Social Psychiatric News Year’s Resolutions #5: Solving our Wicked Problems Dialectically

Phushutter/AdobeStock

PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

“You might even say, looking back developmentally, that moving into each stage is a wicked problem, because you’re facing problems that you don’t have solutions for.” - Jeff Salzman

It seems clear that we are in a new stage in the world, highlighted and exemplified by the beginning of President Trump’s second administration. Already, he has overturned many precedents and policies with his executive orders. It seems to be dialectical to the prior Biden administration.

Part of the challenge is that the problems are wicked ones, with human beings at the epicenter. Wicked problems are those that are so complex and difficult to solve.

Wicked is also the name of the popular and acclaimed book, drama, and now the movie. These are prequels to the original source of the 1900 novel The Wizard of Oz. Like psychodynamic psychotherapy, a prequel is designed to provide the back story and explanation of something of great interest and concern. The current prequel is the popular movie of “Wicked, Part One.”

Before the emergence of modern psychology and psychiatry, understanding human nature was the province of great literature and religious texts. The Wizard and Wicked series have covered most all and more of what I have called the real life social psychopathologies, which in essence have been to date insolvable wicked problems of our human nature vulnerabilities, including: scapegoating, political conflict, fake wizardly authoritarian leadership and cultish followers, immigration, and potential global destruction, rapidly from nuclear bombs and slowly from climate instability, and more. By doing so in such an entertaining way, we can be subliminally influenced. We will have to wait to see how the current movie tries to resolve any of these in “Wicked, Part 2.”

The series even includes a rather ignored ism of Animalism, emphasizing when animals are more like us when capitalizing animal. That concern comes out in our modern dietary concerns that also have carbon release—and thereby climate change—differences, from meatless vegan to meat-based carnivore diets of greater carbon release.

In addressing skin color discrimination, they present the green-skinned Elphaba starting in the 1939 movie, just when the Nazis were beginning their conquests, perhaps as an expression of the risks to the freedom conveyed by our greening Statue of Liberty.

A major dialectic is set up in “Wicked” between Galinda and Elphaba, the so-called good and bad witches respectively, one with white skin, the other with green skin, who are forced to be roommates. Over time, they begin to understand and like each other, but do not yet complement one another.

Dialectic generally refers to a dialogue between people who, like Glinda and Elphaba, hold different points of view. That has been incorporated into the treatment for our very challenging patients with borderline personality disorders. Dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) provides skills for managing intense emotions and negotiating conflictual social relationships. It can be done well with individuals or in groups by mental health professionals trained in DBT.

Intense and increasing dialectics has been set up in our political parties. Perhaps the major evolving administrative changes of the Republican administration will be met by the Democratic resistance and eventually produce new and productive truths that can provide more freedom from our wicked problems. We can potentially be helpers in this process with Track II negotiations whereby we educate key individuals in the respective parties about psychotherapeutic understanding and processes.¹ There is also the potential for the Law of Unintended Consequences providing positive outcomes not anticipated.

Monday is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps of the Nazis. Out of the dialectic of the war came the unanticipated repopulation of a changed Germany with Jews, which so far provides a hopeful example for the positive resolution of other conflicts. Let us add our real wizardly knowledge and skills to such a quest.

Dr Moffic is an award-winning psychiatrist who specialized in the cultural and ethical aspects of psychiatry and is now in retirement and retirement as a private pro bono community psychiatrist. A prolific writer and speaker, he has done a weekday column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. He was chosen to receive the 2024 Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Association for Social Psychiatry. Previously, he received the Administrative Award in 2016 from the American Psychiatric Association, the one-time designation of being a Hero of Public Psychiatry from the Speaker of the Assembly of the APA in 2002, and the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 1991. He presented the third Rabbi Jeffrey B. Stiffman lecture at Congregation Shaare Emeth in St. Louis on Sunday, May 19, 2024. He is an advocate and activist for mental health issues related to climate instability, physician burnout, and xenophobia. He is now editing the final book in a 4-volume series on religions and psychiatry for Springer: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianity, and now The Eastern Religions, and Spirituality. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.

Reference

1. Aggarwal, NK, Dulat AS, Durrani A. How psychoanalytic theory and Track II diplomacy can inform each other: a dialogue with the former heads of India and Pakistan’s foreign intelligence agencies. Psychodyn Psychiatry. 2023;51(1):25-44.