politics

Congress – America’s Biggest Dysfunctional Family

By Judith Barr

Congress doesn’t work anymore because it is like a dysfunctional family.

A family in which there is a string of successive fathers, who try to do something for the family -to make it like they want it – while bringing their own wounds and dysfunctions to the group. A family in which there is no mother at the head of the family. Where did she go? Who took her? Who got rid of her? Where in the world is she? Her absence leaving the dysfunction that comes of abandonment. Even if she was barred from the family.

A family in which the siblings have learned to fight with each other . . . some of them while pretending they’re not fighting; some of them under the guise of friendship; some of them fighting in public view while being close in private; some of them trying to win; some of them trying to make the others fail; some of them fighting to the death, albeit figurative death . . . to date. None of them seeing what they are doing to each other. All of them blind and uncaring about what they are doing to the family. Fighting for what they want . . . the family be damned! The consequences be damned!

And that’s what our members of Congress are doing. They’re acting like the children in a horribly dysfunctional family. They’re in adult bodies. Some of them even have adult personas. But some of them, many of them, looking and acting like children right out in full view. Meanwhile they are all (or almost all) regressed children . . . as young as the age at which they were wounded in their own early lives. We have regressed, wounded children running our Senate. We have regressed and wounded children attempting to do the business of our House. We have regressed and wounded children claiming to lead our country.

When we are wounded as children, we get stuck at that age, that point in time, that developmental level. We may grow around the wound, but the wound is left there in the center. We may create defenses that help us seem to develop around the wound, but the defenses don’t dissolve the wound. Until we actually heal the wound, we will consistently, under stress, regress back to the level of that small child — mentally, emotionally, in some ways even physically.

No amount of bandaids will heal the wound. No quick fixes, no matter how simple or how sophisticated, will heal the wound. No amount of managing of behavior, thoughts, or feelings will heal the wound and help the development to continue. The dysfunction will continue, even expand and escalate . . . until we heal the wound to its root.

Our Congress is a dysfunctional family. A family of wounded children. The family needs therapy . . . both as a family and every member of the family.

But…is it just our Congress that’s a dysfunctional family?

© Judith Barr, 2010

Crowley and Gates “Agreed To Disagree”

By Judith Barr

I wasn’t there when Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Cambridge police sergeant James Crowley met at the White House with President Obama.

I don’t really know what happened. I have read multiple times that Crowley said they “agreed to disagree.”

In one report it was reported that Crowley said the two men “have agreed that both perspectives should be addressed.” *

Regardless of what did happen at the meeting . . . I feel called to comment on “agreeing to disagree.”

In Power Abused, Power Healed, as Mita is talking with Jason about her correspondence with Alan, she says:

His phrase, ‘This is my truth and that is your truth’ actually muddies the meaning of ‘truth’ . . .

Statements such as ‘This is my truth and that is your truth,’  and ‘we can agree to disagree’ offer an escape from the need to do the hard work to know, learn, and face an objective truth, a deeper truth. (P 52) **

And in my audio “Woman, Come to Your Self,” I invite you to …

Imagine being that truthful.
Imagine being that much yourself
and still being in relationship.
Imagine being that real
and still being valued.
Imagine being that much yourself
and still being loved.
Imagine being that real, that much yourself
and when the conflicts come
you both stand in your truth
and instead of collapsing your truth,
instead of compromising on the surface,
you trust truth
to take you deeper
into a real solution,
a true resolution
within each of you and between you.
A real resolution created from truth… ***

I know this may seem like it contradicts what I said in my book. But actually it says the same thing. It says that we need to take “our truths” and do the deep work to follow them to the deepest truth and the deepest resolution possible.

Back to Power Abused, Power Healed . . .

Like the old story of the blind people standing around an elephant, each thinking she knows what an elephant is from feeling it, while describing only one part of the elephant – the tail, the trunk, the foot, the ear, the belly.  (p. 187 )**

Is it enough to agree that you think this is an ear and I think this is a trunk? It’s better than warring with each other over who is right. But far better still, is for each of us to do the work – whatever work we need to do – so that we both discover this is an elephant.

Who knows what Crowley and Gates would have discovered at the core? I can tell you that I watch people learn how to do this in every appointment, every workshop I do.  It is a far deeper, far more expansive way to be in life. And it offers far more possibilities!

*https://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/07/30/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5199511.shtml
** https://www.PowerAbusedPowerHealed.com
*** https://judithbarr.com/shop/

(c) Judith Barr, 2009

EXPLORING THE ROOTS OF A SHOCKING EXAMPLE OF POWER ABUSE . . . AN UPDATE

By Judith Barr

As of Thursday, April 16, 2009, Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan, has responded to demonstrations in his own land and criticism from Western leaders against the bill which he recently signed into law, including a provision which essentially legalizes the rape of womenwithin marriage. Karzai claimed that he was not aware of the provision in the law, and told CNN:

“Now I have instructed, in consultation with clergy of the country, that the law be revised and any article that is not in keeping with the Afghan constitution and Islamic Sharia must be removed from this law.”

We have cause to celebrate all those who took action. We have cause to celebrate that President Karzai did respond. But this does not sound like a clear and solid commitment to remove the article from the law. We cannot stop here. We must continue to keep our eyes, ears, hearts and voices on this issue in Afghanistan until it is resolved in favor of a woman’s right to say ‘no’ to her husband’s request (or demand) for sexual contact.

And we cannot stop here. We cannot limit our attention to the outer world manifestation of such abuse of power. We need to remember that a core part of healing this in the outer world is healing it in our inner worlds, too . . . healing the misuse and abuse of power it reveals in our lives – current and long, long ago – and healing the powerlessness it reveals in our lives – current and long, long ago. Only by including the inner work of psyche, heart, body and soul, will we be able to help make changes that are sustainable.

Please read my original post at
https://judithbarr.com/2009/04/05/exploring-the-roots-of-a-shocking-example-of-power-abuse/
to expand your understanding and inspire you even more to do your part, too.

(c) Judith Barr, 2009

THE PRESIDENT REVEALS HIMSELF – AND SO DO WE.

By Judith Barr

A few nights ago, I saw the movie, Frost/Nixon. It was a profound movie at a crucial time in the life of our country. There were moments when the theater was absolutely silent and still – save the monologue or dialogue on the screen. More silent, more still than at any movie I’ve ever attended.

People told me afterward that many of those moments, they were thinking – Bush. The similarities were consistently in my awareness.

For me . . . I was moved by the humanness. For me . . . I was left in tears . . .
For the former president . . . who was so deeply wounded, he wreaked havoc in our country and our world. Richard Nixon, yes. But also George Bush. And who knows how many other presidents. And foreign leaders, too.
And for us, the citizens, who elect presidents who are so deeply wounded that, without doing their own healing work, will most assuredly wreak havoc in our country and our world.

My tears . . . our world would be so much healthier, so much safer, so much kinder, so much more life supporting and nourishing of our positive potential, if we would really find out about the candidates who plan to run for president – their childhoods, their wounds, their psyches, their hearts – before we vote for them . . . and cry for those who are wounded, cry for those who are too wounded to be president . . . instead of electing them.

This doesn’t mean someone who has seen a psychotherapist or been helped with depression is too wounded to be president. Actually, someone who has really deeply worked with a good psychotherapist may well be even more healthy and able to serve well as president than someone who has never acknowledged his/her wounds and done the work to heal them.

My tears . . . our world would be so much healthier, so much safer, so much kinder, so much more life supporting and nourishing of our positive potential, if we would truly find out about our own childhoods, our own wounds, our own psyches, our own hearts and cry for ourselves and our woundedness. . . instead of pushing ourselves into positions in which we act out our wounds and our defenses against our wounds, wreaking havoc in our own lives and the lives of those around us –
in our families, our neighborhoods, our churches and schools, our communities, our countries, and our world.

If we would do this for ourselves,
we would also do it in relation to our leaders.
We would insist on this as the fabric of our culture.

© Judith Barr, 2009

FOR OURSELVES AND FOR THE SAKE OF OUR WORLD

By Judith Barr

I read this article recently – “India Razes Slums, Leaves Poor Homeless” – what I thought would be the last thing before I closed up shop for the day. The first words that came into my mind and heart, echoing the song Easy To Be Hard . . . “How can people be so heartless? How can people be so cruel?”*

I know this happens all over the world, including in our own country. But at the same time, it is beyond comprehension. Beyond sanity to believe that the people affected are not cared about by those who make the decision to bulldoze their homes, as well as by those who actually demolish their homes.

She, her husband, five children and other relatives erected a hut to live in – a home that provided shelter and a base for her husband’s street-side blacksmith business.
The problem is that the land they built on belongs to the government. And the government has decided to take it back. In a matter of minutes bulldozers level the place, leaving Devi and her family perched on a bed atop a sea of rubble.
They have nowhere to go.
“They did it so fast that there was no time to take out anything. And the bulldozer broke everything on the way,” Devi said.
“It’s like we were picked up and thrown away,” she said.**

How hardened have people become that they can bulldoze someone’s home and belongings without feeling a thing – with a closed and locked heart?
How many government officials the world over live like that, act like that?
How many politicians globally go through life like that?
How many citizens live their lives on this earth that way?

And why?
Because they have closed and locked their own hearts to keep from feeling the pain of their own lives – especially their early lives as children in this world . . . when someone bulldozed them . . . their home . . . the home of their body, mind, heart, and soul.

How to unlock and open their hearts again? Our hearts again?
Do our own inner work of psyche and soul to heal the wounds, the traumas, the pains of our own childhoods . . .
for ourselves and for the sake of our world. ***

(c) Judith Barr, 2009

* “Easy To Be Hard”, from the musical “Hair”, James Rado/ Gerome Ragni. https://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/hair/easytobehard.htm

** CNN.com/asia, “India Razes Slums, Leaves Poor Homeless,” Sara Sidner.
https://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/01/14/india.slums/index.html  (Accessed January 21, 2009)

Welcome To PoliPsych . . . Where Politics And Psychology Meet!

By Judith Barr

 

Imagine being empowered by the union of psychology and politics!
Imagine utilizing the joining of psychology and politics to heal not only your own life, but also the life of our country and our world!

Have you felt helpless and powerless when you thought about politics, government, and the world situation?
Have news and events in the political arena brought up raw, intense feelings for you?
Have you wanted to help the world situation, but then thought “I’m only one person . . . what can I do?”

Most people think of politics only as “here-and-now.” But I can tell you from hours and hours of experience with clients, colleagues, friends . . . politics, both for those who are directly involved in the political arena and for the average citizen, is intrinsically interwoven with our individual psychological histories.

Those in the political arena are, after all, human . . . with wounds from their own childhood which, if left unexplored and unhealed, can affect how they use their power and how they govern. Only by working with their own childhood traumas can people in office help ensure that they are able to use the power of office for the good of our citizens, our local communities, our nation, and our world.

As citizens, with our own positions of power in our lives, often when we read or hear about political issues, scandals, actions, or appointments, deep feelings are triggered in us. Our voting choices are often colored by our own inner life, and the experiences of our childhood. When something happens in the world of politics, whether it be something we are happy to see happen or something which causes us sadness or anxiety, we may begin to look outside for solutions to the world’s problems, assigning blame or praise, or the responsibility to fix things . . . rather than using the world of politics as a mirror of ourselves, to help us, and our world, heal.

This blog is here to help you navigate the world of politics through the lens of psychology. In this blog, I will explore with you both the psychology underlying political events . . . and also how to use the actions of our leaders as a mirror to ourselves, to heal and transform our individual perceptions of politics and our individual lives . . . and in doing so, help to create the healing we would all love to see in our world.

(c) Judith Barr, 2009