The Psychology of Truth-Tellers: Inspired by Dan Ellsberg

Note: This is a revision of an earlier Substack on “The Psychology of Veridos™ (Seekers of Truth and Justice) being repurposed as a tribute to Dan Ellsberg

In my A Tribute to Daniel Ellsberg: The Inspiration for My Psychological Study of Moral Heroism and the Courageous Personality, I described how Daniel Ellsberg was the source of my inspiration to develop a theory of “the Courageous Personality.” His exceptional courage motivated me to study people who take great personal risks for truth, justice, peace, and freedom. I was curious about the psychology of the very few courageous souls who rise up in the face of oppression.

I described our meeting at the 1995 International Psychohistorical Association (IPhA) and the discussion after his keynote address regarding why he alone had the courage to expose the truth. After some discussion, I realized that it was up to me to answer my question. I thought that if interviewed several moral heroes that a pattern would be revealed to me.

1. INTERVIEWEES

I undertook to interview whistleblowers, human rights activists, movement pioneers, women who hid Jews from the Nazis, and judges at the Hague War Crimes Tribunals. I was honored to interview Joseph Rotblat, Nobel Peace Prize winner, the only scientist to quit the Manhattan Project when he discovered that Germany could not get the bomb; Betty Friedan, feminist pioneer; DC Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton; and psychiatrist Peter Breggin, who challenged overdiagnosis of ADHD, psychosurgery and the drugging of children. See Appendix 7 for list.

I also interviewed several pioneers in the Israeli Palestinian peace movement and antinuclear Israelis recommended by Dan who were friends of Mordechai Vanunu, Israeli whistleblower who had exposed Israel’s secret nuclear weapons program.

Dan was my first interview in his Washington DC apartment. I think we spoke for 5 hours before getting to the first question.

2. DISCOVERING VERIDO™: The Instinctual Drive for Truth and Justice

Throughout my interviews, I felt a palpable sense that these risk takers did not undergo a conscious, deliberative decision-making process. They were incapable of holding untruths within their bodies and souls.

I reject the mindless adage that “the line between good and evil runs through every human heart.” It obviously does not. These people demonstrate the capacity to resist and transcend the powerful pull towards evil.

I coined the term “Verido”, to describe the instinctual drive for truth and justice, like “libido” the instinctual energy and drive for sex.

The capacity for Verido, like libido, may be cultivated or squashed with familial and cultural practices in childrearing, education and socialization. Before the Holocaust, German childrearing practices were characterized by physical punishment, the demand for obedience, breaking the child’s will and inducing submissiveness to authority. These were conducive to developing a followership for authoritarianism.

Veridos™ may represent less than 5% of the population. They see through deception, investigate truth and have the strength to challenge official narratives. They are truly courageous and refuse to remain silent.

Suppression and Retaliation

Historically truth-tellers who threaten the powers of domination have been shunned and silenced, like Galileo; demonized and imprisoned, like Antonio Gramsci, John Kiriakou, and Mordechai Vanunu; exiled, like Edward Snowden; punished and threatened, like Julian Assange; hung, like people who hid Jews from the Nazis; and burned at the stake like Giordano Bruno.

Because information is power, those who expose truth are a threat and must be punished and silenced by the forces of oppressive authority, who need a mystified, pliable populace.

3. THE ARCHETYPE OF THE MORAL HERO

Before presenting my findings, I wish to highlight the meaning of moral heroes for the collective psyche.

Carl Jung considered moral heroism as an aspect of the life force, Eros. The hero archetype personifies progressive elements in the collective psyche. It is the aspect of the Self that fights against the pulls toward regression, passivity, fear, and the desire to take refuge in the protective nurturance of the Great Mother. The collective symbol of the hero embodies the highest aspirations and ideals of a culture.

Jungian analyst, Dr. Jerome Bernstein distinguished between the immature hero, who is identified with physical strength, and mastery over death and the mature hero, who is concerned with moral and ethical issues. Bernstein describes the immature hero who embodies warrior energy as being anti-life, whereas the mature hero is committed to the life principle.

Veridos exemplify high levels of psychological, moral, cognitive and political development, maturity and integration.

The Archetypal Drama of Liberation from Oppression

Veridos arise in response to oppression, corruption, and deception to stimulate humanity to higher levels of consciousness, creativity and functioning - the stuff of myths and fairy tales.

Their devotion to relieving suffering transcends ego, which I define here as the sense of the Self as separate. Each Verido embodies a force of healthy development towards equality, freedom, truth, and justice. Some are moved to live on the front lines. Their work can contribute to conscious evolution.

Veridos represent “the ideal of the Bodhisattva, the symbol of compassion … the ultimate expression of the underlying concern to lead every being to freedom from suffering, to enlightenment” (Self and Liberation: Jung/Buddhist Dialogue).

4. SOME FINDINGS

Some patterns emerged through my semi-structured interviews. Not every finding applies to every moral hero. In various combinations, they paint a picture.

My findings regard:

Family of Origin

Life Experiences – Discrepant Realities

Jungian Psychological Type

Psychological Maturity and Human Development

Psycho-Sociological Observations

·      Mothers (in one case an older sister, in one case a nanny) were described as being ahead of their time, competent, strong, having minds of their own, open-minded, compassionate, creative. They were unfulfilled (likely for women in previous generations). Their children felt the frustration of their mother’s unlived life. They felt delegated to live out and fulfill her dreams. Sometimes the father was frustrated.

As a girl, Betty Friedan prayed for “someone who loved me best and ‘a work’ “

·      Families valued equality, justice, freedom

·       Clear boundaries, limitations, sometimes a strict but loving father

·      Mother was regarded as subject, not object, and affirmed their child’s subjectivity, individuality and uniqueness. If not the mother, another adult filled this function.

·      Mutual recognition and close relationship with a member of opposite sex, a sibling, cousin, friend, relative. This applies to race in some cases.  There are developmental connections between consciousness of otherness - the Other Sex and the Other Race. With unshakable knowledge of the humanity of the Other (sex and race) they could not dehumanize and found intolerable the dehumanization of others.

·      As children, they demonstrated acts of individuality, integrity, intuition, and trust of a higher moral authority above conformity and conventional authority, or just having a mind of their own. One stood up for other children who were bullied. Some refused to comply with rules, got kicked out of school or quit activities in protest.

·      In adolescence they differentiated from family, carved out their own identity and values. They could reject parents’ values, without rejecting parents. Family could tolerate difference and negotiate the tension between individuality and connection (neither enmeshed nor disengaged).

·      Veridos were not enamored of hero figures. Since they manifested courageous aspects of the Self, they did not need to engage with these qualities through projection onto external heroes who embody disowned aspects of the self. Some admired Gandhi, King, Malcolm X, Einstein, Paul Robeson.

·      Capacity for intimacy, depth, richness in relationships. Several became co-creative couples.

·      Some felt special, the “Christ child.”  Parents had confidence in them.

·      Alice Miller, who attended my presentation at the International Psychohistorical Association in Amsterdam in 1999, urged me to emphasize that (most) were not punished as children.

·      A few Veridos had harsh parenting and punishment but likely had one parent or other adults in their lives, relatives, teachers, etc. who recognized and affirmed them. I don’t have enough data on this. 

·      Child Holocaust survivor Samuel Oliner and his wife Pearl studied people who rescued Jews in the Altruistic Personality. They similarly found that families were close. Parents had moral principles and taught empathy, compassion, and equity for all humanity. They had lenient childrearing practices. They did not demand obedience. Hence, their children were not submissive to authority.

·      Rather than physical punishment, parents used reasoning, a sign of respect and trust. By contrast, child-rearing practices in Germany before the Holocaust were very strict and authoritarian. They demanded obedience to break the child’s will, and were authoritarian and punitive to encourage toughness.

·      A secure attachment pattern, as opposed to anxious, avoidant and disorganized attachment patterns, is established in the first year of life. It optimizes development, empathy, trust, problem-solving, and openness to exploration. It is associated with taking risks.

5.    SOME PERSONALITY CHARACTERISTICS OF VERIDOS

·       Psychological Maturity. Emotional Intelligence.

·      Capacity to Tolerate Ambiguity, to live in and negotiate the tension between the opposites, a sign of psychological health.

·      Strong egos, not necessarily big egos. They operate at a level that transcends ego. (They are not necessarily ego-less either.) Jung said that to withstand such overwhelming opposition, the ego must be equal to the whole world. They have a good connection along the ego-Self (higher Self) axis.

·       Not deterred by fear. Does not regress in the face of fear.  Others who sometimes function at higher levels regress under fear, lose higher level brain functions and may be vulnerable to psychological manipulation.

·       Low on hypnotic susceptibility and the Tellegen Absorption Scale, low on "openness to absorbing and self-altering experiences (Tellegen & Atkinson, 1974).

 Jungian Psychological Types. This was a fascinating and significant discovery. The theory of Psychological Types requires explanation beyond the scope of this article.  Some may be familiar with the Myers-Briggs typology, which developed, tested and popularized Jung’s model, rendering it widely usable as a tool in training, business and beyond.

I found that Veridos take in information more through their highly developed functions of sensing or intuition, categorized as Perceiving, rather than those who use the functions of thinking and feeling, categorized as Judging. Veridos rely on direct experience rather than concepts. They have heightened, fluid perceptive abilities which enable them to take in new information directly and in more detail, and to see through propaganda and preconceived notions, social conventions and belief systems.

Perceiving has a parallelism with the idea of being “data driven.” One is influenced by direct observation of facts, and is able to change theories and beliefs according to new factual evidence, as opposed to being “theory driven.” Those who are “theory driven” filter the world through preconceived notions and filter information to fit into their beliefs or cognitive frames.

Intuition is not a hunch or a guess. It is a form of knowledge, perceived through the unconscious, rather than on the level of concrete reality. Intuitives can see below the surface and intuit into the future. Some can feel when they are being lied to. They sense incongruencies in a story that don’t add up. They detect something hidden and anticipate trajectories.

Sensation types perceive empirical reality directly and immediately through their heightened senses. People with a strong sensation function are good with directions, mechanical abilities, science, finance, and possibly the arts.

LIFE EXPERIENCES - Discrepant Realities, Ruptures, Paradise Lost, and Failed Enactment

Many Veridos had formative life experiences I call “discrepant realities.” Others are vicariously affected by historical traumas like genocides, massacres, displacement, and slavery.

One’s primary experience of dignity, equality, freedom, safety, and love was ruptured in some way, generating a sense of paradise lost, failed enactment, the pain of preventable loss and suffering. The discrepancy feels physiologically intolerable.

Processed by their developed psychological functions of intuition, sensation and feeling, they experience tension between current reality and what is possible, and their inalienable human right. They feel a deep urge to repair and devote their lives to restoring the ideal state. Examples include:

·  Paradise lost

Nelson Mandela said, “I wasn’t born with a hunger for freedom. I was born free...” Having lost the freedom he had known, he devoted his life to regaining freedom.

Nobel Peace Prize winner 

Joseph Rotblat, Nobel Peace Prize winner, born in 1908, grew up in a secure, prosperous household in Russian Poland. With the outbreak of World War 1 the family lost everything and went into poverty.

RFK, Jr., “Camelot Lost,” experienced the assassinations of his uncle and father, and his knowledge of hidden forces motivates his fierce courage and relentless dedication and readiness to “die with my boots on.” I wish him a long, healthy, successful life.

Vera Sharav - Child survivor of the Holocaust, whose intuition and refusal to comply at age 6 saved her life. She founded the Alliance for Human Research Protection, highlighting the role of doctors then and now, and Nuremberg Code, Never Again is Now. 

Betty Friedan - Feminist pioneer Betty Friedan was the first to name and research “the problem that had no name.” She struck a huge collective nerve when she described a malaise felt by privileged women in suburbia in her groundbreaking “The Feminist Mystique.” She wrote, ”There was a strange discrepancy between the reality of our lives as women and the image to which we were trying to conform, the image that I had come to call the feminine mystique. I wondered if other women faced this schizophrenic split, and what it meant.”

· Failed Enactment - See Dan Ellsberg’s Story of the accident that could have been prevented.

Veridos, motivated by experiences of loss, betrayal, and failure, have an inner knowing that a better world is possible. They palpably feel it in their bodies and strive to overcome the discrepancy.

6.    PSYCHOLOGICAL MATURITY AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

Around 1990 I was developing a “unified field theory” model of human development, called “Eros Development,” inspired by Erik Erikson’s eight stage model, Jane Loevenger’s scale of Ego Development, Piaget’s model of genetic epistemology and others.

I read a disturbing fact, that 50% of Americans did not achieve “formal operations,” the capacity for abstract thinking. I also read that business school students graduated at a lower level of ego development than when they entered. When listening to political discourse, I began coding development levels.  Much reflected immature, concrete, black-and-white thinking.

Veridos exemplify high levels of psychological, moral, cognitive and political development, individuation and self-actualization. Their lives and work are dedicated to stimulating humanity to higher levels of functioning.

·      Loevenger’s Model of Ego Development (see full chart below in APPENDIX 2)

Loevenger’s stages, from birth, are:

·      pre-social (undifferentiated)

·      Impulsive

·      self-protective

·      conformist

·      self-aware

·      conscientious

·      individualistic

·      autonomous

·      integrated

Stage E4 Conformist

“Belonging to group is paramount; “right” and “wrong” simply determined by social convention; self and others viewed in terms of “fit” with group norms; simplistic and banal inner life.”

At the conformist stage we identify with our group, act as a member of the group, and treat others as members of groups. I believe that nationalism, submerging one’s identity with the group (as opposed to patriotism perhaps), is associated with the conformist stage of development and below.

People who may not feel good about themselves can feel pride and esteem by binding their identity to being part of a group that is good and superior. Those who criticize and blame the group are psychologically threatening at a core level and will be fiercely resisted.

Psychologically, at the conformist stage, one has not yet constructed a concept of the individual. One emerges from the conformist stage with budding self-awareness, followed by conscientiousness, individualism, autonomous and then integrated.

I hypothesize that Veridos are at least “Autonomous”

Stage E8 Autonomous

“Freedom from excessive striving and achievement; search for self-fulfillment; recognition of individual human complexity; tolerance for ambiguity and paradox; deepened respect for autonomy of others.”

Stage E9 Integrated

“Self-actualization; not fully described.”

·      Moral Development - Kohlberg and Gilligan  

In the 1950s and 1960’s psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg extended Piagetian cognitive development into a model of moral development based on interviews with boys about moral dilemmas. Kohlberg’s theory consists of three levels and six stages of moral development. The levels are Preconventional level, Conventional and Postconventional or principled level. See APPENDIX 3.

Developmental psychologist Carol Gilligan challenged Kohlberg’s work in her groundbreaking book In a Different Voice (1982). Gilligan conducted research with girls and women, discovering that females use different reasoning. While males are concerned with rules, females are more concerned with caring. Gilligan attributes changes in moral reasoning to changes in relational thinking rather than cognitive thinking.

The distinction between a justice orientation and a mercy orientation is shown here in KOHLBERG'S SIX LEVELS OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT.

 “On Kohlberg's model, moral development is the development of an autonomous self, capable of being motivated by abstract principles understood as a kind of "mathematical" solution to conflicts of interests.”

     “On Gilligan's model, moral development is the development of a self-in-relation.  Morality is understood in terms of the preservation of valuable human relations.  Progress from stage to stage is motivated by increasing understanding of human relationships.”

Males and females can possess both justice and care orientations, but one is more prevalent. The more evolved and mature we are, the more likely we are to integrate both dimensions.

Hopefully, the gender split is less rigid than it was in the 1980s, and Veridos in particular are crying out for mercy.

You guessed it. Veridos are at the highest Post-Conventional stage. See APPENDIX 3.

·       Individuation – (Jung and others), self-actualization (Abraham Maslow), and Heinz Kohut’s “nuclear program of the self.”

Individuation is to live according to one’s design, to become whole, realize one’s Self. A goal of Jungian analysis is expanding consciousness by awareness and integration of unconscious contents from one’s shadow, anima/animus (the complex of the opposite sex in one’s psyche), and other unconscious complexes. It strives to develop balance in one’s personality by developing one’s inferior function. Following the horrors of World War II, Jung strongly believed that to resist tyranny, mass psychology and the potential destruction of the planet, it was critical for more people to become individuated.

In the last analysis, the essential thing is the life of individual. This alone makes history, here alone do the great transformations take place, and the whole future, the whole history of the world, ultimately springs as a gigantic summation from these hidden source in individuals. --- Carl Jung

Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself. --- Carl Jung

Individualization does not shut one out from the world, but gathers the world to oneself.

--- Carl Jung

·      Differentiation of Self from Family of Origin (Murray Bowen)

The goal of Bowen’s family of origin therapy is to establish a sense of self, one’s own personality, and one’s own path despite (family) pressures and expectations. It involves developing one’s ability to hold an “I position” while maintaining relationship rather than disengaging. One is able to resist “groupthink,” conformity, and the need for approval. That makes it possible to think clearly, handle criticism and conflicts constructively and creatively.

7.    THE PSYCHOLOGICAL OPPOSITE OF THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY

Studies on the Authoritarian Personality have exposed the underlying psychopathology in those who have caused the greatest damage to humankind. I was struck by the high level of psychological development and integration in Veridos, as compared to the Authoritarian Personality.

Authoritarianism and Human Development

I had an “Aha!” experience, concluding, among other things, that “the Courageous Personality” is the psychological opposite of “the Authoritarian Personality,” a concept that emerged from the body of work developed after the Nazi Holocaust to explain genocide, anti-Semitism, fascism, ethnocentrism and anti-democratic attitudes.

After World War II, many psychologists studied the psychological forces and conditions that allowed the Holocaust, including Stanley Milgram, on obedience, Phil Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment, Solomon Asch on pressures to conform, and many others. Adorno, et all developed a theory of the Authoritarian Personality. (More on this at the end. See my chart below).

Erich Fromm was a prominent social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist and humanistic philosopher. Here are excerpts from his 1957 article on “The Authoritarian Personality.” (Note the term applies to the followers of authoritarian leaders. Bolds are mine.):

What they have in common, what defines the essence of the authoritarian personality is an inability: the inability to rely on one’s self, to be independent, to put it in other words: to endure freedom.

The opposite of the authoritarian character is the mature person: a person who does not need to cling to others because he actively embraces and grasps the world, the people, and the things around him.

… the individual’s goal must be to become his own authority; i.e., to have a consciousness in moral issues, conviction in questions of intellect, and fidelity in emotional matters. However, the individual can only have such an inner authority if he has matured enough to understand the world with reason and love. The development of these characteristics is the basis for one’s own authority and therefore the basis for political democracy.

Comparing Authoritarianism and the Courageous Personality

Here is my comparison of the Authoritarian Personality with the Courageous Personality, written around 1997. The left side of the chart is from p.164 in The Authoritarian Personality, Adorno, Frankel-Brunswick, Levinson, and Sanford.

8.     CONCLUSIONS

Living in this incredible time of existential danger and great promise, there is value in raising consciousness about the too few courageous people who have made personal sacrifices to speak truth, expose secrets, and challenge oppressive authority. They are uplifting humanity.

Childrearing - Can we cultivate more Veridos?

Consider psychohistorian Lloyd DeMause’s observation that “psychoclass” emerged from a particular style of childrearing, and Alice Miller’s work on the harms of punishment in childhood, which can make people hypnotically susceptible and obedient to authority.  The difference in childrearing between Veridos and authoritarians is undeniable.

The use of harsh physical and psychological punishment in patriarchal authoritarian cultures results in higher incidences of avoidant attachment patterns, associated with more problems in adulthood that negatively impact society.

Some can be helped with therapy, social support and corrective experiences, but it would be best to prevent the damage in the first place. Years ago, realizing the harms of childhood punishment, the German Parliament banned corporal punishment.

“German parents nowadays prefer to use dialogue rather than physical punishment to correct wayward children, while traditional virtues such as strict punctuality, orderliness and discipline are no longer considered as important.” German parents go off corporal punishment.

This should cultivate the development of more Veridos. We could benefit from mass education in childrearing practices.

The immunity of the nation depends entirely upon the existence of a leading minority immune to the evil and capable of combating the powerful suggestive effect. — C. G. Jung, The Symbolic Life, para. 1400.

MORE JUNG QUOTES (emphasis added)

From the blurb of The Undiscovered Self, First published January 1, 1961:

One of the world’s greatest psychiatrists reveals how to embrace our own humanity and resist the pressures of an ever-changing world.
 
In this challenging and provocative work, Dr. Carl Jung—one of history’s greatest minds—argues that civilization’s future depends on our ability as individuals to resist the collective forces of society. Only by gaining an awareness and understanding of one’s unconscious mind and true, inner nature —“the undiscovered self”—can we as individuals acquire the self-knowledge that is antithetical to ideological fanaticism…. Jung compellingly argues that only then can we begin to cope with the dangers posed by mass society - “the sum total of individuals”—and resist the potential threats posed by those in power.

Indeed, it is becoming ever more obvious that it is not famine, not earthquakes, not microbes, not cancer but man himself who is man’s greatest danger to man, for the simple reason that there is no adequate protection against psychic epidemics, which are infinitely more devastating than the worst of natural catastrophes. 

The supreme danger which threatens individuals as well as whole nations is a psychic danger. Reason has proved itself completely powerless, precisely because its arguments have an effect only on the conscious mind and not on the unconscious.

The greatest danger of all comes from the masses, in whom the effects of the unconscious pile up cumulatively and the reasonableness of the conscious mind is stifled. Every mass organization is a latent danger just as much as a heap of dynamite is. It lets loose effects which no man wants and no man can stop.

It is therefore in the highest degree desirable that a knowledge of psychology should spread so that men can understand the source of the supreme dangers that threaten them. Not by arming to the teeth, each for itself, can the nations defend themselves in the long run from the frightful catastrophes of modern war. The heaping up of arms is itself a call to war. Rather must they recognize those psychic conditions under which the unconscious [tsunami-like] bursts the dykes of consciousness and overwhelms it. ” — The Undiscovered Self

Only a few individuals succeed in throwing off mythology in a time of a certain intellectual supremacy--the mass never frees itself. -- Psychology of the Unconscious

The mass State has no intention of promoting mutual understanding and the relationship of man to man; it strives, rather, for atomization, for the psychic isolation of the individual. The more unrelated individuals are, the more consolidated the State becomes, and vice versa.

For, in order to turn the individual into a function of the State, his dependence on anything beside the State must be taken from him.

It is the individual's task to differentiate himself from all the others and stand on his own feet. All collective identities . . . interfere with the fulfillment of this task. Such collective identities are crutches for the lame, shields for the timid, beds for the lazy, nurseries for the irresponsible.

The achievement of personality means nothing less than the optimum development of the whole individual human being. It is impossible to foresee the endless variety of conditions that have to be fulfilled. A whole lifetime, in all its biological, social, and spiritual aspects, is needed. Personality is the supreme realization of the innate idiosyncrasy of a living being. It is an act of high courage flung in the face of life, the absolute affirmation of all that constitutes the individual, the most successful adaptation to the universal conditions of existence coupled with the greatest possible freedom for self-determination. To educate a man to this seems to me no light matter. It is surely the hardest task the modern mind has set itself.

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. -- The Undiscovered Self 

Note to readers: I intend to make my writing available to everyone for free. I am grateful to my readers and comments which have deepened my thinking, improved my writing and led to new friendships. I feel part of a community and no longer so isolated.

I just set up paid subscriptions. I would deeply appreciate paid subscriptions from anyone who is able to support my writing and help me pay my bills. It would also support Substack to which we all owe a great debt of gratitude for creating a platform even chosen by Sy Hersch. I moved to Substack after being censored on Medium. Substack has changed many of our lives and is a significant part of the solution we need in these times.

_____

• Acknowledgement and much gratitude to David Schonbrunn for help with editing, clarity and being a sounding board.

APPENDICES

1.    Dan Ellsberg’s Story 

2.    Jane Loevenger’s Scale of Ego Development 

3.    Moral Development – Kohlberg & Gilligan Models

4.    Alice Miller Child Mistreatment, Child Abuse5.    More on the Authoritarian Personality

6.    The Heroic Imagination Project

7. Interviewees

APPENDIX 1

Dan Ellsberg’s Story Excerpts (emphasis added)

On the Fourth of July, 1946, driving on a hot afternoon on a flat, straight road through the cornfields of Iowa—on the way from Detroit to visit our relatives in Denver—my father fell asleep at the wheel and went off the road long enough to hit a sidewall over a culvert that sheared off the right side of the car, killing my mother and sister.

My father’s nose was broken and his forehead was cut. When a highway patrol car came by, he was wandering by the wreckage, bleeding and dazed. I was inside, in a coma from a concussion, with a large gash on the left side of my forehead. I had been sitting on the floor next to the back seat, on a suitcase covered with a blanket, with my head just behind the driver’s seat. When the car hit the wall, my head was thrown against a metal fixture on the back of the driver’s seat, knocking me out and opening up a large triangular flap of flesh on my forehead. I was in coma for 36 hours. My legs had been stretched out in front of me across the car and my right leg was broken just above the knee.

My understanding of how that event came about—it wasn’t entirely an accident, as I heard from my father, that he had kept driving when he was exhausted—and how it affected my life is a story for another time. But looking back now, at what I drew from reading the Pentagon Papers later and on my citizen’s activism since then, I think I saw in the events of August 1945 and July 1946, unconsciously, a common message. I loved my father, and I respected Truman. But you couldn’t rely entirely on a trusted authority—no matter how well-intentioned he was, however much you admired him—to protect you, and your family, from disaster. You couldn’t safely leave events entirely to the care of authorities. Some vigilance was called for, to awaken them if need be or warn others.

They could be asleep at the wheel, heading for a wall or a cliff. I saw that later in Lyndon Johnson and in his successor, and I’ve seen it since.

But I sensed almost right away, in August 1945 as Hiroshima and Nagasaki were incinerated, that such feelings—about our president, and our Bomb—separated me from nearly everyone around me, from my parents and friends and from most other Americans. They were not to be mentioned. They could only sound unpatriotic. And in World War II, that was about the last way one wanted to sound. These were thoughts to be kept to myself.

APPENDIX 2 
Jane Loevenger Scale of Ego Development

Stage Characteristics

E2 Impulsive

Focus on physical needs and impulses; dependence on others for control and limits; rules are poorly understood; exploitation of others for one’s own good; Physical and emotional needs are merged; no sense of inner emotional experience.

E3 Self-protective

Capacity to delay immediate gratification; self-serving appreciation for rules; interpersonal wariness.

E4 Conformist

Belonging to group is paramount; “right” and “wrong” simply determined by social convention; self and others viewed in terms of “fit” with group norms; simplistic and banal inner life.

E5 Self-awareness

Allowance for qualifications of “right” and “wrong” based on demographic differences; capacity for loneliness and self-consciousness; expanded inner life; relationships experienced in terms of feelings rather than behaviors.

E6 Conscientious

“Right” and “wrong” and decisions based on personal feeling; capacity for guilt; concern about hurting others; feeling responsible for others.

E7 Individualistic

Greater tolerance for individual differences; differentiation between inner and outer states; emergence of long-term perspective; Interpersonal relationships are deeper and more intense.

E8 Autonomous

Freedom from excessive striving and achievement; search for self-fulfillment; recognition of individual human complexity; tolerance for ambiguity and paradox; deepened respect for autonomy of others.

E9 Integrated

Self-actualization; not fully described.

Levels of Ego Development and Example of a Scored Item (Hy & Loevinger, 1996)[4]

APPENDIX 3

Moral Development

Kohlberg’s Six Levels of Moral Development

Level 1: Preconventional level

Stage 1: Punishment/obedience orientation

Stage 2: Instrumental purpose orientation

Level 2: Conventional level

Stage 3: Good Boy/Nice Girl orientation

Stage 4: Law and order orientation

Level 3: Postconventional or principled level

Stage 5: Social contract orientation

Stage 6: Universal ethical principle orientation

Gilligan's Six Stages of Moral Development (Ethics of Care)

A.  Pre-Conventional Level 

STAGE 1:  Caring for the self.

STAGE 2:  Stage 1 concern judged to be selfish. 

B.  Conventional Level 

STAGE 3:  Goodness is caring for others, frequently equated with self-sacrifice. 

STAGE 4:  Illogic of the inequality between self and others becomes evident.  Search for equilibrium.

C.  Post-Conventional Level 

STAGE 5:  Focus on the dynamics of relationships, to eliminate the tension between self and others.   

STAGE 6:  Care is extended beyond personal relationships to a general recognition of the interdependence of self and other, accompanied by a universal condemnation of exploitation and hurt.

Males and females can possess both justice and care orientations, but one is more prevalent. The more evolved, mature we are, the more likely to integrate both dimensions.

APPENDIX 4

Alice Miller 

Child Mistreatment, Child Abuse. What is it?

Humiliations, spankings and beatings, slaps in the face, betrayal, sexual exploitation, derision, neglect, etc. are all forms of mistreatment, because they injure the integrity and dignity of a child, even if their consequences are not visible right away. However, as adults, most abused children will suffer, and let others suffer, from these injuries. This dynamic of violence can deform some victims into hangmen who take revenge even on whole nations and become willing executors to dictators as unutterably appalling as Hitler and other cruel leaders. Beaten children very early on assimilate the violence they endured, which they may glorify and apply later as parents, in believing that they deserved the punishment and were beaten out of love. They don’t know that the only reason for the punishments they have (or in retrospect, had) to endure is the fact that their parents themselves endured and learned violence without being able to question it. Later, the adults, once abused children, beat their own children and often feel grateful to their parents who mistreated them when they were small and defenseless.

This is why society’s ignorance remains so immovable and parents continue to produce severe pain and destructivity – in all “good will”, in every generation. Most people tolerate this blindly because the origins of human violence in childhood have been and are still being ignored worldwide. Almost all small children are smacked during the first three years of life when they begin to walk and to touch objects which may not be touched. This happens at exactly the time when the human brain builds up its structure and should thus learn kindness, truthfulness, and love but never, never cruelty and lies. Fortunately, there are many mistreated children who find “helping witnesses” and can feel loved by them.

Alice Miller on the Roots of Violence

The Roots of Violence are NOT Unknown

The misled brain and the banned emotions

The Facts:

1. The development of the human brain is use-dependent. The brain develops its structure in the first four years of life, depending on the experiences the environment offers the child. The brain of a child who has mostly loving experiences will develop differently from the brain of a child who has been treated cruelly.

2. Almost all children on our planet are beaten in the first years of their lives.They learn from the start violence, and this lesson is wired into their developing brains. No child is ever born violent. Violence is NOT genetic, it exists because beaten children use, in their adult lives, the lesson that their brains have learned.

3. As beaten children are not allowed to defend themselves, they must suppress their anger and rage against their parents who have humiliated them, killed their inborn empathy, and insulted their dignity. They will take out this rage later, as adults, on scapegoats, mostly on their own children. Deprived of empathy, some of them will direct their anger against themselves (in eating disorders, drug addiction, depression etc.), or against other adults (in wars, terrorism, delinquency etc.)

APPENDIX 5

The Authoritarian Personality Type

According to Adorno's theory, the elements of the Authoritarian personality type are:

·       Blind allegiance to conventional beliefs about right and wrong

·       Respect for submission to acknowledged authority

·       Belief in aggression toward those who do not subscribe to conventional thinking, or who are different

·       A negative view of people in general - i.e. the belief that people would all lie, cheat or steal if given the opportunity

·       A need for strong leadership which displays uncompromising power

·       A belief in simple answers and polemics - i.e. The media controls us all or The source of all our problems is the loss of morals these days.

·       Resistance to creative, dangerous ideas. A black and white worldview.

·       A tendency to project one's own feelings of inadequacy, rage and fear onto a scapegoated group

·       A preoccupation with violence and sex

Nine Components of Authoritarianism, pioneering research measured by the “F Scale” by Adorno,[5] et al, 1950,

·       Conventionalism: a rigid adherence to conventional, middle-class values

·       Authoritarian Submission: a submissive, uncritical attitude toward idealized moral authorities of the in-group

·       Authoritarian Aggression: A tendency to be on the lookout for people who violate conventional values and to condemn, reject and punish them.

·       Anti-Intraception: an opposition to the subjective, the imaginative, the tender-minded

·       Superstition and Stereotypy: the belief in mystical determinants of the individual’s fate, the disposition to think in rigid categories

·       Power and Toughness: a preoccupation with the dominance–submission, strong–weak, leader–follower dimension, identification with power-figures; over- emphasis upon the conventionalized attributes of the ego; exaggerated assertion of strength and toughness

·       Destructiveness and Cynicism: a generalized hostility, vilification of human nature

·       Projectivity: the disposition to perceive the world as dangerous; tendency to project unconscious emotional impulses outwards

·       Sex: Overly exaggerated concern with modern sexual practices. (Less true in 2023)

Authoritarian Personality

APPENDIX 6

Zimbardo’s Heroic Imagination Project

Today, HIP’s mission is rooted in the findings of social psychological experiments of Asch, Milgram and Zimbardo, among many other. These experiments, as well as myriad heinous acts throughout history, reveal the “banal” side of evil, as described by Hannah Arendt. No one is exempt from the possibility of being coerced by the dark side of human nature.

However, the reverse also appears true. The “banality of heroism”, an idea first explored in a 2006 article written by Dr. Zimbardo and Dr. Zeno Franco, is a guide for HIP’s work, suggesting that each and every seemingly ordinary person on this planet is capable of committing heroic acts.

From this core belief, the Heroic Imagination Project was born with a mission to use important findings in psychology to equip ordinary people of all ages with the knowledge, skills, and strategies necessary to choose wise and effective acts of heroism during challenging moments in their lives.

HIP’s Mission

Inspired by the Heroic Imagination in each of us, HIP designs innovative strategies by combining psychological research, intervention education and social activism to create everyday heroes equipped to solve local and global problems.

We believe ordinary people can do extraordinary things.

We believe most of the heroes in the world are everyday people, just like you.

The Heroic Imagination Project provides training for individuals and groups, as well as promoting research and providing resources.

APPENDIX 7 Diane's Interviewees

Joseph Rotblat, Nobel Peace Prize winner, the only scientist to quit the Manhattan Project  when he discovered that Germany could not get the bomb

Peter Breggin, psychiatrist who challenged psychosurgery, overdiagnosis of ADHD and drugging children

Marion Pritchard, who hid Jews from the Nazis

Judges at the Hague War Crimes Tribunals

DC Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton

Betty Friedan, feminist movement pioneer

John Marks, founder of Search for Common Ground and his wife Susan Collin Marks, Frances Moore Lappe, Diet for a Small Planet and her then husband, Paul Dubois.

Early Pioneers in the Palestinian – Israeli Peace Process

         Gershon Baskin

         Hillel Schenker

         Rami Hielbronn

         Dr. Jumana Odeh

         Raji Sourani.

         Galia Golan

         Affif Saffiah – Palestinian Ambassador to the Vatican

         Friends of Mordechai Vanunu

                   Gidon Spiro

Rami Hielbraunn

                   Akiva Or  

Eyad Saraj, Palestinian psychiatrist, founder of the Gaza Community Mental       Health Programme who invited me to come to Gaza to present GCMHP’s International Conference on Health and Human Rights in 1997 and 1999.

[1] See Academy Award nominated documentary,The Most Dangerous Man in America.

[2] Dan Ellsberg’s Story - https://apjjf.org/-Daniel-Ellsberg/3201/article.pdf

[3] I highly recommend the Hulu 8 part series, Mrs. America, dramatization of the 1970s feminist movement featuring the characters of Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, Shirly Chisolm and Phyllis Shlafly https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9244556/

[4] Scored items were removed from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2729054/

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