ShrinkWrapped

An Example of Anti-Insight

I have little time for blogging this week and will be away next week.  (And, according to Mrs. SW, I will be unable to go on line at all.... I have been informed, in no uncertain terms, that we [meaning "I"] will not be bringing any computers and all of our time will be spent in the [un]real world on vacartion.... There are worse fates and I am fairly sure I can function for a week without the internet, but the jury is out on whether or not I can actually do it.)  In the meantime, in between reading about the end of the world as we know it, take a look at Richard Landes's article, Jeffrey Goldberg: 4-D Jews, 2-D Gentiles, 1-D Muslims.  Richard takes apart the well meaning but anti-insightful article by Jeffrey Goldberg; he summaraizes Jeffrey's efforts as follows:

And in not tackling the real thing to fear – an active cataclysmic apocalyptic movement struggling for a hierarchical millennium of global dominion – Goldberg and those who proceed in the same line of thought, condemn us all to an interminable life of just these kinds of fears, always walking on egg-shells to avoid provoking the explosive forces we won’t talk about (and, arguably thereby encourage).

For Jeffrey Goldberg, and for so many bien pensants like him, not only should Voldemort's name never be mentioned, but his existence must continuously be denied.  This is not restricted to Islamic terrorism, of course, but to any phenomenon which does not fit the approved template.  Articles like this do not seek to enlighten, to offer insight, they aim to disguise and obfuscate; they are, to coin a phrase, examples of anti-insight.

Anders Behring Breivik, Naser Jason Abdo, and the Nature of Evil: Part II

Part I

There have been several varieties of the "terrorist are crazy" meme that are reliably expounded whenever an atrocity occurs.  We feel comforted by the idea that one of us could commit such an atrocity as Breivik only if we were "crazy".

William Falk, the Editor of The Week, a newsweekly and member of the New York Times News Service, in the course of offering his take on the interaction between blogs and Breivik's attack in the August 5th edition, provided his reasoning behind the "Breivik is insane" meme: [Emphasis added-SW]

All Muslims are terrorists, and all terrorists, Muslim.  Barack Obama is a Marxist on a mission to destroy the U.S. economy, after which he will establish concentration camps for Christians.  All Republicans are heartless fascists motivated by hatred of blacks, old people, and the poor.  These examples of extreme black-and-white thinking, which psychologists would see as evidence of mental illness, can be found every day on the fevered fringes of the blogosphere.  Anders Behring Breivik spent a lot of time in that alternative reality, soaking up U.S.-based blogs that insist day after day that "Islam is intrinsically violent" (Jihad Watch) and that 'the 'moderate Islam' meme [is] a theory with no basis in reality or history" (Atlas Shrugs).  Breivik cited these blogs hundreds of times in the 1,516-page manifesto he posted before he went off to slaughter the children of Norwegian socialists.  The irony, of course, is that Breivik's violent and apocalyptic worldview is a mirror image of the one found on Jihadist websites; for both the Nordic Crusader and the soldier of Allah, there us no gray-only black and white, Us and Them, humiliation and vengeance.

But let us not blame blogs or the internet for the proliferation of extremism; they are merely tools.  Let us blame black-and-white thinking itself, and the people who indulge in it.  To live in a world devoid of doubt and ambiguity is seductive, and deeply satisfying, but its crazy, and inevitably leads to crazy results.  If people who think differently from you aren't merely different, but evil, then you mustn't bargain with them, or even tolerate them.  You must destroy them.  Ands so it goes.

To quote Wolfgang Pauli in a different context: This isn't right. This isn't even wrong.

First of all, no reputable Psychologist with the least amount of training would ever agree that "black-and-white" thinking is prima facie evidence of mental illness.  That is a nonsensical statement that shows a complete lack of understanding of how our minds are structured and operate.  More formally understood as a derivative of the psychological function know as "splitting", black-and-white thinking is ubiquitous and ultimately, an intrinsic aspect of human rationality.  It would not be an exaggeration to say that the scientific method depends on black-and-white thinking; what, after all, is the scientific method but systematizing the differentiation between one's hypothesis and the null hypothesis!  In fact, the first, most basic mental distinction an infant learns is a black-and-white distinction between what belongs to one's own mind and body (self) and what belongs to that larger realm of not-self.  This is a binary structure.  Something is either self or not-self.  People who do not negotiate this psychological milestone are prone to psychotic compensations.  Without getting too deep into the subject, the point is that our brains, and our minds (which are either derivatives or epiphenomena of our brains) are especially designed to seek out edges, those boundaries that divide one thing from another.  Our visual systems even have specialized cells which fire only when boundaries are crossed; our brains distinguish edges (especially when in motion) much more effectively than "shades of gray."  The binary, black-and-white distinction is the bedrock of mentation!  It is only as our brains develop and mature that we can begin to overcome our innate tendency to dichotomize the world and enlarge our concepts of Self (which comes to include family/tribe/country) and Other.

In the simplest terms, black-and-white thinking is baseline; nuance and texture requires a constant struggle to maintain one's higher order cognitive functioning (the rational mind) despite the constant pressure from the emotional mind to regress to a position of all-good versus all-bad.

Under duress, when we tend to regress to earlier levels and models of function, we quite easily fall into a world where splitting is prominently featured.  As a physician I can assure you that perfectly normal people, in the face of bad news, can quite readily go from seeing their Doctor as a brilliant, heroic, saving figure to an incompetent charlatan in the blink of an eye.  Healthy people do not remain trapped in the regressed state that is characterized by collapsing the world into all-good versus all-bad objects (the analogue of Falk's black-and-white thinking) but are able to recover and resume using higher order cognitive abilities which represent the triumph of rationality.

There is an additional point where Falk's reasoning collapses.  Whether or not you agree with the premises of the anti-Jihad blogs, when the writers at Jihad Watch or Atlas Shrugs exaggerate, as all of us do from time to time, and write words that paint all Muslims as the enemy of civilization, they specifically do not recommend taking up arms and murdering innocents as a way to combat the spread of Sharia.  Our greatest problem with Islam today is that far too many of those who speak for Islam or defend Islam, quite specifically support or rationalize the use of violence against innocents to combat those who are labeled as enemies of Islam. 

Consider the Norwegian Ambassador's shameful and reprehensible remarks rationalizing Palestinian terrorism:

The Oslo Attacks And Palestinian Terrorism Are 'Different'

In an interview with the Israeli daily Maariv, Norway's ambassador to Israel Svein Sevje patiently explained that he wanted to "outline the similarity and the difference in the two cases."

Palestinians, the ambassador told Maariv, "are doing this because of a defined goal that is related to the Israeli occupation. There are elements of revenge against Israel and hatred of Israel. To this you can add the religious element to their actions."

"In the case of the terror attack in Norway, the murderer had an ideology that says that Norway, particularly the Labor Party, is forgoing Norwegian culture," Sevje said, referring to Anders Breivik.

"We Norwegians consider the occupation to be the cause of the terror against Israel," he said. "Those who believe this will not change their mind because of the attack in Oslo."

This came after Israel was one of the first countries to reach out to Norway after the attacks and offer its condolences and assistance.

Sevje's reasoning is not only morally corrupt and inverted, it is also a wonderfully simplistic example of what Falk would refer to as black-and-white thinking.  In this case, Sevje makes a distinction where none exists between Breivik, who committed his crimes out of a belief system that holds the Norwegian Labor party is an agent of a dangerous ideology which aims to destroy Norway, and the Palestinians, who act out of a belief system (with which, apparently Sevje agrees) that Israel is an embodiment of a dangerous ideology which aims to destroy the Palestinian people.  In both cases, the thinking could not be more simplistic, debased, and regressed, in a word, an example of splitting.  For Breivik and Sevje, one side is all-bad, the other all-good.  They might disagree on who gets assigned to which condition but they agree with the structure of splitting that is apparent in what passes for both men's thinking.

So, if splitting per se does not explain the distinction between crazy and not crazy, how do we attempt to tease out when an individual who does something horrific has indeed crossed the line from reality to unreality?  That is a subject for Part III.

Psychiatrist as Fool

This is thoroughly embarrassing.  There are good reasons Psychiatrists should think twice before making sweeping comments about those with whom they disagree politically...*[HT:  Allahpundit]

 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The lack of self awareness is striking and breath taking...what a fool.

*If this doesn't get the Judge back to comment, I don't know what will.

Obama Closes in on a Milestone

The markets have been down 8 days in a row.  The last time the markets were down 9 days in a row was 1978!

That means that if the markets are down again today, Obama will have tied his mentor, Jimmy Carter, and presided over an economy stumbling along so badly that it is setting records!

[HT: This is according to a personal communication from long time reader and occasional commenter CF, who follows the markets much more closely than I do.]

Anders Behring Breivik, Naser Jason Abdo, and the Nature of Evil: Part I

This should be a very short post.  It is really not that difficult to define Breivik's actions and Abdo's plans as evil, and all civilized people, and all those who evince pretensions to being numbered among the civilized, should be able to agree on the fundamentals.  Unfortunately, we neither have a decent theory of action which can explain Breivik and Abdo, nor do we have a common moral compass which allows us to understand their behavior in useful ways. 

In the last week we have been treated to a variety of shop worn memes purporting to explain Breivik's actions and, in a typical MSM contrast, we have been treated to the relative absence of the obvious memes which could be used to explain Abdo's behavior. 

(Consider the "paper of record's" description of Abdo:  Two reporters and the usual army of editors manage to describe Abdo as a Soldier Arrested in Suspected Bomb Plot (who) Had Series of Disputes With Army; despite acknowledging a religious element to his disagreements with the army [and one is left to wonder how child porn and murder fit into his Islamic beliefs] the Times does not even once venture into any explorations of what those beliefs might be!  The New York Times is remarkable for its fastidious adherence to the highest standards of modesty when discussing Islamic terrorists; they showed no such diffidence in discussing, and smearing, those who allegedly fueled Breivik's terrorism.)

Since I attempt on my blog to "Understand Our World" the first order of business would be to explain the limits of our understanding of action, to wit:

None of our Neurosciences, ranging from the most behavioral (Psychoanalysis) to the most biological (Neuro-psychiatry) have an adequate theory of action.

In other words, while we can often create post-hoc explanations that are convincing and superficially compelling, we have no theories that can predict future behavior, except in the most limited, mundane sense.  This leaves us with a major lacuna in the center of our understanding of aberrant acts.  Consider this from Dr. Theodore Dalrymple, the pen name of Anthony Daniels, who worked for many years as a Forensic Psychiatrist in England and was quoted in the WSJ Saturday:

Unraveling the Mystery of Murderous Minds

Your garden-variety convicts, he contends, are much simpler subjects than a man like Breivik. To ask them why they steal, he says, "is like asking you why you have lunch." They want something, so they take it. "And since in Britain," he adds with a smirk, "the state does very little to discourage [thieves]," or to incarcerate them when they are caught, "the question is not why there are so many burglars, but why there are so few."

A Breivik is a deeper mystery. Of him, "you can say, 'This man is highly narcissistic, paranoid and grandiose,'" and this may lead you to seek reasons for that in his past—"his father disappeared at the age of 15 and so on and so forth." But uncovering such facts doesn't solve the mystery because "whatever you find, you would also find among hundreds or thousands or even millions of people who didn't do what he did." There is, he says, "always a gap between what is to be explained and your alleged explanation. So there's always a mystery, and I think that's going to remain."

[Dr. Dalrymple has some most interesting comments on our need to explain, and our self-deceptive belief that such explanations are possible but that is beyond the scope of this post.]

[As for a predictive science of individual behavior, I am indebted to, and  retain a deep sense of satisfaction and humility with, Roger Penrose's explanation that consciousness may not be computable; he uses math and information science to show that a predictive science of consciousness may well require more computing power and time than the universe allows, a subset of the incompleteness theorem.  If he is correct, and I do not doubt that he is, considering the complexity of the human brain and mind, we may someday improve in our ability to predict the behavior of large groups, where irrationalities sum, but will never be able to perfectly model or predict an individual's behavior at all times; the antecedents and interconnections in the mind/brain are simply too complex to ever decipher in less time and computational ability that is available in the known universe.]

What this means is that we will never be able to predict with certainty which person who complains that _____ (fill in the blanks with your own choice) is unfair will take violent action to redress his grievances and who among them (the vast majority who may agree) will either remain passive or work within the accepted bounds of social and political decency.  That does not, however, argue for taking a passive stance when confronting those with grievances.  We do, in fact, know that there are a number of factors that make violence more likely.  Note that this is, as suggested above, a consideration of group dynamics from which violent individuals emerge.

1) In the face of societal regression, less mature modes of thinking and acting become more likely.  In other words as a society is stressed, and as individuals are stressed, the ability to take appropriate actions (hard work, debate, organizing and voting to redress political grievances) becomes more friable; on the fringes, violence can come to be seen as the only alternative for those who experience themselves as weak and disenfranchised.  Nonetheless, even at times of great stress and regression, the majority of people do not resort to violence unless directly threatened themselves; perhaps this is the greater mystery than why the few become dangerously violent.

2) In circumstances where one's culture, or sub-culture, explicitly sanctions or glorifies violence as a response to real and imagined slights, the risk of violence increases dramatically.  Even here, it is remarkable that though close to 100% of Palestinians hate Jews and wish they would be destroyed, it is, despite the efforts of the entire society to mobilize to destroy their enemies, a small fraction who actually engage in murderous acts toward their neighbors.  Here, the distinction between Breivik and Abdo is most stark.  Breivik comes from a culture that finds violence anathema; he has been universally condemned, even by those who he and the Left-leaning MSM cite as inspiring his ideological posture.  Abdo, although living within a culture that abjures the use of violence for resolving political disputes, identified himself as a member of a culture that celebrates the use of violence for expanding its writ.  It is thus no coincidence that there are far more Abdos than Breiviks.

3) In addition to the societal factors, there is broadly speaking, one additional factor related to the individual's transition from passive to (violently) active, best explained by the Poet:

On a rattlesnake speedway in the Utah desert
I pick up my money and head back into town
Driving cross the Waynesboro county line
I got the radio on and I'm just killing time
Working all day in my daddy's garage
Driving all night chasing some mirage
Pretty soon little girl I'm gonna take charge

CHORUS
The dogs on Main Street howl
'cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister I ain't a boy, no I'm a man
And I believe in a promised land

I've done my best to live the right way
I get up every morning and go to work each day
But your eyes go blind and your blood runs cold
Sometimes I feel so weak I just want to explode
Explode and tear this whole town apart
Take a knife and cut this pain from my heart
Find somebody itching for something to start

- The Promised Land

When you have done all the "right things" and you still cannot succeed to your specifications, if you still don't "get the girl", the rage at frustrated desires can be overwhelming.  One can start off as a loser or become a loser, ie one who loses in the competition for success and status in a modern economy; either way, for those will limited internal resources, there are only two options: the resulting rage can be turned inward (depression and suicide) or outward (externalized onto others in violence.)

Sometimes I feel so weak I just want to explode

In the early 21st century, the old orders are failing across the board.  Societies are under great stress: the Blue, welfare state model is failing; Communism has failed; Islam has failed, and we are careening toward a modern world that looks more and more as if it is regressing to a Hobbseian state of nature.  During times of extreme dislocation, the possibility that we are finally (once again?) approaching Apocalyptic times, becomes prominent and man's usual tendency for hyperbole escalates; exaggeration is de riguer at such times.

[See Richard Landes' new book, Heaven on Earth, for an explication of Millennialism in its various forms; sadly, it is likely to be a more useful discussion as time goes on.]

At this point I would only add one more element that distinguishes Breivik from Abdo:  Breivik is no more evil than Abdo, but he was far more competent, a sad commentary on the much greater ability of Western Culture to cultivate competence even in its least able.  Further, he was aided and abetted by the incompetence of those who the Norwegian innocents relied on for protection.  A healthy, self correcting society would immediately recognize that there is never going to be a guarantee that a lone loser will not take up arms against his own feelings of inferiority and weakness and direct his inchoate rage at his surround.  That hypothetical healthy society would recognize that a citizenry must be able to protect themselves (either by demanding competency from their police and military or arming themselves) or they will have forfeited the right to be free men and women.

Although I have not cited the Neuropsychiatric research or the Psychoanalytic investigations which support my contention that we currently lack anything approaching an adequate theory of action, the evidence is available for anyone who wants to devote the time and energy.  The next step is to establish that Breivik's actions, just as Abdo (and Major Hasan, and Timothy McVeigh, and a host of other terrorists) were not psychotic, but were rather  behaviors that occurred at the extreme limits of a continuum from normal behavior to pathological behavior without ever crossing the boundaries of psychotic behavior; to wit, neither Breivik nor Abdo are "crazy" either in the Psychiatric or the forensic sense.

To be continued...

Good News, Bad News

The Good News is that I am doing very well.  My children continue to come up with ways to make their mother and me proud, my new job is interesting and rewarding, and I am busier with good things that ever.

The Bad News is that I have not been able to figure out a way to fit blogging into my schedule. 

While I am chary about making promises I may not be able to keep, I hope to be able to produce a blog post this weekend for posting next week and if it works, I would very much like to resume posting once or twice a week going forward.  The recent events in Norway (and today's arrest of a Jihadi "conscientious objector" for plotting to re-visit the Fort Hood massacre) cry out for a Psychological perspective on "crazy" versus evil behavior.

I apologize for my extended silence and appreciate the good wishes of all who sent me e-mails.  I meant to post a response but as each day passed without the time or internal impetus, it became harder and harder to figure out exactly what to say about my hiatus.  I hope that when next I post I can shed a little light from my corner of the blogosphere.

On Blogging

I know that a number of people have wondered what has become of me.  I very much appreciate all the concern and comments you have posted and e-mailed.  I am in the middle of writing a post explaining my extended absence.  I am personally doing well and my family is doing well, however, my blogging has fallen victim to unforeseen circumstances.  I hope to have a more complete explanation available in the not too distant future.

A Work in Progress

I have been taking a somewhat involuntary extended break from blogging but have not given up hope that I will be able to rejoin the conversation, albeit in a more limited fashion, in the next little bit.  In the meantime, I hope all of my friends and readers have had a wonderful Easter and Passover.

The Persistence of the Unconscious: Part II

Last Friday, Richard Goldstone published a self serving mea culpa on the op-ed page of the Washington Post:

Reconsidering the Goldstone Report on Israel and war crimes

We know a lot more today about what happened in the Gaza war of 2008-09 than we did when I chaired the fact-finding mission appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council that produced what has come to be known as the Goldstone Report. If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.

The final report by the U.N. committee of independent experts — chaired by former New York judge Mary McGowan Davis — that followed up on the recommendations of the Goldstone Report has found that “Israel has dedicated significant resources to investigate over 400 allegations of operational misconduct in Gaza” while “the de facto authorities (i.e., Hamas) have not conducted any investigations into the launching of rocket and mortar attacks against Israel.”

Our report found evidence of potential war crimes and “possibly crimes against humanity” by both Israel and Hamas. That the crimes allegedly committed by Hamas were intentional goes without saying — its rockets were purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets.

The allegations of intentionality by Israel were based on the deaths of and injuries to civilians in situations where our fact-finding mission had no evidence on which to draw any other reasonable conclusion. While the investigations published by the Israeli military and recognized in the U.N. committee’s report have established the validity of some incidents that we investigated in cases involving individual soldiers, they also indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.

[Richard Landes, courtesy of  Fabian Pascal who blogs at the excellent The PostWest, has an extensive collection of links and commentary to Goldstone's recantation: Goldstone recants… sort of.  Read the whole thing.]

Any fair minded person would have to believe that Richard Goldstone, a man who professes a deep appreciation for the law and a firmly rational judicial mind and temperament, could only have allowed himself to be used by those who hate his people out of some complex internal calculation.  Surely, Goldstone sees himself as a humble man desiring only to do good; he wishes to find justice for the Palestinians, and by his own words, and those of his supporters (see J Street's pronouncements on the Goldstone Report) has a desire to protect Israel from its own immoral excesses.  To hear such people protest their moral purity is akin to appreciating the righteous anger of the Prophets of the Old Testament.  If only Israel repented and changed its evil ways, Goldstone would be vindicated and his conscious desires gratified.

Yet there is something much darker in a man turning on his own and everything he claims to stand for.  The Goldstone Report was a kangaroo court out of Alice in Wonderland: "Sentence first - verdict afterwards."  As noted at Understanding the Goldstone report:

The Commission openly denies a presumption of innocence to the Israelis accused of crimes (while honoring Hamas’ presumed innocence) and acknowledges that it made accusations of crimes without proof that would stand up in court.

[For additional links and discussion of Richard Goldstone's recantation, see Richard Goldstone: Chief Kangaroo; there are many additional places to find out more; suffice to say that the evidence suggests that the presumption of Israeli perfidy and Palestinian innocence was the bedrock of the Commission and no amount of facts were allowed to interfere with this preconception.]

With the proviso that I do not know Richard Goldstone and everyone has their own variant of ubiquitous psychodynamics, the understanding of those who hate their own families (and ethnic groups are essentially extended families) contain some common elements. 

Freud believed that the Oedipal Complex was universal.  Later Psychoanalysts enlarged our understanding of childhood development to include many other important elements but what is often overlooked in our sanitized versions of childhood and its vicissitudes in the public sphere is that childhood conflicts concern the most intense of emotions.  To become an adult who is capable of love, work, and play requires taming murderous hatreds and violent wishes.  Love and fear eventually civilize most of us but the vestiges of our early love and hate remain in the timeless unconscious.

The personality has its first crystallization during the Oedipal Phase (4-7 years old.)  During that period of time the young child must renounce his primary attachment to his mother and his murderous rivalry with his father because he loves and fears his father and mother and wants to preserve his relationship with both.  However, the resolution of the Oedipal Complex does not mean that all murderous and rivalrous feelings disappear; they simply remain hidden in the unconscious, with the needed object(s) protected by love and fear.  Ultimately, the child knows that expressing hatred toward the father means that there can be retribution.  It is safer to bury the Oedipal competition.

When the youngster reaches early adolescence, the upsurge in hormones and the developmental pressures forward reawaken old feelings and passions.  Whenever there is a developmental move forward into the unknown there is always a reactive regressive pull back to the familiar early experiences, with the additional fillip that the early experiences have become softened and idealized in the unconscious.  The pull is back to a primary relationship with the all powerful and all giving mother of infancy, but since such fantasies are unacceptable to the maturing mind (and any pull back to the mother stirs up Oedipal feelings for a second go round, typically in much more hidden form) the young adolescent must translate his inchoate feelings into acceptable forms.  This is also the time when many young people are discovering politics and ideology.  Left wing ideologies champion the rights of the oppressed (and what adolescent is not oppressed?) and hold out the promise of a Utopian world in which there is no lack of gratification or deprivation.  There is no competition (Oedipal rivalry finally vanquished!) and morality is clear and unconflicted.  Oppressors are evil and victims are innocent, often some variant of "Nobel Savages."  This is ideal for conflicted youngsters who can not bear to work through their Oedipal conflicts a second time and find comfort in hiding their feelings under the rubric of an ideology that brings them social capital even as the internal emotional IED's are defused.

Now we can see that the young idealistic Leftist can use his ideology to protect himself from awareness of his unconscious murderous feelings.  Further, he can, in our current disturbed world, receive approbation by expressing his murderous rage toward acceptable outlets.  Further, as an unconscious bonus, the evil ones toward whom the hatred is expressed are rather thinly disguised stand-ins for the father.  After all, who is "the Man" if not the father? 

Many, perhaps most, idealistic young people enter the adult world, confront their disappointments with reality, and as they begin the difficult task of taking care of themselves and supporting themselves temper their Utopian anger as they recapitulate the resolution of the Oedipal Complex.  Now it is the greater world, including "the Man", who is understood as made up of people who are merely human, with all our foibles, and the young adult can move forward vowing to do a better job than his or her parents and their generation.

Far too many Westerners never have to abandon adolescence.  In Academia and government especially, work can often be a sinecure where there is little of the trouble that those who have to work at less secure vocations face.  By being protected from the vicissitudes of life, there is no need to temper one's insistence on Utopia with the demands of reality.  One can imagine (insist!) that war should never be necessary and when it is (only in a Nobel cause, as in Libya) it can be measured and proportionate at all times, that Westerners can be expected to adhere to impossibly high standards of conduct while their victims are held to no particular standards at all. 

For these fortunate few, there are multiple rewards, monetary and moral, to maintaining the purity of Utopian youth.  From their elevated stance above the maddening crowd, they can imagine themselves champions of a pure love for mankind, unadulterated by the compromises that reality forces upon the rest of us, all the while feeling free to express the hatred that their love ennobles.  Their virtue is unassailable and their righteous anger a pure and noble passion. 

In this way they select themselves as useful idiots for a new generation of mass murderers and madmen, destroying their paternal revenants in an eternally recurrent, irresolvable, passion play.

The Persistence of the Unconscious: Part I

At one time sophisticated, modern people recognized that many of their conscious motivations were based on deeper strata of irrational desires.  For a time sophisticated Europeans and Americans understood that our understanding of reality is filtered through a cognitive process that was inextricably intertwined with the irrational.  During the last half century, several pernicious developments in Philosophy, Academia, and Medicine have enabled the re-submergence of our understanding of the irrational. 

Philosophy gave us post-modernism, which like many philosophical ideas has value in the abstract but is all too easily twisted into a mental construct that not only effaces unpleasant reality but allows one to simultaneously pick and choose those "realities" which supports ones desires.  It enabled an intellectual construct that facilitated the free expression of one's basest drivers and emotions while consciously denying the connection to one's inner world.  In other words, one could argue that any and all forms of sexual behavior are liberating while denying the unconscious determinants of the perverse.  This has now reached the point of absurdity where some Western feminists defend such primitive practices as child marriage and female genital mutilation in the name of multi-culturalism.

Academia has done its part by imposing a template upon scientific research that enforces a rigid set of boundaries beyond which inquiry is forbidden.  At the same time Academia and the media which feeds off of its pronouncements ignore the growing body of evidence that supports some of the most important theories of Psychoanalysis which argue for enlarging the realm of personal responsibility and freedom (ie, the existence of a Dynamic Unconscious) while emphasizing those developments that diminish personal responsibility (when useful.)    For example, sexual preference and individual character traits are often explained as primarily genetic in origin (diminishing responsibility for misogynistic and violent behavior in approved and excused victim groups) while the connection between genetics, culture, and intelligence is consistently denied.

Finally, Medicine, especially organized Psychiatry hand in hand with large Pharmaceutical corporations aided and abetted by the FDA, has taken to treating troubled individuals as if their minds are black boxes form which symptoms emerge medicines are designed to control. 

The effect of these developments, along with many others (this cannot be an exhaustive list since the erasure of the unconscious has been a societal effort from the moment its codification was begun by Sigmund Freud) have led to the post-modern environment when because men nd women speak in measured tones and use rational terms, the unconscious roots of their behavior is ignored.  Yet, the bizarre events of daily life in our modern world cry out for a Psychoanalytic explanation.

According to the elites in Europe and America, with their friends and colleagues in the rest of the enlightened world represented by the sovereign states of the UN, there is no higher level of rational discourse than that august body.  After the Gaza War of 2008-09, the UN, in high dudgeon, demanded an investigation of Israeli "war crimes."  The fact that casualties were quite limited in comparison to similar conflicts elsewhere or that Hamas had been attacking Israel on a daily basis with rockets aimed at civilians (an actual war crime) was immaterial.  The UN, as is its wont, would investigate and damn Israel.  In order to assure that the report would be given the weight intended, the UN chose a prominent Jew, South African Jurist Richard Goldstone, to be the chair and author of the committee's report.  The Goldstone report was a treatise worthy of the Tzar's police; as expected it damned Israel and became part of the bedrock for the delegitimization and demonization campaign aimed at Israel being conducted around the world by Arabs and other Jew haters. 

Consider this an introduction to an examination of a terrible miscarriage of justice done for the best of conscious reasons by a man who had no idea of the unconscious determinants of his behavior.

[To understand my disgust with Richard Goldstone, you should spend some time at Understanding the Goldstone report.  Their work is excellent, high quality research by people who know what they are doing, complete with citations.  Here is their summary from the home page:

The report violates international standards for inquries, including UN rules on fact-finding, replicating earlier UNHRC biased statements.

The Commission systematically favored witnesses and evidence put forward by anti-Israel advocates, and dismissed evidence and testimony that would undermine its case.

The commission relied extensively on mediating agencies, especially UN and NGOs, which have a documented hostility to Israel; the report reproduces earlier reports and claims from these agencies.

At the same time, the Commission inexplicably downplayed or ignored substantial evidence of Hamas’ commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes of terror, including specifically its victimization of the Palestinian population by its use of human shields, civilian dress for combatants, and combat use of protected objects like ambulances, hospitals and mosques.

The Commission openly denies a presumption of innocence to the Israelis accused of crimes (while honoring Hamas’ presumed innocence) and acknowledges that it made accusations of crimes without proof that would stand up in court.

The report contains numerous gratuitous digressions into issues beyond the purview of a fact-finding commission that are inaccurate and profoundly hostile to Israel and Jews.

The Commission distorted legal standards, imposing on Israel standards that reverse their generally understood and applied meaning, while ignoring important rules of international law that put the onus of responsibility on an organization as base, by Goldstone’s own standards, as Hamas.

Tomorrow, Richard Goldstone's mea culpa.