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history and fiction in Hilary Mantel’s A Place of Greater Safety

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A passerby hesitated, stared. “Excuse me–” he said. “Good citizen–are you Robespierre?
Robespierre didn’t look at the man. “Do you understand what I say about heroes? There is no place for them. Resistance to tyrants means oblivion. I will embrace that oblivion. My name will vanish from the page.”
“Good citizen, forgive me,” the patriot said doggedly.
Eyes rested on him briefly. “Yes, I’m Robespierre,” he said. He put his hand on Citizen Desmoulin’s arm, “Camille, history is fiction.”
–Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety

Like her Booker-Prize-winning books Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, A Place of Greater Safety is a historical novel in which lawyers best known for beheading tragic heroines (Anne Boleyn, Marie Antoinette) are among the protagonists. In its form, its topic, and even its quality, A Place of Greater Safety also bears comparison to War and Peace, although Mantel does not advocate an elaborate conceptual scheme comparable to Tolstoy’s. In the afterword, she writes, “I am not trying to persuade my reader to view events in a particular way, or to draw any particular lessons from them. I have tried to write a novel that gives the reader scope to change opinions: a book that one can think and live inside.” Until I finished the novel on Saturday, I was so deeply inside it that now I mourn the characters, even Robespierre.

As the quotation cited above suggests, Mantel is interested in the relationship between history and fiction. The most obvious difference is that history is true and fiction is false. But even if one insists on facts (as I do), the distinction is more complicated than that. Robespierre really walked down the streets of Paris. The passage above is fiction because Mantel has imagined the scene. (However, Mantel frequently has the characters state real quotations from their works, on the theory that “what goes onto the record is often tried out earlier, off the record.”) Within the fiction of the book, it really is Robespierre whom the patriot recognizes: that is a fact, not a mistake.

But what does it mean to say “Robespierre”? Does one mean The Incorruptible, the great civic republican moralist and statesman? Does one mean the villainous author of the Terror? Historians still debate who Robespierre was, even given the vast evidence that survives. And, according to Mantel, Robespierre wasn’t sure himself. Not only is the truth perspectival in the sense that each of us observes from a distant and limited vantage-point, but we are not even sure how to view ourselves. The meaning of the word “Robespierre” changes for Robespierre from minute to minute. His name did not vanish from the page, as he predicts above, but the fullness of his experience did.

It’s worth comparing the actual French Revolution to the contents of this novel. One difference is scale. Twenty-eight million people were alive in France in 1792. Each lived a continuous stream of consciousness and formed passionate, complex, incomplete, and often invalid views of scores of other people, for a total of billions of relationships. The scale of a novel is necessarily much smaller. I count roughly 136 named characters in A Place of Greater Safety, not counting crowds and generic figures like “the patriot” (above).

In real life, the action was continuous and simultaneous, all those millions acting and thinking at once. In contrast, Mantel writes almost entirely in set-pieces. Each scene takes place at a geographical location and involves between one and a dozen named people. Each scene is set after the previous one in chronological order, but usually after a gap of hours, days, or even months. So, whereas history flowed smoothly and simultaneously, the novel jumps from set-piece to set-piece.

Reality has no narrator. Mantel narrates in a supple, subtle, deliberate style. For instance, consider this sentence: “He put his hand on Citizen Desmoulin’s arm, ‘Camille, history is fiction.’” Since Robespierre was a boyhood friend of Demoulin’s, he never addresses him as “Citizen Desmoulin.” The title “Citizen” enters the narration here because “the patriot” has been addressing strangers that way, and Robespierre sees his friend from the patriot’s perspective at that moment. But he begins is sentence with the name “Camille …,” and within three words, we are back to a more intimate view. The title “Citizen” evokes layers of irony as we read Mantel’s narration of Robespierre’s thoughts in reaction to a nameless patriot who is using terminology invented by men like Robespierre.

As Mantel writes in the afterword, “I am very conscious that a novel is a cooperative effort, a joint venture between writer and reader. I purvey my own version of events, but facts change according to your viewpoint. Of course, my characters did not have the blessing of hindsight; they lived from day to day, as best they could.” To imagine their experience sympathetically (when the characters in question include Danton, Demoulins, and Robespierre) is a great achievement of sympathy. But the book is not devoid of judgment, on the false theory that “tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner.” Like Cromwell at the end of Bring up the Bodies, Robespierre in the last chapter of A Place of Greater Safety is a chilling figure, all the more frightening because Mantel has made him so human until then.

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history and fiction in Hilary Mantel’s A Place of Greater Safety

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A passerby hesitated, stared. “Excuse me–” he said. “Good citizen–are you Robespierre?
Robespierre didn’t look at the man. “Do you understand what I say about heroes? There is no place for them. Resistance to tyrants means oblivion. I will embrace that oblivion. My name will vanish from the page.”
“Good citizen, forgive me,” the patriot said doggedly.
Eyes rested on him briefly. “Yes, I’m Robespierre,” he said. He put his hand on Citizen Desmoulin’s arm, “Camille, history is fiction.”
–Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety

Like her Booker-Prize-winning books Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, A Place of Greater Safety is a historical novel in which lawyers best known for beheading tragic heroines (Anne Boleyn, Marie Antoinette) are among the protagonists. In its form, its topic, and even its quality, A Place of Greater Safety also bears comparison to War and Peace, although Mantel does not advocate an elaborate conceptual scheme comparable to Tolstoy’s. In the afterword, she writes, “I am not trying to persuade my reader to view events in a particular way, or to draw any particular lessons from them. I have tried to write a novel that gives the reader scope to change opinions: a book that one can think and live inside.” Until I finished the novel on Saturday, I was so deeply inside it that now I mourn the characters, even Robespierre.

As the quotation cited above suggests, Mantel is interested in the relationship between history and fiction. The most obvious difference is that history is true and fiction is false. But even if one insists on facts (as I do), the distinction is more complicated than that. Robespierre really walked down the streets of Paris. The passage above is fiction because Mantel has imagined the scene. (However, Mantel frequently has the characters state real quotations from their works, on the theory that “what goes onto the record is often tried out earlier, off the record.”) Within the fiction of the book, it really is Robespierre whom the patriot recognizes: that is a fact, not a mistake.

But what does it mean to say “Robespierre”? Does one mean The Incorruptible, the great civic republican moralist and statesman? Does one mean the villainous author of the Terror? Historians still debate who Robespierre was, even given the vast evidence that survives. And, according to Mantel, Robespierre wasn’t sure himself. Not only is the truth perspectival in the sense that each of us observes from a distant and limited vantage-point, but we are not even sure how to view ourselves. The meaning of the word “Robespierre” changes for Robespierre from minute to minute. His name did not vanish from the page, as he predicts above, but the fullness of his experience did.

It’s worth comparing the actual French Revolution to the contents of this novel. One difference is scale. Twenty-eight million people were alive in France in 1792. Each lived a continuous stream of consciousness and formed passionate, complex, incomplete, and often invalid views of scores of other people, for a total of billions of relationships. The scale of a novel is necessarily much smaller. I count roughly 136 named characters in A Place of Greater Safety, not counting crowds and generic figures like “the patriot” (above).

In real life, the action was continuous and simultaneous, all those millions acting and thinking at once. In contrast, Mantel writes almost entirely in set-pieces. Each scene takes place at a geographical location and involves between one and a dozen named people. Each scene is set after the previous one in chronological order, but usually after a gap of hours, days, or even months. So, whereas history flowed smoothly and simultaneously, the novel jumps from set-piece to set-piece.

Reality has no narrator. Mantel narrates in a supple, subtle, deliberate style. For instance, consider this sentence: “He put his hand on Citizen Desmoulin’s arm, ‘Camille, history is fiction.’” Since Robespierre was a boyhood friend of Demoulin’s, he never addresses him as “Citizen Desmoulin.” The title “Citizen” enters the narration here because “the patriot” has been addressing strangers that way, and Robespierre sees his friend from the patriot’s perspective at that moment. But he begins is sentence with the name “Camille …,” and within three words, we are back to a more intimate view. The title “Citizen” evokes layers of irony as we read Mantel’s narration of Robespierre’s thoughts in reaction to a nameless patriot who is using terminology invented by men like Robespierre.

As Mantel writes in the afterword, “I am very conscious that a novel is a cooperative effort, a joint venture between writer and reader. I purvey my own version of events, but facts change according to your viewpoint. Of course, my characters did not have the blessing of hindsight; they lived from day to day, as best they could.” To imagine their experience sympathetically (when the characters in question include Danton, Demoulins, and Robespierre) is a great achievement of sympathy. But the book is not devoid of judgment, on the false theory that “tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner.” Like Cromwell at the end of Bring up the Bodies, Robespierre in the last chapter of A Place of Greater Safety is a chilling figure, all the more frightening because Mantel has made him so human until then.

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talking about the Pledge of Allegiance on “Tell Me More”

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On NPR’s “Tell Me More” recently, I discussed the Pledge of Allegiance with host Michel Martin and reporter Mary Plummer from KPCC in Pasadena. At one point, Martin asked me whether I would replace the Pledge with something “better.” I replied that I am not necessarily against it, “but I do think there is something more important, which is actually to have a conversation, an appreciative conversation but a thoughtful conversation, about what ‘liberty and justice for all’ means–to actually take some of those words like ‘liberty’ and ‘justice,’ which are very complicated and controversial, and talk about them and understand them.”

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Albert Dzur and democracy inside institutions

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Albert Dzur, author of Democratic Professionalism and Punishment, Participatory Democracy, and the Jury, is writing a series in the Boston Review entitled “Trench Democracy: Participatory Innovation in Unlikely Places.”

When we think of democratic reform, our minds usually turn to explicitly political upheavals: the Civil Rights Movement, the Arab Spring. In such cases, masses of people put aside their ordinary lives of family and work to press for a new government–or at least for new laws.

That definition of reform hides a different kind of democratic politics that is more sustained, less state-centric, and less obvious to reporters and average citizens. It is what Dzur calls “the public work of self-directing community groups that band together to secure affordable housing, welcome new immigrant groups, and repair common areas like parks and playgrounds.”

I am aware of this kind of public work and have put it at the center of my book We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For. I argue that about one million Americans are engaged in “self-directing community groups” in particular places and issue areas. But they do not yet see themselves as part of a civic movement that is larger than their particular projects and causes. So we must organize them to advocate in their common interest–for funds to support civic processes, rights to public participation, education policies that support high-quality civic education, and news coverage of citizens’ work.

In developing this strategy and counting my one million civic activists, I did not pay sufficient attention to the layer of politics and reform that Dzur investigates. I describe leaders and members of civic groups, but his main topic is the everyday pro-democratic work of professionals within mainstream organizations:

[T]hey take their public responsibilities seriously and listen carefully to those outside their walls and those at all levels of their internal hierarchy in order to foster physical proximity between formerly separated individuals, encourage co-ownership of problems previously seen as beyond laypeople’s ability or realm of responsibility, and seek out opportunities for collaborative work between laypeople and professionals.We fail to see these activities as politically significant because they do not fit our conventional picture of democratic change. As if to repay the compliment, the democratic professionals I have interviewed in fields such as criminal justice, public administration, and K-12 education rarely use the concepts employed by social scientists and political theorists. Lacking an overarching ideology, they make it up as they go along, developing roles, attitudes, habits, and practices that open calcified structures up to greater participation. Their democratic action is thus endogenous to their occupational routine, often involving those who would not consider themselves activists or even engaged citizens.

Though they belong to practitioner networks and engage in ongoing streams of print, online, and face-to-face dialogue, the democratic professionals I have met do not form a typical social movement. Rather than mobilizing fellow travelers and putting pressure on government office holders to make new laws or rules, or convening temporary participatory processes such as citizens’ juries, deliberative polls, and citizens’ assemblies, democratic professionals are making real-world changes in their domains piece by piece, practice by practice. In the trenches all around us they are renovating and reconstructing schools, clinics, prisons, and other seemingly inert bodies.

The rest of Dzur’s series will explore examples of this work, using his own interviews with committed democratic professionals. These professionals must be part of a movement for civic reform. The first step is to learn who they are and what they are striving for. Dzur’s work is indispensable for that purpose.

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six types of freedom

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(Ft. Lauderdale, FL, en route to Austin, TX) Here are six types of freedom. Isaiah Berlin cited the first two as part of his argument for pluralism. He believed that genuine goods were distinct and incommensurable. For instance, a reasonable person could value two types of freedom, but no social order could maximize both simultaneously. We would have to choose, not only between the two types of freedom that he described, but also among freedom, happiness, equality, and other worthy goods.

Much in the spirit of his work, I extend the list of freedoms to six:

1. Negative liberty: freedom from constraint in the form of tangible action against the person or her property or (much more commonly) the threat or fear of such. Because fellow human beings can threaten violence, anarchy poses dangers to negative liberty. (Think of failed states flooded with AK-47s.) Although parents must constrain the negative liberty of their children, they can abuse that power. To combat anarchy, intra-family abuse, and other forms of violence among citizens, states are probably necessary. Yet in most of the world, it is the state that can threaten violence most effectively and pervasively. It must be curtailed in the interest of negative liberty.

2. Positive liberty: the freedom to do something. You are not free to travel, for example, unless you can afford a fare. Positive liberty is a matter of degree, since human beings are simply not able to do everything we want. But there may be a list of fundamental capabilities that everyone should be able to exhibit, and they require external support. You can’t learn to read unless someone teaches you. If one has a meaningful right to a positive liberty (e.g., the right to read), then some other person or community has a duty to provide it; and the state may be the best means to enforce that duty. But if I must pay taxes for your kid’s education or face imprisonment, then my negative liberty has been curbed in the interest of her positive liberty.

3. Individuality: the freedom to develop and express a unique personality and life-story in both the public and private spheres. Individuality may require a degree of negative and positive liberty, but it also faces threats not yet mentioned. The social norms that are strongest in tight, traditional communities and the mass culture that dominates today’s global society both inhibit individuality. Mass culture already worried de Tocqueville, but it has been hypercharged by advertising and technology. The global mass exercises its power less through majority rule at the ballot box than through search algorithms, trendy catchphrases, and addictive tunes.

4. Freedom from manipulation: I am treated as a means to someone else’s ends when the other person sways, threatens, or pays me to do what he wants. I am treated as an end when the other person tries to decide with me what we should do. States and markets arrange people as means to each others’ ends, perhaps unavoidably. Freedom (in this fourth sense) exists in ethical communities whose members treat each other as ends in themselves. Neither positive nor negative liberty guarantees such communities.

5. Freedom to make the world (or to live in a world that we make). Society is an artifact. We are born into the society of our ancestors, with all its flaws. But we are not compelled to replicate it. We become freer in this fifth sense the more that we design and fashion the world that we inhabit. That is a collaborative task, so it requires some limitations on negative liberty. But it is also not the positive liberty of being given an education or an airplane ticket. It is a matter of active co-creation.

6. Equanimity: freedom from the dread, doubt, disquiet, and sorrow that are consequences of being vulnerable and mortal creatures who care about other fragile living things. Although it is harder to achieve equanimity under conditions of extreme duress (e.g., given a complete lack of negative or positive liberty), and although mass culture threatens equanimity, inner peace seems to have different conditions. Indeed, when positive liberty means incessantly choosing consumer goods, it is incompatible with equanimity, as is individuality when it turns into narcissism, or co-creation when it becomes a vain yearning to build wholly new and permanent things.

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We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For, the animated version

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I very much enjoyed presenting my new book today at MIT’s Center for Civic Media. The questions and discussion were terrific. Also, Willow Brugh produced an animated version of my talk in real time:

I still maintain that it’s worth reading the book, but this pretty much sums it up.

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All Together Now: Collaboration and Innovation for Youth Engagement

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1377110_10151727004580748_1674310912_n(Washington, DC) Here I am at the National Press Club, releasing the report of the Commission on Youth Voting and Civic Knowledge, entitled “All Together Now: Collaboration and Innovation for Youth Engagement.”

Here is the text of our press release:

While the federal government is shut down, young people across America are required to study our system of government and how a bill becomes a law. Successful civic education is both more difficult and more important when Congress and other elected officials set such poor examples. Today, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE)—the nationally recognized research center based at Tufts University’s Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service—released a groundbreaking report on how to educate young Americans for political participation in a time of deep polarization.

The new report, released this morning at a Newsmaker event hosted by the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., was written by the Commission on Youth Voting and Civic Knowledge and is entitled, “All Together Now: Collaboration and Innovation for Youth Engagement.” The report provides recommendations for educators, parents, and national, state and local policymakers on how to engage American youth.

The Commission on Youth Voting and Civic Knowledge is a distinguished, bipartisan group of scholars convened by CIRCLE to investigate exclusive data collected during and after the 2012 elections on issues such as civic knowledge, voting behavior, and the educational experiences of Americans ages 25 and under—a crucial constituency in electoral politics. The report is based, in part, on data collected for the Commission from more than 6,000 young adults and 720 high school civics or government teachers, and an analysis of all states’ voting and education laws. The research was funded by the S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, Robert R. McCormick Foundation, W.T. Grant Foundation, Spencer Foundation, and Youth Engagement Fund.

“Teachers face an inhospitable climate for civics: tests and standards that do not reward discussing current events, considerable resistance from parents to anything touching politics, and a national political climate that alienates young people from public life,” said Peter Levine, director of CIRCLE. “The research for this new report demonstrates the urgency of better civic education in schools and community-based organizations that include youth.”

Some highlights of the report’s findings released today include:

  •     Current levels of knowledgeable engagement by America’s youth remain too low. Less than half of young Americans vote, even in presidential elections, and just 10 percent of Americans between 18 and 24 met a standard of “informed engagement” in the 2012 presidential election cycle.
  •     Opportunities for civic learning and engagement are highly unequal. White, wealthy students are four to six times as likely as Hispanic or Black students from low-income households to exceed the “proficient” level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in civics. Only 7 percent of students whose parents didn’t graduate from high school and who are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch reached “proficient.”
  •     Civic education is increasingly viewed as controversial by the public. A quarter (24.8 percent) of the teachers surveyed by the Commission thought that parents or other adults in their community would object if politics was discussed in their course—even though they were asked about a course on government or civics taught during a presidential election year.
  •     Although highly controversial, voting laws have only small effects. Photo ID laws seemed to lower voting for young people who have not attended college. Same Day Voter Registration modestly, but reliably, boosts youth turnout. The overall effects of these laws are small compared to the larger challenges to engaging youth in democracy.

“Research shows that civics education works. Discussing controversial issues, engaging in service learning if it involves discussion of “root causes,” being contacted by parties and campaigns, and participating in extracurricular groups all predict good civic outcomes for students,” said Trey Grayson, former Kentucky Secretary of State (R-KY), Director of the Harvard Institute of Politics and member of CIRCLE’s Commission on Youth Voting and Civic Knowledge. “As a teacher we surveyed stated, civic education ‘is essential if we are to continue as a free democratic society’.”

“All young Americans should be informed and responsibly involved in politics and civic life. And engaging the next generation is the best long-term solution to problems of polarization, incivility, and dysfunction in national politics,” said Levine.

To break current patterns, the report recommends policymakers must embrace innovative and collaborative approaches to civic education. Examples of recommendations from the report include:

  •     Lowering the voting age to 17 in municipal or state elections so that students can be encouraged to vote while they are taking a required civics class.
  •     Policies that support teachers’ obligation to include discussions of current, controversial political issues in the curriculum. Assigning students to read and debate news in class and encouraging them to discuss with their parents and other adults who are important in their lives.
  •     State standards for civics that focus on developing advanced civic skills, such as deliberation and collaboration, rather than memorizing facts.
  •     Badges for excellence in civics. These portable, online certificates would demonstrate advanced civic skills, knowledge, and actual contributions.

Both a full list of the commission’s members and additional, detailed information about the commission, its mission and focus can be found here.

###

CIRCLE (http://www.civicyouth.org) is a nonpartisan, independent, academic research center that studies young people in politics and presents detailed data on young voters in all 50 states. CIRCLE is part of the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University.

The Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service (http://activecitizen.tufts.edu/) is a national leader whose model and research are setting the standard for higher education’s role in civic engagement education. Serving every school of Tufts University, Tisch College creates an enduring culture that prepares students to be lifelong active citizens.

Tufts University (http://www.tufts.edu/), located on three Massachusetts campuses in Boston, Medford/Somerville and Grafton, and in Talloires, France, is recognized as one of the premier research universities in the United States. Tufts enjoys a global reputation for academic excellence and for the preparation of students as leaders in a wide range of professions. A growing number of innovative teaching and research initiatives span all Tufts campuses, and collaboration among the faculty and students in the undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs across the university’s schools is widely encouraged.

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the case for active citizenship when government fails us

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In Stockton, CA, columnist Mike Fitzgerald argues that his city needs civic literacy to address its dire economic and political condition:

For two decades, Stockton’s leaders overpaid public employees, subsidized sprawl and racked up staggering debt.

Few objected.

When the crisis hit, a reform council hired a competent city manager. Over the ensuing three years, leaders halted past excesses and put in place fiscal reforms.

But, dismayingly, many citizens seemed unable to distinguish between the reform council and the hacks of the past. They voted almost all reformers out of office.

A surreal procession of angry citizens came before the council to denounce it.

“There are reasons to be angry,” Levine said. “But a successful citizen needs to be able to make distinctions. To figure out who in charge is bad and who is good. And it’s very disempowering if you’re so distrustful that you can’t identify an ally.”

Inability to discern friend from foe explains the blanket anger. It’s a primal scream, as opposed to literate civic discourse.

Angry, unwitting citizens are part of an incompetence loop. They fail to recognize good service; they pelt all councils with hostility; which repels good leaders; which leaves Bozos; who govern poorly; thus further disaffecting the masses.

For some causes of civic illiteracy, such as poverty, there are no easy solutions. A couple obvious remedies are to strengthen literacy programs and civics classes.

Meanwhile, in the University of Florida’s student newspaper, The Alligator, I challenge students to get more involved in civic reform:

… We face profound problems the government isn’t addressing — persistent unemployment, climate change, violence and mass incarceration and the slow desertion of our great industrial cities, to name just a few.

Although we should expect more from the government and our political leaders, they cannot solve these problems on their own. People can solve even the most difficult problems if they are organized and active. That is not a wish — it is a finding of extensive research. But where are we going to get more active and responsible citizens?

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morality in psychotherapy

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A great issue of our time is the struggle between two ways of thinking about human behavior: a philosophical mode that uses terms like “moral” and “immoral,” “good” and “evil”; and a psychotherapeutic mode, which uses terms like “normal” and “healthy” to the exclusion of any moral vocabulary.

I am aware that professional psychotherapists hold various views of morality. (For instance, see William Doherty for a very interesting defense of moral language in therapy.) But I maintain that the mainstream, everyday practice of psychotherapy assumes one or more of these anti-moralistic premises:

  1. A psychotherapist (someone who has had a specialized training based on science) has no means of knowing the difference between right and wrong.
  2. The patient has a right to his or her own values and should not be influenced morally.
  3. Moral pressures are psychologically harmful and should be reduced.

Note that these premises are mutually inconsistent. For instance, #2 and #3 assume that the psychotherapist does know right from wrong–it is wrong to influence a patient’s values or to put moral pressure on her. But the three statements get mixed up because they support the same conclusion: Do not tell patients what is right.

To support my generalization, I offer sample questions from real tests given to clinical social workers.

1. From socialworktestprep.com:

A 32-year-old man is referred to a social worker after his children were removed by child protective services due to allegations of neglect. He tells the social worker that he is not sure that he wants to fight to get them back. He states he doesn’t think he wants to go through all the things child protective services wants him to do only to not regain custody in the end. Which response is the best thing the social worker should say to the client?

  • The correct response: “You are free to choose whether or not you want to try to regain custody of the children.”
  • One of the incorrect responses: “Your children will benefit from knowing that you at least tried to regain custody, even if you aren’t successful.”
  • Official explanation:

A core principle of social work is the client’s right to self-determination. The NASW Code of Ethics is clear that social workers should support a client’s right to self-determination, unless a client is posing a risk to self or someone else. Social workers should set aside their own values and encourage clients to make their own choices based on what they think is right for them. Although it may be appropriate at times to discuss the pros and cons of a decision, clients need to know that ultimately the decision is up to them.

2. From socialworkinfo.com

Mr. J, is referred to the Social Worker after he is released from his first psychiatric hospitalization. His hospital admission occurred sometime after his return from a trip to Rome, where he had gone to give advice to the Pope. His family knew nothing of the trip until the bills arrived. A salesperson, Mr J. had called strangers in the early morning hours seeking sales. He was described as euphoric in mood, but his family reported that be became irrational when his wishes were thwarted. Mr. J. experienced a reduced need for sleep and was described as talking non-stop for long period of time. Based on the above information, which of the following DSMIV TR diagnoses seems most probable?

  • Correct answer:  “Bipolar I Disorder, Single Manic Episode.”

Just to put my own cards on the table: I think the 32-year-old man has a moral responsibility for his children. That does not mean that he should fight for custody. The kids may be better off without him in their lives. But the main issue he must consider is their welfare; custody is either good or bad for that end. His happiness is also an issue that he may think about, but the children count for more because: (1) there are more of them than him, (2) they are more vulnerable; (3) they have more of their lives ahead of them; (4) he brought them into the world; and (5) we should generally weigh others’ welfare more than our own.

The man who rushed off to advise the pope is probably mentally ill and needs treatment. But I would like to know what he told the pope. Maybe he was right, in which case I would hate to see his inspiration and euphoria medicated away. He reminds me of Saul Bellow’s Herzog and St. Teresa of Avila. I think I can demonstrate that Herzog is a misogynist, but it would surely be reductive to treat him as manic. His unsolicited letters to world leaders are outpourings of the sensitive modern soul. As for St. Teresa–I’m afraid I cannot accept the metaphysical underpinnings of her thought, but she was a great leader, reformer, and writer.

W.H. Auden eulogized Freud as a moralist who “showed us what evil is.” It is “not, as we thought, deeds that must be punished” but “our dishonest mood of denial.” There was some truth to that: dishonesty and repression are evils. But they are not the only evils; some deeds ought to be punished or at least reproved.

(See also: “insanity and evil: two paradigms.”)

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snapshots from America

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With the government in shutdown, but TSA deemed “essential” so that people like me can keep burning carbon and racking up the frequent flyer miles, I have been traveling almost constantly, encountering a stream of strangers from Raleigh to Sacramento. Some faces and voices linger in my short-term memory:

The Massachusetts surfer-dude cabby, who tells me: Bro, I surfed Nantasket all day yesterday, and it was awesome. This comes in a strong Boston accent from a young dude with long blonde hair.

The two New Yorkers who board at Kennedy, never having met before, and quickly establish a rapport through kvetching. For the first hour, their conversation concerns irresponsible grown children. (Oy!) Then one of them starts explaining how George W. Bush planned 9/11 so he could pass the Patriot Act. (Otherwise, how could they be rebuilding the World Trade Center site so fast?–they must have had the plans ready.) Meanwhile, a Tchaikovsky Symphony is playing loudly. I assume it is Jet Blue’s background music, although it seems surprisingly bombastic. It turns out that the Truther’s cell phone is broadcasting the music–much to his own surprise.

A pastor, born and still living in North Carolina, strives to marry a same-sex couple in his congregation. He won’t cross a state line to do that. It would be a defeat not to marry them in the Tarheel State, which he expects to do.

A whole planeload of octogenarians with Minnesota accents, slowly boarding the pre-dawn flight from Sacramento to Minneapolis. Going home to the Mayo Clinic for Scandinavian-style care?

In Virginia and North Carolina, whole rooms of people tell me they are pretty confident about the values and facts that are relevant to the social causes they care about. It’s the strategies that baffle them. What can they do to make the big world better?

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