Portrait of Antonin Artaud, by Arthur Hunter-Blair
There were signs: incoherent ramblings on YouTube where Jared Lee Loughner proclaimed himself "treasure of a new currency" and declared that his college practiced genocide and tortured students. He'd been suspended from Pima Community College last fall due to his classroom disruptions, one in which he insisted the number 6 was actually the number 18.
Regretfully there was no one listening to this disturbed 22-year-old, his internet delusions and festering rage. No one to educate him about the severity of his own mental illness in time to save others. Many speculate the diagnosis is schizophrenia or paranoia. About 1% of the U.S. population suffers from schizophrenia. Yet psychosis is part of all of us in varying degrees. The word in its Latin and Greek root means animating principle of life. I think of Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night." Also the troubled French artist Antonin Artaud whose Theater of Cruelty was marked by wild cries and a return to preverbal expression: "If I could be but one sound -- I would be one long scream!!!"
R.D. Laing says the psychotic is consumed by fear of self-loss through fragmentation. The act of encountering the other is experienced as annihilating. In Laing's description, there is a warring division between body and "self." While the self wishes to be embedded in the body, it's afraid to lodge there for fear of being viciously attacked. In defense, the disembodied self scrutinizes what the body feels and experiences -- as if from the perspective of another.
What does the Tucson tragedy tell us about the psychotic divides within America and our encounters with "others"? Did Loughner act out the violent political rhetoric of conservatives like Sarah Palin, who "targeted" Democratic opponents including Gabrielle Giffords? Does he embody, simultaneously, the splintering of the Left -- the dark side of liberal thought?
In my online psychohistory forum, Clio's Psyche, Merle Molofsky puts it this way: "What social factors serve as triggers for psychotic enactment? What rhetoric enflames the psychotic imagination? What aspect of that rhetoric represents the psychotic shadow side of a culture?"
Psychohistory is the study of how psychology motivates historical events. It looks at and listens to the emotional origins of group behavior. It also considers how an individual's acts may reflect something of a collective mind. While a psychotherapist helps an individual evolve and become more self-aware, psychohistorians help groups understand themselves. They hold up a mirror to collective identity.
Clio's Psyche participant, Joel Markowitz argues that gun mentality lies at the root of our country's psychotic character: "The 'gun-belt,' which is most-concentrated in the West and South, stretches across the nation. Easterners regularly condemn it, without understanding its nature; its history; its contributions to our history."
With reference to Born Fighting, a book in which Democratic Senator of Virginia Jim Webb writes of his own people, the Scots-Irish, Joel goes on to suggest these people have been:
"The backbone of the gun-people. They've also been the backbone of the American military establishment from our very beginnings. In all of our wars, they enlisted in disproportionate numbers; they suffered disproportionate casualties; they won a disproportionate numbers of citations; they provided our best generals, officers and soldiers; and some of our best legislators. We must acknowledge and be grateful for those sacrifices; one must admire their courage and fighting abilities and their devotion to this nation... But they have also represented a primitive and reactionary force in the American group mind. They contribute to our excessive use of guns and violence to solve problems."
Gun culture and the hate speech of our current politicians is a deadly mix. Violent metaphors from the political stage (of reloading, "going rogue," armed revolution, Armageddon) are echoed throughout our partisan media and leave an indelible trace on unbalanced people. In some circumstances, these individuals become representative of a group with murderous wishes and act out their fantasies. Paranoid-schizophrenic people, especially, tend to interpret the things said in mass media as communications to them personally.
Another forum friend cites Freud in Dostoevsky and Parricide with reference to the Arizona shootings: "It is a matter of indifference who actually committed the crime; psychology is only concerned to know who desired it emotionally and who welcomed it when it was done." Did Loughner act alone in a paroxysm of madness or is the assailant proof of something more systemic in the U.S.?
Some legislators advocate reintroducing the Fairness Doctrine, repealed in 1987, which required news broadcasters to present multiple sides of a controversial issue and expose viewers to diverse viewpoints on hot button topics such as gun control. The abolition of this policy has led to the rise of polarized political positions as those aired on outlets such as Fox News, widely criticized for its conservative bias.
What do you think, dear reader? Is Loughner just an aberrant, crazy loner or is he symptomatic of a larger problem within the U.S.? What do you see in these recent dreadful events?
Clio's Psyche
Thanks to Arthur Hunter-Blair for the use of his painting.
_____________________________________________
Follow me: http://www.twitter.com/mollycastelloe
