Category Archives: power subtext

June 7, 2009 · 7:57 pm

The Lame Gazelle


Back in Manhattan, back in the day, when my acting friends and I were working on our “Not your victim, not your enemy” subtext schtick, there was an iconic TV documentary, with gory but memorable footage of cooperative hunting by African big cats at a (real) watering hole. How did those cats choose which animal from a herd to attack? No doubt to conserve Therbligs, they went after the lame gazelle. This image became our metaphor for how NOT to present oneself, whether in a Midtown watering hole or an Uptown subway train.

At the most concrete level, it meant not hobbling ourselves by wearing oh-so-high heels, if we were taking the Shoeleather Express any further than a waiting taxi. [Millenial women, I’m talking to you. Pack a pair of flats in your handbag, for a quick getaway.] This was a no-brainer for me, since I had gotten over the glamour of stilettos as a young teenager in London, when my heel wedged itself into the wooden tread of a Bakerloo escalator (8 years before my “Skaaf” escapade in Boston, yet).

At a more controversial level–in that Age of (alleged) Equality of the Sexes–it meant not trying to keep up with the lads, drink for drink, at the watering hole. The slightest unsteadiness on one’s feet, and the “prey” subtext is hard to override, whatever one’s actual state of inebriation. [Another good reason to leave the stilettos to fictional New Yorkers.] A glib remark–such as the British cliche, “Oopsie-daisy! Worse things happen at sea!”–helps, though, since it implies that one is not humiliated by one’s gait. It also is quaint and eccentric, implying that one might be a bit “Doo-lally” (crazy), which no self-respecting predator will pursue, if there is other fair game in sight. [Ethologists have speculated that this avoidance of erratically-behaving prey may have evolved as a protective mechanism against sinking one’s teeth into a rabid animal.] So, it is a fine line we walked–act crazy, not drunk–but we got the hang of it. As we had learned in acting school, actual drunks try very hard to appear sober and do everything more slowly than normal, whereas meshuggahs tend to do everything like a Marx brothers vaudeville routine.

One night, while co-starring in an Off Off Broadway production of Picnic in a theatre so bijou that it had no hot water, I decided to wait until I got home to take off my stage make-up. I was on the Uptown IRT local, getting [puzzling] predatory looks, when we went through a tunnel, which turned the train window into a mirror; and I saw my reflection. [Remember in the Disney cartoon, Aladdin, where the Robin Williams genie channels a Bravo-channel designer and asks our hero of his get-up, “Now, what are we saying?” A line much used in raising my two girls, I must say.] My subtext said either “female with low self-esteem” or “female impersonator.” To override these two subtexts, I addressed my fellow travelers in a loud, theatrical voice, “Hey, everybody! Did any of you catch our production of Picnic down in the Village tonight? We’re there all week!” The hunters averted their gaze. “She’s in a play,” they muttered to one another. “Yeah, yeah. Good for you, there, sweetheart. Break a leg.” No longer their potential victim…nor their enemy, unless I started spouting lines from the play.

So, here is Ruth, giving you her impression of decrepitude. For going-on 20, she is quite spry, and still a good hunter. She allows herself to be included in the male cats’ horsing around, but just let Lili try to herd her, and you’ll see who’s whose victim. Although she is a purebred Maine Coon, she is all fur and bones, no weight at all! Still, her self-possession and longevity are a reminder to us all, “Don’t be the lame gazelle!”

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Filed under ethology, power subtext, semiotics, therbligs

June 24, 2009 · 9:19 pm

"A Highly Trained Individual"


Ever since the Regrettable Incident(s) at the Playing Fields, Lili is on-leash in that area, except for a brief “Ally-Oop” session, where she responds either to that command or to my 3-note whistle, to jump back & forth over an athletic bench or a blue barrel a few times. Now that school is out, a no-nonsense, gruff-looking man has been preparing part of the field we traverse, for a football training camp for Fall Freshmen. Of course, we skirt their playing field; but the boys are always intrigued by the “wolf-dog” as we pass by, offering her catcalls and wolf whistles, trying to get her attention.

I got the vibe that the coach was not amused, so Lili & I just “keep our eyes in the boat” and quick-march by, on our way to and from the woods. Yesterday, as the boys were doing an exercise involving jumping in and out of tractor tires laid on the ground, some of them were again distracted by Lili. So, here’s what the coach told them: “Just let that big dog alone. ‘He’s’ working. That is a highly trained individual.”

How cool is that?

Stand by for the metaphor. Doing daily “wolf-work” [trying to gain mastery over one’s amygdalar arousal, by asking, “Now, what just got up my nose?” then pausing, and redirecting that angry energy into more useful actions] pays off, in the long run. When I first encountered this guy painting stripes on the field, I thought, “Oh, man! Just when school’s out and the fields become “community property” [like on weekends], this grumpy dude [body language, facial expression & failure to respond to my greeting] is making me feel like the trespasser (humiliation, intrusion, and the ever-present fear of consequences for Lili). I considered avoiding the fields altogether, by taking the back path to the woods; but since the last storm, a too-big-to-move-without-a-Bobcat tree [with bayonet-like broken branches] completely blocks the way. [Actually, I was just able to clamber over it, but Lili nearly impaled herself on it; and I got poison ivy on my arm for my efforts, anyway–pain & suffering all around.] So, through the fields we strode on our appointed rounds, shoulders back, eyes front, no Lame Gazelle subtext here: we were neither the “grumpy” dude’s enemy, nor his victim.

I felt not only proud, that the dude had affirmed Lili’s progress, but also sheepish, that I had mistaken his aloof manner for disapproval. What a rookie cognitive distortion on my part, especially given all my years in and around military settings!

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Filed under gets right up my nose, limbic system, power subtext, semiotics

July 28, 2009 · 7:01 pm

Glienicke Breucke: "Bridge of Spies"


Hands up, if you remember the Cold War…or have read any spy novels by John Le Carre or Len Deighton…or maybe saw the movie Funeral in Berlin, starring Michael Caine. In fact and fiction, the little bridge, spanning the Havel River between Potsdam & Berlin, has been the venue for several spy swaps between the Soviet Union and the US, under cloak of darkness. First, Gary Powers, the downed U-2 pilot [no, not part of the Irish band, you Young Ones], in 1962. [Followed by the fictional “Harry Palmer” in 1966.] Then in 1985 the US got back 23 agents in exchange for 4 Soviet agents [such a deal!]; and finally, a 4 (of ours) for 5 (of theirs) swap in 1986.

If you keep in mind that these exchanges happened at night, between warring factions, the metaphor I’m about to lay on you will work better. As a Young One, myself, in the UK of 1960, I used to fall asleep listening to Radio Luxembourg play the latest English & American hit tunes…only to wake up with a shriek @ midnight, when the station switched over to broadcasting Voice of America “information,” only to be promptly and cacophonously jammed by transmitters in the USSR. What a racket! What a rude awakening! What an apt analogy for Freud’s theory of the interpretation of dreams!

Initially, he thought the purpose of dreams was two-fold. They serve to preserve sleep. C’mon, admit it. Have you never concocted an elaborate dream which “accounts” for the sound of your alarm clock, transforming it into something else entirely, just to allow you a bit more shut-eye? Secondly [pace Walt Disney], Freud opined that “A dream is a wish your heart makes, when you’re fast asleep.” His example of this is the sad story of a man whose child has died, for whom he is now sitting shivah. He falls asleep and dreams that he and his child are walking together through a field, with the warm sun beating down on them…until finally, the smell of burning cloth intrudes on his reverie, and he wakes up, to discover that a candle has fallen over onto the dead child’s bedding and set it on fire. While it lasted, this Restoration dream fulfilled the wish that his child had not died; and, for a time, it “accounted” for the heat & light of the fire [transforming it into a sunny day], thereby postponing the mourning father’s rude awakening.

“Oh, really?” said the skeptics of his time, “Do you mean to tell me that the nightmare I had last night was a wish?” Stand by for a large loophole. The language of dreams is Primary Process (more of an Indie film than a conventional Disney narrative); and the way you express “not” in a dream is to begin a scene and then “yell ‘Cut!'” before its logical conclusion. Always? Not always. Just when the dream makes more sense as a wish, with a “not” thrown in.

Enough quibbling, already. Let’s cut to the chase [scene]. There is an “Iron Curtain” between the Unconscious [where dreams are produced] and the Conscious [where they are shown, shared with friends, underappreaciated…]. Like the Soviets who jammed the Voice of America signal, there is (in most individuals) an intra-psychic “censor,” whose job it is to filter, spin, and otherwise obfuscate the message from the Unconscious. How come? Because the censor thinks “The Conscious can’t handle the truth!” Maybe the truth is inconvenient to the current regime. It might incite the dreamer to challenge the status quo, rock the boat, do something wild & crazy. The more “buttoned-down” an individual, the more powerful his censor is; and fewer of his dreams make it across the Glienicke bridge.

Here’s where the “tradecraft”–the cloak & dagger passing of secrets, as described in the novels of le Carre & Deighton–comes in. The message has a better chance of slipping past the censor if it is encrypted. Freud described two common forms of encryption: displacement & condensation. In dreams, actors rarely appear as themselves [except, like Hitchcock, for brief cameos]. So where do the characters come from? And, for that matter, where do the plotlines come from? Often, from current events, mass media, and the dreamer’s daily routine. Freud called this Day Residue. In his dream decoding algorithm, Day Residue is “subtracted” from the Manifest Content of the dream; and the remaining images (especially the odd ones) are assumed to be displacements or condensations of two (or more) images, which need to be deconstructed, for the dream’s Latent Content to be discovered. Got all that?

Let’s use a dream I had in graduate school, to practice decryption. “I have just come out of the 72nd Street subway station and am waiting to cross to the East, but there is traffic from both Broadway & Amsterdam Avenue. I don’t have time to wait for a ‘walk’ sign, so I intend to jay-walk, when there is a lull in traffic. Here comes a furry limousine, moving very slowly. I could definitely dart across in front of it…but I feel the need to reach out and touch it as it passes by.”

Day residue: That’s my real-life subway stop, my etoile of streets to cross, and my typical late-for-a-very-important-date mindset. What’s left, if we take that away?

Odd image: “Furry limousine, moving very slowly.” My free association: “Looked like a Cadillac. Hate them! Make me carsick. Grandparents always drove them. Why furry? This is Springtime. Who wears fur in the Spring? My maternal grandmother wears those weasels biting each other around her neck, even in mild weather. Why moving slowly? Like a hearse? ‘Reach out, reach out and touch someone’ is the current jingle for Bell long distance telephone.”

Latent content: I wish to call my grandmother, before she dies.

“BFD!” I hear you say. But, for complex tribal and power subtext reasons, I had been estranged from my grandmother for about 5 years. Still, having deconstructed a possible meaning for the dream, I went ahead and enacted the “latent wish,” and called her. [She mistook me for my sister, and mentioned she was feeling her end was nye; but when she realized she was talking to me, she back-peddled and hung up.] And, verily, she died later that week. No, I didn’t cause her death, or even really predict it. [She was in her 80s, after all.] I did allow a coded message from my Unconscious to affect my behavior regarding her; and I am very grateful that I did.

Next time you remember one of your dreams, why not see if you can decode it? You are not obliged to enact every “wish your heart makes”; but dreamwork (like wolf-work) often provides valuable “inside information,” to those brave enough to undertake it.

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Filed under altered states, Freud meant..., power subtext, secret code, semiotics

September 15, 2009 · 6:57 pm

"Over a Barrel"


Riding my usual hobby horse today: the double [sometimes, opposite] meanings of certain figures of speech. When you hear the title phrase, do you think “at someone’s mercy,” or “having been rescued from near-drowning, being draped over a barrel to clear the lungs of sea water”? According to all my UK etymological sources, the latter is the first meaning; and it supposedly originated in the States in the 1800s. Only later, in the early 1900s, did it come to mean “being hazed, as in a college fraternity ritual.” Also, supposedly, an exclusively American practice.

Oh, yeah? Well, I’ve just been browsing the British House of Commons debates from 1846 and 1906, concerning punishment by flogging in the Royal Navy. [Actually, I knew about this before, but it’s a trip to read the debates verbatim.] In the former debate, a bill was put forth stipulating that flogging could be legally administered only after a Court Martial [not just at the whim of any officer on board]; and the 1906 bill advocated the abolition of flogging, altogether. Incidentally, the euphemism for a sailor’s being tied to the barrel of a ship’s cannon, in the proper position to receive up to 48 lashes with a cat-o’-nine-tails, was “kissing the gunner’s daughter.” And when someone says of a tight space, that “there’s hardly room to swing a cat,” they are referring to this man-made flayer of human flesh [not a pussycat]. On some ships, though, a milder version of flogging for sailors under the age of 16 substituted a whip of 5 [not 9] strands, without the 3 knots per strand, which was called a “boy’s cat” or “pussy.”

And now, to the [metaphorically] related topics of a modern form of child discipline in America [the Time Out], on the one hand, and invasive medical procedures, on the other. Consider first the aphorism, “A kitchen contractor is a vandal that you pay; and a surgeon is an assailant that you pay.” Partly because of the truth of the first statement, more and more of us opt to Do-the-Home-Improvement-Ourselves; but very few of us opt to perform surgery on ourselves [not even physicians]. So we pay [or at least co-pay] to be assaulted [you know, like, cut open], in the hope that some good will come of it. No matter how much reasoning with yourself you do, about why a given procedure is necessary, there’s no escaping the Big Four irritants: the intrusion, the humiliation, the fear, and the pain & suffering. And what if the procedure doesn’t even purport to be curative, but only diagnostic? [Let your wolf mull that over a bit.]

So, back to Time Out. When a parent says to her/his obstreperous child, “Do you want a Time Out?” I always wonder if they really mean, “Do you want a [mild form of] punishment?” or “Do you want to take a moment to try to compose yourself [with a variant of Zen meditation]?” Is it a threat or a Serving Suggestion? Is it rhetorical [like “Do you want to make a scene?”], or is it Conative? Remember, way back in the beginning of this blog, Jakobsen’s 6 Speech Functions; and one of them was to Give an Order [Even to Oneself]? So, either “Do you want a Time Out?” is a roundabout way of saying “Do you want to pipe down?” or “Why don’t you pipe down?” or even “Pipe down, already!” Trouble with being Conative, though, is that it’s so in-your-face-and-on-your-case. It’s so I-am-the-boss-of-you: so…Packer Leader. [Mull it over.]

When, as a Lieutenant Commander, I used to stand the ER watch at Newport Naval Hospital, back in the day, with my [future] husband, I got to listen to him try to avoid giving direct orders to his patients [even though, as a Naval Officer, he outranked most (not all) of them, especially the drunk & disorderly sailors who made up the lion’s share of our nighttime clientele]. “Why don’t you get up on the exam table?” said he [rhetorically, I assume]. “Cuz I don’ wanna!” replied one under-age-but-way-over-the-limit young man. “Sailor, get yourself up on that table!” the future father of my future children commanded. And thus did an Able Bodied Seaman [a rank, not a diagnosis] begin his ordeal of intrusive, humiliating and painful [but life-saving] treatment for acute alcohol poisoning, for which, given the venue, he was not even charged a co-payment.

You might say that the Navy [and, especially, the ER treatment team] had him over a barrel.

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September 21, 2009 · 8:34 pm

"A nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse."


This old Cockney expression, first cited in 1794, means, “Do I have to spell out the obvious to you? You know what I mean.” [Lately, contracted to the Phatic, “Nar’mean?”] Well, here is my corollary: “A diss is as bad as a threat to a young man.”

Waratu Sato [& colleagues] of Kyoto University have made headlines this week with their research on 24 incarcerated juvenile delinquents, compared to 24 “control” subjects, whose average Verbal IQs were 28.4 points higher than their jailed brethren. [The Controls’ mean Verbal IQs were in the High Average range, whereas the JDs’ were in the Low Average range.] As the discussion portion of this breathlessly-hyped-in-the-media article points out, the IQ factor might account for all the difference between the two groups’ performance on the task. Meanwhile, let us consider the task, itself. Each subject was shown a series of photographs of faces “portraying” one of 6 emotions, which they had to identify correctly. [Wait. Remember the dog-bark-translator, also from Japan, which categorized canine utterances into one of 6 emotions? Hmm…] Anyway, the headline was that the 24 JDs kept “misrecognizing” facial expressions of disgust for anger. So, incidentally, did the Control subjects, but 17.2% less often [which the researchers, themselves, acknowledge is “not a large difference”]. And their conclusion? “One of the underpinnings of delinquency might be impaired recognition of emotional facial expressions, with a specific bias toward interpreting disgusted expressions as hostile angry expressions.” On the other hand, as has been empirically demonstrated for centuries, one of the underpinnings of delinquency might be lower verbal IQ. Nar’mean?

But this is not Sato & Co.’s first foray into studies involving distressingly Photo-Shopped facial expressions. As reported in NeuroImage in 2004, 5 females and 5 males [mean age 24.4 years] volunteered for a [non-diagnostic] fMRI study, comparing their amygdalar responses to facial expressions described as angry or neutral, sometimes facing head-on, and sometimes slightly averted. Guess what they found. Head-on angry faces aroused an amygdalar response [in both men & women], whereas averted angry faces did not. Nor did neutral faces, no matter which way they were pointed. And these subjects weren’t even delinquents!

Apparently, even in Japan, researchers enjoy circling the lamppost, in order to discover that which is already known. Are you tellin’ me, the culture which introduced the Western World to the notion of seppuku [aka, hara-kiri] as a rational response to “loss of face” [aka, receiving a look of disgust, or a diss] doesn’t see the nexus between disgust and anger? Well, I do, and I’m Irish. Anyone who has ever read urban anthropology [or the newspapers] is aware that most youthful violence is triggered by one party giving the other party such a look [of disrespect], that honor demands a hostile response [usually towards the dissing party, but sometimes, turned inwards towards the dissed, himself, out of unbearable humiliation]. Nar’mean?

Street savvy youth [and their elders] learn to avoid inadvertently giving such facially expressed offense by taking a leaf out of the Viennese [Dissed] Clever Dog’s book, and averting their gaze. Further, those of us using public transport in the wee hours, learn to “keep our eyes in the boat” and/or to monitor our facial subtext for inadvertent expressions of disgust, and to verbally override them, with such remarks as, “Yuck! I think I may have food poisoning! Oh, well. Worse things happen at sea, right?” The only threat such a remark poses to fellow travelers, is to their clothing, not to their self-worth. No diss, no hostilities. [Usually, not always.]

I was waiting on line at the clinic pharmacy today, where the TV had some inane talk show on, with a guest who may have been the younger brother of a Backstreet Boy; and the interviewer said to him, “What other people think of you is none of your business.” Well, the studio audience applauded. [And so would I have, except that I was at the clinic pharmacy.] What a wonderfully powerful antidote to the infuriating toxin of humiliation! If someone gives you a look of disgust, it’s none of your business. Avert your gaze and tell the wolf in your brain to pipe down, already. Nar’mean?

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Filed under confounds, murky research, power subtext, semiotics

November 7, 2009 · 6:32 pm

Bronx Cheer


When my father got back from the Korean War and we moved to New York, I was 5 [and my sister was 6]. In what would be called these days, an effort to “bond” with us, he made up for 3 years of lost parenting time by teaching us to play chess and cribbage, and to use a logarithmic slide rule. [Look it up, you Young Ones; and keep the Internet handy, cuz more historical references will follow.] We also got into [radio broadcasts of] baseball. My mother & sister [both Cleveland natives] were Indians fans, while Rosie & I were all about the Brooklyn Dodgers. My enthusiasm outstripped my accuracy, as I raced around the apartment shouting, “Come quick! It’s ‘Dike Snooder’ at bat!” [Also a big fan of “Pee Wee Weese,” I was.] Our parents were fairly ecumenical about whom we could support: Anyone but the Yankees.

My father’s motto was: “Rooting for the Yankees is like hoping for King Faroukh to win at roulette.” At the time Rosie coined this bon mot, the penultimate King of Egypt [aka “The Thief of Cairo”] was reckoned to be the world’s richest man, yet notorious for pilfering valuable artifacts from other heads of state whom he visited [including Winston Churchill]. Thus, our contempt for the Yankees was based, even in the 50s, on the egregiously “uneven playing field” that overpayment of their players created. Baseball, after all, was supposed to be a metaphor for the American Dream: a meritocracy, not a plutocracy.

When we moved to the UK, and the British tried to label me a “Yank[ee],” I would [rather cryptically] respond, “How dare you! I was always a Dodgers fan, until dey left Brooklyn, da bums!” The only part of this they grasped was “bums,” which was rather a rude word for a 12-year-old girl to be using, in those days. When I went to Duke, and a “Magnolia Honey” would remark, “Whah, you mus’ be a Yankee!” I would give her the same retort, leaving her baffled, as well. Ah, the power of the Poetic Speech function! Keeps ’em guessing.

So, anyway, why do we sports fans [even those of us who don’t have a wager on the outcome], get so worked up when our team loses? The Manifest reason is, “Cuz we was robbed!” [The umpire was sight-challenged or corrupt. Add your own conspiracy theory here.] But the Latent reason [as in, “What gets up our nose” about the loss] is often humiliation as the victors litter Broadway with mountains of “ticker tape” [which long-forsaken paper product is as passe as the slide rule]; but also the intrusion of Farouhk-like wealth on one side, to “buy” the outcome. [A casual glance at the jubilant NYTimes headlines this week might have you wondering, were they talking sports or politics?]

There’s nothing more infuriating than a fixed contest [especially when it doesn’t go in your favor]. Rosie always used to stomp around the house in mock indignation while watching the Miss Universe Pageant. “It’s all rigged, I tell you! It always goes to an Earthling!” [Talk about da bums…]

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Filed under aggression happens, power subtext, secret code, sharks and jets

June 16, 2010 · 6:30 pm

Are You Gaslighting Me?


By 1994, when Victor Santor published his creepily serious book, Gaslighting: How to Drive Your Enemies Crazy, the term had come to mean “a form of intimidation or psychological abuse in which false information is presented to the victim, making them doubt their own memory and perception.” Most Americans will associate this with the 1944 film Gaslight, starring Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman & Joseph Cotton, which was a remake of a 1940 UK film of that name [later released in the States as The Murder in Thornton Square], based on the 1939 West End play Gas Light, which opened on Broadway in 1941 as Angel Street, starring Vincent Price in his debut role as a Baddie, where it ran for a record-setting 1,293 performances. In a real-life attempt to gaslight American movie-goers [“British version? There was never a British version.”], MGM arranged to have the negative & all the prints of Thorold Dickinson’s 1940 film destroyed [but he surreptitiously made a print for himself and squirreled it away].

In all the versions, our heroine notices that the gaslights on the lower floor of the house intermittently go dim [indicating that someone has lit up a gaslight in the attic]; but the complicit housemaid [Angela Lansbury in the MGM flick] denies that anyone is upstairs and she denies that she notices the downstairs lights dimming, at all. It’s another case of, “Who ya gonna believe? Me, or your lyin’ eyes?”

Apparently, humans can’t resist this form of Poetic deception, often rationalizing it as “just a bit of fun.” According to my Dad, each Junior Officer, upon arrival at his first Pacific port of call, was gaslighted in the Officers’ Club, thusly. The Newbie would spy his first gecko, peering down at him from one of the corners of the room, point to it and say, “Oh, look! A lizard!” As one, the Old Hands would turn variously to every other corner of the room and say, soothingly, “Yes. I see it. Of course I do.” “No! Really! Over here!” the Newbie would insist; at which the Old Hands would all switch their gazes to another [gecko-free] corner and reiterate, “A lizard. Yes.” Of course, the wheeze would only work if there was only one gecko in the room. A log was kept, of how long it took for “the penny to drop.” And don’t you just know, the ex-Newbie was the most enthusiastic gaslighter, when the next Junior Officer arrived.

Why do we humans feel the urge to deceive? Probably, for the usual reason we resort to Poetic communication: because we reckon that the truth will get us in trouble. The Baddie in Gaslight fears his wife will dime him out as the murderer, so he seeks to turn her into an unreliable witness. The Old Hands seek to assuage the humiliation of their own Newbie cluelessness, so they ritually pass on the pain to the new Newbies. This is especially likely to happen if there is the perception of scarce resources [such as available females, or supplies, or even space] in the area, into which the Newbie has unwittingly intruded.

Turns out, we’re not the only creatures who engage in intra-species deception, as Jakob Bro-Jorgensen reports in his recent article, “Male Topi Antelopes Alarm Snort Deceptively to Retain Females for Mating.” [First of all, that title is far too high-concept to get green-lighted as an MGM film. I’m thinking, Don’t Be That Schmized Gazelle!] Quoting here, “male antelopes snort and look intently ahead if an ovulating female begins to stray from their territory [which] suggests to the female that there is danger ahead…[such as] lions, cheetahs, leopards [or] humans…the snort and intent look were a false call…and there was no danger nearby.” The article asserts, “This type of intentional deception of a sexual partner has not been documented before in animals. Previous studies have shown that animals do deceive each other but mainly in hostile situations or to protect themselves.” Bro-Jorgesen ponders “why females keep responding to alarms at all”; and concludes that “females are better off erring on the side of caution, because failing to react to a true alarm could easily mean death in a place…full of predators.”

So, here’s my suggestion, whatever your species happens to be. If you begin to suspect that you are being gaslighted, ask yourself, “How might the [would-be] gaslighter benefit from the deception? What’s up his [or her, let’s not forget Angela Lansbury’s shenanigans] nose, anyway?” If you come up clueless, you always have the option of reading the power subtext back to the other party: “Are you gaslighting me?”

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Filed under ethology, power subtext, semiotics, understanding shenanigans

July 20, 2010 · 7:23 pm

"Wild horses…"


What? “…couldn’t drag me away” [Richards & Jagger, 1971]? Well, of course they couldn’t, or more accurately, wouldn’t, you City Slickers, cuz they is wild, innit? They neither bear weight on their backs, nor pull it via harness. Their theme song is, “I’ll Never Be Your Beast of Burden” [Richards & Jagger, 1978]. What they will do, if you intrude into their established territory, however, is charge you and possibly trample you.

Which is not to say that they run amok, or obey no Code of Conduct, according to the equine ethologists who study them, particularly the band of 250 [wild horses, not ethologists] who live on Cumberland Island, Georgia. The observers note that the horses tend to organize themselves into Family Groups [a stud, his mares, and their offspring], who rotate through the various grazing venues on the island: meadows, marshes, woods, and beach dunes. An anthropomorphic explanation of this nomadic behavior might be that the families are altruistically sharing the nutritional wealth of the island with their equine brethren. There are two flies in that Utopian ointment, though. One is, well, flies. Inland, where the grass is lush and plentiful, the horses are tormented by flesh-eating flies; whereas on the shore, where the sparse, tough dune grass grows, the constant sea breeze blows the flies away. So perhaps [as Harris opined in Cows, Pigs, Wars & Witches] local geography shapes what is considered to be The Right Thing to Do. [In this case, to keep hoofing it, to the next ambivalent stand-off between eating well and being “eaten alive.”]

Also, as in most human cultures, there is an Out Group, who are forcibly excluded from the Happy Families scenario: bands of Bachelor Horses. The observers offer an illustrative vignette, in which a bold Bachelor Horse put just one hoof onto the territory of a Family Group, which was marked by what is euphemistically called a Stud Pile [of dung], and was immediately charged by the stallion and “shown off the property.” Insert your own current human example of such behavior here. It is not clear [Is it ever?] how the hapless members of the Out Group drew the short straw. What is inspiring is that, every so often, a pariah horse bravely challenges the authority of the humiliating and/or fearsome studs.

Speaking of inspiring, this photo of two Bachelor Horses was taken by my [90-ish] mother-in-law, who trudged 10 miles down the beach to find them, yet [uncharacteristically, for her] heeded the warnings of the island guides, to keep a respectful distance away from her subjects, lest they “pass on the pain” and trample her. Having got what she came for, she trudged the 10 miles back to rejoin the Band of Ecotourists, of whom she & my father-in-law were the oldest by several decades, though not made to feel like members of an Out Group, for all that.

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Filed under ethology, power subtext, zero-sum-gaming

December 15, 2010 · 10:25 pm

"A cat may look on a king, ye know."


The earliest citation for this egalitarian proverb is 1546 [Oxford English Dictionary], when the king in question was Henry VIII. I was going to apply it to the case, a couple of weeks ago, of the Bishop of Willesden’s snarky Twitter response to the engagement of Prince William [heir to the throne and therefore this cleric’s eventual boss]: to paraphrase,”I give it seven years. The Royal Family are all philanderers. When the wedding date is announced, I’ll be booking my republican day trip to France.” The next day, the Bishop issued a pro forma “No offense intended” statement; but by the end of the week he had been relieved of his public duties.

But that puny piece of lese majesty has since been overshadowed by last week’s riotous assault [by disgruntled students] on Prince Charles’ official car and his current wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, who may actually have been “poked with a stick” through the broken window of their Rolls. [All of us curious cats may look at the now-famous photo of Camilla and the future king, wearing matching WTF facial expressions, under siege.] 182 protesters had been arrested by the following Tuesday, on the basis of CCTV footage.

Can you hear the hoofbeats of my hobbyhorse approaching? Det. Chief Superintendent Horne had this to say about the alleged perpetrators: “There was a stark contrast between scenes in Westminster and homes with crying parents and shocked young people when the police turned up. When they are shown footage of their actions that day some are shocked by the impact of their behavior.” Or to put words in their slack-jawed mouths, “I have no idea what got into me! I’m just not like that!”

To use another of my favorite Mancunian expressions, then “What are you like?” [It means “Your behavior is so bad, that similes fail me.”]

My own answer, to the Bishop and to the revolting students, is “You are like anyone else who ever got a snootfull of one or more of the Big Four Precursors: angry.” Was it intrusion? The tuition fees are set to treble in the next few years, meaning that almost all “Uni” grads will incur significant debt. Fear? “How will I ever find a job, if I can’t afford an education?” Pain & suffering? “If the government cuts back on ‘the dole,’ [unemployment benefits], I may not even be able to afford food & shelter!”

But consider the targets of their [and the Bishop’s] anger: the Royals. The ostentatiously wealthy, “Bow-to-me-when-you-address-me,” unelected, Ruling Class.

I’m thinking it was humiliation, that got up their noses. It usually is, when revolution is in the air.

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Filed under aggression happens, power subtext, understanding shenanigans

January 24, 2011 · 4:29 pm

"T’es folle ou quoi?"


French slang for, “Are you crazy, or what?” Also, the title of a 1982 comedy, ads for which were plastered all over the Metro station walls that winter [the coldest on record, at the time]. It became my lingua franca catchphrase during our Eurail Pass honeymoon, as effective in Milan and Vienna as it was in Paris, to back off street hasslers without giving offense. It conveyed the power subtext, “I am not your victim, nor am I your enemy,” in a way that the more common but histrionic “Laissez-moi!” [“Leave me alone!”] just misses.

As effective as the phrase is, after 40 years of close, professional encounters with Those Who May Be Crazy, I don’t like its implication. Now, for a bit of Attribution Theory. Do you imagine that what I object to is the use of a derogatory term for those suffering from Mental Illness? Not me. Sticks & stones and all that. I object, Ladies & Gents, to the overuse of the Insanity Defense, to excuse wolfish behavior, nar’mean?

In March of 1981, you may recall or have read, one John Hinckley, Jr. fired 6 exploding bullets at President Reagan, hoping to win the admiration & love of the actress Jodie Foster. He was a lousy shot, and managed to kill and maim several people; but only one ricocheting bullet entered the armpit of the President, who survived. The shooter copped an Insanity Plea [which a DC jury bought] and remains to this day an inpatient @ St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, DC [which advertises monthly for clinical staff, if you’re interested in a job opportunity]. For years, he has been granted weekend passes to visit his parents.

I’m no fortune teller, but I bet the Tucson shooter’s defense team are pouring over the transcripts of the Hinckley trial, to unearth bits of jury-swaying gold dust. A spate of articles, both in the popular and scientific press, have addressed the thorny “T’es folle ou quoi?” question, in hopes of being better able to identify and forestall future pistol-packin’ werewolves from acting out. Presciently, in the 24 July 09 issue of the Schizophrenia Bulletin, William T. Carpenter wrote a pros & cons think piece, “Anticipating DSM-V: Should Psychosis Risk Become a Diagnostic Class?” Under “cons,” he notes that the proposed criteria for a diagnosis of Psychosis Risk Syndrome [PRS] or Attenuated Psychotic Symptoms Syndrome [APS], are commonly found in “non-ill” young people; and so the risk of needless stigmatisation and overtreatment is high.

Even if the Syndrome makes it into the next edition of the so-called “Book of Broken Things,” the last people who are going to be able to inform the authorities about a perceived loose cannon will be Mental Health providers. Unless HIPAA is amended or repealed, that is. Back in the day, in pre-HIPAA times, one of my jobs as an active duty Navy Psychologist was to do annual assessments of veterans receiving disability pensions for service-connected Mental Illness. It was a Hobson’s Choice the vet faced in his interview. Too sane, and he would lose his benefits. Too crazy, and he might get rehospitalized on the spot. In the summer of 1981 a vet told me that it was his ambition, “to become another Hinckley.” Without fear of litigation or loss of my license to practice psychology, I informed my Department Head, who called the FBI, who arrived promptly, to “continue the interview process” with the vet.

Couldn’t get away with that nowadays. Not even sure if I could get away with remarking, to a weird-acting, in-my-face pavement artist on the streets of Paris, “T’es folle ou quoi?” But I bet he could get away with murder.

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Filed under aggression happens, attribution theory, power subtext, suicide and murder