The Tories and the disabled
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While people are occupied with the EU, and pondering whether or not there will be a Brexit, Tory MPs again voted through a weekly cut to the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) of £30 on Wednesday. This is a hell of a lot of money for people who are already at the bottom of the ladder; the sick and disabled.
This measure, allegedly, is going to spur the disabled on to find work! Quite how that’s going to happen, I do not know, as with less money in their pockets it will be much more difficult for them – if not impossible – to get to job interviews.
The 309 MPs who voted for this cut were all Tories.
“While the nation fixes its eyes on the EU, there's a quiet battle going on between Britain's two Houses of Parliament. Benefit cuts docking £30 a week from the sick and disabled are ping-ponging between the Commons and the Lords as Tory MPs repeatedly vote them through.
Iain Duncan Smith claims peers' continued fears about the impact on the sick are an "abuse of Parliamentary process". But despite a stern letter to his own party, three Tories – Heidi Allen, Stephen McPartland and Jason McCartney – tried to ditch the cuts last night.”
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/how-mp-vote-cuts-esa-7488790
A commentator underneath the article rightly puts this in context when he draws our attention to the much later retirement age that will be coming in, which means that many more of us are likely to become dependent on either ESA or JSA as we advance in years.
Meanwhile Osborne backs down from cutting tax relief for the rich:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35732604They really are the party of the rich. I've never understood why so many who are not rich vote for them (though, I know, most people don't). But there you are.
ALB wrote:They really are the party of the rich. I've never understood why so many who are not rich vote for them (though, I know, most people don't). But there you are.I think authoritarianism plays a big part, as in the success of Trump with the disenfranchised poor in the US. If you are worried about things and want a strong leader to sort it out, that's where you go to.
So, back to Wilhelm Reich and the Mass Psychology of Fascism which Danny translates as the "Mass Psychology of Capitalism" ?
ALB wrote:So, back to Wilhelm Reich and the Mass Psychology of Fascism which Danny translates as the "Mass Psychology of Capitalism" ?No, don't go back to Reich, except for nostalgia or entertainment purposes. There's some brand new political science studies concerning the Trump phenomena and authoritarianism, can't remember the names but I guess if you Google it will come up.
This was one of the pieces:http://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism
Thanks. Interesting and rather disturbing, especially the bit about fear (real or imagined) pushing the non-authoritatian to vote for authoritarian leaders and actions.It still leaves open the question of why some have authoritarian personalities. The way they were brought up?Also, in a UK context, would seem to explain more why people vote UKIP. After all, Cameron is hardly a strong Leader. But then neither is Farage.This article might also interest those following the Trump for President thread.
ALB wrote:.It still leaves open the question of why some have authoritarian personalities. The way they were brought up?Probably the most influential theory on the development of personality, and in my view the most well tested and applicable theory, is Attachment Theory (John Bowlby, et al) . It very much sits on the nurture side of the nature v nurture debate. (it is a big topic to cover on the forum and I wouldn't want to be accused of going off thread, given my geographical location, this appears to be a possibility) In terms of personality development, Mary Ainsworth developed the Ainsworth Strange Situation test which has been used to identify four main attachment types and personalties, of these I would argue that the three insecure attachments would tend to favour authoritarian relationships (either as the authoritarian or as the receiver of authoritarianism) and that this would be likely to impact on their political outlooks. There has been some study of this.This link should workhttps://apps.cla.umn.edu/directory/items/publication/304528.pdfGood news is that securely attached personalities generally constitute around 60–65% of the population. That shouldn't be read as saying that all Socialists have secure attachment patterns (clearly this is not the case!!!), and that those with insecure attachment patterns are likely to be fascists and unable to form socialist consciousness.
Tim Kilgallon wrote:It very much sits on the nurture side of the nature v nurture debate. (it is a big topic to cover on the forum and I wouldn't want to be accused of going off thread, given my geographical location, this appears to be a possibility)lol
Our Blog SOYMB directs attention to another aspect. Doctors surgeries becoming job centres. http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2016/03/gps-to-prescribe-jobs.html
So, Tim, although Reich's theory was wrong he was on the right track: an authoritarian personality (or not) does depend on the way you're brought up. But is there any evidence that authoritarians can be persuaded to support non-authoritarian solutions? Hopefully yes.
Strange guy, Reich, early on in his career did some pretty good stuff and he was a big influence on Fritz Perls, but he did some pretty strange stuff after that. To see it as authoritarian personalities is probably a little misleading, personality is really a spectrum thing with lots of dimensions and lots of shadings. I wasn't implying that all non-secure attachment styles are authoritarian in outlook or desire, merely that the research appears to indicate an increased preference for those types of political structures/right wing views amongst those attachment styles.I, personally, think that the cod psychology of certain of the leftist groups is quite laughable and simplistic. the kind of Trotsyist "If we make outragous demands that captialism cannot meet, the workers will realise the sham nature of the system and join the revolution", as if the whole mass of the working class is of one psyche and will think identically and all come to exactly the same conclusion.
I share ALB’s concern at people’s voting habits which glaringly go against their own interests. Attachment theory and an “authoritarian” personality type have come up as possible explanations.Attachment theory is a big topic, and off-thread, I guess. But what thread stays diligently on-topic?I am no expert on attachment theory, but have come across it in my readings on autism. In the past, it was claimed that autism was caused by “refrigerator mothers”, causing unnecessary anguish to mothers and parents of autistic children.For example:“Attachment theory quickly became the core idea behind child development. It made logical sense and it could be empirically proven. Numerous studies showed that children brought up in loving homes where they could form stable attachments developed into well-adjusted adults. On the other hand, children from broken homes who had been neglected, or were brought up in foster care, had much less successful outcomes. The statistics did not lie and attachment theory was enthroned as a scientific success.There were a couple of flies in the ointment. Autism was one. In the 1950s, an attachment theorist called Bruno Bettelheim suggested that autism was caused by cold or withdrawn mothers who did not allow their children to form emotional bonds with them. As a result, he claimed that the children withdrew into themselves and became autistic. A generation of mothers was condemned as the reason that their children were handicapped, just adding to their anguish. But eventually it was realised that if one of a mother’s children was autistic but the rest were not, there was little justification for blaming her. Attachment theory, of course, need not be disproved by a single failure, and a veil was drawn over the autism debacle. “http://bedejournal.blogspot.co.uk/2008/03/rise-of-attachment-theory.htmlMost researchers now believe that autism is highly heritable. I have posted these links before:http://www.autism.org.uk/24984https://www.autismspeaks.org/science/initiatives/autism-genome-projecthttps://www.autismspeaks.org/science/initiatives/autism-genome-project/first-findings There are also other problems with the attachment theory, one being twin studies:“At its base, traditional attachment theory makes the following prediction – take identical children and separate them at birth. One is brought up in a loving family where it forms stable attachments to its adopted or real parents. The other is less fortunate. It is moved through a children’s home, to foster parents, back into care and has no chance to enjoy a proper upbringing. Child one goes to a good school, child two goes to lots of bad schools. According to attachment theory we should see marked differences between the children once they grow into adults. But we don’t. Even if no one has been cruel enough to do the experiment mentioned above, there have been hundreds of studies of identical twins separated at birth. The researchers were trying to establish how much their personalities and behaviour were affected by nature and how much by nurture. The answer was that identical twins showed a correlation with each other of about 50%. But this figure was almost the same whether they were brought up together by their natural parents, brought up together by adopted parents or separated and brought up apart. Nurture seemed to play no part. Likewise, adopted children did not correlate to their adopted parents anymore than a stranger off the street would. There were some nurture effects while children were still growing up, but once they were adults, these disappeared.”http://bedejournal.blogspot.co.uk/2008/03/problem-with-attachment-theory.htmlObviously a human baby needs the company and physical closeness of caring adults, but how much this shapes the personality of the growing person is debateable – as long as the baby is not experiencing severe neglect (as the example of babies growing up in Romanian orphanages).Donald Winnicott worked with John Bowlby and below is how he refined his attachment theory with the “good enough” mother – I would be more inclined to agree with this refinement:"He thought that parents did not need to be perfectly attuned, but just “ordinarily devoted” or “good enough” to protect the baby from often experiencing overwhelming extremes of discomfort and distress, emotional or physical."http://www.skepticalob.com/2014/11/attachment-parenting-is-contradicted-by-everything-we-know-about-attachment.htmlI would be inclined to say that the child wags the parents just as much, or perhaps more, than the other way around. By that I mean that, as the child’s inborn personality presents itself as it grows, the parent learns how that child must be handled; i.e., is it a wayward and headstrong child that needs strong boundaries and firm parenting, or is the child ultra-sensitive and baulks at the slightest criticism – then that child needs gentle handling .
Sorry for the delay on getting back to you, work getting in the way. The information on autism is to some extent correct, in as much the idea of the refrigerator parent was put forward by Bettelheim and also built on by Tinberger and Tinberger. However, and it is a big however, Bettelheim described himself as a lot of things in his life, many of which he wasn't, and he certainly wasn't an Attachment Theorist. Bettelheim and his work has largely been discredited. Although he arrived in the US claiming to be a psychologist, Bettelheim never had a psychology degree, it was in philosophy, specifically aesthetics. He wrote academic papers about artwork, not the human mind. Bettelheim essentially built an empire for himself based on lies. Many of his former patients have come forward since his death to give testimony that he abused them severely. I met him in Newcastle in the early 80s when he was giving a speaking tour and thought then he was an arrogant and unpleasant man. To use him to criticise attachment theory is a bit like using Kim Jong Un to have a go at the SPGB. Interestingly some of the modern research on autism seems to show there is a link to the function of the neuro-transmiter glutimate in people with autism.With regards to the criticisms of Attachment Parenting, mentioned in the article from Quodibeta, there are a couple of issues with the information they give. they talk of numerous twin studies, however the fact is there is a paucity of twin studies in this area. The mention the work of Judith Harris and are wrong on two counts, one they state she wasn't a psychologist, which must have come as a surprise to her as she got a masters in Psychology from Yale. Another is that they state that the study she used looked at twins that were separated at birth, where in fact the average age at separation was five months. In attachment terms five months is a very long time to be exposed to poor parenting. Additionally there is a huge difference between Attchment Theory and Attachment Parenting.You state "Obviously a human baby needs the company and physical closeness of caring adults, but how much this shapes the personality of the growing person is debateable – as long as the baby is not experiencing severe neglect (as the example of babies growing up in Romanian orphanages)." I would disagree with you strongly, I don't think there is much debate about it at all, countless studies have backed up the work of Bowlby, Ainsworth, Van Izerndoorn, Rutter, etc, etc. MRI scans of children's brains has shown very strongly the impact of poor early years care on the development of social skills, language, physical growth, mental well being, likelihood of on going mental health problems, etc. etc. . With regards to the Romanian babies, as can be seen from the work of Michael Rutter, there is a huge difference between the imapct of severe privation, as was the case in Romanian babies, where they suffered lack of care but not phsyical or sexual abuse or harm and the impact of physical, sexual and emotional abuse and depriviation (which differs from privation) on children in early life.
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