America, The Mentally Ill
Could our country be mentally ill? We seem to be displaying all the signs…
Revisiting a September, 2015 article by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt in The Atlantic on “The Coddling of the American Mind” that delved into the “trigger warning” mentality on the rise collegiately in the United States, I read through a list of mental health pathologies, “common cognitive distortions” that the authors saw as feeding an unhealthy mindset on college campuses. I had an “aha!” moment that drew me up out of the piece.
Reading the list, my mind turned from the subject of the article to another public realm where these mental health pathologies have taken hold — our political system. The authors nod to this, in a sense, in the article:
“These same children grew up in a culture that was (and still is) becoming more politically polarized. Republicans and Democrats have never particularly liked each other, but survey data going back to the 1970s show that on average, their mutual dislike used to be surprisingly mild. Negative feelings have grown steadily stronger, however, particularly since the early 2000s. Political scientists call this process “affective partisan polarization,” and it is a very serious problem for any democracy. As each side increasingly demonizes the other, compromise becomes more difficult. A recent study shows that implicit or unconscious biases are now at least as strong across political parties as they are across races.”
The authors’ focus in the piece led them back to college students and away from politicians, but I couldn’t shake the bigger picture — and what it meant. In our current political system “Cognitive distortions” aren’t aberrations — they’re the rule. Our nation’s mental health is suffering. Our country is mentally ill.
Haidt and Lukianoff summarize how modern psychotherapy addresses these problems:
“(Cognitive behavioral therapy) is the most extensively studied nonpharmaceutical treatment of mental illness, and is used widely to treat depression, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, and addiction. It can even be of help to schizophrenics. No other form of psychotherapy has been shown to work for a broader range of problems. Studies have generally found that it is as effective as antidepressant drugs (such as Prozac) in the treatment of anxiety and depression. The therapy is relatively quick and easy to learn; after a few months of training, many patients can do it on their own. Unlike drugs, cognitive behavioral therapy keeps working long after treatment is stopped, because it teaches thinking skills that people can continue to use. The goal is to minimize distorted thinking and see the world more accurately. You start by learning the names of the dozen or so most common cognitive distortions (such as overgeneralizing, discounting positives, and emotional reasoning…). Each time you notice yourself falling prey to one of them, you name it, describe the facts of the situation, consider alternative interpretations, and then choose an interpretation of events more in line with those facts. Your emotions follow your new interpretation. In time, this process becomes automatic. When people improve their mental hygiene in this way — when they free themselves from the repetitive irrational thoughts that had previously filled so much of their consciousness — they become less depressed, anxious, and angry.”
The good news is, we know how to cure ourselves of these distortions. The bad news? We don’t seem to want to be cured — certainly not in the political arena! Read through the following partial list, summarized by Haidt and Lukianoff, from Robert L. Leahy, Stephen J. F. Holland, and Lata K. McGinn’s Treatment Plans and Interventions for Depression and Anxiety Disorders (2012), quoted in their article, and consider how each of these applies to our current political “reality”. These are pathological and lead to poor mental health in individuals. When they are actively applied as political strategies, what is it doing to us collectively?
‘Common Cognitive Distortions
1. Mind reading. You assume that you know what people think without having sufficient evidence of their thoughts. “He thinks I’m a loser.”
2. Fortune-telling. You predict the future negatively: things will get worse, or there is danger ahead. “I’ll fail that exam,” or “I won’t get the job.”
3. Catastrophizing. You believe that what has happened or will happen will be so awful and unbearable that you won’t be able to stand it. “It would be terrible if I failed.”
4. Labeling. You assign global negative traits to yourself and others. “I’m undesirable,” or “He’s a rotten person.”
5. Discounting positives. You claim that the positive things you or others do are trivial. “That’s what wives are supposed to do — so it doesn’t count when she’s nice to me,” or “Those successes were easy, so they don’t matter.”
6. Negative filtering. You focus almost exclusively on the negatives and seldom notice the positives. “Look at all of the people who don’t like me.”
7. Overgeneralizing. You perceive a global pattern of negatives on the basis of a single incident. “This generally happens to me. I seem to fail at a lot of things.”
8. Dichotomous thinking. You view events or people in all-or-nothing terms. “I get rejected by everyone,” or “It was a complete waste of time.”
9. Blaming. You focus on the other person as the source of your negative feelings, and you refuse to take responsibility for changing yourself. “She’s to blame for the way I feel now,” or “My parents caused all my problems.”
10. What if? You keep asking a series of questions about “what if” something happens, and you fail to be satisfied with any of the answers. “Yeah, but what if I get anxious?,” or “What if I can’t catch my breath?”
11. Emotional reasoning. You let your feelings guide your interpretation of reality. “I feel depressed; therefore, my marriage is not working out.”
12. Inability to disconfirm. You reject any evidence or arguments that might contradict your negative thoughts. For example, when you have the thought I’m unlovable, you reject as irrelevant any evidence that people like you. Consequently, your thought cannot be refuted. “That’s not the real issue. There are deeper problems. There are other factors.”’
Sound at all familiar?
Our political discourse is nothing but a mass of cognitive distortions.
Why is this? Some will shrug and claim it’s inevitable. Others no doubt will chime in with the usual chorus of “Both sides do it!” But neither of these things is actually true. The introduction and application of these cognitive distortions has been deliberate.
While not technically a “conspiracy”, much of it has been done away from the public eye, hidden from scrutiny. Those applying their sort of “reverse psychology” on the country have done their best to lead political discourse in the United States off the rails of logical argument into the morass of Cognitive Distortions in order to then advance their own ideology. They have made the country crazy in order to manipulate it, and act against its own best interests. This is a true Gaslighting of America.
There are two prime forces at work here.
There is an ideological application by the Libertarian Right, who recognized that the usual methods were failing them. The “brilliant” fusion came when, to advance their ideas, they felt compelled to use these “reverse psychotherapeutic” methods, and apply them to economic theory. We’ve seen this illuminated well in Democracy in Chains by Nancy McLean. James M. Buchanan is primarily responsible. But his pathological approach was applauded! He won a Nobel prize in economics for it. Never mind that THAT Nobel Prize isn’t so much like the others.
But that’s just one force.
The other is more apolitical, and has been used by different amoral politicians of all stripes, but it’s not a “both sides” issue, because it’s not necessarily stereotypical of EITHER side. This second force comes from the world of Advertising, where they discovered long ago creating emotional instability in people leads to creating needs and wants, and creating those in people converts them from citizens into consumers, and leads to your ability to show you can fulfill those needs and wants and so they BUY your shit.
This is definitely one of those cases where the “Both Sides” argument is merely deflective, and not useful. Yes, there are amoral pols on both sides who use these methods. There are also moral pols who do not. The problem is, these methods WORK. Although this use of pathological tactics rose on the Right, it does no good now merely to point out its use by the Right, because — as successful tactics often are — these reverse-psychotherapeutic strategies have now been adapted by many pols of many ideologies.
We saw this begin when the psycho-operative marketing machine on the Right mimicked the actual fear and outrage that it saw being used to great success on the Left during the Reagan years. Consider — during the Reagan (& Bush 1) years, actual outrage & fear on the Left — over illegal arms deals and wars, flagrant disregard for economic disparities, etc. — led to motivation of the base. When Clinton then won, the Right’s Psy-Ops began their first wave of mimicry, with Limbaugh, Fox News, et al, actually creating conspiracies like Vince Foster’s “murder” and other fictions to manufacture outrage and fear and stir up *their* base. Consequently, when they saw the very real outrage and fear on the Left over Bush 2 & crew lying us into the Iraq War, they learned from that to ramp it up and then accuse Obama of the same, albeit via fictional creations — lies, tyranny, disloyalty, etc. Each round of true fear and outrage on the Left is echoed by another ersatz simulacra round on the Right.
The problem is, as the Left saw this manufacturing and manipulation work, some began adapting it to their own uses, not realizing to use corrupted strategies leads to corrupted results. When disinformation began to spew from all directions, the current climate resulted, where a true charlatan could breeze to victory because “Nothing is True — It’s All Lies” has become so omnipresent.
What is the answer? How do you treat systemic cognitive distortion? I don’t know. Not sure I’ve gotten over having my mind blown by the “aha!” just described. But I believe part of the answer may lie in first identifying the problem, in showing ourselves that there is a problem. That’s why I hold this therapeutic mirror up to our political system. It’s a start?
We have met the enemy, and he is us. We are knowingly distorting our own reality. And we don’t care. Welcome to the Funny Farm.
