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.