These posts explore the themes developed in my monograph, Narcisso-Fascism, which is itself a real-world test of the central concepts of the Biocognitive Model of Mind for psychiatry.
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After last week’s post, Shattering the Illusion, a reader in Portugal wrote a long question correctly pointing out that there are indeed decent human beings who feel connected to the natural and human worlds around them. Therefore, is the notion that “to dominate is human” not just setting up another illusion, albeit very destructive? This is actually a complex issue, I will try to answer it by degrees in this and other posts. We can start at the beginning, biology, because this is firmly established fact, independent of any ideology. The ideas developed in the biocognitive model for psychiatry [1] and in Narcisso-Fascism [2] start with the widely-studied concept of the animal’s biological response to a challenge.
I say animal because it’s been studied in all major vertebrate classes, mammals, reptiles, fish and birds. This indicates that from very early in the development of life on the planet, nature equipped species with the ability to survive attacks of various sorts. It is primarily mediated by the hormone testosterone or its analogues, and readies the animal to defend itself. The response is present in males and females but, of course, is stronger in males. Testosterone (T) is powerfully anabolic, meaning it builds up the muscle bulk, ligaments and so on, but it is also a “feel good” hormone. A rush of T feels great, so people (especially men) will try to stimulate it by various means. The strongest surge comes from dominating the surroundings, mainly the human surroundings but also nature. People try to reach a more dominant position in the hierarchy just because it makes them feel better; conversely, being forced down to a submissive role is intensely discomforting. Thios is the paradox of hierarchy: the same people who want to be dominant will also do whatever they can to avoid being oppressed.
The biological machinery for the T response is programmed into each and every one of us. It seems unlikely that a person born without it could survive the first few months of life but that’s surmise. Our genetic heritage primes us to respond successfully to a wide range of threats, which makes sense because we have no way of knowing what threats we will encounter. In daily life, what counts is not whether we have this physiological machinery but how we handle it, and that goes back to early life experiences. Children have to be taught very explicitly to wait their turn, not to snatch things, to help the little ones, to share, to play by the rules and generally to stop being the horrible little shits that our DNA is trying to make of us.
The T response to threats is a survival mechanism, it gets us ready to meet challenges but, like all safety mechanisms, it has a downside. In this case, the downside is that high levels of circulating testosterone prime us to see more threats than actually exist. Immediately we perceive a threat, the T response kicks in but that means we will see more threats, and then more and more. Clearly, it is an inherently destabilising process, which goes a long way toward explaining why humans struggle to live peacefully together. The problem for human societies is that the people who strive to get themselves to the top of the hierarchy are almost always doing it for bad motives: “I want to be Number One and I will destroy anybody who gets in my way.” In the main, decent people will not get to the top of any but the most pacifist organisations, and even they aren’t immune.
Human society is therefore built on a number of contradictions. Our evolutionary heritage has prepared us for living in small and probably isolated communities surrounded by a host of immediate threats and dangers. We are set up to be trigger-happy, as it were, to see danger everywhere, to respond with aggression in the first place and sort out the reasons later. Yet we now live in vast nations equipped with nuclear weapons and, growing daily, the ultimate risk of robotic AI warfare. Biologically, we are entirely the wrong creatures to have this power. Psychologically, we are still stuck in a feudal political system, if not tribal, where we constantly try to dominate each other, thereby producing ceaseless anarchy. Worse still, we have a system where aggressive people select themselves to enter the race to get to the top. Before sporting matches, they often say “May the best man win.” In politics, of course, it’s the dirtiest fighter who wins. Just ask Jeremy Corbyn.
Given this gloomy assessment of the human condition, how do we escape our heritage to give our children and their children a half-decent chance of survival? That’s a no-brainer: train them from early life to be calmly cheerful, to stand up for their rights and for other people’s rights but to know when to back down; to act to maximise the planet’s chances of avoiding catastrophe; to work hard but also to stop to play and just enjoy the world; to be fair and generous and not to be evil. That’s all (you can send my Nobel prize through the post).
Next question is glaringly obvious: Why isn’t this happening now? Why are there so many arseholes in politics, in business and commerce, in the military and police, of course; in academia (I always have to get that in) and even in religion? One word answer: Personality. Personality is the set of rules we acquire on our journey through life that gives us control over our biological drives in order to function as a member of society. This starts very early and continues for many years; rules can be acquired explicitly or implicitly and even preverbally; some we can verbalise and many we can’t; some we boast about and others we prefer to keep hidden. If your set of rules is internally consistent, producing a harmonious or euthymic inner state, and it meshes smoothly with the rules of society, then we say you have a normal personality. This doesn’t mean there’s only one sort of normal, that it’s a point on a vast undulating landscape, as normality is itself a huge range that blurs and merges with the extremes with no sharp cut-off points.
If, however, your early or subsequent life experiences have left you with a set of rules that contradict each other, producing inner distress, and grate with the rules of society, producing conflict, we call that an abnormal or disordered personality. Personality disorders are never satisfied with the status quo or with a fair share, they need more as they are constantly searching for something that will make them feel good inside. Some of them think it will be money; some strive for power so they can look down on everybody else and laugh; some search for solitude or bury themselves in books; others want to be the fastest or play the most far-out music or eat or build muscles or paint the grandest picture or starve themselves or be somebody else by acting, or get tattoos or studs or write poetry trying to express their anguish or steal or chase sex or drugs or alcohol or kill, animals or humans, you name it. “Name your poison,” as they say in the pubs. Anybody who is striving at abnormal levels to get something outstanding is probably doing it for the wrong reasons. George Orwell put it perfectly (of course):
All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand [3].
With very, very few exceptions, the people who get themselves into power are entirely the wrong people to be wielding it. There are decent people who get to the top of their field by talent and hard work but they’re rare birds indeed and they rarely want to make the jump into politics because they can’t stand all the dickheads who are already there and making a noise. To make it worse, when people do actually get to the top, their sense of entitlement grows and expands, they need more and more to get the same buzz. Look at stars of sport, music or screen: they get to the top and demand more and more, diverting money from the struggling young people into their accounts in the Virgin Islands or their private jets.
It’s not encouraging, that’s for sure, but there is a path out of this. Ordinary people have to take control again. Our political systems, which last underwent major changes in the early 19th Century, need to be brought up to date. The first and most pressing need is to deal with the corruption which is now entirely normal throughout most political systems in the world. All governments know exactly how to kill it but they won’t do it as they’re hoping to clean up themselves, also it would upset their wealthy friends and donors. It’s dead easy: get rid of offshore tax havens (and, in the US, the onshore versions in Delaware, Nevada etc); institute universal tax jurisdictions; full disclosure of assets and incomes for every person in public office; full disclosure of all cross-border transactions; complete record of every word said by a person in public office, etc.
People say “But isn’t that too difficult? How can we record all this stuff?” Er, we already are. Actually, we’re not, you and me, but the US Government is recording and analysing every electronic transaction anywhere in the world and retaining it for as long as there are humans. Technically, it’s dead easy to set up a smaller system to watch over the rich and the powerful; all that’s lacking is the political will. Just imagine: does anybody think that the Trump family or Biden family or Tony Blair’s family or Putin or Zelensky or, perish the thought, the Saudi royal family, or Prince Andrew or the Clintons or Jacob Zuma or Netanyahu or Bolsonaro or any of them want the general public poking through their dirty undies? No wucking fay, as Spooner nearly said.
Most of the trouble in the world today comes from one group of people trying to dominate another. If we had decent people in politics, which we don’t and probably never have had, then I expect that a lot of that trouble would simply fade away. The principle of self-determination written into the UN Charter would have a chance of becoming reality, for example, in the Middle East at present:
Zionist: Excuse me, but God said we can have this land so we’d like you to move out.
Palestinian: That was your god, neighbour, not ours, and why should we? You’ve already got a big chunk of our land, what says you can have the rest? We’ve been here for thousands of years, our ancestors are buried here, my great-great grandfather planted these olive trees, my father and I built this house for my family. Anyway, where would we go? Who’s going to open the door to 5 million poor refugees?
Zionist: Well, when you put it that way, you’re right. OK, we’ll have to be satisfied with what we’ve got. BTW, we have a religious festival this weekend, would you like to come for the meal afterwards?
Palestinian: That would be very nice. We’ll bring some dishes and some of our special olives, and our children would like to sing some of our traditional songs.
Zionist: That would be lovely, looking forward to it. Shalom.
Palestinian: And peace be with you, neighbour.
Yes, it’s that simple. That is all it takes. But as long as one group of people feel the urge to dominate another, it will never happen. People may get a buzz from being World Police or God’s Chosen People or Born to Wealth and Power or Racially Superior or whatever justification they give themselves but it has to be remembered, which it never is, that the other side of the Cosmic Buzz From Being Dominant is the intolerable pain and misery of the people who are dominated. Nobody likes it. I don’t like it, you don’t like it, so why do we allow it to happen to others? We know that oppressed people are going to push back, that’s written in our DNA, and when they do, there’s no point squealing “Oh, those dreadful savages, those human animals,” and trying to crush them harder, that only breeds further trouble. If you oppress me, I will react. First, I’ll object loudly, then I’ll use any legal measures but, if it continues, eventually I will do to you what you’re doing to me, and I will make it hurt.
Where’s the complexity in this? Where is there room for debate or dispute? You cannot argue with reality, and our biological reality is just this: No animal likes to be oppressed. If the child pulls the cat’s tail, pussy will strike back. If you lock 2.2million people in a huge concentration camp and deny them the rights you assume for yourself, they will hit back. Morality doesn’t get a look in: If you don’t want the cat to scratch, don’t pull her tail. If you don’t want the Palestinians to shoot at you, don’t treat them as vermin.
Enough of pounding the pulpit. Freud said you can’t fight reality, meaning you can’t live a pleasant fantasy. Our fantasy is that we’re wonderful and we can do no wrong; all wrongs come from The Other. Our reality is that, without proper training, we are not nice animals, but that’s true of all animals. Chimps have to be trained to live in their society, and so do we but we aren’t doing it properly and now, our world has changed. We can no longer allow bad or brutal or corrupt people to run the show and believe their self-serving lies. The idea, for example, that the egregiously corrupt Mr Tony Blair, he of the “weapons of mass destruction” lie, can be put in charge of Gaza is the stuff of a very sick comedy. Ordinary people have to take control and start to run the place so that we survive. If we don’t, if we leave criminals and cheats and liars and murderous scoundrels and sexual perverts in charge, then I don’t think we have a future. Even Mrs Jagger’s sybaritic little boy realised that (actually, he did).
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(talking of domination, I had a middle-aged lady as a patient once who wasn’t happy in her marriage. “What would make you happy?” I asked innocently. “Ooh,” she breathed, leaning back rather sensuously, “you might think it’s terrible, but I’ve always wanted to be a dementrix.” It took a moment but I worked out what she meant).
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References:
1. McLaren N (2021): Natural Dualism and Mental Disorder: The biocognitive model for psychiatry. London: Routledge. Amazon
2. McLaren N (2023): Narcisso-Fascism: The psychopathology of right wing extremism. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. Amazon.
3. Orwell, George (1946) Why I Write. In Decline of the English Murder and other essays. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
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My critical works are best approached in this order:
The case against mainstream psychiatry:
McLaren N (2024). Theories in Psychiatry: building a post-positivist psychiatry. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. Amazon (this also covers a range of modern philosophers, showing that their work cannot be extended to account for mental disorder).
Development and justification of the biocognitive model:
McLaren N (2021): Natural Dualism and Mental Disorder: The biocognitive model for psychiatry. London, Routledge. At Amazon.
Clinical application of the biocognitive model:
McLaren N (2018). Anxiety: The Inside Story. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. At Amazon.
Testing the biocognitive model in an unrelated field:
McLaren N (2023): Narcisso-Fascism: The psychopathology of right wing extremism. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. At Amazon.
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I'm starting to feel a little foolish. I recently signed up to this website for a year - expecting that there would plenty of constructive thinking from someone who is both highly intelligent and has had years of experience helping people develop better ways of looking at the world.
Instead I find myself wading through endless denunciations of arseholes and dickheads.
Hello again, Niall!
Receiving your reply was an unexpected birthday gift for me, and, as always happens, it’s the unexpected gifts that make us happiest. I don’t want to cause friction in your hyper-prolific creative machinery — in other words, I don’t want to bother you — but for some reason I feel it’s worth going a little deeper into the question I raised.
It may have sounded a bit shanti-shanti on my part — Miss Universe-style talk — to speak of deepening our relationship with Nature, as opposed to legitimizing or rendering inevitable (pardon the expression) “our” nature, but I truly believe that “our” nature does not exist — or rather, that it doesn’t exist apart from Nature. I see Nature as the “naturally systemic system,” of which this so-called “our nature” is a part. And so, instead of seeing nature as ours, I see that we belong to Nature.
Perhaps this echoes La Palice, but I sense something here of profound meaning; it doesn’t seem to me to be merely a semantic issue. In fact, speaking from “my” experience — and so risking the appearance of contradiction — both the path toward Nature and the path toward love, as well as toward so many other graces of life, have opened themselves to me through the awareness that none of these things are mine. On the contrary — I belong to them; I devote myself to them.
There is a fundamental humility on the path to happiness which, when viewed as an individual pursuit, risks, I believe, losing its very meaning. Any crumb found along the way in this process of surrender to the “divine” — if we may call it that (without the religious baggage that often takes possession of meaning) — is organically “ours”: it belongs to everything, to everyone.
And this, of course, implies a deterritorialization of the human, an inner dawn that opens the windows of the self and gradually unveils what lies outside — that Other we used to see as enemy, as bearer of all evils, as guilty for our inner darkness. Pure attention defines there the reach of “humanity,” until, I imagine (for my little river is still far from flowing into that sea), that very definition — that existential demarcation — ceases to be useful.
Now, let me open up a little with you, at the risk of sounding ridiculous. For several years now, I’ve taken part in ayahuasca ceremonies. In one of them, which marked me deeply, I felt an irresistible calling toward something good, and I hesitated for a moment — because letting myself go would mean losing all control over what I still identified as “me.” I thought to myself: You have a daughter; you can’t go without considering that you’d be leaving your daughter behind.
But I went. It was inevitable. I felt such a great love within me and such a pure calling that there was no way not to go. It was as if I had let go of my grip on a slippery slope and flowed into an infinite expanse of love and freedom such as I had never imagined could exist.
In this “our” world, sometimes we have love but not freedom; at other times, freedom but not love. But to immerse in both — for them to be the same reality, and for that reality to have no body, no end, and for us to have no body or end within it, for us to be it — a beatific consciousness, yet utterly real, for there is nothing hallucinatory in it: no ghosts, no visions, no distortions, no separation, no subject and object — it is wondrous.
And, as has been the rule in my ayahuasca experiences, the deepest messages I bring back are not products of interpretation — they incorporate themselves, they accompany us in this embodied journey through existence.
On this point, I once did a retreat of meditation and silence with one of the people closest to holiness — whatever construction that may be — whom I’ve met in life: a small Indian man named Bal. When the retreat ended, he invited me for a walk through the hills of Monchique, which had been ravaged by a fierce fire, and he urged me to look up toward the retreat centre. Around it, everything was burned, and there was a circle around the centre, as if the wrath of the god of fire had spared it.
Still a young man, awed and impressionable, I asked him: “Wow, how do you interpret this, Bal?”
And he, with that serene simplicity I remember (he passed away two years ago), looked up at me — as I was looking up at the mountain — and said:
“Interpret, my dear? Isn’t it enough for you to see?”
That was one of the lessons that never left me.
And so, returning to that infinite of love and freedom I experienced with ayahuasca — what it brought me was the awareness that that is where life goes when it ends. And from there, already leaning on the “crutch” of interpretation — and therefore without the same essential reliability — I ventured the hypothesis that it may also be from there that life comes when it begins.
Now, this might sound very esoteric, but let’s make it more practical: a baby. Let’s imagine that a baby comes from that “nirvana” (concepts are tricky — they always reduce and stigmatize). The baby emerges from the mother, and there is inevitably a crucial trauma. Pure attention is what we owe the baby — so that it feels safe, so that it feels responded to in its needs, its appeals, its most pressing desires.
The idea that the baby comes from such a space of fullness gives us a greater sense of responsibility. To listen, to feel, to understand — that is the essential task of parents. It is from there that the baby brings us news. And perhaps, speaking generally of course, setting aside physiological specifics, the baby’s cry is proportional to the distance between the place it came from and the place it has been thrown into.
If we look at babies this way, we will be closer to undoing a whole set of illusory concepts that limit our experience of living — whether as individuals, as societies or sociopolitical paradigms, or simply as nature itself.
That’s where my benevolent provocation about the destruction of the illusion of the “human” comes in. I once heard a member of an Indigenous community say that we humans are “earth that speaks.” And I fully agree. Conceived in this way, we do not fight for our land, since it is we who belong to it.
The question of Palestine, were this worldview widespread, would not even need to arise. Israel, as it is, would cease to exist — it would dissolve, earth upon earth.
Often, for example, I’m astonished at the reactions of so many “civilized” people to the “events” of the world. You’ll surely remember the destruction of statues and the uproar it caused — the outrage, from both sides. Some were outraged that the statues still stood; others, that they were torn down. Yet when a tree is cut down, no one is shocked.
A tree is life; a statue is death. We value more the faculty to kill than the faculty to generate. This is clearly a problem of the “human,” because it is disconnected from life. It no longer feels itself connected to the only truly systemic system that exists — Nature.
That biologically dominant human being you describe, Niall — he wants to kill Nature. And since treating evil with evil only doubles the evil, I think it is very important — essential, even — that we reconnect deeply enough to realize that the only way we have to end evil is to cover it with good; the only way we have to enter the night is to fill it with light.
And for that, we must know evil, know the night, devote pure — or as pure as possible — attention to “its” nature.
In my view, evil does not exist except as the absence of good. To make evil lose its fear of good, just as, conversely, to help the newborn lose its fear of the world, requires attention, communication, sharing, tremendous openness, kindness, generosity, perseverance. Faith. To believe in order to see, and to see in order to believe.
I’ll finish with a thought that seeks to undo a possible misconception — that I might see myself as a “bearer of good.” When I advocate for pure attention to the Other, I mean the deep Other, just as the deep self — both as sources of good. And I don’t feel that the liberation of the deep Other is possible without the liberation of the deep self.
One of Fela Kuti’s sons, Semi, said it perfectly in a recent concert to young Europeans:
“I know you’re always eager to free Palestine, the Congo, Sudan, Iran — a new one every week. Free Europe!”
Thank you so much, Niall.