Maggie's Farm

I advise my kids, as they grow up and enter the semi-adult social world, to appraise the people they meet - assuming they like them - before deciding to what extent they would invite them into their personal life, if at all.

We have all been disappointed by people, by ignoring things that were right in front of our eyes, especially when we were young.

Without ever getting into psychology, I just want them to be able to identify problem personality traits or personality types which have the potential to be damaging to them. I don't want them to obsess about it - just to be intelligently observant and to not take people at face value.

It's like Bird Dog identifying birds, or The Barrister having fun identifying fallacies. Call it "Know Your People."

The subject comes up because I was forwarded Instapundit's link to his wife's piece on Borderlines, at Dr. Helen. It can be difficult to write about psychological subjects for laypeople, because we tend to use so much jargon in our thinking, but she does a good job with the subject. However smart or charming Borderline women can be, guys are best off keeping an emotional distance from these often-exciting but angry and unstable females, because they can be very hurtful.

Other types worth identifying "in the field":

The "Slimies."  This includes the ingratiating, the manipulative, the liars, the smoothies, the users, the vengeful, the overly-earnest, the conniving, the calculating. More common in men. Stay away, because how slimies treat others is the way they will treat you when you are no longer useful or convenient.

The "Angries."  Always a complaint, without ability to take any joy in life. Just not any fun. Occurs in both mean and women.

The "Dopeys." They have never been curious enough about life to know much about anything beyond the totally conventional and superficial. Could be fun for a while, but ultimately dull and cannot enrich your life. Occurs equally in men and women.

The "Narcissists." They dig themselves so much that they don't really have much interest or energy for anyone else (unless the other is a "narcissistic object" - but that's too complicated for here). They want admiring mirrors more than they want real relationships. They are takers, often attractive and charming in a way, but they can be very unpleasant when they do not get the attention or adulation they believe they deserve. Enjoy them socially, but don't get too close. Occurs equally in men and women, but more obvious in women.

I noticed the comments, especially on other blogs, related to our post a week ago by Capt. Gilmore, who offered us a follow-up note on his original letter, which we have since posted there. We do not know the Captain, but I see no reason to doubt him.

The desire, on the part of many, to deny that his letter was true seemed odd to me, until I realized that it must represent the desire to deny that 9-11 actually happened and was a Jihadist attack - or who would care?

It did happen, and it was a Jihadist attack. How many others have there been over the past 15 years? Plenty. Why desire not to believe it?

Because if you believe it, you have to do something about it. Much more comfortable to imagine that the attacks in London, and the attack on the Cole, and the first WTC attack, and all the others, were performed by an evil Bush-Israeli conspiracy for some dark but as yet-uncoded purpose. But, wait a minute - Bush wasn't Pres during most of them, was he? Well, maybe Bush and Clinton were in on it together...along with the rest of the government. Sure...that makes perfect sense: When Clinton was Pres, he probably said "George, I'll take a pass on killing these suckers, if you promise you will get them, after I rig your election, so you will get the credit and I will get...more Monica."

Trying to think like a paranoid is exhausting. We try to be sane, but if the blogosphere is a loony bin, I want out.

If I had the time today, I would go into this more deeply, but I cannot. But when I look at this thing on AOL News today - vote and check the numbers - one truly has to wonder about the irrationality, conspiracy cranks,  and wierd distrust that is going around. It is Bedlam. Maybe it's caused by fluoridation? (joke)

Sometimes I feel like adding comments, such as "Have you taken your medicine today?" However, I resist that impulse, since it would not lead to any civil exchange. One last thought: If a Dem were in office right now, and going to war against Jihad, he would be the "Franklin Roosevelt" of our generation. No doubt. 'Nuf said.

Editor's Note: More on this sad subject - "Whack Jobs Convene" - at Atlas.

Let me place the Al Gore quote in context, from a brief interview about his movie at Grist Magazine:

Interviewer: There's a lot of debate right now over the best way to communicate about global warming and get people motivated. Do you scare people or give them hope? What's the right mix?

Gore: I think the answer to that depends on where your audience's head is. In the United States of America, unfortunately we still live in a bubble of unreality. And the Category 5 denial is an enormous obstacle to any discussion of solutions. Nobody is interested in solutions if they don't think there's a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.

Over time that mix will change. As the country comes to more accept the reality of the crisis, there's going to be much more receptivity to a full-blown discussion of the solutions.

How much would you bet that his "solution" would entail government control of the American economy? A "Five-Year Plan," perhaps?

Over 100 readers have complained, on my original post this week, that his statement conveys no dishonest intent. In my book, half-truths and distortions in a documentary intended to inform and influence, if not frighten, is dishonest, cynically manipulative, condescending to the point of contemptuousness and, in the end, self-defeating.

It is self-defeating because you lose your credibility, and become a common crank. People aren't dumb, except when they want to be. The fact is that anyone can cherry pick data on any subject: the economy, the weather, the dangerousness of ladders, the dangerousness of Coca Cola - and create an instant "crisis." But such "discussions" are not in good faith - they are the ordinary tricks of disputation - "lawyerly", in the worst sense.

Are half-truths lies? You decide for yourself. For me, they are.

My opinion after this whole Al Gore storm this week on the blog: This issue is not about science; it's about politics or, as Al Gore puts it, it's a  "spiritual issue."  Hence the emotion.

For more quotes from the Global Warming Big Lie squad, see continuation page below - these statements will bother you, even if Big Al does not:

Whew.

I have been thoroughly farked.

I have never had one of my pieces "farked" before (see my post prior to this one), but I have also never been subjected to so much rage in my life, as in the abundant comments. "Wingnut"? Me? They would never call me that, if they were lucky enough to meet me. 172 comments!

It wasn't even a piece about global warming - just a piece about how the human conscience works. What's the big fuss? Is Al Gore a sacred cow?... or a Sacred Bull? And then does his BS not stink?

This is not war, dear gentle readers.

What especially bothered me is that essentially all of the over-heated comments missed the entire point of the post. Perhaps I should have used the example of "Bush lied so we can get all of this nice cheap oil?" But I have no comparable confession from Bush, nor do I see all of the cheap oil.

Yes, that photo is me, at Cape Cod last summer.  Surfer's Beach (White Crest Beach), where the strong and manly hands of the waves will firmly, steadily and relentlessly disrobe a lady of both her upper and her lower bathing garments, if she is not careful, and unveil the glory of her secret delights.

By the way, if I misread Gore's intent, I will say so. I am not convinced, but I am a Mass General doctor with a Harvard MD. Not a lawyer, but not stupid either: I do not parse - I just read, like a normal person. I can't help it if I am attractive - God made me this way, to be a good breeder, and I like it.

Image: Copyright Harvard Medical School Faculty Facebook

"You know something is happening
here, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?"

I have always thought of the capacity for irony as a good, rule-of-thumb IQ test.

Language without an occasional twist of irony is like language without metaphor.

However, if you don't get the definition of the word correctly, you can't use the concept. The word is only properly used to refer to something addressed to a dual audience, or "as if" to a dual audience: one in the know, and one not.

The usage has been contaminated by the illiterate, and is now sometimes used to apply to the "incongruous" or "unexpected", as in "Ironically, we both showed up at the wedding in the same dress." The cutest way to say that would be "Funnily enough,..."

One amusing use of irony is to say stupid things, or ungrammatical things, with the assumption that those in the know will figure that you are using irony, while others will figure that you are plain uneducated or ignorant. Start with "nucular."

Anyway, world - let's get the usage down properly: there is no excuse for abuse of English, since it has now become our "national language."

Ed: Image of Dr. Bliss added to this post, entirely without irony.

A quote from Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep, after Lee's semi- boyfriend Cross loses a basketball game:

When the buzzer sounded, I looked at Cross and was astonished to see that he was crying. I looked away reflexively, then looked back; his face was scrunched-up and red, and he was roughly wiping his eyes and shaking his head, but he wasn't trying to hide it...

Sports contained the truth, I decided, the unspoken truth (how quickly we damn ourselves when we start to talk, how small and inglorious we always sound), and it seemed hard to believe that I had never understood this before. They rewarded effortlessness and unself-consciousness; they confirmed that yes, there are rankings of skill and value and that everyone knows what they are (seeing those guys who were subbed with two seconds left before the end of a quarter, I'd think how girl's coaches would never be that heartless); they showed that the best things in the world were to be young and strong and fast.

Kay Hymowitz reviews a new book by Flanagan: To Hell with all that: Loving and Loathing our Inner Housewife. The radical feminists hate her, but they should not: it's the radical feminists who "reinforce stereotypes." Who would want to be the kid of a radical feminist? Not me.

Quote from the excellent review:

What Flanagan might have better underscored is that her real subject is not The Question: To Work Or Not To Work. It is love. Flanagan had a fierce devotion to her own mother, whose presence haunts the book. She experienced in her mother’s pot roasts and freshly ironed laundry the embodiment of comfort, safety, and love. Despite Flanagan’s deficiencies in the domestic arts, it’s a feeling she badly wants to bring to her own family. What this talented writer reminds us of are two simple truths that are apostasy to the fundamentalists and, sadly, lost to many young women who never saw them in action: that when working properly, satisfying domestic life can embody a mother’s love for her children, the most powerful love there is; and that no matter how women choose to live, this love will forever be entangled with self-sacrifice.

Should this really be the stuff of war without end?

Whole thing at City Journal here - it's good, and funny.

Image: A young woman gazing at the ocean at Cahoon's Hollow, wondering about her identity, feminist stereotyping, male oppression, and the meaning of life - and hoping she'll meet the tall, dark and handsome man of her dreams at the bar later on.

I think it was in Annie Hall. Alvy Singer is putting together a lobster dinner for his date with Annie - the famous lobster scene. She reads from the paper about the serial killer striking again, and he replies "I was nowhere near there."

My point is not to comment on Jewish guilt. Almost every religion and ethnic group with which I am familiar thinks they have the worst case of guilt. (Not sure about Islam. Do they feel guilty if they fail to kill an infidel?)

My point is to comment on neurotic guilt vs. healthy, normal guilt. Woody Allen's line is funny because it touches the neurotically guilty place in all of us. Normal people with sturdy consciences commonly have a slice of neurotic guilt in their personalities, unfortunately. It is usually a guilt about  bad thoughts, bad impulses, destructive tendencies, ugly selfish conniving, envy, cruelty, etc., or about minor, easily forgiveable moral slips. Oftentimes, such thoughts and impulses are out of our awareness, but the key is that, with neurotic guilt, one hasn't really done much to feel guilty about.

Healthy, wholesome guilt occurs to those with strong consciences when they truly cross a major line which is engraved in their hearts. It is painful, and should be painful. The warning and the punishment is self-administered, as it should be. A non-neurotic sense of guilt is, in my opinion, a matter of the spirit and not so much a matter of psychology. Everyone has stupidly or carelessly screwed up, if they have lived long enough, but a pattern of wrong-doing without appropriate self-punishment bespeaks a spiritual void as well as a non-functioning conscience. (We call that pride, or self-love, or narcissism, or sociopathy.)

Sometimes I wonder whether liberals wear guilt as a badge of pride. It is known to occur in AA meetings, where sometimes folks believe that the lower into tatoo-land they have gone, the more authority they can claim. Silly, and perversely narcissitic.

The subject comes up after reading Shelby Steele's instantly-famous essay, which basically rips apart "liberal guilt" and shows it to be the neurotic foolishness that it is.

(The subject of guilt also fits with Wednesday's post on "feelings," ...and it also comes up after reading today's post on the World Council of Churches, which contains an appalling display of public self-congratulatory hystrionic hand-wringing - so self-congratulatory, in fact, that I tend to doubt its sincerity and wonder whether it is a pseudo-humble, pseudo-contrite form of political statement. Ostentatious contrition is sometimes just the flip side of spiritual pride. If you read the whole piece at Touchstone, you will see that it's a living satire, like Woody Allen's line. I can say that, as an American citizen, I am pretty much guilt-free as far as I know, but as an individual, I am morally imperfect, and thus disconnected from God's loving but inscrutable will, despite my aspirations.)

Steele demonstrates that the undercurrent of irrational guilt in our culture, nurtured by a generation of America-haters devoted to highlighting historical imperfections and ignoring historical sources of national pride, has weakened our spine, our confidence, our common sense - and our freedom to pursue our self-interest. This is very similar to what neurotic guilt can do to an individual.

Here is short list of things about which almost all of us can say "I was nowhere near there": slavery, racial discrimination, genocide, destroying the planet, oppressing helpless people, imposing our religion on others, imperialism, evil intentions, raping and killing women and children. "Collective guilt"? Let's forget that notion: caring for our own souls is a big enough job, and a life-time job. I have no idea how preachers do what they do...

Discrimination against individuals I do not like or approve of? You bet. Always. Capitalism? Wonderful - gives everyone freedom to pursue their own path as they see fit.

There are another ten pages in this, but this is enough for now.

Image: Woody and Keaton in Annie Hall.

An afterthought: Christ set a high standard - impossibly high - in His most famous preaching, in His commentary on the Ten Commandments in the  Sermon on the Mount. Among many other things, He came close to equating evil thought with evil action, thus making all humans sinners, for sure. But Christians accept that, just as they accept the need for supernatural salvation. That is another spiritual matter, and not a psychological one.

As a psychiatrist, and a Christian, I deal with these two realities, sometimes with difficulty. Life is not meant to be easy, despite what the French want to think. "I never promised you a rose garden."

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!

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.

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.