CHAPTER EIGHTY SEVEN. A CIRCLE HAS NO LEFT OR RIGHT

Written by: Rick Staggenborg, MD on May 22, 2010 8:19 AM PDT

This chapter is devoted to Harry Stack Sullivan, the brilliant developer of many of the techniques of interpersonal psychotherapy. The most important thing that I learned from him was that we are all more alike than otherwise.

Interpersonal therapy is a tool I use daily in psychotherapy. My job as a therapist and a physician is to help my patients realize which of their symptoms are treatable without drugs, which might be better borne without the benefits or harm of medicine and what the safest and most effective treatments are when medication is wanted or cannot be avoided if the symptoms are to be adequately addressed.

I cannot help a patient without engaging in a genuine conversation in which he or she lets down the guard that many of us carry around all or most of the time. When I am doing psychotherapy I am engaged in an intensely personal conversation that begins the first time we meet and that deepens over the course of the therapeutic relationship.

Establishing trust in such a relationship means allowing the person who is asking for help to know who I am as a person. My job is helping people deal with some of life’s most soul-shaking experiences. I help them to make wrenching decisions, to live with the consequences of things they cannot control and with decisions whose consequences control their lives. In the process of learning how to help others, I come to understand and change myself for the better as well.

I have learned to understand how men and women do terrible things and how their victims bear the selfish, cruel and destructive actions of others. What is more important, I have learned how to maintain my empathy for the victims of this mindless cruelty without losing myself in anger at the perpetrator. As a member of Soldiers For Peace International, I know that I have a mission that transcends anger and desire for revenge. I know from my work as a therapist that anger will only interfere with the mission of SFPI to end war.


I am determined to not let the suffering of victims of social injustice  to be in vain. To the extent that I am able, I will further the cause of establishing unchallenged democracy in America through my work to abolish corporate personhood. This is the only way to cure the insane society in which increasing numbers of citizens see themselves as separated from the rest, who they consider responsible for their misery. 

The cure for the depression, anxiety and anger of the average American is to Take Back America through a Constitutional amendment that would abolish corporate personhood and restore the power of government to the People. I cannot see another way to achieve this in the foreseeable future unless someone introduces an amendment on the floor of Congress that would abolish it. 

We must encourage candidates has the to have the courage and integrity to challenge sitting members of Congress to choose between corporations and the People. If even one candidate or sitting member of Congress is elected and follows through on the campaign promise to introduce such an amendment, we can use support for it as a litmus test of loyalty to the People in every subsequent election. This person can and must arise when the People speak with one voice and declare their willingness to stand behind such candidates. 

There is a way to end the partisan paralysis caused by the leaders of both major acting in the interest of the corporations over Americans citizens. We must learn to cast aside the self-imposed distinctions of left and right, party affiliations and religious fundamentalism  that translates into support for authoritarian "solutions" to problems affecting all of us. The corporatocracy is able to impose the  will of  the economic aristocracy because it promotes the divisions among the People of the United States in order to serve the interests of a minority over the both the individual citizen and the nation as a whole.

The only way to convince voters to take a chance on a candidate not chosen by the Puppetmasters of Congress is for those of us seeking fundamental change to win the support of both those who consider themselves Conservatives and those who proudly label themselves Liberals. The abolition of corporate personhood is the issue where the Left and Right will come round full circle. It is the issue that will remind us that we are all Americans and citizens of the world.

Americans  have a duty to remember the sacrifice of those who have died to preserve the Union and those who felt that they were defending their homeland from a foreign invader during the first American Civil War. In that time, Americans were torn between fighting for a slavery-based society or to remain a weakened but partially unified nation. We are in a similar time now, with each American deciding for him- or herself whether we were meant to be one nation, indivisible with liberty and justice for all or whether we are to submit to becoming slaves of corporate masters.Thus, we have come full circle from the time of the Founders, who risked and often gave their lives to fight the fascists of their day and establish the hope for democracy in America and the world.

I believe we are one nation under God, though I would defend the right of another to deny it. Whether for love of God, Man, family or self we must come to understand as Harry Stack Sullivan did that our commonalities are much more important than our differences. We should treasure those differences that give life its complex and delicious flavor to those who care to embrace it in all its joy and pain. We must not let our differences divide us.

This is how we End the Civil War and Finish the Revolution. If we dare to talk to each other in a spirit of understanding and respect, we will find that we have left the American Revolution incomplete. Too many of us fell asleep in history class but it is never too late to learn from the mistakes and successes of the past. Those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them. 

Those who do not remember the instructive lessons of the past will be unable to re-establish democracy in a nation where the citizens of this once-great democratic Republic have allowed fascistic corporate control of government to take root and grow nearly out of control. Once rooted, the growth of fascism threatens to choke the life out of  the tree of Liberty.

We need to understand that our forefathers fought the Revolution only after the patriots in Boston decided that the forced import of British tea subsidized by the government was too much to bear. They knew that the King and leaders of the House of Lords profited from this cozy arrangement. In the meanwhile, the British government was casually destroying the burgeoning cottage tea industry and hurting the American shipping industry on which it depended. This was a government in which they were not represented and had little influence.

For three decades, too many Americans have dreamed our lives away. They have been enjoying the fruits of a false economy and have left us, themselves and all of our children to suffer the hangover from their drunken spree with our money. We began to wake up when we found out that we had to cover the bets that they bankers had made with our hard-earned money they expected to multiply by their imaginary winnings. 

The largest economy in the world has been and remains under the control of war-profiteering bankers with no loyalty to the United States, its citizens or the citizens of other nations who are dying for democracy. In its failure to prevent the rise of unchecked corporate power in the United States, its citizens have been complicit in the murder of millions of innocents throughout the world who are the victims of a war-based economy. 

When the middle class and the poor were treated with the respect and compassion that is the hallmark of America since its founding until 30 years ago, the economy thrived. The average American was and remains willfully ignorant of the fact that their standard of living depended on the suffering of others on distant shores. Now that the consequences of unbridled selfishness are devastating the American economy, those who cheered the myth of American exceptionalism must acknowledge the essential interdependence of all who depend on the fair distribution of the Earth's resources and the wealth that is generated only by the sweat of the worker.

The anger of the dying middle class is palpable and survivalists await a showdown at Armageddon. Fingers are being pointed everywhere by the perpetrators and the mobs of the unemployed and retired follow them in their blind anger. 

Survivalists don’t know when or where to shoot but are gripping their guns ever more tightly as they await the advent of the imaginary socialist government that they believe is coming to take them away. Fascists masquerading as conservatives have again spun myths that raises alarm bells in our reptilian brains. 

The hurt and angry average American must be shown that the consequence of valuing individual rights over collective responsibility is economic subjugation of all Americans. The result is the stripping of  the thin veneer of civilization from American society and rendering angry mobs resistant to reason. Only by talking to each other without fear of anger can Americans come together as one to Take Back America for the People.

Those who have not been following events and reading between the lines are easily swayed by corporate propaganda into believing that those of us preparing to Take Back America are naive dreamers, unrealistic and not to be listened to. 

These politicians and the partisan followers of both major and minor parties do not seem to realize that the power of a people united has been proven by the events of 1775. Fortunately, there are untold millions of us who do understand that we can and must Take Back America for the people.  They must understand that no political faction in the United States can do this alone.

The ranks of the Libertarians are swollen with angry and frightened citizens who believe they must protect their property and that of their friends and family at all costs. Those of us who know better must help them understand that it is this selfishness and tribal mentality that is at the root of our recent surrender of democracy.  To assure the individual Liberty that their leaders place over social responsibility, they must understand that in a Revolution, we all hang together or surely we will all hang separately. We can and must make common cause in restoring democracy to the United States.

It is easy to forget the responsibility of citizens of the United States to safeguard democracy through civic engagement that recognizes the inherent dignity of each of us and honors it with civil political  discourse. The Revolutionary period was one in which colonized  people took to the streets and taverns and debated amongst themselves whether they could and should take control of their own collective destiny. In the end, Common Sense prevailed and the revolutionaries seized the day and their own collective destiny.

The question of whether democracy was possible hinged on whether men and women are basically good or whether they are incapable of overlooking narrowly defined self-interest and working together for the common welfare. The majority came to believe that the better angels of our nature are stronger than the selfish part of our nature. Had the majority concluded as does the majority today that Man is inherently evil and war inevitable, the American experiment in democracy would never have been conducted. If we abandon the very belief that makes democracy possible, we abandon democracy itself. We must not fail to find and act on our common interest in this, its darkest day.

The essential assumption of the American experiment in democracy is that if men and women are inherently good, they can rand by right should rule themselves. Americans have for too long abdicated that responsibility to leaders more interested in wealth and power than in serving the interests of ordinary Americans. They must now understand that the wealthy as a class always puts its own interests over the masses because they are raised to see life as a game of Monopoly.

Once colonials made the momentous decision to forget their differences and to work to ensure that they and their children would be free, they launched a Revolution that has not yet been concluded. They fought a King and the corporatocracy of their day. at the risk not only of failure but their very lives. We must do no less than finish the battle to strip the power of the international corporate terrorists of today if we are to honor their sacrifices and those of the men and women after them who died defending our hard-won freedoms.

The first European Americans and the African Americans risked their lives, their property and their sacred honor to challenge the greatest military power of their day. Having been invaded and dominated by the mercenaries of the corporate Puppetmasters of the Eighteenth Century, they fought back with the conviction that God was on their side in the struggle to give birth to the uniquely American experience of democracy. 

If the United States is to become  the beacon of hope to the world that our Founders intended, then we must clean our own House and Senate to ensure that the last, best hope of Mankind does not perish from the Earth.

During the advent of the American Revolution, patriots  depended on support from the rich European nations who were alarmed at the rise of England that was threatening world domination. The French came to our aid thanks to the brilliant work of Thomas Jefferson, who wooed the French court while rooting for the demise of the French aristocracy. Benjamin Franklin also played an important role, playing the American rustic for the amusement of the sophisticates of the French court. Meanwhile, John Adams was judged too dour and quarrelsome to succeed at winning French support, though he was able to help the Dutch government to understand the benefits of standing with us against their rival.

Once victory was secured at Yorktown with the help of the French navy and the Marquis de Lafayette, the new nation turned inward. The Founding fathers counseled the avoidance of foreign entanglements while the new nation shored up its defenses. Jefferson was still in Paris when the French people took matters into their own hands in the bloody Revolution there. He unwisely opined that “The tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots from time to time.”In this day, the only way to finish the Revolution is to abandon violence as a means to our end.

We are today living with the consequences of the widely held belief that democracy can somehow be established with violence. The foreign entanglements that are bankrupting the United States have been widely acknowledged, but the full costs to Americans and victims of war in other nations has yet to be appreciated by the masses of average Americans. 

The American Revolution will not be complete until the people of the United States abandon this belief and work to secure liberty from the corporatocracy through the democratic process and not through the threat of violence, which is the ultimate tool of the international corporate fascists that have seized control of our government. The Crisis is international and as at the beginning of the American Revolution, so is the solution.

It did not take long for leaders of the Federalist Party to look for conquest in the North through the acquisition of Canada through force. While the goal was to end British domination, the effect was to betray the French, whose compatriots supported us during the early stages of our own Revolution at a heavy cost to the French crown and the aristocracy of France.

Adams to his credit opposed this war of conquest and all Imperialist wars. Though he had already begun the counter-Revolution through the Alien and Sedition Act, the arch-conservative Adams had sided with his rival Jefferson and bravely taken on the leaders of his own Party in resisting an even more foolish war against the French in the early days of the American Republic. Neither was a perfect man, but both believed in their vision for America and it did not include Imperialist expansion, though the doctrine of Manifest Destiny proved them wrong.

With this history, it is remarkable that the American people have split under similar lines as those drawn in the early days of the Republic, when the issues are even more clearly apparent. today. We must remember that when government operates it must do so with the just consent of the governed. Stolen elections have undermined the legitimacy of the US government. It is the right and our duty of Americans to alter it, not foolishly abolish it. 

To study our history carefully we must not accept the Bolshevised version that the corporate media would have us accept. We must reject the self-serving myths that promote the interests of the wealthy and powerful among the hard-working citizens who truly believe that  their hard work will automatically bring the economic rewards the myths of their Masters have injected into their collective unconsciousness. 

Together we must reject the revised version now being considered by the Texas Textbook Commission, whose aim is to help us to forget the ideals upon which the United States was truly founded. In recalling our recent history, we may remember that we came together once to fight worldwide fascism and won.

Today’s world is more complex than at the time of the Founding, making it easier to deceive those who do not recognize the interconnectedness of and mutual respect for each other that is the essential assumption of democracy. 

Battle lines are being drawn between self-described liberals and conservatives to fight a new Civil War rather than finishing the Revolution. We cannot afford to fight each other. There is no place for the loser to go now that we span the continent and threaten to impose totalitarian control over the world, in league with soulless international corporatists who respect no national boundaries and care nothing for the peoples of these nations.

In war, there are no winners. We must end this most Uncivil War and finish the Revolution. In the name of all that is Holy I will not cease to fight for a future for our children and grandchildren. that is worthy of being our legacy to them. We are closer to victory than most appreciates precisely because the corporatocracy seems to be so close to the total economic enslavement of the citizens of this planet by the imposition of a fascist New World Order. The human race is waking up to its impending reckoning.

It is up to us now individually and collectively to choose what future the world will take. We can choose endless war and Hell on Earth, or choose to recognize that our mutual survival as a human civilization depends on recognizing our interdependence and acting together to eliminate the threat at its source.

Freedom will begin in America on the day that a Constitutional amendment to abolish corporate personhood is introduced on the floor of the Senate. Only then will the Puppets sitting in the Roman Senate realized that Americans swayed by the lies of the corporate media and these self-serving politicians have awoken will they realize the fate that awaits Kings and Queens when the abuse of their subjects becomes intolerable. Only then will these corrupt politicians understand that Rome is burning around them. while they were fiddling to the tune of their corporate Puppetmasters. They will then have the choice of putting out the fire by putting the  interests of the People before that of corporations. Should they fail to understand the power of a People united they themselves will be consumed by the fires of the Hell they have created.

In the immortal words of Neil Young:

Won't need no shadow man

runnin' the government.

Won't need no stinkin' WAR.

Won't need no haircut,

won't need no shoe shine

after the garden is gone.

After the garden is gone.

After the garden is gone.

What will people do

after the garden is gone?

What will people say

after the garden?

Won't need no strong man

walkin' through the night

to live a weak man's day.

Won't need no sunshine,

won't need no purple haze

after the garden is gone.

After the garden is gone.

After the garden is gone.

Where will people go

after the garden is gone?

What will people know

after the garden?

After the garden is gone.

After the garden is gone.

We live in the garden of Eden, yeah.

Don't know why we wanna tear the whole thing to the ground.

We live in the garden of Eden, yeah.

Don't know why we wanna tear the whole thing down.

And we've got to get ourselves

Back to the garden.

Rick Staggenborg, MD

Portland, Oregon

CHAPTER NINETY SEVEN. HEALING AMERICA’S BORDERLINE SPLIT

Written by: Rick Staggenborg, MD on Jun 28, 2010 2:15 PM PDT

This chapter is dedicated to James Kohut, who developed much of the Object Relations model that is the framework by which I came to understand the pathogenesis and treatment of Borderline Personality spectrum conditions.
In America's Borderline Split I explored the parallels between borderline personality disorder in individuals and a similar disorder that has come to plague the American collective consciousness. This essay describes what must be done to cure that collective dysfunction so that Americans can come to control their individual and collective destinies by creating a truly democratic society.

America is nearly paralyzed by the inability of the average American to see beyond our superficial differences and think of ourselves as one People. We are all Americans and by extension, citizens of the Earth. We stand at the crossroads between a future that could be Heaven on Earth or, following the road we are on, one that holds multiple threats to the survival of human civilization and leads to Hell on Earth. Soon, we must decide individually and collectively whether we will continue marching down the road toward the dead end of American Empire or forge a new path toward a future of peace, love and understanding where the survivalist mentality is but a historical curiosity.

Borderline personality pathology is caused by the inability to integrate into one coherent image the positive and negative aspects of our experience of others. We internalize these experiences as representations of the people who are responsible for teaching us with love to regulate our emotions, delay gratification, accept responsibility for our actions and generally to mature into psychologically healthy and responsible adults.

As infants, we do not perceive ourselves to be separate from our environment. Early in life, we begin to associate positive and negative mood states with the persons around us who seem to induce them by their actions. This is the earliest representation of the not-self, or the Object in Object Relations theory.

If we experience love consistently from our parents, they become “good” objects. If our parents are consistently loving in their interactions with us, it is easy to maintain a positive regard for them even when they inflict pain, such as in teaching us to respect others by making us apologize when we do not. This is emotionally upsetting to the child, but a necessary lesson for living in an interdependent and civil society.

When parents are inconsistent, neglectful or consistently angry or punitive, the child is unable to form a consistent image of the Other as loving. They may see the Other as represented by the internalized parent: Threatening, unpredictable and untrustworthy. While other adults can sometimes provide the consistent affection children need to experience in order to learn to soothe themselves when upset, most children reared in such circumstances fail to achieve adequate integration of the ”good’ and “bad” Objects that are the representations of the positive and negative experiences we have of our caregivers.

As adults, these products of dysfunctional homes tend to form snap judgments of others and are quick to label as “bad” those whose ideas seem different and therefore threatening. This reflexive fear of the other leads to isolation and fear of change, the hallmarks of non-rational conservatism. Other self-identified conservatives are afraid of rapid change, but only seek to change the system slowly and cautiously.

Unfortunately, the corporatists who have seized our government have no such compunctions. In historical time, they have moved very rapidly to assume control of the government through simultaneous attack on the free media, the Supreme Court selection process, the electoral process, international diplomacy and regulation of business. In this time of crisis, traditional conservative responses to the excesses carried out in the name of “conservatism” are inadequate. To Take Back America for the People, we must finish the Revolution that the neo-cons have so thoroughly subverted. The insurgents responsible for the international terrorism since the coup in Iran in 1951 must be stopped now. If we do not act collectively and soon, we may lose the opportunity to restore democracy to the United States that we surrendered in the corporate coup over the last 30 years.

Because parents are rarely totally consistent and because we mature at different rates, some aspects of Borderline psychopathology persist into adulthood for most of us and if we grow up in an emotionally abusive or neglectful home, the pathology is worse and can be very resistant to change. If expressions of love are inconsistent they acquire a powerful value, bonding the child to its aggressor even more strongly than a consistent pattern of loving by the parent. In psychological terms, this is called an intermittent reinforcement schedule and its result identification with the aggressor.

The attitudes and emotions we develop during childhood toward our parents generalize toward others in our later life. Thus, if I believe my parents are unloving and only concerned for themselves, I am likely to expect that of others and treat them accordingly. The predictable effect of automatically distrusting others is that I will not be trusted to consider their interests. If I am such a person, I will only respond to kindness, because it is so unexpected that it challenges my preconceptions and forces me to think. 

The task of those of us raised in loving homes is to recognize that our experience is not the norm in today's society. If we want to return to the halcyon days of our youth, we must model respectful and caring behavior to others so that they may see a more perfect society is possible. In so doing, we undo the work of the corporate media that normalizes antisocial behavior by constantly showing it and even praising the corporatists who live their lives unheeding of their social responsibilities. We must practice random acts of kindness so that others may begin to question the right of the corporate elite to run our government like a candy store that only they are allowed to buy from.

Those who fail to appreciate the importance of their early life experiences do not know themselves, so cannot be true to themselves. They are easily led into rationalizing their antisocial actions when convinced that it is in their best interests or that “that is the way it is.” The truth is that each of us lives in our own reality, filtering our experiences of the day through the lens of our personality.

If we choose to believe that nothing can be done to create a more just economy, government or society we create a self-fulfilling prophesy of the world to come. All it takes for evil to succeed is for good men and women to conclude that nothing can be done but to pray for someone else to save them from the consequences of their own greed, apathy or intellectual laziness. Neither Jesus nor Mohammad will not do it, for God only helps those who help themselves. We have few leaders in the Senate who are morally fit ot make decisions on behalf of all of us. We must work together to replace them with ones who are.

A society where individual responsibility is felt to be the most important virtue is not a healthy one. The radical individualist fails to recognize that just as each of us is interdependent on each other, society and government to enjoy the blessings of democracy, we are interdependent economically. It is the winner-take-all mentality that has caused the economy and society to self-destruct. It is natural for multigenerational abuse and neglect to increase over time in such a society.

If it were true that individuals are always responsible for taking care of themselves and their families with no regard to the effects of their attitudes or actions on society as a whole, then it follows that once these abused children grow up, it is up to them to fix themselves and to make it in the world without any help from family or the government that we all pay for. I do not choose to accept this model of society and do not believe that democracy can long survive the increasingly prevalence of this selfish belief system.

The fallacies in this radically individualistic life-view are apparent on casual inspection. Clearly, it is not a morally defensible position to say that each of us is fully responsible for our own fate. We determine collectively whether the least among us will have an opportunity equal to the favored few to succeed in making it in a mercilessly competitive society. We have to therefore accept individual and collective responsibility for the suffering of those who have been disadvantaged by the society we have created. Accepting responsibility means accepting our own responsibility to the poor, the emotionally damaged, the sick, the old and all of the most defenseless among us who suffer through no fault of their own.

My progressive friends cannot understand why people who more often than not call themselves “Christian” cannot see the simple truth that we are responsible for the welfare of the least among us, as Christ simply stated. It is impossible to argue that greed is good and that unregulated capitalism is the best way to run a democratic society. We knew this at our nation’s founding, when the Founders risked death to establish the credo that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among them are the rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness…” In a society where selfishness is lauded as a virtue, clearly such rights are not universal. Inevitably, this craven competition for ever more wealth and status leads to poverty, disease, hunger, mental illness, despair and individual and societal suicide.

Fortunately, modern Psychology has proven that personality traits once thought to be unchangeable can be treated and with proper care, altered such that the individual becomes happier and more functional both individually and as a member of society. It is not too late to provide the parenting to the angry black-and-white thinkers who have actively encouraged psychopaths in government and industry to lead us ever closer to the edge of outright fascism. They can still grow up to lead happy and productive lives if we can take the responsibility of teaching them the importance of treating others as equals and equally deserving of our love as better behaved children are.

It is unreasonable to expect that these frequently abused and neglected men and women will simply change because we tell them that they are wrong and it borders on insanity to think they will listen if we simply try to outshout the Tea Partiers. We must all reach within ourselves and use the love that we have been blessed with to soothe our own anger and approach these broken souls with loving concern. We arrived at this moment together and none of us is blameless for the resulting situation. The Borderline mind thinks only in terms of Black and White, Good and Bad, Me versus You and cannot even keep its emotional response to an idea straight, being led to feel one way or the other by the skillful emotional manipulation of the corporate media and many of our politicians. That said, the right wing does not have a monopoly on emotional reasoning. We must also hold self-identified “progressives” to this standard when they lose sight of the rights of individuals in a free society.

Those of us who can control our emotional responses to ignorance, greed, apathy, injustice and even cruelty are few in number. We need to think hard about how we can best become the teachers Who Will Change the World. It is our responsibility to encourage those who clearly have the capability to reason based on facts and not emotion to develop the self discipline to help us face the tormentors of the weak without fear of provoking further anger and attack by these seemingly hopelessly confused tools of the right wing. They are our brothers and sisters too, our fellow Americans and fellow citizens of the world.

We are all more alike than otherwise. It is our commonalities that define us as human and our differences that provide the spice to life. Each of us is a part of the Eternal One and we are all equally deserving of the love of a benevolent God. If we do not forget this then we can become the generation that becomes The Doctors Who Will Heal Ourselves.

In the immortal words of Bill Withers:




Sometimes in our lives we all have pain,
we all have sorrow.
But, if we are wise
we know that there's always tomorrow.


Lean on me, when you're not strong
and I'll be your friend,
I'll help you carry on.
For it won't be long
'til I'm gonna need
somebody to lean on.


Please swallow your pride
if I have things you need to borrow.
For no one can fill those of your needs
that you don't let show.


Lean on me, when you're not strong
and I'll be your friend,
I'll help you carry on.
For it won't be long
'til I'm gonna need
somebody to lean on.


If there is a load you have to bear
that you can't carry,
I'm right up the road.
I'll share your load
if you just call me.


So just call on me brother, when you need a hand.
We all need somebody to lean on.
I just might have a problem that you'd understand.
We all need somebody to lean on.


Lean on me when you're not strong
and I'll be your friend,
I'll help you carry on.
For it won't be long
‘till I'm gonna need
somebody to lean on.




Lean on me...






Rick Staggenborg, MD


Detroit, Michigan