What Lurks Behind America’s Political Shadow: A Psychological Perspective
Let me set the debate stage. Six blind monks enter the room to tackle questions about politics, culture and the psyche in an era of Trump, Brexit, and social turbulence. I got onto this webinar from the Asheville Jung Center in SC a few minutes late, so I’m not sure whether there were jokes about the original blind man’s fable, where the men imagine a large hand fan, a huge wall and a rope. The moral of this fable seems to be that there are many truths. I assume that the Jung webinar had the same moral in mind, though it was hard to ignore the obvious fact that there was an elephant in the room.
In this reiteration of the tale, the monks were neither blind nor were they monks. They were mainly Jungian analysts who, like the rest of us, were trying to make sense of this election. Murray Stein, an analyst based in Zurich, Switzerland, said that the current state of political affairs in the U.S. and parts of Europe is an example of the psychological persona of the community being ripped off by the blunt and untidy rhetoric of the day, revealing the shadow elements such as “Lock her up” underneath. These elements include, anger, fear, displacement and fear of the “Other.” In Stein’s view, this eruption of shadow forces is usually kept in polite check by society, giving rise to racism, sexism and religious prejudice. These shadow elements have been stirred in a large minority of the population and, in the analyst’s opinion, it is not useful to call them “deplorables” as Hillary Clinton has done and for which she has apologized. They need to be understood.
Now it gets tricky for the analyst. Even if the so-called “good” side wins, he notes, the shadow elements are not likely to disappear. In fact they can be exaggerated with more psychic energy. And in a patient or nation this could lead to a psychological breakdown.
With a patient an analyst would try to bring these shadow elements to the surface, identify them, and help the patient integrate these shadow elements with her greater sense of self, the psyche’s organizing principle. In psychological terms this is considered a transformation and a union of opposites.
Stein acknowledges that it takes people outside the current political nastiness to remind Americans of the values we share rather than of our differences. He mentioned that Michele Obama’s recent speeches seemed to embody core values rather than a persona shaped for political expedience. Stein suggested that Americans need to move beyond exceptionalism in the world and embrace “relatedness” and living together on a damaged planet.
Betty Sue Flowers, PhD, editor and past Director of the Johnson Presidential Library, asked what makes Trump so compelling for 40% of the population. She surmised that the ubiquity of social media has blessed his persona with the mark of authenticity. It is not “character” in the George Washington sense that defines the new authenticity; it is the consistency of the act, theater and performance. Flowers said that Trump hangs onto his 40% because his supporters trust him; he stays in character even during the most unlikely of times, such as a Presidential debate. Even with his catalog of lies growing by the day, his followers trust his authenticity and his performance. They place a higher value on this than on the truth. This is his version of unconscious method acting and is the method to his madness.
Warren Colman, a Jungian analysist based in London, UK, noted that the Brexit vote that triggered a separation from Europe has released disturbing shadow elements in the land, including violence and racism. These elements have been aided by the lingering distress in the dying industrial zones in Northern England, globalization and psychic factors that have been shaped by material conditions.
Colman said that many of those voting for Brexit believed things that were not true. The vote to leave the EU was irrational. However, as with Trump, the lies surrounding Brexit spoke to feelings of those who were left out. The analyst notes the irony of the vote. The greatest “leave” vote was by those not affected by immigration. They lived in low-immigrant areas. They were voting against a loss of community and shared values. This is a deeply held, archetypal threat. There is a need to find and identify an enemy. Paranoia and conspiracy theories rule the day. Rational discourse doesn’t work largely due to the lack of shared values. For Colman, we are at a very worrying, dark place at the moment.
Dr. Jorg Rasche, a Jungian analyst based in Berlin, Germany, said that Germany and Europe are troubled by the unconscious forces that are at work in America. It is a worry to Europe and the world. Rasche acknowledged that there seems to be some theater afoot in the U.S., but that doesn’t really explain how Trump can capture 40% of the vote. He doesn’t think Americans are fully conscious of the forces driving this dissatisfaction with government.
I sense in Rasche the heavy weight of the dark forces in Europe’s past. He mentioned a recent trip to Kiev, Ukraine, for a conference about the suffering of children caused by Russia’s invasion of Eastern Ukraine. He spoke about a country under siege with Russian soldiers on the perimeter. He shared a conversation with a colleague, a Jungian analyst who joined the Ukrainian Army two years ago and now drives a tank. The existential threat is real. Can you imagine this, he wondered out loud.
Thomas Singer, Jungian analyst based on San Francisco, picked up this thread, citing the real war in the Ukraine and comparing it to the martial political chatter in the U.S. that he calls “symbolic play.” The analyst suggests that this war is really taking place in the psyche of the individual and nation. He finds a devolution of values in the country with a confusion between reality and illusion, issues simplified and fictional narratives finding a ready home. We have traded reality for an imaginary world.
He cites Trump’s continuous domination of Google searches except in late May, 2016, when a child fell into a gorilla cage in a Cincinnati, Ohio, zoo. The child was rescued and the animal shot. After a few days, Trump bumped the gorilla from search results.
Singer addressed America’s powerful cult of the celebrity which serves as a cultural complex. With Trump, this force has become a group phenomenon with a shadow side and archetypal defenses that protect the whole. That’s where the “Get them out of here” chant comes from. It represents the shadow elements leaking out. The man leading the charge can say almost anything. His followers are undeterred by facts.
Murray Stein reminded us that this group shadow can have a profound effect on policy. He noted a recent election in Colombia in which 30% of the population voted against a referendum for peace to end a war that has devastated the country for a generation. On the face of it, this vote seems irrational and against the self-interest of voters.
But this spirit is in the air. Warren Colman said that the Brexit vote was fed by some irrational fantasy about a return to a kind of Athenian, direct democracy. He called this “ludicrous” but recognized that the sentiment is due to a loss of trust in the institution of government. What the protestors really want to do is lob a brick through the windows of Parliament.
On listening to the various speakers, I sensed the political winds, while disturbing in the U.S., might not be as pernicious as those presently experienced in Europe and other parts of the world. If the war we are experiencing in America is “symbolic play” and in the psyche, as Singer suggested, there might still be time for healing. Murray Stein said that the decision by many not to vote is another “shadow” element that negates an important symbol of culture and participation.
Rasche reminded us that Trump is not the first gambler, swindler, and casino operator with a sense of the theatrical and who lived in a fantasy world where gambling was a life sport. He mentioned Thomas Mann’s novel “The Confessions of Felix Krull,” where the trickster character made an earlier appearance. Felix learned quickly how to assume roles and take on personas that would amuse his audience. He avoided military service by faking an epileptic fit. He tried his hand in the wine business but the stuff was undrinkable. The man had no moral center.
The concluding remarks among the panel were about the role of the feminine in the election. Betty Flowers suggested that the refrain from Trump and his supporters to lock-up Hillary Clinton has nothing to do with her emails and everything to do with the fear of the feminine by a restless, narcissistic and wounded patriarchy society. The old forms, beliefs and archetypes are strained and under attack. Someone suggested that Trump’s anima, his feminine side, is repressed and he is struggling with feelings of impotence. He is so massively defensive about these issues that he must be nursing some injury, some deep wound. For her part, to succeed in a patriarchal world, full of shadowy and dark sides of the masculine that Trump projects, Hillary Clinton must wear her masculine side, her animus, like armor. This is appropriate and necessary dress when doing battle in a man’s world.
The air is coming out of the discussion and psychology seems to give way to mythology and the need for Anima Mundi, a world soul, where opposites are joined. In the poet WH Auden’s words, this stage represents, “New styles of architecture, a change of heart.” The poet wrote this in 1930. He was less hopeful when the Nazis and Fascists came on the scene a few years later.
