Psychopathology in the 2016 Election

In present-day America we are witnessing the way the ethos of global capitalism and its impact on daily life shapes and nurtures a growing societal-based psychopathology. No matter who wins in November 2016, anger and hate-oriented political movements will be with us until the economic system and its core assumptions fundamentally change. Understanding how this happens is a first step toward healing.

It’s no secret that the past several decades have witnessed growing economic inequality and deepening economic insecurity for a very large section of working people both in the U.S. and other capitalist countries around the world. Yet what most analysts miss are the hidden injuries of class that become dramatically intensified when the underlying psychological and spiritual dysfunction of global capitalism interacts with economic insecurity. Right-wing, ultra-nationalist, fundamentalist, and/or racist movements gain support as more people begin to lose faith in the efficacy of democratic governments and turn to authoritarian leaders in the hope that their own fears and pain can be alleviated. This has been happening around the world, not just in the U.S. As a nonprofit we are prohibited from endorsing any political candidate or party, so the reflections here are not meant to influence your voting in 2016, but to shape an agenda for how to build a healthier and more just society in the coming decades.

In his presidential campaign, Senator Bernie Sanders addressed some of these economic inequalities by advocating for New Deal-type reforms, but he shied away from any systematic critique of the capitalist order itself. Unfortunately for his supporters, in his televised debates at least, Sanders failed to address the psycho-spiritual pain in people’s lives caused by the hidden psychic injuries of class and globalized capitalist ideologies.

This pain operates on two levels. On a psychological level people are suffering because they have absorbed the capitalist message: “You live in a meritocracy, so you get what you deserve, and if you haven’t achieved the level of success you want, it’s your fault. Moreover, everyone is out for him or herself so you have to maximize your own self-interest, regardless of the impact on others.”

On the spiritual level, tens of millions of people are suffering because they desperately want meaningful and purposeful lives and instead are trapped in jobs that do not produce anything of lasting value, and feel that they are wasting their lives yet believe that there is no alternative and no way out. What’s worse is that many find their work is not really respected (in fact they have a hard time respecting it themselves because they can’t see how it connects to anything with a higher purpose than a paycheck for themselves and massive profits for the super rich).

The liberal and progressive forces have a limited understanding of why the very impressive list of economic changes and important populist benefits Sanders offered the American people did not win him a majority of the votes cast by Democrats in the 2016 presidential primaries. Given his powerful fundraising from millions of Americans, they can’t blame it on the candidate not having enough money to finance a competitive campaign. Sanders rarely addressed the hidden injuries of class and capitalist ideology and how they are absorbed, even by working people whose economic lot is very insecure and who objectively might have been expected therefore to be more responsive to Sanders’s platforms. Sanders stayed on a primarily economistic discourse, talking about the pain caused by economic insecurity but not about the deeper distortions in our own self-perceptions and the way we relate to each other—distortions and behaviors that are endemic to the way we’ve been socialized since we were children with the values and judgements of the competitive marketplace.

To address that deeper level, Sanders would have had to go beyond New Deal entitlements and challenge the essentials of the capitalist worldview and the institutions that daily reinforce them. Most Democrats, social change activists, and environmentalists don’t want to look at the need to transform the larger economic system...