According to Adorno, in psychoanalysis only the exaggerations are true. If you wished to characterize the Democrats and the Republicans in terms of true exaggerations, you might say that the Republicans have become the Party of Psychosis while the Democrats have become the Party of Neurosis. The Republicans are psychotic because they have lost contact with reality, and orient their behavior not toward realities but toward fantasies. The Democrats are neurotic because they are aim-inhibited, as an old-fashioned shrink might say: their anxieties, hang-ups, and insecurities mean that they can’t attain satisfaction, since in a basic way they won’t even allow themselves to know what they want.
posted by j03
on Sep 12, 2012 -
65 comments
Why Won't They Listen? Haidt diverges from other psychologists who have analyzed the left’s electoral failures. The usual argument of these psycho-pundits is that conservative politicians manipulate voters’ neural roots — playing on our craving for authority, for example — to trick people into voting against their interests. But Haidt treats electoral success as a kind of evolutionary fitness test. He figures that if voters like Republican messages, there’s something in Republican messages worth liking. He chides psychologists who try to “explain away” conservatism, treating it as a pathology. Conservatism thrives because it fits how people think, and that’s what validates it. Workers who vote Republican aren’t fools. In Haidt’s words, they’re “voting for their moral interests.”
posted by shivohum
on Mar 26, 2012 -
53 comments
"How is one to know which
aspect of a person counts as that person’s
true self?" Does it lie "precisely in our suppressed urges and unacknowledged emotions, while our ability to reflect is just a hindrance that gets in the way of this true self’s expression?" Or is "the most distinctive and essential to a human being is the capacity for rational reflection?" Or is the authentic self "the
ideologically-validated self"?
posted by AceRock
on Jun 9, 2011 -
51 comments
Anger, Politics and the Wisdom of Uncertainty - "If there's somebody or even some institution to blame, it turns out people are much more likely to get angry... anger tends to inspire individuals to engage in more political activities than they would otherwise... Without someone to blame, respondents mostly just grow fearful and anxious... A particular danger of anger seems to be closed-mindedness. Research finds that when citizens get angry, they close themselves off to alternative views and redouble their sense of conviction in their existing views. Fear and anxiety, on the other hand, seem to promote openness to alternative viewpoints and a willingness to compromise." (
via)
[more inside]
posted by kliuless
on May 18, 2011 -
18 comments
The Ideological Animal. We think our political stance is the product of reason, but we're easily manipulated and surprisingly malleable. Our essential political self is more a stew of childhood temperament, education, and fear of death. Call it the 9/11 effect. Or the Metafilter effect.
[ducks]
posted by gottabefunky
on Jan 9, 2007 -
44 comments
Why do we always seem to expect the worst from some people? By now, it's common knowledge that media reports of widespread looting, violence and sexual assault in the wake of Katrina's strike on New Orleans were grossly exaggerated, but why? Some might attribute such distortions to
unconscious bias, offering up some hope of alleviating racial tension by bringing unexamined racial biases to light; still others see the problem of racial tension as an intractable one, leading inevitably to an all-out clash of cultures--even finding "evidence" of the inevitably of such a conflict in the
unlikeliest of places. Still
others seem especially eager to bring all these tensions to a head. What's really going on these days? Is racial tension ultimately a political problem or, as some suggest, a
psychological one?
posted by all-seeing eye dog
on Oct 21, 2005 -
35 comments
Frontier Psychology - Does Frontier Psychology drive America in a direction that the rest of the world cannot comprehend? Roughly defined as "
the effort on the part of Americans to come to grips with untamed elements of nature and, by taming them, to reorganize their society" We see it everywhere, even in
Buffy. Europe appears to value stability over mobility and change, in opposition to America.
Prof. Richard Slotkin has written extensively about these concepts. An interiew with
audio clips is here. (Real)
Are America's recent domestic and international policy decisions attempts to tame "untamed elements" around it?
posted by Argyle
on Apr 30, 2003 -
23 comments
