One of the more vexing problems for the Psychoanalyst is the determination of the historical reality of our patient's memories. Some try to finesse the problem by suggesting that Psychoanalysts and Psychotherapists are only interested in psychic reality and that not only is it impossible to know if an event happened the way our patient remembers, but it ultimately doesn't matter. I believe that it is not only important but crucial to reconstruct as good a congruence as possible between historical fact and memory, even while I recognize this is not always possible. It is worthwhile exploring why the distinction matters (if it does) and how this question resonates through our culture.
The crux of the problem for an individual patient is that when a "memory" appears in their treatment which has no independent corroboration, its accuracy as a reflection of an historical event is uncertain. If the event is incorrectly accepted as genuine in such a case, it risks turning into a new (and very stubborn) type of resistance that can then hide (screen) other memories behind it. As an example, many people have become falsely convinced (often through the ministrations of well meaning but poorly trained and/or agenda-driven therapists) that they have been abused as a child. When a memory like this occurs, if the memory is confirmed, it leads to a re-evaluation of all past relationships in light of the new information; if the memory cannot be confirmed, the uncertainty must be dealt with (a much more difficult therapeutic task); if the memory is refuted, the patient then has the job of understanding why they would unconsciously create such a memory and how it fits into their current difficulties. For the patient who arrives at new memories of abuse (which in my experience is actually pretty rare) and accepts it uncritically, the memory/fantasy prevents them from this deeper understanding which would allow them to make a more appropriate adjustment to reality and their role in shaping their reality.
Yesterday John Leo weighed in on the significance of the recent revelations that James Frey's recent memoir of redemption, "A Million Little Pieces", more closely resembled a work of pure fiction than an attempt at an historical reconstruction. [Hat tip: larwyn] It wasn't just that Frey fooled himself into believing things that weren't true, but that he knowingly lied and created events to make his story more dramatic and commercially successful. Leo commented on Oprah's reaction to the news that Frey is a fraud:
When Frey appeared on CNN's "Larry King Live," Oprah made things worse by phoning in to say, "The underlying message of redemption in James Frey's memoir still resonates with me." Apparently this meant that she was so moved by the book that she doesn't care that it contains many untruths. Resonance makes lying defensible.
He continued with his concerns about how this is expressed in other settings:
The willingness to accept "emotional truth," even when packaged in lies, is hardly new. What's new is that those who insist on factual truth are now on the defensive, pictured as fuddy-duddies who don't understand that the self recognizes the highest truth in feelings.
College speech codes have long been written in feelings language. Hurt feelings are evidence of an offense. These codes reflect, and reinforce, the rise of feelings over facts and standards. The emotional impact is what counts. Brown University, for instance, banned "verbal behavior" that "produces feelings of impotence, anger or disenfranchisement," whether "intentional or unintentional." In other words, you can't say anything that makes anybody feel really bad.
....
Many of the campus hoaxes owe something to the postmodern notion that there is no literal truth, only voices and narratives. If so, who can object if you make up a narrative that expresses the truth you feel? This attitude seeps into therapy, often through therapists who guide patients to the feeling that parents must have abused them. After one California patient sued her parents, her therapist said, "I don't care if it's true. ... What actually happened is irrelevant to me."
I would point out to this particular fool of a therapist that "what actually happened is" extremely relevant; when feelings are taken as proof of terrible events, real people get hurt and real human beings suffer as a result.
Why should we care? After all, this only affects those few individuals who find themselves in such circumstances? And why should we care that a book is being pushed by such as Oprah that is based on lies which supposedly reveal a "deeper emotional truth"?
Beyond the individual, unnecessary, suffering that occurs in such situations, there is a terrible price that our entire culture is paying for our devotion to "emotional truth" as superior to any actual reality. I wrote a long series on the roots of Political Correctness in which I attempted to trace the development of this pernicious theory which has held sway in liberal academia and in the MSM for at least the last 30+ years. Because PC so easily lends itself to caricature, it's more subtle, and therefore more dangerous, aspects tend to be overlooked. Perhaps the critical problem presented by Political Correctness is that you cannot solve a problem until you can adequately describe it; until you "name" the thing, it will defy explanation, and too many topics are verboten within the precincts of the MSM/Academia/Political axis of discourse. Worse, until such time as the new media can attain a critical mass and begin to set the agenda for daily discussion of the state of the world, we will all continue to rely on the MSM to serve as our eyes and ears around the world. When our MSM "eyes" do not see certain events and our MSM "ears" do not hear them, real events can not get the attention of the zeitgeist; they remain silent and invisible. At the same time, lies become seen as real and destroy reason and the ability to intervene effectively to redress wrongs.
Look at your newspaper today.
Where is the discussion of the danger of multiculturalism? [HT: S, C & A]
Where is the discussion of this new attack on the core legitimacy of Christianity?
Where is the discussion of the fundamental question for Islam to answer? What about this answer?
Where is the discussion of the evil of moral equivalency as practiced by the learned intellects of Hollywood?
If your only source of information is the MSM, you will look in vain for insights into such important issues. It is no wonder that the Times can get away with describing Alito as out of the mainstream, and apparently believe their own constructed fantasy, when it is they who have attitudes far out of the mainstream of the majority of their countrymen and women. How will we ever have a responsible opposition when they believe their own nonsense. That is the danger of replacing truth with "truth."
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