y real immersion in what optimistic delusions really mean to everyone involved, came from the one experience I had that also really confirmed my suspicions on cultural norms that say that we’re all plainly and simply response-able for our own welfare, so no matter what problems others cause for you, no matter how bad or evil they chose to act, etc., you’re just going to have to take life on life’s terms. This is the basic idea of self-help books for victims, since the victims’ problems are simply to be solved by the victims helping themselves. On both my My Story webpage and my Victim Correction as a Panacea web page I mention the experience that taught me of this panacea-like giving response-ability to victims, and on my Candace Newmaker’s Experience webpage I tell of how victim-correcting psychologists tend to have an attitude in which “According to this sort of ‘thinking,’ quite literally there is no such thing as recklessness, since anything that wasn’t done malevolently is minimized as a ‘mistake’ or ‘accident.’” The webpage Hyperthymic Personality Disorder defines this as, “tend to be rash and show poor judgement,” which means that HPD is the only personality disorder that, for the most part, could be excused away with, “Oh, well, everyone makes mistakes,” though since HPD is diluted mania, it’s actually a lot more selfishly impaired than are most personality disorders.
Here I might as well tell you exactly what that problem was that taught me all this. This started just a few months after, due to my fondness for giving moral support to chronically depressed guys,
My beloved spake,
and said unto me,
Rise up, my love,
my fair one,
and come away.
For lo, the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of the singing of birds is come,
and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land:
The fig tree putteth forth her green figs,
and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.
Arise my love, my fair one,
and come away.
O my dove,
that art in the clefts of the rocks,
in the secret places of the stairs,
let me see thy countenance,
let me hear thy voice,
for sweet is thy voice,
and thy countenance is comely.
Take us the foxes,
the little foxes,
that spoil the vines;
for our vines have tender grapes.[Song of Solomon 2:10-15, the Bible]
I got a book for medical doctors by some psychiatrists, Antidepressant Treatment—the Essentials, by John H. Greist, MD and Thomas H. Greist, MD, which includes “According to National Institutes of Mental Health figures, 20,000,000 people or approximately 15% of the U.S. adult population suffers from a serious depressive disorder in any given year.” To say that as doctors treat the million of Americans who suffer a serious depressive disorder in any given year, they should know this rate since it would help the doctors treat each individual as if their depressions simply are their problems, completely ignores the fact that this involves an unnaturally high rate of helplessness, happening to millions of people, year in and year out. It seems that the magnitude of this social problem could just be brushed aside, and would be by those who are gutsy enough.
Just after I saw the enormity of this social problem in a book written to tell people how to treat each case separately as if The Problem is inside of each victim, I had the experience that I go into on my Out Of the Same Mold as Enron webpage. I talked about this with enough Americans that I thought of these discussions as an “informal anthropological survey.” I’m most compatible with other hyperthymics, not only in the sense that my lovers always are hyperthymics, but also that I’m most at home working for them, since that way we could both engage in creative pursuits. This bad experience was that a hyperthymic guy with a bad case of optimistic delusions, told me very sincerely that he’d give me a great job as soon as the building for the subsidiary of his company is built. This was my first experience with hyperthymic optimistic delusions, which really gave me a feel for how glaringly pathological they are, so that when my friend Jim calmly but somewhat sarcastically told me of his girlfriend’s dysfunctional adult son feeling certain that if he went into business for himself the money would just start rolling in, to me this screamed, “” This boss put my job offer in writing,
and for the next year, as I kept assertively calling him and asking when the building would be ready, he kept sincerely telling me that there are all sorts of bureaucratic delays and the like that are delaying the completion of the building, until finally, after a year, I gave up. I kept hanging on because I was trying to start a career in mechanical engineering, and in engineering school they kept telling me that to start their careers engineers have to “pay their dues” by taking relatively unskilled jobs, being transferred all over the country, etc. I figured that the time that I spent waiting for that job would constitute my having had “paid my dues” only if I stayed at that company. The book Influence, Science and Practice by Robert B. Cialdini says that one way to influence (i.e. manipulate) people is by giving them something that they didn’t ask for, and then they’d naturally feel obliged to reciprocate by giving you what you ask for, since the functioning of even the most primitive society requires that people be able to count on others to reciprocate. “Cultural anthropologists Lionel Tiger [The fact that this is his pseudonym should let you know just how utopian he is.] and Robin Fox (1971) view this ‘web of indebtedness’ as a unique adaptive mechanism of human beings, allowing for the division of labor, the exchange of diverse forms of goods and different services (making possible the development of experts), and the creation of interdependencies that bind individuals together into highly efficient units.”
Counting on this boss to reciprocate my waiting for this job, by giving me the job, especially since he’s the one who set the terms of this reciprocation, was hardly utopian or manipulative. He seemed so sincere when he told me his nonsense that near the end of my dealings with him I gave him a nickname that reflected the fact that intuitively he came across as would someone who’s on drugs, which is exactly how someone whose brain is producing too much “uppers” that are giving him the same distortions in thinking as would artificial uppers, would act. Much of this boils down to a lack of a normal sense for the consequences of one’s own behavior, both consequences to oneself and consequences to others, though when I told my minister about the entirety of the broken promises (By this time the boss had told me that he had foreign investors waiting to invest millions, I think it was $50,000,000, in his company.), the minister could tell that it was “pathological,” and said that he hopes that I wasn’t blaming myself for the boss treating me that way. To a realist, the only thing that really matters is that the person with the problem take care of her own problem, since she has the most reliable motivation to do that. Everyone knows that well-adjusted people serenely accept whatever they can’t change, and that whatever anyone chooses to do is therefore normal or slightly excessively normal human imperfection. Those who try to suppress such freedoms, look pretty scary. It seems that we must fear the untermenschen and their victim-power, and mustn’t fear the übermenschen and their freedoms.
The “seven propaganda devices” that the Institute for Propaganda Analysis observed in the 1930s being used by those such as fascist Father Charles Coughlin, which were then described in The Fine Art of Propaganda in 1939, were: Name Calling, Glittering Generality, Transfer, Testimonial, Plain Folks, Card Stacking, and Band Wagon. That’s exactly what you’d expect to hear from the untermensch-phobic victim correction as a panacea, whether or not the person who caused the problem had Hyperthymic Personality Disorder, or even sociopathy. In that experience of mine, naturally the Name Calling involved attributing various untermensch attributes to me. Naturally the Glittering Generalities involved freedom for businessmen and self-reliance for the people who have the problems.
While I didn’t hear any explicit Transfers or Testimonials, these would likely require a certain amount of staging. If I’d read the right books, though, I could have heard plenty of success stories of, and testimonials from, those who’ve succeeded by successfully taking response-ability for their own problems.
Of course the loveable Plain Folks love this sort of self-reliance, and those who question it are unpragmatic intellectuals. Both concerning this situation, and in a therapy group for codependency that I’d attended just before it, I heard so much of the Card Stacking that before I was even finished with the codependency group, I’d gotten to think of it as “sophistry.” How else could everyone involved believe that all those women subconsciously “let themselves in for trouble,” that we should just take the destructive men’s destruction as a given and focus our attention on how the women could better take response-ability for their own problems, etc? This involved pressure to conform, to join the bandwagon, especially since this was just after the Reagan era, when there was a very real bandwagon to accept this sort of unconditional self-responsibility. In essence, it was as if what he did was just slightly excessively normal human imperfection, and everyone knows that something’s wrong with you if you don’t simply deal with whatever normal or slightly excessively normal human imperfection, happens to impact your life.
Unfortunately, there may be a good reason why the sort of rationale that would further fascism, and the sort of rationale that would seem to justify the behavior that one would expect from Hyperthymic Personality Disorder, match. Many have said that the Romantic Era of Central European culture had greatly shaped Nazism, and hyperthymic genius was a big topic in the Romantic Era. This era also made a virtue out of exactly the sort of vibrant gutsiness that makes hyperthymics so attractive, and it’s exactly this gutsiness that gives a Wagnerian outlook its excitement. The romanticism of the Romantic Era is probably the only romanticism that works, in that no matter what problems the free-spirited übermenschen cause for the untermenschen, they have the motivation to solve their own problems, and they don’t want to look as if they’re manipulatively “finding blame,” playing the victim role, evading their response-ability for their own welfare, etc.
(This calligraphic font is the German style of calligraphy, and is actually called “Fraktur.” Its fluid dynamism is exactly the sort that you’d expect from hyperthymics, but its sturm und drang, especially with its name Fraktur, is also what you’d expect from German culture. Also, to most people “calligraphy” has connotations of a Medieval formality, though Fraktur has a fluid dynamism that might even look hellacious to some, all of which is very similar to the German culture, involving both the “good German” authoritarianism, and the aggression for which no one really takes responsibility since “That’s human nature,” and those who object would seem very untermensch: vindictive, resentful, whiny, manipulative, repressive, etc.)
This pretty much included all 29 of the rationales on my Standard Rationales for Victim Correction as a Panacea webpage.
Positive thinking aficionados would say that those who could be on the receiving end of problems had better think positively, since fears could be self-fulfilling prophecies. Yet it would seem too judgmental, controlling, etc., to talk about how moral bankruptcy or the fatalistic reasons given for it, could also be self-fulfilling prophecies. Those who shrug off destructive behavior as long as it’s not malicious, would be very quick to say that some people are inherently reckless. It would seem that to whatever degree someone has “emotional instability, impulsiveness of behavior, lack of customary standards of good judgment or a failure to appreciate the consequences of personal acts,” he can’t really be held responsible for the reckless things he does, because he didn’t really choose to act recklessly. But that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, since it says that as long as someone has a sense of impunity, he’ll be even more immune from responsibility than impune, without punishment. He’ll also be without responsibility for making good on what he did, since he wouldn’t seem morally responsible in that regard either. Webster’s Dictionary defines mistake as “a wrong judgment” and “a wrong action or statement,” and accident as “an event occurring by chance or unintentionally.” If someone chose to do something emotionally, impulsively, with unusually bad judgment, and obliviously to consequences, this could be called a wrong judgment action or statement occurring unintentionally. And we all know what’s wrong with people who hold others morally responsible for their mistakes and accidents.
Yet the above quote comes from Minnesota’s law from 1939 allowing the civil commitment of sexual psychopaths, which defined a sexual psychopath as, “a person exhibiting any or all of the following: emotional instability, impulsiveness of behavior, lack of customary standards of good judgment or a failure to appreciate the consequences of personal acts—which render the person irresponsible for personal conduct with respect to sexual matters, if the person has evidenced, ‘by habitual course of misconduct in sexual matters, an utter lack of power to control the person’s sexual impulses, and as a result, is dangerous to others.’” When someone is reckless like that, in such a way that doesn’t inflict bodily harm, then that seems to be just the way that some people are. And just as Westerners often associate Islamic culture with accepting whatever happens as matters of fate, modern Western culture accepts as inevitable human nature, whatever anyone does that could tenably be accepted as such. Violent crime, no, but recklessness that doesn’t cause bodily injury, yes.
This self-help, quite literally, was inspired by the self-help of Al-Anon. This takes the “resiliency” approach of AA’s transcendent spirituality, and applies it to teaching alcoholics’ family members how they could be well-adjusted, i.e. adjust well to their own realities. Since AA founder Bill Wilson was a stockbroker, and the Big Book was written during the Great Depression, AA-style self-help is basically a stockbroker lecturing those living in the Great Depression that they should just take response-ability for their own welfare, and stop whining. Typical of the Al-Anon approach to those in trouble, is the following, out of their vintage comics:
Yes, that pamphlet that she’s reading, which she got from her first Al-Anon meeting, is titled “Living with an Alcoholic.” Learning how to live happily with an alcoholic, is what would constitute self-help for her, since that’s the reality that she must deal with.
he Tragedy of Victim Correction as a Panacea~
As the above says, this is Al-Anon approved literature, for Alateen. You couldn’t make this stuff up! Persuasion to think like this works best with Groupthink, but if you, on your own, must deal with a devastating reality in order to fit in and function, then you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do, and our self-responsible cultural norms (“Everybody knows that The Serenity Prayer is good.”) would provide the Groupthink. As Addiction: Why Can’t They Just Stop?, by John Hoffman and Susan Froemke, says, in a survey of addicts’ family members, “...the words that everyone used were powerfully negative: ‘devastating,’ ‘abusive,’ ‘horrible’.” Serenity, indeed!
Whether or not you live with an addict, etc., whatever you must do to take care of yourself, is whatever you must do to take care of yourself. That’s why self-help in general tends to admire Al-Anon, The Serenity Prayer, etc., and this self-reliant ethos. The only thing that really matters is what you do and don’t have the power to change. Since Bill Wilson, co-founder of AA who wrote much of their Big Book, was a stockbroker around the time of the Great Depression, one could call this The Great Depression Stockbroker’s Approach to Self-Responsibility. Literally and inevitably, whatever anyone’s life is (including during the Great Depression), is “life on life’s terms,” “reality,” “life’s challenges,” etc., for him. Likewise, you’d simply have to deal with whatever consequences of 2008’s run on the bank, “Our entire economy is in danger,” would affect you, including the consequences of the government’s strong reluctance to “control” the businesses it should have been regulating adequately and “great, great confidence in our capital markets and in our financial institutions.” That’s how people in trouble must take care of themselves self-reliantly, so intercultural studies have consistently found that self-blame as a symptom of depression, anxiety, etc., is unique to Western and Westernized people. Depressed people who’ve lived outside of the modern West have tended to feel paranoid, but modern Westerners, whether depressed or not, tend to figure that even if someone did “get you,” that would mean only that you lost the battle so you’re a loser; you must “look at yourself” so you could independently resiliently and resourcefully find a solution to your problem. Self-help means that if it’s your problem then you provide the help, which is why self-help for people in trouble in general has really taken to the AA-Al-Anon approach, so “Archie” is more than just emblematic of self-reliant self-empowerment for people in trouble in a society with rampant depression. Bush also talked about faith in our economic “resilience” regarding the Great Crash of 2008. This gutsy and self-responsible moral bankruptcy, “Care only about whether you can change it,” is de rigueur. What personal problems don’t have to be taken care of this unconditionally, where the only thing that really matters is what oneself can or can’t change? If your back is against the wall, you must serenely accept this fact. Neo-Conservatives would love this folksy “perception management.” Self-reliance seems to be The Great Liberator. Freedom from government and other “control” is a sacred American tradition, but endurability isn’t. Aggressiveness seems ineradicable, and our objections to it seem eradicable. The moral bankruptcy is a tragedy in the ancient Greek dramatic sense, meaning that if all that victims could care about is whether or not they can change things, moral bankruptcy and immunity from accountability would inevitably result. As can be seen in Nietzsche, the weak could easily seem to be the dangerously ones, since everyone’s beliefs regarding what they deserve are shaped by their own , and the weak can exercise their supposed only in ways that would seem mollycoddle, “dishonest” and “ignominious,” whereas red-blooded strength is “honest,” proud, and at least forgivable. (We must appreciate all the hidden dangers of unchecked “victim-power.”) “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” could happen to anyone. As one could see in the Great Crash of 2008, such a laissez faire concept of personal response-ability could seem good ’n’ gutsy, until you see the consequences of the moral bankruptcy.
Sure, A Dictionary of Psychology defines blaming the victim as, “A pervasive tendency to assume that a person who has suffered a misfortune must have done something wrong to deserve it. It is explained by the just world hypothesis.” Yet it should be obvious from any self-help that victim-blaming is most important when someone must self-motivatedly take response-ability for injustices. This must be as pervasive as the injustices that must be courageously changed. Victim-blaming gets things done, since the victims are motivated to do them. Whatever matters in the real world, matters in the real world. Whatever is reality, is reality. The basic idea is that the weak should become more self-responsible and the strong should be forgiven, and then, realistically speaking, things would keep functioning efficiently. As Dr. Thomas A. Harris wrote in the preface of his I’m OK—You’re OK, “To many people [psychiatry] is like a blind man in dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there,” but Al-Anon-style psychology-psychiatry, neo-Buddhism (which self-disciplines the yin but not the yang, “Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” so could also be called Yang Buddhism), is productive, does produce contrived serenity courage and self-responsibility, whereas telling addicts’ family members, “You’re OK, even if his addiction really bothers you,” wouldn’t: mindless formula, mindful victims. This prevents victimhood. Defiance of this could be labeled as ignominious uppity untermensch , not “maverick” defiance. This mental health treatment is all-natural. Your feeling bad about anything would hurt only yourself. Everyone must adjust. Blinders bring serenity. For everyone, functioning productively and resiliently is all-important. Any fear could be dangerously problematic. To function in the real world, you can’t be horrified. This spirituality is the ultimate radical religion, which you must interpret literally. If the economy collapsed in 2008 because of a few people in the financial sector making risky loans or panicking during the crisis, all of those who’d have suffered the consequences would have had to have taken care of themselves, too; either they’d keep “looking at themselves,” or they’d fail in life since they wouldn’t recognize their own inadequacies.
All problems must be resolved. Attention must be systematically focused on how any victims (who are the most motivated to do this successfully), could most effectively take response-ability for their own welfare, since thoughts about right and wrong would be unpragmatic manipulative and judgmental opinion. Alateen isn’t extremist. Treating victims as victims seems so old-school, mollycoddling. The way that the Iraq war resulted so automatically from the whiny claims that Americans were victims of WMD, shows the great danger of manipulative victim-power. Moral relativism (“Your morality is culturally biased!”) becomes amoral absolutism (“Your morality is biased toward believing that you deserve better! Shame on you!”). Blame the victim, and you’ll get well-motivated self-reliant and anti-judgmental results, solutions. That’s the only thing that really matters (especially for those with big problems). In the real world, some things work and some things don’t, and whenever those who are morally responsible won’t take physical responsibility, cult-like neo-Buddhism would work much better than would moral responsibility. Don’t be pessimistic! In all situations, this is what it takes to win, so everything except “Can I change this?”, should be ignored, is for weaklings. The ignominious banalities of life, aren’t issues. This might not look sociopolitical or socioeconomic, but this is just cultural norms and expectations, along with social pressures, determining who is personally responsible for what in certain interactions, and those of the society at large tend to find the same unconditionally self-correcting platitudes inspiring. Very little of what could counter our rampant depression, anxiety disorders, etc., would sound or feel gutsy, so very little of it could sell. (Endurability wouldn’t make good Populism.) Frank Buchman, leader of the Oxford Groups, the club on which AA and then Al-Anon was based and which is now called “Moral Re-Armament,” said, “D’you know Heinrich Himmler?... Say, you ought to know Heinrich. He’s a great lad.... [Hitler] lets us have house-parties whenever we like.” Anyone who’d love the Nazis, couldn’t help but love victim-blaming, targeting weaknesses (as in whiny) of character, etc.
For an exemplary alkie’s kid who looks like Archie, to preach, “I’ve stopped blaming others and I’m looking at myself!”, should seem like wryly Kafkaesque theater of the absurd, but instead that seems very pragmatic and honorable. His group’s leaders are just trying to help him take care of himself better, which he really needs, and this would also help anyone else in trouble. No self-responsibility for victims sounds nice, but all victim-blaming that isn’t illogical could help the victims by improving their chances of success in the future. For everyone, not just a-holes’ families, realism means accepting that others won’t do what they’re not motivated to do. The only difference between those who Al-Anon corrects and everyone else, is the situation they’re in, and “self-responsibility” and “self-help” would mean the same things in any other situation where, to the same degree, you can’t change others’ actions but can change your own reactions. No matter what any Al-Anon or Alateen members, or those in equally desperate situations, may whine about, self-help psychology could respond, “But to look at yourself instead of blaming others would benefit you, by changing what you can and accepting what you can’t!” (Being in denial about the unconditionality, could make you more serene and courageous.) That’s reality, not victim-blaming. This doesn’t intend to blame or criticize you or be morally bankrupt, just make you more well-adjusted and spiritual. After all, the more that anyone judging such situations tried to be fair, the more unfair he’d be, since no one would solve the problems. Certain things simply have to get done, by those who are the most motivated to do them. Sometimes in life, the pragmatists must stand up to the weak. As Al-Anon shows, and self-help for everyone admires, unconditional acceptance and adjustment toward anything that you’re helpless to change, would always lead to peace and confidence—serenity and courage. (That’s a strong character.)
As Miranda says in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, “O brave new world, that hath such people in it.” Those who most believe in this sort of unconditional self-responsibility are good, hard-working people. (As the Wikipedia webpage on Phil Gramm begins, “Gramm often noted in his political campaigns that he had repeated three grades in school but had overcome his academic deficiencies by hard work.” He’s a proven maverick.)
AA is avowedly anti-intellectualist and pro-self-responsibility. Unconditional and resilient, “can-do” self-responsibility like “Archie’s,” is what made America great. Self-blame is the can-do attitude for people in trouble, “If only I can... better, I can succeed!” If it weren’t unconditional, it would allow cowardice, inadequacy, excuses, faking problems, un entitlement, maladjustment, dysfunctionality, etc., and we mustn’t be naïve about this. In a society with rampant depression, everyone could have an excuse for failure, and such cowardice saps productivity. Self-responsibility along the lines of the law of the jungle works (and worked very productively in the nineteenth century), if you make it work. Losers lose and winners win. The weak can be so unfair. Like any other reductionism, if you listened to many victim correctors’ insistent solutions to peoples’ problems, these solutions would all say basically the same things: change the specifics of one solution to the specifics of any other, and the one could sound just like the other. When reality requires that these expectations go to the point of a reductio ad absurdum (as in “Archie’s” case), then that’s what reality (and self-motivated self-reliance) require. Even if this requires more Stoicism than some Stoic saints had, if that’s what reality requires, then that’s what it requires. (These saints’ self-control shows that it’s possible, and Al-Anon-style self-control isn’t moralistic.) Such unconditional Stoicism can eliminate all misery, the worst of which could have caused big problems. Some ideas sell, some don’t, and this one sells. Which would you rather be, right, or happy? To the uninitiated, victim-blaming would seem bad rather than pragmatic, for 15% of the American adult population to suffer a serious depressive disorder in any given year wouldn’t seem to be among the diseases that are parts of the natural order, etc. This is the same sort of logic that led to Phil Gramm calling America a “nation of whiners,” etc., that has the same unconditionally red-blooded, resilient, exhilarating, hard-working and character-building appeal to it! (Of course, the huge panic behind the Great Crash of 2008, which followed that, should have indicated that those on Wall Street were much bigger whiners, dangerously so, but they’re übermenschen.)
The alkies aren’t controlling Al-Anon members in the authoritarian, paternalistic, anti-freedom sense; that’s just the way that life sometimes goes. We all must adjust to our realities. That’s inherent to life. To end the description of each and every traumatic experience with, “So now I’m supposed to just shut up and deal with this reality, since doing so would benefit me,” might sound like the punch line of a sick joke, but the bottom line must always be pragmatic and well-adjusted. That’s how victim correctors are supposed to operate, since correction is good, and a lack of it is self-defeating. This is the language of letting go. AA slogans such as “Anger is one letter short of danger,” would apply, but “Easy does it,” wouldn’t. Unless what happened was so extreme that this would sound untenable, trying to correct the person who caused the problem, even assertively, could very easily seem or suggest: unrealistic, unreliable, others-helping, naïve, stupid, conditional, optional, half-hearted, limited, judgmental, troublemaking, “on principle,” moralistic, unattractive, sophistry-rewarding, altruistic, controlling, whiny, mollycoddling, intellectualist, philosophical, pathetic, resentful, maladjusted, negative, blaming, subjective, unproven, emotionalistic, manipulative, passive, etc. Trying to correct the person who has the problem in ways that would help him “take care of himself” better, could very easily seem or suggest: realistic, reliable, self-helping, natural, wise, necessary, vital, steadfast, limitless, forgiving, peace-making, pragmatic, trendy, marketable, achievement-oriented, “getting on with life,” self-empowering, gutsy, achievement-oriented, down-to-earth, material, proud, competitive, well-adjusted, hopeful, solving, objective, self-justifying, practical, self-reliant, active, etc. And if what happened was extreme, then the worse was what he did, the more that expecting him to take moral responsibility for that much could seem draconian, naïve, etc.
Victim-blaming can’t make traumas worse, since victims can’t be counterproductive, dysfunctional, maladjusted, defeatist, negative, whiny, unaccepting, demanding, etc. Those who are trying to defend themselves from this (Defend yourself from personal response-ability for your own welfare? Horrors!), could feel uncomfortable expecting others to take such banalities seriously, but the end result of the banalities is rampant depression, anxiety disorders, etc. Whatever happens that contributes to these gargantuan social problems, “Oh, well, that’s life, and the victims probably could have stopped the damage,” so even conspiracy theorists could feel very safe with this massive devastation. Al-Anon would probably say that the reason why it would expect members to accept whatever alkies do is that their disease of addiction makes them not guilty by reason of insanity (Addiction, a disease of people’s motivations, might as well be as involuntary as Alzheimer’s, and disease might as well equal total helplessness.), but if a non-addict caused a member a big problem, the only things that would really matter would be the victim’s serenity and courage. “That’s just the way that human nature is,” “That’s just the way that this sinful world is,” “Boys will be boys,” “That’s just the way that he is,” etc., imply the same level of fatalism and serene acceptance as does, “That’s just the way that addicts are.” This unconditionality would apply to the self-help and self-responsibility in handling any problem whatsoever, since whatever the real world requires, the real world requires. Coping with reality requires that the realities be interchangeable. What could possibly keep victim correction in check, limiting self-responsibility to what’s reasonable? Just think of all the resentment, self-righteousness, wimpiness, etc., that moral clarity would lead to. As one could see in how domestic violence was once minimized, destruction within the family, especially if from the husband, is considered especially banal, personal, excusable, understandable, natural, inevitable, etc., and these minimizing labels come from the usual “Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” social norms. If only the weak took care of themselves better... All that you’d have to do is not care, and primitivism could happen so easily.
(Cartoon generated by “Build Your Own Meat”)
“Archie” was taught to have great confidence in the self-reliance and self-determination of the individual. Instinctively, Americans would tend to be a lot less offended by Al-Anon-style victim correction, than by the whining and the victim-power that it corrects. That self-help formula feels right, helpful, beneficial, self-empowering, resilient, self-efficacious. Victims’ counselors care about them. This empathy requires correcting them, saving them from their own negativity and passivity. After all, “Oh, you poor thing!”, treats people as things. Victim correctors only want addicts’ kids, etc., to be more self-efficacious, serene, etc. The nescient majority has no problem with this level of victim correction, with just expecting people to “get on with life” despite realities this lurid, which seem to be just acceptable losses. The lower middle class approach is about solving problems self-reliantly and realistically, so we should teach the same self-responsible ideas that it does, instead of the petty bourgeois approach, which is palliative. Coping with reality means overlooking some realities, and such pragmatic and red-blooded cultural norms have to be insistent and unquestionable. As White House press secretary Ari Fleischer unabashedly said after Bush admitted that the Iraq-Niger-uranium documents are fake, “Yes, the president has moved on. And, I think, frankly, much of the country has moved on, as well,” a top-notch professional attempt to get the public to conform to letting go regarding Bush’s Machiavellianism. (Fleischer is rebelling from his petty bourgeois family, who obviously can afford not to adequately appreciate why, in the real world, sometimes when others cause you problems it’s necessary to move on rather than whine and intellectualize.) Caring about social problems is so passé, so 1960s, even caring about our rampant depression. In the 60s it was Big Brother AND the Holding Company, but now it’s Big Brother OR the Holding Company, since it seems that either we accept Wall Street excesses or we’ll have Big Brother. During the Vietnam War, defending it by telling opponents to move on, would have seemed morally bankrupt, rather than unconditionally resilient. As Al-Anon shows, it’s possible for pragmatists to expect someone to move on from, let go of, etc., literally anything that he can’t change.
That’s how all cultural conditioning and social pressures work, including that of all those strange foreigners who can’t think for themselves. (BTW, those who think for themselves wouldn’t conclude that for 15% of the adult population to suffer a serious depressive disorder in any given year, is only natural.) Depression is the only dread disease of which many of the causes seem sacrosanct.
Nothing that anyone in trouble could possibly say, could possibly counter expectations that are based on what the real world objectively requires. No matter what an alkie or any other problem parent might do that could traumatize his kid, he absolutely could change himself, and absolutely can’t change anyone else including the parent, which is all that the zeitgeist of The Serenity Prayer cares about. A priori, that’s all that you could care about. That mustn’t seem repulsive. You mustn’t really care about “the elephant in the living room” if you can’t change the elephant. If you think that that’s revolting, then that would be very unserene, discouraging, etc. Obviously, that, like Bontsha the Silent, is far from a natural way to think, though it could be called “cognitive therapy” (“Behavior Therapists and Cognitive Behavior Therapists... concentrate on a person’s views and perceptions about their life, rather than personality traits.”), which has been called, “a natural alternative to anti-depressant medication.” The above is the fully-approved outlook, since it’s very effective in preventing depression. All that you’d need to give self help advice, would be a tape recording that says, “It would really do you a lot of good if you changed what you can and accepted what you can’t! That’s just the way the real world works!”, and you’d play that over and over as the person describes his own trauma. Any reasonable alternatives to victim correction as a panacea, could seem too unrealistic, fallible, subjective, passive, defeatist, untermensch, etc., for the realities that one must deal with. Pragmatism leads to happiness. Victim-correctors, therefore, are the ones who really care about victims.
If one were to apply what On Speculation and Manipulation in Therapy says, “When it works, justice is always very particular. It proceeds on a case-by-case basis with a careful weighing of the facts and an equally careful examination of the underlying logic of key arguments,” certainly the specifics of what addicts’ kids must deal with, would argue for someone else being to blame. Yet blaming others wouldn’t accomplish anything, and would divert attention from solving one’s own problems. It’s your problem, so what are you going to do about it? You’d better just serenely surrender to the inevitable. If we showed an understanding acceptance toward everyone, including the people who have the problems and aren’t dealing with them adequately, nobody would solve them, and the victims would be weakened in the long run. For these people to get on track in taking care of themselves, is the only thing that really matters. If everything must be pragmatic, nothing can be sacred. “I’ve stopped blaming others and I’m looking at myself!”, is inculcated humility, expedient and well-adjusted, without coercion or authoritarian obeisance so this is pro-freedom. Even if the reason for the “negative thoughts” that the victim is washing his own brain of, is that he was unfairly overpowered, that wouldn’t be an authoritarian brainwashing, so his sincere opinion could still seem to be dirt that’s to be washed away and replaced with what he’s supposed to believe. The October, 2007 issue of Counselor, the Magazine for Addiction Professionals includes an article that says, “rigid fidelity may produce an adverse effect,” but for those who must deal with realities like this, rigid fidelity is as necessary as are adequate resiliency and coping skills. Naïveté doesn’t work. Victim-blaming optimistically and determinedly looks for very necessary self-motivated solutions, so, in the words of the Downing Street memo, “the intelligence and the facts” must be “fixed around the policy.”
Reductionism is key. In whatever respects one is weak or strong, the weak serenely accept, the strong courageously change, and the stronger don’t have to worry about changing or accepting anything. As any self-help counselor would tell you, abstractions are immaterial, and judgmental abstractions are self-serving, so conflicts are reduced to the concrete realities. Ambrose Bierce defined platitude as, “A moral without the fable,” and the self-reliant, self-responsible, morals of victim correction sound a lot better without the fables, which would have told of what the people had to deal with self-reliantly. The central message of any self-help approach for people in trouble is that to help yourself: No matter what caused your problem, you absolutely must focus your attention on correcting yourself, since you absolutely can change yourself, absolutely can’t change anyone else, and absolutely must make your life productive (whatever that requires). The real world requires certain things. Everyone must play their part. The only choice that you have is either you do whatever it takes to deal with your problem, or it doesn’t get dealt with. The only legit question is, “Can I change this?”, so no injustices could seem profound. As long as they happened in the past, they’re past history. Unendurability happens. Addicts’ friends and loved ones are the ones who are motivated to correct themselves, and they need more motivation to: change, empower themselves, accommodate to reality, be well-adjusted and productive. That’s only natural. Everyone, not just fundamentalists, must take this sort of spirituality literally. Focus on self-responsibility. Only the person who has the problem, is reliably motivated to deal with it as well as possible. We could live without moral responsibility (which we can’t count on), abstract principles like morality, etc., but can’t live without victims taking response-ability for their own welfare. Some things are luxuries; some are necessities. There’s nothing paternalistic here, so you could feel free.
Even addicts’ families, etc., are sustainable like this, since naturally everyone is motivated to be well-adjusted and functional—serene and courageous. Homespun fortitude is homespun fortitude. Addicts’ kids shouldn’t feel bad about themselves, guilty, etc., but when dealing with what their alcoholic parents do the kids should look at themselves rather than blaming others, so as they do this they should choose not to feel self-blame, and, of course, simply looking at themselves means simply looking at what they should have done better. Their self-help mentors would simply check to see how well they’re doing in following these instructions. (It’s no wonder that Should Statements are one of the single-mindedly self-responsible cognitive distortions of modern Western depression, or that depressed self-blamers have no gauge of how good is good enough other than, “Am I adequate to deal with my [devastating] realities?”!) If one rationale for victim correction doesn’t work, it’s replaced by another. As “Mary Smith” wrote in her suicide note, “All [my psychologist] could do is nitpick about how I need to feel small + helpless,” though Mary obviously had a gutsy personality, which is typical of the self-empowering “thinking” of victim correction: plenty of all-or-nothing thinking, overgeneralization, mental filter, and disqualifying the positive. To paraphrase British prime minister David Lloyd George, such alkies’ kids cannot conquer the chasms in their own lives by gingerly taking one step at a time. (As you could see in “Archie” and in all the other self-blame you might encounter, that isn’t just a fear of a slippery slope, of what might happen to you if this goes too far. Naturally, the realities that you’re response-able for dealing with, will go however far they’ll go, and with realism, there’s no such thing as going too far.) Samia Labidi’s chapter of Ibn Warraq’s Leaving Islam, Apostates Speak Out says, “The shackling of women had to be pursued without any letup, otherwise men risked losing control of the situation,” and with victim correction as a panacea, the shackling of untermenschen has to be pursued without any letup, otherwise übermenschen risk losing control of the situation through: untermenschen believing that they’re ENTITLED to better so they’ll stop “looking at themselves,” others pitying them, and these feelings getting more and more compelling since fear, including legitimate fear, is the strongest motivator.
And, of course, when they look at themselves to see if they have the “defects of character” that AA’s Big Book really goes into, i.e. resentment anger and/or fear, then alkies’ kids would probably find that they feel plenty of untermensch feelings, but Al-Anon doesn’t consider correcting them to be self-blame. It should be that either you’re careful about blaming the victim or you’d be treated as not being careful enough about the accusations you make unswervingly, but that would leave too many problems unsolved. As British author Douglas Adams wrote, “When you blame others, you give up the power to change yourself.” As Susan Faludi wrote in Backlash about writings on codependency, “Norwood’s self-help plan, modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous’s twelve-step program [through Al-Anon], advises women seeking the source of their pain to refrain from looking beyond themselves, a habit she calls ‘blaming.’” Self-responsibility is necessary for victims. Backlash mentions “puerile serenity,” though contrived serenity is what’s pertinent! And we’d better not have a backlash against this knee-jerk, unconditional absolutist one-dimensional uncompromising and unquestionable (but very self-helping and self-motivated) victim correction! As Bush said in May, 2005, “In my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”
Though this conviction and ideology expects people to accept a laissez faire self-responsibility that’s as extremist as the self-responsibility that Enron propounded when it seemed so red-blooded, not only would Al-Anon not seem to be extremist wing-nuts, but if you firmly disagreed you could seem to be an extremist wing-nut. As Enlightenment-era economic philosophers wrote, being productive must override everything else. Most victim-blaming (a.k.a. self-responsibility) can’t seem bad. Those who deviate from these expectations are those who’d seem to be the authoritarians, the judgmental controllers. One can’t say “no” to realism, including, “Like Archie, you should stop blaming others and look at yourself, to improve yourself and your chances!” Unintended consequences, etc., of moral control are dreaded; unintended consequences, etc., of the law of the jungle seem only natural. As Libertarian Ron Paul explained Social Security,“ ...we have taught them to be dependent,” and a single-minded blaming and correction of any victims would have the same unconditional, gutsy and pro-freedom appeal. Social Darwinism protects us from all parasitism, which could only hurt the parasites. No doubt this thrilling philosophy also regards the Americans with Disabilities Act as tyrannical, so either handicapped people get jobs without the ADA, or they’ve been taught to be dependent. Realists can see the dangers that the weak would pose, unless they make great efforts to be self-reliant anyway and succeed. We mustn’t reward failure, victimhood, etc., or the weak could get what they wanted without earning it and the strong might not be motivated to achieve, so we must assume that the weak wanted to fail. This isn’t absolute power; “Archie” and those who are just as helpless can change some significant things. Such “imperfections” don’t seem nearly as scary as do comparable problems from the guv’mint. Helplessness isn’t tyranny.
The Al-Anon formula for self-help, laissez faire Social Darwinist ideology, and what “self-help” must mean in a society with rampant depression, are based on the same ideas, and come with the same frame of reference. You simply must accept whatever you get, that you’re powerless to change. As long as you can’t change what you’re afraid of, the more fear you’d feel, the more self-control you’d need in order to cope with reality. Naturally, we reward success and punish failure. We have to. We seem to be in a constant conflict between untermensch human nature, which tries to get what it wants (including masochistic emotional satisfaction) through mollycoddle cunning weakness, and übermensch human nature, which tries to get what it wants through red-blooded “honest” strength, and the übermenschen must win. Naturally, we must sometimes deal with things going wrong; safety could go against freedom. Victimhood shouldn’t entitle anyone to anything. The weak must be more motivated to play their parts. As Hitler’s idol Schopenhauer wrote, if we cared about what someone deserves other than whether he won or lost, then people could get what they wanted by “proving” that they deserve it, and naturally those whiners would want to believe that they do. Both pro-freedom philosophies, and realism, must accept much of what contributes to our rampant depression. While “Archie’s” situation is certainly atypical, a society that has rampant depression yet stresses response-ability for one’s own welfare would have to make that personal response-ability, that unconditional (though each situation gives opportunities for rationales for this personal response-ability, that victim correctors could focus on). All of the advantages of “the invisible hand,” apply to the lives of “Archie” and everyone else in trouble. (If you weren’t aware of our rampant depression with self-blame, you might think that things just take care of themselves.) No matter how individualistic one is, he’d still have to admit that every society must keep itself stable and functioning, and must enforce its expectations regarding who’s to do this. All of these supposed forms of individualism must indoctrinate their followers into believing in counterintuitive absolutisms such as the above, the ideal being complying with the Al-Anon “Serenely accept and courageously change” formula applied to any realities. That’s living in the real world. You do what you can. Beat the hardcore blues. No self-care could seem onerous. Whatever happens is, therefore, “life on life’s terms,” “reality,” etc. Maturity means accepting reality. Of course, we live in a competitive and self-responsible society, nothing’s guaranteed, and human imperfections are whatever they are. Those who have Nietzsche’s values would be both most likely to succeed, and most likely to seem to have good, well-adjusted backbone. Response-ability for one’s own welfare, one’s own problems: serves the greater good, maximizes efficiency, is a moral obligation that we can’t afford to forgive. Where would our economy be if people weren’t truly motivated to take response-ability for their own welfare? There are no guarantees in life, and if there were, plenty of people wouldn’t be productive enough. Emotionalism such as whining, victimology, and victimhood, wouldn’t be fair play in the contest for success. Fighting for what is good could actually turn out to be bad, since people: are naturally motivated to do what they want and to take response-ability for their own problems, aren’t reliably motivated to take moral responsibility, must be motivated to get what they want by winning and earning it, and mustn’t be motivated to get it by acting like victims or their allies. Asymmetrical warfare means that the strong fight fair and the weak fight unfair. If everyone were to get what they deserved, where would it come from? “I’ve stopped blaming others and I’m looking at myself!”, “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” etc., are, in the end, Social Darwinism that resolutely ignores its own consequences. You get whatever you get. Self-responsibly striving for success, is what it all comes down to. That’s the sort of values that our economy rewards; “Archie” and those who’d insist that we cope like him, would prove very strong resilient and productive. Cognitive therapists could probably prove that those who choose to think that serenely and courageously are the least likely to suffer depression, anxiety, etc.
Things simply have to keep functioning. If you don’t successfully deal with your own problems, who will? We must think realistically, so whatever shapes our realities shapes how we must think. If you don’t go along with the victim correction as a panacea, then that would seem to be your untermensch pathologies, character defects. Pathetic resentment is the ultimate enemy. Whatever is necessary for one to deal with his own realities self-reliantly becomes absolutely necessary, so otherwise he’d be inadequate, dysfunctional, etc. Even if he does plenty, if it’s inadequate to deal with his realities, he’d seem to be inadequate. The weak can be such a drain. Victim-blaming has advantages, such as: conventionality, pragmatism, realism, objectivity, exalting red-blooded strength, avoiding moralism, preventing manipulative and vainglorious machinations, faith that we get what we deserve, and confidence that the person who’s the most motivated to solve a problem is the one who’s in control. All that we’d have to do is treat the weak as a bunch of selfish manipulators, and we could have a de facto law of the jungle without having an official law of the jungle. Everyone must conquer their own doubts, their own “negativity,” for their own good, focusing on correcting themselves. Correcting women, poor people, etc., as if they fit the stereotypes of choosing to be weak for “fun” and/or profit, is intended to benefit them, strengthen them. Normal give-and-take, opinions about rampant depression, etc., seem too prone to manipulation, cowardice, etc. Simple wins.® Success and failure are objective, and questions of, “What’s unacceptably wrong?”, aren’t. (You’re expected to have realistic coping skills, so simply proving that what happened was wrong, isn’t enough.) That’s the real world; sometimes things work out, and sometimes they don’t. There is only so much to go around, and if you don’t get it, you don’t get it. It’s astounding what one can get away with, if what we really care about is the supposed whiners, manipulators, etc. Acting pathetic is the old (pre-Reagan) way of doing things. Weakness isn’t competitive, or fun. Victims could seem to be manipulatively insidiously and perfidiously exploiting victimizers’ (moral) vulnerabilities, in order to get what the victims want. (Paranoia about duplicitous untermenschen could seem healthy—gutsy and realistic.) If those judging you keep hearing from your society, that supposed victims are really untermensch manipulators, attention-seekers, whiners, etc., then that would be how those judges would be likely to judge you. (Prejudice acquires a new meaning, like Ron Paul’s: “Sometimes you have to pre-judge, since you can’t prove cunning untermensch machinations, and you should be optimistic that they could have succeeded if they really wanted to.”) Coping with reality must mean overlooking some realities. Even “Archie” doesn’t have to live in fear. You don’t deserve more than what you won. Your attention would be on what you should be doing better, better, not on the magnitude of the social problem. Some negativity seems pro-freedom,
but some seems dangerously anti-freedom.
Self-help programs like this, even those that apply to situations of unambiguous victimization, are top sellers. The alkies aren’t controlling Al-Anon members in the authoritarian, paternalistic, anti-freedom sense; that’s just the way that life sometimes goes. We all must adjust to our realities. That’s inherent to life. This is the exciting self-reliant freedom, can-do courage, and failsafe well-adjusted forgiveness, that we’ve gotten to know and love. If it feels good, believe it. (Fighting and/or caring for the underdog might feel good, though, but we must understand how this would mollycoddle them.) Addictive personalities would feel right at home. Hans Johst said, “When I hear the word culture, I release the safety catch on my revolver,” and intellectualism could cause similar feelings, even when the supposed intellectualism is a concern about the sociology of what leads to our rampant depression. We must all be motivated to deal with our own problems independently resiliently and resourcefully. We’ll get more chances to succeed. That simply is the unconditionally self-responsible role that we must play, to keep our society functioning with plenty of self-motivation, unconditionally. If people could get what they wanted by manipulatively playing the victim role, then that’s what they’d naturally do. Simply being morally right, has never earned or achieved anything. If you’ve “really failed,” you could become a projection screen for others’ beliefs about failures. Conformists firmly believe that certain things are good, so are blinded by ideology. (“Sure, approximately 15% of the U.S. adult population suffers from a serious depressive disorder in any given year, but if you act like what’s causing your problem is what contributes to our rampant depression, that’s just your manipulative ploy!!!”)
“One [Mississippi] preacher let me into his church,” said Bobby Kennedy’s administrative aide James Symington, “and told me, ‘You represent a tyranny.’ I said, ‘How do you think black people feel living in Mississippi with no rights?’ He said, ‘Well, it’s better to have a lot of little tyrannies than one big one.’” Control based on one person having power over another, is only a little tyranny.
Not only are we supposed to hold to:
but also we’re likely to figure that helplessness is the price that we have to pay for the redbloods, the übermenschen, to have their sacred freedoms, even in a society with rampant depression.
Here you could see the truth of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s statement, “There is a way of speaking which is... entirely correct and unexceptionable, but which is, nevertheless, a lie.... When an apparently correct statement contains some deliberate ambiguity, or deliberately omits the essential part of the truth... it does not express the real as it exists in God.” The pragmatic perspective would say that even in the case of addicts’ kids (who certainly aren’t just playing the victim role), we must include the ambiguities that involve how vital expediency may be, and omit the truths that would distract from this expediency, in order to be productive. Übermenschen would love this stolid self-responsibility, and untermenschen would hate it. This transcendence is often called “spirituality.”
The Fine Art of Propaganda quotes Hitler’s Mein Kampf as saying, “A lie is believed because of the unconditional and insolent inflexibility with which it is propagated and because it takes advantage of the sentimental and extreme sympathies of the masses.” It should be obvious to anyone that the problems of the victims of alcoholic parents (or anything comparable) aren’t inside of themselves. Yet the sentimental and extreme sympathies of Americans tend to insist that one take personal response-ability for his own welfare. If he doesn’t, he could be insolently and inflexibly accused of having “pity parties” and the like. A stolid self-reliance with self-empowerment simply seems good, while passivity simply seems bad.
With all cognitive therapy, the more impressionable that one is, the more that he could learn to think pragmatically. Since cognitive therapy arose in the 1960s based on the then-popular Eastern transcendence, this could be called “Calcutta survival skills.” While you might think that this is pretty unusual, it really does have to be systematic, for any situation in which those who are expected to be self-reliant, can’t change some very important factors but can change others. As the Philadelphia Grand Jury report on their Archdiocese’s enabling of pedo-priests put it,
Al-Anon’s approach was based on AA’s approach, in which the more impressionable a recovering alkie is, the more that he could get rid of his pathological thoughts. Something very vital is missing.
That Alateen comic is part of a series that begins, “At least one child in thirteen lives in an alcoholic home...,” shows visitors from Alateen telling an assembly at the high school, “Alateen taught me how to let go of my father’s drinking problem and still care about him!” and, “I learned that alcoholism is a disease and that I can be happy in spite of my mother’s drinking!”, and ends by saying that though two of the three alkies’ kids in this series go on to get inner peace and confident feelings by letting go and choosing to be happy, the other kid, a contrarian degenerate hippy drug-pusher, ends up in big danger because he refuses to accept this self-improvement. When his dad temporarily sobered-up, the teen is shown wearing a square-looking sweater with a herringbone design,
and with his hair neatly combed.
Obviously he enthusiastically “let go” of any resentment he may have felt about past drinking, but he wouldn’t seem good enough unless he also “let go” of his feelings about present and future drinking. The alkie father didn’t have any addictive cravings compelling him to relapse, but all are simply to accept that his disease made him do it. The whole idea is that at least one child in thirteen lives in an alcoholic home, so at least one child in thirteen would benefit greatly if he learned to deal with such realities in such an unconditional, failsafe fashion.
Among the hyperthymics I’ve known, whose behavior problems have been for the most part moderate, the one behavior that I’ve seen their non-violent sociopathic tendencies lead to most, is the breaking of commitments. The textbook Essentials of Abnormal Psychology by Benjamin Kleinmuntz, copyright 1980, says in its chapter outlining sociopathy, “Unreliability and Irresponsibility. In a society that emphasizes integrity and reliability, sociopaths pose a special problem, for they do not feel bound by the rules that govern most people,” so expecting people to take their voluntarily made commitments seriously can’t seem to be just a utopian dream, or just a manipulative trap for those who made the commitments especially if they initiated them. As Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said about public reaction to Enron’s frauds, “I think that it tells us that, because the whole structure of American business is so fundamentally based on trust, that any evident abrogation of that trust creates a real furor, which it should.” Yet in reality there are just so many potential excuses for breaking commitments, especially if this is a matter of unreliability and irresponsibility rather than maliciousness, and those who are lacking a sense of others’ rights and personal boundaries would think in a way that’s very much in the spirit of these excuses. (I tell of the consistently victimizer-minimizing, victim-magnifying, scrutiny that a rather extreme instance of business commitment-breaking that I was involved in, on my Out Of The Same Mold As Enron webpage.)
This is especially true after that book was written, when a psychology textbook’s judgments of people would have been inspired by the thinking of the Reagan/Thatcher era, so could have said instead, “In a society that emphasizes resiliency, perseverance, vigilant survival skills, and self-reliance, sociopaths’ victims who don’t meet these expectations pose a special problem, for they do not feel bound by the personal responsibilities that govern most people. Non-violent sociopathic behaviors, on the other hand, are merely surmountable obstacles; these, too, shall pass.” (Likewise, in the Stanford prison-simulation experiment in 1975, the male subjects were chosen at random to be either “prisoners” or “guards” and were told to moderate their behaviors but the experiment had to be ended after 6 days when the “guards” became too sadistic and the “prisoners” too sheepish, and the “prisoners” nicknamed a more sadistic guard “John Wayne” just as some Nazi concentration camp inmates had nicknamed one of their more sadistic guards “Tom Mix,” an American cowboy actor of that era, but a few years after 1975, calling someone “John Wayne” could only have been a compliment. As Bobby Shriver said on Larry King Live on October 13, 2006, “And we were reading this poll the other day that the number one movie star, Larry, in America today is still John Wayne. He hasn’t had a movie in the theaters, as you know, in 40 years.”)
We’re to have the same faith in this failsafe sort of self-responsibility, that we’d have in any other cultural norms, as if it’s a universal truth that will work forever.
Typical of the recent psychological approach is self-help books, which, like the above ideal of alkies’ kids resolving to stop blaming others and look at themselves, figures that problems are solved by those who have the problems, helping themselves self-reliantly. Even women partnered with men who are addicts or their functional equivalents, are treated as if this is the women’s disease of codependency. As I’ve said, in essence, what hyperthymics tend to look like is the celebrities who attract hordes of groupies, charismatic smart creative and idealistically caring, but also tending to have plenty of artistic-temperament-style behavior problems, such as boozing, doping, irascibility, flamboyant eccentricities, and irresponsibility. If you surrounded yourself with all of the celebrities who attract hordes of groupies, you sure would tend to associate with people who have artistic-temperament-style behavior problems, so you could very easily seem to have a subconscious codependent attraction to artistic-temperament-style behavior problems. Yet the only groupies who are attracted to the boozing and doping, are those who want to share the booze and dope.
As you could see in the life stories recounted in the book Robin Norwood Answers Letters from Women Who Love too Much, of those men who make their partners seem codependent, either they’re addicted to something, or they have “idiosyncrasies” in which they’re way too impulsive, are prone to uncontrollable anger, and/or tend to do what they feel like as if anyone who tries to stop them is trying to trap them. And, of course, the only reason why these behaviors on the part of the men, is supposed to indicate that the women are codependent, is that the women are attracted to these troublesome men, and, therefore, seem to be attracted to trouble. Yet people with Hyperthymic Personality Disorders could cause big problems, yet seem extremely attractive, and not only to their lovers who could therefore seem masochistic. One of these life stories in Robin Norwood Answers Letters from Women Who Love too Much, tells of the father of the women who wrote it. He also molested his kids, and had several “idiosyncrasies”:
Many times, we children (and my mother) had experienced his irrational anger, his drastic mood swings, not to mention his peculiar habits. Returning home for visits was not always as pleasurable as it should have been. It’s no wonder that we all have anger inside; we were never supposed to talk back or be angry with our father because we never knew how he would handle it. My mother has told me of times when he has banged on walls with his head or his fists. She, too, has been frightened by him since the early days of their marriage. The times when he was calm and relaxed can only be likened to the quiet before the storm.
The catch in all this, as I’m sure it is in similar cases, is that many people think my father is perfect; they think our family is perfect. We, as a family, have even held on to this view as we have grown up. Dad is a minister, now retired. His father was a minister, as are two of his three brothers. My friends have often bragged about what a “cool” dad I have. My mother’s friends have told her how lucky she is to be married to such a wonderful man. His congregations have practically worshipped him more than their gods. And many women have tried to seduce him. Yet none of these people had to live with him as we did.
I have no idea how it could be possible to attribute masochism, to all those who considered him “cool,” etc. According to the current zeitgeist, if a woman keeps finding guys like this to be attractive, then she must be attracted to pervs or those with rage problems, but if the public in general finds them attractive, that doesn’t mean anything. That’s “the catch in all this, as I’m sure it is in similar cases.” And as is typical for the current zeitgeist, this letter goes on to say that once he and his wife got divorced after thirty-five years of marriage, “What hurts me so is that my mother feels that most of those years were wasted on trying to make this man into what she wanted and needed,” as if her expecting his rages to stop was her expecting this sinful world to be as she’d have it.
The other letters in this book don’t show this pattern so clearly. Yet the fact still remains that though the problem guys do things that most would call “selfish,” most people would have no desire to do these very same things, since the costs and risks so obviously outweigh the benefits. At least something similar to Hyperthymic Personality Disorder, must be motivating them to do things that most people would feel uncomfortable doing. This would include any booze or dope problems that led to any of the addictions.
Psychoanalysis doesn’t have a way to include the effects of a disinhibiting impulsivity that makes certain people’s choices, radically different from most peoples’. If psychoanalysts looked at such behavior patterns, they’d probably think that they must have plenty of subconscious sadistic and masochistic desires behind them, since the consequences to oneself and others are so obvious, yet people choose to do them anyway.
Or, if the intent of certain destructive behavior doesn’t look particularly malicious, the person could seem to be subconsciously in denial. The obliviousness of Hyperthymic Personality Disorder comes from an impairment of the frontal lobes of the brain, which are responsible for our self-reflection and awareness of how we interact with the world. The disinhibition from booze, also, comes from its impairing the frontal lobes, so the disinhibition from HPD really does operate just like the disinhibition from booze. On an intuitive level, the two look very similar.
And the section on denial, in Psychotherapy of Addicted Persons by Edward Kaufman, includes, “For example, an AA member with 10 years of sobriety described how great his denial was before he became sober. He had shot one of his fingers off when intoxicated. He stated that he had not been concerned about the loss, but had begun eating starfish to grow back his missing digit (because echinoderms can regenerate missing limbs)!”
Likewise, when active alcoholics deny that they’re alcoholic though that fact should be obvious to anyone, most would say that they’re “in denial,” but what’s really going on with them could be agonosia, the same radical lack of self-reflection that leads people with other obvious mental illnesses to insist, “But I’m not sick!” The lack of reality-testing, awareness of consequences, etc., that comes with HPD, isn’t usually as extreme as thinking that one could grow back his own lost fingers, or that an obvious mental illness doesn’t exist. Yet that obliviousness would still be more extreme than anything that a rational person would freely choose to have. One who has the same sort of malfunction in the brain without having to drink booze, would have the same thinking distortions that he couldn’t be talked out of. And while you might think that these distortions are rare, they’re about as different from the norm as is chronic depression, and everyone knows that that isn’t unusual. Hyperthymic personalities in general are fairly common among those who are charismatic, driven, smart, and creative, so they’re especially common among decision-makers and celebrities. And yes, this includes all those celebrities who attract all those groupies, yet if they actually lived with the celebrities, THEY’D DRIVE THE GROUPIES CRAZY!!!
You’ve probably wondered about certain types of sane people, such as bikers, hobos, and basically dysfunctional career criminals, “Sure, most people would think of their lifestyle as ‘selfish’ and ‘sinful,’ but why would anyone really choose to live like that?” The same goes for pre-addiction boozers and dopers. As The Socio-Economic Impact of Amphetamine Type Stimulants in New Zealand, Final Report, says, “Many frequent users of methamphetamine reported pre-existing mental health problems including tendencies to self-harm. Use of methamphetamine increased these individuals’ levels of psychological problems such as ‘anxiety’, ‘mood swings’, ‘short temper’, ‘paranoia’, and ‘depression’ and the level of suicidal thoughts and attempts.” Yet the American Family in Crisis Brochure says, “Methamphetamine is an incredibly dangerous substance because this drug appeals to kids who love their life! Kids who have a very active schedule and a high standard for their academic performance are intrigued by the apparent endless energy and mental acuity that are characteristic of the ‘high’ of meth.” The poor judgments of those with impairments in their frontal lobes, could be very similar to the poor judgments of “kids.”
As I went into on webpage #7 of this series, if a few of your friends (and it would always be the same people who’d fit this very distinctive pattern) got agitated about something trivial by going hysterical for a few seconds to a few minutes, and then suddenly acted like everything’s normal again as if they suddenly snapped out of something, you wouldn’t conclude that those particular good-natured people are all in the same strange habit of concluding that something trivial was an outrage, then, a few seconds to a few minutes later, suddenly changing their minds and deciding that it’s trivial after all. You could at least sense that their brains are malfunctioning. Well, a delusion that one could re-grow fingers by eating starfish, also comes across as a brain malfunction. The lack of reality-testing, awareness of consequences, etc., that comes with HPD might not have this quality to the same degree, but you could still sense it. For example, typical for HPD is that, “But he thought that he was doing the right thing!”, means what someone under the influence of booze would think constitutes “doing the right thing,” i.e. he could probably come up with plenty of sophistry to “prove” that what he was doing cared about others’ rights, but it was glaringly . Like someone who’s under the influence of booze, he’d likely find it hard to understand why others don’t accept that. He’d likely think that they were being unfair to him, “We are all victims of victims,” etc.
The psychoanalytic concept that might prove the most relevant to Hyperthymic Personality Disorder, is that of infantile selfishness. This selfishness doesn’t look like any cold-blooded personality disorder. Rather, as the baby or tot proceeds to do what would help him learn and otherwise mature, he doesn’t have the awareness and other inhibitions that would stop him from doing what he wants at others’ expense. That’s what HPD “mistakes” look like, caused not by evil tendencies, but by the sort of disinhibition that booze causes. Yet as Treating Substance Abuse, by Frederick Rotgers, John Morgenstern, and Scott T. Walters, begins its chapter “Theoretical Perspectives on Motivation and Addictive Behavior”:
Without an appreciation of the role of motivation, substance abuse treatment can read like a mystery novel with a missing page: How did the butler get that knife in his hand and what does he plan to do with it? Indeed, addiction counselors are often frustrated with exactly this sense of missing something. Laments one: “My client came in last week desperate to make a change. He finally got off parole and was really going to make it work this time. We spent the whole session talking about his plan for avoiding relapse, and now I found out he nearly OD’d this weekend!” The irony is clear: Why would a person persist in behavior that is clearly harming him- or herself and others?
All that it takes for one to do things leading to his own death, and/or horrors to others, is to have this infantile impulsivity. The tenderness of those considered codependent, that tries oh so dedicatedly and desperately to persuade them into stopping addictive self-destruction, would work with those who have a normal capacity for self-regulation. Yet simply because even recovering addicts with this much personal support, pose this much of a danger, those who try to help them seem undoubtedly to be wanting to let themselves in for trouble, endeavoring to go on codependent “rescue missions.”
More objective psychologists would probably say that such oblivious behaviors look antisocial. Violence isn’t necessary for any of the “Characteristics and Typical Behavior of the Antisocial Personality” listed by Dr. Benjamin Kleinmunst in the textbook Essentials of Abnormal Personality: “Inability to form loyal relationships,” “Inability to feel guilt,” “Inability to learn from experience, special attention, or punishment” (I’d suspect that sociopaths do learn from experiences that didn’t result from their own behavior.), “Tendency to seek thrills and excitement,” “Impulsiveness,” “Aggressiveness,” “Superficial charm and intelligence,” “Unreliability and irresponsibility,” “Pathological lying,” “Inadequately motivated antisocial behavior,” “Egocentricity,” “Poverty of affect,” “Lack of insight,” “Casual but excessive sexual behavior,” and “The need to fail.” Since Hyperthymic Personality Disorder means thinking and acting like someone who’s under the influence of stimulants that have the same disinhibiting effects that booze has, this could mean exactly that sort of oblivious aggressiveness. Some of the above could look more like the person is radically in denial, than that he’s cold-bloodedly malicious.
Psychotherapy of Addicted Persons says in its chapter on personality disorders, “Kosten et al. (1982) further suggested that the 32% of opiate addicts who did not meet diagnostic criteria for a personality disorder might in themselves represent a unique character disorder for which no diagnostic category as yet exists. These addicts tended to be better educated and employed, to have less Axis I psychopathology, and to demonstrate higher social functioning. Further research should be done on all [substance abusers] who do not meet criteria for Axis II disorders, in order to determine whether they represent a previously unnamed personality disorder. Perhaps they follow several clusters of personality traits, with none sufficiently differentiated to meet criteria for a personality disorder.” Soon after, this book goes into several ways in which a patient of Dr. Kaufman’s, “David,” fit this pattern. His story appears in the chapter “Defense Mechanisms in Addicted Persons,” along with the section about being in denial. The main issue with him was the chaotic sexual relationships he had with women who had some ornery tendencies, including one with his vengeful secretary, so his employer referred David to Dr. Kaufman. When this book tells David’s story, it includes, “He had recently seen a psychiatrist, who had diagnosed him as having bipolar disorder; he had been on lithium and Prozac for 6 months, without benefit.”
The chapter on personality disorders gives him as an example of someone who fits the pattern of showing several clusters of personality traits, with none sufficiently differentiated to meet criteria for one particular personality disorder. When discussing how likely addicts are to have Antisocial Personality Disorder, the book says, “The case of David, described in the Chapter 3, would certainly fall into Cluster B. Although he demonstrated several characteristics of ASP (early sexual relationships, inability to maintain monogamy, criminal history, recklessness), this disorder would not have been the most valid personality diagnosis for him. David did experience considerable guilt and remorse; he maintained a job and a permanent residence; and he was capable of making a therapeutic relationship even when not coerced to do so by the law or employers.”
When discussing Narcissistic Personality Disorder, the book says,
Closet narcissists may also project their own grandiosity into idealized love objects, so that they idealize others who unconsciously represent themselves; thus they often present with highly “codependent” relationships. This was quite true in the case of David, described in Chapter 3.
[Substance abusers] with NPD expect to be noticed as special without warranting it. They feel that their problems are unique and will be appreciated if only they can find a special person who will understand and mirror them. They feel justified in exploiting others to meet their needs and alleviate their frustrations (American Psychiatric Association, 1987). Again, this behavioral cluster was clearly evident in David.
and also goes into some other details about him. When discussing Borderline Personality Disorder and the extreme instability of emotions that it’s known for, the book says, “Thus individuals with BPD exhibit a protective shallowness in emotional relationships. David demonstrated these extremes and this ‘psuedodepth’ in all of his close relationships, but in a most exaggerated way with his lovers.”
The section on Passive-Aggressive Personality Disorder includes, “As is true of most [substance abusers], many of David’s maladaptive ways of dealing with the world could be labeled passive aggressive.”
And these are all of the personality disorders of addicts, that this chapter includes.
Yet if those with these attitudes went to psychologists, they’d be very hesitant to tell these clients how problematic these red-blooded attitudes are, giving the benefit of any doubt to the “redbloods” over the “mollycoddles.” For example, when discussing their inability to maintain monogamy, it would seem that we mustn’t try to “trap” them. Maybe when they insist that they’ve got to leave their current relationships, they really aren’t very compatible with their lovers. And even if it could be proven that their desires to leave are based purely on their own idiosyncrasies, expecting them to stay would seem to have all the negative consequences of trying to “trap” and “repress” those who have very strong aggressive desires. John Wayne said, Republic...it means people can live free, talk free, go or come, buy or sell, be drunk or sober, however they choose,” and while those who treat addicts would be especially afraid of this gutsy talk about the right to get drunk, it still could seem repressive to go against the sort of red-blooded freedom that we associate with John Wayne.
After all, that webpage selling that pro-pedophile pendant,
said, “A magnificent jewel with forms, both gentle and strong, that can express the intensity and the deepness of a feeling as well as the balance and the harmony of a relation. The open line formed by the two hearts represent duration and liberty, a link that holds and sustains without attaching.” A non-pedophile version of this, which has that same inability to maintain monogamy, would tell a psychologist, “What I believe in, is a link that holds and sustains without attaching.” Of course, the psychologist would never think that he has a right to pass judgment over someone holding to those values.
Psychologists and others who believe in self-help self-responsibility, would then tell the women hurt by this, that of course they’re supposed to:
Of course, if the women don’t, passing judgment on that would seem perfectly appropriate, even beneficial and self-empowering. Just like the above alkies’ kids, these women are simply supposed to courageously change what they can, and serenely accept whatever they can’t.
As a good example of the sort of supposed fair balance that our culture in general would expect people in general to accept if they’re not whiny and resentful untermenschen, the following GIF (so the words in it couldn’t be found by a search engine), appears on the Zoloft website, where Zoloft has given it the file name “fairbalance.gif”:
And, in fact, that normalcy could be proven dangerous. The Learning About Depression webpage on the Zoloft website says, “If you have depression, this sad mood along with other symptoms can last weeks, months, or even years if not treated. Depression isn’t a sign of weakness or a character flaw. It’s a real medical condition, but there are ways to successfully treat depression.... Depressive disorders affect about 34 million American adults.”
So it seems only natural to treat that rate of depression as if it’s just one of those biological diseases that are parts of the natural order, so the only question that we might have is whether that consists of 34,000,000 rather severe medical conditions, or 34,000,000 rather severe character flaws. Everyone knows that what’s at fault, is inside the millions of victims. You’d be amazed how many appeals to higher loyalties would seem more moving than would a concern about such rampant depression: expectations that we be pro-freedom, not try to control or restrict others, not seem emotionalist, be forgiving, love an anti-resentment spirituality, be stolidly rock-ribbed, avoid those social sciences, etc. If you really do care how scary this rate of depression is, it would be you who’d seem scary, because of all the untermensch victim-power you’d have.
And not caring is exactly what we’re supposed to do. If, to a degree and with a persistence that would be worthy of this social problem, an American did care that depressive disorders affect about 34,000,000 American adults, you could bet that a wide variety of untermensch attributes would be attributed to him, such as: weak, passive, whiny, bitter, resentful, manipulative, insidiously self-interested, counterproductive, troublemaking, controlling, restrictive, blaming, excuse-making, anti-freedom, intellectualist, self-righteous, self-pitying, subjective, unrealistic, immature, negativist, defeatist, melodramatic, emotionalist, and judgmental. Just like Jane’s efforts to become well-adjusted, he’d be pressured to become a better, happier person by courageously changing what he could and serenely accepting whatever he’s helpless to change. If instead we compromised, and cared to a degree that’s only a fraction of what our rampant depression deserves, that would still be quite weak-spirited and whiny.
And, naturally, this means...
Certainly you could imagine what would happen if you responded to one of those who figured that naturally you’re simply supposed to adjust to the norms that cause our rampant depression, by saying, “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Sure, for depressive disorders to affect about 34,000,000 American adults is a very serious social problem, but in order to fit in, you’ve got to minimize the problems around your somewhat. Therefore, I’ll treat this as if it were just a moderately severe social problem.” After all, if you could care somewhat, then that would make you somewhat discouraged, maladjusted, thinking like a victim, etc.
Of course the “character flaw” in the Zoloft ad means the kind that depressed people might seem to have, untermensch character flaws which are hard to disprove, rather than the übermensch character flaws of those who cause the traumas which cause the excessive depression. If instead, this were treated as a social problem in the same way that many social movements in the 1960s treated social problems, it would seem very strange to talk about millions of Americans suffering from depression, as millions of Americans who’d better get fixed through antidepressant medication, cognitive therapy, etc.
Let’s say that, hypothetically, someone in the business world initiates a commitment with you, and you invest a lot in that commitment just as he had intended, so for him to welch out on the commitment would certainly be violating your rights and personal boundaries, as well as the expectations that we’d all have that we could rely on freedom of contract. The more condemnable that you could prove him to be, the more ridiculous you’d be proving yourself to be if you expected someone like that to do his part of the bargain. When it’s time for him to keep his end of the bargain, he could honestly believe that you, by expecting him to keep it, are the one who’s trying to violate his rights and personal boundaries. He could tell you, “Go take care of yourself instead of counting on this abstraction,” and could act like a victim of manipulative guilt-trips if you don’t. You sure have some chutzpah expecting him give you something or do something for you, instead of you just shutting up and accepting that life’s not perfect. This would seem especially true if you’re of a lower social status than he is.
That could sound plausible for several reasons. When it’s time for him to keep his part of the bargain, the time in which he made it would have happened in the past, so he could insist that for you to care about the commitment would be holding a grudge about past history; my this potential employer put it, I seemed to be “carrying a chip on my shoulder.” Also, things have changed since you made the commitment, and we all must accept the results of things changing, though what changed was hardly unpredictable, and didn’t make it impossible for him to reciprocate in a way that was roughly proportional. Not only that, the more time that he’s in default, the more that he can say, “But look at all the time that’s passed since I made that commitment! Boy, are you ever dredging up past history!” The Reaganites who’d talk like this would also be the most likely to encourage deferred gratification, earning in the present what you’ll get in the future, but if the passage of time could make anything just water under the bridge, then what you think you’re earning now in a businesslike manner, could mean nothing in the future, when it will be just past history, so if you expect the “gratification” in “deferred gratification,” this would make you seem like a demanding whiner.
Dr. Kaufman, probably to show how David didn’t really fit the mold of sociopathic, narcissistic, borderline, or passive-aggressive, gives the following poem, which David wrote during his first hospitalization. This is also a good example of the real effects of what both many hyperthymics, and the John Wayne and trendy elements of Western culture, regard as selfishness and freedom:
People always say,
“I got over him,”
“Oh, I quickly forgot her.
It was just a sexual thing.”But they’re all fools and liars,
those people who say
they can forget their lovers.
They really never do.They spend too much time staring out the window,
and making senseless trips to the store
to buy greeting cards for nobody.In their deepest selves
they remember the sweetest parts
of the most selfish sex,
the bittersweet echoes of hope and disappointment
behind the angriest words of rejection.They lay awake at night and wonder,
“Should I have tried harder?”
“Was it right to walk away?”
“Why was it so intense and so shallow
both at the same time?”They turn to the wall
sleeplessly asking
why sex felt so much like love,
why they feel separation anxiety
over a person who was no good for them
to begin with.It’s because there is a sweet river
forever in the heart
that flows from an impossibly high mountain top
and you climb it every night in your dreams
hoping to find someone there.Chances are that those celebrities who, as that woman described her father in Robin Norwood Answers Letters from Women Who Love too Much, seem radiantly healthy at a distance but are impossible to live with, “And many women have tried to seduce him. Yet none of these people had to live with him as we did,” also sometimes fit some patterns of personality disorders such as Antisocial, Narcissistic, Borderline, and Passive-Aggressive, yet they also have plenty of exquisite vitality and soul!
And as Steven Carter’s self-help book about commitment-phobic men, Men Who Can’t Love, says, one big reason for the commitment-phobia is a belief that as long as they keep hoping to find a partner who suits them better than their current partner, someday they’ll find her, so they don’t want to become “trapped” with anyone else. David could very easily be following the same path of the suicidal men who end up killing themselves because of the ending of one romantic relationship. On my Men Dying for Love webpage, I have all the suicide notes that were put into the appendix of a scholarly book on suicide. Of the notes that happened to end up in that book, several of the men killed themselves because of the ending of one romantic relationship, while the only woman to do that was a lesbian.
These notes from the men, tend to give the impression that they acted toward their relationships in ways that could be called pettily dysfunctional, though the price of that independent John Wayne and/or trendy willfulness ended up being way too high. If, before their relationships ended so they killed themselves, someone told them that it would benefit them to act more responsibly, he might as well be telling John Waynes or hippies that it would benefit them to act more responsibly. People like that will decide for themselves what they think they are, and aren’t, responsible for.
Bobby Shriver went on to say that he thinks that the reason why the American public still likes John Waynes so much, is, “You know, people like, Americans like that guy who just goes out and stops injustice and does it, you know, doesn’t wait for the government to do it. We just go out and stop it ourselves...” Yet even if that really were all that John Wayne meant, that’s exactly the sort of “thinking” that led to the invasion of Iraq and all that has resulted from it. An episode of CNN Presents, Donald Rumsfeld, Man of War, quotes him as quoting Teddy Roosevelt, the original redblood, “Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords.” Yet this same Rumsfeld, during the Reagan Administration, arranged for the export of many kinds of deadly germs to Iraq, including some to be shipped to the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission! This is
