Psychoanalysts address Donald Trump

Reading and listening to psychoanalysts writing and speaking about Donald Trump, I am struck by the repetition of mistakes often made by people in this profession.  The comments I have noticed are so knowing.  Knowing about what's wrong with Donald Trump, his diagnosis or his psychodynamics, or knowing about how dangerous he is, or how much in denial so many people are about how dangerous he is.  Or knowing about the unconscious psychodynamics of his appeal, or of the way that many people, in voting for him, vote against their own self-interest (as determined by the author).  Psychoanalysts in general tend to present themselves as experts, particularly as experts about unconscious dynamics, about the unconscious itself.

This is an occupational hazard of psychoanalysis, i.e. to believe that one is an expert on the one thing about which no one can be an expert:  the unconscious.  For, by definition, the unconscious always eludes our knowledge, our self knowledge.  Expertise about the unconscious is a contradiction in terms. If we psychoanalysts have an expertise, it consists in sensing the location of our blind spots and trying to learn about them from others (our patients, our families, our friends) who can see us more clearly than we can see ourselves, or from our own dreams and reveries.

In the case of Donald Trump, a commonly shared blind spot is obliviousness to the existence and experience of the millions of people who voted for him.  I suspect this obliviousness is shared by many psychoanalysts as well as those people, the "elite,"against whom Trump was able to mobilize so much resentment.  Is it surprising that people have a huge resentment against those who are oblivious to them and their suffering?   Yet, people like me are continually shocked that there are so many people out there who voted enthusiastically for a man who they felt spoke for them in a very loud, belligerent, unintimidated, voice.

There is a lot of resentment out there directed toward psychoanalysts and psychoanalysis, and I would guess that we feed it with our pretensions to expertise.  But wait---I'm starting to sound pretty knowing myself.  So maybe some of you reading this will comment on what I am overlooking---.

Psychoanalytic Reflections on Liberalism in the Wake of the 2016 election

Liberals, like me, keep being shocked and dismayed that there are all those millions of people out there who voted for Donald Trump.  We condescend to them when we say that they voted against their own interest.  Not that there isn't truth to this statement, as it has become apparent that 22 million or more people, many if not most of them Trump voters, would lose health insurance upon repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act. But we lose sight of the fact that we liberals, too, vote against our own interest in many ways.  Bernie Sanders succeeded in showing how votes for Hillary Clinton worked against the interests of many liberal people.  The neoliberal order reinforced the chains binding us liberals to the individualistic, materialistic treadmill on which many of us have the privilege of running.  The point is not that any of us can see clearly what is in our own interest, or in the best interests of anyone else.  Rather, everyone's interests are multiple and conflicting and ambiguous.  How arrogant is it of me to claim that I know what is in your self-interest, not to mention my own?

People in my community of liberal-leaning psychoanalytically inclined therapists and theorists have taken to analyzing and critiquing forms of ethnocentrism and prejudice that involve dis-identifying with certain other people: immigrants, people of other races or cultures or ethnic or socio-economic groups.  The idea is that people can defensively maintain a preferred self-image, or preferred in-group identification, by contrast with a degraded or demonized group of people defined as "other".  A counter-ideal of multiculturalism has evolved, one that seeks to break down prejudice-driven barriers to communication and understanding.  I myself have promoted, and continue to subscribe to, this point of view.

It has become apparent to me, in the wake of the 2016 election, that there is another form of "othering" at work here: the "othering" of those who "other".  The ultimate form of othering takes the form of rendering those others invisible.  The shock that I and many others with whom I identify feel that all those people voted for Trump  and other politicians on the left speaks to how invisible those many millions of people had become for us.  Well, folks, Trump sure knows how to make people visible.

The conundrum I am describing is one that is familiar, on an individual or dyadic level, to psychoanalytically inclined psychotherapists.  We have learned, and keep learning the hard way, that when you try to address a problem, you first reproduce it.  As the psychoanalyst Edgar Levenson pointed out, if you try to point out a person's sensitivity, you hurt his feelings. You become, for the moment, insensitive. This is the phenomenon that Freud led us to call transference, though Freud misleadingly saw transference as derived solely from past experiences and relationships, rather than reproduced by the analyst in the present interaction with the patient.  One doesn't facilitate therapeutic change by scrupulously avoiding insensitivity, though one must try, or by commenting on the patient's problem from afar.  Rather, one must recognize that insensitivity and other forms of hurtful behavior on the part of the analyst are inevitable despite one's best efforts, providing an opportunity to work on a problem in vivo.  The therapeutic process, from this point of view, occurs as one reflects on how a hurtful pattern, in which both parties are implicated, has evolved.  This reflective process accounts for why psychoanalytic therapy can take so much longer than cognitive behavioral therapy in which the therapist is, to a large extent, a technician rather than fundamentally a participant-observer of the interaction of self and other.


I take this digression into the theory of psychoanalytic therapy to set the stage for a jump from the individual or dyadic level to the political level.  People like me who are shocked that so many misguided people voted for Trump must start by recognizing that we had rendered millions of people invisible and inferior.  We must start with this recognition.  In the therapy room, one could then go on to inquire into the process by which this situation evolved.  Such a concerned inquiry, in which one takes responsibility as a therapist for one's own role in creating an impasse, is in itself a big part of the cure or resolution.  If there is a parallel path to resolution on the political level, surely it involves listening and difficult dialogue.  If one finds oneself referring to millions of people as a "basket of deplorables," one does not backtrack, or clarify what one really meant, or claim to have misspoken. Rather, one must acknowledge and take responsibility for the prejudice and condescension that was revealed in what was said, without overlooking the fact that forms of violence emerged among some people at Trump rallies that was indeed deplorable.  People feel condescended to regardless of whether the speaker recognizes his or her own attitude.  Its best, in therapy and in politics, to get these undercurrents out on the table where they can be addressed forthrightly. 

Human feeling vs. realpolitik: the case of Israel and Gaza

This posting was begun several weeks ago:

In the last few days, I, and I'm sure many others, have felt revulsion and horror as we read about the human suffering caused by the Israeli attacks on Gaza, and the Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli towns.
Today, the NY Times reported that Israel may be trying to show that it still has "teeth" in the wake of the disastrous Lebanon war of the summer of 2007. The idea is that the image of a "weak" Israel following on that war emboldens Hamas and Hezbollah to believe that they can taunt and attack Israel with impunity. The attack on Gaza may be meant to show that Israel is no paper tiger, that it still has teeth.

I am struck by the disjunction between the sensibility that weeps for each human loss, the parent who has lost a child, the child who has lost a parent, and the strategizing mind-set referred to in the Times article. It seems to me that there is a dissociation built into this strategizing mind-set, an objectification of human life in the service of the attainment, or consolidation, of power. It might be argued that power is sought, in the long run, to preserve human life--that some are sacrificed now to preserve much more human life in the long run. According to this logic, there is, in the end, no real disjunction between realpolitik and human feeling. Powerlessness only leads to a Holocaust; the way to save millions of lives is to be powerful, to maintain superiority in violent capability against those who would seek to eliminate you by violence. The sensibility that weeps for each human loss is potentially dangerous to the extent that it disables regrettable, but necessary, sacrifice for the greater good.

What is left out by the this logic, from my point of view, is:
1. The way vengeance and sadism can creep into actions purportedly dictated by long-term humanitarian concerns.
2. The way violence breeds escalating violence, objectification of human life breeds further objectification, rather than peace based on accommodation to superior force.
3. The difficulty sorting out mixed motives from cynical invocation of high-minded motives to camouflage more purely destructive motives, or the dismissal of humanitarian motives in the service of discrediting one's political or military opponents.

Adversarial relationships breed splitting of benevolent motives from malevolent ones.  This splitting is self-reinforcing, creating the reality that it purports simply to recognize.  Acknowledging that we all  contain some mixture of destructive and constructive feelings and forces would lead to less of the objectification of others that makes killing, exploitation and oppression possible. As things stand, such an eventuality appears, to many of us, to make us, and our people, dangerously vulnerable.

De Blasio, the Police, and Race

The current confrontation between the New York City Police Benevolent Association and Mayor Bill de Blasio is a confrontation between black and white thinking about race, and a more complex racial reality.  On January 7, 2015, Former Police Officer Steve Osborne wrote an op-ed entitled "Why We're So Mad at de Blasio."  He wrote as if he spoke for a "we" that included all police officers.  In the article he wrote: "It did not help to tell the world about instructing his son, Dante, who is biracial, to be wary of the police, or to publicly signal support of anti-police protesters (for instance, by standing alongside the Rev. Al Sharpton, a staunch backer of the protests)." 

Some questions:  Does Steve Osborne identify as white?
Does he think he is speaking for all police officers, black and white and various shades of brown?
Would de Blasio have advised his son to be "wary" of the police if he thought of his son as white, as opposed to "biracial"?
Was de Blasio advising his son to be wary of all police officers, black and white?
Are protests against police brutality inherently "anti-police?"
Could "protest" be reframed as consciousness raising?  If so, whose consciousness?  
Do all white police officers agree with Osborne? If not, where are the dissenting voices?
Where are the voices of black police officers and those who identify as Latino, Asian, and so on?

Bill de Blasio, like Barack Obama, embodies the emerging complex racial reality of the twenty first century.  Di Blasio's father was of German origin, his mother of Italian origin. De Blasio was raised primarily by his mother and her family.  He changed his name from his father's "Wilhelm" to his mother's  "De Blasio" in adulthood.  He married and had children with an African-American woman.  He can speak with many voices, but has yet to do so in a way that can help the people of New York City, the United States, and the world to transcend polarizing prejudice-generating racial categories. 

The Police

Did we ever not know that police work is hazardous, that the police have to act boldly and with restraint, making split-second decisions about the use of force, sometimes deadly force, in ambiguous situations of indeterminate danger?  And did we ever not know that police officers sometimes use unnecessary force, sometimes deadly force, whether from panic or sadism or racial prejudice and hatred?

In recent weeks we have gone from a focus on police brutality and racial prejudice, to sympathy with the police for the deadly dangerous situations in which they are placed, choose to be placed, continually.  We swing from one pole to another, demonizing and idealizing the police in a search for clarity.  The truth is much more complex and confusing, not amenable to stereotyping.  

At the Tribeca Film Festival I went to see "Gabriel", a film by Lou Howe and starring Rory Culkin. Rory Culkin played a young man diagnosed as schizophrenic who believes he is married to a young woman, played by Emily Meade, and that she loves him. **Spoiler alert!**: at the end of the movie, he stealthily waits till her father leaves the house, enters her room, then threatens her father with a knife when he returns home.  She talks her father into letting her and Gabriel take a walk to the beach, where she tells him she doesn't love him.  As the movie ends, she hugs him as police approach in the background.

The screening of the movie that I attended was sponsored by the Child Mind Institute of New York.  Its Director, Harold Koplowicz, interviewed Lou Howe and Rory Culkin following the screening.  Koplowicz began by saying something to the effect that when there is a medical illness, the doctor, the patient, and the patient's family are all on the same team against the illness.  But when there is mental illness, the patient sides with the illness.  I couldn't believe what I was hearing.  That means that its doctor vs. patient!

With that introduction, he turned to Rory Culkin, sitting there with below-shoulder length hair and an uneasy manner and asked him what he learned playing the part of Gabriel.  Culkin squirmed and shifted in his seat and finally said he didn't know what to say.  Koplowicz didn't ask him another question for quite some time.

Later in the evening, there was some discussion of what might happen to Gabriel after the movie ended. He would be arrested, hospitalized if he were lucky enough not to be imprisoned.  The generally gloomy if not alarmist speculations about Gabriel's future was suddenly interrupted by Culkin who said he thought that Gabriel's life was about to begin: he had gotten what he needed, the truth.  The young woman's telling him that she didn't love him was just what he needed.  Truth, not cure, is what I think the doctor should order.  

The de-historicized 60s and Bob Dylan

Some people of my generation in the 60's famously said "Don't trust anyone over 30".  Thus was dismissed all human history up to that moment. Utopia had arrived, for the first time.

Bob Dylan resisted being labeled the "voice of his generation".  And now I think I understand why, in a way I couldn't understand back in the 60's.  To my own de-historicized mind at the time, Dylan's music was born out of the void, it had no ancestry, except perhaps for folk music.  To some extent, Dylan played into this de-historicized image by jettisoning his own roots: he replaced his family name, Zimmerman, with Dylan.  He did not present himself as a Jewish man from Northern Minnesota, but as a rootless wanderer, a descendant of the hoboes, of Woody Guthrie, a born again Christian. He was a self-made man, ironically, in the best Euro-American tradition of the New World where anyone can become whoever he wants to be. Each time he played, and plays, one of his songs, it is re-arranged.  He never plays quite the same song twice.  Always morphing, there is no static tradition or history in Dylan the man or in his work, except for the tradition of denying, or transcending, tradition.

Those of us who thought a new world was being born in the 60's have been undergoing a long and sobering morning after.  Events have proven far more complex and unpredictable than we could have imagined, defying understanding or categorization.  On one hand, we have seen as much or more violence in the world as ever.  We have seen a resurgence of the political right wing, of terrorism and reactive nationalism, of poverty, economic inequality, and social injustice.  Some of what has developed in a positive way is a legacy of the 60's; the Civil Rights movement has made lasting, if limited, changes in race relations in the United States.  The Women's Movement and Gay Rights have made undeniable, if again limited, progress. Some of what seems negative to someone of my political persuasion can be seen as continuous with the ethos of the 60's, in particular the anti-authoritarianism and individualism of the 60's seems continuous with the current, long-standing, resistance to government interference, of the present moment.

Looking back, it was incredibly and embarrassingly arrogant of some of us to think we could do better than any previous generation, that we could make a clean and radical break with the past.  Perhaps some of that arrogance was necessary to accomplish some of what is proving to be of lasting value.  Now when I listen to the various incarnations of Bob Dylan I hear echoes not only folk music, but of the blues, rhythm and blues, and something uniquely Dylan-esque, or perhaps Zimmerman-esque.  I hear the legacy of African-American slavery, a Jewish sensibility, a Euro-American faith in self-reinvention, a refusal to be confined by tradition with deep roots in tradition.  And I'm sure I'm not hearing the half of it.

Sexual Violence on College Campuses

In recent years, many if not most colleges and universities have seen a rise both in allegations of sexual assault and in allegations of inadequate response by college authorities to those charges.  There is a welcome determination on the part of students not to allow instances of sexual assault to be swept under the rug, as well as a gray zone of uncertainty as to what constitutes sexual assault and how to establish whether an assault has occurred.  How is one to negotiate the gray zone between the Scylla of neglect of violent assault, and the Charybdis of a rush to judgment of possibly innocent persons?  In the public mind, among students, faculty, and authorities, the rush to judgment can go either way: those who allege assault can be accused, in unwarranted fashion, of hysterical over-reaction; those who are alleged to have assaulted can be portrayed, prematurely and in unwarranted fashion, as having acted in a sexually predatory way.  In this context, it is important to be able to think as clearly as possible about what constitutes assault, as opposed to consensual sexual activity, even if legal and disciplinary responses to allegations cannot always await clarity on these issues.  If those who are accused of a crime are entitled to a presumption of innocence, are those who allege assault not entitled to a presumption of good faith in their allegations?  In the criminal justice system of the United States, the burden of proof is on the accuser.  The case must be made beyond a "reasonable doubt."  In civil cases, claims of damage done are established by a preponderance of evidence, not necessarily beyond a reasonable doubt.  College authorities must act, or not act, in the context of much less clear criteria for establishing whether disciplinary action is warranted in response to a particular allegation, especially when a case is not being prosecuted in the criminal justice system for whatever reason.  Colleges and universities are concerned not only with establishing the truth of what happened and protecting the rights and sanity of those who accuse and those who are accused, but also of managing their own liability to being sued for failure to discipline, or for unwarranted disciplinary actions.

Sexual sado-masochism is one source of confusion in the gray zone of uncertainty.  Sado-masochistic sexual play must be distinguished from coercion.  While sado-masochistic play may or may not look like coercion to an outsider, it feels radically different to the participants, at least to those who are able to tune in to the mental state of their partners.  Those who are not able to tune in to the mental states of others lack what is called "mentalization."  This is psychopathology.  Those who do not care about the mental state of their partners are sociopaths.  This is criminality.  In both cases, the criminal justice system is generally the way to go, ultimately leading to mandatory treatment or incarceration.  But for those who care about the welfare of others, and who can recognize their mental states, play fighting among children or adults or dogs is easily distinguishable from real fighting to injure.  Play requires two participants; if one of them is not playing, the entire sequence of events is coercive and violent.

A related distinction is made by Emmanuel Ghent (1989) in a journal article called "Masochism, Submission and Surrender."  In this article, Ghent distinguishes between surrender, which involves a universal longing to surrender control and structure, from submission which is demeaning and masochistic.  Submission, in Ghent's terms, might look like surrender, but it is a radically different phenomenon.  Surrender entails a giving up of inhibitions, barriers and rigidities within the self, making possible the discovery of previously walled off or avoided potential selves or parts of self.  Submission, by contrast, requires a splitting of dominance and submission, so that one person is assigned the function of control while the other person is enabled to suspend control.  Submission requires a partner who will hold a part of the self for the moment, either the controlling or the controlled part.  Contrary to what happens in surrender, new barriers are set up within the self.  Parts of the self, potential selves, are disavowed, and new rigidities are introduced.  Submission, according to Ghent, is a perversion of surrender, giving up one's will in favor of the will of another instead of the more risky business of trusting oneself and another enough to go with the flow.  Dominance and submission are mirror images of each other, arising when controlling and being controlled substitute for surrender.

Much sexual activity involves surrender---surrender above all to one's own impulses and feelings, a suspension of inhibition, a sense of union with the other.  Under conditions of surrender in the sexual domain, dominance and submission can be played with; when surrender is blocked, the "game" becomes deadly serious.  Fantasies of raping or being raped can arise when the longing for surrender gets transformed into a demeaning desire to dominate or submit.  If she wants to be dominated in a demeaning sense, it reflects a fear of surrender of transcending the dominant-submissive polarity.  If he wants to dominate her, to demean her, it shows a fear of giving up control corresponding to her fear.  When both parties are willing and able to risk surrender, sexual interaction becomes playful and mutually negotiated, whether verbally or non-verbally.

The use of alcohol and drugs is one common way people seek to give up control, simulating surrender. Surrender gives way to submission when intoxication goes beyond freeing oneself up from inhibitions to self-obliteration, to self-destructive self-toxification.  It is no accident that extremes of demeaning sexual activity commonly occur in states of intoxication.

Ghent linked Winnicott's idea of false self with the Hindu/Buddhist notion of "ego" in discussing masochism, submission, and surrender.  Winnicott saw true self as process, as ongoing being.  False self arises when one is made to feel compelled to comply with, or resist, the wishes of others, alienating oneself from one's own process of going on being.  The false self constructed for others becomes the ego of deluded attachment in the Eastern religions in Ghent's vision.  Surrender entails the giving up of the false self/ego in favor of the uncontrolled "flow" of experience.  When attachment to ego/false self does not allow for surrender, self-destructive submission takes its place.  The epidemic of allegations and incidents of sexual violence on college campuses and elsewhere speaks to a rampant and destructive distortion in the process of surrender.  Addressing the way surrender gets perverted into submission is a public health priority of the first order.

Reference:
Ghent, E. (1989) Masochism, Submission, and Surrender. Contemporary Psychoanalysis 26: 108-136.

Dylan and Ronan Farrow, and Woody Allen

So much is at stake in the recent events involving Dylan Farrow and Woody Allen. What could be worse than a sexually abused child, now grown-up, facing denial on the part of the perpetrator and others,  with accusations of falsifying reality?  Not only is she betrayed by someone on whom she has to rely, but her sense of reality is challenged, perhaps threatened and undermined, by people who tell her that she did not experience what she experienced.

Less horrifying, but still extremely disturbing, is the prospect of an adult being falsely accused of having perpetrated a monstrous act on a child. The adult's sense of reality, of what he did and did not do, is more stable and solid than a child's sense of the reality of her experience.  Nonetheless, as we know from Kafka, a persecutory atmosphere can drive a person crazy, undermining his sense of reality and of his own innocence.

With the stakes so high, there is a tremendous need to know what actually happened, but in some cases it is not possible to arrive at a final truth. The potential damage to a child of not being believed is greater than the potential damage to an adult, especially an acclaimed filmmaker, whose reputation is called into question or even destroyed. There is, therefore, a temptation to believe the child, to avoid the greater damage, and because children, even now grown-up children, may seem to have less reason to falsify reality, but the fact is in many cases we just can't sort out the facts, much less the reality of subjective experience which may not accord, exactly, with the facts.

In this posting, therefore, I will not attempt to sort out the facts, whether Woody Allen sexually abused Dylan Farrow, or whether Dylan Farrow falsified reality at her mother's instigation, or whether she simply imagined something that didn't actually happen for whatever reason. Instead, I want to focus on who the audience was for the statements of both Farrow and Allen, and why they chose to speak to that audience.

Both Farrow and Allen chose to speak to the general public. Why does it matter to each of them what the general public thinks, or believes?

Given the difficulty or impossibility of sorting out the facts, there is an understandable desire, on the part of both parties, to seek out witnesses who can validate one's sense of reality. In the case of Farrow and Allen, however, there are no direct witnesses.  So each seeks to persuade members of the general public of the validity of his or her allegation.  People who are persuaded to believe either Farrow or Allen substitute for people who had direct experience of what happened, leaving aside the fact that memory for events that were directly experienced is known to be quite malleable, prone to being influenced by a variety of subjective and emotional forces.

The opinion of the general public is important in part because it can be thought to represent the perspective of the outsider who is not caught up in the force field of the family.  Highly emotional situations in families or other small groups tend to generate micro-worlds, worlds of their own, in which each person gets lost in a general reactivity and emotionality that develops an ongoing and inexorable momentum. A person who is not caught up in these self-contained emotional worlds can seem to bring a relatively objective perspective. When the emotional force field is incestuous or otherwise abusive in one way or another, it is difficult for anyone, much less a child, to maintain an independent, objective perspective. Abused children identify with their abusers, sometimes alongside a sense that something is terribly wrong. People who are kidnapped and held hostage for long periods identify with their captors in what has come to be termed the "Stockholm Syndrome." Appealing to and adopting the perspective of the outside world, individuals, groups, or even the general public can be a way of preserving one's sanity and sense of self before one falls under the spell of the abuser or captor, or on the way out, in the recovery or healing process.

The perspective of an outsider, or the generalized outsider of public opinion can, however, be far from objective.  The opinions and attitudes of people in general are subject to influence from cultural forces that often operate silently, creating an appearance of objectivity by virtue of being widely shared. Widely shared opinions and attitudes can be a marker of virtue, or of membership in a community, or even of personal identity. Examples include widely shared condemnation of homosexuality, or premarital sex, or atheism. Nazi anti-semitism is just one recent example of widely shared public opinions that are far from dispassionate and objective. In such cases, the micro-environment of the family can, in fact, be the last refuge of sanity.

In many times and places, abused children seeking recognition of their situation encounter disbelief, or even accusation of having provoked their own victimization. Children commonly, and irrationally, blame themselves for many events for which they bear no responsibility.  Self-blaming is part of the egocentrism of childhood, and beyond. Children and abused women are commonly subject to community skepticism when they seek validation of their reality, especially when the perpetrator of abuse is a respected member of the community. Woody Allen's status as a respected filmmaker, recent recipient of a Golden Globe lifetime achievement award, seems to have been  a trigger for the recent allegations of abuse.  Respected female actresses who worked with Allen were called on to disavow the aura of respectability they might be thought to have conferred on him by association.

With the general public's opinion being seen as the arbiter of reality, one's sense of self, one's very sanity, can be thought to rest on public attitudes that can be objective, fickle, and/or biased. Thus, the battle for public opinion recently waged in the pages of Harper's, the New York Times, and elsewhere between Woody Allen, Dylan Farrow, and Ronan Farrow. Respected commentators like Nicholas Kristof enter the fray, putting their moral authority behind their opinions. In the age of mass media, public opinion can be influenced and manipulated with hitherto unknown speed and pervasiveness.  None of this gets us closer to the solid ground of truth, that which is beyond reasonable doubt,  about what happened in the Farrow-Allen family. Allegations of bad faith, of destructive and evil intent, seek completely to discredit the allegations and stated reality of the other side, to bypass the collision of realities.  If we resist demonization of one side or the other, we, especially we members of the general public, are left with only a collision of realities. And that feels very unsatisfactory given how much is at stake.

On the use of rhetoric in place of complex political thought

Consider the way two words are used in political discourse: "progressive" and "liberal".  Consider further the way the meanings of these two words have evolved in line with the persuasive intent of the speaker or writer.

The word "progressive" has been appropriated by people on the left to refer to positions and policies they prefer, thus implying that policies and positions with which they disagree are "regressive", i.e. perversely contrary to the direction of progress, the underpinning of modern, and particularly U.S. American, optimism. People on the right, of course, do not refer to their policies as regressive, but as conservative.  They do not oppose progress, they want to conserve tradition, what is good in the past. But now, free market advocates believe that they are promoting progress and that "liberals" stand in the way with obstructionistic regulations and confiscatory taxes.  In any case, by appropriating words that evoke values that few would disavow (progress, conservation of what is good in tradition) politicians and those who advocate for political positions seem to substitute slogans for stimulation of independent and critical thinking on the part of the citizenry.  Are political positions so difficult to defend, so fragilely sustainable, that people should not be rather encouraged to consider their merits and demerits?

Another word that has been appropriated and re-appropriated is "liberal".  This word has a particularly complex variety of meanings.  In its origin, the word derives from the Latin "liber" or free.  To be liberal, then, is to be free, to be a free man, to act freely. According to the Merriam Webster Online Dictionary, "liberal" means "not opposed to new ideas or ways of behaving that are not traditional or widely accepted".  In other words, not "conservative", thus fitting with a traditional U.S. political use of these words---although could one not be both liberal and conservative?  Could one not be open to "new ideas or ways of behaving that are not traditional or widely accepted" while at the same time wanting to conserve what is valuable in tradition?  Of course, but then one has to do some thinking about what is good in what is new, and what is good in what is old, and evidently the populace is not up to the task, or cannot be trusted to think these issues through in the right way.  Merriam Webster online also defines liberal as "believing that government should be active in supporting social and political change".  Evidently, believing in what is new entails belief that the government should promote that which is new.  When did that equation get established?  Could one not be inclined toward what breaks with tradition without believing that government must play a crucial role in promoting change?  Doesn't government often enough play a conservative role? Aren't there conservative people and forces in government?  The idea that government stands for change is at the heart of tea party ideology that wants to see government shrink and get out of people's way so they can act freely (i.e. liberally?)  Wait, this is getting confusing. Now, we have "neo liberalism" in which freedom, i.e. liberalism, stands for "free" as in "free markets".  But now we have liberalism implying freedom from government.  I guess the "neo" signals the meaning of "liberal" is the opposite of what it used to be. I want to be free (or do I?) but I'm getting conflicting, contradictory, advice as to the direction in which freedom lies. Perhaps this is a good starting point for a real discussion, one that acknowledges that, as Isaiah Berlin liked to point out, there is no such thing as pure freedom. For one thing, there is positive freedom (freedom to do what I want; but what do I want to do?) and negative freedom (freedom from interference, which can also be known as interaction.) If I'm free to work hard and make money, am I not less free to enjoy a day at the beach? 

So maybe the problem is not that politicians don't want us to think for ourselves, but that the issues are so complex and multi-faceted, so fraught with contradiction and paradox, that its far easier to join a side than to think.  

Why is sex so much the focus of reviews of "Blue is the Warmest Color" or "La Vie d'Adele"?

Reading a number of reviews of "Blue is the Warmest Color" (La Vie d'Adele in French) led me to anticipate that the sex scenes, extended and realistic, or idealized, would be the highlight of the experience of viewing the film. The reviews led me to believe that the sex scenes somehow broke new ground.  I wasn't sure whether I would be shocked, embarrassed, titillated, or what.  I didn't know whether all the attention was due to the graphic nature of the scenes, or perhaps the fact that the lovers were so young, or both female.

What I found, instead, was a film that portrayed a young woman, an adolescent, in the process of discovering herself, or exploring herself, in an interesting but fairly ordinary human way.  Sex, or her sexual orientation, seemed to be one particularly salient aspect of her self exploration.  What struck me most about the film was the focus on the faces, close up, the level and subtlety of emotional expression in the faces of the young actors, particularly Adele. This was ordinary life in all its pain and wonder. Why the one dimensional focus on sex?

In the final scene of the film, after the relationship between the two lovers comes to an end, eighteen year old Adele walks off into her future, while a young Arab man wistfully watches, clearly smitten with her.  At that point, I thought about the Tunisian origin of the filmmaker, a man from the French colonies.  I wondered then whether the film depicted the experience of a Tunisian feeling as excluded by the French as a man would feel being in love with a woman who is in love with another woman. I have sometimes thought about the colonizer-colonized relationship as a kind of intense, violent, surreptitious love/hate affair underneath the political, military veneer.  I first contemplated this level of colonialism while reading about the alleged erotic/professional relationship between D.W. Winnicott and Masud Khan, the British psychoanalyst with his Pakistani protege.  I imagined that their relationship reflected an erotic connection underlying and motivating the violent possessiveness of colonialism.  Could the erotic connection work both ways, with the erotic connection of the colonized to the colonizer accounting for the former's vulnerability to the latter's contempt, his internalized racism, his identification with the aggressor?  Was all this embodied in the Arab man's hapless, helpless, hopeless, fascination with the French teenager who is totally engrossed, body, mind, and soul, in her French female counterpart?  With such thoughts in mind, the one dimensional focus on the sex in the movie came to seem a reflection of an eager willingness to distract ourselves with the spectacular and the titillating, rather than attend to the painful, violent, and complex realities of life at the intersections of politics, bodies, and minds. 

On reading "Indefinite Detention"  in Precarious Lives by Judith Butler.

In this chapter, Judith Butler outlines the dangerous implications of the U.S. government's (or any government's) arrogation of the power to detain people indefinitely and without trial.  I learned a great deal from this chapter. For example, amazingly, I hadn't known that if and when detainees at Guantanamo Bay are tried in military tribunals, a verdict of innocent can be set aside by the President. Due process and the separation of powers do not prevail: a dangerous precedent and breach of the Constitution.

Butler's chapter is written in a philosophical language that is likely to be inaccessible to all but philosophically sophisticated people, specifically those who are conversant with the work of Foucault, and with post-structuralist, postmodern, language in general.  This amounts to a small audience for a political argument.  I suspect that people who are inclined to become sophisticated with this body of thought are unlikely to need convincing that indefinite detention makes a mockery of due process and the separation of powers in the U.S. government.  On the other hand, the great majority of people who might be influenced in their opinions by Butler's arguments are unlikely to be conversant with her language, not because of any inherent incapacity, but due to unfamiliarity with the jargon of this branch of philosophy or critical studies. These considerations lead me to wonder: for whom is this chapter, and other articles like it, written, and for what purpose?

There is value for many of us who are conversant with Butler's language in clarifying our thoughts on these issues in the face of our fear and confusion about terrorist threats.  The process of writing and reading is often coterminous with the process of thought itself.  Additionally, much writing in the tradition of Foucault is addressed to unpacking rhetoric that justifies the marginalization and dehumanization of people.  It is possible that the deconstruction and unpacking of such rhetoric requires a technical language to get underneath the subtle and obscure manipulation of people's opinions, in this case by evoking fear and rage simultaneously with a sense of righteous victimization and entitlement to retaliate. Perhaps an obscure language is necessary to illuminate how techniques of manipulation are obscurely carried out.  Nonetheless, we need to try to translate our thinking into plain language if we hope to have a significant impact.

Butler's arguments, however, have a rhetorical force of their own; they are not simply objective demonstrations of the uses and distorting effects of rhetoric on the other side.  There is an argument being engaged on both sides as to whether it is a good or bad thing to detain people indefinitely who are suspected of plotting violent attacks on the United States and its people.  Each side seeks to demonstrate the flawed arguments being deployed by the other side, as well as the rhetorical techniques deployed, in the course of marshaling arguments in favor of a particular point of view.  But my impression is that those who defend indefinite detention present their arguments in a much more broadly accessible form than those who take a critical attitude.

If the purpose of articles such as Butler's is ultimately, to influence the opinion of the populace, how does it happen that those who oppose indefinite detention present their arguments in such an obscure manner that the great majority of people would not be able to decipher what is being said?  In this way we, those who oppose indefinite detention without due process, are creating or reinforcing the impression that this position is the province of an exclusive elite.  While both sides try to dismiss or disqualify the views of the other, only those who present an argument against such detention present their arguments in such an exclusionary way.  Those who do not identify with the intellectual elite may be left with the impression that a position critical of the status quo is not for them.

There is a temptation among those of us who think of ourselves as "intellectuals" to talk and write in a way that signals our membership in an elite intellectual club.  We may need to forego such satisfactions if we hope to make a difference in the wider world.

Obama's speech on the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin verdict.

Race relations in the U.S. have often been characterized by what psychoanalysts call "splitting." The very notion of "black" and "white" is a prime illustration of splitting, which occurs when "never the twain shall meet."  In fact, black people and white people form a continuum, both in terms of color and genetically, but we categorize them in black-white fashion so we can believe that there is an absolute separation between "us" and "them".  Politics, especially in a two-party system, tend also to be characterized by splitting: Democrats vs. Republicans, Tea Party Republicans vs. Old Guard Republicans, and so on.

Psychoanalysts speak of a process by which these splits are overcome, as it is recognized that the complexity of anything in life cannot be captured in a simple binary.  Yet, these binaries are essential as well: they simplify an overwhelming reality for us; binaries allow for taking positions, emotional and/or political.  It is hard to talk about anything without invoking binaries, language is full of them.  We need to use a lot more words to be true to the complexity of things than to put them into widely used baskets. When we do try to bring binaries together into a more complex view of reality that recognizes opposing views and feelings, psychoanalysts speak of the process as "containing".

So when Obama talks about race and the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case, his starting point is splitting on two levels.  Race is split into black and white, and his listeners tend to be split into pro and con on the verdict.  Obama's goal, politically, is to bring pro and con together into a "more perfect union".  In terms of race relations, his goal is to bring black and white together by presenting how many black people, including himself, feel about the verdict, without reinforcing splitting (and damaging himself politically) by alienating too many white people.  (Note how I am using the words "black" and "white" reflexively, and to save words.)  He is seeking to "contain" both intellectually and politically.

Obama seeks to accomplish this goal by a strategic use of vagueness, and by countering most of his assertions of a "black" point of view with a qualification, wording that moderates his position.  For example, Obama said:

"Now this isn't to say that the African-American community is naive about the fact that African-American young men are disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system; that they're disproportionately both victims and perpetrators of violence. It is not to make excuses for that fact---although black folks do interpret the reasons for that in a historical context.  They understand that some of the violence that takes place in poor black neighborhoods around the country is born out of a very violent past in this country, and that the poverty and dysfunction that we see in those communities can be traced to a very difficult history."

Obama gives a nod here to a range of feelings that are often set in opposition.  "African-American" is a less polarizing term than "black" and "white".  Black people are African and American. Violent crime is often a black on black problem (giving a nod to a wish on the part of some whites to disassociate themselves from the problem of U.S. violence).  He gives a nod to the idea that to look at the historical context, or roots, of that problem in white racism is seen as making "excuses", by some people, white and black.  He then invokes an "historical context" for violence in "poor" black neighborhoods, consisting of a "violent past".  Here is the vagueness.  He does not say explicitly that the violent past to which he alludes consists of white racist violence against black people.  He goes on to "trace" the "poverty and dysfunction" in poor black neighborhoods to this "very difficult history".  Obama thus manages to acknowledge a white defensiveness that aims to disassociate whites from collective responsibility for racially based violence, AND to connect black on black violence to an earlier history of white on black violence.  Again, he does so without calling white on black violence by its right name, and so he does not put white collective responsibility in whites' faces.  He avoids language that could have been taken as  blaming whites.  In fact, he does not blame whites.  He blames no one, in that he "traces", he makes a connection without implying simple or direct causation.  In this way, Obama offers an alternative to "poor black" internalization of a violent self-image, to self-blame, without blaming whites.  To have done so would have been to initiate a cycle of accusation and defensiveness that would have been damaging both politically, and to his own goal of containing the feelings of a wide range of white and black people.  He would have reinforced, rather than undermined, splitting. The politically astute statement, and the containing statement, coincide.

Nonetheless, Obama does not shrink from exposing an underlying racial bias in those who would defend the acquittal of George Zimmerman while denying that race was a factor.  He asks: "---if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk?  And do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr. Zimmerman who had followed him in a car because he felt threatened?"  This last "he" is ambiguous grammatically.  It could refer to either Zimmerman or Martin.  And that is precisely the point.

I suspect that behind Obama's question is a thought that is familiar to most African-Americans, but that would take aback most Euro-Americans (I include myself here) who stopped long enough to think about it.  Barack Obama, has once again created a mental space capacious enough to include the racial sensitivities and biases on all sides that few Euro-Americans want to admit still deeply divide this nation.

From Dharamsala India, reflections on attachment

From Dharamsala India, after a three day class given by His Holiness, the Dalai Lama

The Buddhist message seems to me to convey that human suffering arises from attachment to transient things in life as if they were permanent.  Chief among such things is the individual self.  Attachment to a certain form of self, shaped in all sorts of ways by gender, cultural, racial, social class, and familial norms guarantees a great deal of agitation, anxiety, unnecessary self scrutiny as one tries to live up to one's own standards, or judges oneself for failing to do so.

His Holiness (HH) seemed to me to return to this theme repeatedly, while the audience members listened respectfully and intently.  However, I noticed a great deal of jostling, planning and scheming to have a favored position from which to watch HH, to be close to him when group photos were taken at the end of the class, and so on.  There seemed to be a great deal of attachment to having some sort of favored position in a class on non-attachment, and a great deal of attachment to the person of HH.

Surely he must be aware of how his presence stimulates this sort of intense attachment.  I wonder what he thinks of it, or whether he would think that what I am describing reflects an attachment to the teaching rather than to his person, or whether he would conceive of it in some way I can't presently imagine.

I remember a book called "Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism" by a Buddhist scholar whose name, I believe, was Chogyam Rinpoche. He pointed out that spiritual pursuits inevitably give rise, paradoxically, to new forms of narcissism and self-attachment.  We take pride or shame in our spiritual status, or compete as to who is more spiritually advanced than whom, for example.

The wily ways of attachment and narcissism the way it eludes all efforts to diminish or extinguish it, should not surprise us.  Here is one of the lessons I have learned from contemporary psychoanalysis.  Psychoanalysis teaches us that personal growth does not elude obstacles; rather, it works with those obstacles (what analysts call "resistance", or what more relational analysts now call "enactments").  Such obstacles are reframed as opportunities to learn and grow, but never reaching an end point or resting place.  The self, narcissistic attachment, denial of death, all of these are inherent in the human condition, yet we can struggle with them and grow, as long as we don't expect to complete the struggle successfully.  The idea of the fully enlightened spiritual seeker, like the fully analyzed person, only reflects a new, more insidious, level of attachment.

Foster Children

Today's NY Times reports that foster children as a group, are prescribed anti-psychotic medications as often as children diagnosed as psychotic. Is this how we want to manage the fall out from social neglect?
Foster children represent an end point of the consequences of social neglect. Poverty and prejudice lead to hopelessness and rage: feelings not conducive to the care of children. When parent's needs are not met, we can expect many of them to have difficulties meeting the needs of their children. We can expect many of them not to have the psychic resources to meet the demands of child care, which, as we know, entails a great deal of self sacrifice and patience. In extreme cases, children end up abused and neglected to the point where they are placed in foster care. Very often they are move through a long series of foster homes, as foster parents, too, are unable to tolerate the provocative behavior of children who, understandably, have little if any trust that anyone can handle their rage and despair.
So foster children are difficult, and we as a society are not willing to put the resources into supporting families, reducing poverty and discrimination, or supporting foster parents. Enter the drug companies and the "quick fix" solution: tranquilize the children, whatever the side effects or long term consequences.
The way foster care is handled is an important barometer of the humanity of a society; today's article in the NY Times gives evidence of how we are failing.

Today's New York Times reports that British Prime Minister David Cameron said that the "decades old policy of multi-culturalism" has encouraged "segregated communities" where "Islamic extremism can thrive". He criticized a policy in Britain and elsewhere in Europe that "encouraged Muslims and other immigrant groups to live separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream". He reportedly said that the "multi-culturalism policy had failed to promote a sense of common identity centered on values of human rights, democracy, social integration, and equality before the law". (NY Times, Feb. 6, 2011 p. 6).
Cameron's remarks remind me of what a friend and colleague of mine said he heard a French person say in denying that the French are prejudiced: that the French believe "anyone can become French". It seems to me that there is an assumption here that European cultures are superior to other cultures (Europeans uphold values of "human rights, democracy, social integration and equality before the law"). This is the assumption that served to rationalize and justify murder and theft of peoples' land under colonialism (By the way, where were concerns about human rights, democracy, social integration and equality before the law under colonial domination?). Did British colonists think they needed to integrate into the "mainstream" cultures of the lands into which they intruded? Why then should people from the formerly colonized lands integrate into "mainstream" British culture?
What Cameron is calling "multiculturalism" is, in my view, actually a way in which cultures can live together with mutual respect, rather than with the implicit assumption that there is a "standard" culture from which other cultures become "deviant", or a superior culture in relation to which other cultures show up as inferior. It is this lack of respect that, in my view, fosters extremism, not the demand that everyone be "like me".

Native Americans set up office of naturalization and immigration

The confederation of North American Native tribes announced today that they have set up an office of naturalization and immigration effective immediately. The chairperson of this office announced that the confederation had determined that not accepting applications for legal immigrant status from European immigrants, beginning in 1492, had been a serious error. The chairperson said "We had no sense of owning the land, if anything we felt the land owned us. Therefore, we never felt entitled to rule on whether European immigrants were here legally or illegally. It has long been abundantly clear that Europeans had no hesitation in believing that they 'owned' the land, therefore that they had the right to decide who could live here legally, or even live, period. We have determined that we must, with great reluctance, act as if we own the land (though deep down we don't believe that for a minute) and start a process by which European immigrants can apply for legal immigrant status on the land that they call "North America".
The chairperson said that there is a great deal of resentment among the people of the confederation because of how vastly they are outnumbered by possibly "illegal" European immigrants. He said "I hear all the time how we have lost our culture as a result of this uncontrolled European immigration, that it must be stopped and reversed by any means necessary". Some of the more resentful people are even advocating "racial profiling" of people with so-called "white skin", detention and possible deportation of those found to be without documentation from the confederation office of immigration and naturalization. "I believe in a more moderate policy" he declared. "We will begin accepting applications immediately and will process them as quickly as possible, seeking to avoid a long period of anxiety for those with European ancestry, and we will do everything we can to avoid breaking up families. I warn the more hot headed among my people that we will not tolerate midnight raids on the homes of people suspected of being undocumented European immigrants." The chairperson also declared that decisions would be made on a "fair" basis, having to do with respect shown to the land by the applicant for permanent residency or citizenship status. "In that respect, our criteria will be quite different from those used by Europeans" declared the chairperson. "We have concluded that what the European immigrants call "development" has led to an unsustainable situation, in which the air, water, and soil of our beloved land is being rendered unusable by future generations. This, too, lends urgency to our effort to ensure that the welfare of all, of current and future generations, is ensured by our decisions as to who will be considered "legal" custodians of the land."
The embassies of England, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, and other European countries had no immediate comment. Some have speculated that given the current low birth rates in these countries, that a reverse flow of people from North American to Europe may not be unwelcome.

Let's reclaim the words "power" and "privilege"

"Power" from the same root as "poder" in Spanish, or "potere" in Italian, refers simply to ability or capacity. How is it that this word has so often come to refer to a very specific kind of ability, the ability to dominate others politically and economically? It is telling that we collapse ability per se into domination, as if one were either dominant or submissive, enabled to dominate or disabled. We forget the paradox or contradiction: that the possession of political and economic power, at the expense of the "disempowered", creates the need to devote an enormous amount of time and energy to preserving and defending that power, thus disempowering the "powerful" in many ways. Anxiety about the envy and hostility of others can come to preoccupy the "powerful" to the point of obsession. On the national level, consider how quickly the fall of the Soviet Union, leading to the ascension of the US as the sole "superpower" in the world, has devolved into an obsession with national security, a preoccupation with threats from small groups of individuals who can quite easily terrorize most of the population of a "superpower" the likes of which the planet has never seen. Then again, consider the preoccupation with "communism" and "socialism", the idea that wealth might be "redistributed", or the fear of immigrants taking US jobs, that terrorizes so many citizens of the wealthiest nation on earth.

Then consider the word "privilege". The root of this word come from the Latin words for "private" and "law", i.e. a law that applies to a private person. In time, this word came to mean special rights and immunities granted to a person by virtue of his or her position or office, by law. This background seems to suggest a special status that not everyone can have. In the contemporary world, the word has come to mean, narrowly, political and economic privilege, the special right to control others and to have access to material goods. But there are other possible contexts in which the word can be used. In a religious context, privilege can refer to the special access to God or to spiritual states conferred on priests. Spiritually based value systems tend to emphasize humility, charity, selflessness. But we have a hard time holding onto forms of privilege other than political and/or economic privilege. Ironically, the privilege of carrying forward the institutions built on these values sometimes becomes the springboard for a cynical disregard and undermining of those values. All too often, spiritual privilege has been perverted into the worldly sorts of privilege that allow people to exploit economically or even sexually those who are dependent on them for spiritual or religious services. Economic and political privilege, too, like power, is jealously and vigilantly guarded, with the subliminal knowledge that such privilege is always temporary and tenuous. We can see all around us that economic privilege leads to a ceaseless seeking for more, no matter how much one already has. Economic privilege can become the dubious privilege of being chained to a rat race, a ceaseless effort to keep up with the Joneses, or a step ahead of the tax man.

It is time to reclaim these words, thereby remembering that there are many things we might want to have the power to do, the privilege of doing, if we were free of insatiable and competitive acquisitiveness and the need to control others. Love and the need to control others are incompatible; we need to remember the power and privilege of love, of community, of time to reflect, of freedom from the domination of things and status and prestige. As Bob Dylan said "When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose". The more you have, the more you have to lose.

Taxpayer or worker?

Most people here in the US are taxpayers AND workers. Who would have thought there could be a conflict? Yet, when it comes to public employee labor unions, many people have come to see only the taxpayer perspective, i.e. they're trying to take more of my money. The other side of the story, i.e. I and my fellow workers need to be paid fairly for the work we do, is often lost. Of course, more of us are taxpayers than are public sector employees, so more of us will be taxed to pay for public employee salary and benefit upgrades than will benefit directly from them. So the logic of supporting only what benefits me and my family works against support for public employee unions. One doesn't have to extend one's horizon too far to realize that when labor unions are weakened, all workers suffer. But that point is, or can seem to be, a little less immediate. Plus people in the US have a long-standing and deep distrust of government (even as they accept Medicare and Social Security), and labor unions evoke shades of socialism, if not the dreaded "C" word. The result is that many people have a visceral feeling that government is there to take their money and regulate their lives, while corporations, which do exactly that, get a free pass.

Obama and the right wing

Barack Obama began his Presidency with the wish to transcend divisive partisanship, to establish dialogues that would bring people together. Instead, his efforts to build consensus seem to have yielded only increased acrimony.
From one point of view, one might say that Obama's openness is read as weakness by those who operate with a dominant-submissive, zero-sum world view. Cheney and others in the Bush administration believed that Al Qaeda and the Taliban, for example, only understand the language of violence, and of course that belief was fully reciprocated by Al Qaeda and the Taliban. In that respect, the two sides spoke each others' language.
Obama speaks the language of dialogue and mutual respect, so we have a confusion of tongues. What happens next is unpredictable and will require creativity to find a way past the impasse. If Obama plays hard ball like the right wingers, he will have become them and nothing will have changed as he meant it to. If he continues as he has been, his stance will continue to be read as weakness, and thus provocative of further bullying. Can Obama find a way to resist the invitation to join those who believe the only kind of power comes from the barrel of a gun, while finding a new way to be powerful? Stay tuned.