DU psychologists or psychiatrists or people who know more than me, is there a name for this?

[EFerrari]

Solly Mack and I have noticed that, over and over and over, stories related to the torture program are reported, over and over and over, as if for the first time. And, bizarrely, the "collective memory" (if such a thing exists) takes them in as if for the first time, every time.

WTH is that? Is there a name for that?

Spinning off of Solly Mack's thread here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7723276

[leftstreet]

1. Are you telling me the US tortured? First I've heard of it

:hi:

I agree with you and Solly. It's a strange phenomenon!

[EFerrari]

3. It's so weird.

There has to be a name for this. :hi:

[leftstreet]

20. I'm reminded of the way the new$ created the Waterboarding controversy

It was all over the M$M, in fact I believe there were news personalities submitting themselves to faux waterboarding 'tests.'

It was an obvious effort to shift collective reaction to US torture to 'well, it was just this waterboarding stuff, and is it really that bad?'

I remember thinking that was very strange.

[Solly Mack]

2. K&R

There has to be a name for it.

[bettyellen]

4. isn't;t it denial? or when you "block:" something-it's pretty common, i think all of us block things

we don't want to see it, so we do not.

[Solly Mack]

6. That could be part of it.

You hear it. You get outraged but it's still so unthinkable you suppress it?

I sometimes think it's short memories but I'm not sure that really explains it either.

The media also treats it like it's something new, so manipulation is also at work.

[EFerrari]

11. It seems to be a type of denial. But what is remarkable

is that it plays at the level of society, not only individuals. I don't know how many times Solly Mack and I have asked each other, wasn't this already reported? And sure enough, it had been.

The CIA tape destruction, the fake numbers put out over and over again about recidivism of freed detainees, Cheney's "confesion", just the fact that we know to a certainty that our government is OBLIGATED to investigate under the Geneva torture conventions -- even THAT has been reported multiple times as if it's brand new.

[Jamastiene]

24. It is a PsyOps technique.

It's like a shit sandwich. They'll sandwich stories of torture between heartwarming news stories. The reason they do it like that is to slip the idea of "our country tortures people, but they attacked us on 9/11, so it's ok" slowly into the collective psyche.

As people become more and more accustomed to the reality that our country tortures people, they'll start to talk about it more and more openly in the news and in our government. By then, everyone will be conditioned to accept it as fact and go on with life as usual.

It's classic PsyOps.

[zeemike]

27. I think it is PsyOps and very subtle.

They are conditioning us to accept things that are clearly immoral and formerly illegal.
That was the whole purpose of TV programs like "24"...to provide justifications for it....and with fear nothing that is done in the name of protecting us from that fear cannot be justified in our media.
We are being conditioned to accept a police state.

[stevedeshazer]

5. Stockholm Syndrome, some kind of weird state of denial. It's disturbing.

My opinion is that people can't accept that our country tortures people.

Rather than become outraged by it like rational people who can accept the fact that we really, really tortured people, and the fact that there is indisputable evidence of it, it is much easier to pretend that it never happened.

I think a lot of Americans are walking around like zombies in a state of self-denial over what we have become and simply choose to ignore it.

This scares be to my very core. We've been here before.

on edit: my wife has been a social worker for 30 years, I'm just some guy who tries to learn.

[Ozymanithrax]

7. It is called HUOA Syndrome...

Short for Heads up our ass syndrome.

It is a mass media related amnesia, most often seen in countries where the majority simply don't give a shit but don't want the rest of the world to know.

[sandnsea]

8. Denial, a type of co-dependency

Probably some other diagnosis would fit better, but it does seem like a collective co-dependency. People categorize each instance in order to cope with it. Tell themselves, ok, that's behind us. Move on. It comes up again, they tell themselves whatever else to cope. Move on. You know the drill as well as anybody. And really, we the people have to conduct ourselves as if everybody believes what we believe - and in a mature, logical, confident manner. Somebody needs to be systematically preparing the case, etc etc etc, as if we were going to prosecute and imprison. I don't know any other way to break through denial.

[bridgit]

9. Hm, dunno, I do know its more than mere apathy - and it does seem there would be lower...

entry levels to altered, catatonic states cause when you look across the landscape there are 10's of millions upon millions of people who just don't care to remember cause it isn't worth their time, it runs counter to their creature comforts by questioning them with sticky images of torture so off we go to a tailgate party with beer, burgers, chips, girls-gone-wild and a corporate sports logo

[Morning Dew]

10. Deja Huh?

the feeling that you've maybe heard something before but you're not sure what it was.



Anyway, it's not deja poo - the feeling that you've seen all this shit before.

[provis99]

12. Repressed memories?

trying to forget bad things that happened in the past. A method of protected rationalization.

[EFerrari]

13. There stories never seem to make it into long term memory.

[dmr]

23. A lie by omission. If you pretend it doesn't exist, then there's no accountability

If you let on that you know and do nothing about it, then are you not a part of the problem?

The media could go nuts and put fire to the feet of the guilty; and light a fire under the current administration to investigate and prosecute.

Instead they pretend it doesn't exist, or isn't as bad as some claim.

Cheney has learned through the past year that he's safe, and can now rub it into all our faces. The bastard.

But as I learned in Catechism, omission is a lie.

Also a lie by omission is propaganda.

[EFerrari]

35. On the media's side and even among some politicians, sure, that is true. n/t

[Hannah Bell]

52. It's like those guys who have brain damage that prevents long term memory storage -

so every time they meet you, it's the first time.

There's probably a special name, but i can't recall it.

[PDJane]

14. don't know what you call it.........

but it reminds me of the sheep in Hitchiker's guide......the ones continually being surprised by the same thing they were surprised by yesterday.

[EFerrari]

15. It's exactly like that. Ouch.

[juno jones]

16. Have no idea

But maybe it'll make the new DSM-5.

Everything else is from what I've been hearing. :D

[ddeclue]

17. Living in Denial..

[Maraya1969]

18. Because we are bored. Early man got his excitement from fighting

off bears and hunting for food. The women had to gather food so they could survive. Now all that is done for us so our excitement comes from violent movies and reading or seeing violence and tragedy. I think it is built in and caused because everything is done for us now.

"endogenous fantasy survival" (?)

[Webster Green]

19. There seems to be some kind of mass psychosis occuring..

Ergot in the rye? :wtf:

[EFerrari]

21. Maybe a shame system activated that is dealt with by denial?

Shame is toxic and contagious. It would account, perhaps, by how persistent the response is?

That's why I wish someone who knows more about group psych would check in.

[Jamastiene]

22. I am not a psychologist or a psychiatrist, but I can give you a simple answer.

It is the simple fact that the news never quits being outrageous, no matter how many times we hear it.

Every time we hear it is like the first time, because we are supposed to be the good guys and not do stuff like that. We lived, ate, drank, and slept the ideal that we, America, were the good guys, for ages.

We had it drilled into our heads that we were the good guys and didn't do stuff like that forever and a day. Then on forever and a day and a half, BOOM! We torture people now.

One version of nationalism is conflicting with another version of nationalism. It was a sudden switch from "we don't torture" to "we do torture."

To hear we not only did torture (and probably still do, covertly, in reality), and that we are supposed to be "ok" with the fact that we did it, just fucks our minds all up.

The outrage just comes back to the surface every time we hear it. Fuck that. It's NOT ok. I don't care how many times I hear it, it still fucks me all kinds of up and pisses me off.

[EFerrari]

32. Yeah, I agree with that. So, these stories are in themselves traumatic?

Is that why we don't retain them?

[Jamastiene]

56. They are to me. I know that much.

Every time I hear them, my reaction is like the first time, because I feel powerless to do anything about it each and every time. I keep hoping we won't do it any more, but I'm not so sure. We are supposed to be the good guys. That's what they taught us. That is what we were taught to believe.

I guess some of us still hope we can become the good guys again, but without prosecutions for war crimes for the torture, there will always be that doubt. So, we block it out, while hoping for the best. That powerless feeling is horrible. The traumatic feelings are too much to take in and retain. So, we block them. I know I have done it at times. I want to still believe we are the good guys or, more realistically, that can return to being the good guys.

[libodem]

25. Might be

that cognitive dissonance thingie? Look it up.

[Rhiannon12866]

26. Repression?

Something that terrible and frightening is hard to imagine, let alone to accept and take in. ;(

[Name removed]

28. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[EFerrari]

34. There is some of that. But does it explain threads of 30-40 responses --

expressing dismay and anger or bitterness or outrage when Story A is reported, only to have Story A reported again three months later as "news", eliciting 30-40 similar responses, many by the same people who responded the first time? There is no rationalization; there's just no retention of the information.

[Name removed]

55. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[DailyGrind51]

29. We DON'T torture! We pursuade with extreme prejudice!

[nashville_brook]

30. language of addiction/dysfunction is most helpful -- it's denial-enabling behavior

participating in a group lie/myth is a classic addictive/dysfunction behavior.

[conscious evolution]

31. This makes sense.

The mind fuckers know this and are making use of it as a manipulation tool.

I also think it is being used as a fear monger tactic.Letting the population know that the goverment tortures and murders dissedents also has a chilling effect on those who are considering standing up to them.

[EFerrari]

33. Except it isn't really that because readers of the story really do respond to them.

They don't deny them and if asked, they remember that Bush tortured. But they forget the specific stories, i.e., how they know he did, etc. And when the story is recycled as "news" by the media, they do that all over again -- having forgotten the first time, sometimes the second and third time.

[lunatica]

36. Disassociation

When reality is blocked out. There's also compartmentalization where what goes in one mental compartment is not related to what goes into another mental compartment. Classing ideas can co-exist without question.

God is an example. No proof needed of his/her existence on an empirical level, yet the same people who believe in heaven will fear death beyond reason. The ability to believe that god loves all creation and at the same time believe god hates gays and everyone who isn't a Christian, or a pure Muslim or whatever god they hold as omnipotent.

[EFerrari]

39. Dissociation would go with the idea that these stories are traumatic

at some level -- doesn't dissociation mess up what gets into long term memory?

[slackmaster]

37. I call it "Deja-Huh?"

A disconnected feeling that something you have in fact experienced before is novel.

I have a degree in Psychology, but I couldn't stand working with people and their stupid personal issues so I evolved into a techie.

[izzybeans]

38. I think the language of social science is more appropriate.

Two terms "alienation" and "illusio" come to mind. Alienation, if applied more broadly than Marx used the term, can refer to a distinct mental separation from the material flow of history. The "self" is alienated from objective events, in this case torture, which in turn, is treated with disbelief and rationalized away through the use of illusio. This separation is made more simple when there are actors explicitly constructing "illusio" through propaganda. The people that trust these propagandizing actors will take the illusio as gospel no matter how contradictory it is when examined critically. Illusio is a term used by Pierre Bourdieu to describe the myths we tell ourselves about our own motives, the motives of others, and how the "world" works. They work like shadows on the cave wall keeping us distracted from the light that could lead us towards our exit back into the world of things, should we choose to stop being distracted by shadows.

The Illusio create blind-spots in the collective memory of the people whose capacity for reason has been coopted by propagandists. "Enhanced interrogation" is an example. I would view Psychiatric explanations as another form of illusio in this instance. These people are not ill, they are being lied to and in turn are lying to themselves.

Orwell describes a similar process when he outlines how members of the Party can so easily mentally switch just who they've been at war with this whole time, which is exactly what happened with the same people who can't seem to remember we have tortured and probably still are. "We are at war with Saddam Hussein. We have always been at war with Saddam Hussein. He's the one who sent the rocket-bombs into our buildings."

[EFerrari]

41. That model works well. The quibble I'd have is that while we are being lied to,

it's debatable whether not recognizing a story you've already read is lying to yourself -- which is where a psychiatric explanation might be useful because this kind of very specific "forgetting" or whatever it is looks like some kind of mass pathology.

Maybe there is a continuum here, ranging from people who simply don't attend much all the way to entire communities that actively deny events like the Holocaust or global climate change. Somewhere along that continuum, there are people who are very upset by these torture stories and then very upset again when they are re-reported as new.

It may be that the way we buy into our corrupt media's framing accounts for a good deal of it. I don't know if you saw the story in LBN the other day, roughly "Obama to Use Executive Power". And the thread was full of "it's about time!" -- which is precisely the response that headline pulled for, right? So, if a recycled story is framed as "new" or a "startling discovery", most readers will not do a mental inventory to see if they already have that information?

[Uncle Joe]

47. I believe Cheney and his corporate media propaganda machine are conditioning the

American People with a psychological ploy based on a reversed form of The Law of Diminishing Returns; it goes something like this, shock - disdain - repugnance - grudging acceptance - acceptance.

People that live in a stinking house become subconsciously adapted to the smell, Cheney & Co. must periodically bring more trash in to the American People's home to prevent any possibility of the nation thinking better of it self and cleaning house.

I can't remember which Republican or Neo con said "We create our own reality," I believe Cheney and his corporate media allies; whether by news or programming are trying to create the new normal.

Cheney will probably win and the United States will eventually embrace torture, as the corporate media, nor the corporate controlled "We the People's" government have much stomach for representing the highest ideals of the people and cleaning house.

[EFerrari]

48. Iirc, Rove said that and yeah, we're being de-sensitized big time.n/t

[izzybeans]

49. I'm not sure how many people actually forget altogether though.

Some people may feign surprise on cable shows, but most people I've seen discuss it either are morally opposed, tacitly support it by not accepting the fact that something illegal has occurred (about 95% of the Bush Admin and their apologists, some Democrats included), or are explicitly out for blood and suggest that this is what we should be doing (The Dick Cheney/Rush Limbaugh wing of the wingnut brigade). That last category of people may be good candidates for psychiatric intervention, but getting them to admit such a problem....

On the problem you posed though, Maurice Halbwachs book "On Collective Memory" has a short discussion of forgetting. If I remember it correctly he says something like forgetting happens because social frameworks for memory are not available in the present. We only remember things that we are reminded of presently (in other words).

There is this book on collective memory and popular culture that suggests that mass media creates a crisis in collective memory. I haven't read it but this thread sparked my interest and it came up in a search. I think perhaps some people don't remember because collective attention can be moved very easily with new media. http://books.google.com/books?id=dAIDvUmJ5X4C&dq=mass+media+and+collective+memory&printsec=frontcover&source=in&hl=en&ei=1_96S7P5IcuUtgfe87XOCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=12&ved=0CE4Q6AEwCw#v=onepage&q=mass%20media%20and%20collective%20memory&f=false

My favorite phenomenon these days are the flocks of foodies that show up at restaurants visited by their favorite Travel Channel or Food Network host. I suspect that some of these folks are the people you speak of. "Huh, what? I'm here for the Pork Belly. Waterboarding? Is that the method you use to brine your meats?" I've been one of those people. "Hey wasn't that the place Anthony Bourdain went to? Let's try it."

[Solly Mack]

51. Thank you for the info!

[EFerrari]

53. izzybeans, this is very interesting:

"Maurice Halbwachs book "On Collective Memory" has a short discussion of forgetting. If I remember it correctly he says something like forgetting happens because social frameworks for memory are not available in the present. We only remember things that we are reminded of presently (in other words)."

Because my op was sparked by, I think, years now of me and Solly Mack trying to keep track of stories related to the Bush torture program and noticing, over and over, how they are re-reported anew AND how people seem to forget that they're reading reruns.

And it may or may not be significant that even people like us who are trying to keep track are having a hard time doing that.

[izzybeans]

54. That's why I don't wish being a historian on anyone, but I'm glad

they exist.

I think reporters are susceptible to collective memory problems, maybe more so than most because of deadlines and and the rush to publish. Fact-checking becomes less about putting the puzzle together than just merely finding pieces, making sure the sources exist, and that they are visible.

Even if they understand and know about various events we consistently get a linear listing of disconnected events from them. Only on big events do they say, well maybe this happened because of X, Y, Z which we reported on last week/year, etc. Instead they just list out X, Y, and Z give us a handful of verifiable details and move on to the next one.

After 9/11 very little discussion was had about why the attack happened, what events led up to it, etc. Without an open consideration of what exactly leads up to these things, there is no serious way to move forward without making the same mistakes. The same thing happened with how we wound up in Iraq. No attempt to connect events outside of activists circles.

Only us leftist radicals attempt to do such horrific things anyway. Why ask questions and piece together answers when we can just take our soma and be happy? :)

[JBoy]

40. Groundhog Day Disorder

[rudy23]

42. I say it's cognitive dissonance.

That "feels like the first time" feeling is because all previous times, cognitive dissonance keeps certain facts from sinking in. Facts that contradict the person's previous beliefs so harshly, they are never assimilated.

[EFerrari]

45. But you'd think, as in the case where we knew Cheney was involved with torture,

the stories would tend to confirm DU's opinion of Cheney or the Bush government.

[Bobbie Jo]

43. I'm thinking "learned helplessness"

You know, when there really isn't anything you can "do" about it. :shrug: Combined with many of the explanations offered thus far.

Beats me...interesting observation, though.

[ecstatic]

44. yes: trolls nt

[EFerrari]

46. Not trolls this time.

:)

[Soylent Brice]

50. K&R

[Solly Mack]

57. Just wanted to say 'Thank you' to everyone. The replies have been much appreciated

and have given me a great deal to think about. (and research)

I think maybe it's a combination of things. (but I don't know for sure)