Can you immagine how the political ideas and aspirations envisioned by Abraham Lincoln and the exploration of the psychological mind explored by Sigmund Freud can be seen as one entity?

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PREFACE:

This book was not written in the logical, step by step, outlined way books are suppose to be written. Rather, it started with the many, oh so many, thoughts I jotted down in my PDA over many years.Added were the unwritten thoughts in the RAM of my mind. They came from my daily cycle of treating patients, speaking, and consulting, followed in the evening by newspapers and newscasts. Psychiatry and politics.

Though the principles are applicable to all of humankind, such as the workplace and relationships, this book focuses on the manifestation of human psychology, in the political world.

Organizing all of this was very difficult. Many of these thoughts and observations could fit into several categories we call chapters—and they did. Re-positioning them, deleting redundant ones, and re-writing them were awfully difficult.

In the end something unexpected happened. I learned from the process. As I put it all down on paper, new connections and ideas came to me, some of them the most important in the book. One was the importance to self propagationof the human reflex of attending to the weakest. Another was to curtail that pleasure in helping the weak with the relity of preserving the whole—weather the whole family or the whole society. So the writing process was not always a chore. It had pleasure behind it, as I take pleasure in learning.

The examples of the workings of psychepolitics on the real people mentioned in this book are based solely on my perceptions of them from the media. I do not know anymore about them then that. They are not my patients. If any of them were, I would not mention them due to the concerns of confidentiality.

Also as I did write this book myself, it might not read as smoothly as it might. He or she may not vote for him or her and give himself or herself a worthy candidate. If that last sentence was easy, you’re better at gender grammar then I am. I gave up on it. For now on and throughout this book, he, him, and his refer to both males and females. Her refers to a specific female. Other of my constructions may be equally obtuse. Sorry. At least it is not written in script!

 

INTRODUCTION

To apply what is generally acepted in a field as broad as psychology to a field as complex and adversarial as politics is an ambitious task. With PsychePolitics I grab the bull by the horns—and struggle just to hold on.

PsychePolitics adds another dimension to the political discussion.It allows us to view politics from the bottom up, the inside out. It elplains how the development of each one of us, from the potential of our genes into their expressions as adults, is determined to a large extent by the social world of our families-for better and worse. When we finally exit the nest and join the adult world, what we learned in our earliest years remains in our unconscious minds and influences us, even when it should not. Unfortunately, this is also true when we attempt to govern ourselves. Both we the governed and our political leaders are a complex mixture of nature and nurture. Nonetheless, this complexity has themes that can better explain how it all works. This is what psychepolitics brings to the political discussion.

With this book, the groundwork of psychepolitics has been laid. My hope is that others, both laymen and professionals, will contribute much more to it, revise it, and knead it, until a set of commonly understood, well acepted principles will emerge. That is when the packages can be fully unwrapped. In Psychepolitics, only the ribbon has been cut, and the models of the contents described. Hopefully, as politics is viewed from this unique perspective, the political discussion will be broadened and deepened, so that we can be more and more sure we don’t wind up with lemmons or snake oil.

PsychePolitics.com was conceived to allow both professional and layman to participate in the advancement of psychepolitics. Its stated purpose is: TO BROADEN AND DEEPEN THE POLITICAL DISCUSSION!

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1: What’s Going On Here?

Chapter 2: Why Do We Need To Know?

Chapter 3: Stages…and Stages

Chapter 4: Preverbal Life: What Happens There, Stays There

Chapter 5: Duality, Populism, and The Opposition

Chapter 6: Verbal Life and The Development of Values

Chapter 7: The Fundamental Identifications-and Beyond

Chapter 8: Concentric Constituencies

Chapter 9: The Ultimate Constituencies

Chapter 10: Managing Fear

Chapter 11: Defense Mechanisms

Chapter 12: Perception and Image

Chapter 13: Political Behavior

Chapter 14: Communication

Chapter 15: Relationships

Chapter 16: Illness

Epilogue