As I strolled through the supermarket today, observing the still not negligible crowd of maskers, distancers and sanitizers, I realized something that should have been obvious to me long ago.
We’ve all read about mass hypnosis and mass hysteria. Some of us know the work of Belgian psychologist Mattias Desmet and his “mass formation” theory. But my realization came from my own past, my personal experience. Throughout my itinerant life, I’ve suffered all manner of what is fashionably called “issues”. It used to be called “neuroses” from Freud’s time until the 1970’s, but the term has fallen into disfavor. In my early 20’s, while living in Israel, I experienced OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) so strong that my mind was not able to focus on anything external at all. I woke up ruminating, locked inside my head, I spent my days obsessing, driving my anxiety to critical levels and I went to sleep in that state as well. It is not something I would wish on my enemies. It’s an unrelenting mental pain, akin to an untreated, unbearable toothache - the difference being there are no mental dentists to extract the offending cuspid. There are, however, therapists and God knows I tried them all: the pipe smoking bearded analyst who kept falling asleep as I described my woes. The chemist who had a pill for every ill - but nothing that could soothe my brain for more than a few hours. The Skinnerian clinician who didn’t see much difference between humans and lab rats - though I will say that of all the shrinks I visited, he was the best dressed and wore the most expensive after-shave. The Jungian who kept looking for archetypical patterns in my life: he did nothing for my state of mind but I enjoyed going to see him because he had the most amazing, booklined office. I kept searching for someone, anyone, to help me ease the distress caused by my mind devouring itself. Finally, through a friend, I was introduced to a youngish American psychologist by the name of Meir. He lived and worked 100 miles south of Tel Aviv. In Israel, 100 miles is really about as far as you can go before you encounter either the desert or enemy fire. I took the train down. Meir didn’t smoke a pipe. He wore a short-sleeved shirt, no tie, no after-shave. His office was tiny. Only a few books on an improvised bookshelf: no Jung, no Freud, just a few basic psychology textbooks. We sat across from each other, an ugly large table between us, Meir wearing thick horn-rimmed glasses, a legal pad in front of him, pencil in hand. I began telling him my story - and by that point my story had accumulated a lot of details which I felt needed to be shared.
In any therapist’s office, time assumes a weird quality: it flows both slower (since there is a lot of ground to cover) and faster (since one always feels better in the presence of a good listener and does not want the session to end) But as it happened, Meir cut me off about ten minutes into my monologue, having only scribbled a few words on his legal pad. “I’ve heard enough,” he said. I felt offended. “But I’ve barely covered a third of what I need you to hear”, I complained. Meir replied: “It’s not about what I need to hear - it’s what YOU feel you need to say. And let me assure you, I don’t mean this in a rude way at all, but I know what the problem is even if you don’t say one more word. I think we should focus on solutions now”
I was stunned. Meir was the first therapist I had encountered who used the word “solutions”. Not “therapy”, and not “improvement”, but “solutions”. He continued: “Here’s why I don’t need you to elaborate any further. You seem like a very bright young man. You’re well read, well spoken and you describe your condition with accuracy and insight. Way more than most of my clients”. He said “clients”, not “patients” - another encouraging sign. “Here’s the deal: if your intelligence and your analytical ability could help you, you wouldn’t be here. You know your obsessions are silly and irrational. You would have simply talked your way out of them long ago. The fact that you haven’t been able to points to the fact that these automatic thoughts are driven by a part of your brain that your neocortex finds impossible to control. And to find a solution, we’ll need to bypass your neocortex, your logic, your analysis-to-paralysis, and hit your amygdala directly!”
How we proceeded to do that is not really germane to this story. Neither is the fact that it took a few more years to find that solution and, actually, some of it DID have to do with my neocortex. What is relevant is that this episode from my past gives me an insight into why the outwardly silly behavior of masking and carrying out ridiculous Covid rituals continues. People who keep acting as if it’s March 2020, as if we don’t have reams of science and experience to show their conduct is stupid and self-defeating, act this way because their neocortex is unable to talk them out of their obsessive fear. They cannot be reached by logic because, as Meir had said to me 45 years ago, if logic could reach them, it would have done so by now. Not being a psychologist myself - though I play one on Twitter - I’m not sure what weapon we will be able to use to “hit their amygdala directly” One thing is for sure: the continuous fear mongering that is blaring at us 24/7, directed by our “rulers”, amplified by social media and the MSM, regurgitated by our “public health” (what an ironic misnomer that is) - all of that feeds the amygdala directly. Fear and panic are to the reptile brain what a piece of fat sausage is to a salivating dog. The longer you hold that sausage in front of his nose, the more drool will come out of his mouth. The first step to finding a solution is stopping the fear. We can then find a way of calming down our primitive snake brain and rediscover the anatomy which makes us (semi) normally functioning human beings: our frontal lobes!
Thank you Mr. Grosman. Please write more about de-programming if you have further insights. This is something we need for the time ahead as everyone becomes more and more entrenched in their fear.
Here’s to the glorious (if sometimes pesky) frontal lobe!!