Introduction:
The canaries of coal miners alerted them to bad air in the mines by dying before they did! Leelah Alcorn’s call to “fix society” is something worth thinking about; especially when we consider how she might have been a canary in the mine of society, responding to the unfinished business of society that needs fixing. Should we be moralizing or pathologizing about what happened? Are we dealing withmoral insanity or clinical insanity, as diagnosed and treated by psychologists, both, or neither? Is this distinction important going forward?
“Fix Society. Please!”
Leelah Alcorn’s call to “Fix Society. Please!” is a very different response to the unfinished business of society than say the behavior of anarchists or terrorists who resort to violence. Some regard them all as canaries in their own right. The fix in her case must involve biological and psychological interventions; some known and some to be discovered. Sexual identity these days may well involve industrial and pharmaceutical pollution acting as gender benders, followed by the mind benders of diminished self-esteem and emotional distress.
It’s easy for a knowledgeable biologist and psychologist to sympathize with her call to fix society. In my case it’s even easier because I believe that in the background we have run-away science and technology, without the constraints of a science of morals, and that this makes it all worse. I discuss such things in the following blogs: “The Ultimate Evil,” “The Self,” “What is the Value of a Human Being,” and “Depression” :
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beyond-good-and-evil/201304/the-ulti...
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beyond-good-and-evil/201307/the-self ,
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beyond-good-and-evil/201211/what-is-...
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beyond-good-and-evil/201408/depression
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beyond-good-and-evil/201410/pillars-...\
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Leelah was depressed and not successfully treated for depression. Any successful treatment must consider two problems. Let’s call them “the reality problem” and “the head problem.” The reality problem concerns biology, Christian family values, and peer pressures. The head problem concerns how she thinks about these problems (i.e., what she is telling herself or self-talk in her search for meaning and struggle to authenticate and validate her sense of self). The treatment she received sought to change reality without changing thinking which rise to identity and emotional distress. This approach acknowledges what can be changed, what cannot be changed, and the difference between the two...and sometimes having to accept that there are no good choices.
What was Leelah telling herself? We will never know for sure, but clinicians suspect she was thinking “it’s hopeless, I’m helpless to change things, and it will all go on forever!” This evoked primary depression with diminished self-esteem and associated emotional distress. Being a witness to it all, a wave of secondary depression followed which made her depressed about being depressed, along with the intensification of emotional distress. This cognitive processing can be represented in a “flow chart” of sorts; one we call the Super ABC Paradigm.
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For those not familiar with the Super ABC Paradigm of cognitive psychology, it is Ellis’ Clinical Model or Therapeutic Paradigm where “A” stands for “activating events” (e.g., someone insults you),“B” for “belief systems” (e.g., what you tell yourself about it), and “C” for “consequent emotions and behavior” (e.g., your anger, anxiety or other upset). It’s important to understand that “A” doesn’t intrinsically cause “C,” and apply this to one’s life. It is “B” that causes “C.” However, the "maps" at “B" must not be confused with the territory at "C." Fanatics and true-believers are prone to confusing the map (i.e., ideas) with the territority (i.e., facts / reality). iThe Super ABC Paradigm tells us that the world doesn’t upset us, it is we who upset ourselves by what we “tell ourselves” about the world. We upset ourselves!. (You would be surprised how many are not aware of this simple truth, and fail to exercise it in moments of crisis). Finally, many under stress tend to confuse B with A, or the maps of the mind with the reality of the territory; especially under stress when critical thinking is most needed. See also the following blogs:
“Tomorrows Healing Today.”
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beyond-good-and-evil/201412/tomorrow...
“How to be Strong While Naked: Collective Humiliation.”
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beyond-good-and-evil/201406/how-be-s...
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Axiological Comments:
Treating Leelah Alcorn for depression should have been a priority. It wasn’t, and she took her own life. Religious values conflicted with existential and humanist values. The treatment of her behavior was made more important than addressing the individuality and uniqueness of her being and becoming. In axiological terms, beliefs or Thinking (T) plus behavior or Doing (D) are made more important than self-esteem or Feelings (F). This is symbolically represented by T = D > F.
(Technical Note: This is “axiological code” equating Thinker (T) with systemic values, Doer (D) with extrinsic values and Feeler (F) with the intrinsic values of personhood, identity, and self (i.e., existential values). These are the dimensions of value identified by axiological science, where the terminology of TDF is more intuitive than the more technical IES; where both refer to the three dimensions of value or “seeing with values,” or “value-vision.” They define the cognitive structure of “B” in our Super ABC Paradigm. The Feeler, Doer, Thinker dimensions of “B” give rise valuational styles which in turn give rise to thought styles at“B.” Each of these dimensions varies as to sensitivity, priority, balance, and plasticity among persons and across situations with some possessing higher degrees of “axiological intelligence” than others. “Axiological intelligence” is a main source of both intellectual and emotional intelligence.)
Each of us possesses preferred valuational styles dealing with the self and the world. Why be concerned about axiological styles? Because we are prisoners of our values and axiological psychology is the science of values. It is an approach that brings science to clinical psychology and an understanding of human beings as habitual self-evaluators. Axiological science and psychology reframes clinical psychology, the study of self-esteem, and values in ways that respond to Professor Milton Rokeach’s belief that the concept of value is the most important concept in psychology (i.e., until recently it has also been poorly studied and understood. Abraham Maslow once suggested it might even be obsolete because so little was known about values and valuations, clinically speaking).
Homosexuality: Once Considered Mental Illness:
The counseling provided to Leelah Alcorn reminds me of how I treated a patient in the early days of my clinical post-doctoral internship under Dr. Albert Ellis. Those were the days when homosexuality and transsexual issues were equated with mental illness. I was asked to see the son of Greek parents who wanted to become a woman. In our first session “he” displayed wrists with the scars of several suicide attempts in response to his family and wife’s insistence he abandon his desire to become a woman. He was seen by psychologists who tried to talk him out of it (i.e., an early version of transgender conversion therapy). That was long ago when I was a professor and postdoctoral intern. Without hesitating, I assured my patient he had come to the right place and that I was going to help him become a woman. “He” became a “He-She” then a “She-He” and then the woman “She” always wanted to be. I’ll never forget the day when “She” arrived at my office dressed as a woman for the first time and announced how “She” had used the Lady’s Room at the Plaza Hotel. I took it as a “rite-of-passage.” I may have saved her life. At the Ellis Institute in Manhattan, we were among the very first to take this approach with such patients. Had I, or others of my professional orientation, treated Leelah Alcorn, we might have saved her life; but of course her parents would have had to cooperate, and they found themselves in a situation where their religious values clash with those our more humanistic psychology in step with changes taking place in society. Riding the two horses of religious values and humanistic values left Leelah falling between the horses. My patient some forty years earlier went on to counsel other transsexuals in a society that continues to evolve in how it deals with such issues out of respect for the individuality and uniqueness of persons. It is hoped that the continued development of value science will enrich both religious and humanistic values, and help us bridge the divide between science and religion in years to come, and in this manner “fix what ails civilization and its discontents.” The approach I used was helpful. In this case it saved a life.
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Anarchists and Terrorists:
Managing terrorism is another story. These canaries in the mine of society and civilization are best discouraged by moral education in the schools which is preventive psychology. I doubt a reactive, crisis approach would work; for terrorists have made up their minds, they have already consulted an expert, namely themselves! Their narcissistic conclusions are where thinking stops, their thinking is embedded in “concrete,” and it is their identity. The represent the rigidity of mind-disease (i.e., “twisted values”) and often brain disease (i.e., “twisted molecules”) in action, and have become “Manchurian Candidates” for “homeland security” to deal with.
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Let’s suppose there are good and bad canaries choking on what ails society and what needs fixing. Leelah’s struggle reasonably encourages us to look at ourselves. However, the struggle of canaries called anarchists and terrorists ought not to be ignored. Should we view them as canaries in the context of the present discussion? Can we learn anything from them?
Anarchists
The dictionary defines anarchists as those in rebellion against authority and established order. Wikipedia lists 92 anarchists by name. In college, I studied the Sacco-Vanzetti case drawing world attention in 1925. These alienated misfits sought to overthrow authority and install a “stateless society of voluntary, nonhierarchical, self-governing individuals” as a way to fix society.
Terrorists:
Neither anarchists nor terrorists can coexist with civilization, its core values, and its societies. Their anger is simplistic, two-valued, black-and-white, them-and-us, anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian fanaticism where thinking stops. The more ideological anarchists of yesterday and mindless terrorists of today corrupting religion want to destroy Western civilization. These puppets are willing to throw out the baby with the bathwater believing the end justifies the means. Their funding comes from puppeteers behind the scenes with resources to support them (i.e., “Manchurian Candidates” brainwashed to be killing machines). In most cases, the puppeteers are morally insane and their fanatical puppets are clinically insane.
Some terrorists are “lone wolves.” One lone wolf, domestic terrorist that comes to mind is Theodore Kaczynski. The press referred to him as “The Unibomber.” He was convinced society needed fixing and his well-developed “critique of society” (i.e. ideology) proposed a solution and drove him to wage a private war against science and technology between 1978 and 1995. His mail bombs killed three and injured twenty-three others. Do you think he was morally insane, clinical insane, or both? Does it make a difference?
Another was the Virginia Tech student who killed 32 fellow students on April 16, 2007 and wounded 17 others, two hours apart and in two separate attacks. Was he morally insane in the sense of being morally confused; or clinically insane in the sense of being psychologically confused in the manner of a diagnosable mental illness?
Terrorism is often contagious in a climate of despair, and even under the influence of gratuitous media and video game violence; especially with the more vulnerable among us. An example of clinical insanity motivating terrorist behavior is seen in the Virginia Tech shooting, and then the Newtown Connecticut Elementary School shooting on December 14, 2014 when a 20 year old shot and killed 20 innocent children and 6 adults after killing his mother. This and the Virginia Tech shooting are the two most deadly mass shootings by single persons in U.S. History. They are examples of the power of unresolved, unconscious conflicts (i.e., clinical insanity or diagnosable psychopathology) beyond any consideration of moral confusion, moral insanity, and immoral aggression. Both incidents have ignited public debates concerning gun control, but without a vigorous discussion of mental illness issues. It’s hard to think in terms of “gun control” without “mental illness controls;” keeping in mind that science-based, moral education is the preventive psychology (i.e., fixing the core of education) society needs in all schools.
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The canaries of anarchism and terrorism involving more than one were of interest to Charles Lasègue and Jean-Pierre Falret, who in 19th century France made a study of folie à deux (i.e., madness of two), folie à quatre (i.e., madness of four), folie en famille and folie à plusieurs (i.e., the madness of many). Psychologists sometimes refer to this behavior as a “shared psychotic disorder” or an “induced delusional disorder.” It is also called the Lasègue-Falret Syndrome. This terminology suggests a pathologizing approach rather than a moralizing one and is more descriptive than diagnostic.
The World as Victim:
Of all the calls to fix societies on a global scale, none is more serious than that of the canaries in the mine of Middle Eastern struggles which have been infecting the world with moral and psychological insanity for decades. The problem concerns the worst kind of war: namely, religious war. It is a cancer that has metastasized to the wider world, and should have been forcibly policed and contained by the United Nations long ago because of its inherent danger to the world. Along with the Arab Spring and the corruption of religion, this social unrest, this fragmented zeitgeist, this incubator of anarchism and terrorism, continues to provide a narrative, script, and rationale to the more vulnerable among us struggling to escape their alienation and humiliation. Remember what humiliation did to German society following World War I? Is history repeating itself? Is a consideration of canaries in the mine of societies relevant at many levels when it comes to fixing what ails civilizations and their discontents?
Prevention of Terrorism:
Moral education (i.e., based on science) in schools would help to discourage terrorism by raising the level of moral consciousness while bridging the divide between science and religion. It would also give humankind a more homogeneous and commonly shared worldview. A science of moral reasoning and moral education in schools would also discourage the formation of the idée fixe that is capable of gripping and motivating alienated terrorists.
The French concept idée fixe is more descriptive than diagnostic in our consideration of terrorists as canaries in the mine of civilization and its societies. But, it captures the notion of ideological rigidity corrupting religion, or any other convenient narrative enabling terrorism. In the end, we all sail in leaky boats on the rough seas of a new century as we search for the shores of a better world with moral science and moral education to guide a preventive psychology and compliment an equally humanistic preventive medicine...capable of enlightening all who would persecute the Leelah’s of the world, and those who support the terrorists of the world in order that all that is right with civilization becomes free to heal all that’s wrong with civilization!
© Dr. Leon Pomeroy, Ph.D.
