SPRING 2019
Trump and the Social Trance (Part lll), Kenneth Alan Adams
ABSTRACT: This project contends that Donald Trump’s tenure as president is dependent on his followers’ immersion in a social trance that inhibits recognition and rational appraisal of his likely collusion with Russia in the 2016 election and his unparalleled malfeasance. It is argued that Christian fundamentalists’ immersion in the social trance is crucial to maintaining Trump’s political support, and traumatic childrearing is the key to understanding the basis for the right’s acquiescence in Trump’s abhorrent behavior and policies. Part I looked at Trump as an exemplar of muscular Christianity and a bully and suggested that fundamentalists’ characterization of him as God’s agent illustrates the Big Lie, a lie so outrageous it must be true. It was argued that Trump’s ascension to power was the culmination of masculine protest against what was experienced as feminine encroachment. Part II focused on fundamentalist childrearing and the terrorization of children through religious dogma and corporal punishment. It was argued that fundamentalist parents traumatize their children, generating in them the susceptibility to trance induction, obedience to authority, and defense against anxiety by switching into social alters. It was suggested that in adulthood alter formation is elaborated into political group-fantasies which are linked to trance induction. Part III focuses on Trump as an emotional delegate for the split-off rage of his followers and his use of projection to attack his opponents. It is asserted that Trump’s childhood experiences were crucial in the development of the persecutory alter with which he merges in these attacks. Trump and his followers share a sense of victimhood, which forms the basis of their collusive association. Trump’s success at trance induction, it is argued, involves encouraging his followers to utilize their projections to fill in the alluring omissions in his arguments. The article suggests that right-wing GOPers and Christian fundamentalists were already functioning in a trance state prior to Trump’s arrival on the political scene. Finally, Trump’s techniques of trance induction are described, including the importance of lying, repetition, invidious comparison, and growth panic.
Beyond Sacred Cow and Scapegoats: Displacement, Ideology, and the Future of Democracy, Brian D’Agostino
ABSTRACT: This is a paper about the dual nature of ideology—how it functions publicly in the macrocosm of history and political economy, and how it functions privately in the microcosm of individual psyches and the family histories that shape them. The first half (sections l and ll) presents an historical survey of how political, religious, and economic ideologies since 1500 have functioned to legitimize monarchy, revolution and capitalism in Western Europe and the United States. Section lll addresses how ideologies function in terms of displacement of unconscious complexes and the origins of these complexes in punitive parenting. The concluding section addresses institutional and psychological conditions for democratization in the Twenty-first Century.
Character Assassination in Ancient Rome: Defamation in Cicero’s First Catilinarian Oration from a Historical-Psychological Perspective, Martijn Icks and Eric Shiraev
ABSTRACT: Cicero’s Catilinarian Orations of 63 BCE are among the most exemplary pieces of damning rhetoric and defamation from all of antiquity. This paper analyzes the first of these famous speeches, using comparative methods to explore the perceptions of how Cicero commits character assassination on his opponent. For the modern observer, at least two general interconnected themes appeared in the speech. One refers to the emotional atmosphere of fear and anxiety Cicero is building in his audience. The other creates a cognitive dichotomy between “us” and “them”. Insights from psychology, history, and sociology can help us to critically connect antiquity to present times, examine how Cicero’s attacks against Catiline’s reputation worked, and why they were so psychologically effective.
Interlude between two depressions: A portrait of Queen Victoria at the pinnacle, Robert C. Abrams
ABSTRACT: From the mid-1890s until the onset of her final period of depression in the fall of 1900, Queen Victoria’s Empire was at its apogee and she personally was at the pinnacle of her post-Albert happiness, if that term can ever be justifiably applied to this often lugubrious and self-pitying monarch. For the Queen this period proved to be a respite, an interlude of symptomatic remission between her prolonged mourning for Prince Albert and the acutely debilitating depressive episode that spanned her last five months of life. The present article presents a portrait of the Queen’s personal style during this favorable hiatus, the details of which emphasize the extent of her belated recovery from mourning and her freedom from the thrall of a new depressive episode. Featured are her independent tastes in travel, music, theatre, food, and clothing and the differing nature of her friendships with men and women, all depicted during a time in her life when she was no longer influenced by Albert’s choices nor by the prevailing cultural preferences and restrictions of most of her subjects. Her distinctive approach to sovereignty is also reconsidered within the narrow frame between her emotional liberation from widowhood and the onset of late-life major depression.
Psychohistorical Perspectives on Current Events and Issues
Children’s Lives as History’s Pawns, Dan Dervin
ABSTRACT: While I was wrapping up this article, events at our southern border continued to accelerate. Over 5,000 troops were bivouacking there, setting up barbwire, firing tear gas, and taking a Thanksgiving break, as migrants/refugees began attempting entry. Meanwhile Trump was working to ban asylum seekers. Accordingly, the situation’s turbulence resists finality and can only be treated as an ongoing work-in-progress. But if we can’t predict where all this is leading, we can at least shed some light on how it fits into a larger picture. Reflections on children’s traditional place in family and culture suggest that howsoever welcomed and cherished, they were often deployed to meet pressing needs of the group. We may trace an evolution in children’s overall welfare being confirmed by reduced mortality rates. But on balance their condition is highly mixed: we merely need to observe the plight of today’s immigrant children as bargaining chips for passing President Trump’s pricey Wall. Cited below are historical precedents for treating children not as ends but as means to secure cultural/political goals alien to their developing natures. Occurring in Canada as well as the U.S. and Australia were systematic removals of indigenous peoples from their native lands. A different, ostensibly benign policy was the evacuation of English children from urban centers to safer rural areas during World War II bombings. Somewhat akin to these practices was our wartime removal of Japanese families to internment camps. Also closer to home were the early 20th Century Orphan Trains that shipped migratory youths from New York streets to labor in the Midwest. These precedents provide contexts for our central focus on current U.S. policies under Trump’s Zero Tolerance: the separations of minors from their migratory parents. Just as previous historical practices reveal distinctive psychohistories, today’s situation merits in-depth exploration.
Book Review
What are Perversions? Sexuality, Ethics, Psychoanalysis, Sergio Benvenuto, Routledge, New York, 2018. Reviewed by Danielle Knafo
Benvenuto, a psychoanalyst in Rome and president of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Psychoanalysis, has written a very interesting and thoughtful book on perversions. He nicely introduces the problematics of writing about perversions in today’s politically correct climate as well as the problematics with the term itself. Many today believe that we should not be using the term perversion or thinking about sexuality as perverse, because of the moral judgment implied. Psychiatry, including the DSM classifications, seems to be unclear as to what exactly constitutes a perversion. For example, homosexuality was once diagnosed as a perversion, but since 1973 is no longer. Is it enough to have unusual fantasies that are arousing or does one need to act on these fantasies to be diagnosed as a pervert? Is the major factor whether the act is performed with a consenting partner or not? Or, do these acts cause significant distress and/or impair one’s functioning?
It is true that enormous ambiguity and confusion surface when speaking about perversions. But….