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July 18, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
30:31
825 Psychologizing

The uses and misuses of emotional insights

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Oh, hi. Sorry, just before we begin this podcast, I forgot to mention that the Freedom Aid Radio Symposium on August the 25th, 2007 will be in Chicago, Illinois.
I hope to see you there.
Thank you! Hi, everybody.
It's Steph. Hope you're doing well.
I'm back, baby!
Sorry that I have been podcasting a little bit.
I have been working rather ferociously on my new book!
More text instead of just podcast rambling!
And I hope that you will buy it.
I hope that you will buy it and I hope that you will enjoy it.
I am likely not going to release it as an audiobook because it's the kind of book that needs patience.
It's highly concentrated. It's not very long.
It's called On Truth, The Tyranny of Illusion.
That at least is the working title.
And I'm going to make it available through Lulu.
It's going to be under 20 bucks.
And I think that you will really, really enjoy it.
This is going to be the first in a series of short books on philosophical subjects that do not lend themselves particularly well to podcasts because podcasts are ephemeral.
They pass through your brain and you can't sort of easily rewind and peruse and pause and reflect and so on.
So... The topics that are covered in this book are topics that would not make much sense to cover in a podcast, so I doubt that I'm going to release it as an audiobook, plus, of course, there's a problem of audiobooks escaping mysteriously from the hands of those who have purchased them to the hands of those who have not, whereas books, of course, not so much.
I do encourage you, of course, though, if you buy the book, it's going to have the website address on the back cover, and...
Hand it out like candy.
It will draw people to the site.
Buy copies for your friends and families and grocery store cashiers and everybody else that you can think of.
So that is going to be available, I think, by the end of this week.
This being mid-July 2007.
So I hope that you will buy it, and I hope that you will enjoy it.
And please let me know what you think.
The second order of business is that the first live Free Domain Radio Symposium Which is going to be a roundtable.
The morning is going to be presentations by Christina and myself, and then followed by a roundtable discussion, questions, issues, problems.
Bring your philosophical, your personal, your practical issues to the table, and we will do our best to chew through them.
And that is going to be provisionally the 25th of August, Saturday, 2007.
And it won't start first thing in the morning, just in case you're driving in from elsewhere, but we can go, I guess, a fairly lengthy distance through the day, and that's going to be $250 US if we get 15 people signed up.
I am more than content to do it, and it'll be in a nice boardroom in a hotel somewhere or so.
I'm still waiting for...
I think we've got not quite 15 as yet.
So the moment that we get the right number of people, then we will have the symposium.
And if we don't, we won't.
So feel free to send me an email.
There's also a thread on the board.
Oh, by the way, we reached 1,000 members.
Whee! Thank you so much for joining.
Thank you so much for participating.
And I hope that you will continue to come by the board and chat.
With us all.
I think it is one of the best places, if not the best place for philosophy, down the web.
So, anyway, I hope that that works for you.
Now, I wanted to do a podcast on a topic that generates some confusion, which is psychologizing.
And we'll talk a little bit about psychologizing and sort of what it means.
And I have an example which sparked some interesting debate on the board with regards to psychologizing.
So I'm going to sort of just work on a general definition and then work on what characteristics I think need to be present for an accurate diagnosis of psychologizing to be present.
Psychologizing, in general, or at least as it's sort of commonly used, is the process of responding not to an argument, but to the motives behind the argument, and almost invariably in a manner that is detrimental to the original arguer or poster.
An example, of course, would be somebody who criticizes Freudianism is then that criticism is absorbed into the Freudian framework by sublimating it towards something like reaction formation or something like that.
And this is...
Sadly, quite common in the world.
And you see a lot of belief systems who retain this capacity to absorb criticisms by attacking the motives of those who criticize.
This can, of course, also occur in more rational philosophies like objectivism, wherein if you criticize objectivism, you are morally corrupt.
I mean, this is not always the view, but it certainly is out there.
Now, that as a principle is something that we sort of need to be aware of, and it can be a weaselly way of dealing with a debate.
There are times, though, in which it is a highly appropriate response, and I think the only rational response to take to a criticism, if that criticism is not rational, if it's highly emotional, if it's abusive, if it's critical at a personal level... if it's highly emotional, if it's abusive, if it's critical Basically, when somebody has an ad hominem attack or an attack upon the person rather than upon the ideas, if somebody has an ad hominem attack...
That's something that you really need to...
If you choose to get involved in a debate that starts off with an ad hominem attack, it usually is not going to do you much good if you don't deal with the ad hominem, the attack upon the person and not upon the ideas.
And so that is something that I think is highly appropriate to do.
And we will get into that in a little bit.
So I would say that if you're a mathematician and you say 2 plus 2 is 5 and somebody says...
You're a jerk, right?
Basically, or only evil people say that 2 plus 2 is 5, it's not going to do you much good to argue the merits of the math, right?
Because you've got this emotional side, this emotional stuff or this emotional side that is occurring.
If you're a mathematician who says that 2 plus 2 is 4 and somebody attacks you for that as well, that's even more egregious, I would say, right?
I mean, if they just say you're a jerk for saying that 2 plus 2 is 4 or just you're a jerk in general.
Then the only thing that you can do, since the merits of the argument are not actually being discussed, the only thing that you can do is either A, you can not respond to that, and that can be a hard thing to do, at least it is for me.
That can be a hard thing to do, because then sometimes what people feel is, well, somebody has attacked you personally, you haven't responded, and therefore it's true, right?
And that is something that we remember from The debates in the past about the disclosure or non-disclosure of details that I had or had not put out in a previous show.
So the next thing that...
So if you choose not to respond, that can be a problem.
If you choose to respond, but you respond with, I'm not a jerk, then you really are basically accepting the premise of the person who's calling you a jerk, right?
So if I say 2 plus 2 is 4...
And you say you're a jerk, and I say I'm not a jerk, then you're no longer debating about whether 2 plus 2 is 4, you're now debating whether you're a jerk or not.
And since jerk is a pretty subjective term, you're now not debating an objective fact like 2 plus 2 is 4, you're now debating a subjective fact like, do you like ice cream?
So, I don't think that's a particularly positive way to approach that from a rational standpoint.
So, if somebody does respond to an argument that 2 plus 2 is 4 with, you're a jerk, then clearly they are not responding to the rational content of your argument, but they are responding to a feeling that your argument is somehow putting them down.
Right? So, when you say 2 plus 2 is 4 and somebody hears...
Sorry. If you're Bob...
And I say, 2 plus 2 is 4, and you hear, you, Bob, are a jerk, then of course you're going to be more likely to respond with, well, no, you're a jerk, right?
Or, you know, if you're not particularly trained in understanding the subtleties of these kinds of interactions.
So, if you then respond with, you're a jerk, and I respond to that as if I had said that you, Bob, were a jerk, then I'm accepting a premise which is not valid.
So I'm allowing a pretty rank irrationality to enter into our conversation.
So if I say 2 plus 2 is 4 and you hear me saying, Bob, you're a jerk, and you respond with, no, Steph, you're a jerk, then by responding to the query or responding to the accusation that I'm a jerk, I'm allowing your irrational response to my argument and responding to that as if it were valid.
So... So when you say, Steph, you're a jerk because you're arguing that 2 plus 2 is 4, and of course nobody ever says that, what they do is they distort the argument in order to serve their own emotional upset, serve the needs of their own emotional upset, then the only rational thing is either not to respond, or to respond by saying, basically, I don't think that the issue is that I'm a jerk, right?
I think the issue is that you're upset.
Is that an unreasonable thing to respond with?
No, I think that that's an accurate identification of the situation.
I think that is an accurate identification of the situation.
If I say 2 plus 2 is 4, and you say you're a jerk, then what you're really saying is, Steph, help me to figure out why.
You may not believe me, but I do believe that it's true.
Please help me figure out why I'm calling you a jerk.
You're putting something out there, right?
You're putting something out there which is really centered in or focused on an irrational outburst, right?
And I view that, frankly, I view that as a cry for help.
Maybe you feel that's condescending, but that's really, really how I see it at a very fundamental level.
It's a cry for help.
And I can either choose to reject that cry for help by not responding, or I can choose to respond to it by identifying it as a cry for help.
Now, what happens, of course, is somebody who's oversensitive to humiliation, I mean, we're all sensitive to it, like somebody who can't separate their feelings of humiliation from being actively humiliated, right?
Just because you feel humiliated doesn't mean that someone's trying to humiliate you, right?
It might just be that you feel humiliated.
So, someone who's oversensitive to being humiliated is going to react to something which upsets them in a hostile manner.
And then, of course, when you say, well, I think you're reacting in a hostile manner, when that's not the content of the argument, then they're going to feel further humiliated, and they're going to get upset, of course, right?
It's natural. They're already hypersensitive to humiliation, so then when you say, well...
You're reacting to this in a subjective manner and attacking me unjustly.
What's up with that? They're going to feel humiliated, right?
And so what they're then going to say is, you, Steph, are psychologizing me.
And what they mean by that is I'm not dealing with the content of the argument, but I am instead attempting to come up with some psychological explanation for why someone is disagreeing with me, which is sort of based on the premise that only irrational people would ever disagree with Steph, only emotionally unbalanced people are irrational, so anybody who disagrees with Steph is emotionally unbalanced, has psychological problems, blah blah blah blah, all the standard sort of objectivist-y, kind of religious-y, kind of cult-y stuff.
And, of course, this interaction in general is just another one of the examples of the impossible situation interactions, right?
So, as I've mentioned before, my brother would say when I was a kid, no means yes, and yes means no.
Do you want me to hit you?
And, of course, that would be the classic example of the intrasibling impossible situation, right?
So another one would be, of course, this happens at work or in work situations all the time, that somebody will say, they'll give you unclear instructions on something, and then roll their eyes and be exasperated when you come to them with questions, right? So they'll explain something to you in a rush that's not clear, and so on.
And then they will berate you for either not getting it done right or for coming to ask them questions.
You know, like, I already told you how to do it, and blah, blah, blah.
How many times do I have to tell you how to do it?
Another impossible situation, of course, is to verbally abuse someone and then criticize them for being insecure.
That, of course, is another impossible situation.
And there's, you know, legions and legions and legions of these kinds of Hellish and destructive interactions that go on in human life, in human relationships.
This one, though, is particularly juicy, right?
I mean, at least for me.
And what this one is, is it's using psychological tactics, it's using psychologizing to criticize someone for psychologizing.
And that is just a wonderfully rich kind of contradiction that's well worth spending a few minutes to understand because you run into this a lot when you talk about ideas with people.
So the impossible situation is this.
So you put forward 2 plus 2 is 4.
Somebody else says you're a jerk.
Now if you start debating about whether or not You're a jerk, then your original argument is lost.
The original question or comment or issue or proposition, syllogism, is lost, and now you're debating about whether or not you're a jerk.
So the person who's being verbally aggressive has hijacked the conversation, right?
They are now in control, they're defining the terms, and you can only respond to what it is that they're putting out.
What happens is the original discomfort that they felt with regards to your argument, whatever that was, has now been...
Pushed aside, right? So they feel that that relieves their anxiety, right?
You're no longer debating whether 2 plus 2 is 4, whatever created the original anxiety in them.
You're now debating whether or not you're a jerk.
And, of course, what happens is they'll make assertions that are not founded, and then when you found them, you ask for foundations.
They say, well, I don't have the time, and, by the way, it's self-evident, and it's obvious.
So you end up not discussing the original issue, right?
Because their fundamental desire Is to erase the original issue, because that's what's causing them anxiety, right?
And they feel humiliated by whatever the original issue was.
So they have to come back and confuse, baffle, frustrate, and humiliate you as retribution, right?
I mean, that's sort of the... So you either, if you say...
If you say 2 plus 2 is 4, and somebody says you're a jerk, and you say, I'm not a jerk, and they say, well, yeah, you are, because of x, y, and z, and then you start debating all of that...
Then they've managed to gain control over the original stimulus and sort of reject the original stimulus that caused them anxiety that made them aggressive.
If, on the other hand, you say, why does my original argument bother you?
It's brilliant! You really have to admire the artistry behind this.
So if I say 2 plus 2 is 4 and you say, Steph, you're a jerk, and I say, well, why would you get upset about whether 2 plus 2 is 4 or not?
I'd say, you're not responding to my argument.
You're just psychologizing me.
Which is wonderful on so many levels.
Like, it's just such a rich little vat of corruption there, right?
Because, I mean, on every level, it's totally hypocritical.
First of all, I am actually responding to the content, the real content, right?
I'm just not responding to the insults.
I'm just responding to the real content.
So saying that I'm not responding to the content is not true.
Secondly, of course, when somebody says, Steph, you're psychologizing, they are, in fact, yes, psychologizing, right?
Because if somebody says, oh, Steph, you're not responding to the content of an argument, you're simply psychologizing the person who's putting the argument forward, they are assuming motives in the absence of evidence, which is sort of what psychologizing is, right?
It's assuming the motive of someone in the absence of evidence, right?
So if I say, I really dislike the idea of God, and somebody says, that's just because you yearn for God so desperately and you feel rejected and this and that and the other, right?
Well, that's just assuming motivations in the absence of evidence, and that's psychologizing, right?
It's projecting motives to someone in the absence of any evidence or corroborating facts, right?
So when someone says to me, or I say to anyone, you're psychologizing, then what I'm doing is I'm assuming motives in the absence of evidence.
So I'm actually doing what I'm criticizing.
I am psychologizing when I criticize somebody of psychologizing.
Again, unless I have lots of good evidence for my assertion.
So it really is a very wonderful and complicated and exciting way of bypassing the actual content And this is what people do.
When the content of an argument bothers them, they're sort of compelled to respond, right, against really anybody's better judgment.
They're kind of compelled to respond to the argument because it causes anxiety in them, so they're bothered, right?
So I put an argument out about drug use and friendship and drinking, excessive drinking and so on.
And we'll get to this in a sec.
So that bothers somebody, right?
And it sits like a splinter in their mind's eye, so to speak.
It irritates them. So they feel like I have created discomfort in them.
So I'm sort of aggressing against them.
So then what they do is they come back and they aggress against me.
So then when I point out that the aggression is unwarranted and I'm not going to respond to an overly aggressive argument, then they have the perfect capacity to come in and say, oh well, Steph, you're just not responding to the argument and you're psychologizing.
It's a wonderful trap.
It really is exquisitely put together.
You either don't respond...
In which case, the accusation often stands.
Or you do respond.
Or then people, of course, will say, well, why is Steph not responding to this argument?
Does this person have a valid point?
Does Steph only respond to arguments when he's got the upper hand?
Like, all that kind of stuff can go on.
The next thing, if you do respond to the form of the argument that you're a jerk side...
Then you don't get to debate the original issue, the other person has set the agenda, and you're then put into the humiliating position of arguing that you're not a jerk, right?
Coming to your own defense when you've done nothing wrong is kind of an insecure thing to do, right?
So it's not something that I'm particularly down with.
Or you sort of respond to the emotional content and say, well, the question is not whether I'm a jerk, but why do you think that I'm a jerk for saying 2 plus 2 is 4?
And then you're accused of psychologizing.
Like, it's a beautiful, beautiful trap, right?
And so we had one of these relatively recently, and I'll just sort of go over it very briefly.
I'll just talk about the original post and why I felt it was this way, just so that we can get some clarity around the question of psychologizing.
All right, so here's an example of the kind of communication that would fall into the category we were talking about.
So here, somebody posted a...
I guess a post.
Posted a post. Hey, remember when I could speak English?
That was fun. So this person says, It was an Ask a Therapist podcast, number nine, number nine.
In it, the caller, or writer rather, who was a high schooler, said that he dislikes and cannot associate with his peers who drink, regardless of whether they drink in moderation or drink to get drunk.
Steph and Christina both got on and said that the people who drink, quote, don't want to be your friend, and basically aren't worth a friendship, and I'm wondering, what the fuck was up with that?
It's WTF.
I understand that they don't want to advocate belligerence in the form of binge drinking, but they are making it sound as if.
See, there's the key, right?
Sound as if anyone who drinks is just automatically an evil person or something.
As I see it, the caller has a skewed view of people who drink alcohol, especially considering he dislikes them and is willing to prejudge them, even if they don't drink a ton and act like fools.
He didn't want to associate with people regardless of their personalities, even if they don't drink often, and when they drink, they drink in moderation.
And Steph and Christina supported this sort of isolationist and irrational behavior.
Can someone... Including staff.
Tell me, what was up with this segment?
I understand many of us on here are kind of nerdy, but it sounded like the sort of crusade the DEA in programs like DARE. I don't know what that is.
Try to push onto people. Is it crazy to think that perhaps some people just like the feeling of being a bit buzzed?
And the same goes for marijuana.
Christina acted like marijuana will ruin your life or something when it hasn't really been shown to have any negative health effects.
It just seemed like rhetoric coming from someone who probably hasn't tried it before or something.
I just don't get why a podcast that advocates rational thought would push something I would possibly consider bigoted like judging someone on whether or not they drink in moderation.
And, I mean, this is the kind of, there was nothing to respond to in this that was curiosity, right?
Like, can you help explain, do you guys think that anybody who drinks in any to any degree is, what does he say, an evil person or something?
So, there's no curiosity here.
And to respond and say...
I mean, to me, it feels ridiculous, frankly, to respond and say, no, somebody who has a beer is not automatically...
Like, it just seems to me a completely ridiculous thing to say.
It's like when people say, oh, so you hate all families.
It just feels sort of ridiculous and...
It's sort of silly to come back and say, ah, no, I don't hate all parents.
It's just anybody who's gotten a podcast number nine of the Ask a Therapist series would know that we're not crazy or anything like that.
And then, you know, when you say to an anarchist that he is like a government program, especially an evil one, like a totally evil one like the DEA, hmm...
And when you put, like, these sentences, again, these are just things to note for yourself when you get into these kinds of conversations, right?
So when somebody says, is it crazy to think that perhaps some people just like the feeling of being a bit buzzed?
Well, this is a statement that answers itself, right?
I mean, is it crazy to not want to beat my wife?
You know, it just answers itself, right?
There's no curiosity here.
There's just kind of posturing and, you know, sort of the presentation of somebody who is trying to pretend to be the moderate between two extremes.
So that I guess Christine and I are portrayed as some Joe Friday fascistic teetotalers who, you know, I smell alcohol in my puppy's breath.
Take it out back and shoot it.
And, you know, then they sort of waste-oid, drunk-oids and so on, right?
And that's not something that you can really respond to rationally, right?
It was just such an unjust accusation.
So, when somebody goes off on a tangent like this and calls Christina rhetorical and starts imagining that...
We use the phrase, like, acted like and making it sound as if, right?
I mean, those are all very specific linguistic markers.
For projection, right?
Which is the fact that this person obviously feels uncomfortable with his own level of drinking or drug use or other people's level in his life of drinking or drug use.
And the natural tendency is for somebody who is overindulging in these things to portray anybody who says that these things can be bad in excess to say, no, no, I just do it in moderation and so on.
So, these are just sort of linguistic clues that can really help you understand that it's a good time not to debate the surface, right?
right?
Because what's going on down under here is like, well, why would you get so upset as to call my wife bigoted and rhetorical and why would you compare a little internet podcast show to DEA?
I mean, and push onto people?
When can I ever conceivably push Freedom Aid Radio onto everyone, onto anyone?
I mean, of all the things that are non-obtrusive in your life, I think Freedom Aid Radio's got to be right up there with the top, so...
So this, of course, is somebody who came very sort of heavy onto a topic and is not talking honestly about his own discomfort with the topic, but instead is sort of creating this mythology around Christina and I. And that's just not the kind of stuff that you can respond to.
So, of course, I responded to that by saying, well, why did this bother you so much?
I mean, I'm not going to sit there and say...
I have too much respect for somebody's intelligence to sit there and explain how free-domain radio is not like the DEA. If I ever thought that somebody was so completely stone-brained-dead-retarded...
That they would need me to explain how a little internet podcast show is not exactly like the multi-trillion dollar DEA gargantuan fascist monolith imprisoning a million people a year and burning down fields in Colombia.
I know he's not saying that we're doing that, but he's got some sort of crusade like the DEA trying to push onto people, right?
Well, the idea that an internet podcast show is even remotely trying to push anything onto anyone is...
I mean...
I'd never think that anybody was that stupid that I would need to differentiate that.
Because if I thought they really were that stupid, I just wouldn't respond.
Like, it would be insulting to respond to that.
And to respond to, Christina acted like marijuana would ruin your life.
Well, Christina's into having people live in reality.
She's a therapist, right? So...
Of course she's going to be anti-drug.
I mean, she's for having people live in reality and drugs distort your relationship to reality.
So, this is sort of important when you have to go down to such ridiculous basics as saying, no, I don't think that having a glass of wine makes you an evil person.
No, Freedom Aid Radio is not like the DEA. No, Christina is not rhetorical.
No, we're not supporting irrational and isolationist behavior.
I mean, if you ever feel the need to respond at that level, don't.
Like, really, really, really resist the temptation.
Because then what you're doing is basically arguing at the level of, I'm not a jerk, right?
Right? And free domain radio is different from, say, the government or the Catholic Church, right?
Or the cults that people...
We are not Scientology.
You know, things like... As soon as you get to that level, you know that you're dealing with somebody's psychological issues and not with the surface of the argument, right?
Yeah. Because, I mean, obviously this guy smoked marijuana.
I don't have enough disrespect for marijuana smokers to assume that he's not...
Like, that marijuana has shot his thinking to the point where this is all he can come up with.
I'm sure... Like, this is...
When you psychologize someone based on evidence, right?
On stuff like this, you're actually showing them some respect.
I mean, I know it doesn't seem that way.
You're actually showing them some respect.
Because I would never want to look at another human being who made these kinds of arguments...
And respond to those arguments on the surface, because that would just be to say, well, you have an IQ of, like, a shoe size, right?
So that's not a, that's not how, psychologizing is the attempt to rescue the conversation from the obscure devils of defensiveness and projection.
So, I know that it feels like humiliating, but it actually is a mark of respect to say, look, I'm going to assume that you don't mean the silly things that you're saying, that there's some emotional reason behind it that makes you say them, because if you do, just, like, if this is the best you can come up with when you're firing on all cylinders, then there's not much point us debating, right, any more than... I'll engage in, like, a cage deathmatch with four-year-olds.
So I hope that this helps a little bit in terms of helping understand psychologizing, but it is really an attempt to release intelligence from defensiveness, and it does have as its premise in the back a respect for the potential intelligence behind that.
Thank you so much for listening.
I look forward to your donations.
I really, really do, and I will talk to you soon.
Oh! Is that right?
The next one? The next one?
No, it was this one. I'm so sorry.
I forgot to mention at the beginning of this that the Freedom Aid Radio show is going to be in Chicago, Illinois.
At least that's the symposium on the 25th of August.
Sorry. Talk to you soon.
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