The 9/11 myth is in fact a massive attempt to impose schizophrenic and autistic thinking on the entire American and world public.
- Tarpley
"The Germans under the Nazi government began to do serious scientific research into trauma-based mind control...
Under the auspices of the Kaiser Wilhelm Medical Institute in Berlin, Josef Mengele conducted mind-control research on thousands of twins and thousands of other hapless victims."
Fritz Springmeier & Cisco Wheeler,
The Illuminati Formula Used to Create an Undetectable Total Mind Controlled Slave.
schizophrenia
ˌskɪtsə(ʊ)ˈfriːnɪə/
noun
- a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behaviour, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation.
- (in general use) a mentality or approach characterized by inconsistent or contradictory elements."Gibraltar's schizophrenia continues to be fed by colonial pride"
" The 9/11 myth is rather a collective psychosis of a paranoid schizophrenic type.
Let us explore for a moment what this might mean.
What is now referred to as schizophrenia was formerly known as dementia praecox; the change in terminology is due to Eugen Bleuler, who used it to describe not so much a split personality as a lack of coordination among various psychological functions.
Bleuler was also the first to speak of the special quality of schizoid thinking, which he called autistic.
Simple schizophrenia is marked by a reduction in external relations and interests; this may include a lack of curiosity.
"Emotions are lacking in depth; ideation is simple and refers to concrete things ... and a retreat to simpler or stereotyped forms of behavior."
DSM-IV Criteria for Schizophrenia
DSM-IV-TR: Diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia:
A. Characteristic symptoms: Two (or more) of the following, each present for a significant portion of time during a 1-month period (or less if successfully treated):
(1) delusions
(2) hallucinations
(3) disorganized speech (e.g., frequent derailment or incoherence
(4) grossly disorganized or catatonic behaviour
(5) negative symptoms, i.e., affective flattening, alogia (poverty of speech), or avolition (lack of motivation)
Note: Only one Criterion A symptom is required if delusions are bizarre or hallucinations consist of a voice keeping up a running commentary on the person's behavior or thoughts, or two or more voices conversing with each other.
B. Social/occupational dysfunction: For a significant portion of the time since the onset of the disturbance, one or more major areas of functioning such as work, interpersonal relations, or self-care are markedly below the level achieved prior to the onset (or when the onset is in childhood or adolescence, failure to achieve expected level of interpersonal, academic, or occupational achievement).
C. Duration: Continuous signs of the disturbance persist for at least 6 months. This 6-month period must include at least 1 month of symptoms (or less if successfully treated) that meet Criterion A (i.e., active-phase symptoms) and may include periods of prodromal (symptomatic of the onset) or residual symptoms. During these prodromal or residual periods, the signs of the disturbance may be manifested by only negative symptoms or two or more symptoms listed in Criterion A present in an attenuated form (e.g., odd beliefs, unusual perceptual experiences).
D. Schizoaffective and Mood Disorder exclusion: Schizoaffective Disorder and Mood Disorder With Psychotic Features have been ruled out because either (1) no Major Depressive Episode, Manic Episode, or Mixed Episode have occurred concurrently with the active-phase symptoms; or (2) if mood episodes have occurred during active-phase symptoms, their total duration has been brief relative to the duration of the active and residual periods.
E. Substance/general medical condition exclusion: The disturbance is not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, a medication) or a general medical condition.
F. Relationship to a Pervasive Developmental Disorder: If there is a history of Autistic Disorder or another Pervasive Developmental Disorder, the additional diagnosis of Schizophrenia is made only if prominent delusions or hallucinations are also present for at least a month (or less if successfully treated).
Subtypes Schizophrenia Subtypes: The subtypes of schizophrenia are defined by the predominant symptomatology at the time of evaluation. Because of the limited value of the schizophrenia subtypes in clinical and research settings (e.g. prediction of course, treatment response, correlates of illness), alternative subtypes are being actively investigates.
9/11 Synthetic Terrorism Made in USA, by Webster Griffin Tarpley,
The wily Shafts of state, those Juggler's tricks
Which we call deep Design and Politicks
(As in a Theatre the Ignorant Fry,
Because the Cords escape their Eye
Wonder to seethe Motions Fly) ...
Methinks, when you expose the Scene,
Down the ill-organ'd Engines fall;
Off fly the Vizards and discover all,
How plain I see thro' the Deceit!
How shallow! And how gross the Cheat! ...
Look where the Pully's tied above!
Oh what poor Engines move
The Thoughts of Monarchs, and Design of States,
What pretty Motives rule their Fates! ...
Away the frighted Peasants fly,
Scar'd at th 'unheard-of Prodigy ...
Lo, it appears!
See, how they tremble! How they quake!"
-- Jonathan Swift, "Ode to the Honourable Sir William Temple" (1689)
Received opinion in the United States has come to regard the official version of the events of 9/11, that is to say the 9/11 myth, as normal. Those who doubt the veracity of the official, mythical account are likely to be accused of being mentally imbalanced, and possibly paranoid. In this chapter, we will seek to turn the tables on the official mythographs and their gullible followers. We have already discussed some of the fantastic, contradictory, and absurd features of the official myth. We now turn our attention to the problem of why this myth has been accepted by so many people, especially in the English-speaking world.
Our conclusion is that readiness to believe in the myth is correlated with a mental outlook which can only be described as schizophrenic and autistic.
In other words, there is something more than fear and stress at work. The resulting outlook operates not just at the level of individuals, but also in the Anglo-American culture as a whole. To do justice to this dangerous but fascinating phenomenon, we must venture into the fields of psychology and psychoanalysis to develop a familiarity with some of the main features of schizophrenic and autistic thinking. This will allow us to evaluate the 9/11 myth as a product of troubled and clouded thinking, and will also shed light on the role of the main purveyor of the myth, G. W. Bush.
Our conclusion is that readiness to believe in the myth is correlated with a mental outlook which can only be described as schizophrenic and autistic.
In other words, there is something more than fear and stress at work. The resulting outlook operates not just at the level of individuals, but also in the Anglo-American culture as a whole. To do justice to this dangerous but fascinating phenomenon, we must venture into the fields of psychology and psychoanalysis to develop a familiarity with some of the main features of schizophrenic and autistic thinking. This will allow us to evaluate the 9/11 myth as a product of troubled and clouded thinking, and will also shed light on the role of the main purveyor of the myth, G. W. Bush.
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," said Franklin D. Roosevelt at his inauguration in March, 1933. The advice of the Bush regime to the American people is, by contrast, "Be afraid! Always!"
As we have seen, in the aftermath of 9/11 U.S. public life has come to be founded more and more upon an outright fantastic myth which is often invoked, but never demonstrated or proven. U.S. institutions have more and more built their foundations upon a provocation.
The impact of the myth on American life and on the psychology of individual citizens has not been sufficiently studied by psychologists, since most of them also worship at the shrine of the myth. But in a general way, it is possible to see that the prevalence of the myth reflects a mass psychopathology of delusion and false consciousness, a turning away from reality into a politics of myth. The United States is well on its way under the second Bush regime to becoming an autistic power, estranged and alienated from surrounding reality. This poses the question: why does anybody believe the official story of 9/11, with all of its absurdities? What explains the power of the myth?
As we have seen, in the aftermath of 9/11 U.S. public life has come to be founded more and more upon an outright fantastic myth which is often invoked, but never demonstrated or proven. U.S. institutions have more and more built their foundations upon a provocation.
The impact of the myth on American life and on the psychology of individual citizens has not been sufficiently studied by psychologists, since most of them also worship at the shrine of the myth. But in a general way, it is possible to see that the prevalence of the myth reflects a mass psychopathology of delusion and false consciousness, a turning away from reality into a politics of myth. The United States is well on its way under the second Bush regime to becoming an autistic power, estranged and alienated from surrounding reality. This poses the question: why does anybody believe the official story of 9/11, with all of its absurdities? What explains the power of the myth?
Countries which have chosen to build their polity upon myth have generally fared poorly. The classical example is of course German Nazism, whose leaders openly rejected reality in favor of a fantastic world of Germanic and Wagnerian heroes and monsters. The politics of modern Serbia, which has seen defeats dating back to the fourteenth century as more real and more relevant than the economic realities of today, are another example.
Unless the 9/11 myth can be deconstructed and demystified, we will soon experience many more of the unpleasant effects of mythical politics here in the United States.
The desperate expedient of turning to terrorism to deal with a crisis is like choosing to initiate a heroin habit to get through a rough patch of personal life, as Sanguinetti reminds us.
A key aspect to consider, Sanguinetti argues, "in connection with a strategy which is founded upon provocation, is as old as the world: Seneca already remarked -- and if I quote him, it is because, being Nero's counselor, he was an expert in state terrorism and provocations -- that it is 'easier not to embark upon this path than it is to stop, once embarked upon it.' Like a drug, artificial terrorism needs and requires to be administered in always more massive and more frequent doses." (Sanguinetti 19)
The problem, after all, is that terrorism -- like all kinds of murder -- will out, and open secrets cannot be kept forever. As Sanguinetti stresses, "the fragility of such artificial terrorism resides however in this: once you proceed with such politics, it becomes even more well-known, and therefore judged, and all that had constituted the strength of this politics now constitutes its weakness, whilst the great advantages it assured its strategists now turn into a major inconvenience." (Sanguinetti 40)
Unless the 9/11 myth can be deconstructed and demystified, we will soon experience many more of the unpleasant effects of mythical politics here in the United States.
The desperate expedient of turning to terrorism to deal with a crisis is like choosing to initiate a heroin habit to get through a rough patch of personal life, as Sanguinetti reminds us.
A key aspect to consider, Sanguinetti argues, "in connection with a strategy which is founded upon provocation, is as old as the world: Seneca already remarked -- and if I quote him, it is because, being Nero's counselor, he was an expert in state terrorism and provocations -- that it is 'easier not to embark upon this path than it is to stop, once embarked upon it.' Like a drug, artificial terrorism needs and requires to be administered in always more massive and more frequent doses." (Sanguinetti 19)
The problem, after all, is that terrorism -- like all kinds of murder -- will out, and open secrets cannot be kept forever. As Sanguinetti stresses, "the fragility of such artificial terrorism resides however in this: once you proceed with such politics, it becomes even more well-known, and therefore judged, and all that had constituted the strength of this politics now constitutes its weakness, whilst the great advantages it assured its strategists now turn into a major inconvenience." (Sanguinetti 40)
In retrospect, 9/11 emerges as a made-for-television spectacle of death and destruction in which all plausibility is sacrificed for visual effectiveness on the screen.
A half century ago, such an operation would have been much more difficult.
Movies go back over 100 years.
By 2004, the U.S. population had been addicted to the television screen for some 50 years; the younger generations had never known anything else.
Computer screens had been around for 30 years.
Finally, the vogue of video games had been strong for several decades.
The result was that a world of flickering images projected on screens of various sizes and types had displaced experienced reality for many, or rather had become the centerpiece of their experienced reality. The computer enhancement of Hollywood films had further blurred the notion of what was real.
A half century ago, such an operation would have been much more difficult.
Movies go back over 100 years.
By 2004, the U.S. population had been addicted to the television screen for some 50 years; the younger generations had never known anything else.
Computer screens had been around for 30 years.
Finally, the vogue of video games had been strong for several decades.
The result was that a world of flickering images projected on screens of various sizes and types had displaced experienced reality for many, or rather had become the centerpiece of their experienced reality. The computer enhancement of Hollywood films had further blurred the notion of what was real.
This was an old problem, the problem of sense certainty, appearing in a new form. It had been discussed by Plato in The Republic, in the celebrated passage of Book VII devoted to the cave.
In the age of 9/11, Plato's cave was even enjoying a new revival of interest because of the way it had been crudely reflected in the movie The Matrix.
Plato imagined ignorant and unenlightened humanity as confined to an underground cave, illuminated only by faint diffuse sunlight from the cave entrance and the light of a fire. Humanity sat tied and fettered, forced to stare at a blank rock face in front of them; they could not turn their heads. Behind them was a wall, and between the wall and the fire a walkway. Along the walkway came bearers of statues, effigies and other artifacts, holding them up above the wall so that their shadows were cast on the rock face in view of the fettered audience. The bearers supplemented their flickering shadowy show with sound effects as best they could, which echoed from the rock face. The fettered audience of course became convinced that the shadows on the rock face in front of them were the very substance of reality, and prided themselves on their knowledge of the various shadows and the order in which they usually appeared. If any of the fettered victims were brought into the sunlight, he would suffer unspeakable pain and take a long time to become accustomed to the light. If any of them who had been in the sunlight tried to explain the nature of the world above to the cave dwellers, he risked enraging them, and being torn to pieces.
In the age of 9/11, Plato's cave was even enjoying a new revival of interest because of the way it had been crudely reflected in the movie The Matrix.
Plato imagined ignorant and unenlightened humanity as confined to an underground cave, illuminated only by faint diffuse sunlight from the cave entrance and the light of a fire. Humanity sat tied and fettered, forced to stare at a blank rock face in front of them; they could not turn their heads. Behind them was a wall, and between the wall and the fire a walkway. Along the walkway came bearers of statues, effigies and other artifacts, holding them up above the wall so that their shadows were cast on the rock face in view of the fettered audience. The bearers supplemented their flickering shadowy show with sound effects as best they could, which echoed from the rock face. The fettered audience of course became convinced that the shadows on the rock face in front of them were the very substance of reality, and prided themselves on their knowledge of the various shadows and the order in which they usually appeared. If any of the fettered victims were brought into the sunlight, he would suffer unspeakable pain and take a long time to become accustomed to the light. If any of them who had been in the sunlight tried to explain the nature of the world above to the cave dwellers, he risked enraging them, and being torn to pieces.
This is Plato's figure for the predicament of mankind, always starting from a naive epistemology of sense certainty applied to the discrete manifold that is accessible to the senses.
Because of the attractive power of sense certainty, most people do not want to advance from opinion, which deals with shadows and reflections, to the higher form of understanding, which deals with mathematical thinking, and to the highest faculty of reason, which seeks to clarify the good and the other Platonic ideas through the exercise of dialectical thought.
But this is the path which those who love truth and reason, the philosophers, must attempt to tread.
Because of the attractive power of sense certainty, most people do not want to advance from opinion, which deals with shadows and reflections, to the higher form of understanding, which deals with mathematical thinking, and to the highest faculty of reason, which seeks to clarify the good and the other Platonic ideas through the exercise of dialectical thought.
But this is the path which those who love truth and reason, the philosophers, must attempt to tread.
In modern times, the ruler of the cave has been John Locke, the great codifier of English empiricism, with his doctrine that the mind is a blank slate, and that the entire content of the mind derives from the accumulation of sense impressions. Locke's sensationalism, itself borrowed from Paolo Sarpi of Venice, has been the key to the degradation of mental life in the English-speaking world for over three centuries.
By comparison, the French Cartesian approach, although deeply flawed, has fared marginally better. The Leibnizian outlook has fared best, even though undercut by the most difficult of circumstances.
This may be at least one of the reasons why mass gullibility in regard to 9/11 has been the greatest in the English-speaking world, while France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and other nations have all had either a best-selling book and/or a prime time nationwide television program devoted to a serious critique of 9/11.
What we need to remember is that if Plato's cave were to be depicted for the modern world, it would have an endless video tape of the events of 9/11 projected on the rock face in front of the fettered cave inmates.
By comparison, the French Cartesian approach, although deeply flawed, has fared marginally better. The Leibnizian outlook has fared best, even though undercut by the most difficult of circumstances.
This may be at least one of the reasons why mass gullibility in regard to 9/11 has been the greatest in the English-speaking world, while France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and other nations have all had either a best-selling book and/or a prime time nationwide television program devoted to a serious critique of 9/11.
What we need to remember is that if Plato's cave were to be depicted for the modern world, it would have an endless video tape of the events of 9/11 projected on the rock face in front of the fettered cave inmates.
Our thesis here is that the 9/11 myth represents a form of mass schizophrenia. It was designed in this form by the terrorist controllers, far from any Afghan caves, who actually planned and executed this project. The schizophrenia of the 9/11 myth is congenial to the mental outlook of Bush and the neocons, who have been the most energetic propagators of the myth.
The mass broadcasting of the myth as a compulsory article of faith by numerous important institutions has clearly induced a schizophrenic shift in the collective psychology of the US population, and may well be generating individual cases of schizophrenia at an accelerated rate.
Something in this direction has been suggested by Dr. John Gray, the celebrated author of Men are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, in his remarks to the International Inquiry on 9-11 held in Toronto at the end of May 2004.
The mass broadcasting of the myth as a compulsory article of faith by numerous important institutions has clearly induced a schizophrenic shift in the collective psychology of the US population, and may well be generating individual cases of schizophrenia at an accelerated rate.
Something in this direction has been suggested by Dr. John Gray, the celebrated author of Men are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, in his remarks to the International Inquiry on 9-11 held in Toronto at the end of May 2004.
The purpose of terrorism, of course, includes terror -- the chilling effect of fear which has already heavily impacted political speech, trade union militancy, and intellectual life. This is so obvious that it hardly needs to be commented upon.
As all those who lived through it can remember, the shock of 9/11 was profound, and successfully paralyzed whatever real political life there was in the U.S. for more than two years, certainly until the Democratic primary contest began to heat up towards the end of 2003. The Democratic Party collapsed during 2002, and it is not clear that it has recovered to this day.
As all those who lived through it can remember, the shock of 9/11 was profound, and successfully paralyzed whatever real political life there was in the U.S. for more than two years, certainly until the Democratic primary contest began to heat up towards the end of 2003. The Democratic Party collapsed during 2002, and it is not clear that it has recovered to this day.
According to the distinguished psychoanalyst Dr. Justin A. Frank, M.D., Bush functions as a highly effective purveyor of fear and terror because he is gripped by real fear in his own subconscious.
One cause of Bush's fear is the disintegration of his own personality, which is never far away. In this regard, Bush's "tightly held belief system shields him from challenges to his ideas -- from critics and opponents, but, more importantly, from himself. Just beneath the surface, it's hard not to believe that he suffers from an innate fear of falling apart, a fear too terrifying for him to confront .... He's appeared close to falling apart in public repeatedly; after wandering off the track while speaking, his statements disintegrate into often meaningless fragments until he finds his way, ends the discussion, or attacks the questioner." (Frank 64)
In Frank's view, Bush also fears retribution, something which the public might associate with his fear of a Nuremburg prosecution for his crimes in the Iraq war, but which at a deeper level certainly involves 9/11 in some form: "the terror of which [Bush] promises to rid the world is in fact a different fear altogether: his intractable dread of his own individual punishment. And now that Bush has, in his grandiose imagination, identified himself with the entire nation, the nation has become the target for the personal retribution he feels is his due." (Frank 100)
This would suggest that Bush's internal guilt, anxiety and stress may well have increased sharply in the wake of 9/11, and of Iraq. Dr. Frank's study Bush on the Couch, although eminently useful in many respects, does not discuss the evolution of Bush's pathologies over time, as for example in relation to the history of his administration. Frank also avoids the obvious implications of his findings for 9/11, which he seems to find too hot to handle.
One cause of Bush's fear is the disintegration of his own personality, which is never far away. In this regard, Bush's "tightly held belief system shields him from challenges to his ideas -- from critics and opponents, but, more importantly, from himself. Just beneath the surface, it's hard not to believe that he suffers from an innate fear of falling apart, a fear too terrifying for him to confront .... He's appeared close to falling apart in public repeatedly; after wandering off the track while speaking, his statements disintegrate into often meaningless fragments until he finds his way, ends the discussion, or attacks the questioner." (Frank 64)
In Frank's view, Bush also fears retribution, something which the public might associate with his fear of a Nuremburg prosecution for his crimes in the Iraq war, but which at a deeper level certainly involves 9/11 in some form: "the terror of which [Bush] promises to rid the world is in fact a different fear altogether: his intractable dread of his own individual punishment. And now that Bush has, in his grandiose imagination, identified himself with the entire nation, the nation has become the target for the personal retribution he feels is his due." (Frank 100)
This would suggest that Bush's internal guilt, anxiety and stress may well have increased sharply in the wake of 9/11, and of Iraq. Dr. Frank's study Bush on the Couch, although eminently useful in many respects, does not discuss the evolution of Bush's pathologies over time, as for example in relation to the history of his administration. Frank also avoids the obvious implications of his findings for 9/11, which he seems to find too hot to handle.
At its root, the belief structure of the 9/11 myth is not a factual account of an historical, real-world event. Still less is it an example of euhemerism, in which real events are preserved in more or less distorted mythical form. The 9/11 myth is rather a collective psychosis of a paranoid schizophrenic type. Let us explore for a moment what this might mean.
What is now referred to as schizophrenia was formerly known as dementia praecox; the change in terminology is due to Eugen Bleuler, who used it to describe not so much a split personality as a lack of coordination among various psychological functions.
Bleuler was also the first to speak of the special quality of schizoid thinking, which he called autistic.
Simple schizophrenia is marked by a reduction in external relations and interests; this may include a lack of curiosity.
"Emotions are lacking in depth; ideation is simple and refers to concrete things ... and a retreat to simpler or stereotyped forms of behavior."
Paranoid schizophrenia generally occurs in later life, and "is characterized primarily by unrealistic, illogical thinking, with delusions of persecution or grandeur, and often by hallucinations."
In psychoanalysis, the description of schizophrenia emphasizes "regressive symptoms," seen as "a retreat to less mature levels of the ego (the reality-testing portion of the psyche)," along with attempts to replace the existing world, from which the patient has retreated, by such phenomena as hallucinations, delusions, fantasies of world reconstruction, and peculiarities of language." (Silvano Arieti, "Schizophrenia," Encyclopedia Britannica, 1971) The points of contact with Bush as the chief 9/11 fear-monger, and with the 9/11 myth, are manifold.
What is now referred to as schizophrenia was formerly known as dementia praecox; the change in terminology is due to Eugen Bleuler, who used it to describe not so much a split personality as a lack of coordination among various psychological functions.
Bleuler was also the first to speak of the special quality of schizoid thinking, which he called autistic.
Simple schizophrenia is marked by a reduction in external relations and interests; this may include a lack of curiosity.
"Emotions are lacking in depth; ideation is simple and refers to concrete things ... and a retreat to simpler or stereotyped forms of behavior."
Paranoid schizophrenia generally occurs in later life, and "is characterized primarily by unrealistic, illogical thinking, with delusions of persecution or grandeur, and often by hallucinations."
In psychoanalysis, the description of schizophrenia emphasizes "regressive symptoms," seen as "a retreat to less mature levels of the ego (the reality-testing portion of the psyche)," along with attempts to replace the existing world, from which the patient has retreated, by such phenomena as hallucinations, delusions, fantasies of world reconstruction, and peculiarities of language." (Silvano Arieti, "Schizophrenia," Encyclopedia Britannica, 1971) The points of contact with Bush as the chief 9/11 fear-monger, and with the 9/11 myth, are manifold.
In this context, neocon utopian thinking, with its explicit "fantasies of world reconstruction," can be seen as a step towards schizophrenic thinking. One is reminded of the comments of retired Army Colonel Larry Wilkerson, who was serving as Colin Powell's chief of staff in the State Department, apropos of certain leading neocons. "I call them utopians," Wilkerson told a reporter. "I don't care whether utopians are Vladimir Lenin on a sealed train to Moscow or Paul Wolfowitz. Utopians, I don't like. You're never going to bring utopia, and you 're going to hurt a lot of people in the process of trying to do it." Wilkerson added that he had "a lot of reservations about people who have never been in the face of battle, so to speak, who are making cavalier decisions about sending men and women out to die. A person who comes to mind in that regard is Richard Perle, who, thank God, tendered his resignation and no longer will be even a semiofficial person in this administration. Richard Perle's cavalier remarks about doing this or doing that with regard to military force always, always troubled me." (Washington Post, May 5, 2004)
Thus, it is the mythographers and myth-mongers -- those who love to brand critics and skeptics as paranoids -- who are really the psychopaths. Chief among these is of course Bush 43 himself, who has functioned as the leading propagandist of the 9/11 myth, from a few days after 9/11 through the 2004 Republican National Convention and his fall re-election campaign.
The thesis of this chapter is the existence of a destructive dialectic between the mass psychosis of 9/11 and the personal psychopathologies of Bush as a media presence. In this dialectical relationship, the mass psychosis and the individual pathologies of the (apparent) ruler become each other's simultaneous cause and effect. To make this clearer, let us turn to a discussion of the paranoid personality written twenty-five years before Bush became a fixture on the national scene: "The person most vulnerable to a persecutory paranoid state is the tense, insecure, suspicious person who has little basic trust in other persons, who has always found it difficult to confide in others, tends to be secretive, usually has few close friends, and is addicted to solitary rumination. These characteristics are sometimes hidden behind a facade of superficial sociability and talkativeness. Above all, there is a rigidity about such a person's thinking which becomes most obvious when he is under emotional stress. This may give an impression of certainty and self-assurance, but actually it is based upon profound insecurity, upon a need to be dogmatic because of an inability to tolerate suspended judgment." (Norman Alexander Cameron, "Paranoid Reactions," Encyclopedia Britannica, 1971 )
The thesis of this chapter is the existence of a destructive dialectic between the mass psychosis of 9/11 and the personal psychopathologies of Bush as a media presence. In this dialectical relationship, the mass psychosis and the individual pathologies of the (apparent) ruler become each other's simultaneous cause and effect. To make this clearer, let us turn to a discussion of the paranoid personality written twenty-five years before Bush became a fixture on the national scene: "The person most vulnerable to a persecutory paranoid state is the tense, insecure, suspicious person who has little basic trust in other persons, who has always found it difficult to confide in others, tends to be secretive, usually has few close friends, and is addicted to solitary rumination. These characteristics are sometimes hidden behind a facade of superficial sociability and talkativeness. Above all, there is a rigidity about such a person's thinking which becomes most obvious when he is under emotional stress. This may give an impression of certainty and self-assurance, but actually it is based upon profound insecurity, upon a need to be dogmatic because of an inability to tolerate suspended judgment." (Norman Alexander Cameron, "Paranoid Reactions," Encyclopedia Britannica, 1971 )
This reads like a psychological profile of George W. Bush, and is coherent with the lucid analysis of Bush's mentality given by Dr. Justin Frank in his recent Bush on the Couch. Frank describes Bush as a megalomaniac operating behind the hail-fellow-well-met affability of a small-town philistine booster of the Babbitt type. According to Frank, "a careful consideration of the evidence suggests that behind Bush's affable exterior operates a powerful but obscure delusional system that drives his behavior. The most precise psychiatric term to describe his pathology is most frequently used to identify a particular condition exhibited by schizophrenics that, as we'll see, has broader applications as well: megalomania. The psychological concept of megalomania refers as much to a mental attitude as to actual behavioral manifestations .... Freud calls megalomania a protective delusion of power and greatness that serves as a defense against fear, against paranoid anxieties." (Frank 200-201)
Bush is thus that type of schizophrenic called a megalomaniac, and the 9/11 myth to which he has devoted his life is entirely coherent with his mentality.
The 9/11 myth is in fact a massive attempt to impose schizophrenic and autistic thinking on the entire American and world public.
This may explain why those who wish to rebel against the myth often tend to insist that Bush (or Cheney) had to have planned and directed every aspect of 9/11 personally and in advance. Even though Bush's limited mental equipment seems to rule this out, this reaction is humanly understandable, since Bush has been beyond any doubt the main propagandist of the 9/11 myth. So, to destroy the myth, it is often seen as necessary to blame the mythograph. The extent of Bush's actual responsibility is discussed elsewhere in this book, where it is asserted that Bush was probably not informed of the details in advance, but certainly embraced the demands of the perpetrators soon after the fact. In this sense, the insistence on blaming Bush is justified as a matter of political shorthand, if not of precise analysis and historical fact.
Dr. Frank writes about Bush 41's favorite technique of "evacuating" his fear onto the U.S. population, both for his own relief and better to terrorize the electorate. He also discusses Bush 43's penchant for projection. Here is another passage from the earlier discussion of this complex: "The paranoid patient gets rid of his intolerable sense of guilt through unconscious mechanisms of denial and projection. He denies his primitive hostile or erotic impulses and projects them -- that is, he ascribes them to other persons. Projection is rarely done at random. Usually the patient unwittingly selects, as the alleged carriers of his own impulses and his own guilt, persons who have correspondingly minimal unconscious trends." (Norman Alexander Cameron, "Paranoid Reactions," Encyclopedia Britannica, 1971)
This fits well with what Dr. Franks writes about projection in Bush 43:
Projection for Frank is "the primitive defense mechanism by which an individual endows others with his own negative attributes." (Frank 152)
Applying this to the tenant of the White House, Frank finds that, "incapable of safely confronting the true extent of his own sadism, Bush had to project his sadism onto an enemy of his own creation -- one he entered the White House ready to demonize and destroy; one whose annihilation would serve to protect his own fragile, deluded sense of self."(Frank 115)
As always, Frank is talking about Iraq, but, like most of his analysis, this applies just as well to Bin Laden and al Qaeda as it does to Saddam.
No thinking person can fail to have been impressed by the degree to which Bush, in his attempt to demonize Saddam Hussein, engaged in self-description. Saddam, Bush alleged, was an oppressor, a violator of international law, a leader in contempt of the international community, an aggressor -- all accusations which applied just as well or better to Bush himself.
Joseph Gabel's comment is highly relevant: "... racist regimes, being generally insensitive to humor ... are, by contrast, keen on caricature, mainly in its crude forms ... The caricaturist, without realizing it, is really drawing himself ... Clearly the caricaturist sees his own essence. In this category of ideas, one could say that the sociocentric and ethnocentric caricature is the deranged perception of false consciousness." (Gabel 123-4 note)
Frank calls attention to Bush's tendency for projection and description in regard to Saddam Hussein, although the same dynamics are at work in the portrayal of Bin Laden. According to Franks, "none of this has gone unnoticed by the public. Indeed, the pronounced parallels between Bush and Saddam may well have promoted a wider understanding of Bush's destructive self rather than hiding it. As suggested by the many circulating photos of Bush's face digitally merged with Saddam's image -- a computer trick that reveals a dramatic pictorial understanding of the process of projection -- satirists instinctively understand that there is a pot-calling-the- kettle-black aspect to the showdown between Bush and Saddam." (Frank 116) And, more to the point, between Bush and the supposed authors of the 9/11 attacks.
Part of Bush's guilt is almost certainly the fact that, while he probably was not aware of the full 9/11 plot before the fact, he became aware of most of it after that fact, most likely during the course of the day on September 11. Bush was the recipient of an ultimatum by the rogue network inside the US government which carried out the attacks, an ultimatum demanding that he go on television and denounce foreign terrorists for the attacks, and then proceed to implicate Bin Laden, al Qaeda, Afghanistan, and to wage the war of civilizations against the Arab and Moslem world which the plotters evidently desired. For these reasons, Bush's burden of guilt and dissembling must be very heavy indeed.
So much for preliminaries. When we enter the world of the 9/11 myth, we find ourselves on the terrain of mass psychosis, mass hallucination, mass delusion. The twentieth century has shown how powerful these ideological figments can be. This book proceeds from the standpoint of Platonic idealism; a Marxist might say that with 9/11, we enter the world of radically false consciousness, where the superstructure has become completely detached from social and material reality in a way that Marx never contemplated in his writings.
A suggestive study that addresses precisely this complex of problems is Joseph Gabel's 1975 False Consciousness: An Essay on Reification. Gabel sees reification (hypostatization) as the making of people, ideas, and time into things. His point of departure is the gross fact of mass belief in ideological chimeras, specifically Nazi and Stalinist ideology. The 9/11 myth is of a piece with these.
Gabel elaborates a lengthy definition of the political world view which is correlated with alienated and manipulated political life under the rule of schizophrenic/autistic ideologies which exhibit a low degree of fidelity to reality. Gabel called this the "police concept of history;" if he were writing today, he might well have called it the intelligence community or CIA theory of history.
Gabel writes: "The police concept of history is the negation of the historical dialectic, in other words the negation of history .... History's driving force is not the ensemble of objective forces but good or evil individual action ... since the 'event' is no longer understood as the normal substratum of the course of History, but as miracle or catastrophe; it is no longer dependent on scientific explanation but on black or white magic. In the Manichean diptych of this view, the hero (leader) and the traitor represent two poles of the same principle of reificational negation of the autonomy of history. It is therefore a pseudo-history, a non-dialectical result either of success due to the genius of the leader or failure explicable through treason; an authentic 'syndrome of external action' permits the privileged system to evade eventual responsibility. The police concept of history represents the extreme form of political alienation; it is both a sociocentrism which dichotomizes the world into a privileged system [the US] and a non-privileged remainder [the Arab and Islamic world] and a phenomenon of consciousness of a schizophrenic nature. Since the privileged system is considered as perfect, extra-temporal and extra-dialectical, the event -- particularly the unfavorable event -- can only be explained by means of external action; it is experienced as an unexpected, 'undeserved' catastrophe, which is no longer integrated into the normal course of events whose succession constitutes the threat of concrete, dialectical temporality. One can compare this ensemble with the two specific elements in the clinical picture of schizophrenia, the syndrome of external action and the deranged experience of the end of the world (Weltuntergangserlebnis, abbreviated as WUE by German authors), the clinical translation of the appearance of the dialectic in a reified world which can accept the event only as a catastrophe." (Gabel 115-116, with my interpolations)
Gabel writes: "The police concept of history is the negation of the historical dialectic, in other words the negation of history .... History's driving force is not the ensemble of objective forces but good or evil individual action ... since the 'event' is no longer understood as the normal substratum of the course of History, but as miracle or catastrophe; it is no longer dependent on scientific explanation but on black or white magic. In the Manichean diptych of this view, the hero (leader) and the traitor represent two poles of the same principle of reificational negation of the autonomy of history. It is therefore a pseudo-history, a non-dialectical result either of success due to the genius of the leader or failure explicable through treason; an authentic 'syndrome of external action' permits the privileged system to evade eventual responsibility. The police concept of history represents the extreme form of political alienation; it is both a sociocentrism which dichotomizes the world into a privileged system [the US] and a non-privileged remainder [the Arab and Islamic world] and a phenomenon of consciousness of a schizophrenic nature. Since the privileged system is considered as perfect, extra-temporal and extra-dialectical, the event -- particularly the unfavorable event -- can only be explained by means of external action; it is experienced as an unexpected, 'undeserved' catastrophe, which is no longer integrated into the normal course of events whose succession constitutes the threat of concrete, dialectical temporality. One can compare this ensemble with the two specific elements in the clinical picture of schizophrenia, the syndrome of external action and the deranged experience of the end of the world (Weltuntergangserlebnis, abbreviated as WUE by German authors), the clinical translation of the appearance of the dialectic in a reified world which can accept the event only as a catastrophe." (Gabel 115-116, with my interpolations)
Here we have the principal elements or memes of the 9/11 myth in a clinical description a quarter century before the fact. The event has nothing to do with real historical forces. The realities of world commodity flows and of the world financial system in particular go out the window.
Bin Laden and al Qaeda provide a deus ex machina of absolute evil and black magic. 9/11 is the undeserved catastrophe or WUE, experienced as a nightmare out of the blue. In order for such notions to gain mass acceptance, the American ideology had to already have traveled a considerable distance down the road towards schizophrenia and autism, and such mass acceptance has in turn further accelerated that descent. For Gabel, schizophrenia is a loss of contact with reality and with history.
His definition of schizophrenia depends heavily on the notion that, for the schizophrenic, development over time has become incomprehensible, while relations in space have become all-important. In space we can often choose to move, but time does not permit this.
Therefore there is a close relationship between a radically anti-historical view of the world, as for example among the neocons and the Bush regime, and the syndromes of clinical schizophrenia, prominent among whose symptoms Gabel sees morbid rationalism, understood as a weak hold on reality: "In the light of recent work, schizophrenia appears as a loss of the sense of personal history, and psychotherapy therefore consists of a reconstruction of the totality of the person with a reintegration into history. From the viewpoint of the investigator the schizophrenic loss of the historico-dialectical perception of reality can be seen in the form of a preponderance of the spatial factor or as a loss of experienced time: as over-spatialization or as sub-temporalization." (Gabel 116) Gabel's work here dovetails with that of Frank, who points to Bush 43's notorious refusal to discuss the details of his youthful debauchery before the age of about 40. It is as if these episodes were repressed and no longer accessible to memory -- at least, in Bush's own propaganda patter.
Frank is certainly on firm ground when he points to the fundamentalist belief structure of Bush and of so much of his base as representing a rejection of human history, personal history, and of natural history as well: "Just as fundamentalist creationist teachings deny history, the fundamentalist notion of conversion or rebirth encourages the believer to see himself as disconnected from history. George W. Bush's evasive, self-serving defense of his life before he was born again displays just this tendency. To the believer, the power of spiritual absolution not only erases the sins of the past, but divorces the current self from the historical sinner." (Frank 59- 60)
Therefore there is a close relationship between a radically anti-historical view of the world, as for example among the neocons and the Bush regime, and the syndromes of clinical schizophrenia, prominent among whose symptoms Gabel sees morbid rationalism, understood as a weak hold on reality: "In the light of recent work, schizophrenia appears as a loss of the sense of personal history, and psychotherapy therefore consists of a reconstruction of the totality of the person with a reintegration into history. From the viewpoint of the investigator the schizophrenic loss of the historico-dialectical perception of reality can be seen in the form of a preponderance of the spatial factor or as a loss of experienced time: as over-spatialization or as sub-temporalization." (Gabel 116) Gabel's work here dovetails with that of Frank, who points to Bush 43's notorious refusal to discuss the details of his youthful debauchery before the age of about 40. It is as if these episodes were repressed and no longer accessible to memory -- at least, in Bush's own propaganda patter.
Frank is certainly on firm ground when he points to the fundamentalist belief structure of Bush and of so much of his base as representing a rejection of human history, personal history, and of natural history as well: "Just as fundamentalist creationist teachings deny history, the fundamentalist notion of conversion or rebirth encourages the believer to see himself as disconnected from history. George W. Bush's evasive, self-serving defense of his life before he was born again displays just this tendency. To the believer, the power of spiritual absolution not only erases the sins of the past, but divorces the current self from the historical sinner." (Frank 59- 60)
A vital part of the WUE brought about inside the perfect system by evil forces is that these evil forces are axiomatically seen as coming from outside of that perfect system.
Evil is always external, never home grown, as it was for the racist southern sheriff who thought that all racial tensions were the work of outside agitators. "The result is that when the evidence of the historicity of existence forces itself on the misoneism [hatred of change] of reified consciousness, it appears as an unexpected catastrophe, inexplicable and often attributed therefore to external action ....
For sociocentrism, the privileged system being perfect, any change (particularly any unfavorable change) is the work of external maleficent powers." (Gabel 288 and note) Gerhard Wisnewski has related this idea most directly to 9/11. As Wisnewski points out, "from outside" is the central slogan of the official version of 9/11. "The impression is produced that the perpetrators came 'from outside': from outside of the building, from outside of America, even from outside civilization. The official version of these events screams 'outside, outside, outside.'" (Wisnewski 143)
Evil is always external, never home grown, as it was for the racist southern sheriff who thought that all racial tensions were the work of outside agitators. "The result is that when the evidence of the historicity of existence forces itself on the misoneism [hatred of change] of reified consciousness, it appears as an unexpected catastrophe, inexplicable and often attributed therefore to external action ....
For sociocentrism, the privileged system being perfect, any change (particularly any unfavorable change) is the work of external maleficent powers." (Gabel 288 and note) Gerhard Wisnewski has related this idea most directly to 9/11. As Wisnewski points out, "from outside" is the central slogan of the official version of 9/11. "The impression is produced that the perpetrators came 'from outside': from outside of the building, from outside of America, even from outside civilization. The official version of these events screams 'outside, outside, outside.'" (Wisnewski 143)
In a world axiomatically defined by terrorism, the Manichean outlook seems destined always to win out. Sanguinetti saw something similar in Italy at the beginning of the strategy of tension:
"In view of terrorism presented as absolute evil, evil in itself and for itself: all the other evils fade in to the background and are even forgotten; since the fight against terrorism coincides with the common interest, it already is the general good, and the State, which magnanimously conducts it, is good in itself and for itself.
Without the wickedness of the devil, God's infinite bounty could not appear and be appreciated as is fitting." (Sanguinetti 3)
Gabel insists again and again on the key role played by the loss of the historical dimension, and it is clear that this problem was shared by twentieth-century America with Nazi Germany and with Soviet Russia. Anglo-American propaganda exhibits an overwhelming tendency to demonize enemy leaders: Noriega, Milosevic, Bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein are notable examples, but the tendency goes back to Kaiser Wilhelm at the very least. Today the explicit speech of propaganda is conducted on the overtly infantile plane: we hear of good guys and bad guys, of bad actors, and most of all of terrorists. Gabel writes: "For Gabel, this is another symptom of reification (hypostatization): "As a prisoner of a universe where space takes the place of duration, man in the reified world cannot understand history as the expression of creativity and spontaneity. Consequently the undeniable fact of change forces itself on this 'consciousness of immediacy' as a catastrophe, as a sudden change coming from the outside that excludes mediation. ...Seen in this perspective, history appears as a function of demiurgic action. An external force (God, the hero, a party) transcends the efficiency of its autonomous dialectic. Reified consciousness is essentially ahistorical: mens momentanea seu carens recordatione,' [a mind in the moment, or lacking memory] said Leibniz on this subject." (Gabel 151)
Here is history reduced to a fairy tale, with the cocaine-abusing, alcoholic, mentally-impaired Bush as the hero of the good, and the rich, misfit, raving ideologue Bin Laden as the champion of evil. How can hundreds of millions of people believe in such a product?
Here is history reduced to a fairy tale, with the cocaine-abusing, alcoholic, mentally-impaired Bush as the hero of the good, and the rich, misfit, raving ideologue Bin Laden as the champion of evil. How can hundreds of millions of people believe in such a product?
Gabel discusses the stress on biological heredity and race as one of the leading anti-historical features of the Nazi outlook, and there is evidence that Hitler was also well aware of this. Gabel points out that Nazi ideology, with its glorification of race and biology, was marked by "morbid rationalism in its worst form."
Gabel argues that "any unfavorable event for this racial pseudo-value is itself extra-historicized and 'understood' in terms of treason or conspiracy:the ideology of national socialism is logically inseparable from the theory of the 'stab in the back."' (Gabel 117)
If fascism comes to the United States, it is now certain that its ideology will prominently feature the 9/11 events as a stab in the back to a benefactor by an ungrateful and treacherous outside world; fascist neocons are already spouting this point of view.
Ironically, the German request for an armistice in 1918, which Hitler later condemned as a stab in the back by Social Democratic politicians, was actually the work of Field Marshal Ludendorff and other future backers of Hitler. As for 9/11, which Bush blames on the Arab and Moslem world, it too had some of its main backers inside the US military and intelligence services.
Gabel argues that "any unfavorable event for this racial pseudo-value is itself extra-historicized and 'understood' in terms of treason or conspiracy:the ideology of national socialism is logically inseparable from the theory of the 'stab in the back."' (Gabel 117)
If fascism comes to the United States, it is now certain that its ideology will prominently feature the 9/11 events as a stab in the back to a benefactor by an ungrateful and treacherous outside world; fascist neocons are already spouting this point of view.
Ironically, the German request for an armistice in 1918, which Hitler later condemned as a stab in the back by Social Democratic politicians, was actually the work of Field Marshal Ludendorff and other future backers of Hitler. As for 9/11, which Bush blames on the Arab and Moslem world, it too had some of its main backers inside the US military and intelligence services.
Frank sees Bush's paranoid schizophrenic hostility to real historical processes reflected in some well-known aspects of his bureaucratic methods. One is his insistence on absolute, unquestioning loyalty on the part of his underlings: "Like the alcoholic father who is threatened by the independence of his family members, Bush demands absolute loyalty and conformity, trying to freeze his national family in time. ..." (Frank 46) For Frank, Bush has no use for history in any form; he remarks, "with a president who refuses to view history as anything but an enemy he cannot afford to acknowledge or engage, it's impossible not to wonder what painful lessons of history we may be doomed to repeat." (Frank 161)
One way of denying historical reality is to wipe out the past; another is to insist that the leading delusion of one's own time is destined to last forever. The Nazis did this in one way, Bush in another: "the historical time of national socialism was dominated ... by the chimerical hope of an empty eternity" -- there was the promise of a thousand year Reich, sometimes escalated to 20,000 years of Nazi world domination. (Gabel 134) For Bush and the neocons, this has become the nightmare vision of a war against terrorism which is literally endless.
Bush's fraudulent "war on terrorism" is of course a war of civilizations directed against the 1 billion Arab and Moslem people in the world; it is more hypocritical than Hitlerism because it assiduously denies its own real content.
In reality, the "war on terrorism" is a racist war against Arabs and Moslems today, with China and perhaps Russia as candidates for all-out attack at some later time. From time to time the real essence explodes to the surface, as in Bush's call for a crusade, or in General Boykin's comments on satanic Islam. Neocon radio talk show hosts like Michael Savage are more explicit every day, and it is they who service the belief structure of Bush's hard-core followers.
Gabel sees racism as another denial of reality and history: "The racist perception of human reality is schizophrenic in several ways," he observes. Gabel also detects a depersonalization of members of the targeted group, "which is reflected particularly in caricature, the strongest weapon of ethnocentrism." (Gabel 123)
In reality, the "war on terrorism" is a racist war against Arabs and Moslems today, with China and perhaps Russia as candidates for all-out attack at some later time. From time to time the real essence explodes to the surface, as in Bush's call for a crusade, or in General Boykin's comments on satanic Islam. Neocon radio talk show hosts like Michael Savage are more explicit every day, and it is they who service the belief structure of Bush's hard-core followers.
Gabel sees racism as another denial of reality and history: "The racist perception of human reality is schizophrenic in several ways," he observes. Gabel also detects a depersonalization of members of the targeted group, "which is reflected particularly in caricature, the strongest weapon of ethnocentrism." (Gabel 123)
In Bush's fear-mongering oratory, the denial of reality is so great that it often approaches the qualities of hallucination, and sometimes enters into that domain. "It will be admitted that there exists a certain analogy between hallucinatory consciousness which, in its demand for homogeneity, is forced to alienate in a hallucinatory form the tendencies that it no longer manages to organize in a concrete totality, and, on the other hand, reified political consciousness which, in its postulate of political homogeneity -- a postulate which the totalitarian state tries to put into practice -- attributes to the foreigner (in the widest sense of the term, implying also political heterodoxy) facts for which a simple dialectical consideration of reality would permit a rational explanation to be given." (Gabel 279-280)
Frank connects this to the hatred of the lawful character of reality, which we see manifested in Bush -- who loves to live outside the law as an individual, from his drunk driving arrests through his National Guard shenanigans to his illegal election -- and in the neocons -- who hate the very concept of international law: "Wilfred R. Bion points out that the part of the personality that hates internal law -- the laws of reality, of time, of responsibility, of loss -- hates external reality as well. It attacks links made in the mind, undermining the capacity to think and organize that comes from facing reality and its limitations. Living outside the law of mature responsibility becomes both the midwife of omnipotent fantasy and the mortician of the capacity to think." (Frank 89)
Frank connects this to the hatred of the lawful character of reality, which we see manifested in Bush -- who loves to live outside the law as an individual, from his drunk driving arrests through his National Guard shenanigans to his illegal election -- and in the neocons -- who hate the very concept of international law: "Wilfred R. Bion points out that the part of the personality that hates internal law -- the laws of reality, of time, of responsibility, of loss -- hates external reality as well. It attacks links made in the mind, undermining the capacity to think and organize that comes from facing reality and its limitations. Living outside the law of mature responsibility becomes both the midwife of omnipotent fantasy and the mortician of the capacity to think." (Frank 89)
Bush boasts about his own penchant for seeing the world in black and white, as a single Manichean opposition of good and evil, with no nuances or gray areas. As Frank notes, "there are no shades of gray in this fight for civilization .... Either you're with the United States of America, or you're against the United States of America." (Frank 13)
Gabel saw the same phenomenon in the Nazis: "By virtue of the implicit Manichean postulate of ideological thought, the enemies of enemies so often enjoy an undeserved favorable prejudice; for the political Manichean one is either "with us or against us," as Bush constantly repeats. (Gabel 97 note)
Gabel saw the same phenomenon in the Nazis: "By virtue of the implicit Manichean postulate of ideological thought, the enemies of enemies so often enjoy an undeserved favorable prejudice; for the political Manichean one is either "with us or against us," as Bush constantly repeats. (Gabel 97 note)
Many have noted the primitive and childish quality of the Bush/neocon analysis, with its mindless parroting about good guys and bad guys. Bush's oratory also shares another key feature of the infantile mind -- egocentrism, or the tendency to see large and distant events as having been caused by ones own petty actions. This is exemplified by the suburbanite who thinks that getting the car washed will make the rain come down. After 9/11, Bush notoriously divided the world into terrorist bad guys and pro-American good guys. He insisted, in other words, that the world should be forever organized around this single event.
Gabel shows that adult egocentrism and schizophrenia go together: "A zoologist who, having been successively bitten by a dog and a cat, used as a scientific concept 'the animal species which bites zoologists' would be guilty of false egocentric identification ... False identification is an important aspect of the anti-dialectical structure of ideologies and, at the same time, a valued technique of economy of effort for propaganda." (Gabel 92)
What egocentrism represents in the stunted individual, ethnocentrism accomplishes for the sick society. Think of Bush's Post-9/11 axis of evil, composed of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Yet, there had been no rogue states' summit to sign a treaty of alliance among these three. Iraq and Iran had been enemies, and North Korea, a true hermit kingdom, lived in its own isolation. Yet, Bush insisted like a small child in defining the three exclusively in relation to himself -- within, it should go without saying, a universe of discourse already defined by the 9/11 myth. Once again, Gabel described something similar under the Nazis.
Under the Nazi regime, "the non-German world seems to a large extent to have been interpreted in terms of the postulate that the enemy world was homogeneous. This was less because of a working hypothesis about propaganda than ideological convictions of a delirious nature." (Gabel 120) The Nazis portrayed a world of capitalists, Bolsheviks, and Jews who were all mythically united in their hatred for Germany.
Gabel shows that adult egocentrism and schizophrenia go together: "A zoologist who, having been successively bitten by a dog and a cat, used as a scientific concept 'the animal species which bites zoologists' would be guilty of false egocentric identification ... False identification is an important aspect of the anti-dialectical structure of ideologies and, at the same time, a valued technique of economy of effort for propaganda." (Gabel 92)
What egocentrism represents in the stunted individual, ethnocentrism accomplishes for the sick society. Think of Bush's Post-9/11 axis of evil, composed of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Yet, there had been no rogue states' summit to sign a treaty of alliance among these three. Iraq and Iran had been enemies, and North Korea, a true hermit kingdom, lived in its own isolation. Yet, Bush insisted like a small child in defining the three exclusively in relation to himself -- within, it should go without saying, a universe of discourse already defined by the 9/11 myth. Once again, Gabel described something similar under the Nazis.
Under the Nazi regime, "the non-German world seems to a large extent to have been interpreted in terms of the postulate that the enemy world was homogeneous. This was less because of a working hypothesis about propaganda than ideological convictions of a delirious nature." (Gabel 120) The Nazis portrayed a world of capitalists, Bolsheviks, and Jews who were all mythically united in their hatred for Germany.
Although often couched in religious terms, the neocon ideology is close not only to that of the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt, but also to that of the Nazi sociologist Gumplowitz, whose major work was devoted to the conflict of the races. This is also not far from Huntington's clash of civilizations. In each of these cases, history is dominated by mythical entities. We think of the Cambone-Boykin-Geoffrey Miller axis in the Pentagon and US Army; Boykin was responsible for a raving declaration that his Christian God is stronger than the God of Islam, and that Islam is satanic. In reality, Boykin knows nothing of universal Christianity, and the god he worships is between totem and Mammon. Schizophrenic personalities like Boykin and Miller (a member of the sinister religious sect called The Fellowship) were observed to have been over-represented among the personnel of the Nazi concentration camps. The same would appear to be the case among the Bush administration; Cambone, Boykin, and Miller have become the architects of the gulag that stretches from Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib to the system of illegal CIA secret dungeons and illegal ghost prisoners reported to be operating in numerous countries.
Frank notes that "the eminent psychoanalyst Vamik Volkan has written that we need an enemy to rally the community around a 'chosen trauma.' Almost immediately after 9/11, Bush began speaking of the war, in grandiose terms, as a kind of epic and eternal struggle .... Making the war against terrorism perennial keeps him in power, by keeping the terror externalized." (Frank 98)
Although Frank hesitates to say so, 9/11 is obviously the chosen trauma.
Frank notes that "the eminent psychoanalyst Vamik Volkan has written that we need an enemy to rally the community around a 'chosen trauma.' Almost immediately after 9/11, Bush began speaking of the war, in grandiose terms, as a kind of epic and eternal struggle .... Making the war against terrorism perennial keeps him in power, by keeping the terror externalized." (Frank 98)
Although Frank hesitates to say so, 9/11 is obviously the chosen trauma.
Bush has spoken of his own role in regard to 9/11 and Iraq as a divine mission assigned to him by God; especially chilling was his remark that he did not consult his own father before the aggression against Iraq, but did consult his "higher father." Here we have the image of the hero who goes forth on a divine quest to hold back the forces of chaos and the WUE. As Frank reminds us, "Bush has always been surprisingly explicit in declaring that he sees himself on a mission from God, and it is his belief in that divine assignment in which we see the most potent combination of politics, psychology, and faith at work." (Frank 71)
For Gabel, this notion of a divine mission is an integral part of the schizophrenic misperception of historical change in the real world. Gabel links "the syndrome of external action and the deranged experience of the end of the world....
Consequently, when the event forces itself into reified consciousness, the latter makes this evident through a double technique of partial obscuration: from the point of view of causal explanation it interprets it as the act of an external power; on the level of lived experience it experiences it either as a catastrophe or, on the contrary, as a sudden significant (and always heteronomic) irruption into the axiological void [vacuum of values] of the world itself: a divine mission.
In short, like a manic crisis, the WUE is an axiological crisis, a sort of storm of values on the boundaries of two atmospheres of different axiological-dialectical density .... Thus a connection is created between morbid rationalism and the phenomenon of the end of the world experience. It is as one aspect of the anti-dialectical mode of being-in-the-world that one can place the WUE in the same ambit as deranged perceptions, hallucinations, and other elements of sub-realist experience." (Gabel 292- 93) Heteronomy is the opposite of autonomy; it is the unfree state of being controlled by outside forces, such as manipulation of the traumas of one's own past.
For Gabel, this notion of a divine mission is an integral part of the schizophrenic misperception of historical change in the real world. Gabel links "the syndrome of external action and the deranged experience of the end of the world....
Consequently, when the event forces itself into reified consciousness, the latter makes this evident through a double technique of partial obscuration: from the point of view of causal explanation it interprets it as the act of an external power; on the level of lived experience it experiences it either as a catastrophe or, on the contrary, as a sudden significant (and always heteronomic) irruption into the axiological void [vacuum of values] of the world itself: a divine mission.
In short, like a manic crisis, the WUE is an axiological crisis, a sort of storm of values on the boundaries of two atmospheres of different axiological-dialectical density .... Thus a connection is created between morbid rationalism and the phenomenon of the end of the world experience. It is as one aspect of the anti-dialectical mode of being-in-the-world that one can place the WUE in the same ambit as deranged perceptions, hallucinations, and other elements of sub-realist experience." (Gabel 292- 93) Heteronomy is the opposite of autonomy; it is the unfree state of being controlled by outside forces, such as manipulation of the traumas of one's own past.
In a striking insight, Gabel shows that the road to a thoroughly schizophrenic foreign policy is paved with ultimata. The Bushes have been prodigal with ultimata: there was one to Saddam Hussein in 1991, one to the Taliban regime in 2001, and another to Saddam in 2003. For Gabel, these come straight from the schizophrenic tool kit of projection; he says that "behavior does exist on a societal level that is phenomenologically close to the psychiatrists' 'mirror symptom' -- This is when a State -- usually totalitarian -- chooses a fictitious interlocutor in order to have an act of violence or a territorial conquest ratified in the form of a supposed negotiation. This is -- just like the clinical phenomenon in question -- an illusion of encounter with an artificial interlocutor; a behavior of schizophrenic structure." (Gabel 259)
Reagan hailed the "magic of the marketplace," obviously a very white magic. In the grim times of 9/11, Bush 43 has had to deal mostly with black magic, but there have been exceptions. One was in the dreamtime that lasted a week or two for some observers after the fall of Baghdad to the Anglo-American aggressors.
Frank is right to comment that "there's no clearer example of magical thinking than the 'Mission Accomplished' banner that served as a backdrop to Bush's flight-suit photo op on the Abraham Lincoln." (Frank 86)
The essence of magic is action at a distance, which Sir Isaac Newton unfortunately made presentable in the Anglo-American world. The official story of 9/11, with everything directed in the last analysis by Bin Laden using his laptop in the distant cave of Afghanistan, represents a thinly veiled version of magical action at a distance.
Gabel pointed out more than a quarter of a century earlier that racism too is based on a magical and irrational world outlook which "also admits fairly often the existence of action at a distance of an undeniably magico-schizophrenic nature ... this is the very definition of paranoid deranged thought ...." (Gabel 123-4)
The essence of magic is action at a distance, which Sir Isaac Newton unfortunately made presentable in the Anglo-American world. The official story of 9/11, with everything directed in the last analysis by Bin Laden using his laptop in the distant cave of Afghanistan, represents a thinly veiled version of magical action at a distance.
Gabel pointed out more than a quarter of a century earlier that racism too is based on a magical and irrational world outlook which "also admits fairly often the existence of action at a distance of an undeniably magico-schizophrenic nature ... this is the very definition of paranoid deranged thought ...." (Gabel 123-4)
Because of the capitulation of the Democratic party and of the liberal intellectual establishment associated with it, Bush and the neocons have enjoyed success as mythographers beyond their wildest dreams. The tenant of the White House may have discovered in the powers of myth a stimulant more potent than his beloved Jack Daniels; at one point, according to a reporter, Bush appeared "bedazzled by his administration's own mythmaking." (New York Times, July 31, 2003)
Out of the preceding considerations, we can gradually come to understand the 9/11 myth in its actual status as a kind of Ersatz (substitute) religion, or more precisely as an hysterical Ersatz civic religion designed to promote social cohesiveness when all other ideologies have failed.
What Franks says in his summary of Bush and Iraq applies even better to the American public and the 9/11 myth:
"The individual who clings tenaciously to unverified beliefs confuses his beliefs with fact, and often inflicts this confusion on others in his struggle to resolve it in his favor. When many people are persuaded to subscribe to the same pretense, of course, it can gain the aura of objectivity; as British psychoanalyst Ron Britton has observed, 'we can substitute concurrence for reality testing, and so shared phantasy can gain the same or even greater status than knowledge.' The belief doesn't become a fact, but the fact of shared belief lends it the valuable appearance of credibility. The belief is codified, takes hold, and rises above the level where it might be questioned. Shared beliefs can come to define a community; religion is, after all, a communal structure, uniting groups in shared beliefs.
In societies where religion is especially powerful, such shared beliefs can actually become law, imposed on others, often restricting their behavior." (Franks 62)
Out of the preceding considerations, we can gradually come to understand the 9/11 myth in its actual status as a kind of Ersatz (substitute) religion, or more precisely as an hysterical Ersatz civic religion designed to promote social cohesiveness when all other ideologies have failed.
What Franks says in his summary of Bush and Iraq applies even better to the American public and the 9/11 myth:
"The individual who clings tenaciously to unverified beliefs confuses his beliefs with fact, and often inflicts this confusion on others in his struggle to resolve it in his favor. When many people are persuaded to subscribe to the same pretense, of course, it can gain the aura of objectivity; as British psychoanalyst Ron Britton has observed, 'we can substitute concurrence for reality testing, and so shared phantasy can gain the same or even greater status than knowledge.' The belief doesn't become a fact, but the fact of shared belief lends it the valuable appearance of credibility. The belief is codified, takes hold, and rises above the level where it might be questioned. Shared beliefs can come to define a community; religion is, after all, a communal structure, uniting groups in shared beliefs.
In societies where religion is especially powerful, such shared beliefs can actually become law, imposed on others, often restricting their behavior." (Franks 62)
There remains the question of to what degree the social and intellectual hegemony of the 9/11 myth, especially as purveyed by its mentally impaired poster boy, is generating avoidable schizophrenic disorders in the US population and abroad.
One form that such an epidemic might take would be an upsurge of autism among the most vulnerable members of society -- among children, who are amazingly adept at absorbing the fears, anxieties, and distortions of the adult world around them. Evidence of just such a phenomenon is not hard to find.
About two years after September 11, Newsweek devoted an important cover story to "Girls, Boys, and Autism." According to the article, there are now more than a million Americans suffering from this disorder, 80% of them males. The article gives no figures for the growth in the number of cases, but the publication of this article and the attention it received suggests that the number of cases is rising, especially among the most vulnerable -- children, but not among them alone. (Newsweek, September 8, 2003)
In 2002 the New York Times reported that "a shocking report from California last week suggested that a large increase in childhood autism in that state over the last 15 years is a true epidemic, not a statistical mirage inflated by artificial factors." (New York Times, October 23, 2002)
Research by qualified experts will be necessary to determine whether there is in fact a causal link between the 9/11 myth and these disturbing reports.
One form that such an epidemic might take would be an upsurge of autism among the most vulnerable members of society -- among children, who are amazingly adept at absorbing the fears, anxieties, and distortions of the adult world around them. Evidence of just such a phenomenon is not hard to find.
About two years after September 11, Newsweek devoted an important cover story to "Girls, Boys, and Autism." According to the article, there are now more than a million Americans suffering from this disorder, 80% of them males. The article gives no figures for the growth in the number of cases, but the publication of this article and the attention it received suggests that the number of cases is rising, especially among the most vulnerable -- children, but not among them alone. (Newsweek, September 8, 2003)
In 2002 the New York Times reported that "a shocking report from California last week suggested that a large increase in childhood autism in that state over the last 15 years is a true epidemic, not a statistical mirage inflated by artificial factors." (New York Times, October 23, 2002)
Research by qualified experts will be necessary to determine whether there is in fact a causal link between the 9/11 myth and these disturbing reports.
According to some, the autism epidemic is genetically determined. According to others, it is a by-product of certain ill-advised vaccinations. But there is no reason why it could not be socially, culturally, and politically determined. This is exactly what one would expect in a traumatized country dominated by a compulsory schizophrenic belief system, whose apparent leadership figure demonstrates a whole range of megalomaniac schizophrenic symptoms.
One means of fighting the growth of culturally and socially induced autism would surely be to junk the schizophrenic myth of 9/11, and replace it with a true and reasoned account of what took place in the real world.
One means of fighting the growth of culturally and socially induced autism would surely be to junk the schizophrenic myth of 9/11, and replace it with a true and reasoned account of what took place in the real world.
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Subtypes include
1. Paranoid Type
2. Disorganized Type
3. Catatonic Type
4. Undifferentiated Type
5. Residual Type Schizophreniform disorder, schizoaffective disorder, and delusional disorder are closely related to schizophrenia and their symptoms are also listed below.
In addition symptoms are listed for the following related disorders: brief psychotic disorder, shared psychotic disorder, psychotic disorder due to a general medical condition, substance-induced psychotic disorder, and psychotic disorder not otherwise specified.
1. Paranoid Type
A type of Schizophrenia in which the following criteria are met:
A. Preoccupation with one or more delusions or frequent auditory hallucinations.
B. None of the following is prominent: disorganized speech, disorganized or catatonic behavior, or flat or inappropriate affect.
2. Disorganized Type
A type of Schizophrenia in which the following criteria are met:
A. All of the following are prominent: (1) disorganized speech (2) disorganized behaviour (3) flat or inappropriate affect
B. The criteria are not met for Catatonic Type.
3. Catatonic Type
A type of Schizophrenia in which the clinical picture is dominated by at least two of the following:
(1) motoric immobility as evidenced by catalepsy (including waxy flexibility) or stupor
(2) excessive motor activity (that is apparently purposeless and not influenced by external stimuli)
(3) extreme negativism (an apparently motiveless resistance to all instructions or maintenance of a rigid posture against attempts to be moved) or mutism
(4) peculiarities of voluntary movement as evidenced by posturing (voluntary assumption of inappropriate or bizarre postures)
(5) stereotyped movements, prominent mannerisms, or prominent grimacing
(6) echolalia (word repetition) or echopraxia (repetitive imitation)
4. Undifferentiated Type
A type of Schizophrenia in which symptoms that meet Criterion A are present, but the criteria are not met for the Paranoid, Disorganized, or Catatonic Type.
5. Residual Type
A type of Schizophrenia in which the following criteria are met:
A. Absence of prominent delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, and grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior.
B. There is continuing evidence of the disturbance, as indicated by the presence of negative symptoms or two or more symptoms listed in Criterion A for Schizophrenia, present in an attenuated form (e.g., odd beliefs, unusual perceptual experiences).
Diagnostic criteria for Schizophreniform Disorder:
A. Criteria A, D, and E of Schizophrenia are met.
B. An episode of the disorder (including prodromal, active, and residual phases) lasts at least 1 month but less than 6 months. (When the diagnosis must be made without waiting for recovery, it should be qualified as "Provisional.")
Specify if: Without Good Prognostic Features
With Good Prognostic Features: as evidenced by two (or more) of the following:
(1) onset of prominent psychotic symptoms within 4 weeks of the first noticeable change in usual behavior or functioning
(2) confusion or perplexity at the height of the psychotic episode
(3) good premorbid social and occupational functioning
(4) absence of blunted or flat affect
Diagnostic criteria for Schizoaffective Disorder:
A. An uninterrupted period of illness during which, at some time, there is either a Major Depressive Episode, a Manic Episode, or a Mixed Episode concurrent with symptoms that meet Criterion A for Schizophrenia. Note: The Major Depressive Episode must include Criterion A1: depressed mood.
B. During the same period of illness, there have been delusions or hallucinations for at least 2 weeks in the absence of prominent mood symptoms.
C. Symptoms that meet criteria for a mood episode are present for a substantial portion of the total duration of the active and residual periods of the illness.
D. The disturbance is not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, a medication) or a general medical condition. Specify type: Bipolar Type: if the disturbance includes a Manic or a Mixed Episode (or a Manic or a Mixed Episode and Major Depressive Episodes) Depressive Type: if the disturbance only includes Major Depressive Episodes Diagnostic criteria for Delusional Disorder:
A. Nonbizarre delusions (i.e., involving situations that occur in real life, such as being followed, poisoned, infected, loved at a distance, or deceived by spouse or lover, or having a disease) of at least 1 month's duration.
B. Criterion A for Schizophrenia has never been met. Note: Tactile and olfactory hallucinations may be present in Delusional Disorder if they are related to the delusional theme.
C. Apart from the impact of the delusion(s) or its ramifications, functioning is not markedly impaired and behavior is not obviously odd or bizarre.
D. If mood episodes have occurred concurrently with delusions, their total duration has been brief relative to the duration of the delusional periods.
E. The disturbance is not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, a medication) or a general medical condition. Specify type (the following types are assigned based on the predominant delusional theme):
Erotomanic Type: delusions that another person, usually of higher status, is in love with the individual
Grandiose Type: delusions of inflated worth, power, knowledge, identity, or special relationship to a deity or famous person
Jealous Type: delusions that the individual's sexual partner is unfaithful
Persecutory Type: delusions that the person (or someone to whom the person is close) is being malevolently treated in some way
Somatic Type: delusions that the person has some physical defect or general medical condition
Mixed Type: delusions characteristic of more than one of the above types but no one theme predominates
Unspecified Type Diagnostic criteria for Brief Psychotic Disorder:
A. Presence of one (or more) of the following symptoms:
(1) delusions
(2) hallucinations
(3) disorganized speech (e.g., frequent derailment or incoherence)
(4) grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior
Note: Do not include a symptom if it is a culturally sanctioned response pattern.
B. Duration of an episode of the disturbance is at least 1 day but less than 1 month, with eventual full return to premorbid level of functioning.
C. The disturbance is not better accounted for by a Mood Disorder With Psychotic Features, Schizoaffective Disorder, or Schizophrenia and is not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, a medication) or a general medical condition.
Specify if: With Marked Stressor(s) (brief reactive psychosis): if symptoms occur shortly after and apparently in response to events that, singly or together, would be markedly stressful to almost anyone in similar circumstances in the person's culture
Without Marked Stressor(s): if psychotic symptoms do not occur shortly after, or are not apparently in response to events that, singly or together, would be markedly stressful to almost anyone in similar circumstances in the person's culture With Postpartum Onset: if onset within 4 weeks postpartum
Diagnostic criteria for Shared Psychotic Disorder (Folie à Deux):
A. A delusion develops in an individual in the context of a close relationship with another person(s), who has an already-established delusion.
B. The delusion is similar in content to that of the person who already has the established delusion.
C. The disturbance is not better accounted for by another Psychotic Disorder (e.g., Schizophrenia) or a Mood Disorder With Psychotic Features and is not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, a medication) or a general medical condition. Diagnostic criteria for Psychotic Disorder Due to a General Medical Condition: A. Prominent hallucinations or delusions. B. There is evidence from the history, physical examination, or laboratory findings that the disturbance is the direct physiological consequence of a general medical condition. C. The disturbance is not better accounted for by another mental disorder.
D. The disturbance does not occur exclusively during the course of a Delirium.
Code based on predominant symptom:
- With Delusions: if delusions are the predominant symptom
- With Hallucinations: if hallucinations are the predominant symptom
Diagnostic criteria for Substance-Induced Psychotic Disorder:
A. Prominent hallucinations or delusions. Note: Do not include hallucinations if the person has insight that they are substance induced.
B. There is evidence from the history, physical examination, or laboratory findings of either (1) or (2):
(1) the symptoms in Criterion A developed during, or within a month of, Substance Intoxication or Withdrawal
(2) medication use is etiologically related to the disturbance
C. The disturbance is not better accounted for by a Psychotic Disorder that is not substance induced. Evidence that the symptoms are better accounted for by a Psychotic Disorder that is not substance induced might include the following: the symptoms precede the onset of the substance use (or medication use); the symptoms persist for a substantial period of time (e.g., about a month) after the cessation of acute withdrawal or severe intoxication, or are substantially in excess of what would be expected given the type or amount of the substance used or the duration of use; or there is other evidence that suggests the existence of an independent non-substance-induced Psychotic Disorder (e.g., a history of recurrent non-substance-related episodes).
D. The disturbance does not occur exclusively during the course of a delirium. Note: This diagnosis should be made instead of a diagnosis of Substance Intoxication or Substance Withdrawal only when the symptoms are in excess of those usually associated with the intoxication or withdrawal syndrome and when the symptoms are sufficiently severe to warrant independent clinical attention. Diagnostic Criteria for Psychotic Disorder Not Otherwise Specified: This category includes psychotic symptomatology (i.e., delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior) about which there is inadequate information to make a specific diagnosis or about which there is contradictory information, or disorders with psychotic symptoms that do not meet the criteria for any specific Psychotic Disorder.
Examples include:
1. Postpartum psychosis that does not meet criteria for Mood Disorder
With Psychotic Features, Brief Psychotic Disorder, Psychotic Disorder Due to a General Medical Condition, or Substance-Induced Psychotic Disorder
2. Psychotic symptoms that have lasted for less than 1 month but that have not yet remitted, so that the criteria for Brief Psychotic Disorder are not met
3. Persistent auditory hallucinations in the absence of any other features
4. Persistent nonbizarre delusions with periods of overlapping mood episodes that have been present for a substantial portion of the delusional disturbance
5. Situations in which the clinician has concluded that some type of psychotic disorder may be present, but is unable to determine whether it is primary, due to a general medical condition, or substance induced.
