Grace Ann- What came to mind in reading this piece is this: we are looking at a passion play unfolding, a tragedy in archetypal terms. The psychology of defense around a complex has been at the core of such human stories for millenia, and this one is massive in its resonance. When themes such as shame, sex, power, money, immunity, exploitation, and secrecy gather around a hidden center, defenses naturally organize to keep that center from conscious view. At times, the defenses themselves become more visible than the core they are protecting, and that may be why this story continues to hold such psychic force in the culture. People sense that something larger than any one headline is being defended and, like you, I sense that we are just at the start of the unravelling of a shadow play of epic proportions. Thank you for the rigor of your work.
Your reframe is going to live in my mind rent-free for a while. "Defenses become more visible than the core they are protecting" is the mechanism I was reaching for and did not have the language for. I was writing about legal choreography and a woman rehearsing her testimony in front of cameras, which is one layer of it. You have named the layer underneath it, which is why the April 9 statement registered as uncanny rather than merely strange. The defenses are already louder than the center.
Part of what has been sitting oddly with me is that I had always read Melania as a woman who held her position as First Lady with a kind of quiet contempt. She has let her husband succeed or fail on his own, has not gone out of her way to defend him, and has never quite seemed to want to be there in the first place. That is what made April 9 so strange. A woman who has spent eight years performing distance from the role walked to a podium, unprompted, and delivered six minutes of unsolicited denial. Something broke through the usual remove. Your frame makes that legible in a way the legal reading on its own does not. The shadow asserted itself from the inside.
I will admit that on a human level, I have not been able to look away, and it is a little like watching a car accident for that reason. I think you are right that we are at the beginning. The Wolff litigation has not even reached discovery. The survivors have signaled they are not done. And the First Lady has now entered her own denial into the public record, which is the kind of move that makes sense only if she and her counsel anticipate a later, sworn version of the same conversation. The shadow is going to keep moving. I will be watching it with your frame in mind.
Grace Ann- What came to mind in reading this piece is this: we are looking at a passion play unfolding, a tragedy in archetypal terms. The psychology of defense around a complex has been at the core of such human stories for millenia, and this one is massive in its resonance. When themes such as shame, sex, power, money, immunity, exploitation, and secrecy gather around a hidden center, defenses naturally organize to keep that center from conscious view. At times, the defenses themselves become more visible than the core they are protecting, and that may be why this story continues to hold such psychic force in the culture. People sense that something larger than any one headline is being defended and, like you, I sense that we are just at the start of the unravelling of a shadow play of epic proportions. Thank you for the rigor of your work.
Sheila,
Your reframe is going to live in my mind rent-free for a while. "Defenses become more visible than the core they are protecting" is the mechanism I was reaching for and did not have the language for. I was writing about legal choreography and a woman rehearsing her testimony in front of cameras, which is one layer of it. You have named the layer underneath it, which is why the April 9 statement registered as uncanny rather than merely strange. The defenses are already louder than the center.
Part of what has been sitting oddly with me is that I had always read Melania as a woman who held her position as First Lady with a kind of quiet contempt. She has let her husband succeed or fail on his own, has not gone out of her way to defend him, and has never quite seemed to want to be there in the first place. That is what made April 9 so strange. A woman who has spent eight years performing distance from the role walked to a podium, unprompted, and delivered six minutes of unsolicited denial. Something broke through the usual remove. Your frame makes that legible in a way the legal reading on its own does not. The shadow asserted itself from the inside.
I will admit that on a human level, I have not been able to look away, and it is a little like watching a car accident for that reason. I think you are right that we are at the beginning. The Wolff litigation has not even reached discovery. The survivors have signaled they are not done. And the First Lady has now entered her own denial into the public record, which is the kind of move that makes sense only if she and her counsel anticipate a later, sworn version of the same conversation. The shadow is going to keep moving. I will be watching it with your frame in mind.
Thank you for reading with this much care.
--Grace Ann