The Age of Traumatic Neurosis

Many of us wondered, when John Edwards quit his campaign for the Democratic Party nomination for president, if the subject of poverty might not disappear along with his campaign. The middle two passages in this posting are recent columns indicating that at least some journalists have managed to remember poverty remains, despite the disappearance of its champion in this campaign year. The columns are framed by passages from two books of prophetic social science, written 30 years ago. The first passage, sent yesterday by Badlands reader and friend, Paul deMarco, is from a 1975 book by a professor he knew in college on what poverty and disaster did to people in W. Virginia when a dam broke, wiping out their communities, and what poverty looks like -- then and now -- up close. The last passage is one we selected from a book from about the same period, Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism.

DeMarco wrote, in a note titled "chronic conditions inducing trauma": "...Some of our conversation last night about the Central Valley reminded me of this passage I had read yesterday (emphasis is mine):

... now that we are working with new rules for identifying disasters, we have to note that we are edging toward the notion that chronic conditions as well as acute events can induce trauma, and this, too, belongs in our calculations. A chronic disaster is one that gathers forces slowly and insidiously, creeping around one's defenses rather than smashing through them. The person is unable to mobilize his normal defenses against the threat, sometimes because he had been misinformed about it, and sometimes because he cannot do anything to avoid it in any case. In has long been recognized, for example, that living in conditions of chronic poverty is often traumatizing, and if one looks carefully at the faces as well as the clinic records of people who live in institutions or hang out in the vacant corners of skid row or enlist in the migrant labor force or eke out a living in the urban slums, once can scarcely avoid seeing the familiar symptoms of trauma--a numbness of spirit, a susceptibility to anxiety and rage and depression, a sense of helplessness, an inability to concentrate, a loss of various motor skills, a heightened apprehension about the physical and social environment, a preoccupation with death, a retreat into dependency, and a general loss of ego functions. One can find those symptoms wherever people feel left out of things, abandoned, separated from the life around them. From that point of view, being too poor to participate in the promise of the culture or too old to take a meaningful place in the structure of the community can be counted as a kind of disaster.

"Erikson gives sociology a good name," deMarco continued, "for once, with his comprehensive view of history, psychology and culture, and his bell-clear writing. He continues later in his conclusions: "

I have suggested that human reactions to the age we are entering are likely to include a sense of cultural disorientation, a feeling of powerlessness. a dulled apathy, and a generalized fear about the condition of the universe. These, of course, are among the classic symptoms of trauma, and it may well be that historians of the future will look back on this period and conclude that the traumatic neuroses were its true clinical signature." --Kai T. Erikson, "Everything in Its Path: Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood" pp. 255-256. 1976

2-18-08
New York Times
Op-Ed Columnist
Poverty Is Poison...PAUL KRUGMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/opinion/18krugman.html?ex=1204002000&e...

“Poverty in early childhood poisons the brain.” That was the opening of an article in Saturday’s Financial Times, summarizing research presented last week at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Reactions From Around the Web As the article explained, neuroscientists have found that “many children growing up in very poor families with low social status experience unhealthy levels of stress hormones, which impair their neural development.” The effect is to impair language development and memory — and hence the ability to escape poverty — for the rest of the child’s life.

So now we have another, even more compelling reason to be ashamed about America’s record of failing to fight poverty.

L. B. J. declared his “War on Poverty” 44 years ago. Contrary to cynical legend, there actually was a large reduction in poverty over the next few years, especially among children, who saw their poverty rate fall from 23 percent in 1963 to 14 percent in 1969.
But progress stalled thereafter: American politics shifted to the right, attention shifted from the suffering of the poor to the alleged abuses of welfare queens driving Cadillacs, and the fight against poverty was largely abandoned.

In 2006, 17.4 percent of children in America lived below the poverty line, substantially more than in 1969. And even this measure probably understates the true depth of many children’s misery.

Living in or near poverty has always been a form of exile, of being cut off from the larger society. But the distance between the poor and the rest of us is much greater than it was 40 years ago, because most American incomes have risen in real terms while the official poverty line has not. To be poor in America today, even more than in the past, is to be an outcast in your own country. And that, the neuroscientists tell us, is what poisons a child’s brain.

America’s failure to make progress in reducing poverty, especially among children, should provoke a lot of soul-searching. Unfortunately, what it often seems to provoke instead is great creativity in making excuses.

Some of these excuses take the form of assertions that America’s poor really aren’t all that poor — a claim that always has me wondering whether those making it watched any TV during Hurricane Katrina, or for that matter have ever looked around them while visiting a major American city.

Mainly, however, excuses for poverty involve the assertion that the United States is a land of opportunity, a place where people can start out poor, work hard and become rich.
But the fact of the matter is that Horatio Alger stories are rare, and stories of people trapped by their parents’ poverty are all too common. According to one recent estimate, American children born to parents in the bottom fourth of the income distribution have almost a 50 percent chance of staying there — and almost a two-thirds chance of remaining stuck if they’re black.

That’s not surprising. Growing up in poverty puts you at a disadvantage at every step.
I’d bracket those new studies on brain development in early childhood with a study from the National Center for Education Statistics, which tracked a group of students who were in eighth grade in 1988. The study found, roughly speaking, that in modern America parental status trumps ability: students who did very well on a standardized test but came from low-status families were slightly less likely to get through college than students who tested poorly but had well-off parents.

None of this is inevitable.

Poverty rates are much lower in most European countries than in the United States, mainly because of government programs that help the poor and unlucky.

And governments that set their minds to it can reduce poverty. In Britain, the Labor government that came into office in 1997 made reducing poverty a priority — and despite some setbacks, its program of income subsidies and other aid has achieved a great deal. Child poverty, in particular, has been cut in half by the measure that corresponds most closely to the U.S. definition.

At the moment it’s hard to imagine anything comparable happening in this country. To their credit — and to the credit of John Edwards, who goaded them into it — both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are proposing new initiatives against poverty. But their proposals are modest in scope and far from central to their campaigns.

I’m not blaming them for that; if a progressive wins this election, it will be by promising to ease the anxiety of the middle class rather than aiding the poor. And for a variety of reasons, health care, not poverty, should be the first priority of a Democratic administration.

But ultimately, let’s hope that the nation turns back to the task it abandoned — that of ending the poverty that still poisons so many American lives.

2-10-08
Washington Post
King's Dream Deferred, One More Victim of the Subprime Mortgage Crisis... Michelle Singletary
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/09/AR200802...
As we spend this month celebrating the achievements of African Americans, I'm saddened by a report that concludes that the subprime mortgage crisis has caused the largest loss of wealth for black and Latino homeowners in modern U.S. history.

The erosion of wealth is staggering.

Subprime borrowers of color will lose between $164 billion and $213 billion for loans taken in the past eight years, according to United for a Fair Economy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization. For the past five years, the group has examined the racial wealth divide in this country.

UFE is the latest organization to try to put a dollar figure on the losses resulting from the proliferation of subprime loans. And while some might want to dismiss the findings in the group's report as alarmist, one fact is clearly troubling: Minorities have been hit hardest.

Black borrowers will lose between $72 billion and $93 billion, and Latino borrowers will lose between $76 billion and $98 billion, UFE reports.

"The dream of economic stability and opportunity for everyone living in the U.S., so eloquently described by Martin Luther King Jr., is bound up with homeownership, the most significant source of wealth for most people," said Dedrick Muhammad, senior organizer and research associate at the Institute for Policy Studies and co-author of the UFE report.

Of late, much has been made of blacks' buying power. A study by the University of Georgia's Selig Center for Economic Growth put black spending at about $845 billion last year. That spending is projected to top $1.1 trillion by 2012. The center describes this buying power, or disposable income, as the total personal income available for spending on goods and services after taxes.

However, it's not enough to consider what people will spend. Wealth is created by what you keep and invest or save. It's also created when people own appreciable assets, such as a home.

"As income comes and goes like a flowing river, wealth -- what you own minus what you owe -- is a reservoir to handle hard economic times, make large purchases, help secure the future of new generations, and protect individuals and families as they age," the report said.

As UFE points out, homeownership is key to achieving economic security. Nearly 60 percent of the total wealth held by middle-class families exists in their home equity. Although home values are declining, owning a home is still the biggest wealth equalizer.

The housing crisis has affected many communities regardless of race or income, but it has disproportionately affected minorities. That's because people of color are more than three times as likely to have subprime loans, the UFE found.

High-cost subprime loans account for 55 percent of loans to blacks but only 17 percent of loans to whites, the UFE report said.

And before any of you fix your lips to place all the blame on the homeowners, just remember that this loss of wealth comes largely as a result of lenders and others in the mortgage industry who took advantage of people trying to achieve the American dream of homeownership.

I've seen some loan documents with crazy-high prepayment penalties that people didn't even realize they had. I've interviewed and counseled hardworking folks who -- yes, foolishly -- were so focused on getting a home that they believed whatever they were told, including that the value of their home would continue to rise, making it easy for them to refinance out of the exotic mortgages with tricky teaser rates.

"On the surface, subprime loan products can sound relatively simple and attractive, and some people have benefited from their use," the report said. "Yet, as more details of the industry's activities began to surface, the predatory practices of many subprime loan brokers came to the forefront. Unless inexperienced borrowers asked complex questions about loan terms covered only in the fine print, they received loans that they had little to no chance of repaying."

UFE is right in concluding that one of the biggest challenges facing our nation is not the lack of wealth but the "destructive distribution of wealth."

When King delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963, he said this about the economic state of blacks: "The Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity" ...

From The Culture of Narcissism, Christopher Lasch, 1979:

In a study of 250 managers from twelve major companies, Michael Maccoby describes the new corporate leader, not altogether unsympathetically, as a person who works with people rather than with materials and who seeks not to build an empire or accumulate wealth but to experience "the exhilaration of running his team and of gaining victoires." He wasn to "be known as a winner, and his deepest fear is to be labeled a loser." Instead of pitting himself against a merial task or a problem demanding solution, he pits himself against others, out of a "need to be in control." As a recent textbook for managers puts it, success today means "not simply getting ahead" but "getting ahead of others."
The new executive, boyish, playful, and "seductive," wants in Maccoby's words "to maintain an illusion of limitless options."
He has little capacity for "personal intimacy and social commitment." He feels little loyalty even to the company for which he works. One executive says he experiences power "as not being pushed around by the company." In his upward climb, this man cultivates powerful customers and attempts to use them against his own company. "You need a very big customer," according to his calculations, "who is always in trouble and demands changes from the company. That way you automatically have power in the company, and with the customer too. I like to keep my options open." A professor of management endorses this strategy.
"Overidentification" with a company, in his view, "produces a corporation with enormous power over the careers and destinies of its true believers." The bigger the company, the more important he thinks it is for executives "to manage their careers in terms of their own ...free choices" and to "maintain the widest set of options possible."
According to Maccoby, the gamesman "is open to new ideas, but he lacks conviction." He will do business with any regime, even if he disapproves of its principles. More independent and resourceful than the company man, he tries to use the company for his own ends, fearing that otherwise he will be "totally emasculated by the corporation." He avoids intimacy as a trap, preferring the "exciting sexy atmosphere" with which the modern executive surrounds himself at work, "where adoring, mini-skirted secretaries constantly flirt with him." In all his personal relations, the gamseman depends on the admiration or fear he inspires in others to certify his credentials as a "winner." As he gets older, he finds it more and more difficult to command the kind of attention on which he thrives. He reaches a plateau beyond which he does not advance in his job, perhaps because the very highest positions, as Maccoby notes, still go to "those able to renounce adolescent rebelliousness and become at least to some extent believers in the organization." The job begins to lose its savor. having little interest in craftsmanship, the new-style executive takes no pleasure in his achievements once he begins to lose the adolescent charm on which they rest. Middle age hits him with the force of a disaster...Jennings treats the substance of executive life as if it were just as arbitrary and irrelevant to success as the task of kicking a ball through a net or of moving pieces over a chessboard. He never mentions the social and economic repercussions of managerial decisions or the power that managers exercise over society as a whole. For the corporate manager on the make, power consists not of money and influence but of "momentum," a "winning image," a reputation as a winner. Power lies in the eye of the beholder and thus has no objective reference at all.
The manager's view of the world, as described by Jennings, Maccoby, and by the mangers themsevles, is that of the narcissist, who sees the world as a mirror of himself and has no interest in external events except as they throw back a reflection of his own image. The dense interpersonal environment of modern bureaucry, in which work assumes an abstract quality almost wholly divorced from performance, by its very nature elicits and often rewards a narcissistic response. Bureaucracy, however, is only one of a number of social influences that are bringing a narcissitic type of personality organization into greater and greater prominence. Another such influence is the mechanical reproduction of culture, the proliferation of visual and audial images in the "society of the spectacle"...Modern life is so thoroughly mediated by electronic images that we cannot help responding to others as if their actions--and our own--were being recorded and simultaneously transmitted to an unseen audience or stored up for close scrutiny at some later time...We need no reminder to smile. A smile is permanently graven on our features, and we already know from which of several angles it photographs to best advantage... The new ideal of success has no content. "Performance means to arrive," says Jennings. Success equals success. Note the convergence between success in business and celebrity in politics or the world of entertainment, which also depends on "visibility" and "charisma" and can only be defined as itself. The only important attribute of celebrity is that it is celebrated; no one can say why. pp. 46-47