Paul Krugman in the Opinion section of the New York Times writes, "When I was young and naive, I believed important people took positions based on careful consideration of the options. Now I know better. Much of what serious people believe rests on prejudice, not analysis, and these prejudices are subject to fads and fashions.”

He continues to write about his amazement and horror at the emergence of a consensus in policy circles in favor of immediate fiscal austerity. He is against this and advances his reasons. However, my essay is not about economics per se; it is about strongly held beliefs and assumptions and those who hold them, who are convinced that they are true.

The history of mankind is replete with instances when certain beliefs which were considered the truth of the time have been proven wrong, dead wrong, but too late for the victims of these beliefs.

The era of the Inquisition is one such example of a group in power that exercised the power of a belief then held inviolate. The Puritan times in the United States, in which hanging and burning were prevalent, is another example of murderous behavior toward possibly ill and innocent women.

Upon reading Krugman, I thought about his initial statement when he advances external arguments to defend his theory. I happen to have respect for a Nobel Prize winner, assuming he got that prize with a great deal of rigorous thinking and coming to some vigorous conclusions which a great number of his colleagues agreed with.

However, besides the short list of reasons above, even more important than the external facts that Krugman offers is the silent glacier under the surface of the water, the unconscious. Even more important than the external reasons, an investigation of the individual’s unconscious would find the real reasons for any one person's external beliefs. As a matter of fact, my research leads me to think that external beliefs are found or fads are followed to satisfy deep unconscious ideas. These ideas have been developed and arrived at by early fetal and/or infantile trauma. The broken ego that results is the main character which finds what it needs in the external world to satisfy these deep internal and unconscious drives.

With that said, I would like to present a session I had with a patient who you will remember from my previous essays “The Awakening” and “The Consequence of Union Upon Reunion.” The session has a very interesting complexion. I will let the session speak for itself.

DREAM – July 1, 2010

In my dream, I am my agent. I have never dreamed of being him before. I enter a room. The room is round and tall and made of brick and very ancient. In this room are a number of people. They are men and women, dressed in business attire. I am also in a suit—my agent always wears a suit. All of the people in the room walk slowly in a circle around and around a central cistern. The cistern is filled with a shallow depth of water. They are moving counterclockwise. It all seems very ancient and ritualistic, like something the Catholic monks would have done as devotion in medieval times.

I approach a young woman—she is in her twenties, very pretty, very smart, dressed in a white business suit with a skirt and white high heels. She reminds me of Lois who I worked with in the 90’s—a very sharp, astute, poised “D” girl in Hollywood.

I realize, suddenly, that I am working for her. This is my new job. She has been made the president of the film studio. She is the youngest woman ever to be made president and it has been considered a risk to do so in the Hollywood community.

I admire her though and want her to succeed. I approach her and fall in step with her, moving counterclockwise around the circle, along with everyone else.

I say something like “Reporting for Duty.” She smiles, teases me chidingly, saying, “Have you been able to do what I asked?” I know by this she means that I need to keep to HER pace, not mine. I need to learn to walk more slowly and talk more slowly. I must go at her pace around the circle, not always getting ahead of her. I say, “I’ve thought about it. I believe that, ultimately, I can do both, but for now, realistically, I can only try to walk slower. To talk slower is beyond me.”

She smiles and seems to accept this. “Okay, what have you got?” she says. (This is the kind of things executives in Hollywood studios are always saying.) I say, “I’ve got a great idea—you like the comedienne Margret Cho, and you like the action star Michelle Yeoh. In fact we have them both under contract. Well,” I suggest, “What if we team them up in a buddy cop movie?” She is disappointed. “Is that the best we can do?” And with that she walks off. I am chastised. But maybe my idea is cheesy. I realize I’m going to have to work harder.

ASSOCIATIONS

Doctor Bail, as always, asks for my associations. I tell him I think it’s interesting I am my agent in the dream. He gets me work. He is a good guy—honest, and he believes in me and he has gotten me a lot of work over the years. But, I assume, he is in no way a spiritual man. He is a company man and I know that. At the end of the day, the agency is more important to him than I am. I succeed with him by fitting my needs into the agency’s needs. So far so good. My work of late has been steady. Still—I like my agent.

Over the years blonde young women have appeared in many, many of my dreams. Doctor Bail associates them, relentlessly, with my feminine unconscious. So, this should be no different. The difference here is she’s been put in charge of the studio. She’s the boss and I work for her. That dynamic never existed in my dreams before and I take it as a positive.

Lois, as I said, was a woman I really admired. She was smart and pretty and pleasant. My assumption is that she would do well in life, although I don’t know what became of her. It’s significant that I want to work for her.

Dr. Bail asks about the round room and the walking. It seems spiritual to me—a ritual. Moving in a circle is the way of God’s energy. I’ve come to believe that all energy in God’s universe rises and falls in a spiraling circle. Also, I mention to Doctor Bail that my study of Kundalini teaches me that clockwise circular movement indicates rising energy or CREATION. Counterclockwise circular motion indicates unwinding or DESTRUCTIVE energy. So, the people in this room move in a way that indicates deconstruction.

The people are business people, walking around a cistern filled with shallow water. I know water always represents the spirit and the unconscious, but, otherwise, the association of this stumps me.

Bail asks about my movie idea. The woman likes both Margret Cho, a gay Chinese comedienne, and Michelle Yeoh, a mature female Chinese action star. (She was the female lead in “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.”) So, I think to put them in an action movie. Like Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte in “48 Hours” or Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jim Belushi in “Red Heat,” team up a comedian and an action star in an action-comedy move. It is a formula of the 80’s and 90’s—and Dr. Bail points out it’s a tired idea even if I’m putting Chinese women in it.

Dr. Bail finally sums up: “I believe your dream is indicating that it is time in the history of mankind to unwind the masculine paradigm. And, would it surprise you to learn that, I have had three patients in one week who have dreams of this nature? There have been three dreams of an unwinding, of a time to tear down the masculine and begin to build up the feminine. That is the obligation of the age we are entering.”

“You associate yourself with your agent, who you say is a good agent, but not a spiritual man. He is a businessman. His loyalty is to business, not to you. So, you are associating yourself with business—which is the obsession of the masculine paradigm that has ruled for so long. The masculine paradigm is all about the intellect, about business and making money. All of the other people are in business suits—so, whether they are male or female, they are also in the masculine paradigm. This is an aspect of yourself that doesn’t serve your greater good.”

At this point I interject, “I’ve been thinking lately that, all of us in the world (certainly in the western world) have been force fed a belief that, first and foremost, ECONOMY is what matters. Yes, there can be ecology, IF it serves economy. Yes, there can be community and family and spirituality and art—but only if it first serves ECONOMY. This is something that is an illusion that people have all been taught to believe. My new job has taken me to Toronto and, by coincidence, it put me in the middle of the G-20 summit last week. I walked the streets that weekend and put myself straight into the middle of the protests—to observe and learn. What I saw were streets full of young people, trying to change things. They were happy and excited. And I saw literally 5 to 1, maybe even 10 to 1, police in riot gear for every one protester. There were 20,000 armed police in Toronto that weekend. An army to protect the world’s leaders from maybe a few thousand kids in t-shirts… ECOMONY above all!”

Dr. Bail continues, “Well, this dream is wonderful because it is personal as well as universal. It is telling you that you need to slow down—walk at the speed of your feminine unconscious, talk at the speed of your feminine unconscious. Stop using intellect. The male paradigm uses intellect. The female uses intuition. Unwind the masculine model of the world, move around the water of the unconscious.”

“The young woman you admire (and it is good that you want to work for her) likes these actresses from the East, from China. She wants to incorporate the Eastern feminine into her new projects. But, as yet, your best idea is to dress that impulse up in old and tired ideas—old masculine conceits. It’s trite and your feminine unconscious implores you to do better.”

“This instruction is for both you, the individual, and, I believe, it is also an instruction for the world.”

COMMENTARY

I think people hold the belief that the world, the country, will be more or less what it has been in their lifetime. Though people, on the average, have been to school, students of history will certainly have heard it expounded that the country—at least the United States—has more or less been the same. People in America in the main have been content to let their Congress make the laws, which we all follow.

However, recent events have made it possible, even urgent, for people to get to see and know what their congressional representatives say and do and what really motivates the rulers of the country—even the Supreme Court.

I daresay with the spilling out of the guts of the political process, a mean and distressing experience, it is almost a maxim that Congress is unconsciously felt to be the parents who are elected and who will look after the people (the children) and do whatever is necessary in the best interests of the people (the children). This is far from the truth. The Republican Party makes it clear it is interested only in aiding the corporations and the wealthy and has little interest in the people; witness Representative Barton, apologizing to British Petroleum for the fuss the people of Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida made about British Petroleum’s irresponsibility. He and the Republicans want the U.S. Government, that is the people, to pay for British Petroleum's reckless behavior.

In other words, if the two parties were seen as the parents, they would both be cited as careless and abusive and fined and jailed for their negligence. To follow Republican logic, the children (the people) would be blamed and made to pay for their parents’ (Congress') almost total neglect.

So altogether we have a situation that people feel will continue to exist more or less the same. This crisis of people's lives and the crisis in the environment is, of course, to be laid at the feet of both the government and British Petroleum, both of whom have been indulging in glaringly criminal behavior. A look at this patient session causes us to stop for a long moment and do a double take. We have been spared the interim between these continuing disasters for which the people (the children) are paying for their parents’ profligacy and arrogant selfishness.

At this point there has been a stop, a gap that remains to be filled in. The dream makes it clear that there is an age of feminine sensibility coming, one that foremost will look after all the children—not only the rich ones. The feminine sensibility will also not be in rivalry with the other party. Both parties have to be concerned with the children and their well-being.

The dream discerns quite easily that it will not fly if there is an attempt to play the same "movie" as has played before—just women playing out the men's parts.

Finally, it is interesting to note that my patient wears two hats. He is his agent and the businessman concerned with the bottom line, not the people (children), and he is the spiritual one decrying the heartlessness of those who are the corporation.

Krugman reminds us that the policies the country follows are made by men who may consciously be in the grip of bias and fashion. I add they may be in the grip of their unconscious, and also influenced by the combined unconscious of the group of which they are a member. Enough is known about the psychology of groups as to cause anyone who has to abide by the decision of a group great worry. Added to the difficulty is the fact that group members, for example G-20 participants, can come from different countries, different cultures, and different family backgrounds. Yet this diverse group, in which a number of countries are failing, contains representatives who must be full of fear, if not consciously then unconsciously. Fear is a slippery contaminant. It takes everything quickly.

Remember that such groups have historically formed and decided the policy of whatever the issue might be. Some, like church policy, have been in effect a long time and it seems not too successfully. In the end we see that little has changed in the economics of the world. It used to be customary that kings, feeling the need for cash (gold), would plunder another region or country citing a variety of reasons (reasons are plentiful), take the gold, take the women, and kill the men. Today we are civilized. That is, corporations deplete other countries’ wealth and leave the people impoverished. Since we are civilized we don't physically kill anyone. The difference between then and now is in the killing or torturing. However, there may be other ways this is being enacted. Once poverty sets in and a land is emptied of its wealth, what life do the people in these countries face?

The ultimate point is that men make the policies and have done so for thousands of years, with all of the frailties that men contain in their psyches and character. No matter what their outward stance, what men make is not of eternity. What men make can be broken or remade.

This idea needs to be in everyone's mind. I think it is an invaluable gift Krugman gives us by reminding us of the manner in which policy is made here and everywhere in the world. I must add that the people are treated like children who are kept away from what the "grownups" are saying. I would say we are not children and it is clear that the so-called grownups are not such at all.

Alexander Pope says it in his couplet, "Man proposes, God disposes."

Always.

July 2010