Can Hillary Clinton Get in Touch with Her Donald Trump? And can we with ours?
By Carol Smaldino
I am not alone in suggesting that Donald Trump represents our shadow sides. By this I mean that the darkest things about him on social and emotional levels can be a mirror image of our own hatreds, even if we reckon that we are better since we only hate bad people, as one example.
When I head Hillary Clinton the other day call the supporters of Donald Trump xenophobes, homophobic, racists, haters of all types, I thought: this lady needs some work. And by work I mean therapy.
Firstly supporters of Donald Trump are multiple in type and description. Some are rabidly hating; some of scared of their rights taken away; some want real change; some cannot stand Hillary Clinton. But Clinton's references to these people reflects a lack of humility about citizens who might be ambivalent, and a lack of awareness that we are all racists, at least I'm speaking of white people.
As long as we don't face the shadows in ourselves, we seek the person, the energy--the phenomenon that will evoke our own hatreds and major complaints--the parts of ourselves left denied and un-integrated-- in the outside. You know, the depressed man marries the hysterical wife; often in therapy we find that the man in this case has unexpressed and hidden passion and the woman may well be hiding a depression.
As it turns out there is the shadow phenomenon lurking in many of our choices, and any of our emotional responses that include moral superiority and self-righteousness. I would suggest here that Hillary Clinton has her own demons, and here I refer only to the realm of her emotions.
How can she lead if she labels her opponents or her doubters, as ugly? And meanwhile, what would she think of some therapy to get more in touch with her darkness, let's say her "Donald" so she can be more real, less prissy and out of touch? Let's face it; in the social political climate of our time, this idea would probably be frowned on. Trump would be the first to say she is mentally unstable (speaking of projecting his own shadows!) and should be deported. No wait, I think he already said those things.
Don't get me wrong. He scares me more than a bit. He finds the notion of climate change, ridiculous, he is very grandiose and wants to keep a nuclear first strike an open possibility. However, I'd like to suggest that it would be very interesting and probably enlightening, if he were to pursue psychotherapy as well, also with a Jungian who knows the shadow quite well. There would be his on darker sides that might well involve the more tender and frightened and sensitive sides, the hurt Donald underneath all that bravado.
We don't yet advocate psychotherapy as a preventive strategy for leaders, so that they might better know their own Achilles heels on emotional levels and not act them out at our expense. Unfortunately we are still biased in favor of political leaders having an easy charisma, being smooth, and seeming honest even while pretty much we know they're not.
However I do have one suggestion. What would happen if while we are waiting for our leaders to get smarter about psychology, we started to schedule some town meetings where we try to process our own emotional responses to this Election, as one example?
When people trample on each other's last nerve and accomplish no consensus, there must be something terribly wrong. When our politics becomes an extreme sport (and not even only in Colorado) with degrading the opponent the apparent goal, there is something wrong. And if we do nothing to interrupt this phenomenon, we are part of it. I know this intellectually at least.
Interestingly I see a really big problem with liberals here. How would it really feel to acknowledge our own inner Donald Trump, the parts of us that want to be brash and oppositional and carry a big stick? That we can be mean and intolerant and scared of foreigners, and selfish and comfy in our own segregated neighborhoods? I hear the objections already; I know some people are nobler than others, although nobility here requires humility as well; to walk in the shoes of one another and understand some of the deeper parts of human experience.
I know the Election is coming up very soon, so these ideas may not be realizable in time. But meanwhile, how does this sound? Having therapy sessions, big and small, with a leader and leaderless to try to penetrate our shadows in the context of this Election as a start?
I often begin to know something can work when it starts to work for me. I have been a hater of Donald Trump even though I've tried to stop. However, the hatred seems to be dissipating as I acknowledge my own wish to be a cowboy, a New York cowboy with a Bronx accent who has a touch of Mafia and a touch of Broadway. Seeing just a shot of his smile (pretty shocking to see the guy smiling, no?) on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, who was actually laughing, made him look like a real entertainer. Also I'd love to feel as secure as he acts like he is. I'd like to have no guilt about being such a badass. I can own this inside of me, so maybe I don't need to vote for him or to insist on hating him so much either.
I'm sorry Bernie Sanders is not in the race and that our choices seem so narrow. Perhaps it's important to remember there will be life and opportunities afterwards.
It's just that our prognosis as people and as a nation would be so much better if we could work on our need to demonize, and to insist we have the right to do so.