The Practicing Progressive

Good morning class! Welcome to Abnormal Psychology 301. This semester we will be studying that fascinating distortion of the human psyche known as Psychological Projection. Our textbook will be the daily paper or your favorite political blog. This course strives to achieve a balanced approach to this aberration but, truth to tell, recent events have made it particularly difficult to find better subjects than those offered by certain sanctimonious politicians.

To wit: Our first case study comes from South Carolina and the strange story of the two-faced Governor. Mark Sanford has been described as a fervent fiscal and social conservative who stands for strong family values except, it appears, in the case of his own family. Governor Mark, as most of you know, went missing last weekend and after a flurry of lies and distortions ended up confessing his affair with an Argentinean lass by the name of Maria. Please write an essay of 500 words on the cognitive dissonance between Mr. Sanford’s public abhorrence over President Clinton’s philandering and his own.

Case Study #2 may be found only a few newspaper issues previous to the Sanford affair. Another Republican presidential hopeful, Senator John Ensign of Nevada also admitted his inability to keep his pants zipped. Ensign did his fooling around with the wife of one of his own staffers which makes him not only an adulterer but a pretty lousy boss. Another 500 words on this classic case study, focusing on the senator’s foolish assumption that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

Hypocrisy comes in a myriad of ways, of course, and one of the more interesting was brought to us by the former Republican Senator Larry Craig of Idaho who got caught with his pants down in a well-known gay hangout at the Minneapolis Airport. Before this embarrassment, Mr. Craig was one of the senate’s most vocal critics of homosexual rights and, once again, a passionate advocate of traditional family values. Your essay on this case should center on the question of self-hatred as a catalyst to political advancement.

Our class will find that self-righteousness is not limited to Republican causes. A Google search away will have you reading of (former) New York Governor Elliot Spitzer’s campaign against prostitution that was brought to a screeching halt when the guv was found to be in bed with the enemy…frequently and with a few admittedly bizarre flourishes. Here your paper could investigate how psychological projection only seems to be a Republican personality trait.

Some of you may remember John Edwards. Too bad. That sanctimonious scoundrel cheated on his wife while she was undergoing chemotherapy. Your assignment will be to compare and contrast his immorality with that of Newt Gingrich who did much the same thing a few years back but hopes we’ve all forgotten it.

For extra credit, you may explore this same psychological dysfunction among the clergy, a profession that seems to attract similar personality types. Researching the strange case of Pastor Ted Haggard, for example, whose private dalliances with both drugs and boy-dates stood in sharp contrast to his pious public persona, is worth ten extra points. A field trip to Colorado Springs will bring another ten points, while to Rome or Dublin, five hundred.

Your final paper will be a careful examination of the enormously harmful effects foisted upon innocent people by these projecting perpetrators. Think especially of the millions of GLBT folk who have suffered at the hands of men who purport to be pillars of piety when they are anything but. You might wish to include reference to the irony inherent in defenders of traditional marriage denying that right to others while despoiling it amongst themselves. Your concluding paragraph should address the hypocrisy and futility of legislating morality…especially with hypocritical and immoral legislators.

Class dismissed.