Monday, February 20, 2006
800 Pound Gorilla
I was recently criticized for raising the issue of mental health in US politics, particularly for citing psychiatric experts in my memoir Blind Spots.
Whatever the reasons that this topic disturbs people, the fact of the matter is that our culture makes people crazy. Americans have been documented to have abnormally high mental disorders. World Health Organization reports on the specifics of this phenomenon are alarming to say the least.
Add to that the effects of inadequate brain development due to poor education and unloving environments, organic brain damage from physical and psychological abuse or accident, as well as brainwashing from aggressive media and religion, and we've got some seriously damaged folks running around. When these confused and often angry fellow citizens get involved in politics, things can get real ugly.
The experts I cited in Blind Spots were included in order to help explain some of the incoherence, malice, and violence I witnessed in the right-wing I actively organized against and later studied. I have no problem claiming some appeared to be insane. Not all were violent, and not all had symptoms like those described in my book, but some did, and I found that interesting.
Under recommended reading in the Curricula section of Skookum is a book titled The Emotional Life of Nations, which is a very disturbing account of child abuse in the US. Suffice to say that this and other books I've read have convinced me that this is a significant factor in what we are dealing with in the US right-wing. That fact needs to be acknowledged as well as explored if we are to counter them effectively. That's why I brought it up.
Whatever the reasons that this topic disturbs people, the fact of the matter is that our culture makes people crazy. Americans have been documented to have abnormally high mental disorders. World Health Organization reports on the specifics of this phenomenon are alarming to say the least.
Add to that the effects of inadequate brain development due to poor education and unloving environments, organic brain damage from physical and psychological abuse or accident, as well as brainwashing from aggressive media and religion, and we've got some seriously damaged folks running around. When these confused and often angry fellow citizens get involved in politics, things can get real ugly.
The experts I cited in Blind Spots were included in order to help explain some of the incoherence, malice, and violence I witnessed in the right-wing I actively organized against and later studied. I have no problem claiming some appeared to be insane. Not all were violent, and not all had symptoms like those described in my book, but some did, and I found that interesting.
Under recommended reading in the Curricula section of Skookum is a book titled The Emotional Life of Nations, which is a very disturbing account of child abuse in the US. Suffice to say that this and other books I've read have convinced me that this is a significant factor in what we are dealing with in the US right-wing. That fact needs to be acknowledged as well as explored if we are to counter them effectively. That's why I brought it up.
