Therapy wars: psychoanalysis vs. cognitive behavioral therapy

The New Neo Posted on by

This is one of those articles that Pocket seems to think I would be interested in, and they weren’t mistaken. It compares psychoanalysis to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for treating emotional problems.

It’s not a bad article at all, but I have a few things to add. The field of therapy has become so complex over time that those are just two of an almost countless array of therapies available out there. Those two are among the more extreme examples of opposing genres: psychoanalysis being the ultimate long-term “talk” depth therapy focused on the irrational and hidden aspects of the human mind and heart, and CBT being short-term and emphasizing ways of dealing with problems by correcting cognitive errors.

Back when I was in school to learn to be a family therapist (which by the way is a very different approach than either of those, and differs in general from techniques of individual therapy), I came to some conclusions about all of this.

The summary version is that therapy can be approached from any dimension: behavioral (action-oriented), emotional (feeling-oriented), or cognitive (thought-oriented). All three dimensions are interrelated and each influences the others, so that whichever one the therapist enters on and concentrates on, it has a ripple effect on the other two. For different clients different approaches can be best; there are no hard and fast rules about it. And different therapists are drawn to working in ways that happen to suit them, so they pick and choose as well.

But overall, the most important factor is the relationship between therapist and client. Some “click” and some do not. It’s not as simple as liking or not liking, either. It’s difficult to define and quantify, but it matters greatly.

The article touches on that towards the end:

…[M]many scholars have been drawn to what has become known as the “dodo-bird verdict”: the idea, supported by some studies, that the specific kind of therapy makes little difference. (The name comes from the Dodo’s pronouncement in Alice in Wonderland: “Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.”) What seems to matter much more is the presence of a compassionate, dedicated therapist, and a patient committed to change; if one therapy is better than all others for all or even most problems, it has yet to be discovered.

My sentiments exactly.

Another theory on why time seems to go more quickly as we get older

The New Neo Posted on by

This:

Time is happening in the mind’s eye. It is related to the number of mental images the brain encounters and organizes and the state of our brains as we age. When we get older, the rate at which changes in mental images are perceived decreases because of several transforming physical features, including vision, brain complexity, and later in life, degradation of the pathways that transmit information. And this shift in image processing leads to the sense of time speeding up.

Perhaps that’s part of it.

But I believe the larger part of it is a combination of other factors. The first is that as we age each passing unit of time becomes a smaller and smaller percentage of the amount of time we’ve already lived. The second is that we are quite aware that the number of days we have left on earth is growing shorter and may even be quite short, as opposed to an earlier perception that we have lots and lots of time left. The third is the absence of novelty in the lives of many people as they grow old; the days all tend to blur together.

Beto O’Rourke: on a slow news day…

The New Neo Posted on by

…Beto O’Rourke instagramming his dental cleaning is a big story.

I kid you not.

This sort of thing promises to be the wave of the future in political campaigns.

Right now O’Rourke’s main activity since losing his Senate race seems to be running for president in 2020. Or maybe vice president, but nobody actually owns up to running for vice president. I would take O’Rourke very seriously, based on his 2018 Senate campaign, in which social media was a big deal in his gaining support:

O’Rourke ran his [2018 Senate] campaign without professional pollsters or consultants, and relied on volunteers with no experience running a political campaign. His campaign employed the use of mass text messages. According to the 2018 third-quarter report from the FEC, his campaign spent US$7.3 million on digital advertising alone (in contrast with Cruz’s $251,000). His first ad was filmed on an iPhone.

He posted to social media daily, including Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, and livestreamed his activities traveling the state, such as skateboarding in a Whataburger parking lot, washing clothes at a laundromat, and “blockwalking” in his constituents’ neighborhoods. He encouraged supporters to post selfies they had taken with him to social media. Some of his videos went viral, including his position on NFL players “taking a knee” and police brutality against unarmed black men. Supporters said O’Rourke’s “promise of compassion”, more than any specific policy position, drew their support.

O’Rourke understands the shallow nature of modern-day campaigning, the importance of social media, and his own appeal, which seems to be based on appearance, demeanor, and (dare I say it?) charisma.

O’Rourke was running against Ted Cruz, who sorely lacks those particular strengths. You might say that this was a contest of opposites. Cruz won, but Texas is somewhat different than the US, and O’Rourke’s charms might do well on a national stage (Trudeau comes to mind).

He certainly had no problem with fundraising;

O’Rourke raised more than $38 million in the third quarter, three times Cruz’s totals for the same period. It is the most raised in a U.S. Senate race in history. According to his campaign, the donations came from 802,836 individual contributions, mostly from Texas. When asked if he would share the funds with Democrats in other races, he declined, saying that he wanted to honor “the commitment that those who’ve contributed to this campaign have made to me.”

That kind of devotion seems Obamaesque.

Singing prodigies: Jeffrey Li

The New Neo Posted on by

Child singers are an interesting phenomenon. Some people like them; some don’t. Child singers can’t bring the depth of feeling to a song that someone with greater life experience can.

Or can they? At least, a few of them?

At 10 years of age, Jeffrey Li sang with an aching purity of tone and tremendous sincerity of delivery. This is a clip from some Asian talent show, seemingly for kids (with some strange shenanigans from the audience). The girl singing the duet with Li, Celine Tam, is around 7 years old here. She has a nice voice, too. But to me, Li is the undisputed star .

Please watch the whole thing, because one of the highlights occurs when they start their duet at around 2:33. I defy anyone not to get a little shiver at that point. And their pianissimo ending is superb as well:

At 13 years of age, Li is still great, singing the same song alone. But maybe not quite as great (here the audience screams in a distracting way, but Li doesn’t lose his composure):

And I love the reaction of Li’s parents as they listen.

Sooner or later Li’s voice will change as he goes through puberty. He may still sing very well, like Aled Jones before him. But as with Aled, he probably won’t be quite as good as he was as a child.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s recovery

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s a lot of speculation about what Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s current absence from the Court means. Is this the beginning of the end for RBG? Or just another bump on a long long road?

Ginsburg had major lung surgery on December 21. That’s about 3 weeks ago. I’ve known several people who had similar surgeries for similar reasons, and they were a lot younger than she is, and they were out of commission for far longer than that. It’s a pretty brutal surgery and the recovery tends to be painful.

I’m not a doctor and I don’t play one on TV, so take everything I say with a grain of salt, but I’m basing my opinion on the experience of those friends of mine, plus articles such as this one:

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg missed her first oral arguments in more than 25 years on the bench this week as she recovers from a Dec. 21 operation that removed about half of her left lung, including two cancerous growths.

Ginsburg’s absence from the bench…did not surprise cancer surgeons, who say that based on what is known publicly, the 85-year-old’s recovery appears to be proceeding normally.

Top doctors with experience performing pulmonary lobectomies expect Ginsburg to be back on the bench in less than six weeks, with more than enough time to return for the court’s February sitting.

That said, I will add that RBG is 85 years old. People of that age sometimes bounce back from surgery (my mother did well after a hip replacement at 96, for example), but they are obviously at greater risk of complications than a younger person. What’s more, we don’t really know whether RBG’s lung nodules were primary cancers or metastases from previous cancers. The longer-term prognosis is probably much better if it’s the first rather than the second.

We have a few resident doctors and retired doctors here who might be able to weigh in with more knowledge than I have.

Does the president have the legal authority to declare a crisis and build a border wall?

The New Neo Posted on by

Unquestionably, lawyers and law professors can argue on either side of this issue and make a convincing case. But here are some of the arguments Trump’s side will probably use if it comes down to that:

It’s likely that President Trump is looking at 10 U.S.C. § 284 for authority to build the wall. That allows the Department of Defense to support other agencies of the federal government to counter drug activity and transnational organized crime, using such means as “Construction of roads and fences and installation of lighting to block drug smuggling corridors across international boundaries of the United States.”

Another law, 10 U.S.C. § 2808, allows the president to declare a national emergency and direct the U.S. military to undertake military construction projects using appropriated funds for military construction, including family housing, that have not already been obligated.

Ackerman [a Yale law prof who wrote an op-ed in the NY Times saying that Trump lacks the authority] compares declaring an emergency to build a border wall to President Harry Truman’s attempt to nationalize the steel industry in 1952. That effort was struck down by the Supreme Court. This comparison is ridiculous, because that case involved the president seizing control of private property (i.e. privately owned steel mills).

In contrast, the government has already purchased much of the land needed for the border wall.

Much more at the link, including:

My research did not isolate a particular legal standard for “a national emergency,” so it’s possible Trump’s critics could challenge his action in the courts as insufficient on that basis. There’s plenty of violence taking place on both sides of the border in connection with drug smuggling that Trump could cite to invoke the same justification used by Clinton and Bush.

If Trump is wrong, Congress, as Ackerman noted, would have “the right to repudiate it immediately.” Thus, the question of whether the situation at the border is an emergency is probably more of a political issue for the first two branches of government than it is a legal issue for the third branch.

Whether or not it should be a legal issue for the third branch, it probably will be, if Trump ends up deciding that declaring a national emergency is the way to go for building the wall.

Why is this the hill the Democrats have chosen to die on? It’s clear why it’s so important to Trump—it’s the linchpin of his campaign promises and he feels he must deliver. For the Democrats, it’s really a reverse of that same principle. Their biggest goal is to remove Trump now or at the very least to prevent his re-election. In fact, they might be more comfortable with the second than the first, because removing a president means they can’t campaign against him in 2020, and they see anti-Trumpism as a big big motivator for voting Democratic.

But their opposition to the wall is multiply-determined. They think it makes them look compassionate, which will appeal to their constituents, who can then bask in the glow of their own compassion when they vote for Democrats. In addition, the Party sees illegal immigrants as ultimately leading to more Democratic voters.

Who will win the wall funding standoff? Michael Walsh believes it will be Trump:

…[T]he furloughed public servants are merely suffering delayed paychecks thanks to the Democrats’ refusal to accept the results of the 2016 election, and while the public has not been as deliberately inconvenienced as it was during the dog-in-the-manger Obama shutdown, its effects are nevertheless being felt at such points of intersection as the national parks. Still, life has gone on otherwise pretty much as before — and the longer the shutdown rolls on, the more easily the way we were can be forgotten.

So the longer Donald Trump wrangles with his two superannuated cartoon antagonists, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, the stronger the president’s position becomes. This despite the Democrat Media’s insistence that the shutdown is a terrible thing, costing the lives of (as usual) untold women, children, and minorities.

He makes a certain point, which is that so far the shutdown has mostly been a non-event, hyped by the press of course, but not affecting most people at all. It will get more visible as time goes on, though, and the government workers start not receiving paychecks.

However, there is a certain “boy who cried wolf” perception that may be starting to operate, which is that people become somewhat bored with these recurrent shutdowns because they seem like old stories. We’ve passed this way too many times before, and the empty theater aspects of the process become more and more apparent.

How many people see the shutdown that way? I don’t know, but I would guess that if I were to poll most of my friends on the subject—which I am not planning to do—the majority of them would start saying how awful it is and how the Republicans are at fault. But whether they are representative of the country at large I do not know.

So far, however, polls indicate that they are:

Nearly half of voters, 47 percent, say Trump is mostly to blame for the shutdown, the poll shows, while another 5 percent point the finger at congressional Republicans. But just a third, 33 percent, blame Democrats in Congress.

The article doesn’t have a link to the poll, so I wasn’t able to see how the questions were phrased, which tends to be highly important in interpreting the meaning of polls. It was also conducted prior to the president’s speech on Tuesday, which makes it even less meaningful than usual.

In a quick search I was unable to find any polls taken after Tuesday. But it’s only over time that this story will play out, and Trump’s only just begun to fight.

Alternative fact-checking from the self-appointed self-annointed truth-tellers of the MSM

The New Neo Posted on by

Even before Trump delivered his short speech Tuesday night, the MSM had decided on its theme/meme of the evening: Trump will lie and we will tell you about his lies and correct them. I discussed the situation prior to the president’s speech here, and shortly after the speech the fact-checkers went to town and did their thing:

The Democrats’ theme for the evening was “facts, not fear.” Many major media also adopted the same theme. The coordinated talking point began hours if not days before the speech even aired, with CNN’s Alisyn Camerota saying yesterday morning, “Fact-checkers are eating their Wheaties and getting extra rest since they will be working overtime tonight to separate fact from fiction on this border situation.”

As soon as the speech ended, White House press corps mascot Jim Acosta recited his rather groan-inducing rehearsed line that Trump’s address “should have come with a Surgeon General’s warning that it was hazardous to the truth.”

But when it came time to back up this talking point about factual inaccuracies, the media whiffed. Most of the alleged “fact” “checks” were instead critiques of opinions. Many critiqued things not included in Trump’s speech. And sometimes the “fact” “checks” dinged Trump for saying completely true things.

Please read the whole thing (also see this and this).

Some of the fact-checking was inadvertently funny in a sad sort of way, such as when “CBS “Fact-Check” Finds That Trump’s Claim About Women Migrants Being Raped Wasn’t Exaggerated But Was Understated, But Then Deletes Its Own Fact-Check as Insufficiently Helpful to the Cause.”

But it all revealed once again—not that we needed any more evidence—that the MSM is now the mouthpiece of the Resistance, and proud of it.

The 2016 election: the crime and the coverup

The New Neo Posted on by

Jed Babbin, writing in the Spectator, notes:

Since Watergate, the Washington wisdom has always held that it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup that sinks a politician. But that’s only the case when the coverup fails.

But what if the coverup succeeds?

It’s horribly simple. The crimes are never uncovered and the perpetrators are never brought to justice no matter how serious their crimes may be. That is precisely what has happened because of the FBI and Justice Department’s coverup of their abuses of power and illegal actions during the 2016 election.

In this case, the FBI and the Justice Department have succeeded in the most significant coverup in American political history. The abuses of power and crimes they have succeeded in covering up are not only against the law: they are crimes against our system of law and government. They were perpetrated by employees of the government, under color of law, with the intention of affecting the outcome of an election.

I disagree, at least somewhat. I think we political junkies on the right do know quite a bit about the crimes and the coverup; the information is out there for those who are interested. But there’s a secondary coverup by the MSM, which is how most Americans still get their news. And there’s another coverup (or rather, minimization) of sorts by Democrats who say it didn’t happen that way and/or it’s been exaggerated and/or you shouldn’t care.

The Spectator article also mentions the stonewalling in which the FBI and DOJ have been engaged, withholding information from multiple Congressional investigations. That’s part of the picture.

But still, we already have enough information to be outraged, and my sense is that most people are not outraged. They don’t care and/or they are partisan Democrats and applaud it and/or they don’t read the information or follow it and/or or they don’t understand what it means.

The article also points out something I was dreading before the midterms when I realized the Democrats were highly likely to win in the House: the investigations mounted by the GOP-controlled Congress have stopped.

[NOTE: A mystery is why Trump never declassified some of the relevant documents, particularly before the 2018 midterms. However, it’s not hard to generate some theories on that—for example, they were just too sensitive. Or they reflected poorly on him or on the GOP in some way. Or he’s saving them for a more important time. None of those seem all that convincing to me.]

Why didn’t the GOP-held Congress fund the wall?

The New Neo Posted on by

A lot of people on the right would answer that question this way: because the GOP really doesn’t want to.

I wouldn’t answer that way, though. This is how I’d answer—

The GOP is hardly a unitary group. There are plenty of GOP members of Congress who would vote to fund the wall. But the GOP had to go it alone; almost no Democrats were going to agree. That’s where the numbers game comes in.

The House had the votes to do it—in fact, they did vote the funds—but the House can’t do much without the Senate. The GOP only held a single-vote majority there, which effectively meant that if only one GOP senator defected it would be a tie, and Mike Pence could break the tie, but if two defected on a bill that bill would fail.

There was more than one GOP senator who was going to defect on this. And there was little to nothing the others could do about it except exert whatever pressure senators (and particularly Senate leadership) can exert.

But did they try to exert that pressure? That’s the big question, and I don’t know the answer. I know that, if the situation had been reversed, the Democrats would have made that person vote with the group. Exactly what forces they would bring to bear in order to accomplish that I don’t know, but they would be fierce forces if necessary.

Now the GOP has a slightly larger margin in the Senate than before, although far from huge (the grand GOP total is 53). But it’s lost the House. So the situation now is similar but reversed. Trump needs some Democrats in the House to go along in order to get funding for the wall. I predict that he won’t get them. The real question is what he’ll do next.

Pelosi and Schumer: looks count for a lot in politics, but not everything

The New Neo Posted on by

You’ve probably seen the Twitter memes on the appearance of Pelosi and Schumer last night. They’re pretty brutal. Here’s one:

Another:

And the comments! Most of them centered on the fact that they looked embalmed and spooky. Others talked about more of the specifics—Schumer’s asymmetrical eyes and Pelosi’s botox. Some said that the two looked so bad they made Trump look normal.

The whole thing threatened to overshadow the messages.

So, does this hurt the Democrats? I doubt it. I can’t imagine any Democrat I know changing his or her mind because of this appearance, or become of their appearance. Pelosi and Schumer have become institutions and their thing is power within the Party.

If you look at Pelosi’s political beginnings, you’ll see that not only was she very attractive at the time, but she was a Party player first and foremost in an area of the country where to win the Democratic primary (or in her case, to be appointed a successor) was to win it all automatically:

Pelosi represents one of the safest Democratic districts in the country. Democrats have held the seat since 1949 and Republicans, who currently make up only 13 percent of registered voters in the district, have not made a serious bid for the seat since the early 1960s. She won the seat in her own right in 1988 and has been reelected 16 more times with no substantive opposition, winning by an average of 80 percent of the vote. She has not participated in candidates’ debates since her 1987 race against Harriet Ross. The strongest challenge Pelosi has faced was in 2016 when Preston Picus polled 19.1% and Pelosi won with 80.9%

Nevertheless, Pelosi has botoxed herself into facial rigidity because she knows that she’s on the national stage and she doesn’t want to look like an old woman. Well, I’m not sure what she conjures up except a waxwork figure, but when you look at her you don’t immediately think “78-year-old woman,” which is what she is.

Schumer’s ten years younger, and he had a somewhat tougher political road once he decided to take the Senate route, because he had to appeal to the entire state of New York. But it’s not been all that difficult, particularly in recent years.

Looking good is a funny thing. For example, Mitt Romney is the handsomest pol I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen him close up during the 2012 campaign. Really quite incredible, and amazing for his age seemingly without any surgery or botox. But I don’t think it helped him at all. I think it hurt him, actually, contributing to the impression of a kind of falseness and Dudly-Do-Right perfection that excluded any sense of what most people have to deal with in life. Hard to relate to this guy.

No, the best looks for politics is to be handsome or pretty but not too handsome or pretty. Obama. Bill Clinton. I’m not sure about women, but I think the principle is pretty much the same. And age is a double-edged sword, particularly for women, who need some of it (at least, so far—AOC seems to be bucking that trend) to lend some gravitas, but not so much that it reads “decrepit old lady.”

Trump will address the American people tonight on the border situation—now that the MSM has said it will let him

The New Neo Posted on by

[See UPDATE on speech below.]

He’ll be speaking from the Oval Office at 9 PM Eastern time.

The media was hesitant to even broadcast the speech at first, but apparently they have deigned to do so. Kind of them.

After hours of “will they, won’t they” coverage, the broadcast networks and cable news networks decided they will broadcast Trump on Tuesday night. Only CBS confirmed the broadcast by Monday evening.

But they can’t let him go unchallenged:

…[T]heir decision led to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to demand equal airtime…

Schumer and Pelosi wrote in a statement that since “television networks have decided to air the President’s address, which if his past statements are any indication will be full of malice and misinformation, Democrats must immediately be given equal airtime.”

As opposed to the sweetness, light, and strict adherence to facts for which Schumer and Pelosi are known.

CNN wrote yesterday:

Trump’s Monday request for networks to air his speech touched on a number of debates that have been raging in journalism since his ascension to the Oval Office. Among them: Should his fact-free speeches be aired live? What kind of fact-checking methods should networks employ?

There has been a recent debate in journalism circles about whether networks should air Trump’s words in real-time. Several media critics, for instance, told CNN last week that networks should not rush to air Trump’s remarks made during pool sprays and briefings, given how much misinformation he spreads.

“Some advice — demand to see the text in advance and if it is not truthful either don’t air it or fact check it live on lower third,” tweeted Joe Lockhart, the former White House press secretary under President Bill Clinton. “And cut away if he goes off text and starts lying.”

Either the press doesn’t recognize its own bias and/or realize how often it lies, or the press recognizes and realizes both (my preferred answer) and thinks it’s done all in the noble service of telling too-stupid Americans what they should think and feel.

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

There was also an interesting and acrimonious exchange today between Kellyanne Conway and Jim Acosta. You may recall that, right at the beginning of the Trump administration during an interview with Chuck Todd, Conway used the phrase “alternative facts.” Her phrase was widely mocked and criticized as though she were talking about facts as having no intrinsic truth or falsehood. But it was clear even at the outset what she actually meant—she meant that on certain things such as crowd size where estimates differ, people pick and choose which estimates to use depending on their political bent. In fact, she said as much during the original interview, which aired about 2 years ago (full transcript here; it makes very interesting reading at this point):

I actually don’t think that– maybe this is me as a pollster, Chuck. And you know data well. I don’t think you can prove those numbers one way or the other. There’s no way to really quantify crowds. We all know that…

…What’s not right, Chuck, is that the day before, you had people releasing a dossier full of junk and lies and fake news. And why did they release the dossier?…

Here’s what happened today between Conway and Acosta:

UPDATE 9:50 PM

“This is just common sense.” Well, it is, but common sense has become a lot less common these days.

A humanitarian crisis, the wall would pay for itself, heroin overdoses, we should rise above partisan politics, wealthy politicians build gates around their homes not because they hate the people on the outside but because they love the people on the inside—many good arguments here. I didn’t expect him to declare a national emergency (which was the rumor) and he didn’t.

Here’s his well-placed shot at Chuck Schumer:

Senator Chuck Schumer, who you will be hearing from later tonight, has repeatedly supported a physical barrier in the past, along with many other Democrats. They changed their mind only after I was elected president.

I wish he’d shown the video of their prior statements; it would have been very effective. Perhaps they expected that particular line of attack, because Schumer and Pelosi’s rebuttal was mostly about the shutdown rather than the wall itself.

I didn’t watch any of it. I prefer to read speeches, although sometimes I watch them.

Here’s an unexpected angle from a person we haven’t heard from for a while:

I very much doubt that’s a common reaction on the left, however.

ADDENDUM: And Twitter’s having fun with Chuck and Nancy photos.

Charisma in politics, charisma in life

The New Neo Posted on by

I think I may have first heard the word “charisma” in connection with JFK. He had it. I could tell. I recognized it and I even felt it. But of course back then I was a kid. Have I ever been enchanted by political charisma since?

In a single word: no. I’ve liked some politicians (Paul Tsongas comes to mind) very much, but actually I’ve liked very few of them, and none enthralled me with their charisma. Maybe I’m a bit charisma-deaf.

And I guess I’m looking for a Churchill or a Lincoln. And even then, I’m not sure that what they had would be called “charisma.” At least, I wouldn’t call it that; I’d call it eloquence and depth. Do those qualities even correlate with charisma? I don’t think so.

This article tries to explain charisma, and although it really doesn’t either explain it or even describe it very well, it does discuss some interesting research involving how charisma relates to analytical skills:

Scientists have plenty to say about charisma. Individuals with charisma tap our unfettered emotions and can shut down our rational minds. They hypnotize us. But studies show charisma is not just something a person alone possesses. It’s created by our own perceptions, particularly when we are feeling vulnerable in politically tense times…

Jochen Menges, a lecturer in organizational behavior at the University of Cambridge, terms the emotional impact of charisma the “awestruck effect.” He came up with the concept as a doctoral student in 2008, when he traveled to Berlin to hear Barack Obama speak in the hopes he might glean some new insights about how charismatic alchemy worked. When Obama bounded onto the stage and announced he was not just a citizen of the United States, but a citizen of the world, Menges himself was taken in. For a few minutes, Menges forgot why he was there—he was taken out of himself, became a follower…

Afterward, a woman next to Menges gushed that Obama’s speech was “amazing,” “wonderful,” and “awesome.” Yet when Menges asked her to name three things she liked about the speech, she couldn’t…

Menges found that students were far more likely to report they remembered the exact contents of speeches delivered by individuals who used charismatic speaking techniques that evoke emotions, than the content of speeches from individuals using a straightforward, non-charismatic mode of delivery. Yet written tests revealed those exposed to charismatic speakers remembered far less than those exposed to the non-charismatic speakers. Even so, when offered the chance to follow each speaker into a coffee room to discuss the ideas of their talks, the students almost never followed the boring speaker—and almost always followed the charismatic one.

None of this is especially surprising, nor is it (IMHO) especially informative. Of course when a speaker exerts some sort of powerfully emotional and almost hypnotically attractive effect on listeners, their analytical powers and recall for the specifics often fall into a haze. It happens not just in political life, but in personal life as well.

For example, it’s one of the reasons people who fall in love quickly and then have troubles say that the danger signs were initially there in the beloved one, but they ignored them because they were just so very smitten.

Well, I don’t fall in love easily, either, although when I do I’ve been known to ignore a few red flags.

I’ve noticed something I’d call charisma among certain of my acquaintances who make friends effortlessly and easily. It seems that nearly everyone they meet wants to be around them and feed off something exhilarating about them. Is it their energy? Pheromones? I’ve tried and tried to define it, but the closest I can get is that people feel happy around those people.

Why? It’s not that these charismatic people all resemble each other. They don’t—not in most ways, anyway. They’re not even necessarily nice people; often they’re narcissists. That’s a clue, actually, because they do tend to have—and to project—a great deal of self-confidence. But self-confidence is not enough. Nor are they all physically attractive. But whatever charisma is, they’ve got it.