The Political Leader and the People: Who Leads and Who is Led?

1.       Prologue

In this posting I am thinking and writing about the events of January 6 on Capitol Hill in Washington not as an American (I am not American) or an expert in the subject, but as an educated person who has a point of view that comes from his background as a psychologist\psychoanalyst.

I have to clarify that what influences my approach to this subject is my background as a psychologist-more than being a psychoanalyst. However, understanding and interpreting the phenomenon is purely derived from my psychoanalytic training experience. My attempt at that is not based on what psychoanalysts say about the phenomenon; it is how psychoanalytic clinical thinking -not psychoanalytic theory- approaches the link between causes and effects in nonclinical issues like social phenomena.

 

Psychologists study and work with cognitive functions, which they consider the core of psychological life: perception, memory, development and evolution of affective responses, memory, etc. Thinking is one of the most significant topics in that list. People differ greatly in their abilities and inclinations to think; sometimes innately (intelligence) and sometimes personally (preference and bias). Trump is an extreme and rare case of a subject who is not able to think either ways. He is not even insightful and inclined to manage anything mentally as some of his kind sometimes do. He even does not fall in the category of selective thinking potentials. He just does not think, period. One example: when he suggested to the team of physicians in the White House to use detergents as injection against Corona Virus, he did not think what could have stopped all physicians over the last two centuries from doing that with other epidemics (I do not mean that he should have thought medically but just to engage his mind in a process of thinking, asking himself a question?). In my opinion, Trump, in most cases of being accused of lying did not lie, because lying requires remembering, evaluating, thinking, and having a conscious intention to lie. He is not capable of activating all those human gifts to use them either together or in coordination to deal with the facts that he manages.

 

People like Trump assume that they think and get ideas about things. What they get is only allusions of ideas. The distinction is between thoughts that a person knows that he has created- in his own mind- and thoughts that seem to have been created by reliable others who got them the same way he gets them [just whims]. Trump’s ideas were mostly the making of others (God knows what kind of others!!!) and he claimed to have been their origin. The “USA first, let us Make America Great Again” are not his thought. His thoughts (if we could think of any of his) were expressing psychological pressure that did not go through the thinking process to give him feedback needed to judge them. In other words, with people like Trump the task is not to deduce from what they say or do some implicit meaning, but to understand the person because he would be only responding to internal pressures.

2.Understanding the Subject:

In normal life we react to others with the belief that we can understand them. Yet, in most cases, it takes some time and several corrections to know whom we are dealing with. The person within the subject has to be firmly defined to be predictable enough to know. We usually accept the discrepancy between the subject and the person behind him if it is within reasonable period of time or significant change of circumstanced. With people like Trump, and because of the absence of any ability to think the task is not to understand him as a subject via his idiosyncrasies and strangeness, and mostly through event by event. The task is to force accepting him as an odd person (difficult!!). We all recognize and remember Trump’s shiftiness between the best in the history of the USA, and never worse than ever before. What is unique in dealing with those people is the absence of what we call ‘unconscious’, because nothing in those people is conscious in the first place to permit contrasting it with unconsciousness. Everything to them is either present or absent but never an issue of where it should belong: present, past, or ever at all. In dealing with North Korea there was nothing existing beyond the moment of being with its leader. The whole event was judged based on how the meeting went, contrary to his meetings with the leaders of Europe. They came up with topics other than Trump himself to discuss, thus he had no interest in the meetings.  Trump’s issues have one entrance (it is also its exit): it is the psychological pressure of a need or a demand, but just not demanding thinking. This point gets us close to the issue of narcissism. I do not think Trump is narcissitic because a narcissist thinks of himself, about himself, his duality as an I and a Me, which Trump has no clue that such things existed. He has no image to embellish or protect, he is an imageless entity.  

The event of the Capitol Hill was Trump’s last chance to do something about being ousted from the presidency and facing the darkness of a world empty of any issues but also still full of issues for thinking. The psychological pressure he was experiencing made him think of a solution: paralyze the democratic system of the USA so they will not find but him to solve the problem (Easy!!). [An intervening sentence: The USA used insurgence successfully in managing the governments of South America, for decades]. As usual, psychological pressure in people like Trump is good for protecting themselves from unmanageable depressions. Trump tried-with the limitations of his thinking -to turn his helplessness into imaginary potency- by fantasizing the collapse of the collegial verification of the result of the election. His imagination did not even go beyond the breakdown of the meeting. What then? Too much thinking needed to answer that question which he was not equipped to do.

The rioters of January six were not much better than trump in regard to thinking. They were very confused and muddled about the objective of their rioting, then they became disoriented about invading the Capitol. They were without any sign of leadership that thinks for them. Without a thinking leadership they got violent and destructive (even murderous). The vagueness was “clearly obvious” in the nonexistence of a defined achievement to reach by their actions. There was no thinking or signs of knowing what their rioting could specifically bring about. It is easy to say that their instigator-Trump- is the kind of leader who could not deliver to the rioters a demand that has process of thinking behind it. This it is too simple a solution for something more complex. He did not think of how the uprise of three or four thousand rioters would make a nation, a system of government, a constitutional legitimacy, and a history of elections and several millions other American who gave their choice of presidency already in their traditional democratic heritage. No one in the USA, a thinker or a no thinker could have moved those thousands of Americans to that senseless uprising by seducing them to adopt his own personal grievances. The rioters were following their own grievance, which happened to agree and overlap with Trump’s. It is also impossible for those thousands to have moved- toward a definite failure- by themselves. In other terms neither the leader (Trump) alone could have moved that crowd, nor the crowd could have encouraged the leader to lead them to a definite failure. The relationship between the leader and the masses-in general- is a relationship that could be a match or a fit. Germans were egging with anger since Versailles. Hitler was ‘A pollical vagabond”; thus were a good fit, but not a good match. A good match at that situation would have been between a capable nation that wants to take her place in Europe and a leader who knew the potential of his people (which happened in the person of Edenauer and the rest of the German leaders.. That fit requires good timing. The timing of the link between leader and people is not studied enough to give some good answers. However, a hasty observation would miss something obvious: people are there in the scene years before the fitting leader appears to ignite them. Therefore, we could say that the insurgency of January was caused by a problem of timing. Although the rioters and Trump are of the same nature (no thinkers) the timing was very wrong. The USA has gone through foundational changes after the impressive rise of China, the creation of the EU, the fall of communism in Russia. It also had to face internal changes in the fields of gender equality, revision of some basic believes regarding race, social equality, international superiority some of the old values.

What happened on Capitol Hill has to be ‘interpreted’ and reconstructed in order to make it subject for deliberation and maybe change, instead of repetition.  From the slogans used and the other mementos that came with the rioters we could conclude that the memory of the civil war of 1861-1865 was lurking in their minds waiting to be announced. The repressed about that major historical event seem to be pushing for return to be worked-up its repression and to announce its presence. The sense of hurt pride and a wishful attempt at reversing an old and a present defeat answers the questions of what, how, and when, but the why question is the difficult one to find an answer for in the same context. Better, January 6 was a return of the after effect of the unworked out repression of the civil war memories. The why question has to deal with two things at the same time: why the hurt of civil war is still living, and what is the link between it and the present sense of defeat?

If I am not mistaken (and it is difficult to not be) historians did not work out a good and proper understanding of the civil war: was it just to emancipate the slaves?!This interpretation takes us to the possible absence of good construction of the past (political working through). Another factor in the event is that replacement of the south’s sense of pride by a new sense of pride reached the point of replacing fact with imaginary thinking. The four years of Trump’s presidency were life in the imaginary both on the side of the president (he took little time to believe that he is really the president) and for his supporters to think they are back in power. Losing power and status after the civil war engendered unconscious and preconscious feelings of self-hate. With self-hate anger is the comfortable twin. Going back to self-love (living with one’s self) is possible if the individual finds a target to hate to free the self in order to be loved again. The search for that hateful other to re-love oneself is possible and easier if someone loves the person. Exteriorizing self-hate and interiorizing selflove - is almost like saying please find me someone to hate to be able to re-love myself.  This is a change that is very fragile and also very demanding because they could happen jointly.

3.       Psychoanalysis and fact of inevitability of change.

 

The inevitability of change is a complex biological, historical, philosophical, social,issues. Putting that aside is necessary to keep this posting moving forward. The end of WWII was a time stated that the world as a whole has to change. True enough, the world started to undergo and is still undergoing unprecedented changes. In the last few years, especially after 9\11 the USA went into a mode of changing too with all the expected resistance to “giving up” what is familiar and American, and adopting what was once anathema. Giving up racial discrimination is a good example of social change. After few decades of quiet and gradual rejection of racial discrimination, determined in some cases by the location and place like north\south, a sudden revival of the old tendencies of the past happened in special forms (police brutality, mass shootings, etc.). Yet, the most important and impressive change was in the rise of the support the white population of the colored population rights and equalities.  Another change was that the movement for the rights of the colored expanded to include more right for more people (immigrants). Racial discrimination was losing its firm grip on social life when it was previously the norm. The call for social justice and change in class distinctions was not looked upon as communist ploys to destroy capitalism as it was judged before. Social change encompassed gender, sexual choices, social, class few more aspects of life. Those changes happened silently over the years (maybe since the assassination of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King).

 

It is not only natural but even normal that change to a more advanced point in development would elicit some temporary regressive reactions to maturation. What happened in January sixth is a convincing sign that Americans are changed and changing, and some are just objecting in a desperate and frantic way to that change. Psychoanalysts and child psychologists could give valuable insights in that regard and confirm the possibility of regression after progression in a process of growing up. The maturation of Europe after WWI was followed by regression in WWII war, which was obviously just a glitch in a remarkable movement to peace in that unstable continent. In other terms: January Six is a glitch in the history of the USA and almost a declaration of an advancement and progress.  The Capitol event takes us right to the relationship between the leader and the people. The most evident feature in the relationship between the racially inclined masses and Trump what looked in 2016 as a coincidental match between an unexpected (even just a temporary) leader and a long dormant old grievance. Neither Trump could have expected to win the election, nor the dormant racial issue could have found a contemporary leader ready to adopt the long-neglected subject of racial discrimination. He was an empty container that was ready to be filled with anything that needed to be contained. The rest is what we witnessed few days ago. Before moving to the next point I would like to bring to attention that grievance of the time of civil war seems to still has a part to play in what is discussed here and should be addressed because the war was not just a noble gesture to free slaves; it has other dimensions that are very active till now.   

 

4.       Psychoanalytic Approach to a Current Problem.

How could psychoanalysis contribute to a discussion about some phenomenon that is void of unconsciousness, and its leader is mentally inadequate!? This phenomenon still needs interpretation and construction because it has a distorted meaning that should be made distinct and clear to make changes-if possible- to its understanding.

The act of psychoanalyzing is an act of interpretation and construction. Interpretation is to elicit the meaning behind obvious expressions (verbal, symptoms, dreams, transference, memories, etc.), thus a new or another meaning emerges and comes through the previous manifest- usually rigid meaning. Construction is putting the patient’s psychological life, including the unconscious material that was revealed by interpretation, in context; the patient’s context’. Psychoanalytic work is interpretation in the service of constructing a past to make it amenable to change. For that work-to-work, analysis should avoid looking for the causes of what is discovered (why), because the answer will always be influenced by the patient present conscious function and not by the past conditions when the event really happed. Psychoanalyzing should be limited to what, when, and how the associations the analyst is dealing with materialized. I would also add that leaving the best interpretations without construction, when the opportunity appears, makes the psychoanalytic work worthless.

Working with candidate in supervision of their early practices raised two questions in mind: one I mentioned before. I was able to articulate clearly to the candidates that the vocabulary of psychoanalysis is not the theory of psychoanalysis and using that vocabulary does not mean that we are talking theory. The other, which I only got it clearer in my mind lately and after I finished work as supervisor. ‘When we listen to a patient it is to interpret and elicit the unconscious meaning in it, not to find out what psychoanalysis says about it. I noticed that Kleinians are more inclined to look first for the mechanisms that explain the patients’ association and derive and formulate their interpretation based on that finding. This remark relates to the quick application of psychoanalytic ideas in understanding social and historical phenomena.

How can we look into the January sixth events to find an interpretation for it? It was an act of desperation because even if the rioters managed to kill few of the ‘enemy’, stop the certification of the result of the election, and prevent the transfer of power, they still would not have been able to fulfill their leader’s ambition (stay in power). It was also an act of abreaction of rage and the pain of depression, but not a recent and lived one; it was rage and depression of a time passed. The way they appeared and acted indicated that they are living another time in history. The most obvious, but negated thing, in the whole matter, is the actual and factual discrimination the rioters were expressing in the material destruction of the building… this is not ours. The rioters were American of a time passed. This is the danger that should not overlook. Those events could be repeated in the same exact manner because they are not time-related if the problems are not addressed.

I would end this endless discussion by making two observation only a foreigner could make nonchalantly. The USA needs to look at the greatness of its beginning as a past that affected its present decade ago, but now with the whole world solving the problems of pride, nationalism, patriotism, and distinction in different ways. I know more and firsthand that the distinction between the Sunnis and the She’ates is based on two historical lies, and much of their history is the reactions to activating those lies every now and then. I would not be surprised if Americans have similar things in their history that could correct many flaws that politicians use for their own benefit.