The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness

431 Pages·2008·1.84 MB·English

by  Lyle H. Rossiter

THE LIBERAL MIND: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CAUSES OF
POLITICAL MADNESS. Copyright © 2006 by Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr.
Published by Free World Books, LLC. All rights reserved. Printed in the
United States of America. No part of this book may be used or repro-
duced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in
the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For
additional information go to www.libertymind.com.
ISBN 0-9779563-0-X
Library of Congress Control Number: 2006926407
Printed in the United States
Second Printing: March 2008
Publication Date: October 2006
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Cover and title page design by George Foster
Interior book design by Bob Spear
Free World Books, LLC
St. Charles, IL
Table of Contents
DEDICATION vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS viii
PREFACE ix
PART I
1 THE BIPOLAR NATURE OF MAN 3
2 RULES AND REASON 13
3 DEPENDENCY AND COMPETENCE IN
COMMUNITY LIFE 22
4 SOCIAL POLICY AND CHILDHOOD
DEVELOPMENT 27
5 ALTRUISM AND THE COMPETENT SELF 34
6 THE INNATE CHARACTER OF CHOICE 40
7 COMPETENCE AND COLLECTIVISM 47
8 PARENTING AND CULTURE 54
9 IDEALS & IMPERATIVES OF DEVELOPMENT 62
10 SIGNS OF DECLINE 73
11 RECAP OF PART I 84
PREFACE 91
PART II
12 THE SCIENTIFIC STATUS OF BEHAVIORAL
DESCRIPTIONS 92
13 CHALLENGES OF DEVELOPMENT 96
14 THE DICHOTOMIES OF DEVELOPMENT 102
15 CHILD DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIAL PROCESS 110
16 ATTACHMENT, DETACHMENT, AND TRUST 116
17 TRUST, MISTRUST, AND SOCIAL PROCESS 123
18 AUTONOMY AND SOCIAL PROCESS 129
19 BIOLOGY AND AUTONOMY 134
20 AUTONOMY AND THE SELF 138
21 AUTONOMY, INDIVIDUAL, & INDIVIDUALISM 145
22 CAUSE, EFFECT AND WILL 154
23 RULES AND THE CHILD 162
24 ATTACHMENT REVISITED 167
25 AN OVERVIEW OF EARLY DEVELOPMENT 171
vi Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr., M.D.
26 INITIATIVE 180
27 THE FAILURE OF INITIATIVE 185
28 THE FOUNDATIONS OF INDUSTRY 193
29 ACHIEVEMENT IN THE JUVENILE ERA 201
30 MORALITY IN THE JUVENILE ERA 207
31 ADOLESCENCE AND IDENTITY 211
32 ADOLESCENCE AND FREEDOM 217
33 ADOLESCENCE, HEALTHY AND UNHEALTHY 223
34 ADOLESCENCE AND SOCIAL PATHOLOGY 232
35 ADOLESCENCE AND THE LIBERAL AGENDA 237
36 YOUNG AND MATURE ADULTHOOD 253
37 FREEDOM AND FAMILY 263
38 FAMILY FUNCTIONS & THE LIBERAL AGENDA 269
39 THE COMPETENT SOCIETY 277
40 THE FORCE OF RULES 296
PREFACE 309
PART III
41 THE BENIGN LIBERAL MIND 310
42 THE FALLACIES OF POSITIVE RIGHTS 318
43 THE RADICAL LIBERAL MIND 327
44 THE RADICAL DEFICITS OF INFANCY 340
45 RADICAL DEFICITS IN CHILDHOOD 349
46 RADICAL DEFICITS IN THE JUVENILE &
ADOLESCENT ERAS 361
47 IDEAL AND REALITY IN RADICAL LIBERALISM 372
48 INTEGRITY AND TREATMENT 396
BIBLIOGRAPHY 407
INDEX 413
ABOUT THE AUTHOR 419
Dedication
To Jane and Laura, and the Memory of My Parents.
Acknowledgments
My sincere thanks to the many friends who have taken the
time and trouble to read manuscripts of The Liberal Mind at
various stages of its development. I greatly appreciate inputs
from Vern Miller, Shaukat Jamal, Harry Schaffner, Curt Danekas
and Arthur Biddle, among others. Darlene Wingard generously
proofread an early manuscript. My daughter, Laura Rossiter
Spicer, has made especially valuable suggestions in editing the
text and in supervising the book’s publication. I am most deeply
indebted to my wife, Jane Ann Rossiter, for her exceptional editing
skills. Her insistence on clarity, logical coherence and economy of
language have aided immensely in turning sometimes turgid prose
into readable exposition. Of course, ultimate responsibility for the
final product with all of its faults and failings remains mine.
LHR Jr.
Preface
This book is about human nature and human freedom, and the
relationship between them. Its contents are an outgrowth of my
life-long interest in how the mind works. That interest, beginning
at about age twelve, eventually led me to careers in clinical and
forensic psychiatry and to the particular access these disciplines
provide to human psychology. Disorders of personality have been
a special focus of this interest. First in clinical practice and then
in forensic evaluations, I have had the opportunity to study the
nature of personality and the factors which affect its development.
The practice of forensic psychiatry has permitted an especially
close look at the manner in which all mental illnesses, including
personality disorders, interact with society’s rules for acceptable
conduct. These rules, both civil and criminal, largely define the
domains of human freedom and the conditions that ground social
order.
Historically, of course, western ideas about freedom and
social order have come from fields quite distant from psychiatry:
philosophy, ethics, jurisprudence, history, theology, economics,
anthropology, sociology, art and literature, among others. But
the workings of the human mind as understood by psychiatry and
psychology are necessarily relevant to these disciplines and to the
social institutions that arise from them. This book is an attempt
to connect mechanisms of the mind to certain economic, social
and political conditions, those under which freedom and order
may flourish. Although I have made strenuous efforts to follow
where reason leads, I have not written this book out of intellectual
interest alone. My intent has been more “generative” than that, to
use one of Erik Erikson’s terms. It has, in fact, grown out of a deep
concern for the future of ordered liberty. In their efforts “to form
a more perfect Union,” America’s founding fathers intended, as
the Preamble tells us, to establish justice, insure peace, provide for
the nation’s defense, promote its general welfare, and secure the
blessings of liberty. But the entire twentieth century, and the dawn
of the twenty-first, have witnessed modern liberalism’s relentless
x Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr., M.D.
attacks on all of these goals and on all of the principles on which
individual liberty and rational social order rest. Although they
are strikingly deficient in political substance, these attacks have
nevertheless been successful in exploiting the psychological nature
of man for socialist purposes. To counter the destructiveness of
these attacks requires a clear understanding of the relationship
between human psychology and social process. It is my hope that
this book makes at least a small contribution to that purpose.
L.H. Rossiter, Jr. February 2006