The Passion of James Valliant's Criticism

[John Dailey]

MSK:

~ Not to hijack the subject of this thread, but upon finishing reading this thread I find it interesting that you point out that quote since it (coincidentally) relates to a 'free-will' discussion I more-or-less am involved with on RoR. The quote centers around the term 'value.'

~ I wonder just how clear everyone thinks they really are re all others agreeing with them about their 'meaning' of the term 'value'? Basically, re there being any question re any diff between a 'value' (or, on RoR, a 'value-judgement') and a mere momentary 'desire', the latter for which one also can be said 'acts to gain and(/or) keep'?

~ Just mentioning this 'in passing' since I've no desire for the main subject; but, what would be the proper sub-forum for persuing this subject here?

LLAP

J:D

[Chris Grieb]

Michael and Jim;

I think it is worth noting that one of things that happened between FTNI and VOS was Ayn Rand changed publishers. She left Random House where the next book was to be called the Fascist New Frontier. According to PAR Cerf was a friend of John Kennedy and was at first enthusiastic but became less so. Cerf finally refused to publish the book and released Miss Rand from her contact. The next book with her new publisher was VOS.

VOS appeared in December of '64 in paperback. As a personal note I can tell you the name and location of the bookstore I just saw and purchased VOS.

While the different dates for the articles Miss Rand may have found the point Jim made earlier about going from the bold statement of philosophy to specifics.

[Guyau]

Michael,

You mentioned an idea you have found helpful which was expressed by Nathaniel Branden in a 1963 essay, placed right after Rand's "The Objectivist Ethics" in the collection The Virtue of Selfishness. Branden's expression, which you quoted, was:

"A sacrifice, it is necessary to remember, means the surrender of a higher value in favor of a lower value or of a nonvalue. If one gives up that which one does not value in order to obtain that which one does value---or if one gives up a lesser value in order to obtain a greater one---this is not a sacrifice, but a gain."

I think that when Branden here wrote "it is necessary to remember" he was referring to Rand's earlier presentation of this her special concept of sacrifice. That presentation was in Galt's Speech. In my hardcopy edition of AS, it is on page 1028.

(Rand's special definition of sacrifice is partly idiosyncratic. That is fine for what the logic texts call a theoretical definition, although the departure from common usage has to be acknowledged to avoid misunderstanding. See the following note at RoR http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/GeneralFo...807_1.shtml#22)

There is a paper of Branden's that presents Rand's ethical theory, if I recall correctly. You might like to get hold of this. Its title is "Rational Egoism." It appeared in The Personalist in 1970.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Stephen,

There is great value to be had in correctly defining terms like sacrifice. I, like you, hold that in addition to correct definitions, there is usually more than one definition that is in common usage.

Apropos to another discussion here on OL, that is the main reason for the call to "define your terms" between men of good will—not to define every single aspect of every word being used (leading to infinite regress), as I recently read in an essay by Popper, but instead to choose which of the normally accepted meanings are being used in a person's discussion at the moment.

Regardless of whether the meaning of sacrifice Rand provided was specific to her works or not, the principle of receiving a gain by choosing a greater value over a lesser one when reality won't let you have them both is a powerful call to look at the two-thirds-full glass and not the one-third empty one.

Nathaniel Branden's formulation was not necessarily an original thought, but it was a great catch-phrase that expressed an important philosophical principle in a powerful manner. It was easy for me to use as an emotional tool over the years when I felt disappointment at losing some lesser values. It was even important in overcoming drug addiction. (People don't normally think of an intoxicating drug as a value, but it most definitely is. Seeing it as a lesser value in relation to a productive life, instead of an evil substance, is a very important consideration to one who is addicted.)

This is a part of the wealth I think Objectivists are losing by ceding to the orthodoxy's call to demonize Nathaniel. There is a whole lot more where that came from, including original Objectivist concepts that were later misappropriated in an entirely immoral manner or whitewashed out.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

~ Just mentioning this 'in passing' since I've no desire for the main subject; but, what would be the proper sub-forum for persuing this subject here?

John,

The meaning of value could be discussed in the Ethics forum, or if it gets really outside the box, in Chewing on Ideas.

Michael

EDIT: I'm not going to make a separate post in honor of recent posts of SLOP (which is why this is an add-on), but it does look like the dark side woke up. I particularly appreciate their scatological/digestive and sexual-like approach to defending their brand of Objectivism and the Goddess Rand. It's quite funny. (Start somewhere around here, but this is only for about 3 posts, so more will probably be added.) Here are some choice goodies of so-called rational passion.

sewer

Gatorade-colored bile

let off the stinkbomb

nose hairs he has plucked and proves that they are ASS HAIRS

mutual masturbation

that sewer's standards

skunk

child pornographer

Namblaphile

cockroach [not really on topic, but thrown in for good measure]

the mud pie that someone threw at his ass just as he was defecating

crapped on an apple pie

loved to crap on freshly baked pies

This was probably just a little something to do right by Rand's memory by her erudite defenders. (I sure was kinda' missing Fahy.)

Incidentally, it is refreshing to see that Valliant now considers that public criticism of Rand (the person) comes from Rothbard and certain libertarians as primary sources in addition to the Brandens, given the impossibility of maintaining an "only the Brandens" posture without time travel. Whew! That's what I call progress.

[Robert Campbell]

Jim,

I second Stephen's recommendation of Sulloway's book on Freud. It's an eye-opener.

And I look forward to reading the other books on Stephen's short list.

Unfortunately, I also don't see any detailed intellectual biography of Ayn Rand coming out unless the author is somehow able to circumvent the Estate of Ayn Rand and the Ayn Rand Institute.

My efforts on one little bitty narrow topic (when, how, and why did Rand decide to call the moral position that she opposed "altruism") led me to an eminently plausible answer--namely, that Rand learned from Isabel Paterson about Auguste Comte's invention of the term. But even with help from Steve Cox, today's leading expert on Paterson, all I could do was use Rand's published journals to establish a time frame and point to published evidence that Paterson was familiar with (and extremely scornful of) the main themes of Comte's social philosophy. I don't know whether any unpublished documents in the Ayn Rand Archives would help to nail down the connection further. I do know that, as an "enemy of Objectivism," I will never be allowed in there to find out. Meanwhile, the ARIans will insist that everything I wrote on the topic is arbitrary speculation.

I never saw either Barbara Branden's book or Nathaniel's as a full-bore intellectual biography of Rand. I don't fault either book for not being that sort of work. Both do present a lot of information that a proper intellectual biography of Rand will have to take into account. And neither neglects Rand's ideas.

Ironically, the scholar who has so far come closest to providing an intellectual biography of Rand is Chris Sciabarra--in The Russian Radical and a couple of follow-up articles.

The Orthodoxy will never forgive him for it.

Robert Campbell

PS. While Barbara, Michael, Kat, and probably some others here were kicked off SOLOHQ or SOLOPassion, Michael is correct that I was never given the boot. Remarkably, considering the way Mr. Perigo runs people off for lesser offenses, I still have an account at SOLOP. Of course, said account is going to gather cobwebs until the site either ceases to exist or Mr. Perigo relinquishes control of it.

[Jonathan]

Ironically, the scholar who has so far come closest to providing an intellectual biography of Rand is Chris Sciabarra--in The Russian Radical and a couple of follow-up articles.

Do you have any news that you can share on how Chris is doing these days?

J

[Robert Campbell]

Jim,

Since you mentioned Nathaniel Branden's purported erectile dysfunction (and I agree that, whether he mentioned it rarely or frequently, this was complete, deplorable BS), I'm surprised that you didn't ask further questions about the sessions with Rand during which he made these excuses.

I mean, what about Ayn Rand's practice of providing "psychological" sessions to disciples, even... in NB's case.. to a lover?

In clinical and counseling psychology, such counseling would be considered grossly unethical, on account of the conflicts of interest involved.

It would be unethical even if Rand were professionally qualified to offer such counseling. (Obviously, Rand wasn't trained in counseling. Even if that didn't matter, the tortuous philosophicopsychological diagnoses that she offers in those journal entries are prima facie evidence that she lacked the temperament or the skill for the job.)

In fact, the provision of psychotherapy by masters to disciples (e.g., "auditing" in Scientology) has come to be considered a mark of a cult.

Mr. Valliant and his claque don't give a hoot about the ethics of counseling, so are incapable of recognizing any exposures here. (Meanwhile their sometime ally Mr. Perigo, who despises clinicians and psychotherapists as a class, deems himself personally qualified to provide counseling sessions à la Rand.)

By drawing attention to this activity of Rand's, Mr. Valliant's book may harm her reputation in the long run.

Robert Campbell

[James Heaps-Nelson]

Jim,

Since you mentioned Nathaniel Branden's purported erectile dysfunction (and I agree that, whether he mentioned it rarely or frequently, this was complete, deplorable BS), I'm surprised that you didn't ask further questions about the sessions with Rand during which he made these excuses.

I mean, what about Ayn Rand's practice of providing "psychological" sessions to disciples, even... in NB's case.. to a lover?

In clinical and counseling psychology, such counseling would be considered grossly unethical, on account of the conflicts of interest involved.

It would be unethical even if Rand were professionally qualified to offer such counseling. (Obviously, Rand wasn't trained in counseling. Even if that didn't matter, the tortuous philosophicopsychological diagnoses that she offers in those journal entries are prima facie evidence that she lacked the temperament or the skill for the job.)

In fact, the provision of psychotherapy by masters to disciples (e.g., "auditing" in Scientology) has come to be considered a mark of a cult.

Mr. Valliant and his claque don't give a hoot about the ethics of counseling, so are incapable of recognizing any exposures here. (Meanwhile their sometime ally Mr. Perigo, who despises clinicians and psychotherapists as a class, deems himself personally qualified to provide counseling sessions à la Rand.)

By drawing attention to this activity of Rand's, Mr. Valliant's book may harm her reputation in the long run.

Robert Campbell

Robert,

I agree with you that these "counseling sessions" were bizarre to say the least. They indicate a basic ignorance of the psychology of personal relationships, naivete and ignorance about the proper structure of a therapist/patient relationship, but the questioning that is going on is honest and she did not require them of Nathaniel. My question is: how did he get himself into this situation where he had to play about 4 ends against the middle? I don't get it. It is outside my experience of the reasonable.

Jim

[James Heaps-Nelson]

Robert,

As a followup I don't regard honesty as something you achieve simply by commitment to the facts. That's part of it, but the other parts are maintaining a balance between independence and being receptive to feedback from others and cultivating an understanding of your own needs and motivations. Part of the reason for the ethical rules of counseling you alluded to in your post is conflicts of interests. The other part is the blurring of healthy boundaries in a therapist/client relationship. The same is true for a mentor/disciple relationship.

The reason for boundaries in these kinds of relationships in a therapist/client relationship is that it is a facilitization process. Not one therapy technique will work for everyone and the therapist has to be open to the possibility that they are not helping their client. Patients need to understand what motivates their behavior. That is not always easy, but part of being a responsible person is to undertake the effort.

An unfortunate aspect of the early Objectivist movement was engagement in amateur therapy. This was an abdication of responsibility both on the part of the therapists and the clients. If I were to seek therapy I would try to delimit it to a issue or small set of issues I was trying to solve. I would want to see progress during my sessions and I would view the therapist as a detached professional facilitating and guiding the process.

I see a number of problems with the Rand/Branden situation:

1. Conflicts of interest and lack of detachment (as you mentioned).

2. No professional training (as you mentioned).

3. It is the responsibility of either the client or the therapist to break off therapy if they they have knowledge that it is based on false information.

Now I agree that Rand owned joint responsibility for 1 and 2, but I don't think she owned any responsibility for 3.

Jim

Edited June 9, 2007 by James Heaps-Nelson

[Brant Gaede]

Jim,

Since you mentioned Nathaniel Branden's purported erectile dysfunction (and I agree that, whether he mentioned it rarely or frequently, this was complete, deplorable BS), I'm surprised that you didn't ask further questions about the sessions with Rand during which he made these excuses.

I mean, what about Ayn Rand's practice of providing "psychological" sessions to disciples, even... in NB's case.. to a lover?

In clinical and counseling psychology, such counseling would be considered grossly unethical, on account of the conflicts of interest involved.

It would be unethical even if Rand were professionally qualified to offer such counseling. (Obviously, Rand wasn't trained in counseling. Even if that didn't matter, the tortuous philosophicopsychological diagnoses that she offers in those journal entries are prima facie evidence that she lacked the temperament or the skill for the job.)

In fact, the provision of psychotherapy by masters to disciples (e.g., "auditing" in Scientology) has come to be considered a mark of a cult.

Mr. Valliant and his claque don't give a hoot about the ethics of counseling, so are incapable of recognizing any exposures here. (Meanwhile their sometime ally Mr. Perigo, who despises clinicians and psychotherapists as a class, deems himself personally qualified to provide counseling sessions à la Rand.)

By drawing attention to this activity of Rand's, Mr. Valliant's book may harm her reputation in the long run.

Robert Campbell

It would have been completely unethical if she had been professionally qualified, but as an amateur ...?

This illustrates Rand's over-reliance on philosophy and her consideration of psychology's inferior status to philosophy. Hence, talk therapy. Therapy that does not involve altered states of consciousness is usually just blather (I am not including any energy psychology techniques of which I am mostly clueless) and can go on for years, as with psychoanalysis. This country is full of fully credentialed psychologists and psychiatrists who do horrible, incompetent, stupid and worthless work. (There was even one on "The Sopranos.")

But it is ludicrous to suggest that Branden's therapy sessions with Rand were damaging to him; they were damaging to her because of him. All those foolish journal entries would not exist except for him. Those were the days before NB developed his sentence-completion technique and transcended mere talk therapy. Before that he was probably little more effective as a psychotherapist than she was. (She apparently had some good things going for her one-on-one with people who were honest and aboveboard with her, but that was personal philosophy, not psychology.)

Afterwards, he was a genius psychotherapist. One had to see him in action to really appreciate this. While you had as a client no place to hide if you wanted to work, he was always very supportive. This is simply the nature of sentence-completion. His basic competence was two-fold: using sentence-completion effectively (he used other techniques but sc was overwhelmingly the most used and most important) and using what sc revealed competently and effectively, sometimes involving more sc with different sentence stems and other times switching techniques and sometimes talk, albeit mostly the client talking apropos what had just happened. Frequently the client made startling original and powerful observations. Nothing so far describes or alludes to any psychological change which happens later, unexpectedly. Sometimes, much later.

The above observations of his therapy are 30 years old. I have a basic critique of his kind of therapy then, which I am not going into here. I have nothing to say about his current work.

--Brant

Edited June 9, 2007 by Brant Gaede

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I see a number of problems with the Rand/Branden situation:

1. Conflicts of interest and lack of detachment (as you mentioned).

2. No professional training (as you mentioned).

3. It is the responsibility of either the client or the therapist to break off therapy if they they have knowledge that it is based on false information.

Now I agree that Rand owned joint responsibility for 1 and 2, but I don't think she owned any responsibility for 3.

Jim,

I can agree with this, but I would add a 4th entry, probably the most important, that is simply blanked out by those who criticize Nathaniel. That is the intent of the therapist.

A therapist should have on main goal only: to restore the patient to mental health. This is like a doctor, whose main purpose is to restore the patient to physical health.

We already know what Nathaniel's critics think about his participation in those sessions, but what about Rand's? Was she doing therapy in order to guide Nathaniel to mental health if that meant losing him? Or was she trying to use therapy as a tool to get him back?

Think about it. Do you find that honest? Did she say to Nathaniel, "Let us do these therapy sessions so I can brainwash you into loving me again"? No. She went on and on about how his psychology was flawed by this premise and that premise, claiming that he would be psychologically destroyed or worse if he didn't do this or that, yada yada yada—always aiming at getting him to react to her romantically. Her journal entries spell it out in plain English for those who are not blinded by Rand-worship. You can't possibly imagine that she was one person in the sessions an another when writing her journal.

Rand was using her position as therapist for gross manipulation, for her own personal gain irrespective of the cost to the patient. That is not honest.

My own opinion is that this is a situation where nobody was right. I particularly abhor the blank-out on reality that claims that Rand was some poor innocent victim and completely in the right about anything and everything under the sun. Rand was a victim of deception. But she was also guilty of deception.

I can live with that and sill admire her and her works. But then, I don't have my own self-esteem tied to a ghost.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Michael, her deception was general and basic going back many years and involved great self-deception and blindness about herself, people and her philosophy, but in regards to her therapy sessions with NB, he was the deceiver, not her. Of course she wanted him "back." If not she didn't want him at all in any respect.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Michael, her deception was general and basic going back many years and involved great self-deception and blindness about herself, people and her philosophy, but in regards to her therapy sessions with NB, he was the deceiver, not her. Of course she wanted him "back." If not she didn't want him at all in any respect.

Brant,

This confuses me. Are you saying that Rand was not hiding and misrepresenting her real intentions from Nathaniel in the therapy sessions? Her journal entries say otherwise. They say very blatantly she was actually trying to restore his mental health, while complaining that the sessions were not working at getting him back.

One deception does not erase another. (And there are differences of degree, of course.)

I will admit that she defined Nathaniel's mental health as Nathaniel being in love with her. I cannot conceive that a woman as smart as her would believe in this definition in all innocence all the way down.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Michael, her deception was general and basic going back many years and involved great self-deception and blindness about herself, people and her philosophy, but in regards to her therapy sessions with NB, he was the deceiver, not her. Of course she wanted him "back." If not she didn't want him at all in any respect.

Brant,

This confuses me. Are you saying that Rand was not hiding and misrepresenting her real intentions from Nathaniel in the therapy sessions? Her journal entries say otherwise. They say very blatantly she was actually trying to restore his mental health, while complaining that the sessions were not working at getting him back.

One deception does not erase another. (And there are differences of degree, of course.)

I will admit that she defined Nathaniel's mental health as Nathaniel being in love with her. I cannot conceive that a woman as smart as her would believe in this definition in all innocence all the way down.

Michael,

In regard to your next to last sentence, she probably would have considered that a symptom of his good mental health, not a definition.

Obviously she was in way over her head even if Nathaniel hadn't been lying to her.

I think--speculate--that she wanted him to exist--"back"--as a John Galt facsimile, which is the more basic lying I was talking about. I think--speculate--that she didn't see people as people--when and if she saw them--but as reflections of her heroes or other fictional characters. I also think she wanted him even if he was a liar if only he would keep lying. It was when the lying stopped that she got really pissed. Some would say because he had been lying. I think because he didn't keep lying. After all, their affair had been a lie: to their close friends, the public at large, to students of Objectivism who thought they were getting one thing and got quite another, ultimately. Reality raw crammed down our throats. And we thought it had been real. We didn't even know what "it" was. Consider that she thought love was "exception making." She could have accepted the lying as reflective of his love for her, just don't let it out--exception making.

As for Rand hiding her true intentions in therapy sessions: if she did, that might have been appropriate--for therapy. That is, to keep them out of sight or on the back burner while the "client" and his "problem" came first. I'm not trying to let her off the hook here, but as a psychotherapist it was objectively Nathaniel's job to tell her that any "therapy" with her wasn't appropriate for all the true and obvious reasons and that he was going to see Blumenthal instead, or whomever.

I think she lived in an "Atlas Shrugged" context--inside out--and that trapped her and her followers and that that was insane or at least simply and utterly wrong. If she had been there as an artist only, that would have been significantly different. In the deepest sense, all that crap in the 60s that led to the Break in 1968 was Nathaniel breaking free from that, including the "therapy." I consider his struggle admirable, but the way he did it much less so. He seemed to consciously want to have it all: her genius, his genius, NBI, the Objectivist movement, and above all, Patrecia. If so, he was a reflection of AR also wanting to have it all without paying the price, going back to the start of their affair where she seemed to be primarily concerned with protecting the culmination of her life's work from adverse publicity. And she seems to have known that to make their affair known would have made the affair impossible for it couldn't have withstood the light of day.

Obviously I may be wrong about a great part of what I have written above. Some of it can be referenced, some of it can't. What is certainly true is that neither was especially innocent, all considered.

--Brant

Edited June 11, 2007 by Brant Gaede

[James Heaps-Nelson]

Michael wrote:

I can live with that and still admire her and her works. But then, I don't have my own self-esteem tied to a ghost.

I have met very few Objectivists who really have their self-esteem tied to this. What I've seen is the fear that Objectivism is somehow unworkable in reality. I think that is simply a reflection of taking on worthwhile challenges and feeling fear and some of the missteps Rand took in psychology.

One of my favorite Nathaniel Branden quotes is: If you're going to accomplish anything worthwhile you're going to know some fear. Well it's true. It's how we face up to that fear and life's challenges that matters.

Jim

[James Heaps-Nelson]

Michael wrote:

Rand was using her position as therapist for gross manipulation, for her own personal gain irrespective of the cost to the patient. That is not honest.

Michael, I don't buy it. She was overreaching, but then if she didn't she wouldn't be who she was. She had no idea what she was trying to fix and that wasn't her fault.

Jim

Edited June 9, 2007 by James Heaps-Nelson

[Jonathan]

Michael wrote:

Rand was using her position as therapist for gross manipulation, for her own personal gain irrespective of the cost to the patient. That is not honest.

Michael, I don't buy it. She was overreaching, but then if she didn't she wouldn't be who she was. She had no idea what she was trying to fix and that wasn't her fault.

Jim

I got the impression that Rand had a very clear idea of what she needed to "fix," and was busy trying her hardest to "fix" it: She sensed that she had a rival, and she made it clear that it was unacceptable for Branden to have a serious romantic interest in her. The rival was scorned as a contemptible shop girl who was not worthy of Branden's affections (while Frank O'Connor was somehow worthy of Rand's), and was judged as most defintely not worthy of being selected over Rand as a romantic partner.

Btw, if you're wondering, yes, I understand that Branden helped feed Rand's views that Patrecia was unworthy. But I think that Rand had trained him well to believe that someone with a mind like Rand's should be the romantic ideal of any rational, healthy male, especially a brilliant man like Branden who was capable of grasping how wonderfully, perfectly ideal Rand was. Through hard work, a man can correct himself and program his emotional responses to reflect his rational beliefs, and, no doubt, he can also program his erections so that they also reflect only his highest, most rational evaluations. Surely there must be something very wrong psychologically, if not morally, with an intelligent man who would prefer a pleasant, pretty little actress to dour old Rand's arousing mind!

J

Edited June 11, 2007 by Jonathan

[william.scherk]

James Heaps-Nelson responds to Robert Campbell's post regarding sessions between Nathaniel Branden & Ayn Rand: "An unfortunate aspect of the early Objectivist movement was engagement in amateur therapy. This was an abdication of responsibility both on the part of the therapists and the clients."

[ . . . ]

I am close to pig-ignorant on details of this interlude, and don't know of the broader milieu at that time (e.g., I don't know if there was an inchoate habit of chatting each other up psychologically, or rather a developing plan for formal therapeutics to be associated with Rand, or what).

Ignorance established, I still would caution Robert and James to be chary of anachronisms -- I can't judge these talks between her and Branden through 2007 ethics. I know neither the detail or the contract: this was not a client and a professional, neither was it a cult elder and a transfixed victim. Lots of wild, dangerous and all round crappy psychotherapeutic notions were in the air in America at the time she had these sad meetings with the lying two-faced bastard . . . let's not blame her for doing exactly what we would have done: meet one on one with the lover to reason out the heartache and misunderstanding. That neither one could make love come again is neither our business nor very pertinent.

Is it sad? I dunno. Some Randian folk won't leave the minor personal tragedy off the table. Valliant's book, whether it sells 1500 or 4000, is prurient and unhelpful, to my pig-ignorant eyes. Let forgiveness draw a veil over these giants (Valliant's embarrassing persistence in flacking his own vanity press hitjob? Oi, go on a frigging TV talk show, James . . . promote your book less in the special-purpose cellars and punishment chambers of the inbred online world . . . ).

Or not, if the aim is to loudly and relentlessly re-wash dirty laundry on the front lawn, as at the cousin-in-Rand site Solo.

Soon the actors will all three be dead. What then? Will there be solemnity and a reckoning, or will there be the usual hyena calls to lunch?

James sees "a number of problems with the Rand/Branden situation" and lists them as, 'conflicts of interest and lack of detachment, no professional training, and mutual irresponsibility.' I am just not sure it should be cast in the creepy light of the 80s/90s therapy wave or our present theory and nomenclature. It was sad enough by its fated ending. It's not in the least creepy on its plain face, however, unless all romantic deaths are creepy.

I forgive all of this stuff as human, all too human and understandable and a bit over-ripe by now. Turn the page and take the veil with regard to The Affair, I say. Let it rest for a while while we all give it a big long think.

If only Vallant and his toadies would go on a lengthy golf tour or go raise Objectivism high hell in Dubai or something less smutty, less nose-in-crotch righteous. Yes, James Valliant, you smelled evil and you want us all to thank you for pointing out the lingering stench and making us queasy all over again. Thank you for the nose-rubbing. Point taken. Shut the f**k up.

I will happily accept a few links or tips to rectify my present bestial state of knowledge.

Edited June 11, 2007 by william.scherk

[Robert Campbell]

Jim, Brant, and WSS have all raised some worthwhile questions about the ethics of psychotherapy and why they matter here.

I'll get to these a little later.

In the meantime, I made a reference, up this thread a piece, to the difficulty of identifying and tracing intellectual influences on Ayn Rand:

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/in...ost&p=29605

It turns out that Jim Valliant has recently undertaken to review the work of a real scholar, Stephen Cox, on Isabel Paterson and her influence on Ayn Rand:

http://www.solopassion.com/node/2597

I won't attempt an analysis of the review, which is sitting out there for any interested person to read and evaluate.

I do know that if I had written a book that has a lot to say about Rand and someone reviewed it favorably (as Mr. Valliant claims to have done), I might be slightly taken aback seeing the reviewer make this off-hand remark:

The problems involving Rand in Cox's book are significant enough that we shouldn't expect something called "the Ayn Rand Bookstore" to be carrying it...

(See http://www.solopassion.com/node/2597#comment-32514)

But, hey, we're in Rand-land.

Robert Campbell

[Daniel Barnes]

Robert quoted James Valliant:

>"The problems involving Rand in Cox's book are significant enough that we shouldn't expect something called "the Ayn Rand Bookstore" to be carrying it..."

Given that TPARC is a quite remarkable exercise in apparatchik sycophancy, it is hardly surprising that James Valliant is at least consistent.

I note later he quotes Robert:

Robert:"PARC shares with official ARI publications the presumption that Ayn Rand never did anything wrong and had no character traits that might merit criticism."

Valliant then claims this statement shows Robert is either illiterate or dishonest. Well, if that's so, I must be illiterate or dishonest too, because I can't recall Valliant saying Rand ever did anything wrong, or had any character traits that might merit criticism, other than the occasional unjust outburst of anger - which is the Officially Sanctioned Character Flaw anyway, with the prefab secondary justifications already waiting to be lowered on cue like stage flats in this perennial melodrama. We might contrast this token level of criticism, clearly inserted to save the author from the embarrassment of having written an utterly adulatory tome, with the meter-busting levels of sycophancy recorded throughout the book. As I've noted elsewhere, Valliant seems to insert a remark or implication flattering to Rand on every page; sometimes in consecutive paras; even consecutive sentences. He makes wild claims that, if true, would amount to near superhuman abilities of prescience, psychological insight and emotional control on Rand's part (without noticing that such claims would make his fundamental thesis - that the Brandens played Rand for a fool for decades - untenable).

Of course, nothing could be more designed to deepen outsiders' suspicions of Objectivism than the attribution of superhuman qualities to its founder. The standard reply to this is that such sycophancy is the only rational, objective response to Rand's epochal greatness, plus the usual reversal of the burden of proof: further, that anyone who might be suspicious of such self-evident greatness merely reveals their own intellectual and moral shortcomings - that they are nothing more than an "anti-Objectivist bigot" as Valliant remarks later in the same thread. Frankly, I find it quite remarkable that Valliant would describe Robert like that. I mean, I can imagine him taking that somewhat over-defensive line about someone like me or Greg Nyquist, or anyone who's severely critical of Rand. But about a guy that co-edits a journal dedicated to spreading Rand's ideas??? Gee, how anti-Objectivist can you get?

I think this sort of thing is a pretty good indication that Valliant's entire "case" is little more than wild, and often hilarious, conspiracy theorising with transparently apparatchik intent. But at least we now know what is appropriate for the ARI bookstore to sell, and what is not.

Edited June 11, 2007 by Daniel Barnes

[Neil Parille]

Dan,

Prof. Campbell is of course correct. Valliant does have a "presumption," because anything negative about Rand with the exception of what the ARI sanctions isn't to be credited. Whenever anyone other than Peikoff says Rand was angry, he or she just doesn't understand that Rand's anger was the righteous rage of a moral prophet. "Rand threw every ounce of her justifiable 'intolerance' -- every sincere ethical judgment she could muster -- into the promiscously 'tolerant' culture she perceived around her. The Brandens' real problem with Rand is her moral (they would say 'moralistic') perspective." He then proceeds to discount "the Brandens'" particular examples.

[Daniel Barnes]

Neil:

>Prof. Campbell is of course correct.

This judgement is just your rank hooliganism and bilious partisanship showing, Neil...;-)

BTW, will "Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged: A Philosophical and Literary Companion" be sold in the ARI bookshop, given that at least one contributor, Michelle Cohen, finds some of the essays in it so offensive "to the novel's ideas, author, or fans" she has withdrawn her own?

My quick skim of the essay list certainly didn't reveal any shortage of fans contributing. Who, I wonder, were the offensive ones? And will the other "men of the mind" on that list reveal themselves, and join her in denying sanction to this deeply immoral mixing of poison with food?

Stay tuned....

[Robert Campbell]

Daniel,

Where did Michelle Cohen make the claim that she was withdrawing her chapter? It's in my copies of the book.

Needless to say, the Younkins book on Atlas Shrugged was never going to be sold by the Ayn Rand Bookstore. No one who was affiliated with ARI back in 2004, when the call for contributions went out, agreed to write a chapter.

As for what offends Ms. Cohen, well, Steve Cox (Chapter 35) suggests that Rand owed a greater intellectual debt to Isabel Paterson than the folks in Irvine are willing to accept. Susan Love Brown (Ch. 28) maintains that Rand's treatment of sexuality in Atlas Shrugged is superior to what we find in her two previous novels because Rand is no longer confusing pleasure with pain or "diving into the depths of perversion." Robert Campbell (Ch. 31) wonders why Eddie Willers had to be hopelessly and unadmittedly in love with Dagny Taggart, and what the broader implications of that might be. Etc. etc. etc.

It's amazing how many of those Rand fans can't give up the pesky habit of thinking for themselves :-)

Robert Campbell

[Dragonfly]

BTW, will "Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged: A Philosophical and Literary Companion" be sold in the ARI bookshop, given that at least one contributor, Michelle Cohen, finds some of the essays in it so offensive "to the novel's ideas, author, or fans" she has withdrawn her own?

My quick skim of the essay list certainly didn't reveal any shortage of fans contributing. Who, I wonder, were the offensive ones? And will the other "men of the mind" on that list reveal themselves, and join her in denying sanction to this deeply immoral mixing of poison with food?

Well, I saw the name of Sciabarra, and we all know what an evil whim-worshipping mystic Saddamite pomowanking scumbag looter he is! After all Hsieh proved that in a brilliant article of a few hundred pages, so it must be true. Further I saw the name of Jeff Riggenbach, who probably wouldn't pass the test either. Oh, and Robert Campbell too, that puts the lid on it of course! These are the most dangerous enemies of Objectivism, didn't you know that? You can't expect an Aryan, eh I mean ARIan to sanction those evil people!