Monday, December 10, 2007

Sexual and Textual Perverts in Islam and the West

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, when I first read deMause's Foundations of Psychohistory, it made immediate sense to me, as if he were just confirming things I knew had to be true, not all of it -- i.e., the more extreme historicist speculation -- but his abundant documentation of just how badly children were treated in the past, and how this resulted in very different historical personalities and "worlds" than ours.

It also occurred to me how compatible deMause's ideas were with Ken Wilber's Up From Eden, which I read when it was first published in the early 1980s. The latter book also posits a developmental model of history, although in Wilber's case, he anchors the model in a sort of universal Hegelian/Aurobindean evolution of spirit as opposed to anything concrete, i.e., improved childrearing practices. The problem is, deMause is an atheist, so he would undoubtedly regard Wilber's higher spiritual stages as intrinsically pathlological.

Now that I think about it, I suppose these were just two more of the contradictions I was attempting to resolve in my own book -- which would probably have to be much, much longer in order to convince anyone who isn't already somewhat sympathetic to its basic arguments.

An immediate difficulty one encounters is the definition of human normalcy. For example, modern Americans don't think it's "normal" to abuse children. However, as deMause writes, there is "a point back in history where most children were what we would now consider abused." But if that is the case, perhaps they were normal and we are the aberrations. The only other option is that normalcy exists in an archetypal sense -- that it is a telos that draws development toward it. This is what I mean when I say that Eden (or Adam Kadmon, the divine cosmic human archetype) is not in the past but in the future (or in the present vertical). Otherwise, psychological normalcy becomes an arbitrary cultural construct.

Again, as I have mentioned before, we needn't venture into the distant past to find confirmation of deMause's ideas, being that developmental time is embodied in cultural space. (Another excellent and more mainstream book in this regard is Edgerton's Sick Societes.) In other words, when we encounter what we regard as a "primitive" culture, we will nearly always discover -- assuming we are capable of true empathy of childhood pain -- what we consider to be appalling childrearing practices that keep it primitive (because of adults acting out their own childhood trauma on each new generation).

Just yesterday there was a very important piece at American Thinker by psychiatrist Stephen Rittenberg, entitled Liberalism, Jihadism and Perversion. He points out the difficulty of "diagnosing" the barbaric jihadis -- as if they are Western psychopaths, when they are actually just craven conformists in the context of their own culture:

"It is the intense pleasure derived from religiously sanctioned murderous lust that makes the jihadis so dangerous. The degree of narcissism matters little; these are not people who can be 'treated' by shoring up their narcissism, and bolstering their self esteem. It is our very civilized, therapeutic culture that makes us flinch from taking the necessary measures needed to deal with such foes. In truth, it may be our own narcissism -- the need to reassure ourselves of our superior civilized nature -- that causes us to obsess about whether necessary measures for waging war, like water boarding, and Guantanamo constitute 'torture'."

Thus -- and this is a critical point -- there is actually an implicit dynamic between the bloodthirsty psychopaths of Islam and the narcissistic enablers of the left, and that is perversion. And what is perversion? Importantly, sexual acting out is not synonymous with perversion, but an effect of something much deeper. As Rittenberg explains, perversions are not just "sexual" in the more narrow behavioral sense of the term. Rather, they embody the idea "that erotic pleasure [can] be intensified by the discharge of aggressive wishes, including the inflicting of, and submitting to, pain up to the point of death."

Rittenberg refers to the theories of Chasseguet-Smirgel, who "found that perversions are an essential way in which the human mind and psyche rebel against and seek to evade reality," including the reality of male-female differences: "The intolerance and fear of such differences can result in the practices of Wahabbi Islam, wherein women are so feared that they must be hidden and brutalized like beasts of the field. Muslim men's terror of women is undoubtedly accompanied by a high incidence of hidden (not so hidden when they travel to the Riviera) perverse sexuality."

This is true as far as it goes, but the question is, how do people -- and whole cultures -- end up this way? That is a question psychoanalysis in itself is unequipped to answer, since it is essentially a clinical practice that focuses on adult individuals as opposed to field study into, say, Muslim childrearing practices. This is what deMause's research attempts to do -- to link the kind of gross perversion we see in the Islamic world to concrete childrearing practices.

But at the same time, we shouldn't let the West off so easy. I believe ShrinkWrapped has written of how it is true that on the one hand we in the West have the most enlightened, child-centered parenting. But the problem -- and I'm not sure if deMause ever addressed this -- is that our own style of parenting may be more humane, but at the same time, it definitely has a dark shadow side, which is to say, pathological narcissism.

In other words, there is no doubt that there was a significant shift in childrearing practices in the West, beginning in the 1950s, i.e., with the Baby Boomers. I know that my own mother, for example, accepted Dr. Spock's ideas as gospel, Spock being the first pediatrician to popularize the new ideas about attachment theory coming out of England from people like John Bowlby and D.W. Winnicott. Later I'll get into deMause's evidence of just how different this child-centered approach was from past "adult-centered" parenting styles, but suffice it to say, when it comes to parenting, there is a fine line between empathy and indulgence -- just as there can be a fine line between having expectations or boundaries and just plain sadism.

As ShrinkWrapped has written -- and if he sees this, feel free to send the link -- the dark side of child-centered parenting is the kind of indulgence that can lead to pathological narcissism, which is why the Baby Boomer generation is perhaps the most narcissistic in history. Because in reality, indulging a child is not empathic. Rather, it is a failure of empathy, because it is a failure to recognize the actual child and to provide what he really needs as opposed to wants. In other words, giving a child what he wants can be either empathic or unempathic, depending upon the case.

Perhaps this explains our very different ways of responding to the Nazi perverts in World War II as opposed to the Islamist perverts today. The Islamists and Nazis haven't changed, in that they represent the same dark powers and principalities, the same barbarism, the same assault on everything we call Good, True and Beautiful. But in the West, there was much less narcissism a couple of generations ago, so that the threat could be appropriately dealt with. Of course, I cannot cite statistics to back this up, but psychoanalysts in general began to notice a great increase in narcissistic patients by the late 1960s, which led to a revolution of theorizing about how to treat them, since they couldn't be treated in the manner of a normal neurotic.

The barbarians haven't changed but we have, in such a way that we narcissistically treat the barbarians as if they are just unhappy children, and that if we only appease and indulge them enough, they will come around. As Rittenberg explains, leftism is as perverse as Islamism, only in a different way: in the realm of perversely destructive ideas as opposed to behavior. Indeed, "The reason we hear so little condemnation, much less military resolve to annihilate these savage perverts, is Western culture's thralldom to contemporary, politically correct liberalism, which is itself perverse. Post-modern Liberalism shares the mindset of the jihadis and unconsciously enjoys their enactment of liberal fantasies."

So, is the left itself just a giant sexual perversion? Well, ask yourself: why are they so obsessed with sexual transgression, sexual "freedom," sexual "oppression," sex "education," homosexual "marriage," the erosion of sexual differences, etc? It's not about the sex. That's just an effect, not a cause. Rather, as Rittenberg explains, leftism is a perverse mode of thought which, because of its attack on hierarchy and distinctions, ultimately destroys the very basis and possibility of thought: "Thus, for example, Post-Modernism represents perverse thinking in its denial of the difference between truth and falsehood, good and evil, superior and inferior cultures. When it argues that ‘male' and ‘female' are ‘constructed' identities, it argues against the immutable differences imposed by biological reality." (I would say archetypal reality.)

Likewise, "Socialism is similarly perverse in its radical egalitarianism, denying differences of talent, intelligence, motivation, skill." Affirmative action is obviously perverse, as is political correctness: "Ideas are perverse when they seek to undermine distinctions that are necessary for thought itself to exist. When such distinctions are eliminated, anything goes. When liberalism asserts that al Qaeda and America are equal threats to the world, it is being perverse. In fact, when liberals argue that modern Christianity and Islam are both ‘religions of peace' they are being perverse."

Perverse thought eliminates the vital distinctions that make thought possible; it is literally a form of thinking in reverse, in that it believes that the ultimate meaning of meaning is to render meaning ultimately meaningless. It is what Bion referred to as a sadistic "attack on linking," the links that form the foundation and infrastructure of the thinking mind.

By definition, the ultimate perversion has to be materialism, for it obliterates all hierarchical distinction and redounds to horizontal confusion and spiritual emptiness, or chaos and nihilism. It is just another word for intellectual and spiritual entropy, the terminal moraine of terminal morons. This entropy must be countered one Raccoon at a time, generation by generation. For to paraphrase Christopher Dawson, what took thousands of years to build can be destroyed in a single generation.

[T]he advance to the material extreme inevitably means a loss of distinction between things and a trend toward equalization, and in human beings, a corresponding loss of understanding as to the meaning of things that still escape this process.... there follows a corresponding weakening in the realms of intellectual and creative endeavor.... The issue then is the paradox of the decline of something which is the very negation of decline and corruptibility. But its effect on this world depends on the extent to which it is realized in each generation. Man's falling short of his destiny allows cosmic necessity to outflank the spiritual power... --Robert Bolton, The Order of the Ages

31 comments:

walt said...

Bob wrote:
"...the ultimate meaning of meaning is to render meaning ultimately meaningless. It is ... a sadistic "attack on linking," the links that form the foundation and infrastructure of the thinking mind."

Yes, this is what confronts us.

This post really speaks to current events, and what ails us.

BTW, I just received Bolton's book over the weekend, and after surveying the Table of Contents was reminded once again of what a valuable service you provide here, in terms of translating and explaining "serious" ideas. It's not that I don't want to read the book, but on its own merits, it looks daunting!

Gagdad Bob said...

Yes, that book requires intense cooncentration on just about every sentence. The author doesn't help much, since there is almost no "rhythm" to his prose. It's all one speed, which is to say, warp.

Anonymous said...

By definition, the ultimate perversion has to be materialism, for it obliterates all hierarchical distinction and redounds to horizontal confusion and spiritual emptiness, or chaos and nihilism.


Looking at the different forms of carbon illustrate this point. Diamond, a form of carbon, is created by intense conditions of heat and pressure. This results in a structural arrangement that is heirarchical and confers the beauty, strength and integrity of diamond.

Graphite, on the third hand, is one of the softest metals and is dark and gray. Not surprisingly, it's structure is planar (read flat, horizontal) and stands against the horizontal and represents leftism in Bob's post.

Viewing carbon as man, we can arrange our universe either way and the results are predictable. More of the vertical/horizontal tendencies of the universe as it now exists.

Anonymous said...

correction: penultimate paragraph should read:

Not surprisingly, it's structure is planar (read flat, horizontal) and stands against the VERTICAL and represents leftism in Bob's post.

Anonymous said...

Yes, just as there is Shankara's Crest Jewel of Discrimination or the Diamond Sutra of Buddhism, there are the unholy Graphite Sutras one learns in a liberal university education, and which apply to all thought and argument: racism, classism, sexism and homophobia.

Rick said...

Another for the greatest hits in the boxed set. My vote for one of the first tracks.

“Attack on linking.”

Perfect.

It’s like the guy that takes apart a clock to see how it works and puts it back together. He thinks he’s done except for those extra parts on the table. He shrugs off the ones he didn’t understand or forgot where they went. Winds it.
Ahh…still works, he says.
For now…, the Designer says.

robinstarfish said...

Today's post is a rocket...bombs bursting in midair!


Rabbit Ears
the age of reason
lost when man dyed black and white
dan choked on courage

Van Harvey said...

"Perverse thought eliminates the vital distinctions that make thought possible; it is literally a form of thinking in reverse..."

In reverse, or the leveling of throwing down the structure of thought as it seeks to be, in favor of a flat and undifferentiated yada yada yada blah blah blah of quantity without quality and meaning.

"It is what Bion referred to as a sadistic "attack on linking," the links that form the foundation and infrastructure of the thinking mind."

Or what the DBA's out there would recognize as a corrupted database.

"...in that it believes that the ultimate meaning of meaning is to render meaning ultimately meaningless."

Robin Hood splits the arrow - bullseye!

Kaffepaus said...

"Because in reality, indulging a child is not empathic. Rather, it is a failure of empathy, because it is a failure to recognize the actual child and to provide what he really needs as opposed to wants."

Just as the concept of "curling parents" sweeping away every little rough spot in front of their child. Thus, raising an indivual totaly incapable of taking care of him/her self. A whining grown up who yells and get angry as soon a things are not like they wish. Just listen to the left, all they do are "demanding" stuff, rights, equality, etc, instead of going out there and create something on their own.

Also, this must be the idea of the leftist "do gooders", who wants to "take care" of all people, defining people as "weak" and therefor in need of government support all through the different passages of life. It the leftist "circle of anti-life", if you ask the Lion King.

/Johan

Anonymous said...

You write:

“Of course, I cannot cite statistics to back this up, but psychoanalysts in general began to notice a great increase in narcissistic patients by the late 1960s, which led to a revolution of theorizing about how to treat them, since they couldn't be treated in the manner of a normal neurotic.”

I would like to see what resources you did use for the problem of the rise in narcissism in western culture. I have used Professor Jean M. Twenge’s study titled “Generation Me” as a resource for this subject but would like more and possibly better resources if you have any. Particularly for the rise in narcissistic behavior.

Because if :

“Nazi perverts in World War II = Islamist perverts today”

And

“As Rittenberg explains, leftism is as perverse as Islamism”

Then

Leftism = Nazi perverts.

How ripe are we then as a nation of perverts for a Forth Reich? Only this time we would be further along the narcissistic time line increase.

You wrote :

“When liberalism asserts that al Qaeda and America are equal threats to the world, it is being perverse.”

Is it, or is it in a narcissistic way trying to tell you something? A Liberal America I think would be as perverse or even more than al Qaeda, and I think we are further towards that conclusion than you may want to think. Let’s get the studies and statistics out and see. Please list what you have and if any others have good resources on the rise of narcissism in America I would like to know them.

Thanks

Anonymous said...

Speaking of narcissism, Bill, you certainly feel entitled to make demands of Bob and the community here.

NoMo said...

The ideas (truths) in today’s post need popularizing and broad distribution.

My couple of cents:

Although I’m not a big fan of Michael Savage, there are a few words and phrases that I believe originated with him that have become widely used (although not necessarily well-understood) – e.g. “compassionate conservative”, “islamofascism”,
“liberalism is a mental disorder”, and “diversity is perversity”. Regarding the latter in relation to your post today, almost as if in accordance to some master plan look how “diversity” morphed from its original, fairly benign EEO / AA intent, to its ultimate promotion of “equality” across nearly all differences, finally taking firm hold of our culture, laws, and even our language and thought. As you said today, when you “eliminate the vital distinctions that make thought possible”, what’s left (pun intended) is programming – human machines with artificial intelligence.

While identifying children as gifts from God, the Bible speaks repeatedly to their healthy rearing and makes clear the horrific result of the alternative. Loving discipline, correction, guidance, etc. has always been the scriptural Jewish and Christian tradition of the faithful. For me, every single scripturally-based, individual faith relationship with God down through the ages, regardless of the covenant in place at the time, has represents a “present vertical Eden” connection of man to God, if you will – establishing the family model. In other words, it only takes looking up to determine what it is to be a father, mother, or child.

(Look at me resisting the multiple links I could have made to scripture to illustrate these points).

8’]


billh - How ripe? Just take a big whiff.

Anonymous said...

Yes, "diversity" is nothing less than the deification of the particular over the universal, which leads to the flatland homogenization of man rather than the vertical hominization of beasts.

Anonymous said...

Only in the postmodern world wide perverted whoopie have people been able to write under the name "anonymous" and assert their opinion as truth without any requirement to list their resources. The burden of evidence has always been on the writer in the past but with the rising increase in libel and slander, the new narcissists think they are entitled to simply post their opinion, whether factual or not. I am sure Bob doesn’t confuse a request for a resource a demand, as “anonymous” seems to have and also spoke for the “community”.

But then I’ve gotten used to getting this kind of response from posting on this “forum”. A strange kind of “community” but fun to see is consistent. I shood haf mispellt some words to really get the police out.

Anonymous said...

Assoul.

Van Harvey said...

billh said "But then I’ve gotten used to getting this kind of response from posting on this “forum”. A strange kind of “community” but fun to see is consistent. I shood haf mispellt some words to really get the police out."

Hmmm ... interesting backhanded turn, or slip there... maybe you should stick with one nic, instead of using a shifting anonymity of nics? Perhaps I should say 'still laughing?'

Anyway, distractions aside, the point of the potential of leftism sliding into nazism is well addressed in The Ominous Parallels,a couple bullet points noted:

-Political parties devoid of principles or direction and moved at random by pressure groups, each demanding still more controls.

-A "progressive," anti-intellectual educational system that, from kindergarten to graduate school, creates students who can't read or write — students brainwashed into the feeling that their minds are helpless and they must adapt to "society," that there is no absolute truth and that morality is whatever society says it is.

and much more. He digs into the philosophical foundations for the rise of Nazism, rather than the irrelevant particulars (economy, Versailles treaty, etc) which were nothing more than convenient material to work with - had events been different, different events would have been made use of. A particularly interesting read for those who have read Explaining Postmodernism by Stephen Hicks

It'll get your brain churning - good for the doom and gloomer in everybody, but with the recognition that all it takes to correct that path is adherence to reality and respect for the oneness of Truth. Of course, being an Objectivist, it is atheistic, but as an incidental, not of the current silly strident Harris/Hitchens variety, and once indicated, Raccoon's can take the fire escape into the vertical from that point.

Van Harvey said...

Oh... and the Parallels are between Germany of the late 19th century - when they had their Hippie movement, and America of the late 20th century. It leads unsettlingly well into today.

I believe he was writing in the early 80's, and we're now beginning to see more of that swell into public view, what with Greens, Gore's and HillarObama's... but this is still America - still filled with the unseen defuse’rs of disaster… the pre-post Remnants…

Stephen said...

Thanks for the kind references to my piece on Jihadism, Liberalism and Perversion in the American Thinker. The French psychoanalyst I cite, Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, has written a very important book I recommend to all. It's titled Creativity and Perversion. Her analysis of the Marquis de Sade is crucial, I believe, to understanding the appeal of murderous jihadism today.
Stephen Rittenberg
http://www.doctor-horsefeathers.com

Gagdad Bob said...

Thanks, and I just read your piece on Joe Torre. Tough luck. We got him, and we're not giving him back!

Anonymous said...

Nomo said:

"(Look at me resisting the multiple links I could have made to scripture to illustrate these points)."

I never minded the links to scripture Nomo. That's one of the things I like about you. What the scripture means...well, we may differ on some things. But we shouldn't dwell too much on that should we?

Anonymous said...

No, not at all.

Van Harvey said...

Quick related note, I watched a C-Span show this weekend on Diana West's 'The Death of the Grown-up' in which she raised a lot of interesting points, and notes that by the early 1950's, there were already warning alarms beng raised about 'child centered' homes....

Presumably, these would have been the leading edge of the boomers, brought forth from those returning from WWII. Doing a little pop-psyching, I wonder if we didn't reap a perfect storm of parents wanting to indulge their kids, rather than discipline them, due in part to the fact that The Greatest Generation were:
- The first generation whose parents were themselves raised in public schools (thanks to, and imbued with the message of the progressives).
-Raised with little or no frills during the Great Depression,
-Brought up under the beginnings of Nanny Statism with FDR's New Deal,
-Having seen all the regimented discipline and horrors of death and destruction they ever wished to see in WWII,

is it surprising that these new parents were not only willing, but wanting, even needing, to see 'happy' faces on their children more than anything else - and especially on the parts of the WWII veteran fathers, at a distance?

NoMo said...

Nice.

NoMo said...

Oops. That was to coonified...just sayin'.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

I think our problem as of late is not being child-centric, but adolescent-centric. Adolescents are the people who are capable of adulthood but still childish. In earlier eras they would have been forced - or allowed or made able - to begin to behave as adults.

While I suppose the complexity of things has forced this to arise, it would seem that there is a stuckness - sticking to the childishness rather than the childlike wonder.

"I don't want to grow up, I'm a Toys R Us Kid" Is not a message for a child; they really don't know what growing up is. It's an adolescent message: "I'm growing up, but I don't want to. I want to keep buying toys and remaining a kid."

...

Loss of discipline turns love into coddling; and young men into teenage wannabes...

Once you hit the 'age of reason' it is impossible to really be a child anymore.

Er, except in the sense of recapturing the childlike wonder of that time. That's what you want.

Anonymous said...

Another great one, Bob, and it was a nice surprise to have Dr. Rittenberg drop in. His piece is excellent and goes beyond, but helps to crystalize, my misgivings about recent trends.

I think you're onto something, Van. It's tempting to think that at least some of what went wrong with Raising Boomer came out of the kind of denial and repression that often accompany trauma. The 1-2 punch of the Depression and WWII also followed on the heels of cross generational trauma in that the Greatest Generation was raised by those who had endured the Great War and many premodern conditions. My grandmother, for example, was raised by parents who had lost all five of their children to the 1918 flu just before she was born.

As for boomer narcissism, it became clearly evident almost immediately on a broad social scale. The proliferation of higher education -- along with the assumption that we young 'uns had secrets to convey -- was followed by student riots and unrestrained hedonism within a few years. The same trajectory followed the civil rights movement, with the first real destructive riots (Harlem and Brooklyn, 1964) following by two weeks the congressional passage of the most sweeping Civil Rights Act to date. Both of these deeply destructive trends, and the aftermath that continues to the present, appear directly attributable to the abdication of authority by those in charge.

I find myself less worried these days, though, about evil really getting the upper hand again. My late-90's theory that the Left was dead met a bad end, I have to say, but there's a feel now that America still has a lot of common sense remaining and that the 16% of us who still call ourselves liberals is about to suffer yet another trauma like the one in 2004.

Anonymous said...

River,
That's an interesting point you make, and one that John Gatto returns to quite often in his writings on the public school system in America. It has been, since the early 1900's, according to Gatto, by design, a system created to increase the time of adolescence. This is why middle and high schools are so mind numbing, in general. The idea is to develop a stupid, subserviant, consumer class.
It worked.

Anonymous said...

"Please list what you have and if any others have good resources on the rise of narcissism in America I would like to know them."

That sounds suspiciously more like a demand (albeit a polite one) than a humble request...

But hey, I guess I'm the assoul.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Yes. I think there were some that mistakenly thought Free-Market Capitalism would not work without a subservient consumer class.

They were probably communists. Who, according to Chesterton, created the only truly working model of 'capitalism' (as they defined it - they're the ones who coined the term.)

It was that on one hand you had the socialists, who were heavy handed top down planners, and on the other the magnates, who wanted a free market of (more or less) slaves.

Neither seemed to really understand at all what a free market means. One thought experts could dictate where money needed to be spent and guarantee stability; the other thought that stability would come from masses who were taught to buy consumables and be obedient to marketing.

Really, they're both the same thing - a mistrust of maturity. The idea that underlies seems to be if people, adults, had their way, it would be anarchy.

Really, it's just the fears of men of power being worked out...

Anonymous said...

Thanks Van for the resources. I have read the The Ominous Parallels but I have not read “Explaining Postmodernism”. I would think there would be some good references in it to point to a trend in rising narcissism. I personally feel strongly that the “trend” was more a revolution or major shift than a rise and I also think it happened with the Boomers. Whether it has increased, I am not convinced, although I do not see a trend or shift away from the changes that occurred in the 60s.

Perhaps it is a total lack of etiquette or protocol that I am missing in posting here but I find it very interesting that whenever I post anything it is immediately, not criticized, but vehemently attacked often immediately after I post it. With such outstanding critical arguments as “assoul”. Sorry Van if I stepped on your toes and you consider yourself part of the “community” that does this. I do not even know what a nic is so I cannot respond or continue laughing but I can thank you for the resources and the discussion on the Ominous Parallels that have obviously continued to be discussed into today. I have benefited from them both and am probably wasting bandwidth or something posting on a previous days comments but ignorance is bliss.

Van Harvey said...

billh said "Perhaps it is a total lack of etiquette or protocol that I am missing in posting here but I find it very interesting that whenever I post anything it is immediately, not criticized, but vehemently attacked often immediately after I post it. With such outstanding critical arguments as “assoul”. "

'billh' is a nic, which I don't recall seeing before, so I was a little confused about your saying you always get attacked. The mispelt words made me think of an anonnymouse we had a running gag/fight with, whose 'opinions' were so silly that Hoarhey & I taunted him with 'still laughing' at his attempts at critical insults.
'assoul' - sometimes Cousin decides that the best remedy for tappin in a nail is to use a sledgehammer.
He means well.
(check the comments in the day after this for similar links)

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