Economic PTSD: The Psychological Effects of the Recession

By Michael Bader, AlterNet. Posted January 14, 2009.

Most people can't let themselves feel innocent, because in a truly moral universe their caregivers would then have to be guilty, and that recognition is intolerable. It would mean that they, as children, were not protected, that the attachment necessary to their psychological survival was absent, disturbed or even dangerous, and that the beings upon whom they helplessly depended might, at times, have meant harm.

Children can rarely face this emotional reality, and neither can most adults. It is not even necessary that these perceptions be objectively true -- it is the subjective experience of parental failures that is so frightening, it leads to self-blaming.

I think that the residue of this childhood denial can be found in the last-ditch psychic efforts of many of the people I know and treat to continue to believe in the goodness of our political and financial institutions. Our public outrage at being betrayed by the greed, mismanagement and political shenanigans that created the current crisis is compromised by all the subtle and secret ways that we irrationally hold ourselves accountable.

This creates a political problem: While the helplessness we feel is legitimate, our ability to rationally respond to it by trying to correct its real structural causes is compromised by the guilt and shame that we've internalized. Our real responsibility to change the world -- something we can do -- is undermined by our false and self-blaming feelings of responsibility for things that we didn't and can't do.

To say the obvious: We're not children objectively helpless in the face of overwhelming parental authority. The system has been rigged against us, but it doesn't have to be. Our culpability is not in having trusted this system, but in not seeing that -- unlike children in a family -- we currently have the freedom to change it. The paradox is that we have to face the ways that we're really helpless in order to own the ways that we're not.

The argument that most of us irrationally resist feeling helpless and innocent may seem spurious given how often we hear parents, teachers, pundits and politicians extol the importance of personal responsibility. And isn't it true that too many, not too few, people seem to blame others constantly for their own problems? How can I argue that people suffer from an inability to feel helpless and innocent rather than an inability to take responsibility?

Here's why: Public displays of innocence are almost always defenses against private feelings of self-blame. In both my personal and clinical experience, the louder someone proclaims his or her victimization, the more guilty that person is liable to feel underneath. The reason is simple: guilt and self-blame are too painful for most people to consciously tolerate for too long. They're compelled to externalize it, vainly trying to convince themselves and others that they're innocent victims and that everyone else is to blame for their predicament.

Such folks -- and there are many -- appear to wrap themselves in the flag of helpless and blameless innocence. Secretly, however, they feel guilty. This system isn't stable because it rests on a foundation of guilt and its denial, and thus the cycle of blame and guilt goes on endlessly.

Most of us are, in fact, helpless and innocent victims of the breakdown of an economic system rigged to benefit the rich. However much we might have, at times, followed our worst instincts when it came to spending, debt and investments, we are not to blame for our current predicament.

We need to develop compassion for ourselves and each other. We need to mourn the loss of our money and the financial dreams that they fueled. This is not to say that we won't recover some of our losses or shouldn't have dreams, but we can't turn back the clock and pretend that this catastrophe hasn't happened.

Thus, like mourning the death of a loved one, we have to come to terms with a new reality in a way that allows us to experience a range of normal reactions, reactions we can openly share with others rather than hide in the closet as if they were private failures and sources of shame. I have too many patients and friends who are ashamed of talking about their financial losses for fear of being judged. Shame makes loss and trauma indigestible.

And, finally, we have to get angry, get organized and empower ourselves to change a system over which we have had too little control. It is -- and should be -- infuriating that economic elites, along with their political enablers, have gamed the system such that they've reaped astronomical benefits while exposing the rest of us to the toxic byproducts of their greed and indifference.

See more stories tagged with: economy, psychology, depression, recession, financial crisis, shame, guilt

Michael Bader is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in San Francisco. He is the author of "Arousal: The Secret Logic of Sexual Fantasies" and "Male Sexuality: Why Women Don't Understand It -- and Men Don't Either." He has written extensively about psychology and politics.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace! Sign up now »