Don’t ask yourself where God was at Auschwitz, ask yourself where the man was! To forget, to be silent, to be indifferent to those around you, these are some of the biggest sins. (Elie Wiesel)
Today, the Federal Court of Australia has finally decided that sex is “changeable and not necessarily binary”, according to the BBC. The judgement involves a man who identified as a woman and wanted to use an app that was designed for women only; when he uploaded his photo, the face recognition software has correctly identified him as being a man and denied his access, a story that ended in tribunal and well… here we have it!… the court has decided that biological sex matters less than what a given person identifies with. In other words, the biological given (not chosen at birth, clearly written in our genetics) no longer matters when it comes to law. Rather, what we choose to identify with… matters more. Given that Australia belongs to the civilized world and to the Western cultural space, it is likely that other countries will cite this judgement and tend to copy its result, as a precedent has now been created. And if I remember the recent Olympic Games in France, where two genetic men boxed in the final competition destined for women, the verdict of today is not a surprise.
Starting today, I can freely say that the locked psychiatric unit has moved on the Western streets.
Why? Well, even if I’m aware that the subject is controversial and the Western world is completely parasitized by an insane ideology, the redefinition of sex as being felt or stated rather that biologically certified, does involve a fundamental redefinition of reality that involves, unfortunately, not psychology, but straightforwardly psychiatry, namely the realm of mental disorders…
It’s time to write about one of the most basic things in psychiatry, something that governs my judgement and is well-known in my field. We will talk about the reality principle (Realitätsprinzip, in German) and the pleasure principle (Lustprinzip, again in German). They are used extensively in psychoanalysis and come mainly from Sigmund Freud, although the Greeks in antiquity mentioned them in a slightly different form. Some definitions first.
The reality principle is the ability of our mind to assess the reality of the external world and act upon it accordingly. This principle is the governing principle of the actions taken by our conscious mind (Freud names this the Ego) and is developed later in life, when the human being leaves the territory of childhood and begins the adult life. The pleasure principle, by contrast, is the instinctive seeking of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, aimed at satisfying one’s biological and psychological needs. Since the pleasure principle is instinctive, it originates in our subconscious mind and it is the animating force behind our decisions during our childhood, and throughout our later life, this time working in balance with the reality principle (Freud names the origin of this principle the Id).
Now, it is very obvious when a person uses only the pleasure principle: the children use it all the time, the psychopaths use it most of the time (they disregard society and its rules, they do what they desire and not what is reasonable, they act on their impulses, etc.), and pretty much the entire “club” of schizophrenics and psychotics do use it abundantly (when their illness is active and we say that “they lose the contact with reality”). On the other hand, when the reality principle is used, the persons are generally capable of deferring gratification (postpone the immediate satisfaction of their desires) and live a balanced way of life, accepting the limitations of reality and negotiating the satisfaction of their desires. There are more explanations available online and I only touch the aspects that are absolutely necessary for the understanding of the discussed issue.
Now, I understand that some people feel uncomfortable about their body or having a fixed (sexual) identity. And I have no problem with this minority that needs recognition and visibility. However, I am not okay with redefining the biology of the human body, which is clear, obvious and impossible to debate (until today).
The fact that you feel that you are something else does not change the reality of you being who you are.
You are NOT a character in a virtual computer game, you cannot trade or replace skills, you cannot change “skins” and “bodies”.
You are REAL. This means that you are limited by reality.
So the wisest thing you can do is to… suck it up! You are who you are and deal with it! Like an adult!
If you start to define yourself by what you wish to be, you are using the pleasure principle (because you desire something) and you are returning to the childhood stage of development. And this goes against each and every book of both psychology and psychiatry, which underlines the necessity of strengthening the reality principle and working towards achieving a balanced adult state.
Using exclusively the pleasure principle is wrong and destroys the foundation of everything that has been achieved in my professional field, while opening the door to the manifestation of the unconscious forces lying in our inner mind… and I am thinking here about the archetypal forces that are repressed so that a civilized society can properly function.
Hitler, Stalin and Mao happened because their respective populations were “bewitched”, were “under the spell” of some religion-like ideologies that have caused the death of millions of people and ample mass psychoses. The Germans still ask themselves today what happened to their rational mind and how it was hijacked by the Nazi ideology. Well, they allowed to be lived by unconscious archetypal forces seducing them with the phantasm of superiority and of racial purity. It happened and it will happen again, in a different form, since the judgement of today in Australia is historically significant. The West has slipped blindly in some sort of neo-communism, well-known for an East-European like me who lived it when I was a child and I had to watch carefully my speech, but completely unknown to the West, a West that lacks the “antibodies” I have against more or less concealed authoritarian tendencies.
The moment when I can choose, right now, that I am a woman, against my biology – hence exhibiting a denial of reality – is the moment when I allow to be lived by my phantasies. There is no difference between me and a child, an impulsive psychopath or a weird schizophrenic. I have lost the contact with reality and the gate of my subconscious mind is wide open. History tells that through that gate only bad things may come out…
I lived in a community that told me that I am a Dragon Spirit and I am currently living through my 57th reincarnation. I know more parapsychology than you can imagine. I have seen fortunetellers and clairvoyants and I encountered many weird things and many more unexplainable things. I lived my entire life on this edge, between what is real and what is superstition or crazy belief. I come from Romania, that country of vampires. Wraiths and other ghosts are relatively ordinary and dreams have great significance. I am used to all this. Yet, I maintain a clear separation between my reality and my desires. I am no longer a child. I am also an adult.
The way I see it, this world is plunging head-on into chaos. Of course I will respect the wishes of someone who suddenly desires to be called the opposite sex or any of the additional sexes. Of course I will respect the self-induced psychosis or the ideologically-induced psychoses of anyone; I always respected a real psychotic, a real schizophrenic, and his or her or their opinion about reality, including the opinions of all the voices in his or her or their head.
But I wonder: What are You going to do?! How are You going to live in such a dystopian and confusing world?!
