The evidence that institutions invariably betray the principles upon which they are founded is everywhere around us. Where shall I start?

With the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy and the sexual abuse scandals that have come to light?

With the entire medical establishment during — and continuing after — covid?

With the psychoanalytic societies and institutes worldwide?

I have firsthand knowledge of the latter two, and I’ve written far too many articles about the failure of establishment medicine worldwide and in New Zealand for me to dredge up another expression of outrage. But the matter pertaining to psychoanalysis strikes close to heart.

There’s a famous little joke about psychoanalysts, and it goes like this.

Two analysts are in an elevator. A well-dressed woman enters, nods, and says “Good morning.” After departs a few seconds later leaves several floors later one analyst turns to the other and says, “What did she really mean by that?”

In other words, a psychoanalyst is always looking for a view beneath the surface of anything and everything, sometimes to an absurdity (but mostly because there ARE hidden meanings behind virtually every phenomenon in which we participate).

However, when it came to covid, lo and behold, THIS became the phenomenon — the single exception to all other phenomena — that was universally accepted at face value and which could not be questioned.

Think of it: a group of authorities whose entire professional lives were founded upon the notion of a division between surface and depths, upon the discovery of unconscious currents and ideas, upon that notion that what one sees is almost never an expression of what is really there — these authorities established a new precedent in naivete by swallowing the covid operation like swillers of beer at an Oktoberfest.

For the first time in recorded psychoanalytic history everything pushed by the political and medical establishments was accepted as the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

It has been discouraging nearly beyond description to have discovered that I, a former psychoanalyst, could find only one or two other colleagues who rejected masks, lockdowns, the lethality of covid, the necessity of the jab and the abolition of informed consent.

As I said earlier, institutions in the end always seem to betray their foundations, and this is one personal example. The once much vaunted New York Psychoanalytic Institute is a glaring case in point, where there are more fervent covidians than New Agers at Burning Man.

Readers of my essays will know that I have devoted thought to the psychological uses of power and the trends pushing humankind, with technological developments, towards a kind of culminating point of godlike omnipotence that risks the destruction of our frail human experiment. You can get a taste of my views with my essay on power here.

Recently I came upon another questioner of institutions in a fellow substack writer by the name of EKO, and I was struck by his brilliant suggestion that the parables of Jesus, if I understand him correctly, were coded messages of rebellion for generations then and now — rebellion against the worldly Roman government of the day and all oppressive political institutions thereafter.

Here is a beautiful example of EKO’s work: see this.

Musing upon such matters led me to revisit the temptations of Jesus during his forty days and nights in the wilderness. These temptations are described in three of the Gospels, most fully by Matthew here.

Matthew 4:1–11

4Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. 3The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 4But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” 5Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” 7Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” 8Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; 9and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” 10Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” 11Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

And Luke here.

Luke 4:1–13

4Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, 2where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. 3The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” 4Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’” 5Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. 7If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” 8Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” 9Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, 10for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ 11and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” 12Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” 13When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

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What is the message for us here, I pondered — and then it struck me. It was not only the obvious message that Jesus would not be tempted by Satan into a ‘devil’s bargain’ for Power, it was more. It was the simple and beautiful rejection of power for power’s sake.

Jesus would later go on to turn water into wine, to multiply loaves of bread and fishes and even to raise others from the dead, all miraculous signs of his divine power in the Gospels. But here, when pressed, he refuses to act.

Famished, he decides to remain hungry.

Alone and without a following, he rejects worldly dominion.

Solitary and on foot, he scorns a demonstration of his transcendental potency by NOT flying into the air.

Humankind is drunk with its mastery over the material world, and this mastery is increasing exponentially. We now have the burgeoning Artificial Intelligence movement, we can alter genomes and split atoms, all in an approach to lessen the gap between thought and deed. A wish can more easily be translated into fulfillment than at any other time in history.

But to what end? The natural trajectory of this development is a psychological return to an infantile omnipotence. Think of it for a moment. We’ll be able to do more and more with less and less until we can do absolutely everything by doing nothing, which is another way of saying that everything will meet its end.

It will be an act of self-annihilating bravado worthy of … you guessed it: the Devil himself.

I grew up near Amish country in Pennsylvania. The Amish are quite content with their horses and buggies and their rejection of vaccines, and they survived quite well, thank you, during covid, and were far wiser than all of those august psychoanalytic types who shuddered with fear and bowed down to the mouthpieces of propaganda.

Perhaps Jesus was telling us, way back when, that their was virtue in rejecting the blandishments of material dominion, and in living with the greater aspirations of love and work.

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Dr. Garcia is a Philadelphia-born psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand in 2006. He has authored articles ranging from explorations of psychoanalytic technique, the psychology of creativity in music (Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Delius), and politics. He is also a poet, novelist and theatrical director. He retired from psychiatric practice in 2021 after working in the public sector in New Zealand. Visit his substack at https://newzealanddoc.substack.com/.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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