"We are born princes and the civilizing process makes us frogs."--Publilius Syrus
Despite its depiction of the world as being populated only by men, the quotation above, first attributed to a first century B.C. Roman, was adapted by Canadian-born psychiatrist Eric Berne to help explain transactional analysis, a Freudian-type therapy he developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s. For clarity's sake, let's stipulate that frogs are not favored in this metaphor.
Readers may be more familiar with Berne through his popular books, Games People Play (1964) and the posthumously published What Do You Say After You Say Hello? (1972).
Transactional analysis finds relevance today in the way politicians relate to their audiences and to each other. Without doing the therapy's fundamentals too much injustice, a brief description of them is that people's behaviors are shaped by their experiences and, ultimately, we wander through life playing the roles of Parent, Adult, and Child (Berne capitalized the terms to distinguish them from their common interpretations).
When we are in our Parent mode, we relate to others in ways we observed our parents and other authority figures relating to us and others (for example, we can be judgmental, critical or nurturing). Our Adult mode is more objective, helping us to be less judgmental about people and events, while when we are in our Child mode, we relate somewhat more immaturely, as we learned to behave in childhood (for example, we can be accepting, rebellious or sullen).
Clearly, those people who mostly operate in the Parent or Child mode are more metaphorically frog-like than those who operate in the Adult mode.
Of course, the three behavioral modes are much more complicated than these simple characterizations, but such stripped-down descriptions are sufficient to help us analyze the leading contenders in this year's presidential campaigns.
On the Democratic side, former first lady and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont dominate. Both seem to be in their Parent mode much of the time when they are delivering stump speeches to potential voters, as they tell audiences how life in the United States should be. They rail against inequality of all kinds and they promise to take relatively impossible actions to make things right.
When Hillary and Bernie appear on talk shows and other news programs, they try to slip into their Adult modes, calmly expressing their worldviews and objectively (in their minds) explaining how their presidential administrations will solve everyone's problems. Once in a while, however, they forget to be presidential and accidentally revert to their Parent or Child modes (Hillary can become agitated and smug; Bernie seems to be a natural shouter).
In the Republican race, where business icon and former reality TV star Donald Trump definitively tops most of the polls, the other leading contenders at any given time are Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Sen. Marco Rubio (Florida), with retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and current Gov. John Kasich (Ohio) occasionally outpolling one or both of the senators.
The Donald, as Trump is affectionately known, alternates between his Parent and his Child. He seems to bask in the warmth of hotly controversial statements, he impetuously condemns reporters and others he doesn't like, and he claims he will make astounding changes in the country. His claims come without any acknowledgment that to make many of those changes happen, he will need an unruly Congress to comply with many of his wishes.
Senators Cruz and Rubio seem to favor their Child modes as they address their audiences on the campaign trail, in televised candidate debates and as they make guest appearances in the more sedate forums of TV talk shows. They whine about each other, they mislead voters by presenting misinformation (see, for example, reports by the "truth squads" monitoring the most recent Republican debate) or by failing to mention facts that might discredit their statements, and they portray their political positions in accordance with their audience's expectations.
The two candidates who most often are in their Adult modes, Carson and Kasich, seem to calmly evaluate political issues, they find no need to shout at their audiences, and they are polite during televised debates in which they frequently are ignored by the moderators. Kasich moves into his Parent mode when he touts his record as a former congressman during the 1990s and as Ohio governor, while Carson remains good-natured about being criticized or ignored.
In summary, voters in Democratic primaries have a narrow choice between two major candidates who mostly can't help themselves from operating in the Parent mode.
On the other hand, voters in Republican primaries have a wide choice among several major candidates who operate in various modes, though only two spend significant amounts of time in their Adult mode.
Perhaps the mode in which candidates operate is as important as their political stands on important issues. After all, would we really want a frog to lead the country?
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Bruce Plopper earned graduate degrees in psychology and journalism before teaching mass media-related college courses for more than 30 years. He retired from UALR's School of Mass Communication in 2012.
Editorial on 01/23/2016