Some Thoughts on Our Online Discussion (response article)

The value of this exchange will ultimately be determined by the reader. Our judgment is that it is a worthwhile endeavor to capture the feelings, thoughts, and assessments of psychohistorical colleagues who are in the process of dealing with the emotional shock of the slaughter of 20 six and seven-year-olds and six of their teachers. We welcome your thoughts about the value of this endeavor as well as your considered well-researched essays on Adam Lanza and other mass murderers, how individuals and society process this emotional shock, the role of guns in American society, the efficacy of instant psychohistory, and related subjects. It was our hope that a few participants in the online listserv discussion would go beyond this endeavor to write serious psychohistorical studies. Such studies require detailed research, thoughtful analysis, and hard work.

The listserv demonstrated itself to be a Wilfred Bion-type work group (Experiences in Groups, 1980), which showed signs of getting into a fight mode as with the several incidents mentioned in the introduction, and then the most prolific, as well as a long term and valued member of this psychohistorical listserv, questioning the efficacy of doing psychobiography and psychohistory; in our opinion, confusing psychobiography with psychoanalysis. Clearly, psychoanalysis requires living subjects, sitting or reclining in a room with the analyst, while psychohistory is based primarily on psychoanalytic mindset, requires only that there be data on the subject and an analyst who is willing to utilize that data as well as the feelings that are induced by it (the countertransference).

The different length and quality of the submissions by colleagues on the listserv are well worth noting. Merle Molofksy was and is a very strong presence, as she seems to almost bubble over with associations, insights, interpretations and even poems relevant to our subject. Howard Stein, another poet, provides assessments that are of great value in our understanding. The convener/director of the Psychohistory Forum, which sponsors the listserv and its associated website (cliospsyche.org), is not typically an active partici-

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pant. Molly Castelloe, as usual, fulfilled a valuable role in furthering discussion and welcoming people to our site, as well as providing important questions on gender, child-men, and grandiose fantasies. Joel Markowitz and Alice Maher are two psychiatrists/ psychoanalysts who brought their special knowledge and concerns to the table. Joel’s profound interest in the evolution of our species and our consciousness was reflected in many of his posts, while Alice’s concern for de-stigmatizing mental illness runs against the tide prompted by psychological problems of the recent shooters. This resonates with this author’s focus on the ways in which even the mentally disturbed reflect unconscious motions and impulses within our society. Her frustration with the “Goldwater rule” of the American Psychiatric Association barring psychiatrists from the public discourse regarding living people without their expressed written permission is quite understandable.

James Anderson and Neil Wilson are two psychoanalytic psychologists who brought unique insights to the discussion. Jim’s view of the deleterious impact of guns was heightened by the statistics he cited, including the fact of the role of bullets in making male suicide attempts a reality. Neil reminded the group of basics, including that this is a psychohistorical group, so people should be doing in-depth psychohistorical explorations. Florian Galler, a Swiss economist and creator of a psychoeconomic newsletter, brought his unique perspective to the discussion. Henry Lawton, despite his serious medical problems, brought some of his knowledge of family history from decades of social work experience to our exchange. Lew Schwartz brought a lot of energy to our discussion. At so many points, other colleagues such as Hans Bakker (Canada), Don Carveth (Canada), Brian D’Agostino, John Farion, Ken Fuchsman, David Lotto, Helénè Lewis (South Africa), Geraldine Merill, and others made valuable contributions to our discussion.

Personally, we are strong advocates of tight gun controls, a national system of gun registration, and prohibitions on any weapon that can begin to fire at a rapid rate, such as the machine guns that were outlawed in America in 1934 in the wake of the rampage by Bonnie and Clyde. Yet guns have such great emotional appeal in our society, and our national politics have been so dysfunctional as

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of late, that there is very little likelihood that strong actions (such as conservative Prime Minister Howard of Australia took in 1996 when he strictly banned civilian ownership of assault weapons and mandated gun licenses and firearm registrations) will be implemented. The love affair that America has with the gun has gotten stronger, precisely at a time when fewer and fewer of our citizens are hunters. Why is this? Clearly men—who in our lifetimes have had to relinquish much of their sense of superiority over women, whose jobs have been lost or are in danger of being lost to foreign competition, and whose sense of America as a white, Christian society is diminished by our growing ethnic, racial, and religious diversity—talk of restricting weaponry, to say nothing of introducing legislation to that effect, results in guns literally being sold out of stock in some stores. The demography of gun owners does not appear to have changed very much. The large minority of Americans who own weapons are simply buying more and more of them and desire those with the greatest firepower. Our dislike of guns, despite Paul Elovitz having been qualified as a marksman during basic training as a draftee in the U.S. Army, is based on the death and destruction they spread in our society on an everyday basis. The 32,163 gun deaths in America in 2011 included 15,953 homicides. In 2010 there were 11,832 suicides with guns (http:// www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/united-states). While gun deaths are declining slightly in the U.S.A., public tolerance for them is also declining. It may be true, as conservative intellectuals have sometimes pointed out, that robberies are diminished when the citizenry is armed, but this is an exception, not the rule. Guns are mostly for killing, and the more guns there are distributed in American society, the more people are killed in homicides, suicides, and accidents.

Yes, the 32,163 killed by guns in our violent society’s horrid dance of death takes precedence even in the face of the Newtown elementary school massacre horror. On the same day as the murders in the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, a 36-year-old Chinese man stabbed 22 school children, but none died. The Chinese, who have an incredibly bloody history, do not have a gun culture. The reality is that in America other massacres are being planned as we grieve this one.

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Lately, Paul Elovitz has been focused on how to organize much of his teaching around the growth of empathy and the general decline of violence in Western Civilization—taking the long view which is hard in the face of the Connecticut massacre (see Jeremy Rifkin, The Empathetic Civilization [2009] and Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence [2011]). America’s love affair with the gun needs to be confronted and rejected in our complex, interrelated world. This is something that needs to be done despite our severely dysfunctional national politics.

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