PRISONER OF THE MIND (excerpt from TIME OUT FOR SANITY!)

PRISONER OF THE MIND

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© January 27, 2015

REFERENCE:

Excerpt from TIME OUT FOR SANITY!  It is due to be published by TATE Publishing Company in April, 2015.

“Psychological manipulation pervades all areas of society, not only through the use of skills and techniques, but through the conveyance of oppressive behavior to the oppressed themselves, and through the use of psychology as an ideology for the defense of the status quo.”

—Phil Brown, Radical Psychology (1973)

There is a reluctance to focus on the question: is society sick? This is not only a problem for professional thinkers but also for laymen. There is a kind of normalcy to the idea that society is sick and people are sick in society. So what? When has society not been sick?

The frenetic pace of society, the compulsive waste making, the robbing Peter to pay Paul, the planning for planning sake, the living without consequences, the lifestyle diseases, the looking for miraculous drugs to cure addictions, hey, what’s all the fuss about? It’s the way it is, Mac! But is it? And if so, why?

We are told we are a nation of believers in God but that doesn’t include going to church. We are told we are religious and a caring nation, but that doesn’t include knowing and fraternizing with our neighbors next door. We are told we are a melting pot of nations, but that doesn’t include socializing with other ethnic groups. We have had our portrait painted as to what we are and have had this freeze framed to be our reality, when it has little in common with our real self.

The religion of the West is imbued with the idea of God and the individual as infinitely precious and irreducibly real for his having an immortal soul. Yet, the history of carnage in the West, and violent crime in the United States, contradicts this perception.

Thinking and behaving are worlds apart.  Churches are constructed as houses of worship, but have become increasingly empty of worshipers, as modern society has moved away from religious doctrine to secular dogma.

In Freudian speak, religion once kept the “Lid on the Id,” but no longer. The moral highway has no speed limits, no consensus rules of the road, and so crashes have become the symphony of the times. We lost 55,000 Americans in the Viet Nam War. We lose that many every year on American highways as a gauge of this reckless carnage and despair.

The Id (our compulsive self) is running rampant, as there is little Superego (moral self) in evidence. We have lost our moral compass and thus our way.

The paradox is that everything is set on the rational while the emotional needle seems fixed on the irrational. Incest and murder, corruption and malfeasance, and coveting the neighbor’s wife and property have become banner headlines, not only in the supermarket rags, but also in traditional newspapers. We have lost our way. Even being nice has been replaced by being with it.

The idea of the immortal soul has been superseded by the idea of the individual personality, which is not immortal, but is considered all the more precious for not being so. Identity and role relationships have become the new psychology. The irony is that psychology rose out of philosophy and has never found its own identity much less its role. So, rather than create that role, it continues to search for its identity.

The evidence is demonstrated as psychology develops a new branch every time a perplexing problem surfaces. Currently, we have existential psychology, which rises out of the philosophy of the absurd, and humanistic psychology, which attempts to be everything and to please everybody suggesting the philosophy of the Pollyanna. The clergy, desperate for survival, grab these new psychologies as if long lost relatives, accepting their premises, and incorporating them into their sermons as if pure wisdom.

This was patently evident when Eric Berne took Freudian psychology and its quid pro quo implications and wrote “Games People Play” (1964), simplifying Freudianism to “transactional analysis,” creating the “Adult” (Ego), “Parent” (Superego”) and “Child” (Id) egostates to illustrate the dynamics of interpersonal relationships.

Thomas Harris then came along, turning Berne’s transactional analysis into a practical guide with his “I’m OK—You’re OK” (1967). A decade later, John Dusay came up with “Egograms” (1977), solidifying the role of the “Adult” (Ego), but further differentiating the “Parent” (Superego) into the “Nurturing Parent” and “Critical Parent,” and the “Child” (Id) into the “Free Child” and “Adaptive Child.” Parents, teachers, and preachers, as well as gurus latched onto this new nomenclature seeing children, as well as people in general in these schematic terms.

In this new age of the idea of the individual, we measure a person’s worth not by his bond, or what he has done, but what he can become. Becoming, not being, is the philosophy of instant celebrity consistent with instant everything.

Syndicated columnist and practicing psychiatrist Charles Krauthammer saw this trend apparent in national politics in 2013. “President Barak Obama is perhaps our greatest president as campaigner,” he reflects, “but this excellence doesn’t appear to extend to governance.” The columnist was referring to the procession of “fiscal cliffs” that had stalled monetary policy between the President and Congress from 2011 on.

Then in the fall of 2013, while promising everyone could keep their health insurance if they wanted to, which proved not to be true, the president delegated the problem solving to the bureaucracy on the Affordable Healthcare Act. Instead of rolling up his sleeves and taking charge of the enrollment computer glitch, he went on a national whistle stop campaign across the country to sell the program.

Barak Obama, the first African American President of the United States, not only shocked the nation by winning the presidency in 2008, but also confirmed the power of his personality and charismatic presence by being reelected in 2012. That said he has unwittingly personified phantom leadership or leaderless leadership, which allows events to dictate circumstances rather than initiatives to dictate events.

This is the role of the consummate actor who demonstrates neither the will nor the way to lead. And like that actor, he emotes what has the widest appeal where substance is reduced to shadows of the mind. The only problem is you cannot eat shadows and they provide little shelter or security.

Should the reader think I am taking unfair measure of our president, nothing could be further from my intention. The state of the presidency, at the moment, seems to represent the highest profile of the American collective conscience being “prisoner of the mind.” We acquire the leadership we deserve which is confirmed by our feet in voting President Obama into a second term.

President Jimmy Carter sought reelection handicapped with similar economic circumstances, but he didn’t see the role of the presidency as that of an actor, and of course actor Ronald Reagan unceremoniously replaced him.  Carter, Reagan, Obama, indeed, all presidents since the 1970s have promised “transparency,” including President Clinton, but only President Carter attempted to practice it, one time addressing a national audience on television in a polo shirt and cardigan sweater (July 15, 1979), insisting the nation had “a crisis in confidence.”

Listeners took it as a scold and were none too happy for the reminder. Viewers preferred a presidential euphemistic “hope rope a dope,” which is quite Machiavellian. The author of “The Prince” (1532) provided a practical guide to leaders on how to win and stay in power, which had little to do with virtue much less transparency, but much to do with using any means to a desired end, while giving a nod to virtue in rhetoric if not reality.  Reagan, Obama, Clinton, et. al., knew what the Renaissance author was advocating, being as clever as a fox, ruthless as a lion, while seemingly as docile as a lamb.

Leadership in the American Republic has devolved to presence and platitudes, which takes good actors, but doesn’t necessarily translate into prudent action. The more a leader can astonish us with his glibness the more vivid he is. We connote “brilliance” to presentation skills forgetting how seldom such command relates to action. Whatever the discipline, we see leadership of a politician, an artist, scientist, businessman or entertainer, not on the strength of his contribution, but on the mesmerizing quality of his presentation skills. We may see this presenter as a phantom chasing shadows, but it never occurs to us that he is our invention.

“Phantom” here is used in the Buddhist sense. The Buddhist would read the careerist’s resume with a smile as a picture in the mind without blemishes and not as a person. You cannot shake hands with a picture. A picture is a cold medium devoid of feeling other than what the observer projects of himself into the image.

There is no exchange. This makes the individual appear near perfect if unreal, while projecting that phantom world he has created as real. The motivation is to connect, but at the price of being empty of individuality, and therefore a shadow of the self. The first electronics guru of the Information Age, Marshall McLuhan, defined this as “The Medium Is The Message” (1967). He discerned that television is a cold medium and the viewer puts his subjective warmth into that cold phantom object on the screen. The aim of the televised personality is to capture the viewer’s attention with one objective in mind, to influence.