Psychiatrist: We must have empathy with the Tea Partiers

[Matt Collins]

http://www.psychologytoday.com/print/39146

.

[angelatc]

These tea-party folks seem to most liberals-well, to most of us who live in the "reality community," on the government's dime,

I fixed that for him.

[Paulitical Correctness]

Paranoid beliefs about Obama and the government promulgated by the ultra-right have a similar genesis and meaning. In the Times story about the tea-party movement, the writer describes how most tea-party activists are not loyal Republicans. "They are frequently political neophytes," he writes, "who prize independence and tell strikingly similar stories of having been awakened by the recession. Their families upended by lost jobs, foreclosed homes and depleted retirement funds, they said they wanted to know why it happened and whom to blame."

They began listening to Beck, reading the Federalist Papers, books by Ayn Rand and George Orwell, and started visiting radical right wing websites. The Times writer then makes a crucial observation: "Many describe emerging from their research as if reborn to a new reality." In other words, like my patients, the tea party folks find in their paranoid views about politics a narrative that "explains it all," that reduces their sense of helpless confusion, and that channels their feelings of victimization into ones of self-righteous militancy. They go from passive victim to active agent, from guilty to innocent, but all at the price of distorting reality into one full of malevolent conspiracies.

loool.

[catdd]

Why would the status quo flame the Tea Party unless they were afraid of them?

[Paulitical Correctness]

Michael Bader, D.M.H.

Michael Bader is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in San Francisco with over 30 years of experience. He is the author of Male Sexuality: Why Women Don't Understand It-and Men Don't Either and Arousal: The Secret Logic of Sexuality Fantasies. Bader has written extensively about the interaction of psychology, culture, and politics in both academic journals and popular media such as Alternet.org and Tikkun Magazine. He has appeared as an expert in numerous documentaries, as well as radio and TV programs. In addition to his clinical work and writing, Bader was also a founder of the Institute for Change, a progressive think-tank focused on leadership development and currently associated with the Service Employees International Union.

[angelatc]

The comments allude to a dropped f-bomb in the first sentence, but it appears the author has revised that.

[catdd]

Michael Bader, D.M.H.

In addition to his clinical work and writing, Bader was also a founder of the Institute for Change, a progressive think-tank focused on leadership development and currently associated with the Service Employees International Union.[/B]

Palin's attempt to bring the Tea Party into the republican fold is drawing fire from the left.

[Dustancostine]

Someone needs to psychoanalyze this guy. Talk about paranoid and angry.

[osan]

http://www.psychologytoday.com/print/39146 (http://www.psychologytoday.com/print/39146)

"I hate these folks..."

.

My, how kind! How compassionate! How professional his decorum!

So, lessee here, we need to have empathy for people he openly hates... how internally consistent and free of contradiction! A textbook social-liberal. I have to laugh at the childishly weak attempt to hide his bald-faced hatred behind a rusted out, fallen down ramshackle facade of "compassion" and "empathy". In another life he would have called black people "******".

This Michael Bader, D.M.H. is a creepy little hypocrite. Makes my skin crawl.

[osan]

Why would the status quo flame the Tea Party unless they were afraid of them?

Precisely so.

[therepublic]

http://www.psychologytoday.com/print/39146

.

These tea-party folks seem to most liberals-well, to most of us who live in the "reality community," or, as I like to call it, "reality"-like crazy types.

As a recent NY Times article reports, this hodgepodge of people and groups spout frankly paranoid beliefs as received wisdom, e.g. the Federal Reserve is our enemy and should be abolished, citizens should stock up on ammo, gold, and survival food in anticipation of an impending Civil War, states should "nullify" federal laws and even secede, medical records are being shipped to federal bureaucrats, the Army is seeking "Internment/Resettlement" specialists, Obama is trying to create crises in order to destroy the economy, convert Interpol into his personal police force, and create a New World Order. Conspiracy theories involving shadowy elites like the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations have resurfaced. Self-defense and armed resistance are frequently called for. Racist stereotypes, innuendo, and hostility run rampant. The Constitution is its sacred text and Glenn Beck its most beloved prophet. They don't usually wear aluminum hats but perhaps they should.

[SamuraisWisdom]

That was a very good article and I think it hit on a lot of key points. This quote stood out in particular to me.


The "problem" is that tea-party activists move from legitimate feelings and normal longings to paranoid political positions that are dangerous and cruel. But because these positions serve an important psychological function, because they resolve an emotional dilemma, they can't be changed by rational argument. I have never been able to help a paranoid patient even a little bit by arguing with his or her view of reality. Not one bit. The only way I have been able to make any headway is use our relationship to provide real experiences that have a shot at providing an alternative and more satisfying "solution" to their underlying fears. Only then can I begin to offer a counter-narrative, one that acknowledges their pain and innocence, but enables them to more accurately identify its sources and, therefore, its antidote.

You see that a lot around here as well. Some people have become so hard-line in their beliefs that no amount of dissent, be it rational or not, will have any impact on their ideals. That's a dangerous position to be in because if you can't listen to and accept other people's arguments then you're setting your self up for isolation, which leads to a bent view of reality.

[Epic]

That was a very good article and I think it hit on a lot of key points.

Dude, the guy said that wanting to abolish the federal reserve was a sign of being psycho!

I mean, you think he's heard of Austrian Business Cycle Theory? :)

[RM918]

http://www.psychologytoday.com/print/39146

"I hate these folks..."

I think he needs to work on his bedside manner.

[hugolp]

That was a very good article and I think it hit on a lot of key points. This quote stood out in particular to me.

You see that a lot around here as well. Some people have become so hard-line in their beliefs that no amount of dissent, be it rational or not, will have any impact on their ideals. That's a dangerous position to be in because if you can't listen to and accept other people's arguments then you're setting your self up for isolation, which leads to a bent view of reality.

So basically if your opinions are too far away from this guy's opinion you need to be indoctrinated, using emotional manipulation if necesary. And that is justified because your opinions would be too different and that somehow is unacceptable. I believe he needs to change his opinions, not anyone arround here.

[Ninja Homer]

"I hate these folks but I also understand them."

Wow, is this guy really a licensed psychiatrist? His life's work is to help people, and yet he hates a specific group of people that he's never met, just because their political beliefs are different than his own? Something just seems blatantly wrong there.

[Libertini]

That was a very good article and I think it hit on a lot of key points. This quote stood out in particular to me.


The "problem" is that tea-party activists move from legitimate feelings and normal longings to paranoid political positions that are dangerous and cruel. But because these positions serve an important psychological function, because they resolve an emotional dilemma, they can't be changed by rational argument. I have never been able to help a paranoid patient even a little bit by arguing with his or her view of reality. Not one bit. The only way I have been able to make any headway is use our relationship to provide real experiences that have a shot at providing an alternative and more satisfying "solution" to their underlying fears. Only then can I begin to offer a counter-narrative, one that acknowledges their pain and innocence, but enables them to more accurately identify its sources and, therefore, its antidote.

You see that a lot around here as well. Some people have become so hard-line in their beliefs that no amount of dissent, be it rational or not, will have any impact on their ideals. That's a dangerous position to be in because if you can't listen to and accept other people's arguments then you're setting your self up for isolation, which leads to a bent view of reality.

wat?

I think you missed the point of the article. What the author is trying to dismiss completely is that the beliefs of teapartiers are LOGICAL CONCLUSIONS. He doesn't give it a second thought so he's running with the assumption that the current liberal policies of the federal gov. are not the problem and are, in his mind, reasonable. Read the first sentence of the article and he reveals his bias right away.

Political positions that are dangerous and cruel? The tax/spend/regulate policies of the government can be seen as dangerous and cruel. But that is the point that the author is trying to dismiss. He wants to make it seem like rebellion against our current regime is a mental disorder.

And the point he makes about not being able to argue rationally? That is because his own liberal beliefs are set in stone. He's already made up his mind that conservative/libertarian/anti-gov beliefs are kooky and have no basis in reality. So of course he's going to think you can't argue rationally with teapartiers.

He also mentions that the teapartiers are coping with their emotions by finding someone else to blame. He should see the most obvious example of that in government. Government is the king of creating problems and finding someone else to blame.

[Libertini]

"I hate these folks but I also understand them."

Wow, is this guy really a licensed psychiatrist? His life's work is to help people, and yet he hates a specific group of people that he's never met, just because their political beliefs are different than his own? Something just seems blatantly wrong there.

Nothing wrong with him hating teapartiers. Trying to somehow compare anti-gov activism with a mental disorder is wrong.

[JK/SEA]

He sounds like someone getting ready to fly his plane into something.

[johngr]

Someone needs to psychoanalyze this guy. Talk about paranoid and angry.

To do that you must jump out of the paradigm of traditional psychiatry. First of all, he might be angry but he is not paranoid at all. Traditional psychopathology arbitrarily over-emphazes the suspicion side of the trust-suspicion axis while all but completely neglecting the trust side. His audience suffers from a condition, nearly absent from the members here, but rampant in the general population, that I call "Pathological Authority Trust Personality Disorder", and you must consider that audience when reading his essay. Second, he suffers from another undiscovered psychiatric condition, an obsessive disorder that I call, "Power Acquisition Disorder" (extremely common among psychiatrists, policemen, judges, politicians, etc.) He probably has good reality-testing and no discernable paranoid delusions. Behind his anger lies hyperanxiety, not from paranoia, but rather because he correctly perceives from us a very real threat, if our movement catches on among his audience and we end up making the changes we want to make, to the government gravy train which narcotizes, infantilizes and further enables his audience to pathologically trust him as an authority figure and to the legal enforcability of the authority that he is pathologically obsessed with and wishes to further aggrandize.

[fisharmor]

To do that you must jump out of the paradigm of traditional psychiatry. First of all, he might be angry but he is not paranoid at all. Traditional psychopathology arbitrarily over-emphazes the suspicion side of the trust-suspicion axis while all but completely neglecting the trust side. His audience suffers from a condition, nearly absent from the members here, but rampant in the general population, that I call "Pathological Authority Trust Personality Disorder", and you must consider that audience when reading his essay. Second, he suffers from another undiscovered psychiatric condition, an obsessive disorder that I call, "Power Acquisition Disorder". He probably has good reality-testing and no discernable paranoid delusions. Behind his anger lies hyperanxiety, not from paranoia, but rather because he correctly perceives from us a very real threat, if our movement catches on among his audience and we end up making the changes we want to make, to the gravy train which narcotizes, infantilizes and further enables his audience to pathologically trust him as an authority figure and to the legal enforcability of the authority that he is pathologically obsessed with and wishes to further aggrandize.

Brilliant.
Though I would have gone with a much more pedestrian and vulgar explanation.

[jkr]

Like I'd believe ANYTHING a "psychiatrist" said...

[therepublic]

Dude, the guy said that wanting to abolish the federal reserve was a sign of being psycho!

I mean, you think he's heard of Austrian Business Cycle Theory? :)

You hit the nail on the hear Epic. Obviously not only did the psychologist miss the point, so did some of the posts on this link.

[Danke]

There is some mixing up of terms here. Psychology vs. Psychiatry.

Carry on.

[rancher89]

To do that you must jump out of the paradigm of traditional psychiatry.

Or at least understand something threatens his "business" and thus his bank account.


First of all, he might be angry but he is not paranoid at all. Traditional psychopathology arbitrarily over-emphazes the suspicion side of the trust-suspicion axis while all but completely neglecting the trust side.

So very true.


His audience suffers from a condition, nearly absent from the members here, but rampant in the general population, that I call "Pathological Authority Trust Personality Disorder", and you must consider that audience when reading his essay.

Snort---"PATPD" and then below "PAD."


Second, he suffers from another undiscovered psychiatric condition, an obsessive disorder that I call, "Power Acquisition Disorder" (extremely common among psychiatrists, policemen, judges, politicians, etc.) He probably has good reality-testing and no discernable paranoid delusions.
Behind his anger lies hyperanxiety, not from paranoia, but rather because he correctly perceives from us a very real threat,

We threaten his wallet, sweet!


if our movement catches on among his audience and we end up making the changes we want to make, to the government gravy train which narcotizes, infantilizes and further enables his audience to pathologically trust him as an authority figure and to the legal enforcability of the authority that he is pathologically obsessed with and wishes to further aggrandize.

Kind of a long sentence, but I'm with you---he's a tool.:D:rolleyes::)

[ScoutsHonor]

Michael Bader, D.M.H.

Michael Bader is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in San Francisco with over 30 years of experience. He is the author of Male Sexuality: Why Women Don't Understand It-and Men Don't Either and Arousal: The Secret Logic of Sexuality Fantasies. Bader has written extensively about the interaction of psychology, culture, and politics in both academic journals and popular media such as Alternet.org and Tikkun Magazine. He has appeared as an expert in numerous documentaries, as well as radio and TV programs. In addition to his clinical work and writing, Bader was also a founder of the Institute for Change, a progressive think-tank focused on leadership development and currently associated with the Service Employees International Union.

hmmm. "D.M.H."? Never heard of it. :cool:
:confused:

[johngr]

Snort---"PATPD" and then below "PAD."


We threaten his wallet, sweet!

Okay, maybe in addition to or instead PAD he also suffers from obsessive Wealth Acquisition Disorder.

[rancher89]

Okay, maybe in addition to or instead PAD he also suffers from obsessive Wealth Acquisition Disorder.

"OWAD" he's got "OWAD." snicker--good stuff.

[Fox McCloud]

this is why I hate when any psychiatrist or psychologists is involve in both politics and his own profession; eventually it becomes an elitist "we should feel sorry for them because they're being exploited", "they're just naive", or (in a lot of case) "they're irrational and psychotic" type line of mantra time and time again.

It's just downright despicable in my eye.

[rancher89]

Gotta put the nutjobs on drugs, sweet kickbacks the more you prescribe them...:(

Trouble is, some of those drugs cause more problems than you started out with.

Kind of off topic here, but one of the best things about drug companies being able to hawk their wares on the airwaves has been the uptick in awareness that some of the side effects are worse than the original issue. "May cause death..."

My Dad worked with kids inside the juvenile criminal system. His biggest battle was trying to get the others to stop wholesale drugging of all the kids. Gotta keep em docile, don't cha' know...:confused:

DMH = Doctorate in Mental Health? Wonder what papermill THAT document's from?

[hugolp]

To do that you must jump out of the paradigm of traditional psychiatry. First of all, he might be angry but he is not paranoid at all. Traditional psychopathology arbitrarily over-emphazes the suspicion side of the trust-suspicion axis while all but completely neglecting the trust side. His audience suffers from a condition, nearly absent from the members here, but rampant in the general population, that I call "Pathological Authority Trust Personality Disorder", and you must consider that audience when reading his essay. Second, he suffers from another undiscovered psychiatric condition, an obsessive disorder that I call, "Power Acquisition Disorder" (extremely common among psychiatrists, policemen, judges, politicians, etc.) He probably has good reality-testing and no discernable paranoid delusions. Behind his anger lies hyperanxiety, not from paranoia, but rather because he correctly perceives from us a very real threat, if our movement catches on among his audience and we end up making the changes we want to make, to the government gravy train which narcotizes, infantilizes and further enables his audience to pathologically trust him as an authority figure and to the legal enforcability of the authority that he is pathologically obsessed with and wishes to further aggrandize.

This was great.

[catdd]

Seems that the left and right are trying to catch the Tea Party in a bipartisan crossfire.
They both pretend to be enemies, but just let someone or something come along that might upset the status quo and this is what happens.
I recall the way CNN and FOX both attacked Ron Paul during the primaries.

[andrewh817]

I swear, there's nothing worse than an idiot with a college degree.......although I agree that the Tea Parties are a waste of time.