thwarted
Armchair Psychoanalysis: Anthony Weiner and the Tweets of Doom
To preface, I am not Anthony Weiner’s psychotherapist, psychologist, psychoanalyst, or hypnotist, but I thought it would be interesting to explore some of the facets of this mega faux pas and use this event as a “teachable moment”, a way of exploring psychological ideas.
Now, I do not know Congressman Weiner, so I don’t profess to know AT ALL, what was and is going through his mind. Even if I did know him, I’m sure there is such a panoply of potential explanations and rationalizations for his behavior that we could theorize for days and weeks and months, and still not know. Any understanding of his psyche will only occur within the private and secure bounds of his own therapy, painstakingly discovered through a dedicated and authentic process. We will never know. Hopefully he will articulate, for himself, a narrative that will help him express and rework these longings, fears and compulsions. I don’t know him, and I am not trying to figure him out– my friends and patients will tell you that I tend to believe it is a futile exercise to make any attempt to decode the meaning of a another man’s behavior. Let’s just use our imaginations and play and try to learn about how the mind works.
There are many places to start, but let’s start with the most basic ones. First, I am not going to focus on Congressman Weiner’s need to send graphic pictures or have online chats to get turned on. Sexuality is such an individually constructed subjective experience that the content of his behavior is not necessarily problematic. In a private context, where everyone is consenting and no one is harmed, we have nothing to say about this behavior except perhaps comment on its compulsiveness. Unfortunately, the context within which all of this occurred was not private, not necessarily consenting, and there has been much harm all around. Second, a core premise here is that there are, as always, deep and unconscious desires and needs seeking expression and release, for which, in this case, there was no supportive outlet. We won’t know what Congressman Weiner’s deep longings and needs are, as they are personal and unique to him, as well as so private that it is unfair to speculate. We are instead going to discuss the context that might have encouraged such a disappointing, self-defeating and sad expression of the unconscious processes that dominate us all in some way or another.
Congressman Weiner’s sins were most egregious in the areas of impulse control, emotional regulation and judgment. These abilities are part of the brain’s executive functioning capacity, and associated with the prefrontal cortex. These functions involve abilities of attention, planning, organization, judgment, self-control, emotional regulation and delayed gratification. We develop these strengths through growing up in a secure and supportive environment where our caregivers help us process our experience and model ways of understanding and modulating our feelings. Success in life seems correlated with the development of these brain functions. A study by Walter Mischel, a Stanford psychologist, found that young children who were able to exercise self-control by delaying eating a marshmallow were found to become more successful adults. They were able to use mental strategies, such as distracting themselves or reframing what they saw (imagining the marshmallow was a picture of a cloud), that helped them suppress their strong desire for the marshmallow. We can improve these functions at any point of the life span through meditation and actively developing mental strategies. We can also enhance and strengthen these neural connections through the empathic, supportive and narrative relationship of psychotherapy.
Executive functioning varies widely between people, but also within people. Someone who has abilities that are no better or no worse than anyone else can plan and carry out their lives successfully. However, anyone can be stretched past the point of coping well with life, to a place where they lose control and are unable to apply cognitive control over their behavior. I believe that this is part of what allowed Congressman Weiner to act in such an unthinking, careless and self-destructive way. Overwhelming feelings, stress, illness, loneliness, feelings of deprivation, and re-experiencing traumatic emotions, can all overtax our ability to regulate our emotions and behavior. We’ve all experienced this (at least everyone that I know). Haven’t you ever received a phone call that left you so frustrated that you immediately, as if you were hypnotized, ran into the kitchen and eaten way too many potato chips? Or what about that time you broke up with your partner and had “one” cigarette, which lead to a pack? Or when you received an infuriating letter from a co-worker, which made you feel so belittled or controlled, that you immediately wrote a response you later regretted? How about the time when you couldn’t stop playing online poker, lost a lot of money, and went without sleep for a day? We all have different boiling points, and different characteristic responses to an overwhelming state of mind where our developed mental strategies don’t work because of such high emotional arousal. I believe that some inner or outer experiences overtaxed him, and led him to turn to his own compulsions of choice. Obviously (as we can unfortunately plainly see), Congressman Weiner doesn’t eat too many potato chips, or alienate his colleagues (as far as I know). His comfort food of choice involves the internet and sex, as it does with many people.
Many people express powerful longings which can’t be processed or soothed but can be superficially managed through internet porn, other compulsive internet activities, and impersonal online semi-sexual liaisons. Internet soothing becomes a problem when is ends up being self-destructive or destructive to others. This behavior was self-destructive because if he had not been so in the grip of these powerful longings and needs, he may have been able to think, and to understand that it was highly probable that this would be easily revealed and/or discovered. He would have understood how damaging to his reputation, marriage and career this behavior was. He might have even been able to reach the sense of responsibility he had to his wife, to the women he treated like objects, and to his constituents, as well as to his political causes. He couldn’t though. His higher level cognitive capacities were offline when he was online.
I also believe that there was one more extremely potent factor contributing to Congressman Weiner’s disinhibition….POWER! Power ignited the fire and was the kindling allowing it to rage out of control. Having power enables someone to fail spectacularly and sometimes to take the whole world down with him. Power and celebrity create an illusion (or delusion) of omnipotence, indestructibility, infallibility, unreality, and a lack of ability to see others as people. When people work for us, or admire us indiscriminately, we hear a lot of yeses, and very few nos. There is a term, “acquired situational narcissism” that refers to this sense of unreality and lack of perspective that develops when we live in a world where everyone treats us as someone special. We can lose the ability to question ourselves, to be reflective and to see the world accurately because others validate our perceptions and feelings because of who we are and not what we think (think of Michael Jackson). In a world of power, we often end up looking only in the mirror, because there are no “real” people who give “real” feedback and boundaries. Congressman Weiner had greater opportunities to enact his desires without reflection since he wasn’t often questioned. Do you think that all of the women who conversed with him online would have participated if he was just any other Weiner from Queens or Brooklyn? They looked up to him and admired him, and were probably flattered by his attentions, as strange as they may have been. Powerful people who don’t have very strong values and capabilities often succumb to the echo chambers of their fantasies and needs. Experiencing feelings of fear, doubt and vulnerability is frightening, if not downright intolerable. During these online excursions, he may have entered a different state of mind that allowed him to escape from the stresses of life and to feel as invincible and as invulnerable as he needed to. Power is a paradox: it highlights one’s vulnerability by its negation of it.
So, what have we learned here? I think that the main idea I would like you to take away from this is how vulnerable we all are to a spectacular slip like Congressman Weiner’s. No matter how developed our cognitive capacities are, any of us can have difficult experiences that overwhelm or impede our reflective abilities and allow us to act in ways that we feel ashamed of. While we can’t predict what will come in life, we can engage in an ongoing life of dialogue with trusted and “real” others that can help us express our hurts, fears and vulnerabilities, as well as gain support and insight.
other interesting postings:
What Science Tells Us About Power and Infidelity
How Anthony Weiner Might Save His Marriage
Sex Rehab for Weiner? How Sexual Addiction Treatment Works
Related articles, courtesy of Zemanta:
- Weinergate: Why Did He Do It?
- What Kind of “Treatment” Is Anthony Weiner Getting?
- Does Acting Like a Weiner Mean You’re An Addict?
- Is Weiner’s Behavior a Disorder?
- Why we CAN’T know why they did it
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