Harold Loeb’s utopia as the source of “capitalist realism” and “acid communism”?
Category Archives: Psyspeak
Trump: “a President should take a cognitive test”, “they say it’s unconstitutional” (2024)
Trump on Biden: “We have this man negotiating nuclear weapons with Putin and with President Xi and he has no idea what’s going on”.
Putin vs. Biden, February 8th: spectacle and psyspeak (2024)
Putin’s “paranoia” and Biden’s “memory”. Two extracts from Putin’s interview and Biden’s press conference, both aired on the evening of February 8th 2024 on American media outlets.
Harvard 30th President’s psyspeak: “a well-laid trap”, “obsessive scrutiny,” and “projecting every anxiety” (2024)
Claudine Gay: What Just Happened at Harvard Is Bigger Than Me
– The New York Times, Jan 4th 2024
‘The Last King of America’ and proto-psychiatry (2022)
“Though the incapacity of the King had been discussed in Parliament […] the British Constitution (was) not merely shaken, it (was) dissolved, and the reign (was) given to every revolutionary projector, who may seek to raise himself hereafter upon the ruins of his country,” and the situation makes “the sovereign a slave of his servants.”
“The two accounts” – Jain and Sarin concluded – “preserved in the same set of documents by Arthur Cole, regarding events in Coorg in 1809 and London in 1810, highlight the tension between madness and a sense of political order. The account in the Madras Courier emphasizes that the paramount power of the Regent cannot, and should not, be restricted by any other process, parliamentary or medical, as it was absolute, even though the King was insane. The suggestion that there should be parliamentary oversight was tantamount to treason.”
“Putin come Hitler? Cosa significa davvero” – ilGiornale.it (2022)
Intervista – “Cosa c’è davvero dietro l’abuso di termini quali “follia”, “pazzia”, “fobia” legati alla politica?
Ce ne parla il dottor Federico Soldani, epidemiologo psichiatra che lavora nel Regno Unito e studia la storia della psichiatria, in particolare rispetto alla dimensione politica”.
Biden: “A phenomenal negative psychological impact that CoViD has had on the public psyche” (2022)
“As Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General, points out, I think one of the significant things we are going to find ten years from now is a phenomenal negative psychological impact that CoViD has had on the public psyche.
And so you have an awful lot of people who are, notwithstanding the fact that things have gotten so much better for them economically, that they are thinking, but how do you get up in the morning feeling happy – happy that everything is alright?
Even though your job is better, even though you have more income.”
If political psychology becomes epidemiology (2020)
As the great doctor Rudolf Virchow used to say “politics is medicine on a large scale”.
Huxley’s introduction to the Bhagavad-Gita (2022)
“Man possesses a double nature, a phenomenal ego and an eternal Self, which is the inner man, the spirit, the spark of divinity within the soul.”
“The evil, folly and ignorance which constitute the thing we call our personality and provent us from becoming aware of the spark of divinity illuminating the inner man.”
“The invention of the steam engine produced a revolution, not merely in industrial techniques, but also and much more significantly in philosophy. … External circumstances came to be regarded as more important than states of mind about external circumstances, and the end of human life was held to be action, with contemplation as a means to that end.”
“The solution… must be be sought in the domain, not of philosophy, but of psychology.”
“The Gita, where the psychological facts are linked up with general cosmology.”
“It is only to a mind purified from egotism that intuition of the Divine Ground can come.”
“There will never be enduring peace unless and until human beings come to accept a philosophy of life more adequate to the cosmic and psychological facts than the insane idolatries of nationalism and the advertising man’s apocalyptic-faith in Progress towards a mechanized New Jerusalem.”
Charles Reade, the Medico-Psychological Association, and “conspiracy theory” (2021)
“The theory of Dr. Sankey – the President concluded – as to the manner in which these injuries to the chest occurred in asylums deserved our careful attention. It was at least more plausible that the conspiracy theory of Mr. Charles Reade, and the precautionary measure suggested by Dr. Sankey of using a padded waistcoat in recent cases of mania with general paralysis – in which mental condition nearly all these cases under discussion were – seemed to him of practical value.”
“The only wonder is that in public asylums – Dr. Tuke added – considering the savage nature of some of the half-educated victims of mental disease, and the liberty which the non-restraint system allows them, accidents do not more frequently happen; that within the last few years several superintendents, and many attendants, have been seriously hurt, would show there are two sides to this question. The fact is that in the refractory wards of our public asylums the attendants, too few in number, carry their lives in their hands. The remedy is to increase their number, and add to the surveillance over them.”
A new global psychiatric power? ‘CNN Talk Show’ – 1/13 (2021)
For Dr. Frances, who was claiming that we should discuss politics instead of psychiatry, language was moving from political to psychological metaphorical, while for Dr. Lee language was moving directly from political to literal technical psychological language and concepts, used to discuss a political theme. Both psychiatrists were moving, despite specific content discussed, language to the psychological sphere, metaphorically for Dr. Frances, literally for Dr. Lee.
While opposing each other on a political theme, the net movement of the two debating psychiatrists is from political to psychological language.
‘Life in a Technocracy’, 1933: a soviet of technicians… in America? /14 (2021)
“Probably the one event capable of instigating so fundamental a change would be a major collapse. Only if the present producing and distributing apparatus should definitely break down, only if hunger and cold should spur the minds of a majority of the nation into unaccustomed activity, could a revolution conflicting with nearly every current belief gain momentum.”
“Since revolution should neither be desired nor expected now, and since the transformation from capitalism to technocracy is so drastic that certain of its stages will certainly be considered to be of a revolutionary nature, it may be asked what preliminary steps should be taken in order to prepare for the crucial moments.”
“Revolution, as Trotsky puts it, can only occur when the class in power has outlived its usefulness and thereby become rotten.”
“As a result, capital has been shorn of its function though the realization of this may not immediately percolate through the group consciousness.”
‘Life in a Technocracy’, 1933: a soviet of technicians… in America? /13 (2021)
“There is no a priori reason why a sustained, even intelligent, study of the phenomena which induce these visions cannot eventually permit us to attain them at will.” “And when a being is in possession of them, he knows or thinks he knows the meaning of life and thus, as a secondary benefit, reduces, by the aid of memory, to their proper unimportance, the sorrow, the tragedy, even the ostensible evil which is woven of necessity into the texture of our temporal days.”
‘Life in a Technocracy’, 1933: a soviet of technicians… in America? /12 (2021)
“Society since the beginning has discouraged by means of church, school, and statutory restrictions all experimentation in the domain of spiritual living. The consequence has been a stultification of the intellect, a frustration of the emotions, and a damming up of nervous energy which is bringing many people to the verge of a nervous breakdown. A technocracy would attempt to set free that great surplus of vital energy now burning itself out, uselessly, in the business game, and redirect it into unexplored channels.”
“Research work, directed toward discovering the causes of psychic maladjustments, may prove more difficult than devising a machine to pick cotton; and successful achievement in this field will surely be harder to measure.”
‘Psyspeak’ on PsyPolitics and ‘therapy-speak’ on The New Yorker (2021)
In the summer of 2019, I proposed the use of the terms “psyspeak” or “ideopathological lexicon” to mean psychologized as well as medicalized lexicon used outside of the clinical context especially when applied to the wider societal and political world, during a talk at the Royal College of Psychiatrists in London.
On the 26th of March this year, just a few days ago, The New Yorker online published the following article, under Cultural Comment: “The rise of therapy-speak. How a language got off the couch and into the world” by Katy Waldman, a magazine staff writer.