ShrinkWrapped

The Narcissistic Over-Investment in Ideas

For the last week I stayed out of range of the internet, newspapers, and television.  It was a cleansing experience, but now I have re-engaged in the real world and one of the things that has leaped out at me is how little reality matters to those who develop a powerful emotional attachment to their own weltanschauung.

Even for those with normal levels of narcissism, the probability of falling into an over-investment in one's own ideas is ubiquitous.  The maxim that "scientific paradigms change one death at a time" is a recognition that even those (scientists) who are expected to be most dispassionate about their beliefs are subject to the all too human failing of growing wedded to inaccurate or incorrect theories simply because they have invested so much time and energy into them that they are unable to countenance the possibility that they are in error.  Those who have more than the usual quanta of narcissistic pathology are far more liable to embrace, and persist in their embrace of, nonsensical ideas than those who lack such a passionate attachment. 

Politicians tend to come in two varieties, both exhibiting elements of enhanced narcissism.  Most politicians are primarily opportunistic.  Their narcissistic investment is in their own importance and power.  When the polls go against them, they can rather easily jettison their political beliefs in favor of the more important gratification of being loved, adored, and re-elected.  Other politicians are much more ideological and ideologues are prime examples of those who refuse to examine their own beliefs in the light of failure. 

Barack Obama appears to have a narcissistic over-investment in his own particular ideas of how the world should operate and he shows little evidence just yet of allowing reality to impinge upon his beliefs.  (I do not think he is especially ideological; I agree with the pundit, whose name escapes me, that Obama's liberalism is more of an attitude than a developed and principled ideology.)  Obama's policies often appear to be primarily motivated by an animus toward George W. Bush rather than any profound or nuanced grasp of complex realities.  If Bush did it, then Obama must be against it.  On those occasions when Obama has continued or adopted Bush's policies, he takes pains to pretend that he is doing something different from what Bush had done and the press offers cover by omitting any mention of the inconvenient truth.

Nowhere is Obama's over-investment in his own ideas (or attitudes) more overt than in his approach to the Middle East.  Come what may, he insists that his policy (what there is of one) toward Iran is appropriate and necessary.  (This may actually reflect a dearth of ideas on the part of his foreign policy team but if so, that is even more dispiriting.)  Barry Rubin, of the GLORIA Center, Global Research in International Affairs, offers a concise summary of our position viz a viz Iran:

Here's Your Story: No Engagement Game Because Iran Burned Down

Gerald Seib’s article in the Wall Street Journal is worth responding to because it does symbolize the curious mentality about Iran prevailing in American policymaking and opinion-making circles. The article is entitled, "Iran Collapse Complicates U.S. Moves."

On the contrary! I think it makes things much simpler and clearer.

But first a story told to me many years ago by famed radio host Barry Farber:

A reporter is dispatched to cover a high school basketball game but doesn’t file a story. As deadline approaches the editor irritably calls the journalist into his office and asks where is the story?

“There isn’t any story,” says the reporter.

“Why not?” asks the editor.

“There wasn’t any game,” the journalist replies.

“Why not?” asks the editor.

“The gym burned down.”

For those of you who are journalists with certain mass media outlets, I should explain the point of the anecdote: The gym burning down was the story.

Now back to Seib.

He explains there is an alleged irony in the fact that, “America's most vexing enemy is plagued by growing internal dissension, a vocal opposition movement that won't die and a crisis of legitimacy.”

What is it?

“The upheaval there actually is making the job of crafting an American strategy more difficult.”

Why?

Because, you see, it is harder to engage Iran when it is so busy with domestic matters and in disarray. I’ve heard this from others in Washington as well. And Seib gives us the likely Obama administration conclusion:

“And here's the most likely outcome: The U.S. will leave the door open to engagement with Iran, but won't be trying as hard as before to coax the Iranians into walking through it.”

Well, why are we even talking about this? It is time for a new view of Iran and U.S. policy. Memo to Obama: The situation has changed big-time.

Why engage a country where the most extreme of the extreme have seized power and anyone prepared to make compromises has been kicked out or put on trial (not that they were so moderate either)? There can be no illusion that while the president of Iran is a loudmouth the spiritual guide is a secret moderate.

Why engage a country which has ignored every effort to do so and has gone full speed ahead on nuclear weapons?

Why engage a regime which has just appointed a wanted terrorist involved in killing Americans as its defense minister, who will have control over nuclear weapons?

Why engage a country whose ambitions are clearly regional hegemony and is making gains in that direction precisely because of perceived U.S. weakness?

What the United States needs now is not an engagement policy or even a sanctions' plan (though that is a part of it) but a strategy to compete with Iran and its allies throughout the region and defeat their ambitions. (Just because George W. Bush thought that way does not mean it's wrong, a concept it is vital for the Obama administration to grasp.)

...

I’ve got news for you. There is a story: Iran burned down.

I took the liberty of reprinting most of Barry Rubin's article because it is so exquisitely on target.  While I disagreed with the President's position that (greater) engagement with Iran was going to be anything more than a way for Iran to temporize and progress toward their goal of a nuclear capacity, his position was defensible.  However, since the elections and the turmoil in Iran, with the thugs in charge showing for all the world to see their true nature, the justification for continuing to press for engagement is impossible to rationalize. 

If Barack Obama still believes that he can bring about world peace simply by the force of his personality and his eloquence, he is dangerously foolish and naive.  The alternatives, that he still does not have a coherent Iran policy or that he believes that empowering tyrants will moderate their behavior, are, if anything, worse.

Climate Change, the American Psychological Association, and Psychopathology

The Soviet Union perfected the art of pathologizing its dissidents.  Since the USSR was a "Worker's Paradise" it was rather obvious that anyone who objected to the arrangement must be psychologically impaired.  Dissidents were routinely sent to Psychiatric hospitals and injected with all manner of powerful Psychiatric medications in an effort to correct their Psychiatric disorders.  Once the basic premise was accepted, the misuse of Psychiatry was inevitable.  It appears that the American Psychological Association is following in the glorious footsteps of Soviet Psychiatry: [HT: Jonah Goldberg]

Psychology and Global Climate Change: 

Addressing a Multi-faceted Phenomenon and Set of Challenges

A Report by the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on the Interface Between Psychology and Global Climate Change

I hadn't realized that there was an intimate interface between Psychology and Global Climate Change, but once the premise is accepted, the abuses to follow become inevitable.  According to the APA report (which relies on the IPCC report that has been debunked as junk science by a fair number of eminent Climate Researchers), the Global Climate is changing and human activity is the primary driver of climate change.  I will not again review how badly the science has been politicized and how baldly the data has been manipulated in order to force predetermined conclusions; I would merely point out that so far none of the computer models have been able to predict the past, let alone the future; that even the proponents of measures to address climate change, such as cap and trade, admit that the best they can hope for is to mitigate temperature rise by less than one degree Fahrenheit by 2100; and that there is little evidence that human activity is a more powerful driver of climate than solar output. 

[Wolf's post summarizes some of the ways in which the data has been distorted and notes that global warming, excuse me climate change, research has been conducted contrary to the spirit and methodology of science:

This really is a travesty. But what I find most breathtaking is people calling themselves "scientists" while refusing to release their methodology and, now, complicit in hiding even the raw data. Such people should be stripped of their tenure and accreditation. Perhaps then some of the problems of politicized science that are now so bedeviling us would disappear.]

The Psychologists of the APA, who insist that they are scientists, accept the premise and construct a 230 page report detailing ways in which the people are failing in their understanding of the risks of "Climate Change", the necessity of the dissenters learning to accept the wisdom of those who know better than they do, and ways in which the public can be induced to accept the necessity of stringent measures to fight the menace.

(pp 20)This report considers psychology’s contribution to understanding and responding to climate change by focusing on psychological dimensions of climate change. We do this by reviewing what psychological research can tell us about perceptions and conceptions of global climate change, human activities that drive climate change, the psycho-social impacts of climate change, barriers to responding to climate change, and human responses to climate change via adaptation and mitigation. After a review of the literature, we recommend ways that the APA can: 1) Encourage psychologists to become involved in understanding human and psychological dimensions of global climate change; 2) Create effective outreach programs that assist the public in understanding of climate change, mitigating its human causes, and adapting to climate change impacts, and facilitate international, cross-disciplinary, trans-disciplinary collaborations that address a climate change; and 3) Address the organization’s environmental impacts that contribute to global climate change. [Emphasis mine-SW]

The report reads like a pseudo-scientific discussion.  It imagines climate change to be a closed, ie complete, science, rather than a series of hypotheses for which evidence remains in short supply.  The report accepts that the world of 50-100 years from now will be irretrievably altered in negative ways because of our actions today and works to find ways to help people recognize the dangers.  It is at this point that two things occur:

(pp 41) The perceived ability or inability to take corrective action is an important determinant of emotional reactions. Potential catastrophes from climate change (of the kind graphically depicted in the film “The Day after Tomorrow”) have the ability to raise visceral reactions to the risk (Leiserowitz, 2004). Climate change that is construed as rapid is more likely to be dreaded.  Perceived behavioral control and its absence can both work against behavior change. That is, it fosters the (probably unwarranted) belief that one would move from the hazard zone, and thus need not fear the hazard. At the same time, when people believe that they have no control over climate change, it facilitates such mechanisms as denial (e.g., Gifford, Iglesias, & Casler, 2008).

First, "The Day after Tomorrow" was risible nonsense.  It had absolutely no relationship to any science one could imagine.  It did not work as Physics or as Climatology.  By approvingly citing it as a way to raise "visceral reactions to the risk" it discredits the report as no more (and perhaps less) credible than movies claiming there are aliens in Area 51. 

Second, it establishes that those of us who do not accept the received wisdom of Anthropogenic Climate Change (and whatever happened to Global Warming?) are exercising a primitive defense mechanism, denial.  Brief episodes of denial are not diagnostic, but sustained denial suggests an impairment of reality testing.  The APA has now established a baseline assumption that those who are in denial of Anthropogenic Climate Change are suffering from a psychological disorder that is reflected in their use of denial.

The report has an entire section devoted to explaining "Which Psychological Barriers Limit Climate Change Action?" (pps 123-132)  Nowhere does the report include a recognition that the science of climatology is still in its infancy, that the global cooling for the last 10 years had not been predicted by any of the computer models, and that there may well be many more immediate problems that have a higher claim on our concern.  No, to the APA, Anthropogenic Climate Change is a privileged "fact" which has become unquestionable.

It is the blindness to their own unconscious motivations and desires that leads organizations like the APA to accept nonsense as fact.  It is a damaging and dispiriting development.  The APA should be devoting its energies to helping us understand human emotions and interactions.  Climate would seem to be a peripheral concern at best, yet by accepting the millenialist argument that the planet is at stake (a stretch even by the standards of the IPCC), the APA offers a Psychological rationale to support emergency measures to save mankind and the biosphere.

The APA has not yet determined that Climate Change scepticism is a distinct psychological disorder, but the ground work has been done.  It is beyond foolish for an organization devoted to understanding the Psychology of human beings to allow itself to fall into such a state.

Interestingly, we may well  gain enough data in the next 20 years to be able to make predictions about climate change.  At that point, technology will almost certainly have progressed to the point where energy use is exponentially more efficient and, if human derived CO2 is found to be a major driver of climate change, efforts to combat the problem can be more thoughtful, more effective, and more sparing of our economic well being.  If, as is at least equally likely, the human contribution to climate change is found to be negligible, the APA will be able to take the opportunity to examine how they have allowed themselves to succumb to dystopian fantasies and lose their reality testing.

August

It is August, the month that Psychoanalysts traditionally take off and head for the Cape.  Of course, in the 1950s, Psychoanalysts apparently were all wealthy and had waiting lists of patients! All the rich and famous felt somehow incomplete without an attempted analysis in their past.  The poor soul who was unable to start a conversation by the ubiquitous locution, "My analyst says..." was frequently left off invitation lists at the salons of the wise and venerable.  Alas, times change, and Psychoanalysts (especially those who practice in New York and have four children) must work for a living, even in the dog days of August.  However, in homage to our forefathers, I plan on blogging very lightly, if at all, during the month.  I also plan on taking some time off (though I will avoid the Cape) and catching up on some projects I have been neglecting and some books I have been waiting to get acquainted with.

I am fairly certain the world will persist in the absence of my blogging and will still be merrily heading wherever it is going, at a fine clip, in an out of control handbasket.

 To all my readers, commenters, and friends, have a wonderful August.