Clinton volunteered to be impeached, according to Lloyd DeMause
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston
Oct 25, 2019, 8:03:28 AM10/25/19
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We've heard recently speculation that Trump must want to be impeached, that bit where he more or less admitted in plain view to conspiring with Ukraine to get dirt on political opponents. Most would assume that a hefty percentage wanting a president to be impeached means they want him out. Not so for DeMause. He argues in this bit, taken from his essay, The Phallic Presidency, that it can just mean that the public wants their leader to serve as a sacrificial figure into which to project all their own ostensible sins into.
"That Clinton unconsciously volunteered to be a sacrificial victim is clear. The weeks prior to his starting his affair with Monica Lewinsky were filled with media reports and late-night staff meetings in the White House about how the Chief Sacrificial Priest Kenneth Starr was hot on Clinton’s trail for sexual misdemeanors for which he could be convicted. Staffers warned Clinton daily not to risk another “bimbo eruption” lest he be caught this time. Yet Clinton, sensing the group-fantasy of sacrifice was asking him to volunteer as the victim, started the affair nonetheless, looking out the White House windows while he was being sexually serviced by her to see if Starr’s snoopers were looking in.
According to his biographer, Clinton’s family role was also as a sacrificial hero, who was “caretaker and protector of the family” and of his mother, Virginia.3 His alcoholic stepfather was so violent toward his mother that Clinton recalls him firing a gun at his mother when he was five, and little Billy “twice had to stop real violence when Roger threatened to kill Virginia.”4 Clinton’s “Family Hero” role was of course what has made him such a superb politician, being able to sense the unconscious emotional needs of others and sacrifice his own values for the adulation he gained. There was little love in his family. His stepfather physically abused him during his drunken rages, and his grandmother, who was his primary caretaker in his early years while his mother was elsewhere, had a “fierce temper” and undoubtedly used “a whip” on him as she had done on his mother when she was a child.5
Besides this physical abuse, Clinton was also a rejected child, whose mother left him as an infant for two years with her mother while she moved to another city to learn nursing and then routinely left him while she gambled as he grew up. “I was raised in that sort of culture where you put on a happy face, and you didn’t reveal your pain and agony,” he says.6 Psychotherapist Jerome Levin attributes Clinton’s sexual addiction with hundreds of women directly to his lonely childhood:
Virginia Kelley [Clinton’s mother] looks extraordinarily like Lewinsky. Kelley’s hairstyle, heavy makeup, and the overall impression are strikingly similar to Lewinsky’s. Bill Clinton, the man who had lost his mother, had found a replacement for her….His legacy as an adult child of an alcoholic compelled him to fill the emptiness of his childhood and to repeat the addictive pattern of both his biological and his adoptive parents…7
That Clinton repeated his longings for his absent mother with Monica Lewinsky can be seen when he said to Monica after she was transferred out of the White House, “Why do they have to take you away from me?”, the same question he had for his mother when she left him as a young boy. Even Juanita Broaddrick–who accused Clinton of biting, assaulting and viciously raping her twice–looked very much like Clinton’s mother, and was, in addition, a nurse like Clinton’s mother.
Of course, in addition to restaging the betrayal he felt by his mother, Clinton’s continuous humiliations of his wife over the years can be seen as expressing his unconscious rage toward his mother for her early abandonment of him–with the difference that in his affairs he would reverse roles and he would be the betrayer and his wife would be the betrayed.
Indeed, the Clinton scandal wasn’t “all about sex,” it was “all about loss.” Clinical studies of sex addicts find they aren’t “expressing their drives” so much as combating desperate inner feelings of maternal abandonment, impotence and self-fragmentation through their repeated conquests of women.8 Feelings of impotence, not excess potency, is the source of all sex addictions. And wars.
Purity Crusades–like the impeachment of Clinton and the Yugoslav War, which The New York Times described as a necessary “Cleansing of Serbia”9–are periodically encountered in history, usually after periods of peace and prosperity.10 They are usually conducted against “too much sexual freedom,” with various designated sacrificial scapegoats. The most famous took place prior to WWI, with a hysterical Vice Commission closing down brothels and regulating dance halls. Before the Civil War, reacting to the feminism and new sexual freedom of the 1850s, purity reformers suddenly decided to “protect the sexual purity of America” by starting a civil war to clean up the “one vast brothel” in the South. Before the Vietnam War, following the first legal publishing of Henry Miller’s books, Citizens for Decent Literature conducted nationwide letter-writing campaigns and harassed drugstore chains to stop the distribution of “obscene” literature. Time even ran a cover story in January 1964 on “Sex in the U.S.,” full of shocked prose on how America had become “one big Orgone box of Freudian” pornography and promiscuity. America’s Purity Crusade during Clinton’s secnd term wasn’t justabout Presidential sex.From New York to California, cities were attempting to close down X-rated video stores, politicians were “outed” as adulterers as “the sex police runs around Washington checking everyone out,” and television programs featured specials declaring “The whole nation needs to repent!”11
That impeachment of Clinton functioned for a time as what columnists called “a renewal process” and a “cleansing of America”12 seems odd until it is considered as an age-old device for purification of a nation for its hubris, its prosperity, its sinfulness. In ancient Mesoamerica, when the state became convinced its prosperity had made it too sinful, the Chief Priest would tear out the heart of its best football player on a sacrificial stage and present it to the bloodthirsty goddess, who might otherwise punish all the people by not raising the sun the next day.13 The “Sacrificial Hero” was turned into a god himself since he, like Clinton, had willingly volunteered to be sacrificed. Thus Clinton’s polls, which had been sub-par until his affair was revealed, soared to over 70 percent approval “for the job he was doing for his country”–in other words, for being a sacrificial scapegoat, a poison container for our guilt–an approval level never before reached by a peacetime president."
"That Clinton unconsciously volunteered to be a sacrificial victim is clear. The weeks prior to his starting his affair with Monica Lewinsky were filled with media reports and late-night staff meetings in the White House about how the Chief Sacrificial Priest Kenneth Starr was hot on Clinton’s trail for sexual misdemeanors for which he could be convicted. Staffers warned Clinton daily not to risk another “bimbo eruption” lest he be caught this time. Yet Clinton, sensing the group-fantasy of sacrifice was asking him to volunteer as the victim, started the affair nonetheless, looking out the White House windows while he was being sexually serviced by her to see if Starr’s snoopers were looking in.
According to his biographer, Clinton’s family role was also as a sacrificial hero, who was “caretaker and protector of the family” and of his mother, Virginia.3 His alcoholic stepfather was so violent toward his mother that Clinton recalls him firing a gun at his mother when he was five, and little Billy “twice had to stop real violence when Roger threatened to kill Virginia.”4 Clinton’s “Family Hero” role was of course what has made him such a superb politician, being able to sense the unconscious emotional needs of others and sacrifice his own values for the adulation he gained. There was little love in his family. His stepfather physically abused him during his drunken rages, and his grandmother, who was his primary caretaker in his early years while his mother was elsewhere, had a “fierce temper” and undoubtedly used “a whip” on him as she had done on his mother when she was a child.5
Besides this physical abuse, Clinton was also a rejected child, whose mother left him as an infant for two years with her mother while she moved to another city to learn nursing and then routinely left him while she gambled as he grew up. “I was raised in that sort of culture where you put on a happy face, and you didn’t reveal your pain and agony,” he says.6 Psychotherapist Jerome Levin attributes Clinton’s sexual addiction with hundreds of women directly to his lonely childhood:
Virginia Kelley [Clinton’s mother] looks extraordinarily like Lewinsky. Kelley’s hairstyle, heavy makeup, and the overall impression are strikingly similar to Lewinsky’s. Bill Clinton, the man who had lost his mother, had found a replacement for her….His legacy as an adult child of an alcoholic compelled him to fill the emptiness of his childhood and to repeat the addictive pattern of both his biological and his adoptive parents…7
That Clinton repeated his longings for his absent mother with Monica Lewinsky can be seen when he said to Monica after she was transferred out of the White House, “Why do they have to take you away from me?”, the same question he had for his mother when she left him as a young boy. Even Juanita Broaddrick–who accused Clinton of biting, assaulting and viciously raping her twice–looked very much like Clinton’s mother, and was, in addition, a nurse like Clinton’s mother.
Of course, in addition to restaging the betrayal he felt by his mother, Clinton’s continuous humiliations of his wife over the years can be seen as expressing his unconscious rage toward his mother for her early abandonment of him–with the difference that in his affairs he would reverse roles and he would be the betrayer and his wife would be the betrayed.
Indeed, the Clinton scandal wasn’t “all about sex,” it was “all about loss.” Clinical studies of sex addicts find they aren’t “expressing their drives” so much as combating desperate inner feelings of maternal abandonment, impotence and self-fragmentation through their repeated conquests of women.8 Feelings of impotence, not excess potency, is the source of all sex addictions. And wars.
Purity Crusades–like the impeachment of Clinton and the Yugoslav War, which The New York Times described as a necessary “Cleansing of Serbia”9–are periodically encountered in history, usually after periods of peace and prosperity.10 They are usually conducted against “too much sexual freedom,” with various designated sacrificial scapegoats. The most famous took place prior to WWI, with a hysterical Vice Commission closing down brothels and regulating dance halls. Before the Civil War, reacting to the feminism and new sexual freedom of the 1850s, purity reformers suddenly decided to “protect the sexual purity of America” by starting a civil war to clean up the “one vast brothel” in the South. Before the Vietnam War, following the first legal publishing of Henry Miller’s books, Citizens for Decent Literature conducted nationwide letter-writing campaigns and harassed drugstore chains to stop the distribution of “obscene” literature. Time even ran a cover story in January 1964 on “Sex in the U.S.,” full of shocked prose on how America had become “one big Orgone box of Freudian” pornography and promiscuity. America’s Purity Crusade during Clinton’s secnd term wasn’t justabout Presidential sex.From New York to California, cities were attempting to close down X-rated video stores, politicians were “outed” as adulterers as “the sex police runs around Washington checking everyone out,” and television programs featured specials declaring “The whole nation needs to repent!”11
That impeachment of Clinton functioned for a time as what columnists called “a renewal process” and a “cleansing of America”12 seems odd until it is considered as an age-old device for purification of a nation for its hubris, its prosperity, its sinfulness. In ancient Mesoamerica, when the state became convinced its prosperity had made it too sinful, the Chief Priest would tear out the heart of its best football player on a sacrificial stage and present it to the bloodthirsty goddess, who might otherwise punish all the people by not raising the sun the next day.13 The “Sacrificial Hero” was turned into a god himself since he, like Clinton, had willingly volunteered to be sacrificed. Thus Clinton’s polls, which had been sub-par until his affair was revealed, soared to over 70 percent approval “for the job he was doing for his country”–in other words, for being a sacrificial scapegoat, a poison container for our guilt–an approval level never before reached by a peacetime president."
James Sturges
Oct 25, 2019, 3:55:30 PM10/25/19
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Patrick,
Thanks for your thoughtful, psychohistory-based posts on the impeachment issue.
I definitely agree with you that there are many parallels in the Trump and Clinton scenarios which almost demand a comparative analysis of the unconscious motivations aka LdM Group Fantasies.
Lloyd's "Poison-container" analyses were indeed spectacular. I do not necessarily agree that the hatred primarily results from childhood trauma, as I have come to appreciate the presence of the death drive in so much of group psychology ... but this slight difference of emphasis (in cause) does not detract in the least from my appreciation of Lloyd's singular achievement in advancing large group psychology.
-------Jim
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston
Nov 4, 2019, 8:01:43 PM11/4/19
to realpsychohistory
Sorry for the late reply, James. I missed this. If you're interested in death drive, it might be interesting to you to note the Judith Butler has been re-introducing it to her London Review of Books readers (https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n20/judith-butler/genius-or-suicide). She believes Trump is suffering it; my own sense of how impeachment is due to fall out may may it seem more that the democrats are suffering from it--as indeed, in a way, they are. That is, democrats aren't suffering from death drive, in my judgment, but from growth panic... the five horsemen of the apocalypse that arrive in one's psyche once one feels one has transcended in terms of personal growth what your parents ever could possibly have allowed for you: they may be aware at some level that they are channeling their way down a path where if they lose, the matter of waiting for punishment is settled: it'll have arrived, immediately. One's a drive and the other's based on early childhood, but death, horsemen... boy, don't they seem almost of the same family?
Allan Hytowitz
Nov 6, 2019, 12:58:58 PM11/6/19
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Patrick and James,
My OPINION is that you both are wrong.
Clinton likely felt guilt for having been caught in his infidelity. The impeachment attempt provided him with a reprobation, although it apparently has not stopped his adultery post-Presidency. His behavior is typical of a dependent alcoholic who uses remorse as a source of exoneration.
Trump feels no guilt. His entire life history is one of lies and bullying to get what he wants, as perceived by his ego. He was constantly abused by his alcoholic father and learned that aggressiveness and "being tough" was the key to success. His "failure" role model was his older brother who died from alcoholism and "failed" to stand up to their father's abuse.
However, there is another, almost unique, factor to Trump's behavior.
In the 21st century, most successful people achieve success due to their skills dependent upon literacy or creative arts. Trump's "creative arts" is the use of his verbal skills to sound convincing but screw over others when it comes time for reciprocity. Trump's concept of "winning" is ONLY if he wins and the other party loses. His approach to all interactions is to lie and be abusive. That predatory attitude is compounded by his illiteracy due to his dyslexia. Not all prior US Presidents were scholars. Trump's uniqueness is that he doesn't read because he CAN'T read, or at least reading is very stressful.
He has dyslexia, likely due to a higher ratio of red to green photoreceptors which creates an unstable near vision image. It is genetic since Donald Sr, Eric, and Baron all exhibit the head-bobbing gait typical of Steve Jobs, who was also dyslexic.
My most recent favorite example of Trump's dyslexia:
That near vision stress is also reduced by alcohol and muscle relaxants such as marijuana. It correlates to Trump's brother and father being an alcoholic. In Trump's case he likely relieves his stress by adultery and abusing other people.
However, I think that the reason for the majority of Americans wanting Trump out of the office of President as soon as possible is not "the five horsemen of the apocalypse" but rather fear that Trump's instability and irresponsibility may damage the American economy.
However, I think that the reason for the majority of Americans wanting Trump out of the office of President as soon as possible is not "the five horsemen of the apocalypse" but rather fear that Trump's instability and irresponsibility may damage the American economy.
The US is run by a bureaucracy which is almost autonomic. We now take clean water, electrical power, paved roads, TV reception, the stamps of approval for use by the FDA, and the enforcement and prevention of most crimes for granted. Like the child who never spoke until he was 12 years old and his mother burned the waffles, we live a blessed life of complacency with little to complain about if we do our jobs and spend less than what we earn.
Trump is an anomaly in that he was elected by voters who wanted to feel that they had a need for an even more stable environment and felt threatened by global economics and new technology. Their loyalty to someone who promised a return to security was both a result of their gullibility and their preference for someone who sounded authoritarian. That gullibility combined with the distaste for the codependency of Hillary still being married to Bill and the arcane system of the Electoral College resulted in the majority of the US voters being castrated at the poles as to the Presidential victory. Essentially, we were screwed no matter who won the 2016 election.
(Tony Schwartz, the embarrassed ghost writer of "The Art of the Deal" said that WHEN Trump lost he would be even more destructive to the US than if he wins since he would than be able to continue his criminal and disruptive activities under the radar since he would not have the transparency required of the US Presidency.)
The function of the US Constitution is to provide for due process in resolving conflicts so that we do not have to resort to Civil War or the regicide which removed Caligula from office. (Those who cite Judeo/Christian ethics as the basis for the Constitution fail to realize that the most frequent method of leadership change in early Israel and Christianity was regicide. Our secular Constitution is a significant improvement.)
With the expanding economic and and bureaucratic growth of the US we now take for granted the stability and functionality of our government. The President has become not so much a functionary but a figure head. We need to get rid of Trump because he is an impediment toward the US providing an image of responsibility and rationality, and his irrationality, inconsistency, and lack of understanding as to how governments work, and lack of administrative competence creates a risk as to US and global economic stability.
However, the source of Trump's support are the tribal Gullibles who believe every word he says, despite the day-to-day contradictions, and every attack and claim he makes as to his being victimized.
What is disturbing is that those Gullibles have an 80% correlation to having Red Focused Vision associated with a stable distance image for hunting and living on farmland, but an unstable near vision image as to literacy. Trump doesn't read because he can't due to his dyslexia, and the majority of his supporters empathize with his disdain for laws and literacy due to their dyslexia.
The color screening test is below.
http://www.dyop.info/documents/Color_iPad/index.html
The clinical study validating a 90% correlation of color perception to symptoms of dyslexia is attached.
I also believe that in the past James tested positive for Red Focused Vision which is why he tends to have preference for authoritarianism. The correlation of Red Focused Vision and being a Trump supporter is that the Trump supporters I personally know all had unsupportive/non-nurturing childhoods in addition to their dyslexia. However, I know lots of people with dyslexia who despise Trump. The difference is that the dyslexics who despise Trump all seem to have had nurturing childhoods which seems to validate my understanding of Psychohistory.
See www.trumphasdyslexia.com for additional details.
Any assistance as to an expanded study of Red Focused Vision and being a Trump supporter would be greatly appreciated.
Regards,
Allan Hytowitz
www.linkedin.com/in/allanhytowitz
"
The benefit of technology is NOT in what it lets people accomplish, but in how it improves the character of people.”
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