Introducing Political Therapy

Apr 17, 2024

Note: I am reposting the same message from Changing My Name to Political Therapy to come from “Political Therapy” to get a fresh start with this name. Thanks for your sentiments for those who commented and I missed you too. Happy to be back in the game.

My Dear Subscribers, Followers and Readers,

As global chaos and violence are bursting more deeply into our consciousness, I have decided to change the name and orientation of my Substack from CoronaWise to Political Therapy. When you see a Substack from Political Therapy you will know it is from me.

Once I change the name and information I will post a new Substack introducing Political Therapy.

The new name expands the frame to reflect my life’s work as a political psychologist focused on conflict transformation. It embodies my lifelong interest in the psychology of war and peace, terrorism, the nuclear arms race, and global violence.

Conflicts fueled by psychological manipulation of fear, exaggerated images of the enemy, propaganda, censorship, and dualistic, concrete, black-and-white thinking. Trauma, unresolved grief and mourning, envy and humiliation, fear and other emotional factors fuel violence. Asymmetrical power dynamics and domination provoking warfare of the weak. Threats, pressures, punishments are destabilizing.

I will introduce more principles of Political Therapy in future posts. Many are on my website, https://www.consciouspolitics.org, where my earlier work is parked. The name “Conscious Politics” implies that much politics is driven by unconscious forces. A major goal of psychoanalysis is to make the unconscious conscious, thereby expanding consciousness.

Evolution of Psychotherapy

Various fields of psychotherapy have evolved since Freud (id, ego, superego, the unconscious), to Jung (archetypes of the collective unconscious, psychological types, complexes, individuation, etc.), to Neo Freudian “object relations” theory (object meaning other people), to interpersonal, relational, and intersubjective schools of psychoanalysis, to family therapy, group therapy, systems theory, organizational psychology, transpersonal psychology, political psychology and so on.

It is high time for Political Therapy - an analytical and therapeutic healing approach to addressing conflict, violence and war in order to reverse cycles of violence. It is grounded in evidence-based social science. Like all healing arts it is simultaneously an art and a science, not a belief or opinion. It is based on observation, research, and data, including historical examples of what makes matters better or worse.

People often go into therapy after attempts to solve their problems and advice from friends don’t help. Using common sense, being right, righteous and reasonable usually makes things worse. Therapy is about treating a condition and situation with the intention of making things better. Political Therapy offers uncommon sense: problem-solving, outside-the-box strategic thinking for individual and collective healing.

The Dominant Paradigm

Has anyone noticed that the policies we rely on usually fail, yet we keep doing more of the same?

Realism theory of power politics dominates the think tanks and academic programs in international relations and political science. Institutions train people for positions in government and policy making. They are organized around theories of “hard power” and “soft power” (use of persuasion). Their big advancement is “smart power” – the use of reward and punishment, still coercive in its way. Carrots and sticks is the way you treat a donkey.

Coercive polices, like sanctions and deterrence, pressure, more pressure and maximum pressure are unlikely to produce stable outcomes.

· Sanctions can provoke fear, loss, moral outrage and humiliation. They harm innocent people and increase popularity of hardliners. They drive our adversaries into the arms of our enemies and require parties to get support elsewhere and promote self-sufficiency.

· Deterrence can provoke fear, humiliation, and flip dynamics from dissuasion to escalation, according to spiral theory (Robert Jervis). Sooner or later, they provoke what is naively called “the law of unintended consequences” or “blowback.”

Most unintended consequences are predictable and preventable. Policies driven by emotions, especially fear, provoke regression to concrete, black-and-white, zero sum thinking. There is psychological ignorance about those on the receiving end of our policies who may not respond as we expect when humiliated and backed into a corner.

Hostility does not necessarily arise naturally between peoples. War is not required by human nature. Enmity can be manipulated by powerful forces with conflicts of interest who profit from endless wars. They know how to seduce people into supporting policies that do not serve their own interests.

The drums of war beat with overconfidence about ease and speed of victory and illusions of heroism along with denial of negative consequences, defeat and trauma.

Intended Consequences

Political Therapy asserts the “law of intended consequences” – designing creative strategies, policies and processes known to reduce tensions, increase options, and create space for problem-solving.

Political Therapy comprises little-known bodies of work most essential to healing our ills – the interdisciplinary field of peace and conflict studies. It draws on psychology, history and social sciences.

Much is informed by the work of Johan Galtung, my dear friend and mentor, father of peace studies and co-founder of Transcend International (transcend.org) who died in February at 93 in Oslo. The son of a physician, Johan’s approach involves Analysis, Diagnosis, Prognosis and Therapy.

Johan developed the solutions-oriented “Transcend Method” that uses creativity to generate a new reality that bridges seemingly incompatible legitimate goals, in a way that addresses basic human needs. Conflict transformation produces more satisfying, win-win solutions as opposed to conflict management and conflict resolution, based on compromise in which parties are often disappointed and have to eat some shit to prevent a worse outcome.

There are ancient and modern processes designed to deal with protracted, collective trauma. Most famously, South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Process intended to prevent a blood bath following apartheid. The TRC had some political successes and some psychological successes and failures. It could be improved upon.

The ancient Hawaiian ritual, Ho’o Pono Pono, meaning “setting things right, very right” is a favorite among many fellow members of Transcend International.

Political Therapy is committed to raising consciousness about strategies for tension reduction, nonviolent conflict transformation and reversing cycles of violence.

Middle East

I have a lifelong interest in the Middle East and have interviewed several Jewish, and Palestinian leaders in the peace movement since 1996.

I have visited Israel several times since my junior year in college at Hebrew University in 1970-1. My last visit was 2013 when I presented at the International Society of Political Psychology held that year at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Israel.

I have been Gaza to present at the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme Conferences in 1997 on Health and Human Rights, and in 1999 On Women in Palestine. In 1999 I attended a conference in Ramallah by Physicians for Human Rights on caring for victims of torture. At that time, I also visited my son who was in a high school program in Israel. When I arrived at the airport, I got pulled aside and questioned because of my plans to visit Gaza.

I have attended two UN Conferences on a WMD Free Zone in the Middle East as an advisor to the Middle East Treaty Organization. I attended as an NGO representative of civil society, every UN conference on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in New York since 2000, and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), known as the “Ban Treaty” for which the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons in 2017.

I hope to contribute to the work of many others, including my cherished fellow Substackers, to the understanding of techniques used by global forces of domination revealed over the last 4 years to inspire enlightened strategies capable of transcending them.

Personal Note

Briefly for now, I have been mostly absent from Substack over the last 7 months. I have been unable to write due to disabling toxic mold exposure in my condo building. I lived out of suitcases for 2 months and finally moved to an apartment where I feel better.

I am detoxifying, rebuilding my health and brain function, and getting my bearings enough to do serious writing again. I still have some neurotoxicity and impairments in executive function – reading, writing and organizing. David Schonbrunn, who connected with me through Substack has been helping me with editing, for which I am eternally grateful. I will need other kinds of assistance to be able to manifest more of my incomplete work.

I will soon begin posting many pieces that I have written in past years that are relevant to current events. I hope to be back to regular writing and analysis soon.

Given my deep interest in the Middle East and the peace process, it has been exceedingly frustrating for me to be incapacitated at this astonishing, critical time when I have much to say. Stay tuned.

Much gratitude to Substack for this platform, to my esteemed fellow Substackers, and to my precious readers and subscribers.

NOTE

I joined Substack on September 23, 2021 after Medium censored my "Open Letter and Challenge for Rachel Maddow: IVERMECTIN: Truth or Consequences." I named my Substack CoronaWise as I was primarily addressing collective psychological dynamics around the Covid phenomena.

https://coronawise.substack.com/p/open-letter-and-challenge-for-rachel