XDA

I never paid much attention to the psychological motivation of characters in books and in the movies. Books and movies showed us both the world outside and the inner world of the characters, but since I never studied psychology, the idea that people would do or say things for reasons they did not know or understand was foreign to my worldview.

I still haven't studied psychology, beyond reading some things in the DSM IV-R, but I began to understand the term and see unknown motivation at least in some movies. The first time I thought that I understood every human move for psychological reasons in a movie was in The Remains of the Day. Since then it has been hit or miss, but I do get the concept at last.

Just so, I think it is very possible to see that sort of motivation in some of our politicians, and as an example, I present the following bloody obvious things about Senator John McCain (R-AZ).
Let's skip the influence of his father the admiral, and go directly to his mistreatment, indeed, torture by his North Vietnamese captors. The long term resonance of that is plain to see every time he speaks on the subject of torture or even 'harsh' interrogation treatments well short of torture. Also very clear is his reaction to being one of the Keating 5. That bad experience has apparently blinded him to the damage he has done to our First Amendment speech rights with his absolutely useless campaign reform. There's more, but let's leave it at that.

I believe, however, that anyone can do the same to any other politician or any celebrity for that matter. The question is will we be drawing the right conclusions.

Labels: John McCain, Psychological Motivation