The Democrats and the MSM have traditionally had a difficult time explaining to themselves why their preferred candidates for office so often lose to people they consider ethically, morally, and intellectually inferior. In extremis, they have taken to a course that last succeeded in 1964, that is, the Psychological Attack.
In my post PsychBlogging and the Goldwater Rule, I discussed the Goldwater Rule, promulgated by the American Psychiatric Association after the psychological savaging of Barry Goldwater during the 1964 election campaign. I included part of the text of the APA statement (and a link to the full statement) and added some thoughts about the delicate balance the PsychBlogger must negotiate:
As with any professional who uses his or her expertise to comment on the world via a Blog, the PsychBlogger must walk a fine line between using professional expertise to illuminate and using such ability as a weapon. I do not think the Sanity Squad crossed the line. We stayed close to the manifest behavior of our subject, did not use his psychological make-up (real or imagined) to attack him, but in an attempt to understand why he did what he did, and did not use our knowledge to discredit his political positions. We all must remain mindful of the risk of stepping over the line and, as with most issues, look for our readers and listeners to remind us when we, from time to time, approach too close to the line.
Once again, the MSM in concert with some misguided members of my profession, have taken to crude Psychological Assault substituting for substantive analysis. Newsweek has an article purporting to document President Bush's denial of the true state of affairs in Iraq. In the article, a colleague, Dr. Kerry Sulkowicz, someone I know and think highly of, a Psychoanalyst at my institute, lends his imprimatur to this attempted character assassination. None of us are immune to forgetting some of the basic tenets of our profession; in the spirit of amity, I would like to offer some advice to Dr. Sulkowicz.
First, however, a couple of points about the article itself, which offers a jaundiced and incredibly over-simplified, occasionally nonsensical, definition of psychopathology. The Anchoress does us the honor of using common sense, too often in short supply in the MSM, to devastating effect:
Bush gets “The Full Nixon” treatment
My goodness, that is a masterpiece of ugliness and “nuanced” aggression based on nothing more than someone sitting around musing. In one paragraph - and with the seemingly reluctant admission that all this musing may mean nothing - we get:
1) He might not only be lying to himself (because he must know that his “war is lost,”) but he’s also LYING TO US (Mr. Subliminal reinforces the “he’s a liar - Bush lied, people died” narrative).
2) When he was 7, he tried to comfort his grieving mother with all the compassion, love and clumsiness of a 7 year old.
(Mr. Subliminal says Bush is mother-hung, traumatized and guilt-stricken by his sister’s death and that’s why he’s retreated into fantasy land!)
Until I read that part, I was mildly amused…but that bit made me mad. When my Elder Son was 7 I lost a baby during pregnancy, and as I wept my son - full of compassion and wanting to do anything to make me feel better - climbed onto my bed and hugged me and told me “it will be alright, Mommy, it will be alright.”
I suppose my son is “mentally ill” too. Either that or Newsweek has made a serious miscalculation, here. Every parent who is honest understands precisely what passed between Dubya and his mother at that moment, and it is nearly obscene to see it painted as anything less than profound and innocent love. It is low, hateful, needlessly spiteful and quite honestly it says much more about the writer than it does about the president.
Clarice Feldman linked to a number of Freeper's comments which document the difficulties that Dr. Sulcowicz has had with President Bush for quite some time, including his history of donating $500 to Howard Dean. For reference purposes, and to understand where I stand on this, I voted for Al Gore in 2000 and for George Bush in 2004.
Psychoanalysts are trained to be experts in understanding the organization and processes that take place within our patient's minds. We undergo our own Psychoanalysis to gain as good a grasp as possible on the workings of our own minds. We begin our work with the greatest humility, expecting our patients to surprise us, enlighten us, and educate us. As with so many people, it is easy, once involved in the work, to lose sight of the fact that our knowledge is actually quite limited and may, in many respects, be wrong. Psychoanalysts are in the unique position of understanding how little we know and can know about the inner experience of others; further, we should be in the forefront of those who seek to apply the scientific method of doubt and reproducibility in all areas; no information is ever completely divorced from its source. Dr. Sulkowicz is quoted in the Newsweek article:
"I do think there is denial on Bush's part in his running of the war," says Kerry Sulkowicz, clinical professor of psychiatry at New York University Medical Center. "He seems unmoved by the extent of the evidence that things are far worse than he believes. The tip-off for denial is perpetual optimism, a pathological certainty that things are going well."
In this quote lies Dr. Sulkowicz's assumptions. He assumes that the war is lost; this is understandable, if as is likely his only source of information about the war comes from the MSM, who are equally dedicated to the proposition that the war is lost. Consider Dennis Prager's column yesterday; he most astutely conflates last summer's Israel-Hezbollah War with the Iraq War:
America has "lost" the war in Iraq primarily because most people believe it has. And most people believe it has because the news media have said so.
If this sounds bizarre, consider this: Why is it widely believed that Israel lost its 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon? The answer is essentially the same — people believe it because the media said so. In fact, there is no rational case for arguing that Israel lost its war against Hezbollah.
I have believed that Israel won, or at least that Hezbollah lost, since the end of the war in 2006. I was convinced of this by Michael Young, the opinion editor of the Lebanese newspaper the Daily Star. In an interview on my radio talk show, he made the compelling case that Hezbollah had lost.
Dennis Prager then documents exactly why he believes Israel won and that the United States has not lost; he concludes:
In effect, then, America will have lost in Iraq when America decides it has lost. And then it becomes what is known as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
One can agree or disagree with Prager's conclusions (and you might be surprised at who he quotes for support) but it should be obvious that our MSM paint a picture that is at best incomplete.
As I have often stated the MSM are our society's perceptual apparatus; when our eyes deceive us, our conclusions are likely to be skewed. The Psychoanalyst acknowledges our own tendency to unconsciously accept the deceit of our own senses. In order to compensate for this, we trust our patients to offer evidence for the accuracy or inaccuracy of our interpretations. For example, if I comment to a patient that a particular bit of behavior appears to represent an unconscious repetition of a pattern we have noticed between him and his ambivalently held abusive father, I do not expect or accept a simple "yes" or "no" as confirmation or refutation. I wait to see what appears next in the consciousness of my patient. If he spends the rest of the session describing a new memory that just occurred to him of a time his father ridiculed him for striking out in a little league game, I know I am on the right track, whether the patient was dismissive of my comment or receptive to it. On the other hand, if he spends the rest of the session complaining of his boss who continually tries to shove things down his throat, forcing him to accept a work approach that he thinks is nonsense, I recognize I have misread the situation and misunderstood what he was experiencing in the session. This would be true whether he told me my comment was a brilliant insight or rank nonsense. Either way, I do not set myself up as the omniscient arbiter of my patient's experience.
Dr. Sulkowicz has fallen into the trap of imagining his experience, based on the distortions and biases of the MSM, accurately reflects the reality of our war efforts in Iraq. Just as he would reasonably protest that the MilBloggers and embeds who are in Iraq do not have the complete picture of the War, he fails to acknowledge his own limitations. As a result, he commits a grievous error and does harm to Psychoanalysis and to our political discourse.
I would suggest that Dr. Sulkowicz start a Blog in which he can lay out his grounds in detail for establishing why he believes what he believes. He would then have the advantage of having his readers comment and critique his reasoning. Only through such a struggle, listening to those who disagree with him, questioning his authority, tolerating others questioning the authority of his statements, can he hope to, as I have put it, "sum the irrationalities" which persist within him and within everyone else, and hope to arrive at a closer approximation of reality. Until that time he is willing to invite us all to see how his mind works, a little more humility would be welcome.
Tomorrow, I hope to return to Lisa's story.
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