Care to see a shrink?
WHAT PROVOKES the elite few in this world who possess power and authority and have managed to build empires of fortune and publicity to risk it all by committing a foolish crime? This is the question that has occupied my mind throughout this past week, whilst reading news coming in from Saudi Arabia and the United States of America.
In Saudi Arabia, he is allegedly a religious scholar who found his way to the mass media. He is a man of influence and connections; a successful man by many standards. His crime is torturing his own five-year old daughter, which led to her disturbing death in the hospital a few days after the police got involved.
In the United States, he was the CIA director. His crime was engaging in an extramarital affair with a married woman, which led to his humiliating resignation from public service.
Just like that, despite the power and fame that usually accompanies successful careers, these people shocked the community with their ability to lead secret lives, contradicting the very essence of what they publicly exemplify.
Psychologists would say these people suffer from a personality disorder. They might be successful in their public lives, whether it is in business, politics, sports, or religion. However, deep down, they possess underlying symptoms of depression.
This psychological analysis might have been the answer I was looking for during the entire week, to fathom the news. As such, these powerful individuals were able to pull such crimes, despite their apparently successful lives, because they suffered from a personality disorder.
Unfortunately this answer did not quell my questions. Quite to the contrary, it led to other questions, such as who else in our direct social circle suffers from similar psychological disorders?
The act of committing a crime has nothing to do with fame and power. Human beings are known to make mistakes. Some of these mistakes are big enough to constitute being labeled as a crime. We have religion and laws for this reason, to govern our lives and proscribe our mistakes.
In that sense, is it morally justifiable to subject those of fame and power to intensive public humiliation and scrutiny just because they are famous? We should not look at them, at their crimes, with a different scale of justice.
Of course I am not trying to vindicate or diminish the ugliness of their crimes I am merely thinking out loud and trying to fathom how ‘human’ beings behave.
What I am trying to say here is this; success does not immunize us from choosing the wrong paths. The public image powerful people project to the community at large is in many instances deceiving.
Morality does not stem from success and fame; it comes from mental, psychological, and spiritual wellness. Which leads me to my second question, what percentage of Saudis are truly aware of the importance of their psychological health?
The word psychology is not a favorable word in Saudi Arabia. It is usually associated with mental illnesses and madhouses. In most cases, we would choose to take the urban superstitious explanations over the psychological one.
There is some kind of barrier that prevents us from being in touch with our inner selves. We have been raised in a society that admires toughness and strong appearances.
We are a muscling society that considers psychological issues a sign of weakness. I truly believe that a lot of our day-to-day social problems, along with many bigger and more serious crimes, can be traced back to our psychological issues. Perhaps it is time to reconsider giving psychology more of what it deserves in terms of public awareness.
Perhaps, psychology should be part of our educational system, in schools and universities. Maybe then we will have a healthier, more productive, crime-free society.
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