Attention Denial Disorder & The Royal Nonesuch

Problems with attention are not exclusive to ADHD. They occur in various other psychiatric illnesses: depression, anxiety, dementia, TBI to name a few. All of these have an organic, neurophysiological basis. There are non-biological attentional problems. We see a monumental demonstration of it in the news, politics and pundits of the past weeks.

Denial, and projection are the most primitive ego defenses. They are polar opposites to the elegant defenses of altruism and sublimation. And they are seriously problematic.

Mark Twain, the famous writer and nasty anti-semite gave us two useful models to illustrate the carny side show of the past weeks. One is the Royal Nonesuch. In Huck Finn a couple of flim-flam cons come to town and perform the aforementioned "show". It is of course mocking, condescending and derisive or the audience. Having miscalculated the town's population, half of them got took the first night. Too embarrassed to admit this they praised the performance to the other citizens. They got took the second night. Well, as luck would have it, the flim-flammers dauntlessly put on a third performance. Most of the tooked townspeople turned out and pelted the cons with rotten eggs, tomatoes and assorted flora. Then, they relieved them of their purses, tarred & feathered 'em, and ran 'em out of town on a rail.

Twain also made the observation that "when they're running you out of town grab a stick and make it look like you're leading a parade!"

Your personal politics notwithstanding this all came to mind as I watched the election returns; the bizarre statements and behavior of Matthews, Pelosi, Frank and others. And the Royal entourage of Obamanics parading to India and Indonesia in this, the second year of his reign. Brings to mind the remark of one Phineas T. Barnum: "You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time but you can't fool all of the people all of the time."

Denial and projection are very primitive defense mechanisms. That contrail popping out of the Pacific yesterday was curious. Hmm...And I saw and heard the two F-15s that scrambled over my office in Beverly Hills today. Hmm...