Barak Obama did a bit of analysis. He proposed that the middle class voters had retreated into Religion, Guns, and Racism because they were "bitter" about their plight. The spinmeisters accused him of being elitist. I presume they played it to mean that Obama was putting this group down – saying they were less than. I think, in the context it was delivered, he was actually defending them, but that’s neither here nor there.<\/p>\n
In psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, what Obama did is called an interpretation<\/strong><\/em>, assigning a meaning to something that is different from the one presented. He was saying that the people who seem like religious zealots, gun nuts, and racists are really acting out an emotion, bitterness, at how they’ve been treated in one way or another. In my profession, one doesn’t throw interpretations around lightly – for many reasons, but up front, you’re saying to a person – "you don’t know what you’re doing!" In addition, you’re saying, "I know you better than you know yourself." Therapists in training often learn to sleuth out hidden meanings long before they learn when and how to deliver them in a helpful way. So they bludgeon their patients with premature, unwanted, or downright wrong interpretations [accounting for their inability to hold onto their early clients, who leave saying "he was a know-it-all snob"].<\/p>\n Obama broke some of our rules with his comment, to be sure. Maybe it was even elitist, but that’s not my complaint. I think he was wrong. The hyper-religious, and gun toting, bigotry comes from much more primitive sources – greed, envy, power, fear, hatred, paranoia, aggression, group narcissism. Obama was being naive. Human beings are Xenophobic [fear of strangers], banding together against "the other" by nature<\/em><\/strong>. It is only a civilized lot that can rise above it. If Obama wants to address these darker places in the human psyche, he would do well to learn more about them.<\/p>\n In fact, I hope does. In this case, he could’ve stayed on the surface – religion, guns, racism and simply pointed out that those are strong currents right now – something that needs to be understood more fully. And left it at that. One cannot interpret a reason for something until it has been established as existing. On the other hand, he could’ve said that there is a lot of bitterness right now, probably a lot of it is justified, and that the bitterness needs to be better understood if we’re going to move forward. People can relate to feeling bitter [because they feel it]. But hooking up bitterness with their religion, guns, and racism seems like an accusation and a put-down – and his opponents jumped on it like locusts.<\/p>\n What does a therapist do when there is a reaction like this? Says, "You know I connected A to B, and it’s obvious that what I said hurt you. I’m sorry. I guess it felt like an accusation. Which part hurt? Which part did I get wrong?" Obama might even say, "If I were white, I think I might feel bitter about affirmative action and some of the other programs that came out of the Civil Rights Movement. Is that not right?"<\/p>\n