Read Online Secret and Suppressed: Banned Ideas and Hidden History by Jim Keith - Free Book Online
Authors: Jim Keith
Tags: Retail, Non-Fiction, Alternative History, Gnostic Dementia, Amazon.com, 21st Century, Conspiracy Theories, v.5
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the world in a state of fear. Total paranoia and awareness…” Once again I was grappling with the riddle of a man who appeared to act on the basis of a supreme confidence in the validity of his own delusions.
Escalation of the Vietnam war had radicalized me, once again, politically. So Charlie Manson’s affinity for right-wing organizations was something else that alarmed me. Most particularly I was spooked by allegations about links between Manson’s people and the Process Church. For when I had returned to New Orleans in order to clear myself, unsuccessfully, of Jim Garrison’s suspicions, I encountered the Process Church there — in circumstances giving me ample reason to suspect it was at least partially involved in framing me.
So as to avoid the mistakes of people like Garrison and Manson, it seemed essential to study psychology. That was another subject I found more fascinating than conspiracy theories about the John Kennedy assassination. Already acquainted with Freud and other pioneers of psychoanalysis, I began devoting my attention to more recent trends. That the older theories were unconsciously tainted with reactionary ideology was frequently mentioned in my political readings.
In 1972 I discovered a psychology book that dovetailed beautifully with my political opinions, by then both anarchist and left of center. A collection of readings compiled by Jerome Agel and The Radical Therapist newspaper staff,
The Radical Therapist
anthology found the roots of nearly all neurosis and psychosis outside the individual, lodged firmly and visibly in the authoritarian class structure of society. As a sociology major at Georgia State University I had already begun to suspect as much.
There was only one hitch, best summed up in “The Radical Psychiatry Manifesto” by Claude Steiner: “Paranoia is a state of heightened awareness. Most people are persecuted beyond their wildest delusions.”
I wondered if that could be true. Certainly it was not without personal relevance, in terms of my own very unsatisfactory adjustment to the John F. Kennedy murder mystery. Perpetually fearing that my radical friends would think I was a CIA agent, because of what Garrison had said, and yet afraid that I would become paranoid if I delved into the unanswered questions about Oswald too deeply, I walked an uncomfortably narrow line.
In
The Farther Reaches of Human Nature
by Abraham Maslow (Penguin Books, 1971) there appears the following: “There is still another psychological process that I have run across in my explorations of failure to actualize the self. This evasion of growth can also be set in motion by a fear of paranoia.” Although I was not to read those particular words until many years later, I was versed enough in modern literature of psychology to realize that traditional Freudian notions of paranoid schizophrenia and classical paranoia were under attack by more than just wild-eyed radicals. One of my textbooks in school contained a sociological study of a man who was committed for symptoms of paranoia; it demonstrated that, due to his rather unpleasant personality, he was actually being secretly harassed by his co-workers who, upon being interviewed, admitted as much.
At that point I took a long second look at the origins of my own fears of paranoia.
What popularized that brand of psychosis for my generation was the film,
The Caine Mutiny,
with Humphrey Bogart clicking his steel marbles compulsively, saying, “I kid you not,” and making a fool of himself over a few stolen scoops of ice cream.
Another French Quarter writer who worked in a record store next to the Bourbon House, where I ate and drank and socialized when I lived in New Orleans, possessed a book about color psychology that said brown was the favorite color of most paranoids. He added to my information that most novelists tended toward paranoia, something about which we had both laughed a little
Escalation of the Vietnam war had radicalized me, once again, politically. So Charlie Manson’s affinity for right-wing organizations was something else that alarmed me. Most particularly I was spooked by allegations about links between Manson’s people and the Process Church. For when I had returned to New Orleans in order to clear myself, unsuccessfully, of Jim Garrison’s suspicions, I encountered the Process Church there — in circumstances giving me ample reason to suspect it was at least partially involved in framing me.
So as to avoid the mistakes of people like Garrison and Manson, it seemed essential to study psychology. That was another subject I found more fascinating than conspiracy theories about the John Kennedy assassination. Already acquainted with Freud and other pioneers of psychoanalysis, I began devoting my attention to more recent trends. That the older theories were unconsciously tainted with reactionary ideology was frequently mentioned in my political readings.
In 1972 I discovered a psychology book that dovetailed beautifully with my political opinions, by then both anarchist and left of center. A collection of readings compiled by Jerome Agel and The Radical Therapist newspaper staff,
The Radical Therapist
anthology found the roots of nearly all neurosis and psychosis outside the individual, lodged firmly and visibly in the authoritarian class structure of society. As a sociology major at Georgia State University I had already begun to suspect as much.
There was only one hitch, best summed up in “The Radical Psychiatry Manifesto” by Claude Steiner: “Paranoia is a state of heightened awareness. Most people are persecuted beyond their wildest delusions.”
I wondered if that could be true. Certainly it was not without personal relevance, in terms of my own very unsatisfactory adjustment to the John F. Kennedy murder mystery. Perpetually fearing that my radical friends would think I was a CIA agent, because of what Garrison had said, and yet afraid that I would become paranoid if I delved into the unanswered questions about Oswald too deeply, I walked an uncomfortably narrow line.
In
The Farther Reaches of Human Nature
by Abraham Maslow (Penguin Books, 1971) there appears the following: “There is still another psychological process that I have run across in my explorations of failure to actualize the self. This evasion of growth can also be set in motion by a fear of paranoia.” Although I was not to read those particular words until many years later, I was versed enough in modern literature of psychology to realize that traditional Freudian notions of paranoid schizophrenia and classical paranoia were under attack by more than just wild-eyed radicals. One of my textbooks in school contained a sociological study of a man who was committed for symptoms of paranoia; it demonstrated that, due to his rather unpleasant personality, he was actually being secretly harassed by his co-workers who, upon being interviewed, admitted as much.
At that point I took a long second look at the origins of my own fears of paranoia.
What popularized that brand of psychosis for my generation was the film,
The Caine Mutiny,
with Humphrey Bogart clicking his steel marbles compulsively, saying, “I kid you not,” and making a fool of himself over a few stolen scoops of ice cream.
Another French Quarter writer who worked in a record store next to the Bourbon House, where I ate and drank and socialized when I lived in New Orleans, possessed a book about color psychology that said brown was the favorite color of most paranoids. He added to my information that most novelists tended toward paranoia, something about which we had both laughed a little
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