[Neurons] 2018 Neurons #42 DID SHE OR DID SHE NOT GET OVER THE PAST?

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2018 Neurons #42

September 27, 2018

Critical Thinking about a Testimony

 

 

DID SHE OR DID SHE NOT

GET OVER THE PAST?

 

Recently I wrote a series of articles on Getting Over the Past.  Then
yesterday when I watched the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford in the
Kavanaugh confirmation at first I thought I was watching someone who had not
gotten over the past.  That was my first impression, it also seems to be the
impression she wanted to create, and the impression that most people took
from it.  But then I began to wonder.  Really?

 

Speaking in a quavering voice, and a "small" weak voice, certainly not the
voice of a University Professor(!), Ford presented herself as a victim.  But
not a victim of a rape, but of an event that she "thought" someone could
have possibly have raped her.  But that, of course, did not happen.  My
wonder about it focuses on two contradictory pieces - she fully presented
herself as a victim and yet none of the rest of her life corresponds to
that.  In every other way she has seemed to have lived a competent life-
successfully completed graduate degrees, wrote "scientific" papers, married,
had children, travel extensively, etc.

 

>From what we know, for the past 30 years she has "moved on" and lived life
in a way that most of us would describe as a fully and successfully life.
Only one small sign of being a victim came up- she testified that she was
afraid of flying.  Yet it was discovered that she had flown to many vacation
places for many years as well as flying for her work.  She has flown many
times over the years to Hawaii.  So is she or is she not a victim?

 

Another contradiction.  What also struck me is that when she described the
event wherein she feared she could have been raped, she told it as if she
was still experiencing it.  That is the associated position in NLP.  So 36
years after one event (when she was 15 years old), and as someone trained in
psychology- she seems to be unaware of how to get over the past.  How could
that be?  Had she never applied any aspect of psychology to herself?

 

For most people a highly undesired event four-decades old usually and
typically lose most of its emotional intensity.  Most people "move on."  And
if it happened when you were 15, you also grow up.  Your thinking and
feeling as a teenager usually grows up so that when you look back on some of
the stupid things that happened back then- you put the events into a
different frame.  But not Ford.  Her emotional testimony in this sense
struck me as very strange- 1) either she is a very fragile and low
ego-strength person, 2) or in spite of her studies in psychology, never
applied trauma recovery to herself, 3) or she has been coached to be a
victim, 4) or something else.

 

Another contradiction.  She asked for confidentiality.  She asked that her
name never be used.  Then someone mysteriously leaked the information about
who it was(!) and suddenly the media was at her door.  The committee offered
that she could make her statement privately, but no.  She did not choose
that.  She chose to make it publically before the whole nation.  So why was
that?  Why would a highly private person want to do that?

 

Perhaps the context can help explain things.  All of this was obviously in
the context of a political drama being carried out in Washington DC. and it
seems to me to be a last-ditch effort of the Democrats to stop a
confirmation.  As many noted, why else would the person who knew about Ford
60 days ago hold the letter, never mention it, never confront him about it,
never ask for a FBI investigation, and only reveal it after the confirmation
hearings?  Seems very suspicious to me.  It strikes me as the kind of
political theater that gives politics a bad name. 

 

Whether Ford was "almost" raped is still an open question.  It's certainly
believable she could have had some experience.  Whether the Kavanaugh had
anything to do with it is much less certain since there was no corroboration
at all from any witness.  In fact, all four persons she said were alleged
witnesses denied any memory of it or said definitively that it did not
happen.  And in spite of how impossible it is to prove a negative ("I was
not there"), Kavanaugh did present evidence (his calendars from 1982) to
indicate that he was busy every day with other activities. 

 

In 1991 when Anita Hill testified in the Clarence Thomas confirmation
hearing, some said that the problem was that she did not look or talk like a
victim.  She presented herself as an intelligent, competent, and educated
woman, not as a victim.  I wonder- is that what Ford's attorney was trying
to do?  Did her lawyers coach her on how to be a victim?  Is that why it
took so long?

 

While every commentator that I've heard grants that Ford was credible, my
doubts about these contradictions makes me wonder.  Several things do not
add up:

           As a highly successful woman in every way- is she really a
victim who has not gotten over the trauma? 

           As a highly educated woman who knows human psychology, does she
really take her teenage 15-year old fears about what might have happened and
live in fear all her life?

           As a highly private person does she hire an extremely leftist
lawyer who puts her on the world's stage in the most public way possible?

 

Obviously, none of us know what really happened, but I do have a lot of
questions that makes me wonder about things. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D., Executive Director 

Neuro-Semantics 

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

               1 970-523-7877 

                    Dr. Hall's email:
<mailto:meta at acsol.net\hich\af31506\dbch\af31505\loch\f31506> meta at acsol.net


    cid:261CED33-4408-4124-862B-B9A4B37A367A

    

 

Dr. L. Michael Hall writes a post on "Neurons" each Monday.  For a free
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click on Meta-Coaching for detailed information and training schedule.   To
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