Recording of Live Session with Dr. Lee
Series on Fridays at 12 noon EDT/9 a.m. PDT
Below is the recording of the session on July 12, 2024, of the topic:
“How do We Recover Our Democracy?
Democracy as a Sign of Collective Mental Health”
Please note: This is a private video, intended only for subscribers and their private shares. Thank you for your understanding.
Dr. Lee is a forensic psychiatrist, social psychiatrist, and expert on violence who came into prominence in 2017 with her book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. Since then, she has endeavored to warn the American public of the societal dangers that would result from someone so mentally-impaired as Donald Trump being given the powers of the U.S. presidency. Dr. Lee explains how what we are seeing today is a product of Trump Contagion, collective psychosis, collective criminality, and the spread of violence. Her new book, The Psychology of Trump Contagion: An Existential Threat to American Democracy and All Humankind, is available through paid subscription or by ebook.
Thank you, Dr. Lee, for the recording of your live session. I am about to go out, so I am obviously divided between two tasks; but I will nevertheless view the recording after I get back. Of course, all have their own timeouts, whether in corridors of applause and power, or in things handy and mundane, moreso in the very testing times in which we "live and move and have our being." Current stormy weather makes lengthy excursions difficult, but not everyone moves to the drumbeat of raindrops or the occasional claps of thunder. G-d bless!
As a new subscriber, I'll begin by introducing myself. I believe every strength in one context is a weakness in another context, and vice versa. One of my weakness is my knowledge of psychiatry. I took a course called "Introduction to Psychiatry" in the late 1970s while earning a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering. But I've seen many times in my carrier that fresh eyes can see what experts fail to see. One of my strengths is the ability to understand systems, and I suggest that is a valuable asset in our current dilemma.
Next, I'll state my conclusion. I assume we've travelled different paths to arrive at the same destination, but I agree with Dr. Ramona Fernandez and Thomas Quigley that Biden has earned and deserves our support for whatever decision he makes. But it's a lot more helpful to know the assumptions underlying a conclusion so they can be challenged, as opposed to knowing just the conclusion. Specifically, if I'm unable to address someone else's challenge to any of my assumptions, then I must reevaluate my conclusion.
One assumption I make is that we do know President Biden's mental health status. I found out by watching Lawrence O'Donnell's show. Biden has an annual physical that includes an examination from the Whitehouse neurologist, and he passes each time, which is to say there are no symptoms of concern.
Another assumption is based on my observations of a common behavior pattern in which people tend to draw prejudicial conclusion and then go looking for confirming evidence while ignoring refuting evidence. Maybe it's me in this case, but I think I saw that pattern while watching the recorded live session. Specifically, I didn't any hint of the publicly available knowledge I reference in the previous paragraph.
Yet another assumption is based on the observation that Biden has more difficulty than any of us would like to see in terms of his ability to translate his thoughts into the words he uses to express those thoughts. Me too. I say something I think is perfectly innocent to my wife, she responds angrily, and I recognize that it's not her fault, it's mine. Specifically, my intent was good, but my expression of my intent was bad. So, then I correct myself. We've gotten used to this pattern, and its effect on our relationship is probably as much or more positive than negative. My assumption is that Biden exhibiting this trait, however troubling it is to someone observing him on TV, is not at all troubling to those who work with him closely and understand his real, as opposed to perceived, competence.
Lastly, I'm going to give you my idiosyncratic interpretation of Carl Jung's "collective unconscious" concept, but you'll have to bear with me a bit on this one. I'll come back to Biden and Trump at the end.
Before our ancestors evolved at the origin of our species, the collective unconscious perception of the social system was rigid in that it defined the system as a single, genetically homogeneous family. Then the perception became complex and adaptive roughly 12,000 generations ago with the emergence of Earth's first multi-family (and thus genetically heterogeneous) social system, the hunter-gatherer band.
A system is internally interdependent and externally independent. A subsystem is internally and externally interdependent. A Paleolithic hunter-gatherer band was an economically and socially autonomous social system. To Republican individuals and groups, they do not appear to be internally and externally interdependent subsystems of a global social system, even though that appearance is an illusion.
Joe Biden is the right person for the job because he intuitively understands that the 21st century's version of the hunter-gatherer band is comprised of roughly eight billion human beings. I'm basing that on his words and actions. It's not necessary for him to be consciously aware of that perception, but it would be better if he was.
People who believe that civilization is a fission-fusion society comprised of social system, as opposed to one system comprised of subsystems, are serving a subsystem, and not serving the system itself. That is potentially but not necessarily an issue. It depends on the person's power. If the person has a circle of influence extending beyond the person's circle of concern, then they're serving the subsystem at the system's expense, which is a resolvable dilemma.
The POTUS circle of influence is eight billion human beings. Donald Trump's circle of concern is Donald Trump.
"It is interesting that people living in egalitarian societies must work so aggressively to keep their political order in place." —Christopher Boehm (1931-2021)