology pieces, but this one on "Happiness Traps" by Baker in Prevention Magazine has been brought up by a couple of my patients in Boston. It is simple, clear, and practical.

We did a piece here many months ago on Cowboys and Cowgirls, and another piece on What do Men Want?  Now Newsweek has a major piece on "the trouble with boys." One quote:

In elementary-school classrooms—where teachers increasingly put an emphasis on language and a premium on sitting quietly and speaking in turn—the mismatch between boys and school can become painfully obvious. "Girl behavior becomes the gold standard," says "Raising Cain" coauthor Thompson. "Boys are treated like defective girls."

Well, duh. More from the piece:

Boys have always been boys, but the expectations for how they're supposed to act and learn in school have changed. In the last 10 years, thanks in part to activist parents concerned about their children's success, school performance has been measured in two simple ways: how many students are enrolled in accelerated courses and whether test scores stay high. Standardized assessments have become commonplace for kids as young as 6. Curricula have become more rigid. Instead of allowing teachers to instruct kids in the manner and pace that suit each class, some states now tell teachers what, when and how to teach. At the same time, student-teacher ratios have risen, physical education and sports programs have been cut and recess is a distant memory. These new pressures are undermining the strengths and underscoring the limitations of what psychologists call the "boy brain"—the kinetic, disorganized, maddening and sometimes brilliant behaviors that scientists now believe are not learned but hard-wired.

Exactly right. Hard-wired. Read the whole thing. Once upon a time, every grandmother in the world knew all of this.

One common failing of good-hearted people is to imagine that everyone else is good-hearted and well-intentioned, if not at least justified in their emotions. We're all entitled to our beloved emotions, right? Since Rousseau changed the rules?

Similarly, cold, suspicious and malevolent people tend to imagine that all people are malevolent or purely self-interested.

Both are fatally foolish.

Everyone who knows anything about themselves knows that we all contain both loving and destructive aspects. Civilized humans in Western civilization try to put a leash on their destructiveness and selfishness, so as to join a civil and humane society based on our remarkable, unique, and precious Judeo-Christian religious ideas about the God-endowed value of individual human existence. We may sometimes fail in this ideal due to emotional weakness, character flaws, or immaturity, but civilized people in the Western world aspire to this sense of community, respect, mutual concern, trust, and sympathy. It's an implicit religious-cultural-social contract, and many if not most of us try our best to live up to that contract, both for respect from others and for self-respect. It means a lot to most of us, and we do, and should, feel rotten and self-contemptuous -  guilty - when we break this contract of "conscience and good cheer".

Is this approach to the world and to reality worthy of protection with arms? I say "Yes". I say that it is precious, far beyond anything material or comfortable. Our material blessings are just a lucky side-effect of our view of reality, but they can be seductively tranquillizing and sedating.

But such an attitude towards life is not universal - it is cultural and even personal. Such attitudes towards life make us suckers and easy prey for the malevolent, the schemers, the predators, the anti-social, the power-seekers and the con artists - The Lords of the Flies who dominate so much of the planet from Sicily to Africa to Venzuela to Gaza to North Korea to our neighborhood insurance scammers and grifters and politicians. I have already written a little on the blog about evil here, and about related subjects here.

Humans tend to want to live in fairy tales of their own creation, to inhabit worlds that they spin out of their own hopes and dreams and fears and imaginations - their own fictions - until a harsh reality comes to call. At that moment, we humans can either rise and grow, or succumb and regress deeper into fantasy, and to raise the walls of defense of our fantasy world. Commonly, it is external misfortune or aggression which trigger these challenges to our psychological comfort and waken us from our personal dreams. It is truly painful for everyone to be forced to adjust to disturbing  realities. It is the burden of being human.

Why do some people seem to want to deny the existence of evil in the world? Because they will have to deal with it, and it's a hassle, or worse. It disrupts a comfortable illusion. And it requires that we confront whatever malevolence we may have in ourselves, too, which is not fun to do. Nevertheless, confronting true external evil is daunting, scary, and complicated, and forces us to locate the required courage and aggression within ourselves - to the point of being willing to die for home and family and country - when we would prefer to be comfortable.

In psychiatry, among other things, we deal with fear, both realistic and imaginary (aka "neurotic") fear. To reduce all external danger to the realm of the neurotic is the height of decadance and naivete, as it the opposite.  The world contains both lions and imaginary lions. Humans have to be wise enough to discern the difference.

The world is full of plenty of people seeking power and domination. That's the way the world is. Maybe they are crazy, or maybe not, but they still exist. Pretending that they do not is to be a modern-day Candide. And to casually dismiss evil or aggressive intentions of others, trusting in their basic humanity, can be suicidal. The Jews who remained in Germany found that out recently, as did people in Stalin's Russia, Serbia, Rwanda, the World Trade Center, the Sudan, and now in the Congo. Humans, especially in groups, can be a highly dangerous, ruthless, murderous species - especially to their fellow man. Is this news?

It runs deep in American culture to stand up to evil, and to point it out, and to actively resist it, whether in our own society or in others. That is a fine, strong, and noble societal trait, and I hope we will always remain true to that tradition.

Divorce

According to Marquardt, the author of the excellent Between Two Worlds, two-thirds of divorces in America are "optional" or elective, ie not a consequence of abuse, violence, addictions, adultery, or similar lethally destructive misbehavior.

Orson Card has written a wise, thoughtful, and mature review of Marquardt's book, and I agree with every word in it. In my experience, many "unhappy" people are unwilling to see that much unhappiness comes from within, not from without, and refuse to see that they have the power to make things work, or not work. Or to see that much human misery comes from people's unwillingness, or inability, to grow up.

And both Card, and Marquardt, are emphatic about the point that a family is not a casual institution entered into for "personal fulfillment" or selfish gratifications: it is meant to be a rock and foundation for growing people - both the married people and any kids. Being married is difficult, sacrificial, possibly sacred, and oftentimes happy and peaceful, especially when we take it for granted and do not even realize that we have a good thing going. Marriage is not "natural." Honeymoons never last; passion fades when faced with daily reality; everyone has terrible, nasty flaws; the grass is rarely greener except for a brief time. It's too bad that the adolescent fantasies of true love that lasts forever is not automatic, but must be built and re-built over time.

Some quotes from Card's review:

"....Between Two Worlds is not just an important book, it is a highly readable one. And, to put it plainly, I believe that anyone who has children and is contemplating a divorce should regard it as a solemn duty to read this book first, and take its findings into consideration."

and:

"Given that our whole society seems to believe the myth of romantic love -- that hormonal yearnings should trump rational commitments -- it's hardly a surprise that many perfectly good marriages break up over matters that should have been left behind in adolescence. Bad enough the heartbreak such misbehavior causes among the formerly married. But when children are involved, the selfishness and callousness of the behavior of some supposed adults should earn the disapproval of all civilized people.

But we are all so nice, so nonjudgmental, that we have to assure everyone that we aren't condemning anybody, that "it's your life." "

Read the whole thing.

Knowing and not-knowing

It is common for people to both know and yet not know something at the same time. Sometimes we call it "not noticing," or "avoidance" or "denial"; sometimes we call it "repression" or "forgetting,"and sometimes we call it "ignoring reality."  Sometimes we must call it plain "stupid."

There are many levels of "not knowing," including the always-challenging "not knowing that you're not knowing" (as in the charming Elvis ditty here: I Forgot to Remember to Forget Her. )

There's usually a pretty good reason for "not knowing" something we subliminally know, or suspect: it's almost always to avoid anxiety, worry, pain, loss, shame, guilt, weakness, inconvenience, conflict with others, conflict within ourselves, and other sorts of discomforts.

When we refuse to know what we know, and we act on our "not-knowing", it usually works out badly. Still, it happens all the time, to the best of us. And we all know far more than we want to be aware of about ourselves, and about what goes on around us. "No brain, no pain". When I was in my analysis, which all psychoanalysts must undergo to cleanse the scalpel, so to speak, my analyst used to refer to "un-thought thoughts," which I find to be a very valuable concept in life and in my work as a shrink. Such unthought-thoughts can effect us in all sorts of sneaky ways, beneath our awareness or beyond our willingness to confront them directly. They effect us because there is ultimately no escape from the ideas in our heads, except death. Or maybe good therapy. But there are many such thoughts that we need to know, and need to face, to be fully in reality.

Still, we all waste energy avoiding some of our thoughts. I advise people to sometimes turn off their car radios, put down the book, don't have that second Scotch, step away from that computer monitor (but not Maggie's Farm), turn off the boob tube, listen to those thoughts that drop down in the middle of the night - and confront them. It's not fun, but it is worthwhile: we have a lot to tell ourselves, if we would only listen. It's analogous to prayer: sometimes we need to shut the hell up and listen.

Therefore it is fascinating to me, but not surprising, to see that there is a defineable neurophysiological correlate to such common occurences: why not blame it on your brain and let yourself off the hook?  Science Daily. 

I found some interesting statistics:

25% of search engine requests are for porn.
12% of websites are porn sites.
8% of all emails are porn-related (2.5 billion/day)
Number of websites offering illegal child porn: 116,000
Adults admitting to an internet sexual addiction: 10%
Male/female breakdown of porn site visitors: 72%/28%
People admitting to visiting porn sites at work: 20%

Alas, no blogger can compete with the power of raw animal instinct, can they? One can only envy their website traffic.  More numbers and stats here. 

Interesting numbers, accurate or not, but can anything be said about them, other than that there are lots of people who are looking to have their sexual imaginations stimulated in a fairly effortless way? Which is a true "Duh."

Depending on one's degree of mental inhibition (which is highly variable from person to person), people commonly and routinely experience every sort of sexual fantasy, including the bizarre, deviant, uncomfortable, and immoral, so, in a sense, the brain is the ultimate porn site as decreed by the amoral laws of biology. (As the old joke goes: What is the dirtiest part of a person? The brain. Or the modern version: The brain is the primary erogenous zone.)  Is inhibition of sexual thoughts and fantasy good or bad, healthy or unhealthy? Neither - these are just personality differences and differences of choice (in the sense of choice of what thoughts one is willing to welcome and to entertain), generally speaking. There is a lot to be said for "thought control," but only when it is self-administered.

Mind you, we are talking about fantasy here - not action. Turning fantasy into action is an entirely different subject, because many, if not most, ideas and images are best left in the mental realm where consequences are few (other than shame or guilt about one's wicked or wierd thoughts, which is also normal), assuming that one has a modicum of post-adolescent judgement, maturity, and self-control. After all, we aren't ordinary animals and we can make choices. But enjoying porn isn't action, really.

Do sexual thoughts occupy and distract people's minds more than they like to admit in "studies"? For sure. Is it "sick" to use porn sites as a fantasy aid? No, not intrinsically, but if any human behavior is compulsive, including golf or chess, it could be a problem or a symptom. Can it be a poor substitute for real human interaction? Sure, but not everyone is a South Beach party-gal or -guy - thank God. Is it harmless fun? Probably, except when it's predatory, of course, which is not only evil but can be illegal... and that last group of 20% had better watch out - they could lose their jobs if Big Brother is watching. Is porn a little sad and lonely? Sure. Does it feel a little sleazy? Sure - it feels like slumming to most people. Is porn morally and spiritually pure from a Christian standpoint? Well, that's outside my jurisdiction today, but it's not an unreasonable subject for a lively discussion.

(Photo: If I could remember where I found that photo, I'd credit the clever person. All that the keyboard lacks is a Maggie's Farm button.)

The "Trolley Problems," and other Moral Dilemmas

The field of Cognitive Psychology has shown a recent interest in the psychology of morality. Can psychology tell us what is moral? Definitely not. Can psychology help us understand how we approach moral issues in our lives? Maybe. Is there a common "moral instinct" which most humans share? Quite possibly. Can looking at difficult moral dilemmas illuminate what keeps people on the right track most of the time? Doubt it. Still interesting, though.

Rebecca Saxe sums up current thinking in the psychology of morality: "Do the Right Thing."

The Old Doc asked me to jot down some thoughts about his post on Transgender. His post was pretty good for an off-the-cuff piece, and I can't do much better, but I can say more.

But let me first explain that the psychoanalytic view of the world is a strange and highly skeptical one: we rarely take unexamined thoughts and feelings and actions about important matters at face value, but rather regard them as surface data. Like oil geologists, we survey the terrain not because we value hills, but because of the clues they offer about what lies beneath. In AA they like to say that "Feelings aren't facts," and that is the truth.

Therefore we are inclined to view thoughts and feelings people have about their bodies and their sexuality as just that - thoughts and feelings, not facts, until demonstrated otherwise. Same as their thoughts and feelings about their mothers, or their jobs, spouses, or money, or anything else that matters. For example, I have seen patients who thought they were gay, and weren't, just as often as I have seen patients who refused to admit that they preferred guys. The Old Doc is right - people's feelings about what they are is always a muddle, and especially in adolescence. This is why analysts are always reluctant to label anyone: to stick with the geology metaphors, when there is a rattling of teacups in the cupboard, we want to know whether it's a mouse running around, or an earthquake in the neighborhood. Plain "rattling teacups" doesn't do it for us. 

As a consequence of our skepticism about accepting thoughts, feelings, and fantasies at face value, we naturally also are skeptical about behavior. We know that people often do not know why they do what they do, even though they may offer a ready explanation. People are great at rationalizing and justifying things they do for irrational or hidden motives of which they are often unaware.

So, given all of that, just a few disjointed points:

First, the idea of how we feel and think of ourselves, and the melding of  "female" and "male" identities, were discussed at length by Freud, as the Old Doc recalls, and is nothing new. However, most analysts would tend to regard a person's viewing themselves as another sex as a surface sign of what we call an identity disturbance.

Second, the idea of how we think of ourselves (not for the moment talking about partner choice) is sculpted by culture: it is not a "something" independent of culture.  For example, the Whites at Harvard showed in their cross-cultural studies that man and woman roles are related to the economy (hunter-gatherer vs. agricultural in the "simplest" societies, with, as I recall, more gender differentiation in the hunter gatherer societies. 

Third, Bettelheim's book, Symbolic Wounds, demonstrated the yearning by men across cultures for the power of the woman's body: ie. Bettelheim showed that there is male "womb envy" as there may be female "penis envy." (These refer to usually unconscious thoughts and feelings and fantasies.) He described various male pubertal rites across cultures of symbolic "menarche" including subcision or circumcision at time of puberty.  In US cultures, this is more often seen as ear or nose piercing by boys, and the like.  The phenomenon of "couvade" among some American Indians (male hysterical pregnancy at the time of the woman's pregnancy) was culturally institutionalized in some Indian cultures.

Sensitive Men

As a female who enjoys the company of men, I find "sensitive" men unappealingly slimy. They are either weenies, or manipulators. You can care about somebody without wearing it on your sleeve, and real men do not wear it on their sleeve. Real men show things in action, through the way they live, and not in words and show and expressions of emotion and empathy. That's mostly the female department. All that you guys are allowed to do is to listen to us, or to pretend to, and to make occasional noises to indicate that you might be paying attention, or that you are, at least, awake, after we have given you our all and you are at peace. We know you love our magnificent pleasure-filled bodies, and the charming way we turn our heads to glance at your studly selves across a crowded room, or the way we put our hands in the back pockets of our jeans, Bette Davis style, but we'd like to imagine that our hearts and souls matter to you, too. Grant us that fantasy, fellas. It means a lot to us. We are needy souls, and it isn't our fault. God made us this way.

Why does this subject come up? Well, Right Thinking has another one of his deeply sensitive and thoughtful reactions to a study of why men die before women - a study which suggests that if men would become sensitive liberals, they might live longer. A sample of his impressive, if anectdotal, scientific analysis:

So, in other words, turn men into pussy liberals, and they’ll live longer.  What a crock of shit.  The real reason men don’t live as long is because women drive us to the grave.  Really.  Think about it.  Our sex lives are over in our mid-30’s if we are married, so we have nothing to live for outside of football, gambling, and strip joints.  If a man is not married, then he is chasing young ass around the nightclubs, which includes lots of drinking, which also leads us to an early death.

I wonder how much teabag tax money was wasted on this “study.” Any study that doesn’t say its women and their constant nagging and bullshit that drives us to an early grave, is 100% scientifically invalid.

A persuasive case, no? Girls and ladies, take note.

From Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie:

Mrs. Darling first heard of Peter when she was tidying up her children's minds. It is the nightly custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day. If you could keep awake (but of course you can't) you would see your own mother doing this, and you would find it very interesting to watch her. It is quite like tidying up drawers. You would see her on her knees, I expect, lingering humorously over some of your contents, wondering where on earth you had picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not so sweet, pressing this to her cheek as if it were as nice as a kitten, and hurriedly stowing that out of sight. When you awake in the morning, the naughtiness and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind, and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread out your prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on.

The J.M. Barrie website is a good source of info on the enormously popular turn-of-the-century Scottish playwright. He had so little confidence in the commercial potential of Peter Pan that he underwrote its production himself, so as to protect investors. After the play became successful, he wrote the book. Like Lewis Carroll and Arthur Conan Doyle, his "minor" work is what he is remembered for.

Political Medicine

It used to be quite hip for medical schools to discuss the cultural aspects of medicine, but that fad has passed - there are just too many facts to learn, and young doctors don't have patience with the soft stuff.  But the subject comes up after reading about Dr. Adel Sadeq, an Egyptian psychiatrist who puts suicide bombers in this context:

When the [suicide bomber] dies a martyr's death, he attains the height of bliss. As a professional psychiatrist, I say that the height of bliss comes with the end of the countdown: ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. And then, you press the button to blow yourself up. When the martyr reaches 'one,' and then 'boom,' he explodes, and senses himself flying, because he knows for certain that he is not dead. It is a transition to another, more beautiful world, because he knows very well that within seconds he will see the light of the Creator...

Puts Prozac to shame. He goes on to argue the necessity of driving the Jews into the sea. If you are a Jew in Egypt, and need a psychiatrist, I suggest avoiding Dr. Sadeq. Sometimes cultural differences are underestimated because people seem so much the same in so many ways, but when you read something like this, you realize that many Moslems, inclduing prosperous, professional Egyptians, are living in a different reality entirely. They have modern medicine, embedded in 7th century ideas. Entire piece here, on neo neo-con.

Why most shrinks don't take many notes

This is why, re Marilyn Monroe. Her doctor is dead, but someone supposedly got notes and/or tapes. Who does tapes? Bad idea. BTW, Atlas Shrugs has a charming photo - art, not porn - of Marilyn, here.

Denial of Evil, Nihilism, and the Left, Part 1

We who try to be reasonable are befuddled by why the American and European Left have a reflex to defend the Jihadists, and to oppose combating them. The fact that they do so is amply demonstrated, endlessly, by the Great Horowitz, among others.

My theory is that the Left is nihilistic at heart. For whatever reasons, they have passed criticism and have come to hate their own civilization, which is admittedly imperfect but which, at the same time, cannot be matched anywhere, anytime, in history in its freedom, opportunity, safety, stability, and idealism. (Yale's famous rejection of the Bass donation was a high-water mark of this self-hating trend.) The consequence is an anti-Western bias, but they refuse to offer an alternative, either because they do not have one, or because any offered would be rejected by voters. My belief is that our civilization is a fragile sculpture, a rare and precious thing, and that our Western Civilization is one of the most amazing things that humans have created, with, at its core, the idea that every individual human matters, as a child of God. That’s the core of it all, and it is at the core of Western medical practice and medical ethics too, since Hippocrates. We care for their injured in our hospitals, and they behead their prisoners. That is a big difference, one which relegates them to the barbarian category. “All men are created equal…”

It is not my brief on Maggie’s to get into politics, but I cannot ignore this one. What is behind the Left’s apologizing for Jihadists? Why does England welcome them? Why does the US welcome them? Why France and Germany and Sweden? Why does Canada welcome them? Why welcome your destroyers into your home?

I wrote a piece on Evil several months ago, but it had no political content. Hatred and destructiveness can derive from hundreds of sources, but most of the time social norms and rules prevent us from acting on such impulses. They are very human evils, or sins, if you will. If you live in a culture, or subculture, which endorses them, many will be pleased to follow – see Nazi Germany, the Mafia, the Weathermen, or any number of murderous, sadistic civilizations and cultures and subcultures throughout history - and relieved to be given a sanctioned outlet for such emotions. Humans are natural-born killers, after all, just like chimps, and it takes a heck of a lot of civilization to keep us on the right side of the road.

It’s clear to me from all that I have read that the Jihadists have long identified Jews and Christians as the “other” – sub-humans occupying potentially Islamic space. We do not do the same to them – on the contrary, we in the West bend over backwards to make them welcome and to accommodate their ways. Their denial of our humanity is their evil, even if it is endorsed by their culture and their religion, and their using our generosity and tolerance for their own purposes is evil as well, though they see it as justified by Mohammed. Fooling an Infidel is not a sin, and we "nice" infidels are too eager to be fooled.

So we quickly arrive at the religious core of morals and ethics, from whence they derive. The Jihadist believes that war on the West is demanded of him by God. I refuse to get morally relativistic and multicultural about that about that - leave that to the anthropologists. To me that is evil. Why does the Western Left like to ally themselves with this? One might imagine that woman-hating, fascistic, anti-human rights, primitively-capitalistic, oil and opium-dependent, hyper-religious movements would be anathema to them.

The UCC, More

The UCC did vote in favor of divestment re Israel. This kind of thing just amplifies my critical piece on the UCC a few weeks ago. But with the US as the major ally and supporter of Israel, I don't understand why they aren't voting to divest of US companies also. 

Memories of Childhood

Children's memories are famously unreliable, as are adult's memories of the past. Memory is distorted in hundreds of ways for hundreds of reasons for which there is no space here. But there is a truly "dark age" of birth through about age 6 in which children have what Freud termed "infantile amnesia." Nothing from that period seems to be retrievable, at least not in the usual ways.

Cognitive Daily speculates, and provides an excellent thumbnail summary, on the subject of infantile amnesia here. But I'd like to add a psychoanalytic dimension to the subject, despite the Munger's discomfort with analytic theorizing - some of which is surely deserved and some of which has to do with different disciplines. The realm of "meaning" crosses many discipline boundaries, and is a strange and baffling subject.

Several points of interest:

1. Memories from birth through 6 may not be retrievable in the sense of  "I remember my 4th birthday party," but emotional reactions, and states of mind - neither of which are readily expressible, may be solidly engraved in the old hippocampus - and why not? Deep memories can be visceral, not just visual and verbal.

2. People create things which psychoanalysis terms "screen memories." These are not literally accurate memories, but they are mental constructions which may capture something meaningful from the past - an issue, a conflict, a fear, a joy, a wish, etc., in a similar way in which dreams do. Thus in analysis, we tend to be more interested in the psychological meaning of memories and recollections than in their objective truth. We psychiatrists and psychoanalysts are not historians of truth, we are historians of meaning. When we have a spontaneous memory, it probably carries a telegram, from ourself to ourself, relevant to the present.

3. Memory distortion - I said I would say nothing about this, but just one superficial comment. We all re-write our histories, especially to protect ourselves from pain, or to protect our self-respect, or to create a story we can feel good about, or to portray ourselves as virtuous victims, or to justify ourselves or to rationalize things (meaning an effort to justify, or to make sense out of something we have done or thought, that we are not comfortable with), etc. etc. We do not do this consciously or willfully - our devious, self-deceiving brains do it for us. Humans are forever at battle with their consciences...those that have one.

One of the most interesting things we observe in patients in analysis is how the "narrative" of their life changes over time. Thus anyone's autobiography is a momentary story, a construction of reality, usually with a self-serving psychological purpose - and the most common is to preserve an illusion of self-regard - something which darn few of us hominid critters deserve to hold, but which we must fake to survive. There is nothing easy about being an animal with a soul. (Just ask any hunting poodle - they will tell you all about it.)

IQ

In the psychological-medical fields, we find IQ to be a useful measure, along with many others. IQ has only very broad predictive power for adjustment to life or for achievement in life, but a person's reasoning ability, curiosity, analytic talents, and their sensitivity of pattern-recognition, all say something important about a person and the tools they have to deal with life. But a very high IQ doesn't equate with "success", whatever that is, though it certainly correlates with the richness of the life one is able to live; a lower IQ, on the other hand, cannot interfere with happiness or with achievement in less intellectually rigorous areas of life.

In the variety of folks we encounter in medicine, it is common to see folks of high IQ doing relatively menial jobs, but who must find outlets for their abilities in all sorts of surprising interests, intellectual hobbies and obsessions. I recall one truck driver whose hobby of Latin translation was almost obsessive, and wonderful. And a refridgerator repair guy who could have taught the Cornell Lab of Ornithology a thing or two...not everyone spends their spare time stupified, watching sports on TV or the other crap.

And neither is it rare to find folks of very limited talents and potential, but of slippery, conniving character, shoving themselves forward in the world, beyond what substance they really bring to the table - especially in sales, finance, and politics - the realms of BS, the schmooze, and the con job, and, in some cases, genuine integrity.

IQ shows a bell-curve distribution across a given population, with the peak around 100. Along with social class and background and emotional maturity, IQ tends to be an important part of social affinities and friendships - people of similar IQs are "on the same page." There seem to be optimal IQ ranges for different areas of life. CEOs of Fortune 500 companies tend to be in the 120-130 range - very smart but not so smart that they get tangled up. Attorneys today, unlike the past, inhabit a wide range, from 90 to the max. - there are lots of law schools looking for paying customers. As people enter the high end, over 140, they often seem a bit eccentric or awkward, because they are experiencing the world a little differently and their range of interests can be wide and unusual.

Quick IQ tests, and further comments, on continuation page below:

Moms at War

Auster is right to point out to what extent our PC machine in America is able to "normalize" the grossly abnormal and nonsensical (while simultaneously trying to "abnormalize" the normal).

His case in point concerns "coping groups" for military Moms in Iraq who miss their kids. There is a craziness to letting Moms go to war which mocks common sense, emotional sense, family sense, cultural sense, and psychological sense, and would only make sense if our shores were invaded by barbarian hordes. How did we get to this, unless we are psychotically imagining that Moms are Dads, and men are women, and black is white? Auster here.