THE LIBERAL MIND: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CAUSES OF POLITICAL MADNESS. Copyright © 2006 by Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr. Published by Free World Books, LLC. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or repro- duced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For additional information go to www.libertymind.com. ISBN 0-9779563-0-X Library of Congress Control Number: 2006926407 Printed in the United States Second Printing: March 2008 Publication Date: October 2006 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Cover and title page design by George Foster Interior book design by Bob Spear Free World Books, LLC St. Charles, IL Table of Contents DEDICATION vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS viii PREFACE ix PART I 1 THE BIPOLAR NATURE OF MAN 3 2 RULES AND REASON 13 3 DEPENDENCY AND COMPETENCE IN COMMUNITY LIFE 22 4 SOCIAL POLICY AND CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT 27 5 ALTRUISM AND THE COMPETENT SELF 34 6 THE INNATE CHARACTER OF CHOICE 40 7 COMPETENCE AND COLLECTIVISM 47 8 PARENTING AND CULTURE 54 9 IDEALS & IMPERATIVES OF DEVELOPMENT 62 10 SIGNS OF DECLINE 73 11 RECAP OF PART I 84 PREFACE 91 PART II 12 THE SCIENTIFIC STATUS OF BEHAVIORAL DESCRIPTIONS 92 13 CHALLENGES OF DEVELOPMENT 96 14 THE DICHOTOMIES OF DEVELOPMENT 102 15 CHILD DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIAL PROCESS 110 16 ATTACHMENT, DETACHMENT, AND TRUST 116 17 TRUST, MISTRUST, AND SOCIAL PROCESS 123 18 AUTONOMY AND SOCIAL PROCESS 129 19 BIOLOGY AND AUTONOMY 134 20 AUTONOMY AND THE SELF 138 21 AUTONOMY, INDIVIDUAL, & INDIVIDUALISM 145 22 CAUSE, EFFECT AND WILL 154 23 RULES AND THE CHILD 162 24 ATTACHMENT REVISITED 167 25 AN OVERVIEW OF EARLY DEVELOPMENT 171 vi Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr., M.D. 26 INITIATIVE 180 27 THE FAILURE OF INITIATIVE 185 28 THE FOUNDATIONS OF INDUSTRY 193 29 ACHIEVEMENT IN THE JUVENILE ERA 201 30 MORALITY IN THE JUVENILE ERA 207 31 ADOLESCENCE AND IDENTITY 211 32 ADOLESCENCE AND FREEDOM 217 33 ADOLESCENCE, HEALTHY AND UNHEALTHY 223 34 ADOLESCENCE AND SOCIAL PATHOLOGY 232 35 ADOLESCENCE AND THE LIBERAL AGENDA 237 36 YOUNG AND MATURE ADULTHOOD 253 37 FREEDOM AND FAMILY 263 38 FAMILY FUNCTIONS & THE LIBERAL AGENDA 269 39 THE COMPETENT SOCIETY 277 40 THE FORCE OF RULES 296 PREFACE 309 PART III 41 THE BENIGN LIBERAL MIND 310 42 THE FALLACIES OF POSITIVE RIGHTS 318 43 THE RADICAL LIBERAL MIND 327 44 THE RADICAL DEFICITS OF INFANCY 340 45 RADICAL DEFICITS IN CHILDHOOD 349 46 RADICAL DEFICITS IN THE JUVENILE & ADOLESCENT ERAS 361 47 IDEAL AND REALITY IN RADICAL LIBERALISM 372 48 INTEGRITY AND TREATMENT 396 BIBLIOGRAPHY 407 INDEX 413 ABOUT THE AUTHOR 419 Dedication To Jane and Laura, and the Memory of My Parents. Acknowledgments My sincere thanks to the many friends who have taken the time and trouble to read manuscripts of The Liberal Mind at various stages of its development. I greatly appreciate inputs from Vern Miller, Shaukat Jamal, Harry Schaffner, Curt Danekas and Arthur Biddle, among others. Darlene Wingard generously proofread an early manuscript. My daughter, Laura Rossiter Spicer, has made especially valuable suggestions in editing the text and in supervising the book’s publication. I am most deeply indebted to my wife, Jane Ann Rossiter, for her exceptional editing skills. Her insistence on clarity, logical coherence and economy of language have aided immensely in turning sometimes turgid prose into readable exposition. Of course, ultimate responsibility for the final product with all of its faults and failings remains mine. LHR Jr. Preface This book is about human nature and human freedom, and the relationship between them. Its contents are an outgrowth of my life-long interest in how the mind works. That interest, beginning at about age twelve, eventually led me to careers in clinical and forensic psychiatry and to the particular access these disciplines provide to human psychology. Disorders of personality have been a special focus of this interest. First in clinical practice and then in forensic evaluations, I have had the opportunity to study the nature of personality and the factors which affect its development. The practice of forensic psychiatry has permitted an especially close look at the manner in which all mental illnesses, including personality disorders, interact with society’s rules for acceptable conduct. These rules, both civil and criminal, largely define the domains of human freedom and the conditions that ground social order. Historically, of course, western ideas about freedom and social order have come from fields quite distant from psychiatry: philosophy, ethics, jurisprudence, history, theology, economics, anthropology, sociology, art and literature, among others. But the workings of the human mind as understood by psychiatry and psychology are necessarily relevant to these disciplines and to the social institutions that arise from them. This book is an attempt to connect mechanisms of the mind to certain economic, social and political conditions, those under which freedom and order may flourish. Although I have made strenuous efforts to follow where reason leads, I have not written this book out of intellectual interest alone. My intent has been more “generative” than that, to use one of Erik Erikson’s terms. It has, in fact, grown out of a deep concern for the future of ordered liberty. In their efforts “to form a more perfect Union,” America’s founding fathers intended, as the Preamble tells us, to establish justice, insure peace, provide for the nation’s defense, promote its general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty. But the entire twentieth century, and the dawn of the twenty-first, have witnessed modern liberalism’s relentless x Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr., M.D. attacks on all of these goals and on all of the principles on which individual liberty and rational social order rest. Although they are strikingly deficient in political substance, these attacks have nevertheless been successful in exploiting the psychological nature of man for socialist purposes. To counter the destructiveness of these attacks requires a clear understanding of the relationship between human psychology and social process. It is my hope that this book makes at least a small contribution to that purpose. L.H. Rossiter, Jr. February 2006