More about the Peterson Principle

Not surprisingly, some people took vigorous exception to yesterday’s post about Jordan Peterson. I trust that everyone noticed, but, for your edification, the post’s title, The Peterson Principle, referred to an ancient theory called, the Peter principle. Its author, Laurence Peter, suggested that people in the corporate world rise to the level of their own incompetence.

Anyway, I am thrilled beyond reason to see people come out to defend Carl Jung, of all people, and to accuse me of using ad hominem arguments. I will point out, for those who do not navigate the psycho world, that Jungian analysis is basically dead. It does not and has never worked, so no one practices it.

Heck, even Freudian psycho analysis is pretty much dead in America. No one really undergoes psycho analytic treatment any more. I draw your attention to the post I wrote a few days ago about Aaron Beck, one of the most prominent detractors of Freudian analysis. He did not detract from Jungian analysis because no one takes it seriously, except for Jordan Peterson and his merry band of acolytes.

As for the charge of going all ad hominem, it is fatuous, of course. It reeks fatuity. But consider this, when news of Martin Heidegger’s Nazi sympathies became more a matter of public record in 1987 with the Victor Farias book, Heidegger and Nazism, the academic world was awash in speculation about how it could have happened that the progenitor of a practice called deconstruction could have been a true believing Nazi during the Third Reich and how he had used his position as rector of the University of Freiberg to militate for Hitler’s policies.

Heidegger’s defenders explained that we should not judge him by his actions, because his philosophy was a completely different story. And yet, if he did not understand his own philosophy, what makes them think that they did? Do his public actions count as part of his philosophy, and, if they do, should we expect that deconstruction will lead people to become unhinged radicals. After all, as I have occasionally noted, deconstruction is a fancy philosophical term for pogrom. Heidegger was a great supporter of the Nazi Storm Troopers, leaders of many pogroms.

In truth, the discussion of Heidegger’s Nazi practice is more a way of studying his thought than an ad hominem dismissal of same. It does not involve the man’s personal habits, his private life or his affair with Hannah Arendt. We do not pry into personal life, but we have no reason to ignore public behavior.

I would point out that Peterson’s behavior during his wife’s illness is public record. It is public record because he and his daughter made it public record. If he did not want his followers and detractors to judge it, he should have kept it private. The same applies to his willingness to invite a New York Times reporter to look at his bedroom. 

For those who want us to follow Peterson's serious thinking, the sad truth is that it is not serious thinking. It is a complete muddle. Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings.

And then there is one Karen Myers, who wrote a thoughtful, though wrong headed response to yesterday's post. One understands that she is a fabulator, someone who believes that we can understand human behavior by telling stories about it. In that she is apparently a Jungian or else a Peterson acolyte, so we will take a little time to clarify her points.

So, she begins with a dubious assertion, one that contains partial truths that lead to distortions.

A human is a story-telling animal. All of our perceptions are based upon narratives that are shortcuts to understanding reality, in order to better survive it.

Obviously, she is not very strong in the matter of theory formation. She presents the first sentence as an axiomatic truth. It is true, as far as it goes. It would have been better to say that human beings are social animals who occasionally tell stories. 

Humans are social animals because they obey certain codes of conduct. They observe social rituals, they use proper table manners, they follow dress codes, they speak a language, they salute the flag-- we could go on. Human survival depends far more on social cohesion than on storytelling.

And yet, when you fulfill your duties as a human being, when you hand in an assignment on time, when you show up for dinner on time, when you return a favor or engage in a social exchange-- you do not have to tell a story about why you failed. It is only when you fail to show up, when you are late, when you do not do what you said you would do, that you need to offer up a narrative explaining why you failed.

As for Peterson’s personal failings, he has advertised them. I will make clear the fact that people in social groups do the right thing, not because they follow what Myers calls their inner toolkit-- that is, their instincts-- but because they follow rules. You can find such rules in the first books of the Bible. Evidently, the Peterson and Jung approaches prefer following instinct to following rules. Where did that lead central Europe in the last century?

As for how people learn to follow rules, they emulate people who are following them. You do not learn table manners because someone told you a story about table manners. You do not learn language because someone told you a story about learning language. You do not make your way through the woods because someone told you about the goddess of the underbrush. Obviously enough.

And yet, when Peterson holds up his own behavior as a moral exemplar, he is not showing himself to be responsible or heroic. His conduct during his wife’s illness, especially his addiction to prescription drugs, showed him to be weak and passive, seeking attention and even seeking pity. Obviously, his slack jawed followers were happy to afford lots of it, but still, when you are preaching the gospel of personal responsibility, why trot out a story that shows you to have failed on that score.

One emphasizes that the Peterson approach to therapy involves discovering why people fail to do the right thing.  It ignores the social cohesion produced, not by believing in stories, but by observing rituals and customs and norms. 

As for why human beings are afraid of tigers, the reason lies in human instinct, not in story telling. Even newly hatched chickens are instinctively afraid of forms that look like chicken hawks, and try to run away from them. They do not gain this fear because they concoct a hokey narrative. And they do not go on to form nations because of their instincts or archetypes. They simply avoid the danger.

Myers has followed Jung and Peterson in concocting a new narrative of how human beings behaved when they were living in the bush. As for the silliness about tigers, we recall that Peterson, at one point, was touting the virtue of the all-meat diet. We assume that he imagined that it would turn him into Tony the Tiger. In truth, it made him more like a frosted flake.

Anyway, Myers mistakes instincts for Jungian archetypes and then continues to trash rational analysis.

How could it be otherwise? We are the descendants of people who, when they saw something move in the bush ahead of them, ran away because they feared the possible tiger, not the people who paused to construct a rational analysis of the scene (and were sometimes mistaken). Speed and pre-judgments matter to us. Rational analysis is an afterthought for when we are safe, not when we are in danger.

In truth, we form social groups in order to ensure our survival as humans. Besides, when you are making your way through the bush or have gotten lost in the wilderness, you might be attuned to danger, which feels normal and instinctive, but you will also probably want a map or a compass to guide you. To imagine, as Peterson does, that stories are maps seems to be a basic and fundamental error. And of course, if rationality is of such little use how and why did people ever get the idea to create maps. Is it because they had lost touch with their primal instincts-- the ones that made them into genocidal maniacs.

The general contempt for rational thought also underpins certain fascist and Nazi philosophies. Didn’t their proponents propose that we all follow human instinct and liberate our aggressive impulses from our tendencies to behavior rationally and respectfully. And how did they decide that certain groups of people were as dangerous as tigers-- because they followed rules and laws-- and needed to be exterminated. 

Myers continues, leading us out of our lives and into our minds. She thereby represents the flawed Jungian and other psycho analytic treatments. It gets you out of your life and into your mind. It dispenses with rules of good behavior and even role models, in favor of storytelling. You might recall that I myself called Freudian treatment overpriced storytelling-- in my book, The Last Psychoanalyst.

When we arrive in a social scene we might at some level stereotype people, but we also want to know the nature of the game, the rules of the game, the players, their roles and their duties. Game, of course, are not narratives-- because we do not know the outcome in advance. All of which good Jungians ignore:

Our first reaction to any sort of social scene is to immediately assign acquaintances to internal representations of what we know about them, and strangers to various archetypes as placeholders. It is those stand-ins for real people that we are constantly manipulating in our heads as we navigate social situations.

Again, this is a narrative. It is not a very persuasive narrative, since no serious people today really believe it. And it fails, rather dramatically, in not seeing human beings as social beings, as members of groups. Fair enough, group membership is necessary for survival, but there is far more to human existence than mere survival.

And, more importantly, the rules that determine group membership were not concocted out of narratives. Some stories have been used by various religions to set up role models for good or bad conduct, but the rules themselves, the laws themselves, were not embedded in our toolsets-- whatever that means. Perhaps they are in some cases-- for people who are tools.

Again, Myers seems to have a problem with rationality, and also with free will. One recalls that free will has its origin in the book of Genesis and that it is one of the most important moral bases for Western civilization. Evidently, certain political movements abhorred the concept and wanted to eliminate it.

Unfortunately, Myers misunderstands it:

If you think humans can embrace rationality and ignore the older and more fundamental toolset, then you probably believe that humans can change their behavior at will. We can all be thin, and fit, and attentive, etc., just by knowing what the rational behaviors should be (for historically contingent values of "should"). Since that demonstrably doesn't work any better for adults than children, what makes you think this is how humans can actually function?

Actually, most people-- Jungians excepted-- have an inner moral sense that can guide their actions-- if they know the rules. There is no archetype that dictates good table manners and the proper dress code. Most people, upon learning the difference between right and wrong, tailor their behavior accordingly. Most people learn from the past and plan for the future. They do not allow themselves to be carried away by impulse and instinct, on the grounds that hostility and genocidal mania is the natural human condition.

As for free will, it does not mean and does not pretend that we can change behavior at will. Then again, if we cannot change behavior, whatever are therapists doing? Free will means that you are responsible for your behavior, no matter how much you were tempted by whatever serpent. In other words, it is about personal responsibility, not about blaming the archetypes or concocting a narrative that excuses and absolves you of all responsibility.