Psychology and Ideology. How Could Anyone (Except the Rich) Vote for George Bush? By Peter Prontzos (3/6)

Arthur Janov focuses on the specific psychological dynamics between children and parents, which is a major determinant of how one thinks about the world.  Janov contends that children who are raised in a loving and nurturing environment are more likely to develop in a healthy manner and that a truly ethical, caring society would prioritize the needs of children.

Janov’s Primal Theory starts from the premise that we are born with a few basic needs, such as for food, warmth, affection, safety, and, in general, an environment which allows a child to develop at its own pace.  Providing these necessities are concrete demonstrations of love.  When children get what they need, they naturally develop into caring and feeling human beings.  (In this context, Maslow’s concept of a “hierarchy of needs” is relevant.  He held that an individual’s most basic needs, such as food, shelter, and safety, naturally take priority over important and universal, but less vital needs).

When babies and children do not get their basic needs met and are sufficiently traumatized, for example, by emotional neglect, or physical abuse, or continuous criticism, (there is usually more than one problem), the attachment process is disrupted and the child cannot develop in an emotionally healthy fashion.

It turns out that, “our parents’ behaviour can change the way our genes function” (Tencer, 2006).  Studies done by McGill psychologist Michael Meaney found that intense childhood experience can turn genes on and off.  "Parental care does affect the activity of genes in the brain that regulate stress response, and it can create structural change in the DNA and affect its expression”, he writes.  These are known as "epigenetic effects", which can be caused parental behaviour, making changes in hormone and neurotransmitter production (Meaney, 2006).

In The Myth of Sanity, Martha Stout, a clinical psychologist at Harvard, writes about dissociation, which is the universal human reaction to extreme fear or pain.  In traumatic situations, dissociation mercifully allows us to disconnect emotional content – the feeling part of our “selves” - from our conscious awareness.  Disconnected from our feelings in this way, we stand a better chance of surviving the ordeal, of doing what we have to do, or getting through a critical moment in which our emotions would only be in the way (Stout, 2001).

Dissociation due to trauma is extremely adaptive because, if the hurt is too overwhelming to tolerate, the child may actually die from the pain.  Stanford neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky recounts a tragedy in U.S. orphanages in the last century, when infants would be fed, kept warm, and so on, but would not be talked to, or held when they cried, and so on.  An investigation of 10 institutions found that, in nine of the ten, every single child died before the age of two (Sapolsky, 2005).  The pain of the emotional deprivation (“loneliness”) weakened the immune system, which fatally lowered their resistance.

Children who manage to survive abuse and neglect are literally brain-damaged.  The integrative fibers of the brain may be affected the most; “that is, they're not able to grow well, and they can actually be destroyed” (Siegel, 2006B).  Such damage disrupts communication between differentiated parts of the brain and prevents the integration which is essential to healthy functioning.

Janov views the split between one’s awareness and one’s buried feelings as the essence of neurosis, self-alienation, and the inability to feel empathy.  If one is unaware of how one really feels, or the true source of one’s pain, then pathological emotions (such as anger, or an obsession with wealth or power), and unconscious feelings (like the need for love) can be manipulated by others (e.g. advertisers or political leaders).  Moreover, when a person is unaware of their own feelings, they often have less empathy.  As De Waal noted, losing access to one’s own feelings in childhood makes it difficult to empathize with others (CBC, October 2009).

The relationship between feeling and morality was discussed by of one of the most influential 20th century Anarchist thinkers, George Woodcock.  He wrote that morality is part of human nature, a natural law of life, which has only been perverted because men live in societies based on artificial standards and not on the internal nature of man (Woodcock, 1945).

The parallels between this essay and Janov’s On Morality are striking.  Janov writes that “morality” is an externally imposed concept, whereas one’s own feelings “are the only moral principles” for people who have access to them.  He believes, like Erjcb Fromm, that if “neurosis [emotional repression] prevents feeling” and one cannot know why one is frustrated or angry, then external “moral” codes are needed to control the resulting anti-social behaviour.

For Janov, these artificial codes of conduct have significant social and economic implications:

When you cannot offer people what they need you must give them morality…The whole notion of a future reward serves to keep people from fulfilling themselves in the present.  It keeps them working under exploitation, producing profits for others…Morality is truly the opiate of the people... (Janov, 1975).

A person who has not lost their natural empathy will not need an externally-imposed “morality” or threats of punishment to prevent them from hurting others.  Janov adds:

Morality is basically a totalitarian notion since it involves an outside power coercing people into certain modes of behavior.  It contravenes the principle of self-determination…
We refrain from cruelty to our children not because to hurt them is “wrong,” but because a feeling person cannot hurt anyone else (ibid 271).

As we have seen, when an infant or child is sufficiently traumatized, their only option is to repress the pain that is too overwhelming to feel.  It must “forget” its real emotions and construct a partially false self in order to cope.  Such children ( and adults) “live” in a state of semi-consciousness, driven by mostly unconscious pain that causes them to “act out” for reasons that they don’t understand.

 As soon as you’re born
They make you feel small
By giving you no time
Instead of it all
Till the pain is so big
You feel nothing at all.

Keep you doped with religion, sex and TV
And you think you’re so clever
And classless
And free.
-  John Lennon (Working Class Hero)

One’s unconscious emotions may, for instance, be projected onto others (liberals, Muslims, foreigners).  This “attribution error” underlies much of the hostility to “the Other” and provides fertile ground for demagogues to manipulate repressed feelings of fear and anger.  It also serves to keep the focus of the person “out there”, thus serving as a defense against the true source of painful feelings.

This phenomenon is related to what Marx called “false consciousness” – ideologies that serve to perpetuate the rule of elites – and it partly overlaps with Janov’s concept of “bizarre ideation.”  Primal Theory holds that, in a world of pain, repression, and dehumanization, it is to be expected that people will believe all sorts of nonsense: religious charlatans, “greed is good”, and that the President is really the Anti-Christ.  Such beliefs are especially powerful if they seem to provide meaning and help to cope with daily life.  “God is a concept by which we measure our pain” is how John Lennon phrased it.  Indeed, after noting that, in time of economic distress, “people were more likely to turn to authoritarian churches”, Jost’s meta-analysis (op. cit.) adds that they view their research as generally supporting John Lennon’s (1970) famous observation…insofar as people embrace different religious conceptions as a function of the degree of adversity and threat they experience (ibid).

It’s hardly a novel idea that people often construct ideological and emotional defenses, including the futile search for some transcendent “meaning”, in order to endure the real pain in their lives.  Creating humane and nurturing societies would obviate the need for such illusory consolations.

To paraphrase Marx, the demand to abolish alienation is a demand to abolish the conditions that create alienation.
Lakoff has found that political socialization begins in the home: parents who are more nurturing have children who tend to be more liberal - empathetic and open-minded - than those parents who practice the traditional “strict father” method.  Children raised in the latter situation tend to be more conservative politically and see morality as based on obedience, whereas children raised in nurturing families tend to use empathy and responsibility as moral foundations.