More on Beliefs (Part 3/3)

In the paper recently is a story about a female astronaut driving one thousand miles to do away with a perceived rival for the affections of another astronaut. All of her amazing education and brilliance could not stop her from doing something absolutely crazy. She could not think out this problem and decide on a different course of action; she was compelled to follow her deep feelings of past rejection into oblivion. Could there be a better example of rationality living side by side with irrationality in the brain? In cerebral terms, it is deep feelings of rejection in the right hemisphere and in the forward top brain (the orbito-frontal area) that sends the message over to the left prefrontal brain and says, "Stop the rejection by any means possible!" She could not do it as a child — helpless before parental neglect and indifference, but now she can do something about it. But ay any ay, what she did was nuts. So the left advanced brain tried to find symbolic solutions to an old imprinted problem that had only one solution — love by the parent — at that time and no other. So here we have the perennial dilemma: the left prefrontal brain always tries to find current solutions to old historical problems; and it therefore always fails.
This seeker gives up everything in exchange for the hope of receiving what was deprived her long ago. She becomes an extension of the leader's will. She and the other disciples will kill others or themselves at the leader’s behest, turn over their money to him, live by capricious rules he makes, think thoughts he inserts in their minds, eat what and when he allows them to. They act like devoted children, and his authoritarian bearing reinforces that childishness. Women will even give over their bodies to the leader, and their mates will allow it because they have learned obedience to authority. That obedience is one of the most dangerous facets of human life. All manner of crimes exist in its wake. Fascist dictators can easily get thugs to do their murderous bidding because those thugs are loyal and obedient to the leader. Those in war can kill because it is their job; they usually don’t kill out of anger. It is a job like any other, devoid of passion. In need of order in a world of chaos, hope and magic instead of confusion and pain, they swallow the ideology the leader dispenses hook, line and sinker. In the case of our homegrown cult leaders, women will even submit to the leader's sexual whims, will leave their husbands, and abandon children in order to please him. In the case of one cult leader, the wives’ mates bunked in a dormitory downstairs while they slept with the guru. Parents went along with their leader's penchant for their pubescent daughters. But the leader has to have the answer! And he must exert his ideas with certainty and force. Beliefs are medicine for the hopeless. They attenuate despair, vitiate parental substitute. He gives love and can take it away from those who are not obedient. For those who were rejected by family, to be again rejected and thrown out by the "new family" is intolerable. Some prefer death to this pain. loneliness and dissipate helplessness. Not a despair necessarily arising out of one's present circumstances, but one that is imprinted physiologically and emotionally in the individual — the despair of a baby in the crib who cries her heart out for days hoping someone will come to feed, cuddle, caress and soothe her. The despair of a child who sees his mother die in an auto accident or his father leave the family for good. A despair long ago forgotten by the mind but not by the body, consigned to the unconscious, covered over by layers of newly constructed hopes ... and best of all, the hope for a different and better life. Later on, it is no wonder that person becomes radicalized, looking for a better world, trying to destroy symbols of his current world, becoming a utopian who must find the perfect system or perfect place — all because his early life was such hell and so hopeless. We need hope more than we need truth. Hope feels good, but truth often hurts. The truth hurts because to feel that "my parents don’t like me, don’t want me around and they never will love me," is intolerable for a youngster. If the Bible is your bag, you can be born-again. The medicine of hope dispels the misery of our pre-born-again life. Hope's assurances shield our ears from the child screaming below the surface of consciousness. She is screaming yet even she cannot hear it — until, we take her back to her childhood and help her cry and scream, at last. Now she knows what has driven her.

More on Beliefs (Part 2/3)

Sometimes people only respond to feelings and vote for political candidates who reflect them. But often they vote for an idea that reflects their underlying needs and feelings: e.g., "This man will make our country safe." We can ignore the reality of what he does because his rhetoric soothes apprehensions and salves fear. But of course, the leader has to first install fear — the enemy is planning secret attacks. Then, I will protect you by arming heavily. "Yes, yes I will vote for more and more arms so I can feel safe." Too often individuals vote their feelings in the guise of an idea. The more neurotic (heavily repressed) a person is, the greater the distance between his ideas and feelings — what I call the Janovian gap — the more symbolic her ideas. By neurotic I mean someone with a high degree of imprinted, blocked pain that distorts the whole system physically and psychologically. It is not just that someone has far-out ideas. They are linked into a major system. They have anchors into a personality. There are certain traumas imprinted in the system that require repression, and the interplay between them is the hub of neurosis. The outcome of that interaction, the resulting symptoms, is what we generally call neurosis. Belief systems are just another form of symptoms. They do not spring full blown out of the air. There are historical causes. Once we understand this, we can see how one can give up drugs and booze in favor of being born-again; ideas smother the pains just as well as, if not better than, drugs. That is why those who are unwell will tend to fall ill prematurely, stricken by an internal reality of which they are not aware. The more warped the ideas, the more likely the person will have a warped physiology, and vice versa. It isn’t just ideas we are dealing with; it is a whole human being whose ideas reflect his buried needs and feelings. Twisted ideas and beliefs, in my view, presage a shorter lifespan. The system is neurotic not just one’s beliefs. In psychoanalysis and cognitive therapy they tend to help change ideas without realizing that they part and parcel of a human, and a human with a history. And of course, there are the various tests for progress in therapy usually of the verbal variety so that if one says one is better, one is considered better. Or on certain questions, "Are you more comfortable with yourself now after therapy?" We see that the more one is defended and thereby feels more comfortable, the more progress we consider the patient has made. Key psychological factors lead people into belief systems, cults and self-destructive situations. The Arab suicide bombers, the followers at Waco and Jonestown were in the grip of something much stronger and much older than reason and good judgment. They were victims, first, of a culture that extolled death and the hereafter. That is: We don’t die; we just go on in a different form. Thus death is rather meaningless. They were also victims of basic unfulfilled need; the need that meant survival early on. A matrix of unconscious feelings and unending neediness impelled the suicide bombers, People’s Temple and Heaven's Gate members and the Branch Davidians to search for what had been deprived them in childhood, even though they had forgotten and, for the most part, had no memory of the existence of such needs. Deprived childhood need (the need to be caressed, soothed, valued, loved) had driven them into the hands of an equally needy demagogue who had promised them fulfillment; in return they would follow, adore and deify the leader. Each cult member is as naive, needy and vulnerable as an infant turning toward its mother for warmth, sustenance, protection and guidance. They look like adults but they are basically babies.