The Art of the Plausible

Every American ponders starting a business. There is some genetic confidence the Americans have in their ability to do it, the belief it has a local and even national social value, and they have the inverted view that such a risk is a virtue. Of course the technical and scientific fields are fertile here but many wonderful creations have emerged from the softer areas.

The Freudian franchise comes to mind at once. Freud was wonderfully creative; one need look no further than his Moses and Monotheism, a much more entertaining work than his psychological fiction. But rather than pursue the "Moses as an Egyptian" idea, he stayed with the psychological product. Brilliantly he merged it with the genius of Sophocles to give it historical and intellectual heft. (Imagine how different life would be if he had chosen the beautiful writer, Webster, and saddled the West with a generation of The Duchess of Malfi and lycanthropy.)

What raised this question was a comment on the phrase "Psychological Homogeneity" yesterday, a phrase coined to highlight the disparities often seen in pathological personality where one would expect the pathology to bleed from one discrete area into another but somehow does not. This is more than a Bill Clinton-like compartmentalizing, it is a true parallel life that allows the ax murderer to move seamlessly through his nonviolent world, as comfortable as a bigamist. It is not simply the absence of guilt or the apprehension of capture; there seems to be a true comfort these people have in both entities. Unlike Jekyll and Hyde, they are the same man, with no chemical interface.

"Psychological Homogeneity" has "The Art of the Plausible", a creation that has a reasonable appeal that fits an inherent preconception. Like so many notions, "right brain, left brain", the value of trans fats, the inherent instability of societies with disparate incomes there is an appealing and totally improvable logic in the concept. This is a fertile field for entrepreneurs. The plan would be to get some start up money, endow a university chair, set up a charity with a few high profile personalities and start employing the kids.