Defending the King's F-Word Speech

I did not watch the Oscars last night, but I am glad to hear that the King's Speech walked away with awards for Best Actor, Best Director and Best Picture. I adore this movie and cannot recommend it highly enough. Aspirations, my autism support group, is actually doing an outing to see the movie, something I pushed for. Now my roommate just pointed me to an article that says that the King's Speech is going to be edited to make it PG-13. The King's Speech is probably the cleanest most "G rated "movie with an R rating attached to it. There is no sex, no violence, just lots of good humor, inspiring moral courage and a scene in which the main character lets off a string of profanities, including several F-words.

This is a good example of how my very conservative personal values clash with my libertarian opposition to censorship and loses. This is usually because it turns out in the end that my libertarian side does a better job at defending my deeper conservative values than my conservative side. In general I am not a fan of the use of profanity and you would be hard pressed to hear me using any. That being side I find the rating system used by the film industry, largely to forestall actual government censorship, to be so arbitrary as to invite absurdity and ultimately to corrupt society into hypocrisy. Our rating system has created a situation where a movie can show people's naked back sides while having sex or hacking other people apart and still receive a PG-13 rating, but God help us if there are two F-words. As if sex and violence were ok, but we must protect children from hearing a word regularly used on the street.

This does not help traditional values, but rather corrupts them. Take for example the infamous "wardrobe malfunction" at the 2004 Superbowl halftime show, when millions of viewers where treated to Janet Jackson's exposed nipple. I was not so lucky as I was engrossing myself in my Latin flashcards while at a Superbowl party. I heard shouts of "boobie" and I looked up and asked "boobie where?" For all of those churches and synagogues hosting Superbowl parties, who felt guilty about exposing "innocent children" to Janet Jackson's boobs, what about an entire halftime show, that as far as I could tell from looking up from my flashcards was all about sex? If you are ok with people bumping, grinding and singing about sex then you should not be bothered by a little partial nudity at the end. Why should traditional Judeo-Christian values bow before the edicts of a random board?

In general I do not like hearing the F-word. The King's Speech is one place where it should be. Any parent who would refuse to take their children to see this movie because of a few F-words can go F themselves.

  

Hebrew Hovers at the Doorway of Symphonic Metal CDs

It is funny the unexpected places where one runs into Hebrew. For example the first time I read through Dune I paid little heed to the title used for Paul Muad'Dib, Kwisatz Haderach. In the novel, the Kwisatz Haderach is meant to refer to a theoretical superhuman messiah figure that the Bene Gesserit sisterhood has been working towards for thousands of years through their breeding program. It was only after I finished that a friend of mine pointed me to the index and the fact that Kwisatz Haderach is the Hebrew phrase קְפִיצַת הַדֶּרֶך meaning shortening of the way.

Today I had downloaded and was listening to the Dutch symphonic metal band Epica and their album Divine Conspiracy when I noticed the title to one of their songs "La‘fetach Chatat Rovetz." I first thought it was French until it hit me that it was the Hebrew לפתח חטאת רובץ, sin hovers at the doorway. If I were of a more Haredi disposition I might think that this was a heavenly sign warning me away from non-Jewish music.

Emes Ve-Emunah and the Horrors of a Libertarian Society

Baruch Pelta just sent me a recent post by Emes Ve-Emunah on the issue of gay marriage. It is a pretty good piece attempting to balance a principled opposition to gay marriage with an honest caring for individual homosexuals. Then at the end he drops this bit of wisdom.

The ultimate libertarian ideal is to make no value judgment at all placed on any behavior that is private and among consenting adults. As long as you do not hurt or force yourslef on others – who cares what goes on in the bedroom? Sex between siblings – if they agree - why not? Mother-son, father–daughter? …as long as they are adults and agree, why stop them? Do we as a nation really want to go down that path? Without the bible what possible objection could one have?

Do we want to go down this path? Why not? If people wish to not live under biblical principles and violate every sexual taboo in Leviticus why should it be my problem that I should risk my life and liberty threatining them with government sanctioned coercion, inviting them to retaliate in kind? I accept the Constitution, not the Bible, as the basis for our legal system. So yes I have no possible objection. (See Religious Choices.)

Jesus Versus the Backside of a Girl

College posting boards, which allow anyone to put up what ever they like as long as someone does not come afterwards to tear it down, can make for some interesting bed fellows. Take for example the posting board at the back of my classroom, with its poster for a vacation spot, featuring the backside of a girl in a bathing suit, and a collection of "Christ is Victor" pamphlets. What story can we tell about this? How about "stop just staring at the backside of the girl in the bathing suit and hand the nice lady a pamphlet about Jesus. This will give you an opportunity to stare at her from the front."

I cannot wait for the weather to clear up and the campus oval circus can come to town. This features lots of girls in bathing suits and a collection of preachers in suspenders calling them whores and threatening them with hellfire. As a hellbound Jew, I am comforted to know that my side has the pretty girls in bathing suits even if the preachers are a whole lot more entertaining.

Teaching History to Some Very Special Children

Yesterday I was invited for a second time to give a presentation to the high school of Haugland Learning Center, a special education school for autistic children. I would like to thank the absolutely wonderful and dedicated staff for allowing me to come and making me feel welcome there. The first time I came I spoke about college and dating. (My main piece of advice for dating was not to be an ax murderer.) This time around I gave a version of my presentation about research on the internet and the limits of Wikipedia. (See My Blog and Wikipedia Versus Frances Yates.) In truth both of these presentations quickly evolved into free running conversations with the kids, which is how I like to teach even as that rarely happens in my regular teaching experience.

I must admit to a rift between my inclinations as a teacher and as an academic. I am working on a doctorate in history, a path suited for teaching in a university. Left to my own devices I lecture on highly theoretical and technical topics best suited for a graduate school setting. (This is one of the reasons why I only lasted a year teaching at the Hebrew Academy.) On the other hand the people that I best relate to are children and particularly autistic children.

Children are not bothered by the fact that I am strange and that they do not always understand me. I am an adult so it is only reasonable that I am strange and not easily understood; adults can get away with this. That being said children quickly pick up on the fact that I am interested in them and respect them in ways that few other adults do. I am not very good at talking up to or down to people. I tend to speak to everyone as my equal and this includes children. For this reason children are far more willing to engage with me than adults are. This helps bring me out of a lecture mode; once I am responding to other people I can stop responding simply to the issues in my own head and deliver content understandable to the listener.

This is even more true for autistic children, who are used to adults looking down on them and thinking of them as things to be handled. I think they pick up very quickly how, on the contrary, it is a relief for me to be with them. I am not bothered by lack of formal social contact or odd gestures. With them I feel at home and I will work with them on their terms.  

If anyone knows of an autistic school looking for a general studies teacher, who, while lacking a formal training in special education, but relates well to autistic children and can serve as a bridge between special education and regular schooling feel free to contact me. (For more on my interest in working with children see My Ideal Job.)   

Kelly Hunter's Tempest Workshop

Recently Aspirations, the autism support group I work with here in Columbus, hosted Kelly Hunter to give a workshop on acting. Kelly Hunter is a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and specializes in using theater to work with autistic children. (A later search revealed that she also guest-starred in an episode of Doctor Who. I will leave it up to my readers to judge for themselves as to the relative importance of the two.)   

Ms. Hunter pulled off one of the most incredible teaching sessions I have ever seen. Beyond anything she can do for children, her performance was worth it simply as an exercise in teaching. She presented Shakespeare's The Tempest to a room full of parents and children and some were more interested than others. Not using the text of the play, she had everyone group up in a series of exercises to follow the various characters. For example, there was an exercise with Miranda teaching Caliban to speak and Caliban becoming a little "too friendly" with Miranda. (In the play Caliban actually tries to rape Miranda in order to produce "little Calibans.") My Caliban was inspired by Gollum in Lord of the Rings. And then there was Ariel leading Ferdinand to Miranda and the two seeing each other with "new eyes." This is followed by Prospero's objection. My Prospero was based on Sean Connery.

Such a method of teaching avoids the trap of lecturing to people, of forcing them to simply memorize information and instead invites them into the process to take it on their own terms and make it their own. Furthermore this method plays to all three varieties of learning styles, auditory, visual and above all kinetic.

Inspired by this, I attempted to apply some of these ideas in my History 111 class the next day by asking students to group up and role-play two different figures from different time periods that we had been discussing, Cicero and Giordano Bruno, and have them talk to each other. The students did not take well to this exercise and I was told that they preferred being lectured at. Well, you cannot win all your battles, but I am not going to give up on more theatrical history classes.    

  

History 111 Book: The Spartacus War

Proving once again that students prefer classical over medieval history, for the final book of the winter quarter my class picked The Spartacus War by Barry Strauss. The book deals with the Spartacus slave revolt of 73-71 BCE. It has much of what I like for a basic level history book. It is short, easy to read, but offers a glimpse into some of the wider complexities of the historical method. All of this while avoiding polemics. Strauss is particularly to be recommended in that he is taking a politically loaded issue such as a slave rebellion and avoids taking sides. Unlike the Kirk Douglas movie, this not about noble freedom fighters fighting for liberty against tyrannical Rome. Despite the generally negative role the Romans play in Jewish history, I admire them too much to simply dismiss them as villains.      

Arianna Huffington Crosses the Aisle to Join David Brooks in Some Bi-Partisan Bashing of the Two Party System

Arianna Huffington has a post on a recent debate in which she joined with conservative David Brooks to defend the proposition that "the two-party system is making America ungovernable" against Zev Chafets and P. J. O'Rourke. What struck me is how gracious Arianna is when talking about the event and the issue being debated, both to a conservative like Brooks and to her opponents; the piece is worth it just for her tone, regardless of content. Perhaps this has something to do with being paired with Brooks, a writer whose chief strength is, following in the tradition of William F. Buckley, in being the gentleman conservative; the sort of conservative that liberals might disagree with, but cannot help respect.

Huffington argues that:


It [the two-party system] has ossified to the point where it can only deliver short-term fixes. It has led to entrenched thinking, complacency, and the deification of conventional wisdom -- all conditions that have made it harder and harder to challenge a broken status quo.


And the two-party system has not just narrowed our choices, it's narrowed our thinking. It has deeply infected our political discourse, our media, and our politicians. To paraphrase Einstein, the problems we are facing today cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.


The hunger for change is evident on both sides of the political spectrum -- from the meteoric rise to power of an outsider candidate like Barack Obama to the lightning in a bottle creation of the Tea Party -- both the result of grassroots, anti-establishment movements. The American people clearly want alternatives.


On practically every level, potential nominees in each party are running away from the establishment label and desperately trying to show their independence from the establishment wings of the two parties that are held in such low esteem.


And the Internet and social media are making the shakeup of the two parties much more likely, with young people less and less aligned with large, established institutions -- and more empowered than ever to connect with each other and cut through the spin perpetrated by politicians and special interests.

I would like to voice my respectful and courteous disagreement, precisely in that, as I see it, it is the two-party system that allows for the thin veneer of political civility we possess. If, as I have argued previously, politics is a means of negotiating as an alternative to violence. The value of politics is, therefore, less in any specific agreements that may be reached but in the fact that all parties have committed themselves to this process and not to violence.

The virtue of our two-party system is that it forces everyone involved to the political center. Get past the political rhetoric and you will see that the two parties are fairly close to each other. Both parties are in principle committed to state-guided capitalism, with private businesses and a welfare system designed to eliminate extreme poverty. Both parties support a large military that involves itself in foreign conflicts. Both parties accept that women are to be involved in the political and social sphere. I might not like all of these principles myself, but no one can operate within our political system without convincing voters that he holds to them. Now there are certainly very real disagreements between the parties, but as all involved see the other as accepting the same principles it becomes possible to create an ethos of compromise. In our legislative system, there are few debates over principles; it is a matter of negotiating a dollar amount, how much you are going to regulate something and what kind of restrictions to put in place.

To be clear this is not to say that the actual policies put out by such a system are particularly good, often they are ridiculous. What is important here is that the various factions in our society are negotiating and not trying to force their will upon everyone else. It is very well that few people actually like how our two-party system operates and the sorts of solutions it comes up with. That being said, no one, barring the likes of the Westboro Baptist Church and Aryan Nations,  is going to point blank reject the system.

Our political system does seem to be in crisis as the divide in our society seems to be widening and the rhetoric is being ratcheted up. More and more we are seeing an "us versus them" rhetoric, the logical consequences of which is violence. Some might blame the internet or talk radio. I blame the statist logic which both parties submit to. The more government interferes with people's lives and becomes the solution to problems the more people have reason to feel threatened by the government and see it as a foreign coercive force, which can only be met by going outside the system; a path whose logical conclusion is violence and the destruction of the political system.

If you wish for a respectful civilized political discourse then you may very well have no choice but to accept the two-party system with all of its very real flaws.                

  

Atlas Shrugged Trailer

So the Atlas Shrugged movie is coming out in April. If you are wondering how they are going to turn a thousand plus page book into a single movie, they are not; it is going to be a trilogy. Judging from the trailer, the first movie is going to deal with Dagney Taggart building the John Galt railroad line. It looks like they are going to take the train crash from later in the novel and place it here. Makes a sort of sense as this movie is going to need some action. No one is going to sit through a movie about building a railroad line with a new high tech metal, a plot line that was already thin in the 1950s; why do these characters spend days shuffling back and forth across the continent by train when they could just fly? If this movie is going to work they are going to need to turn to what Ayn Rand did best, political satire featuring her comic villains going into monologues about the need to protect the public interest. Do the filmmakers have the good sense to not take themselves and Ayn Rand too seriously and actually try to have some fun with this?        

The Trap of Duty in Dating

As I posted on previously, I struggle with dating in some rather ironic ways. It is not that I do not care, on the contrary at times it is because I care too much, but it is an intellectualized caring lacking formal empathy. Because of this I get hurt from both sides. I am seen as uncaring; this is a damaging accusation since, as someone who often misses social cues, I cannot manage without a certain level of charitable understanding from others that I am ever malicious. On the flip side, since I do in fact care, I open myself up to being hurt.

To give an example, from one of my past relationships. Now to be clear, this relationship, in my mind, was an extremely positive one. It lasted as long as it lasted because we both came to it with the necessary goodwill and we walked away from it, for all the right reasons, but on very good terms. There have been many women about whom I would say they wronged me. Agnes is not one of them. Agnes visited me and got to meet my family. Things went very well, though afterwards, my father made an astute observation to me. He pointed out that it was clear to him, from watching my interaction with Agnes, that I cared greatly about her. When she was in the room she was the center of my attention and what I cared about was making sure that she felt comfortable. On the other hand, my father saw nothing to indicate that the feeling was mutual.

Of course in this situation it was Agnes who had gone out of her way traveling to see me; obviously, it was my obligation to look after her and make her feel that her trip was worthwhile. (Again this has nothing to do with any personal feelings I may have had toward Agnes at a given moment. She was doing something for me; I, therefore, owed it to her to respond in kind.) Also, I must admit that there is an element here of overcompensating for being an Asperger. It was drilled into me that, if I did not want people to think I was unfeeling, I needed to actively show I cared for people and keep them in mind. So in any situation in which it becomes actually relevant to me whether someone thinks I care, I am going to make them a conscious priority. Most people can get away with caring subconsciously so they can keep it at moderate levels. Since this is something I need to do consciously if I am going to do it all, I lack a ready mechanism to moderate it.

This gap between our mutual levels of attention, though, became very readily apparent when our roles were reversed. What ended this relationship was when, after traveling to spend time with Agnes, she informed me that I would be left to my own devices Saturday night. My response to her was that if I were single I would be looking forward to spending the evening playing Mass Effect, geeky, loserish, but loads of fun. If I were dating I would be looking forward to actually be spending time with my girlfriend. What I had now seemed to be the worst of both worlds.    

Care, as I conceptualize it, is an expression of duty. For starters, I take dating and the responsibilities that come with it very seriously. If talking to someone in the first place is a big deal, how much more so if you are engaging in a series of meetings to negotiate a "till death do us part" agreement. (Part of being an Asperger is that one approaches everything with literal earnestness.) Furthermore, there is my quid pro quo morality. How can I imagine asking someone to treat me with charity, a virtual necessity living as an Asperger in a neurotypical world, if I am not prepared to give in kind? If I need to rely on other people thinking to themselves that, despite my very real flaws, they are in a relationship with me and therefore owe it to me to give me that benefit of the doubt to try to make things work then I need to feel obligated in turn to honor that relationship and always try to work things out. In practice, though, this feeling simply results in me acting out this sense of obligation for people, even those I actively dated, who do not reciprocate. To make matters worse, most seem to lack even a concept of such a quid pro quo sense of duty.

Fox Attacks Libertarianism

A major part of my political evolution these past few years has been a realization that, even as I still accept much of the conservative critique of the modern liberal establishment, I did not fit into the dominant model of conservatism as displayed on Fox news and right wing talk radio. This is not to say that I do not feel a strong affinity for John Stossel and Judge Andrew Napolitano, who both have shows on Fox. For then there are attack pieces like the following written by Kevin McCullough and posted on Fox. McCullough sees evidence of libertarians being "disrespectful" to the Republican party by "hijacking" the CPAC poll, leading to libertarian Ron Paul victory with Gary Johnson, also with strong libertarian credentials, coming in third. According to McCullough:

It has been the inclusion of the libertarian aspects of the past two years that has thrown the message of conservatism askew in a widely disproportional way.


It is the libertarian in attendance that produced the free pornographic calendar passed out to attendees in 2010. It is the libertarians in attendance who openly promote the inclusion of groups like GOProud, largely as an attempt to silence groups who would speak in strong support of traditional moral values. It is the libertarian in attendance who slandered President George Bush, by claiming his appreciation for the Constitution was best summed up as a "damn piece of paper." It is the libertarian in attendance that proclaimed the war to prevent terrorists from regathering strength and coming after our homeland as "illegal." And it is the libertarian in attendance that eschewed, booed, cajoled and screamed "war criminal" to Vice President Dick Cheney, a man who served his country with commitment and still attempts to help the world understand the threat of the radical Islamic element devising plans to eliminate us and our allies.

McCullough concludes by saying:

Libertarians and Conservatives are as different as Libertarians and Liberals. The truth is libertarians are the worst form of political affiliation in the nation. Combining the desire of economic greed, with the amoral desire to promote any behavior regardless of its cost to our culture is a stark departure from the intent of the Founding Fathers.


So what does it mean to be a libertarian? I am not sure about handing out pornographic calenders, but welcoming gays, questioning Bush's commitment to the Constitution, believing that throwing around the word "terrorism" is not a legal blank check and finding Dick Cheney to be an all round worthy target of ridicule seem like good places to begin. So if Fox conservatives decide that I am not a "good conservative," whose "greed" for money leads me to not use government to protect Christian culture I guess I can live with that.  

My Very Rational Approach to Love and Dating and Why It Has Not Worked (So Far)

The common adage that you hear about Aspergers is that we do not have emotions and we are therefore incapable of falling in love and pursuing romantic relationships. This is absolutely false. I have, for one, been in love many times, all failures to one degree or another, often with the other person not even willing to talk to me. In contrast, in circumstances where the situation has been reversed and I was aware that another person had feelings for me my position has been, whether or not I felt able to return those feelings, that the person had given me one of the nicest things possible, the knowledge that someone else cared about me, and that I, in turn, owed them something. Even if for various reasons I felt unable to return their affection, they deserved their chance to make their case and I owed it to them to hear them out with an open mind; above all else, I feel the need to avoid doing something that might hurt the other person. Following the author of Psalms, I see returning good with evil as the most unforgivable action one can do in this world. If one is to go based on my life experience it is neurotypicals, living inside their own feelings, who seem incapable of love.

Part of my problem, I have come to recognize, lies in how I conceive of love and the logical conclusions I take from it. Much as I despise Ayn Rand's concept of sexuality, there is something to be said for her notion of love as a rational decision that one chooses to make. For me, love is essentially an offer of loyalty in this difficult world. What I want is very simple; give me a girl that I am attracted to, can get a decent conversation out of and operates within traditional Jewish practice and I would be willing to offer this girl absolute loyalty. Obviously, there is more to a relationship than just this, but give me this to work on and I will figure out a way to take care of everything else. I am a rational and tolerant person, who respects the fact that other people have different and equally valid personalities from mine. Assuming that this other person is equally rational we should be able to meet each other half-way. I am also not bad looking and perfectly willing to allow the person I am dating to take charge of my wardrobe and my beard as best suits them.

So where does this entire process go wrong as it has so many times for me? For one thing, this is a very quick process for me. I should be able to figure out whether a girl fits my criteria in a matter of minutes; a few days if I really want to be sure. This creates a situation in which I have fallen in love and am willing to go all out with someone whom I have just met and who likely, at best, sees me as an interesting person. Furthermore, my instinctual reaction to falling in love is to take it very seriously. For me, there is no such thing as a person, particularly a girl, that I just casually talk to. If I am talking to a person on a regular basis at all then, by definition, the relationship is important.

This sort of relationship does not work with most girls, even the intelligent eccentric ones that catch my attention. They are likely to be turned off by my unreciprocated intensity. In this day and age, such affections are generally interpreted as marks of instability rather than honorable commitment. Also, most girls are looking for something with more empathetic depth to it. This is not something that happens in the short time schedule that I operate on. Furthermore, even in those situations in which I fail to turn someone away very quickly, the relationship still fails in the long term once the person realizes that I am not capable of developing such an empathetic relationship. What I understand is wanting something from someone else (in this case sex and affection) and making the logical assumption that the other person might want something from me (likely just for me to get out of their hair). The logical conclusion from this is that we should use reason to negotiate a mutually beneficial agreement (say if I am affectionately told to get packing). This is the extent to which I understand how to relate to people. Any relationship outside of this framework is meaningless to me.

At a philosophical level, my approach to dating suffers from the same problem as all Kantian relationships in that it is ultimately impersonal. In Kant's moral philosophy, one always acts from universal principles and not from particular feelings. So one is not kind to a friend because you like their friendship. The friend as a person is irrelevant, just an object of categorical imperatives. Similarly, with my dating, the girl I am with may mean the world to me but is of little relevance in of herself. She is a person who happens to fulfill a set of categories. She could just as easily be replaced with someone else who also fit my categories and that person would mean the world to me.

Oddly enough, my approach to dating would likely work very well if I operated within the Haredi framework. For some Haredim, the practice is for the guy to meet the girl for the first time for a few hours in the girl's home with the platters for an engagement party already in place. In such a world it would come down to the girl being faced with a very simple calculation: "This Benzion guy comes from a good family, he is smart and funny. Even if he is a little odd, he is clearly not the abusive sort so why not just say yes."

I do have my sight on a girl (not actually dating her though). Let us see if, this time around, things work out differently.

If You Hired a Historian as Your Therapist

As I argued in the previous post, historians have a far superior method of analyzing human motivation than psychoanalysts do. The obvious conclusion from this is that historians should step in and offer themselves as professional psychologists. There are millions of people out there not achieving their personal goals in life, whether in business, love, or in just being happy. Many of these people are at present spending thousands of dollars lying on the couches of psychoanalytic therapists, as they try to pierce the veil of their own subconscious to explain their failings. Considering the poor job market for historians, I am sure many of my fellow graduate students would jump at the chance to apply their skills in dealing with historical figures to help real live present-day people with their problems. Of course, the psychiatric board would object, demand that we receive licenses from them, and refuse to give them to us, but that is just a matter of them being a special interest group.

So what might it be like to have a historian as one's personal therapist? The goals of such therapy would be different from traditional psychoanalysis. For our historian therapist, the purpose of treating his patient would be to rationally examine their goals in life, the actions they have taken to achieve them, the rational reasons why such actions might have failed, and how better to rationally pursue their goals in the future. Since we are applying the historical method, there would be a radical de-emphasis on talking to the patient. As historians, we value written documents over personal memory. So, after an initial consultation with the patient to discuss their specific goals in therapy, the patient would turn over all relevant documents such as letters, e-mails, and text messages (living in the twenty-first century is going to be a big help with this) over to the historian therapist for study. Our historian therapist would then proceed by himself to analyze these documents to get a sense of the patient and their motivation while keeping in contact with the patient to receive biographic info to help place everything in its right context. Once our historian therapist is satisfied with the information he has he can bring in the patient for the actual therapy. Proceeding on the assumption that the patient has acted from consistent rational motivations, our historian therapist will discuss the logical possibilities over with his patient. The starting point is going to be the patient's motives as he understands them, considering that he is the one with the best knowledge of his own mind. Our historian therapist will challenge his patient by pointing out contradictions between what the patient claims and his actions as they appear from the documentary evidence and suggest other possible motives more consistent with the evidence at hand.

It is here that our historian therapist is likely to get into trouble. Therapists, as employees of their own patients, are dependent upon the goodwill of their patients and therefore need to create "safe" environments and offer flattering explanations that will appeal to the patient so that the patient will continue to employ them. This is one more reason why this whole psychoanalytic field is invalid as a means of gaining actual knowledge. Historians usually have the advantage of dealing with dead people and therefore we have the luxury to be as critical as we wish. Like psychoanalysts, we do not judge our subjects but attack and demonstrate that the subject was not as virtuous as they claimed is a basic part of the historian's task. You identify your source's agenda and ignore anything it tells you that supports this agenda; on the flip side, you accept as absolute truth anything that goes against the agenda. This creates a relationship between historians and their sources more akin to that of police interrogating a subject than a therapist with a patient.

Sigmund Freud argued that, since there is much in psychoanalysis that a patient would be loathe to accept, it is necessary to create a process in which the patient comes to the proper conclusions on their own and not as the opinion of the therapist. Our historian therapist might be able to do something similar. He can teach the patient about the historical method and invite him to apply it to the events of his own life through the analysis of documents that he wrote. If nothing else, a commitment to reason and using it as a tool of self-analysis should do wonders for any patient's mental well-being.