Psychotic Dissonance
By Mat Wilson
According to National Post columnist Andrew Coyne "Cognitive dissonance is a term from psychology describing the state of mind of a person who holds two contradictory beliefs at the same time. The conflict between the reality conveyed by the senses and prior belief commonly gives rise to feelings of immense anxiety and frustration, which the patient attempts to resolve in various ways."
The phrase cognitive dissonance was coined in 1957 by U.S. social psychologist Leon Festinger and it indeed describes the discomfort of holding two contradictory ideas at the same time. But is the stress created as a consequense of "cognitive" dissonance or is it in fact "psychotic" dissonance?
According to psychologist, Frantz Fanon, “Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against the core belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn’t fit with the core belief”
That is not cognitive. It is psychotic dissonance or a form of "tunnel vision".
It is not in fact possible to be both genuine and to hold contradictory beliefs because, by definition, one belief makes the other a fiction, not because something is false, but because the mind of the believer resists the truth.
Is it therefore not more accurate to think that what we call cognitive dissonance is in fact psychotic dissonance? Philosophy has taught us that we frequently synthesize contradictory ideas through a beginning proposition called a thesis, a negation called antithesis and a synthesis whereby two conflicting ideas are reconciled to form a new proposition. We can now call that "bullshit".
When ideas cannot be reconciled, the dissonance is psychosis, that is a formm of insanity and it should be recognized as such because, as we like to repeatedly insist, "facts matter". Well, if that is true, dump the bullshit.
In particular, instead of trying to reconsile left and right, which has become an oxymoron for pretending to be fair, we should facilitate awareness and understanding.
In practical terms, cognitive dissonance is essentially the self-deceptions we accumulate to settle the strife between our natural inclinations and unwanted expectations that idiots immpose. Understanding diminishes the growing gap between what we in fact believe and the actual truth.
When we reverse the escalating consequence of misrepresenting reality, we will be well equipped to resist the inevitable, negative consequences that psychotic dissonance produces.
Widespread tolerance and respect for everybody's opinion is probably one way to adequately deal with the adverse consequences of every kind of dissonance because when we do not take our opinions any more seriously than the fact that most of them can probably use a good revision, we allow for the opportunity to grow and mature without ideological constraints.
In the final analysis, mental health is about promoting the capacity to make independent choices, not about adapting to the "norm" of the hour, and if we ought to establish a dissonance scale to be able to measure personal departure from reality.
The lack of science and the presence of bias in current methods of assessing mental health are confusing and it is time for the psychiatric and the psychological profession to become less theoretical and more pratical because the mental stability of everybody is equally fragile and it requires far more attention -we have far too many judges, lawyers and legislators who are simply Bat-Shit-Crazy and we need to call them out because mental health issues are far too important to treat in such a cavalier manner.
The bottom line is clear; without awareness and understanding, cognitive dissonance threatens to become a serious breach of reality and that is why we ought to call it what it is -psychotic dissonance, because, in the absence of a reality intervention, the enormous gap between what we in fact believe and the actual truth will continue to grow and mental health will continue to further deteriorate.
