A Quality of Mercy: How we Resent the Other as we Resent Ourselves

Leonard Nimoy in A Quality of Mercy (1961).

In the third season of The Twilight Zone (1961), Leonard Nimoy played a minor role in a tale of personal transformation penned by Rod Serling and Sam Rolfe. Typical of Serling's Twilight Zone series, the episode deals with social issues of prejudice, hatred, and personal blindness to one's own true motives.

In A Quality of Mercy a young, gungho officer arrives on the Philippine Islands at the scene of an attack. It's the final days of World War II and the American G.I.s are battle worn and weary from years of death, destruction and hatred. The Americans have cornered a platoon of Japanese soldiers in cave, many of whom are worse for the wear than the Americans themselves. Starving, spent, and trapped they pose no real threat to the American soldiers.

The United States' atomic attacks in Hiroshima and Nagasaki have crippled Japan and these are the final days of the war. With nothing left to be lost nor to be gained, the G.I.s hope to avoid killing the cave full of wounded Japanese men. They are resolute to wait out the final days of the war without further slaughter.

Things change when Second Lieutenant Katell arrives. Fresh out of officer's training school and thirsty for Japanese blood, Katell is hankering for his piece of the action before the war ends. Although Sgt. Causarano and his men explain the senselessness of further bloodshed to the Lieutenant, he is unmoved. The officer reminds the soldiers who is in control and how he intends to have his men attack the cave. Leonard Nimoy, playing a private, adds (in a very Spock-like tone) "This one is bloodthirsty". Sgt. Causarano doesn't back down. He tells the Lieutenant,

"We've seen enough dead men to last the rest of our lives. The rest of our lives, lieutenant,  and then some. Now you've got a big yen to do some killing? Okay, we'll do some killing for you. But don't ask us to stand up and cheer."

As the lieutenant is preparing for battle, he chastises the sergeant for being "either battle fatigued or chicken." The sergeant attempts to introduce the lieutenant to himself,

"You're a pea-green, shaved hair, and just fresh from some campus. Afraid you won't bag your limit, or worse all shook-up because somebody might spot you as a "Johnny come lately" instead of a killer of men... You want to prove your manhood, but it's a little late in the day, there aren't many choices left as to how to do it. It all boils down to that cave full of sick, pitiful, half-dead losers and a platoon of dirty, tired men who've had a craw-full of this war."

The lieutenant is livid and barks back,

"You're a lousy soldier, and that goes for the rest of these poor, sick boys that you want me to bottle-feed. When you fight a war, you fight a war, and you kill until you're ordered to stop... No matter who they are or what they are, if they're the enemy they get it! First day of the war or last day of the war, they get it!"

This is where things become interesting. In his rage Lieutenant Katell drops his binoculars. When he reaches down to get them he is suddenly Lieutenant Yamuri, an officer in the Japanese army. He is startled to realize that he is leading an attack against a group of wounded Americans in a cave. He has entered, as Serling tells us, "into The Twilight Zone".

The remainder of the film describes the change of heart that the officer undergoes when he is in the position of the other. No longer trapped in his own malignant narcissism, the lieutenant is able to empathetically identify with the other, and this change of heart necessarily results in a change of his actions. The episode concludes with words from William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice:

"The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain of the heaven upon the place beneath. It blesseth him that gives and him that takes."

We all have been Lieutenant Katell at certain times in our lives. While dealing with others on the highway, in the supermarket, or online, we tend to project the worst fears we have of ourselves onto others. Fleshing out assumptions about sex, gender, skin, body shape, ethnicity, wealth, poverty, and much more, we come to resent the other as a generalized amalgamation of all of our resentments.

It is easy to do this from a distance, because from afar we can only see the generalizations of our assumptions. As we get closer to the other, just as Lieutenant Katell becomes closer to Lieutenant Yamuri, we begin to see the other as a person, rather than as a conglomeration of that which we resent in ourselves. This is the entrance into empathy. Sigmund Freud tells us in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego that empathy begins with identification. It is not until Lt. Katell identifies with  the other, literally seeing the world from their eyes, that he develops a sense of himself in relation with the other.  In this way, it is only through empathy, or mercy as Shakespeare puts it, that one can take away the self-hatred that one acts upon others. 

The Blue Dress: On The Phenomenology of Color Perception

In the first psychology class, taught by William James at Harvard in 1872, the psychological perception of reality was demonstrated with a fascinating experiment. James arranged three buckets of water on a table; one hot, one room temperature, and one ice-cold. He then asked a student to hold their left hand in the hot water while holding their right hand in the ice-cold water. After a few minutes, James instructed the student to place both hands in the room-temperature bucket. What the student felt was astounding, to the left hand the water felt ice-cold, and to the right hand the water felt hot. Although both hands were in the same bucket of water, each hand experienced something entirely different.

This experiment in perception illustrates the precedence of context in our experience of reality. Every quality that we experience, be it temperature, color, flavor, odor, or tone, is a result of the contrast between it and what precedes it, or what it is enframed in. Take for example the traditional rules of wine tasting. When we are tasting wines, it is customary to begin with dry wines and then proceed to sweet wines. The result in violating this rule is that a dry wine tastes extremely dry if preceded by a sweet wine. It is also convention to "cleanse the palate" between tasting different wines with water or bread, which acts to establish the same contextual transition between wines. In other words the new wine is always introduced with the same flavor (water or bread). This prohibits the wines from interfering with each other.

In color perception the case is similar. The color that we perceive is always dependent on the context within which that color exists. Take for example these three images. The color in the center (we call this the figure) seems to change depending on the context which surrounds it (called the ground). Although in isolation the center color is stable, in the framed with a different context, the color itself changes. In psychology we call this enframing gestalt.

In music a tone takes on meaning depending on the key in which it played. For example, the tone "C" (do) takes on different perceptual meanings in the key of C major than in the key of F major. The tone itself takes on meaning in the context of the key in within which it exists. In this way, we come to understand that the perceptual meaning of a stimulus is always enframed and never in isolation. Even in isolation, the note is preceded by silence, which is the context. Perception and meaning is always contextual.

Screenshot from wired.com.

This week's Internet craze is the "blue" dress. Debates are taking place as to whether the dress in the picture is really blue or gold. Taking the Gestalt principle of enframing into consideration, we understand that the color of the dress is a perceptual phenomenon dependent on the context within which it exists.

Beyond the question of the dress color is a deeply rooted debate in the philosophy of science. It is the debate between the views of universalism and relativism in human experience.

The belief that we see the world as it is, and that we can arrive at some objective, quantitative, categorization of stimulus is called naive realism. This is the view of empirical science, which holds that all stimulus can be measured and categorized.

The opposing view is that of phenomenalism. This view holds that experience might be quantifiably measurable in isolation, but its meaning is always dependent on the context within which it exist (time context and space context), as well as the context of the biology and life experience (history) of the viewer. For the phenomenologically oriented, reality is always a participatory experience of a perceiver and the perceived. 

Immanuel Kant made the distinction this way: The thing as it exist in itself he called the noumenon. The perceptual experience that we have of the thing he called the phenomenon. For universalists the noumenon is studied empirically through measurement. For phenomenologists the important thing to study is the phenomenon.

Sir Isaac Newton laid out an objective theory of color which most research in psychophysics is based on. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe disagreed with Newton and proposed a theory of contextual experience, which is often favored by phenomenologists.

Take for example the experience of temperature. Two people are in the same room, but one is cold and the other is warm. The empirical or quantitative researcher would be interested in the quantitative temperature of the room; what the thermometer says. The deference to measurement, the empiricist says, will tell us what the "objective" reality of the room temperature is.

The phenomenologist points out that regardless of the quantitative measurement of temperature, what is truly important is each individual's experience of the room, it is a qualitative (comfortable or uncomfortable) experience that matters most. 

The same experience holds true for time. Depending on what we are focusing on (our intentionality) we experience time differently. This is why "time flies when we're are having fun," the phenomenological perception of time is dependent on the context of the individual's intention.

The ancient Greeks made a distinction between chronos time and kairos time. Chronos time is the time on your watch; the quantitative measurement of time. Kairos is time as experienced. If you are dating someone new and wondering how many dates should pass before you have your first kiss, you are thinking in chronos time. If you just allow the kiss take place at the "right time," you are living in kairos time.

The German philosopher Martin Heidegger pointed out that to fully embrace the world, we must consider both the objective view (he called this ontic) as well as the phenomenological view (he called this ontological). Those who prefer to view perceptual experience as something objective to measure typically embrace the quantitative, scientific view. Others, who prefer to understand the world phenomenologically, become artists, poets, and writers--Sometimes psychologists.

And then there is the question of language and culture. It turns out that "blue" is just a signifier for a signified. But we will save that for another day. In the final analysis we accept the wisdom of the Surangama Sutra, "Things are not what they appear to be, nor are they otherwise."

The Social Responsibility of the Press: Lessons From the 1947 Hutchins Commission

Journalists and the media platforms that broadcast their work play an essential role in the American version of democracy. Those who write the news, produce, and distribute it act as an unofficial fourth estate of government. Founders including Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson felt that the press should act as a watchdog that keeps-in-check the actions of the executive, legislative, and judicial estates of government.

The history of journalism is necessarily entangled with the history of technology. With each technological revolution, the fourth estate has undergone considerable transformations. In its earliest appearance town criers would read the news aloud to a largely illiterate citizenry. The press came to refer to the news when figures such as  John Campbell, John Peter Zenger, and Benjamin Franklin established press-printed news broadsheets; early forms of print newspapers. The technological transition passed from an oral, to print, to electronic, and currently to digital medium which has been described as a networked fourth estate or a fifth estate. Marshall McLuhan's (now banal) declaration that, "the medium is the message," points to the fact that technology influences how we receive, process, and react to information.

Print magazines tell us what happened last week. Print newspapers tell us what happened yesterday. Facebook tells us what just happened, and Twitter tells us what is about to happen. With the transition from print to digital media, we encountered a compressing of time between when something happened and when it was reported. With each technological shift we find a decrease in time between event and reporting. This necessarily means that information being reported will change.

We find that a weekly news magazines, either in print or digital format will be longer, more in-depth, and presented in a way that is necessarily distant from the event itself. The time available to the journalist for research, thinking, and writing lends itself to a more deliberate style of reporting. At the opposite end of this spectrum is the Twitter-like, 24/7 news flow that was introduced by CNN in 1980. News that is reported live is necessarily less deliberate, less thoughtful, and less researched than is weekly or even daily news. It is intrinsically more reactive than other forms of news.

There is a direct relationship between the time taken to report and the accuracy, depth, understanding, and ethicality of that which is reported. We find that the more time between the event and the reporting on it, the more deliberate and credible the reporting is. With the as-it-happens presentation of the news comes a certain rumorous buzz that appeals the most base aspects of our species. Being in the know is deeply rooted in our evolutionary past.

During World War II the publisher of both Time and Life magazines, Henry Luce, became increasingly aware of the important role that the media played in modern democracy. Luce was one of the most influential Americans of the mid-twentieth century, and Life magazine was a dominant weekly, photojournal that shaped the public's opinion of the war. In 1943 Luce approached the president of the University of Chicago, Robert Hutchins to lead a Commission on Freedom of the Press to scientifically evaluate the impact of media on American democracy.

The findings of the Hutchins Commission were published in 1947. The 140 page report described the influence of mass media on society and its implications for a healthful democracy. Of particular interest is the final section of the last chapter entitled, What can be Done by the Public. The suggestions by the commission of university academics are relevant to us today and essential to building a media literate citizenry in the age of media saturation.

The Hutchins Commission concluded that journalists needed to take more social responsibility in their reporting of the news. The commission established five requirements for members of the press:

1. The media should provide a truthful, comprehensive and intelligent account of the day's events in a context which gives them meaning.
2. The media should serve as a forum for the exchange of comment and criticism.
3. The media should project a representative picture of the constituent groups in the society.
4. The media should present and clarify the goals and values of the society.
5. The media should provide full access to the day's intelligence.

At the heart of the concluding chapter of the report, we find an emphatic message to the government and to the American people: the real power of the media is in the hands of the people. Despite the overwhelming nature of the news media shower, we alone have the choice to engage or disengage the media. The potency of our vote through our consumption practices exceeds the potency of our vote at the polling station. The report describes:

"The people of this country are the purchasers of the products of the press. The effectiveness of buyers' boycotts, even of very little ones, has been amply demonstrated. Many of these boycotts are the wrong kind for the purposes; they are the work of pressure groups seeking to protect themselves from justifiable criticism or to gain some special advantage. The success of their efforts indicates what a revolt of the American people against the service given them by the press might accomplish." (Pg. 96)

The report continues, 

"What is needed, first of all, is recognition by the American people of the vital importance of the press in the present world crisis. We have the impression that the American people do not realize what has happened to them. They are not aware that the communications revolution has occurred. They do not appreciate the tremendous power which the new instruments and the new organizations of the press place in the hands of a few men. They have not yet understood how far the performance of the press falls short the requirements of a free society in the world today. The principal object our report is to make these points clear."

What we find here is a direct message from academics to the American people. The true power in matters legislative, judicial, and executive lies in the individual choice to engage with media. In other words the choice to subscribe, to support advertisers, to "like," and to share --or not to-- wields more influence than any other factor in our media landscape.

Revisiting the Hutchins Report repays dividends ten-fold. In it we not only find advice relevant to us today, but also an example of the vital role that our intellectuals and academics play in democracy today.

Direct comments, questions, & corrections to Matthew Giobbi.

American Sniper and Fifty Shades of Grey: Sadomasochism and the American Unconscious

In the psychodynamic tradition, we hold that culture--that is, the artifacts that are created by those whom we call artists--is the manifestation of the unconscious struggles of the individual with society. We hold that there is not only a personal unconscious which moves individuals, but also a social unconscious that moves society. By examining the themes and issues that recur in a society's cultural artifacts, we can sketch-out the underlying, unconscious cultural conflicts that give rise to the work of art. In this way, as Erich Fromm described it, we put culture on the couch to discover the unconscious motivations of our society.

Two current films point to an interesting phenomenon in the American unconscious. American Sniper and Fifty Shades of Grey both deal with relationships of authority, power, dominance, and submission. These films also illustrate the two unique forms of sadomasochism that psychodynamic psychologists describe: moral sadomasochism and Sexual sadomasochism.

Let's begin with a distinction between the two types of sadomasochism. Moral sadomasochism refers to a certain attitude that governs the personality of some individuals. These individuals are strikingly aware of and sensitive to their own and others' position in society. They are in a constant state of evaluating how another "measures up" to themselves. They are interested in identifying who is a potential threat and whom they can dominate and control. At the core of this moral sadomasochistic character is an extreme awareness and sensitivity to controlling and being controlled.

Sexual sadomasochism is far less prevalent than moral sadomasochism, and is marked by sexual excitation through dominance, submission, humiliation, and pain. In sexual sadomasochism the arrangement is voluntary, consensual, and typically independent of an individual's personality outside of the bedroom. The significant difference for us here is that sexual sadomasochism is a consensual activity for mutual sexual satisfaction, whereas moral sadomasochism is a non-consensual, social expression of exploitation that necessarily involves a persecutor a and a victim. David Shapiro, in his classic text, Autonomy and Rigid Character, describes the moral sadomasochistic character:

"...an individual who respects power and the powerful above all and despises weakness and helplessness, who tyrannizes those beneath him and is submissive to, wishes to "fuse" with, the powerful ones above."

The moral sadomasochistic character (also called the authoritarian character) has a marked interest in who is superior and who is inferior. They are often interested in positions of both legal enforcement of the law (such as the police and military) and moral enforcement of the law (as in rigid religious chiding). They simultaneously submit to others that they admire, and persecute those whom they find contemptuously inferior. As Shapiro describes them, they take particular interest in being a part of some elite or special group to which they, themselves submit:

“These individuals continuously take their own measure, and many rigid persons live with a self-important consciousness of their superior achievements, rank, and authority, their membership in some prestigious group or category.”

American Sniper and Fifty Shades of Grey are both films about power, dominance, submission, and authority. The themes that exist in the film come to life when we place them in the context of the social reaction to the films. Through examining the comments, reactions, and critical responses, we can flesh-out the currents that run beneath the surface of American society.

The comments made by viewers who find satisfaction with the ideology of American Sniper are remarkably consistent with Shapiro's insights into the moral sadomasochistic character. These comments are marked by interests in "settling the score," and "putting them in their place". They often go far beyond the sometimes necessary military action, and instead incite a sense of sadistic satisfaction in exercising dominance and power over others. The very essence of a sniper is one who is at an advantage over another, it is a fight in which a person who is already in a position of vulnerability is attacked. Shapiro describes this:

"To put the matter another way, to inflict suffering on a relatively powerless individual, an 'inferior,' or to inflict further suffering  on one who is already suffering, is the intrinsic nature of sadism."

Possibly the most damaging assault to the sadomasochistic character is when they are challenged or injured by someone whom they consider inferior. We can see this reaction evident in the fact that such a powerful military could suffer injuries from those they consider "inferior" groups. Shapiro says:

“When his already exaggerated and uncertain sense of personal authority is chafed further by feelings of inferiority, shame, and humiliation, the rigid individual may become defensive, his attitudes harder and angrier."

In Fifty Shades of Grey we find the identical theme. Far from being a movie about sexual sadomasochism this is a film that resonates with the moral sadomasochistic dilemma that many women experience in American society. We note two things from the reception of Fifty Shades. Firstly, the revenue for the book and the film have been overwhelming. There is something in this story that is resonating with viewers and it is not merely sex. Anyone can view much more exciting sex from the comfort of their own homes. Secondly, the demographic for the book sales is reported to be mostly college-age girls and women over thirty, married with children. The movie demographic is mostly the latter.

On a conscious level the motivation might be mere sexual taboo of sadomasochism, but the fact remains that much more compelling depictions of sadomasochistic sex are available to all of these viewers at home.

What is attracting these demographics to the theaters and the bookstores is something that is on the minds of both college women and those married with children. For the former it is a question of whether or not to continue the traditional cultural roles that society is expecting them to play, and for the latter it is coming to terms with having chosen to enter into those traditional, phallocentric, social structures. This is the dilemma that Anastasia Steele is confronting through her encounter with Christian Grey.

It seems that both of these films are resonating with the unconscious of men (in American Sniper) and women (in Fifty Shades of Grey). Perhaps through these films, the unspoken struggle will become spoken and individuals will come to terms with the choices they have in continuing the moral sadomasochistic narrative.

---

Shapiro, David. Autonomy and Rigid Character. New York: Basic Books, 1981.

In the Eye of the Beholder: How we Determine the Meaning of the News

Paul Lazarsfeld, lead researcher of
The People's Choice Study.

Common sense holds that when we are presented with information that is contrary to what we believe, we are forced to reexamine not only the new evidence, but also our beliefs, attitudes, and assumptions. This is the belief that when a rational individual is confronted with evidence that runs contrary to their assumptions, that individual will rationally change what they believe.

Our news media landscape is more diverse than ever before. Digital, electronic, and print media each provide an assorted and democratic array of perspectives, including conservative, liberal, and centrist attitudes. We have at our fingertips what seems to be a limitless variety of ideologies to guide us towards making rational, informed, and deliberate conclusions about our world. However, one of the earliest studies in media psychology research suggests otherwise. It tells us that far from challenging our beliefs, contrary evidence reinforces the beliefs we already hold.

The 1940 American presidential election found the incumbent Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt running for an unprecedented third term. His tremendous popularity overshadowed the unknown Republican challenger Wendell Willkie. In the end, Roosevelt became the only president in U.S. history to serve three, consecutive terms.

What makes the 1940 U.S. presidential election interesting to us today is that it was the first election in which social scientists examined the influence of information on the voter's thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, and actions. Five important concepts were produced from The People's Choice Study that are relevant to us.

1. We are influenced by people whom we admire

Through the 1940s it was commonly believed that information was injected directly from books, newspapers, film, radio, and television into the person, not unlike a hypodermic injection. The model, which is commonly called the hypodermic needle theory or the bullet theory held the view that people contemplate and interpret new information independently from others. The principal researcher of the study, Paul Lazarsfeld, found that we are influenced more by who is saying it, rather than what is being said. Lazarsfeld and his colleagues found that we are influenced more by opinion leaders than we are by information. In other words, our attitudes, beliefs, and thoughts are influenced by the interpretations of those we admire, rather than by our own thinking. This model, known as the two-step flow model, revolutionized how media theorists think about how media influences the audience.

2. We seek-out information that confirms our beliefs

Lazarsfeld and his colleagues found that far from providing us with a diversity of information, increasing the number and diversity of information "channels" did not increase the diversity of our political opinions. Rather than considering the assorted explanations and attitudes presented by various sources, audience members tended to selectively expose themselves only to programs that confirmed their attitudes. In other words, people with centrist beliefs tend to spend their time listening, reading, and watching centrist programs. The same is true for liberal and conservative attitudes.

3. We hear only what confirms our beliefs

We often find Liberals complaining of a "conservative media bias" and Conservatives complaining of a "liberal media bias".  How can this be? It turns out that the bias is more in the individual than in the message. The People's Choice Study reported that Conservatives or Liberals who were exposed to information that challenged their political attitude were reinforced in their preexisting attitudes. In other words, liberal news programming reinforced the Conservative's belief  and conservative news reinforced the Liberal's belief. When it comes to news programming, we selectively perceive what we are exposed to.

4. We remember what confirms our beliefs

It should come as no surprise that two friends, watching the same movie, will recount two different films. Not only do we selectively perceive what we are consuming, we also selectively remember what we have been exposed to. Selective retention was found to exist when Democrats could report instances of Roosevelt's trademark fireside chats, while Republicans could not. Of course at the basis of selective recall is selective perception; we cannot remember what we did not perceive.

5. Information reinforces rather than converts

Focusing on campaign media, the People's Choice Study concluded that campaign advertisements and public relations messages were not likely to change an individual's choice of candidate. Rather than convincing people to vote against their political party, political ads encouraged those within their party to get out and vote. In this we see how partisan news media serves not to convince others of their views, but rather to reinforce the views of their own party.

Although conducted over seventy years ago, The Peoples Choice Study and Paul Lazarsfeld's text, The People's Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Election, both remain valuable resources for considering how we understand our relationship with media.

America's First Movie Star

Until 1991 America's first movie star rested under an unmarked grave in Hollywood Forever Cemetery on Santa Monica Boulevard. Over 50 years after her death an anonymous British actor memorialized her grave marker with the words, "The Biograph Girl/The First Movie Star".

Florence Lawrence's story is the template for Hollywood celebrity. Her grandparents escaped Ireland's Potato Famine to Canada where her mother became a vaudeville entertainer known as Lotta Lawrence. Her father, a carriage builder from England, would die in a tragic coal mining explosion when Florence was between 2 and 8 years-old (the exact date of her birth is a mystery). Upon her father's death she and her mother emigrated from Ontario, Canada to Buffalo, New York, and eventually to New York City.

When Florence and her mother moved to New York City in 1906, New York and New Jersey were the center of American motion picture making. It was that year that audiences saw the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire; history written in light, as well as the gangster film The Black Hand. Growing up on the vaudeville stage, Lawrence immediately found work as a silent motion picture actress, appearing in 38 Vitagraph Film Company films by 1908. In 1906 she and her mother were both hired to appear in Thomas Edison's production of Daniel Boone. Lotta and Florence were paid five dollars a  day to film in the freezing cold in Bronx Park in the Bronx.

In two years Edison would establish The Motion Pictures Patents Company, an organization that would enforce Edison's patent use fees on any filmmaker using his technology to produce motion pictures. Known as The Trust, filmmakers were eventually forced to leave the oppressive climate of New York and New Jersey for the freedom of the West Coast -the birth of Hollywood.

In 1908 Florence Lawrence appeared in 60 films directed by D.W. Griffith for Biograph Studios, which filmed in a brownstone studio near Union Square in Manhattan. At the time, motion picture studios did not credit the actors, fearful that doing so would increase the actor's bargaining power for pay. When Biograph Studios began receiving letters inquiring into the name of the beautiful actress, the simply called her The Biograph girl. In a curious move, Biograph eventually fired Lawrence for courting other film companies.

A German immigrant named Carl Laemmle saw profit where Biography Studios saw control. Laemmle, who ran Independent Moving Pictures (IMP) in Manhattan, signed Lawrence on as an actor in 1909. But before she appeared in an IMP film, Laemmle pulled on the most successful publicity stunts in motion picture history, a antic that would launch Lawrence into being the first movie star.

Laemmle put out a rumor that The Biography Girl, Florence Lawrence, had been tragically killed in a street car accident in New York City. After newspapers reported the story, and the shocking news was on the public's lips, Laemmle ran a strategically placed newspaper ad that simply said, "We Nail a Lie". The ad identified Lawrence with a headshot and announced that she was alive and well, and that she would be appearing in the IMP film, The Broken Oath.

Laemmle's plan to manufacture Lawrence as The Imp Girl,  came to a climax when he fabricated a press story that Lawrence had been stripped of her clothes by a frenzy of St. Louis fans upon her first public appearance after the false report of her death. America's first movie star was born.

An 18 year-old Mary Pickford would take Lawrence's place after she left IMP for Lubin Films of Philadelphia. Lawrence went on to appear in hundreds of films for production companies in New York and New Jersey.

In just under ten years, Lawrence not only acquired fame but also fortune. In 1915 she began shooting a picture for Victor Film Company called Pawns of Destiny; a filming that would result in the ending of her stardom.

While filming, a staged fire erupted and Lawrence was severely burned leaving her with facial scars and a fractured spine. At the time D.W. Griffith had introduced the close up shot into filmmaking; a technique that conjured an intimacy between audience and actor like never before. Left with facial scars Lawrence starred in one last feature for Universal Films, Elusive Isabel. 

In 1927 The Jazz Singer ushered in the world of talkies to cinema. Like most of actors of the silent movie era, Lawrence's career was over. In 1929 the stock market crash and sudden death of her mother plummeted Lawrence into emotional and financial depression.

For eight years she survived on bit parts and finally moved to Hollywood where MGM gave her small rolls. She was living at the home of her friend Bob Brinlow in West Hollywood when she received a diagnosis for an incurable bone disease. On December 28th, 1938, Lawrence drank a mixture of cough syrup and ant poison. She left this note.

"Dear Bob, Call Dr. Wilson. I am tired. Hope this works. Good bye, my darling. They can't cure me, so let it go at that. Lovingly, Florence -P.S. You've all been swell guys. Everything is yours."

Me & Caesar & The Id & The Ego (Part 5)

In 1923 Sigmund Freud formalized his theory of the dynamics of the self. Forty-one years later we find much of the book illustrated in a half-hour episode of The Twilight Zone.

V The Dependent Relationships of the Ego
Whereas much of the first four chapters of The Ego and the Id describe the origins, development, and nature of the systems of the psyche, this final chapter deals with the dynamics of those systems; how they act and interact.

Freud begins the final chapter by summarizing what has been explored in the previous four chapters, namely how the ego and super-ego emerge from the id as identifications with lost love objects (abandoned cathexes). Freud tells us that the development of these three systems of the psyche not only mirror the child's development through puberty and adulthood, but also preserve the conflicts (complexes) that a child experiences during those years. "As the child was once under a compulsion to obey its parents, so the ego submits to the categorical imperative of its super-ego."(Pg. 49). Freud goes on to remind us that,

"...the super-ego is always close to the id and can act as its representative vis-à-vis the ego. It reaches deep down into the and for that reason is farther from consciousness than the ego is." (Pg. 49)

The above passages illustrate for us the dynamic nature of the psyche, namely that there are aspects of the super-ego and the id that are unknown to the ego; private conversations that take place behind the back of the ego. It is important to recall that Freud described that the ego itself is partially unconscious and unknown to itself.

In Caesar and Me we find conversations between Jonathan West and Caesar only taking place in
Jonathan's room. The room is private and closed off from reality--a place where conversations take place between West, Caesar, and Susan. Whereas West's conversations outside of the room are placating, superficial, and hurried, his conversations inside his room are deliberate, penetrating, and searching. West's internal dialogue, the unconscious thoughts that express the demands of the id and super-ego, is authentic, whereas the conversations he has outside of the room (conscious conversations) are calculated performances, ego defenses against the demands of reality. We also note that Susan and Caesar have conversations unknown to Jonathan, illustrating the unconscious dynamics that Freud describes, between the super-ego and the id.

Jonathan has just settled his debt with his landlady using money that he swiped from the neighborhood delicatessen. Jonathan, Mrs. Cudahy, and Susan interact in the lobby of the boardinghouse. Mrs. Cudahy is supportive and encouraging to West while Susan berates him, "Will wonders never cease... Better count it again, Auntie, see if they're real." We find here the dynamic interaction of the ego, super-ego, and reality taking place in consciousness. The id is silent, only speaking unconsciously. It is not until we enter West's room (the unconscious) that we find Caesar admonishing Jonathan:

West: A common thief. What a way to make a living.
Caesar: You couldn't make it any other way.
West: What's happened to me? A no-talent ventriloquist. Worse, a second-rate thief.
Caesar: Third-rate.
West: Starving to death. In the profession I know, paying the bills by robbing the neighborhood delicatessen.
Caesar: Well, that's show biz.
West: I guess I wasn't too bad considering it was my opening performance.
Caesar: Let me straighten you out before you start taking too many bows.
West: Oh Caesar, just let me alone, please.

Let's first consider the dynamics of the conscious interaction between West and Mrs. Cudahy. West is always placating, polite, and superficial with Mrs. Cudahy. It is as if he is acting as one acts when one is in public. West is performing, meeting the demands of reality by obsequiously capitulating to the social commandments of civilized society. His interaction with reality is consistently submissive and appeasing, as if to say, "pardon me for my impotence". West is almost deaf to Mrs. Cudahy's praise. Freud tells us,

"There are certain people who behave in a quite peculiar fashion during the work of analysis. When one speaks hopefully to them or expresses satisfaction with the progress of the treatment, they show signs of discontent and their condition invariably becomes worse... One becomes convinced, not only that such people cannot endure any praise or appreciation, but that they react inversely to the progress of the treatment... They exhibit what is known as a 'negative therapeutic reaction'... We are accustomed to say that the need for illness has got the upper hand in them over the desire for recovery... In the end we come to see that we are dealing with what may be called a 'moral' factor, a sense of guilt, which is finding satisfaction in the illness and refuses to give up the punishment of suffering." (Pg. 49) 

Despite the fact that West is satisfying his debt, he is unable to accept praise from Mrs. Cudahy. Meanwhile, Susan is whipping him with for his sin, partly in consciousness and unconscious, she knows the true origin of West's payment, and she won't allow him to forget it. Susan is West's conscience seeping through into consciousness. It is clear that West is suffering from guilt. Freud tells us how this unconscious guilt functions:

"An interpretation of the normal, conscious sense of guilt (conscience) presents no difficulties; it is based on the tension between the ego and the ego ideal and is the expression of a condemnation of the ego by its critical agency. The feelings of inferiority so well known in neurotics are presumably not far removed from it... In melancholia the impression is that the super-ego has obtained a hold upon consciousness is even stronger. But here the ego ventures no objection; it admits its guilt and submits to the punishment... in melancholia the object to which the super-ego's wrath applies had been taken into the ego through identification." (Pg. 52)

We find here why West must not take compliments from Mrs. Cudahy, for he feels he deserves punishment for his guilt. This underlying guilt is latent and pervades West's entire character. The guilt is not merely over the petty crime of robbery; it is a much deeper guilt that, in fact, the guilt drives West to commit crimes. Freud tells us,

"It was a surprise to find that an increase in this Ucs. sense of guilt can turn people into criminals. But it is undoubtedly the fact. In many criminals, especially youthful ones, it is possible to detect a very powerful sense of guilt which existed before the crime, and is therefore not its result but its motive. It is as if it was a relief to be able to fasten unconscious sense of guilt on to something real and immediate." (Pg. 53)

What Freud proposes is that underlying both depression (melancholia) and neurotic obsessions (Obsessive-Compulsions) is unconscious guilt. The former resulting symptom is self-reproachment, while the latter is pleading and forestalling. Each, Freud surmises, is incited by an unconscious intrusion of the death-drive. In other words, depression and obsession are both unique expressions of the ego's defense against the unconscious desire to return to the inorganic--to die. Freud warns, "The more a man controls his aggressiveness, the more intense becomes the ego ideal's inclination to aggressiveness against his ego." In other words, repressed aggression results in self-admonishment, illustrated clearly in the relationship between Susan and West.

What is it that Jonathan fears? Freud tells us, "The superior being, which turned into the ego ideal, once threatened castration and this dread of castration is probably the nucleus round which the subsequent fear of conscience has gathered; it is this dread that persists as the fear of conscience." (Pg. 60) What we find here is that we are driven not by guilt or conscience, but rather, to the unconscious fear of what conscience threatens to do to us. At a primal level it is castration, the symbolic annihilation of the self.

In the final scene of Caesar and Me we find the collapse of the dynamic structure of the self. The boundary between conscious and unconscious is breached as the unconscious is penetrated by the external world (reality). Two police officers enter the room and witness the breakdown of Jonathan West. An anonymous phone call has lead the police to Jonathan as a suspect in a crime. Of course this anonymous call was from Susan, illustrating how the super-ego betrays the ego as symptoms, which, although anonymous by nature, can be seen by others. In response to Jonathan's monologue of confession, begging, and acceptance, Caesar is silent. The intrusion of reality marks the collapse of the ego defenses and the dynamic self. What remains is an unconscious which is vacant of the ego; a Jonathan West his has been reduced to id and super-ego, without conscious expression.

Caesar & The Id & The Ego & Me (Part 4)

In 1923 Sigmund Freud formalized his theory of the dynamics of the self. Forty-one years later we find much of the book illustrated in a half-hour episode of The Twilight Zone.

IV The Two Classes of Instincts

Freud tells us that two impulses are predisposed at birth: a drive towards life and an drive towards death. The event of birth is something endured, not something invited. Freud claims that humans  yearn to "re-establish a state of things that was disturbed by the emergence of life." Here we find Freud describing the idea of the death-drive, the opposition of Eros, the life-drive.* Eros had been the lone drive in Freud's theory, a bifurcation of the desire for sexual objects and the desire for self-preservation.

We find that the life-drive and the death-drive are not merely in opposition, but are also fused and complimentary. Freud tells us that "...a special physiological process (of anabolism or catabolism) would be associated with each of the two classes of instincts; both kinds of instinct would be active in every particle of living substance..." Freud describes the death-drive as a necessary part of the organism protecting itself "against the external world," in other words it is "alloyed with" the life-drive.

An instance of this fusing can be found in the "sadistic component of the sexual instinct... and the sadism which has made itself independent as a perversion [that] would be typical of a defusion..." This fusion and defusion between the life and death instincts, Freud surmises, is not only the core of sexual sadism, but also the impulse for the "fundamental phenomenon" of ambivalence -our simultaneous feelings of desire and disgust, often experienced as the simultaneous desire to be both protected and independent -"the polarity of love and hate". Freud characterizes this:

"There is no difficulty in finding a representative of Eros; but we must be grateful that we can find a representative of the elusive death instinct in the instinct of destruction, to which hate points the way. Now, clinical observation shows not only that love is with unexpected regularity accompanied by hate (ambivalence), and not only that in human relationships hate is frequently a forerunner of love, but also that in a number of circumstances hate changes into love and love into hate." (Pg.41)

In Jonathan West we find curiously little evidence of either a life-drive or a death-drive. His words and actions with others are empty placeholders, temporary acts that fend-off and forestall the intrusion of reality. This is most obvious when we see West auditioning for a ventriloquist job. His act is unconvincing, dispirited, and impotent. The same is true with his interactions with other objects of reality, including Mrs. Cudahy; West is repeatedly inert to his landlady's overtures of nurturing and love. We get the feeling that West is somehow unable to respond to her willingness for affection. The only emotional investment we find in West is within himself.

Freud describes how the erotic libido (the sex drive) can be transformed into ego-libido (self-preservation drive), which serves to de-sexualize the libidinal energy. Freud describes this de-sexualization of the libido as a way of dealing with the loss of a love object, particularly a forbidden love object, such as the cultural restricions of a homosexual love object-cathexis. Freud tells us,

"By thus getting hold of the libido from the object-cathexis, setting itself up as sole love-object, and desexualizing or sublimating the libido of the id, the ego is working in opposition to the purposes of Eros and placing itself at the service of the opposing instinctual impulses." (Pg. 45)

This, of course, is illustrated by Jonathan West's narcissism. His only investment of libidinal energy is with himself, that is, with Caesar and Susan. In an attempt to deal with some object-loss in reality, West has redirected his erotic libido onto himself, which leaves nothing for the external world. Freud tells is, "The narcissism of the ego is thus a secondary one, which has been withdrawn from objects."

It is important to note that Freud does not point to homosexual object desire as the cause of this neurotic way of dealing with the world. This illustration clearly shows that it is the forbidden status of that homoerotic desire that the ego reacts to. In other words, it is the social imposition against the desire, rather than the desire itself, that results in the shift from love of the object to disgust. Freud illustrates this economic redirection of the drives with a joke. "Such behavior on the part of the unconscious reminds one of the comic story of the three village tailors, one of whom had to be hanged because the only village blacksmith had committed a capital offence."

We find Caesar, in playing the role of id, driven by the pleasure principle. His demands are life-preserving, an attempt to counterbalance the narcissistic deflation of the ego. We see that without Caesar's prodding, West would be little more than a living corpse. Freud tells us that this relationship is "illustrated in Fechner's principle of constancy... [it] governs life, which thus consists of a continuous descent towards death, it is the claims of Eros, of the sexual instincts, which in the form of instinctual needs, hold up the falling level and introduce fresh tensions." Here we can see that far from being merely destructive, Caesar is the one force that is keeping Jonathan from death.

Freud concludes the penultimate chapter of the book with a description of how the ego and id corroborate in a maintaining the life-drive. Through this description of the id's drive towards pleasure, we can understand how Caesar, far from being a mere destructive force in West, is also a life-sustaining function that keeps West alive.

"This accounts for the likeness of the condition that follows complete sexual satisfaction to dying, and for the fact that death coincides with the act of copulation in some of the loser animals. These creature die in the act of reproduction because, after Eros had been eliminated through the process of satisfaction, the death instinct has a free hand for accomplishing its purpose. Finally, as we have seen, the ego, by sublimating some of the libido for itself and its purposes, assists the id in its work of mastering the tensions." (Pg. 47)

*Freud uses the German Triebarten where James Strachey chose Instincts. Triebarten is similar to the English word modes, and refers to what we today call drives.

Phenomenology: The Other Psychology

In 1815 A German astronomer named Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel came across the curious story of an assistant researcher at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England. He found that in 1795 David Kinnebrook was relieved from his duties for sloppy data recording. It seems that the head researcher (Reverend Nevil Maskelyne) noticed a consistent half-second discrepancy between his and Kinnebrook's recording of the "transits of stars".

What Bessel found intriguing was that Kinnebrook was not the only researcher whose data recording was questioned. The more Bessel investigated, he found increasing evidence that there are distinct individual differences in our experience of the the world; a personal equation. This is the event that many scholars point to as the impetus for the development of a scientific psychology.

Gustav Fechner (1801-1887)

The predicament of the the personal equation challenged the Enlightenment certainty in the objective observation and measurement of the natural world; the project of the scientific revolution of the 16th century. A new field called psychophysics emerged to investigate how individual differences occur at the sensory level. In an attempt to understand the personal equation, researchers including Johannes Müller, Hermann von Helmholtz, Ernst Weber, and Gustav Fechner took up the task of examining how the sense organs function.

The culmination of the psychophysicists' work was presented in Gustav Fechner's 1860 text, Elements of Psychophysics. We find in Fechner's book, some 7 years before Wilhelm Wundt's first course on experimental psychology, much of what Wundt taught in that course. So great was Fechner's influence on Wundt (Wundt gave the eulogy at Fechner's funeral) that we find an almost seamless transition from Fechner's psychophysics to Wundt's experimental psychology.

Franz Brentano (1838-1917)

The physiologically oriented psychophysicists were not the only Germans investigating the sensory experience of the world. In 1874 a German-Italian named Franz Brentano published a book that challenged nearly every aspect of Wundt's experimental psychology. In Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, Brentano argued that the experimental methods of the psychophysicists were of limited usefulness in the study of the human mind. He proposed that psychology should be based on qualitative observation, rather than on quantitative measurement. It is interesting to note that in his final work, the ten volume Völkerpsychologie of 1900-1920, Wundt himself described the limitations of a quantitative, experimental psychology.

Brentano's influence on psychology is significant. At the University of Vienna, where he was professor of philosophy for 20 years, he taught students including Christian von Ehrenfels,  Edmund Husserl, Carl Stumpf, and Sigmund Freud. Freud was so taken by Brentano's lectures that he enrolled in five of Brentano's courses. Later Freud would regard Brentano as a "genius... a damned clever fellow".

If we trace the lineage of the Gestalt psychologists and the existential phenomenological (humanistic) psychologists we arrive at Brentano. Carl Stumpf, one of Brentano's best known students, was influential in the founding of Gestalt psychology. Stumpf's students included Wolfgang Köhler, Kurt Koffka (two of the main founders of the Gestalt movement), and Kurt Lewin, one of the founders of social psychology.

What made Brentano's psychology different from Wundt's can be seen in the qualities of its descendants. Social, Gestalt, existential-phenomenology, and psychoanalytic psychologies are all based on meaning arising from the interaction between and individual and their world; it is the study not of the quantitative functions of the senses, but of the qualitative contextual experience.

For Brentano experience was an activity, not a structured contents of sensory elements, as Wundt and the psychophysicists held. Act psychology, as Brentano called it was interested in describing the act of experiencing a phenomenon; rather than dissecting consciousness into associations of sensations. 

This way of doing psychology is strikingly different from Wundt's tradition of objective measurement. Brentano's psychology is entirely descriptive and experienced from the first-person perspective, rather than the third-person, which is common to the the tradition of experimental psychology. This difference, the description from the first person, is not merely a grammatical variation--it is an act that calls into question the separation of the subject and the object; it eliminates the possibility of distinctly "subjective" and "objective" experience.

For Brentano, and the phenomenologists who followed, there is no distinction between subject and object, there is a dynamic interaction between a person and the world, from which experience emerges.

Phenomenology is descriptive psychology. For Brentano, as he discusses it in his text Descriptive Psychology, it is the description of experience from the first-person point of view. Edmund Husserl, who is often cited as the founder of the phenomenological method of research, built his theory upon Brentano's writings on descriptive psychology, as well as those of Brentano's student Carl Stumpf.

What made Brentano's theory of mind different from the experimental psychologists can be seen in three concepts which Brentano attributes to mental phenomena. He claims that experience is: internal, experienced as a whole, and always intentionally directed. These three concepts place the focus of psychology not on the objective world, but on the internal world of the individual. Like Freud's new science of psychoanalysis, the phenomenologists rejected the experimental approach of studying psychology. The focus of psychology should be on experience, not measurement. 

In his 1874 text Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint Brentano  describes intentionality:

"Every mental phenomenon is characterized by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object, and what we might call, though not wholly unambiguously, reference to a content, a direction toward an object (which is not to be understood here a meaning a thing), or immanent objectivity. Every mental phenomenon includes somthing as object within itself..."(Pg. 88)

This passage illustrates the issue that positivist, experimental psychologists took with Brentano's descriptive psychology. To them, Brentano's psychology was vague, unscientific, and lacking in the rigour of the psychophysical tradition.

*An excellent introduction to the work of Franz Brentano can be found at The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.