Salon | Letters to the editor

_______________THE POWER OF POSITIVE SHRINKING BY CAROL LLOYD (10/21/98)

In Carol Lloyd's article, she quotes dear old messed-up Sigmund Freud on the futility of happiness:
"Unhappiness is much less difficult to experience. We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution ... from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations with other men."
Bear in mind that Freud was writing this from the perspective of a man who constantly warred between his desire for women and fear of same. He spent his life in the safe-but-boring haven of an essentially loveless, passionless marriage, and proclaimed his experience to be the norm. American women, with their independence and straightforwardness, scared the piss out of his male-supremacist self. Yet they gave him, as he admitted to Jung, incredibly erotic dreams.
But Freud, the man who lived in the house he was born in until Hitler forced him to flee, would never act on his dreams: He reacted with horror when Jung -- always the man of action -- suggested that Freud try to make his dreams a reality. (This situation is similar to the schism that developed between Emerson and Thoreau. Emerson was very much the fire-breathing radical on paper, but an act as innocuous as Thoreau's going to jail for a night to uphold a principle was something that terrified his bourgeois soul.)
I think that what we are seeing here is not so much the application of "happy talk" to psychiatry, but the final overthrow of the shadow of Freud, the man who took his own bizarre, sadly constricted emotional life and used it as a template for "normalcy."
-- Tamara Baker
Although there are plenty of good reasons, based on good research, to believe there are limits to "the power of positive thinking," there is also plenty of evidence that optimism promotes health and aids in coping. Marty Seligman may be president of APA, but the debate about "positive thinking" is decades old. So is the notion of prevention. Indeed, many of the early efforts to prevent mental illness arose from people whose backgrounds were in neo-Freudian psychoanalysis. The people who came after Freud included individuals like Harry Stack Sullivan and Erich Lindemann who recognized the importance of the environment and the resilience of most people. Seligman is in a rather ceremonial office and like past presidents of the association is unlikely to lead any revolutions during (or after) his term. Although Lloyd made nothing up, the level of Lloyd's article reminds me (I'm a psychologist) of the fabulations of the Angkor Thom column in Wanderlust earlier this month -- simply amateurish.
-- Richard A. Jenkins, Ph.D.
I enjoyed Carol Lloyd's article on Freud, Seligman and the matter of therapy and happiness. Quite a stimulating article even though I don't agree with much that was said about happiness.
I think happiness comes mainly from the result of spiritual endeavors, not from money, success, fame, etc. Put another way, there are very few paths to true, enduring happiness. On the other hand, there are many things that can make us miserable, not the least of which are matters psychological.
These are not especially original thoughts. Something closer to original involves my own theory of personality, which focuses on the role of memories and how they intersect with personality. Somewhat overly simplified, my position is that if you want to know yourself, go to your memories and work with them. If you want to make your life work better, the answer will lie in the content and patterns from your memories.
-- Arnold Bruhn, Ph.D.

_______________THURSDAYS AT THE CLAMBUCKET BY GEORGE PAUL CSICSERY (10/19/98)

George Paul Csicsery seems to think that police overreaction to peaceful (and occasionally less peaceful) political speech ended with the advent of the '70s. Typical boomer! I'm here to tell him that there are still a lot of cops who are badly out of control, and that he was too gentle on those retired skull-busters at the Clambucket.
In the '80s, I was present at a number of nonviolent but noisy protests in San Francisco and on campus at UC-Berkeley. I cannot recall one of them where at least one cop didn't decide that we were unruly and deserving of a nice little poke with a nightstick. I can recall a phalanx of Dianne Feinstein's San Francisco Police Department squads on horseback and motorcycles, literally running over protesters at the Holiday Inn. I also recall the cowardice of reporters who watched and filmed it all, never to show it on the nightly news, and the complicity of the Office of Citizen Complaints, who ignored nearly all of the well-documented cases of assault by the cops.
It's now the '90s, and guess what? The SFPD is still busting heads. This time, they like to take on unarmed bicyclists and the people who film them. At least three different Critical Mass demonstrations have been marred by police violence. Worse, the local media lie -- boldly, openly -- to recast events in a light favorable to law enforcement.
What to do? Well, first order of business, it's time for the OCC to have some teeth, and to use them on occasion -- a cop literally has to kill someone in this town before significant punishment is levied. Second, let's license the police. Lawyers have the Bar, and doctors have the Medical Board -- let's set up a central licensing bureau for people empowered to use deadly force. If you carry weapons, you should be held to a higher standard. Third, hold the media to a higher standard, as well. It's one thing to acknowledge the difficulties of police life, quite another to whitewash assault and battery. Finally, in all jurisdictions where cops' salaries are inadequate, raise 'em -- I don't want the cop who stops me on the sidewalk to have underpayment as one of his resentments, and I do want to reward a job well done.
Let's be clear: The majority of cops are kind, gentle, hard-working people with a tough job. Swaggering bull rednecks and itchy-knuckled jocks are the minority. That minority, however, must not be allowed to abuse people, and the good cops must not cover for the bad. People in positions of authority must be accountable, and it's hard to imagine an authority more real than a gun on one's hip.
-- Michael Treece

_______________HOW EUROPE CHANGED MY LIFE BY HANK HYENA (10/21/98)

Thank God Hank Hyena had his "conversion." Too bad we can't get about 100 million other Americans to do the same before Nov. 3.
-- Dewitt Henderson

_______________WHY I LOVE TV BY SALLIE TISDALE (10/22/98)

Sallie Tisdale's "Why I love TV" nailed it. She has spoken for all of us who find channel surfing to be at once expanding and an intellectual vacation. Mr. Rogers is better for you than Valium, and documentaries are often more informative than courses at your local community college. Vive la tube!
-- Rob Allison

_______________REVIEW OF "THE VAMPIRE ARMAND" BY MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS (10/22/98)

I just read the review of "Armand the Vampire." It would seem the biggest blood sucker of the Vampire Chronicles is Anne Rice.
-- Judith Spencer
Fort Worth, Texas

_______________WEB OF HATE BY ROS DAVIDSON (10/16/98)

Despite what readers think, and despite what one might learn from "Gone With the Wind" and other romanticized accounts of the Confederacy, hate was exactly what the Confederate Battle Flag originally stood for -- that is, if you think that slavery was a form of hatred. The "freedom" that the South fought for in the Civil War was nothing more nor less than the freedom to continue to practice and to spread westward the institution of slavery. More recently, the flag was proudly waved by the staunchest segregationist opponents of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s.
Rest assured that when I see Don Black and other hate-mongers standing in front of a Confederate flag I do not think I have seen the entire South. I know full well that nearly all African American and many white Southerners understand what that flag really means and object to its display. And Palle Thomsen need not worry about my education on this matter: I have a Ph.D. in American history. It's the thousands of Americans who disagree with Black but still fly his flag that need to be educated. The Confederate flag will forever be linked to slavery as the swastika is to Nazism. Southerners (and everyone else) ought to find other symbols more worthy of their loyalty.
-- Ben Alpers
My patience is running out with those who took you to task for displaying a Confederate flag in your article on hate on the Internet. The Confederate flag began its revival flying over Southern state capitols in the 1960s as a protest against federal enforcement of civil rights laws. The advocates of "Southern culture" attempt to remind us that the Confederate battle flag is about the right of people to "govern themselves." However, these advocates have never been able to define their desire to govern themselves outside of a desire to maintain their feudal system of exploitation. There is no reason why we must continue to accept this repeated propaganda.
-- Dean Christakos
Albany, Calif.
SALON | Oct. 27, 1998

R E C E N T L Y+| NO PLACE TO HIDE BY BRUCE SHAPIRO

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_______________THE POWER OF POSITIVE SHRINKING BY CAROL LLOYD (10/21/98)
	In Carol Lloyd's article, she quotes dear old messed-up Sigmund Freud on the futility of happiness: "Unhappiness is much less difficult to experience. We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution ... from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations with other men." Bear in mind that Freud was writing this from the perspective of a man who constantly warred between his desire for women and fear of same. He spent his life in the safe-but-boring haven of an essentially loveless, passionless marriage, and proclaimed his experience to be the norm. American women, with their independence and straightforwardness, scared the piss out of his male-supremacist self. Yet they gave him, as he admitted to Jung, incredibly erotic dreams. But Freud, the man who lived in the house he was born in until Hitler forced him to flee, would never act on his dreams: He reacted with horror when Jung -- always the man of action -- suggested that Freud try to make his dreams a reality. (This situation is similar to the schism that developed between Emerson and Thoreau. Emerson was very much the fire-breathing radical on paper, but an act as innocuous as Thoreau's going to jail for a night to uphold a principle was something that terrified his bourgeois soul.) I think that what we are seeing here is not so much the application of "happy talk" to psychiatry, but the final overthrow of the shadow of Freud, the man who took his own bizarre, sadly constricted emotional life and used it as a template for "normalcy." -- Tamara Baker Although there are plenty of good reasons, based on good research, to believe there are limits to "the power of positive thinking," there is also plenty of evidence that optimism promotes health and aids in coping. Marty Seligman may be president of APA, but the debate about "positive thinking" is decades old. So is the notion of prevention. Indeed, many of the early efforts to prevent mental illness arose from people whose backgrounds were in neo-Freudian psychoanalysis. The people who came after Freud included individuals like Harry Stack Sullivan and Erich Lindemann who recognized the importance of the environment and the resilience of most people. Seligman is in a rather ceremonial office and like past presidents of the association is unlikely to lead any revolutions during (or after) his term. Although Lloyd made nothing up, the level of Lloyd's article reminds me (I'm a psychologist) of the fabulations of the Angkor Thom column in Wanderlust earlier this month -- simply amateurish. -- Richard A. Jenkins, Ph.D. I enjoyed Carol Lloyd's article on Freud, Seligman and the matter of therapy and happiness. Quite a stimulating article even though I don't agree with much that was said about happiness. I think happiness comes mainly from the result of spiritual endeavors, not from money, success, fame, etc. Put another way, there are very few paths to true, enduring happiness. On the other hand, there are many things that can make us miserable, not the least of which are matters psychological. These are not especially original thoughts. Something closer to original involves my own theory of personality, which focuses on the role of memories and how they intersect with personality. Somewhat overly simplified, my position is that if you want to know yourself, go to your memories and work with them. If you want to make your life work better, the answer will lie in the content and patterns from your memories. -- Arnold Bruhn, Ph.D.
_______________THURSDAYS AT THE CLAMBUCKET BY GEORGE PAUL CSICSERY (10/19/98)
	George Paul Csicsery seems to think that police overreaction to peaceful (and occasionally less peaceful) political speech ended with the advent of the '70s. Typical boomer! I'm here to tell him that there are still a lot of cops who are badly out of control, and that he was too gentle on those retired skull-busters at the Clambucket. In the '80s, I was present at a number of nonviolent but noisy protests in San Francisco and on campus at UC-Berkeley. I cannot recall one of them where at least one cop didn't decide that we were unruly and deserving of a nice little poke with a nightstick. I can recall a phalanx of Dianne Feinstein's San Francisco Police Department squads on horseback and motorcycles, literally running over protesters at the Holiday Inn. I also recall the cowardice of reporters who watched and filmed it all, never to show it on the nightly news, and the complicity of the Office of Citizen Complaints, who ignored nearly all of the well-documented cases of assault by the cops. It's now the '90s, and guess what? The SFPD is still busting heads. This time, they like to take on unarmed bicyclists and the people who film them. At least three different Critical Mass demonstrations have been marred by police violence. Worse, the local media lie -- boldly, openly -- to recast events in a light favorable to law enforcement. What to do? Well, first order of business, it's time for the OCC to have some teeth, and to use them on occasion -- a cop literally has to kill someone in this town before significant punishment is levied. Second, let's license the police. Lawyers have the Bar, and doctors have the Medical Board -- let's set up a central licensing bureau for people empowered to use deadly force. If you carry weapons, you should be held to a higher standard. Third, hold the media to a higher standard, as well. It's one thing to acknowledge the difficulties of police life, quite another to whitewash assault and battery. Finally, in all jurisdictions where cops' salaries are inadequate, raise 'em -- I don't want the cop who stops me on the sidewalk to have underpayment as one of his resentments, and I do want to reward a job well done. Let's be clear: The majority of cops are kind, gentle, hard-working people with a tough job. Swaggering bull rednecks and itchy-knuckled jocks are the minority. That minority, however, must not be allowed to abuse people, and the good cops must not cover for the bad. People in positions of authority must be accountable, and it's hard to imagine an authority more real than a gun on one's hip. -- Michael Treece
_______________HOW EUROPE CHANGED MY LIFE BY HANK HYENA (10/21/98)
	Thank God Hank Hyena had his "conversion." Too bad we can't get about 100 million other Americans to do the same before Nov. 3. -- Dewitt Henderson
_______________WHY I LOVE TV BY SALLIE TISDALE (10/22/98)
	Sallie Tisdale's "Why I love TV" nailed it. She has spoken for all of us who find channel surfing to be at once expanding and an intellectual vacation. Mr. Rogers is better for you than Valium, and documentaries are often more informative than courses at your local community college. Vive la tube! -- Rob Allison
_______________REVIEW OF "THE VAMPIRE ARMAND" BY MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS (10/22/98)
	I just read the review of "Armand the Vampire." It would seem the biggest blood sucker of the Vampire Chronicles is Anne Rice. -- Judith Spencer Fort Worth, Texas
_______________WEB OF HATE BY ROS DAVIDSON (10/16/98)
	Despite what readers think, and despite what one might learn from "Gone With the Wind" and other romanticized accounts of the Confederacy, hate was exactly what the Confederate Battle Flag originally stood for -- that is, if you think that slavery was a form of hatred. The "freedom" that the South fought for in the Civil War was nothing more nor less than the freedom to continue to practice and to spread westward the institution of slavery. More recently, the flag was proudly waved by the staunchest segregationist opponents of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s. Rest assured that when I see Don Black and other hate-mongers standing in front of a Confederate flag I do not think I have seen the entire South. I know full well that nearly all African American and many white Southerners understand what that flag really means and object to its display. And Palle Thomsen need not worry about my education on this matter: I have a Ph.D. in American history. It's the thousands of Americans who disagree with Black but still fly his flag that need to be educated. The Confederate flag will forever be linked to slavery as the swastika is to Nazism. Southerners (and everyone else) ought to find other symbols more worthy of their loyalty. -- Ben Alpers My patience is running out with those who took you to task for displaying a Confederate flag in your article on hate on the Internet. The Confederate flag began its revival flying over Southern state capitols in the 1960s as a protest against federal enforcement of civil rights laws. The advocates of "Southern culture" attempt to remind us that the Confederate battle flag is about the right of people to "govern themselves." However, these advocates have never been able to define their desire to govern themselves outside of a desire to maintain their feudal system of exploitation. There is no reason why we must continue to accept this repeated propaganda. -- Dean Christakos Albany, Calif. SALON \| Oct. 27, 1998