On melancholia, lack of rebellion - not speaking the truth (lying) deforms the man...

Karin Johannisson, professor in History of Ideas at the University of Uppsala, spoke in an interview on the Swedish TV the other night apropos her last book on melancholia that she thinks the lack of rebellion is striking in today's society. Yes, where’s the wrath?

Is it strange if people are depressed (melancholy), exhausted, burnout if they have to keep quiet, if they aren’t allowed to rebel or protest at the state of affairs?

The Swedish author Henning Mankell spoke in the morning-sofa on his last book about Kurt Wallander, also in an interview on Swedish TV, about the 60-year old man as distant or reserved (his home site). And apropos politicians that

”Not speaking the truth [lying] deforms the man.”

Karin Johannisson has also contributed to an anthology with the title (in my amateur translation from Swedish) ”The Power of Diagnosis: On Knowledge, Money and Suffering.”

About this book you can read:

The psychological suffering is extensive in the millennium shift Sweden. Burnout, stress related tiredness syndromes, depression, self damaging behavior, overweight, anorexia, Asperger syndrome and ADHD are only some of the names.

The stronger the medicalization, and making human beings psychological and social problems psychiatric, the more the biomedicine is given the preferential right of interpretation when those conditions occurs and makes so that those explanations (biomedical) are seldom called in question.

In the book researchers and clinical practicians meet around controversial questions concerning psychological suffering and the treatment that is offered.

“Is burnout a disease? How do new forms of psychological suffering arise [and from where does psychoilogocal suffering come?]? What’s normal respective divergent behavior? Has the space for what’s normal become narrower? How is a diagnosis created? Is ADHD a scientific diagnosis? Is there an oscillation movement between putting emphasis on inheritance respective milieu as causes for psychological suffering? Is medicine (pills) cheaper than psychotherapy? Is it the money that governs the creation of new knowledge? What sort of conditions favor researcher-cheating and how are the researchers’ integrity preserved?”

The editor Gunilla Hallerstedt sketches in the introduction the last decades’ changes in the society, the new forms of psychological suffering and ways of talking about them.

Karin Johannisson asserts that the diagnosis’ is working as a comment to the society, a limit for what’s seen as normal, reasonable and acceptable.

A head for a psychotherapy unity in Stockholm, Sigmund Soback, asks what sort of help all those sick, as those who became outburnt, depressed and severely stressed during the years 1998-2003, get, numbers that increased five times those years (among people under 35 years these numbers have increased nine times. Are people, and especially young people, weaker today?).

And what does evidence based treatment on the psychotherapy field mean?

According to Eva Kärfve, associate professor in sociology at the University of Lund, the biological outlook on man has been dominating for many centuries; the explanation to characteristics and peculiarities has been “inheritance by blood.” How does this come through in the view on divergences and when diagnosing?

Aant Elzinga, professor emeritus in Philosophy of Science, is reflecting from the other contributions in the book and shows how the world of science, entrepreneurs and politics are enmeshed in each other.

Yes, who writes the history? Who has the power to do this? And what does this power want to create? From where do those ideas in the power come? Is their outlook on man and society "right"?

Leaders and child abuse…

people lived here 6000 years ago (stone age).

From Bob Scarf’s essay “Leaders”:

"This is consonant with the idea that ‘leadership’ is composed of the most backwards psychoclasses.

Question: Why is that? That is, why is ‘leadership’ composed of the most backwards psychoclasses? /…/

I have written elsewhere (and in previous posts) on the origins of political power [and why are some given power? Why does the people give certain people power, even the highest power in a society, whether formal or informal, on different levels? What do those have in their early history?].

In the gynarchy (female subculture) women restaged their abuse and warded off their annihilation anxiety by emulating their abusive mothers.

In the androcracy (male subculture) men, who did not become mothers, had to restage and combat their annihilation anxiety in other ways. One of the ways they did so was by developing politics and political power [or in anger]. So power is pathological. If you want to avoid using medical terms; power is a defense. It follows then that the people who are more defended (in certain ways) are more attracted to political power.

[and power in general in the society!? I think the ones that would become the best leaders, for instance on workplaces, don’t seek those jobs, because they realize the problems with being a leader. The researchers Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter thought the workplaces and companies were at risk of becoming drained on their best work labor, because either they would become burnout or try to leave and start their own businesses, with all the troubles connected to this and what this would cost for the companies, workplaces, the democracy the society, the societal economy. And so far I have had the incomes so I can buy and read a lot of books. More privileged than many in this world, even though I only have middle-incomes! Grew up and still belong to the middle class, maybe grew up in the somewhat upper middle class].”

See what Alice Miller writes in her book "The Body Never Lies" and what's written about its content (the second half of this posting) concerning child abuse and the society.

I thought further on my maternal grandparents and how they survived the pressure on them (in the working class. Addition: I think I belong to the “working” class too!).

We live in much more complicated societies than our first ancestors lived, in societies with the potential to really destroy everything on this earth; the nature, all human beings.

My great grandparents and their generation, and in the generations before them, didn’t really have those means.

I also came to think how does the history look when it comes power-mad? To money and property mad (having limitless needs, needs that can never become filled, the person never becomes satisfied, is about persons trying to fill needs they can never fill afterwards, because that time has passed, but what does this cause other people, if not the whole society, but the persons nearest to them)?

And societies with many disturbed because of the ways that were in fashion raising children (as for instance in Germany decades before WWII, and probably also occurring in societies in wars and lots of conflicts today too)?

That our grandparents (in my generation), being under and standing with their caps in their hands, bowing for their employers managed their lives (in greater poverty than almost all people today?) how did they? Were they stronger, or what? The illnesses came late in life for them. See about the ACE-study. I think Miller wonders if Hitler had needed his leader role (that much) if he had a lot of children, and been able to abreact the horrible abuse he endured during his childhood on them.

Did they because they could abreact their frustrations on their kids, it was your duty to educate your children, and the method was spanking them and making so they didn’t think they were anybody (by using emotional and verbal violence)?

Men abreacted on their wives and kids if they weren’t in a power position (then they probably mistreated the persons standing them nearest in different ways, more or less subtle), and women in turn on their kids (if they couldn’t react at their husbands, on whom they were dependent)?

Women abreacted the abuse they had endured during their childhood (and their under order in the whole society) and their fear of becoming annihilated by copying their mothers (and/or fathers). Men sought power in the society, and if this wasn’t possible they abreacted their early experiences and latter humiliation they experienced in the society, at work etc. too on their kids (and wives. But women have been abusive too at not only their kids!). As was the case when I grew up.

In this way they survived, didn’t become sick in the first place, and had a feeling of some sort of power and control (the therapists Ingeborg Bosch and Jean Jenson, maybe among others, think you get a feeling of power and control through anger and/or denial of needs) ?

Also came to think: Owe Wikström realized when his heart all of a sudden stopped and during the recovery after this, how totally being at the mercy and dependent he was on his caregivers, and the care and good will he got from them [my addition: that they didn't abuse his situation]. See what his reflections in his book “Sonias goodness”.

I also wondered: real equality, real freedom, (that all people have the same say, are equally worth, get the same respect as everybody else) in the society and the world is that the real prerequisites? How do we create this? The best and probably only method is changing childrearing methods even more than we have already done? There’s still quit a lot to do there I would say.

Interview with the author Henning Mankell.