MusePaper January 24th, 2004
Howard Dean's "Primal Scream"
Part One: The Republican Media, Repression,
and the Appeal of Stony-Hearted Presidents
by Mickel Adzema, M.A.
Had Enough?
OK, I've seen the clip scores of times by now. I've heard it described as Dean's "primal scream" -- meant derogatorily, as usual. I'm talking, of course, of Howard Dean's post-Iowa caucus whooping, his simple, exuberant, "Yeaah!" -- which I have watched repeated on the TV news and the Late Night talk shows ad nauseum over the past week, since Monday night's event. My response: Big Fucking Deal! Its overwhelming importance: I just don't get it, do you?
I'm not necessarily a Dean supporter; I think there is plenty of talent among the Democratic candidates. Any of them would be far better, more intelligent, more experienced, and most important, actually dedicated to the well-being of this country and its people, willing to work their hearts out to make it a better country and globe, even at their own expense, which is the opposite of what I see in the current President. So up front let me state for the sake of those who disagree: I believe that the distinguishing characteristic of Democrats is that they truly want to do good for others -- their country and the world -- their real motivation and joy lies in the extent to which they succeed at that; whereas the distinguishing characteristic of Republicans is that they want to do good for themselves -- so also, out of necessity, for the wealthy elite who support them -- and their joy and success lies in the ego-aggrandizement that holding office gives them, along with the power and wealth that they can amass for themselves and their friends, and to get office they are willing to pretend to want also, like Democrats, good for the country's people; and they are successful to the extent that they are good at pulling off that charade (No coincidence, that one of our worst, yet much revered Republican presidents was an actor; nor that our current California Governor is one). So, if the previous statement gets you in a dither you are on the wrong page, and probably the wrong site as well.
"Now, You Be Good Little Boys and Girls."
Now, back to Dean: Despite the brouhaha his behavior has triggered off, I am amazed that, to date, no Pundit can see Dean's post-caucus reaction as anything but a negative. When is the media in this country going to catch up with the times? A related example: We hear that the FCC, recently, wants to come down harder on TV and radio announcers that dare to use "dirty" words. This typifies how Republicans are using their power to make grade-school morality a matter of Federal concern. How juvenile can you get? Similarly, the Pundits and Talk Show Comedians might as well be saying to Dean: "Sit up straight and quit squirming!" -- as if he were in grade school!
The saying used to be: "You can't legislate morals"; but the Republican's are surely trying. It might make a difference if this, so called, morality, were indisputable. Take those "dirty" words again. Lenny Bruce certainly disagreed about their immorality -- and that was the Fifties, early Sixties!. I'd have to come down on his side. Certainly my generation, the Sixties generation, made an issue of the fact that "dirty" words are a non-issue. For those of you old enough: Remember that song from the musical, "Hair." With its intonation, "Father, why do these words sound so nasty?" You know the song I'm talking about if you are at all familiar with the album, soundtrack, musical, or the movie of that name. The point of this (and of the song): I have yet to see anyone killed, maimed, or destroyed by a dirty word. I've yet to see someone lose their job, their pension, their health care or their life because of not having that, or have to go to war over the use of a "dirty" word. Yet, the Republican's war policies (then and now), their environmental, their civil liberties, and their economic policies -- truly immoral -- are not even mentioned as being so.
Job Opening: Pundit. Espouse Lame Non-News
As for the infamous "yeaah!": Let me be the first to say it: Dean's "passion," ten years from now, is going to be seen as trivial as Muskie's shedding a tear almost thirty years ago. It will be even more forgotten than Clinton's sexual improprieties were just a decade ago, as, with our country on the ropes in every sphere of our lives in just three years of a Bush administration, already we hear little of those peccadilloes and instead a wistfully expressed longing for the decade of the economic boom; the budget surplus; the environmental gains; the international respect and admiration for America, its values, and its democracy; and the job growth and prosperity that we enjoyed with the help of his administration.
The Pundits, without exception, intone that Dean's "outburst" showed "anger," an uncontrollable nature, and, at the least, "passion" -- all of which are considered not Presidential qualities. The reason this is important, they imply, is that we can't trust a person with passion near "the button" (meaning in charge of our nuclear arsenal). Well, I didn't see the way he acted as "anger" at all! And I am stunned that no one has used this word to describe his appearance: enthusiasm.
I think that the fact that the Pundits and Talk Show Comedians don't see it that way says much more about them, and the Republican lame-o's who fund their positions, their jobs, in the media, than it does about Howard Dean. (See "Pundits Versus People, Or, The Real Sources for Voter Apathy and Cynicism."
Let's analyze it from the perspective of enthusiasm , just for fun. Enthusiasm means literally, inspired by God. Use that word, and Dean's demeanor takes on a different, an entirely different light. Would we not want a President "inspired by God" . . . or "filled up by God" -- as that word is also defined?
President Alfred E. Neumann
Bottom line: Our society still thinks that the most repressed person is the most stable person. Half a century
after Freud, we still don't get repression; we thinks it's a positive. And so . . . we have George W. Bush, standing up there at the podium, reading from a prompter. looking
like a groomed, but still goofy looking, Alfred E. Neumann. [I can't stop thinking that Mad Magazine's character was some kind of precognitive "upchuck" from our Collective Unconscious of who would be our President at the Millennium! :-) . . . ;-( ] With the deficit, jobs, the environment, our standing in the world, and the global economy all going in the crapper, the Dubya might as well be saying "What, me worry?"; for that is certainly his attitude.
But at least he doesn't get caught (much) saying dirty words or letting out any loud exclamations (God forbid!).
Think I'm over the top about our Prez? OK, how about his State of the Union speech last Tuesday. It's all agreed, even among fellow Republicans, that he didn't say much, no grand vision, no inspiring uplifting overview. (Of course, with what is really going on, he'd have to be another actor to pull off such a stunt.) Even the country suspected as much, with twenty million less viewers tuning in than watched last year. He didn't even bring up his recently announced grandiose scheme to go to the Moon and then to put people on Mars. Maybe he secretly realized it would remind people of his environmental and energy policies and sound too much like his idea was to have another planet in reserve, just in case. His advisors, when interviewed about this omission (no pun intended) said that the idea had just not gotten a very good response from the public; many people reacting -- I think correctly so -- that the money was needed much more to fix the problems here on Earth.
Nonetheless, the State of the Union speech in recent times, considering our preeminent position in the world and that our policies affect everyone on the planet because of that, is watched around the world and has been likened
to a State of the World speech. So there he is, President Alfred E., out of nowhere coming out strongly against athletes' use of steroids. Now there's a man of conviction! Boldly making a stand, in front of the entire World, a stand about which our "Earth," truly, "hangs in the balance." Even his Republican colleagues were set floundering afterwards trying to explain this one: mumbling things like, "Well, he is a man who is interested in sports," and similar lame stabs at supporting it. I was embarrassed; apparently even they were. And like, yeah, I've got a brother-in-law who loves his sports too -- sitting, beer-in-hand, yelling at the tube on weekends. But my brother-in-law's not making any bones about wanting to be the Leader of the Free World!
Lighten Up and Live Long
On this issue of emotion, or lack of it, as I have pointed out in "Are Some 'Sick' People More Healthy Than Normals? " on this site, cross-culturally and from the field of therapy we see that the more stable people are the ones who are able to express, rather than repress, their emotions. (See also the recently uploaded book, Falls From Grace , the book Primal Renaissance: The Emerging Millennial Return , and articles, by myself, others too, on this site.) We know from Primal Therapy that by allowing oneself to express what is going on inside of oneself -- one's emotions, generally speaking -- one is then able to be more "rational," "adult," coherent, stable, and yes, even, sane and "healthy"-minded. Our motto on this site has been, "Live long and lighten up." We have pointed out that it is the most repressed persons -- like the World War Two Generation -- who have no doubts about the certainty of their actions, who can truly take us into wars, push the button to drop nuclear weapons, use weapons of mass destruction, or destroy the planet. Note also that terrorists exemplify that trait of absolute certainty in their cause, and their actions make my point. (For more on these matters, see on this site: " The Scenery of Healing ," "Drugs, Consciousnesses, and Generational Cultures " and "Move Over, World War Two, Generation . . . ")
Rather than the "passionate" ones, it is those who are truly cut off from their unconscious -- and who therefore are without doubt and truly convinced of their rightness -- who can do these things. I've heard several prominent Republican-supporting pundits actually put it that way recently: "The difference between Democrats and Republicans is that, though they might be well-meaning, we are right! And, "The problem with the Democrats is that they can never agree with each other completely on anything because they doubt themselves. Another, further removed, way of putting this is the claim often made against Democrats that they have "flip-flopped" on some issue, or other. How many times have we heard that?
Well, doesn't a growing person change one's position as one gets older, wiser, or simply more knowledgeable about an issue over time? This is considered a positive in a human potential sense, but the Republicans would have us believe that it is a virtue to adopt one position in one's lifetime, even if it is in one's youth, and never, ever, change one's view, regardless of one's life experience. I.e., it is a virtue never to get wiser through experience. And these -- never doubting, self-righteous, never changing (never flip-flopping) people can be distinguished by their lack of emotionality, their lack of feelingness. They do not change because though experience happens to them, it does not change them. This is one of the characteristics of an inauthentic person . . . and the reality espoused by one is an unreal, non-authentic one.
"Nice" Monsters
Before I say the next thing, let me not be charged with claiming that Republicans are murderers, not in any personal way anyway (the war questions aside). Still, looking at the extreme, it is no coincidence, as pointed out elsewhere on this site, that mass murderers, serial murderers are often described as being unassuming, quiet, unemotional, generally -- as conveyed by their neighbors -- "nice" people. Their neighbors say they cannot believe these "monsters" are the type that would do such things (as they have done).
Well, why do they think that they would not do such things? It is because more than a half century after Freud told us about the unconscious, we still believe that the most repressed and unemotional of us is the most stable. We have yet to learn that beneath the most stable, most controlled exterior lies the greatest volcano of anger, fear, hurt, resentment -- which may erupt, uncontrollably, at any time. Or in looking at less extreme examples of this type, this repressed seething unconscious seeps out into mean-spirited, self-serving, destructive decisions and actions.
This idea of stable, repressed people being such time bombs of repressed hostility is still so foreign to us, despite all the findings since Freud and especially those of the deep experiential psychotherapies which this site is dedicated to exploring and expounding. I remember, as a recent example, one of my university students -- a medical, scientistic type -- in my class on Pre- and Perinatal Psychology. Part of the required readings for the course included writings in the field that were discussing the workings of the unconscious as having an effect on our behavior -- taking off from the standard Freudian notion of the subconscious. In his "Reaction Paper," he wrote "Why do we have to read this crap?" And went on to explain that these ideas were nonsensical. To him, all this stuff about unconscious motivation, the very existence of the unconscious, was offensive to his all-powerful and mighty "rational" mind, with its " supreme will power." I can understand an Egotist and one who relies on intellectual defenses to ward off his Pain. Still, I was aghast. He was a psychology student, but apparently had short shrift with the idea of the subconscious -- an idea that so pervades our academic and lay thinking at this point, not only in the social sciences but in the arts, literature, humanities, as well.
"Let It Out! . . . but not tooo much.
What's worse, I've discovered, is that even among those in the human potential movement some people can get it wrong. A sad, tragic example of this ignorance: I have heard of a particular leader of the Men's Movement, who will of course go unnamed, who was leading a workshop to help men get back their authenticity as males. You know the scene: off into the forest or some other natural setting, the pounding of primitive drums, the stirring up of and release of feelings through some kind of pseudo-indigenous, pseudo-primal or primitive ritual. The intention: to trigger and awaken feelings and energies locked away in the normal, repressed male. And then afterwards to bond these males with a sense of their common maleness in fellowship and mutual understanding -- to free men from their socially programmed competitive "nature"; and thus their alienation from each other -- and Others -- with the loneliness attendant to that. A noble idea, yes?
Now, in the midst of these frenzied and frenetic activities, one person is triggered into birth feelings -- what we would call a birth primal in Primal Therapy, or, in Holotropic Breathwork, simply into a nonordinary state of consciousness in which birth is being relived and healed. He lay down on the ground and began going into the contortions typical of someone re-experiencing his birth. So what does this famous Movement leader and experienced workshop leader do? He interprets this person as having a psychotic breakdown (whereas elsewhere on this site we would see it as a break-through ). Worse than that, he has this person hauled off to the ER at the nearest hospital!
Now, if that person were in one of our workshops at our Primal Spirit Center or at any Holotropic Breathwork workshop, he would be viewed as simply doing the kinds of things that fit in with the variety of things that everyone else is doing and would be aided in continuing the process triggered in him to its completion -- which would have taken, oh, about twenty minutes to an hour and a half; and after which he would have gotten up, done a drawing, maybe, and at any rate, have continued on, feeling better than before, back into his normal life, with a renewed understanding and appreciation and freshness about him. It is because of this misunderstanding between what we call feelings in Primal Therapy and what other people think of as feelings, that we try to stress so much that when we are talking about deep experiential therapy, we are talking about experiences that even human potential or counseling veterans have probably never seen or experienced and why, at some point, we intend to have actual mpegs -- visual clips -- of people experiencing these deep feelings -- or nonordinary states -- on this site . . . so that people can actually see what we in Primal Therapy and Holotropic Breathwork are really talking about.
Back to the big-shot author and workshop "master" (a World War Two Generation guy, it should be noted): Well, if we cannot get it right in our own movement, how can we expect society to?
The Lincoln Monument for President
What does all this have to do with Dean's exuberance, and politics in general? First, we must address the media's role in all this. Plainly put, the Pundit's have to have a story -- a story that sells, that hooks, that makes people want to tune in. No better way to do that than to do exactly what Republicans do to get elected: i.e., appeal to the lowest in us. Example: Talk Show Comedians have to have someone to make fun of. We all feel better about ourselves when we can laugh at someone else's faux pas. We like feeling better than other people, especially important people; it boosts our Ego. This is not a good thing, but it is a true and prevalent thing.
But we have wall-to-wall, twenty-four- a- day nonstop cable news. In all that time, you'd think they'd find the time to explore the issues about which the people of this country are struggling, the problems they are having, the dangers that are looming. But, except for rare instances, they simply won't discuss the issues, or they won't tell the truth, the sometimes dire truth, about them -- lest it affect the profits of some corporation or other to which it has ties or which outright owns them. They won't educate the public. Instead we have the endless play about some singular murder, or other kind, of trial -- the "if if bleeds it leads" line combined with the hook of the good whodunit. And if they cover politics, it is horse-race style, or, as in the case of Dean's "yeaah!", in the "gotcha" style.
The media has scores of cameras and reporters on the trails of these Presidential candidates, not to let us know about these men and the things they stand for, but primarily in the hope that someone will fall off the back, or front, of a stage (Remember?), or that someone will stumble or hit their head when they are walking (you know, the things that -- regardless of what he did as President -- Gerald Ford is noted for), and to catch, as mentioned, who wept, who whooped . . . and let us not forget, who wore a helmet . . . once. They justify the endless replaying of a tape of such sort and the prattle that surrounds it by saying it says something about the man. As if a momentary behavior can compare in importance in judging a person to the record of accomplishments of their lifetimes -- of which little is said. Worse, the implication in their demeaning a public figure for an occasional loud yell, a tear, or a stumble is that, in our heads, we compare Presidential candidates to the stone figure of Lincoln, sitting in his chair at his monument -- unmoving, huge, and somber-looking. They would want our Presidents to be automatons, statues, stone-faced robots, not humans.
Even on a show like "The West Wing," the plot of which I personally find engaging, I am left cold by the crisp, short exchanges, the computer-like interactions -- each character one-upping the other in his or her quick and witty retort. Each of them sound like the same person. They all talk alike. I feel like yelling at the TV, "People don't talk like that!" I definitely get the feeling that it is one writer, whose personal style he or she has imbued in all the characters. And the characters go from one task or event to the next with hardly a breather. It's like watching the inner-workings (if one could) of a multi-tasking computer. "Where's the humanity?" I wonder.
Yet the show wins Best Drama year after year at awards shows. It occurs to me that Martin Sheen, the producers, the other characters, and the audience that watches all see this kind of clock-like (Spock-like) efficiency as admirable and as humans at the top of their "craft" -- and as should be in the most important Office on the face of the globe. Again, no coincidence (is there such a thing?), recently on one episode Martin Sheen, as President, is faced with the death of one of his predecessors in the Office and is left a cryptic note: "Spend more time listening to Lincoln." Sure enough, the show ends with Sheen, after a pondering gaze at Lincoln sitting in his huge armchair at the Monument, likewise sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Monument, looking out over the Mall, the grand chiseled figure framing him and reflecting his demeanor, behind him. No doubt, we were supposed to be awed by this sight of the small and frail, still human figure of the live President in seeming communion with the Grand Thoughts of Lincoln and by extension with all those who have held the office before him, all long gone. How touching and patriotic.
But what I saw was, "So that is what we expect our Presidents' to ape? We expect our Presidents' to be walking statues -- somber, slow-moving, emotionless, and never-changing?" The closest to that I can remember in my lifetime is Ronald Reagan. He stumbled and mumbled his way through his Presidency, sticking closely to what was said on the prompter, sitting quietly -- sometimes nodding off asleep -- in meetings with foreign dignitaries. Perhaps that is why he is still so revered, despite the mess he left the country in after the "party for the rich" that he threw during his two terms, which left us with a quadrupled deficit and a recession.
HEADLINE: "Republicans Run Daddy for President!"
People are wont to say that a stone-faced demeanor comes across as more paternal, even "more Presidential." Great for those who want their Presidents to stand in for the good daddies they never had, who never really loved them. It makes them feel that the unemotional, somber, never-smiling, aloofness they experienced as children from their own dads was actually some kind of love, which, as they like to say, "was there, but which he simply couldn't express."
Bullshit. The guy -- this daddy, your own personal daddy, whose surrogates Republicans are ever seeking to put up for President -- was repressed, he was unfeeling and unemotional and -- let it be said -- unloving. For he lived in his head -- terrified of the hurt, pain, anger, and fear locked away inside, carried by that lonely inner wounded child that he denied and would not dare let come to consciousnesses lest it make him "unstable," "uncontrolled," . . . or outright psychotic. And without access to that part of himself that would have allowed him to have gotten down on the floor, on your level, and laughed and played with you, he was not either able to feel the love that you so desperately needed him to feel. For feelings are all connected, an all or nothing thing; and when you block out the negative, you simply cannot have the positive.
To your dad's his credit, he probably did the best that he could, considering he got as much, probably even less, from his own father. But the fact remains that the ideal for a President is one that is chiseled and honed down in our very earliest years with our very first father figure -- our own father; and to the extent that we are Republicans, and even for many of us who are not, that figure is one who was in total denial, of his own unconscious, with all the feelings -- for both love and "anxiety."
In this respect, remember that among the attacks Dean has endured over the last few weeks has been one that he once got help for dealing with "anxiety." And of course, in concurrence with all being said here, that is seen as a negative. God forbid we should have a President who would get help with his grief when his dear brother dies, rather than one who stoically pushes forward and plays out his repressed anger from such a traumatic event in terms of the destruction of others and the planet, which is, of course, the norm.
But as for your own personal father again, yes, he was the unfortunate product of a time that gave him little of love, burdened him with more than he could handle at a young age, took not the time to listen or understand him but instead paddled him when he got out of line, and told him he was right only when he agreed with his superiors, and taught him also instead to slog onward, alone. (This is assuming a certain pattern of child-rearing prevalent in the Fifties, but becoming less as time goes by. If you were more fortunate, consider your self lucky. For explanation, see " The History of Childhood As The History of Child Abuse " by Lloyd deMause, on this site; " The Scenery of Healing "; and "Move Over, World War Two Generation . . . " for more recent changes and more relevant examples to you.) Yet this dad, your dad, however beaten down, is also guilty to the extent to which he chose to continue that pattern with his own children (you), to the extent to which he chose also to vote for Republicans who furthered his hopeless economic burden, or chose not to vote at all, to the extent that he chose solace in glorifying the authorities who humiliated him, including his own father -- out of cowardice at looking at the truth of his childhood. On the other hand, to the extent that he chose to admit into his consciousness the tragedies of his life, rather than out of his humiliation to go along with his peers and create a mythic unreal "glory days," he was also able to give more of what counts as authentic love toward you, for that courage to face his life honestly also allowed him to feel . And one needs to be able to really feel -- not just to feign feeling but actually experiencing feeling -- in order to love.
In any case, to the extent that our inherited Primal Pain has made our lives overburdened and futile we are more or less likely to use repression and denial to not see that horror. To that extent, we will wish emotionless daddy-surrogates for Presidents.
And the Republicans and their media lackeys find it fruitful and profitable to play to those deprivations in us. They ridicule the humanity in us -- like they did Muskie shedding a tear (only in hindsight and because of the overall cultural evolution we have gone through since that time can we see how silly that was). But for those most repressed, it is only dead Presidents who can ever truly be revered. For sitting as statues, like Lincoln, is the only way to offset the slings and arrows that are aimed at those in the spotlight -- ever open to ridicule -- who the media and the Talk Show Comedians relish catching in a human moment.
Go Forward to: Howard Dean's "Primal Scream" Part Two: The Scapegoating of Feeling, 2004 Culture Clash, Real Versus Sham News, and "Let's Not Get Fooled Again!" by Michael D. Adzema.
Copyright © 2004 by Michael Derzak Adzema
Related MusePaper: Go to The Michael Jackson Fiasco . . . "It's the Attack on Uniqueness, Stupid!" by Mickel Adzema.
Related Book: Go to Falls From Grace: Spiritual and Philosophical Perspectives of Prenatal and Primal Experience by Michael D. Adzema.
Related Book: Go to Primal Renaissance: The Emerging Millennial Return by Michael D. Adzema.
Related Article: Go to "The History of Childhood As the History of Child Abuse" by Lloyd deMause.
Related Article: Go to "The Scenery of Healing: Commentary on deMause's 'Restaging Prenatal and Birth Trauma in War and Social Violence" by Mickel Adzema.
Related MusePaper: Go to "Pundits Versus People, Or, The Real Sources For Voter Apathy and Cynicism" by Mickel Adzema.
Related MusePaper: Go to "Are Some 'Sick' People More Healthy Than Normals?'" by Mickel Adzema.
Related MusePaper: Go to "Move Over, World War Two Generation, The Sixties Generation Has Arrived! An Essay Review of the Movie, 'Pleasantville'" by Mickel Adzema.
Related MusePaper: Go to "Drugs, Consciousnesses, and Generational Cultures" by Mickel Adzema.
Related Article: Go to " Planetary Survival and Consciousness Evolution: Psychological Roots of Human Violence and Greed " by Stanislav Grof, M.D.
Comments? E-mail me by clicking on: mickel@primalspirit.com Mickel Adzema
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