The radical liberal mind is trapped in his bitter cynicism because he suffered certain kinds of neglect, deprivation and abuse at an early age and has had as a consequence to deny, as if they don’t exist, whole realms of human experience, because awareness of those realms is emotionally painful beyond his tolerance. He has not had as an infant and toddler the deeply formative benefits of engagement, love, tenderness, protection and empathy that would allow him to understand and participate happily in the human benevolence that is everywhere available to him as an adult.
To the radical liberal who is blind to an entire realm of interpersonal experience, and who distorts the realities of spontaneous cooperation in every community where freedom prevails, America and Trump are devils that must be stopped from destroying the world. The radical liberal and the Trump-deranged individual see only the projections onto others of their own inner badness, greed, predation, exclusion, prejudice, bigotry, envy, jealousy and exploitative impulses. They don’t see, beyond Trump’s personality faults, his goodwill for America, his generosity toward veterans and other Americans, his grandiose but effective identification with the greatness of America. The dysfunctional families which radical liberals and Trump-deranged sufferers come from are the source of their projections of badness onto our country. What they see in present-day America are transference versions of their own early traumas.
Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr., M.D.
September 30, 2019
Psychiatrist: Trump Derangement Syndrome is real – and serious
[As stated in SJWs Always Lie, They lie, they double down, and they project. This psychiatrist claims he know why they do this:
Perhaps. But I would like to see the raw data he used to arrive at his conclusions.—Joe]
I’m not a psychologist, nor did I stay at a Holliday Inn Express last night. However, I think that much of the liberal/progressive/socialist ideology (at least in this country) stems not from depravation of love, tenderness et al. but rather from getting everything that they want when they want it. They never have to face the reality of no, nor do they learn that if they want something they have to work for it. Therefore, the state becomes a surrogate for Santa Clause, without the naughty or nice list.
“He has not had as an infant and toddler the deeply formative benefits of engagement, love, tenderness, protection and empathy that would allow him to understand and participate happily in the human benevolence that is everywhere available to him as an adult.”
The idea that you can generalize about the psychological environment of millions of people during their childhood is absurd. The real purpose of this narrative is to dehumanize “the enemy” so they can be more easily destroyed without remorse.
If childhood experiences are a strong influence upon the beliefs and behaviors of the people then it would seem that you could create categories that do accurately describe “millions of people”.
If you are saying that isn’t possible then you must not believe people raised in a Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, etc. tend to have a set of beliefs and behaviors that match their childhood environment. I don’t have the raw data but I think you will be hard pressed to find data that refutes my hypothesis.
So you think religion and trauma are the same thing?
Even in that case, you can’t abstract causal relationships for millions of people. Unless you assert that everyone who’s a Christian had the same upbringing.
Of course religion and trauma are not the same thing. But environment has an influence on personality.
How about this, does a childhood in a communist country generally result in a different set of beliefs and behaviors than a childhood in a capitalistic country?
Or does a childhood with Democrats for parents generally result in a different set of beliefs and behaviors than a childhood in a Republican household?
If so, then one might reasonably expect to see a general set of differences for children who “suffered certain kinds of neglect, deprivation and abuse at an early age” as opposed to children who did not suffer much in the way of neglect, deprivation and abuse.
As there is evidence of a difference from the population at large in the political beliefs of those in prison one might reasonably expect a difference in childhood environment to contribute to both political beliefs and criminality. Is it causation or merely correlation? I don’t know. But it’s a reasonable hypothesis to explore. And it would apply to millions of people.
>>If so, then one might reasonably expect to see a general set of differences for children who “suffered certain kinds of neglect, deprivation and abuse at an early age” as opposed to children who did not suffer much in the way of neglect, deprivation and abuse.
Sure, but you can’t hypothesize backwards from somebody being a liberal to them suffering neglect or abuse as a child. You can hypothesize that they grew up in a liberal environment, but even that may not be true (maybe they were rebelling against strict conservative parents).
The author is arguing that people become liberals because they’re abused as children. The only way that statement is true is if you redefine liberalism as being a set of ideas born of child abuse.
>>one might reasonably expect a difference in childhood environment to contribute to both political beliefs and criminality
Yes, but there’s a difference between saying of all liberals “He has not had as an infant and toddler the deeply formative benefits of engagement, love, tenderness, protection and empathy” and saying “He grew up in Romania under Ceaucescu and is thus deeply suspicious of authoritarian arguments for social control.” Saying that all liberals were abused as children is like saying that everyone suspicious of authoritarian regimes grew up in Romania.
I never said or defended such a conclusion.
I did take issue with you saying
You appear to have substituted my disagreement with your claim for a support of the much more suspect claim of Dr. Rossiter.
If psychiatry as a whole can leap to conclusions like this, it confirms my belief that the whole pseudo-scientific field is nothing but mumbo-jumbo. It also shows that “experts” can be bought – climate change comes to mind.
Good point. This seems just as much a violation of the Goldwater rule as it was a year or two ago, when a bunch of quacks claimed that they had diagnosed Trump as having mental problems.
Those are all decent theories. Cain however had presumably received essentially the same upbringing, in essentially the same environment, as Able.
Two people might experience essentially the same traumas in life and yet exhibit very different reactions to those traumas. Similarly, three people may be exposed to the same disease-wracked environment; and may get sick and die, one may get sick and recover, and the other might remain healthy. When it comes to morality though, we actually have a choice.
The psychiatrist’s apparent assumption, that a+b+c+d must always equal e, is not universally true. We are not robots (as much as the left wants to treat us as such) which can be programmed and expected to respond all accordingly. Some will react as predicted and some won’t. Spiritual morality stands outside the understanding of the formal medical science degree programs.
The point is that there are some very kind, thoughtful, considerate, honest and liberty-loving people who’ve had horrible upbringings.
This broaches the subject of exoneration by reason of insanity, or not guilty by reason of childhood trauma. The left often wants to tell us “That’s easy for YOU to say; YOU haven’t been the victim of racism (or etc., etc., etc., etc.).” In other words; the left wants to look at a relatively successful person and assume that he’s successful because he’s had it easy all hs life. Just as wrongly, they want to assume that the successful person got what he has unfairly, by gaming the legal system or by some racial or gender advantage.
Never do they conclude that success is the result of people overcoming the same challenges they themselves are facing, and by working hard, being creative and honest in the face of adversity, and persevering, regardless of one’s past. If that we’re all true then they’d be personally responsible, and they don’t want to be personally responsible.
And so it seems to me that our psychiatrist is himself left-leaning in that he’s attributing personal morality to immutable mechanical causes.
In fact the challenge in life, for literally everyone, is to overcome the injustices in the world, which are inescapable, and come through morally and spiritually OK. It’s a tall order. We aren’t going to overcome adversity by excusing our bad behavior, saying “My parents made me do it” or “Society made me do it”. That’s the Charles Manson defense, and in that case we are nothing but the products of our past, and in that case there’s no cure for our condition of sinfulness.
The leftist wants to blame society for his pain, and to lash out against all of society for it (especially those he considers more successful, for surely they are among the perpetrators against him). Thus, anthropogenic “climate change” appeals to him naturally. He doesn’t have to think it through; he “knows it instinctively”; humanity is a stain on an otherwise pristine Earth, and must be removed from it, etc., etc.
Any way you look at it, the mind of the left is the mind of Cain, of fascism, of Rome and Babylon, which is the mind of a rampaging plunderer and murderer.
You don’t need 100% accuracy for a hypothesis to have predictive value. Anything better than chance demonstrates that you “are onto something”.
I’m not defending the theory, but you have the logic turned around. a+b+c+d does not need to equal e a majority of the time for e to equal a+b+c+d a majority of the time. In other words, a+b+c+d may be predicates for e but may not always result in e.
I believe were seeing a society of people that were raised by someone other than their parents. Start at pre-school and end with a masters degree. You’ll have very little understanding of the real world. Throw in a little propaganda. And you get what we have now.
Were naturally destructive. And when were not taught self-control. We will self-destruct as a society.
I am not a psychologist…..my specialty is radiology…..but I paid for a PhD in psychology. My daughter’s. And she has stated that compared to the rest of the medical field psychology is still at the ‘rubber chicken’ witch doctor stage.
And I believe her.
I seem to have read everything this PhD said a few years ago about Conservatives.
If we like his conclusions, we think he’s a very wise and astute doctor. If we don’t, he’s nothing more than a political hack. Everyone should be aware of this, but I doubt my real-life Leftist brothers and their Maoist wives can even think that far.