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Titanic America

William K. Joseph
The Journal of Psychohistory V. 26, N. 2, Fall 1998

It was the best of times. The world was at peace; there had been no wars for some time. Progress and social change marked the era. Exciting new discoveries in science, engineering and medicine made it possible to expect that life would be much easier than in the past. Times were prosperous. The rich were getting richer, but the middle classes were catching up and the poor had hopes that began to seem attainable. There were no enemies, nothing on the horizon that made it seem anything could go wrong. Then disaster struck, out of the blue, with massive, swift destruction. Lives were ruined, fortunes lost and what once seemed invincible, indestructible, unsinkable had completely failed. This is the story of the French Revolution, the American Civil War, the Crash of 1929, Nazi Germany...and quite possibly the story of what is about to happen today. It is the universal saga of overconfidence, complacency, hubris, denial of risk, and belief that we are fully in control of our fates. It is also the story of Titanic.

The movie Titanic captures the essence of this age-old story as well or better than any novel or movie ever has, and, as such, has won its place as the most successful movie ever made. Perhaps it is one of the most widely-shared events so far in history. For this reason it is an important phenomenon to study. Why? (1) Because extraordinarily popular cultural events give us a window on the psychology of the group, a glimpse of its collective unconscious fantasies, (2) Because group-fantasies always precede group behavior, and proper analysis might lead to successful predictions of what group action is forthcoming, and (3) Because dangers and opportunities can be discerned and destruction possibly avoided if correct insights are acted upon.

My own analysis of Titanic is that it succeeds in touching the most important and sensitive chords in all of us, the pain and suffering that accompany growth and separation from our parents. In addition to actual birth, individuation and separation are experiences shared by everyone who has lived past infancy of course with varying degrees of anxiety, anguish and exhilaration.

THE SINKING OF THE TITANIC AS
PUNISHMENT FOR INDIVIDUATION

In Titanic, we know from the beginning of the movie that the ship will sink, that over one thousand five hundred lives are lost and that unfathomable pain and suffering will take place. We also know that Rose Dawson survived this tragedy, since she tells the story. Our primal instinct for survival is aroused how did she do it and why was she spared? We soon go back to the past a favorite hypnotic trance-inducing technique for the story.

Rose was a prototypical individuating teenager: angry at the pressure she felt from her mother, forced into relationships that she detested, kept on a short leash of social constraints, prohibitions and rules by a group she was seemingly bound to forever. It seemed all her acts of rebelliousness had been exhausted. In fact, at the peak moment that this group was showing off to the world their superiority and success, Rose chooses to try to kill herself, for there seems no way out of this awful bound existence for her but suicide. Enter the White Knight, the Christ-like savior, Superman: Jack Dawson.

Rose, about to throw herself into the black nothingness of the sea, is saved by Jack, in a way that every human would like to be saved his hand out, a kindly voice, no harsh condemning words, a selfless gesture. Jack takes off his boots so that he can dive into the water if she should fall in. Why? Because, as he says, he has seen her plight and he is now involved. Jack is a free spirit, an orphan with no home, he does what he pleases, and to him "life is a gift and I intend to make each day count."

Jack proceeds to guide Rose into a world of independence, of freedom, of dance, of laughter and spitting, of expression, of defiance of constraints and irrational authority. A world of truth and sincerity, and of love. A world where there is no shame for physical expression or for thinking bad thoughts. He gives her a reason to live and the strength and support to break away from her family, her group, her society. A wonderful, titanic, fantasy-wish fulfilled.

Of course we know there is nothing that comes that easily that is so good. At the exquisite moment that Rose stands on her own, separate and apart, trusting Jack with her fortune, her soul and her self, at the very moment of merging with Jack sexually, the ship hits the iceberg. Jack is hunted down like a dog, the ship is sinking, Rose's mother's wrath becomes poisonous, the ship cracks in two, and one of the great human disasters of all time ensues. Jack is condemned to die by being chained to the sinking ship. Rose is now faced with the mother of all dilemmas: save herself by regressing and returning to the suffocating but "safe" world of her mother and sadistic fiancŽ, or risk it all to forge a new life on literally uncharted waters, on her own, using only her wits and instincts to survive. This is what she chooses, but, again, at a huge risk and cost, fighting against the odds, struggling through narrow, water-filled passages, being crushed, going through birth tunnels and mazes, battling hysteria, screams and blood, she survives and even frees her savior! What a fantastic dream!

Ultimately, Jack dies so Rose can live. He refuses to get on the makeshift raft with her because it would not support both of them. With hundreds of dead and dying all around, Jack floats, Christ-like, through the water once it is evident Rose will survive. Rose is reborn, taking on a new identity, taking Jack's last name. Her hideously selfish fiance kills himself. Rose goes on, thinking of Jack, dedicating her life to him. She has children and grandchildren. In the end, she throws the fabulously famous and priceless jewel necklace into the sea the ultimate choice is made favoring the cherished memory of Jack and what he did for her in saving her life and allowing her to separate from the materialistic bauble, the meaningless object that seemed to only curse those who owned it.

THE MESSAGE OF THE TITANIC FOR TODAY

A most interesting phenomenon occurred at screenings of Titanic all around the world. Teenagers in the audience have cried throughout the movie. The eerily-haunting wails of the Celine Dion songs set the mood for sadness. Surely, the love story is sad, the tragedy of the ship's sinking is depressing, but other stories have been sadder and more tragic. Perhaps the crying is in recognition that to survive, to separate from our infantile world, from our family and parents and siblings, from our dependent emotions and infantile cravings and demands, is the most painful, difficult struggle we all must face. And for us, unlike Rose, there may be no Jack to save us, to put out a helping hand, a loving kind word, supporting us when we falter and waver; no guiding hand to lead us through the oppressive battle. It is a cry for ourselves. For despite health, education, money, material goods and comfort, the struggle is ours and ours alone, and there is something to truly feel very sorry for ourselves about.

If this is indeed what the popularity of Titanic is all about, what does it foretell about the future? On a positive note, Rose does survive and perhaps we will too. On the other hand, Rose survives at quite a price: by the sacrifice of the person she so truly loved, and by giving up all her worldly material possessions and breaking from the world she knew. Also, the world around Rose cracked, crumbled, sank and was destroyed, taking with it its accumulated wealth, progress and changes and regressing back to a primitive state. And all this came about in a Gilded Age of peace, progress and prosperity. The metaphor of the supposedly invulnerable ship heading recklessly into dangerous waters is perfect as the embodiment and representative of all such times in history. Destructive forces wipe out human progress at similar critical moments of human overconfidence, materialism and delusions, when mankind believes that we have gained a mastery over our natures and our fates.

Titanic has not been alone in conveying this message. The past year has been filled with endless numbers of disaster movies, of threats to the planet from invaders (Independence Day), tornadoes (Twister), asteroids (Deep Impact and Armageddon) and monsters (Godzilla). On television, the most successful comedy sitcom for the past nine years, "Seinfeld," ended with the four principal characters being tried and convicted for not caring about their fellow men and sentenced to prison for a year, a cell block being the final image seen as the show faded from view.

If the message is that our progress and growth and independence will be threatened with disaster from somewhere should we do anything about it? Here is the age-old question of whether we can learn anything from history or not. I believe that if we simply look for any of the specific historical events to be reenacted, they never will. There will not be another French Revolution or Civil War. But I do believe groups will repeat an acting out of the destruction of its wealth or death of many of its members after today's period of peace and prosperity, after this period marked by individual growth, separation and individuation.

What could go wrong? Nuclear warfare could easily erupt as nuclear weapons proliferate. A world economic collapse could come about if the world's nations do not cooperate in saving the weakest nations from further financial collapse. The Middle East could blow up. Nationalism could revive and overcome world cooperation, leading to crippling disputes. As this paper is being written (Aug. 12, 1998), there are many ominous events taking place in various places around the world. These events, if not quickly handled and contained, have the capacity to sink Titanic America. Russia, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philipines, Hong Kong and Japan are all experiencing economic contractions and severe banking and currency problems, perhaps analagous to the Titanic hitting an iceberg. There is hardly a rescue ship on the scene; unlike in many past manias, there is no lender of last resort that is capable of bailing out these financial problems. The IMF and the World Bank say they have just about exhausted their reserves. Despite all the unsettling news, the stock markets in America and Europe are soaring to record high valuations. We are running full steam ahead, ignoring icebergs. Throughout history, financial manias always have ended badly.

One worrisome concern is that the investment mania is worldwide. The contagion has reached around the globe. Are we facing a global financial panic? If panics serve to erase progress and prosperity, as a sort of group homeostatic mechanism to keep within safe and "normal" bands of acceptable group behavior, then we can expect a panic in the near future. It is doubtful that we in the U.S. are immune from crashes in the Far East. After all, the leading heartthrob in Japan today is Leonardo DiCaprio, the lead actor in Titanic. The world's investors and hysterical teenage girls are all in a state of hypnotic entrainment, a global social trance. Most of the world stares into a television screen every day and gets its news and cultural imput from the same basic sources. A worldwide group-fantasy might exist, and the normal give and take of opposing or opposite points of view may exist no longer.

The world has experienced enormous growth, prosperity and peace in the past twenty years. Historically, such periods are followed by disturbingly severe setbacks, usually in the form of crashes, deflations and depressions. A reading of Charles Kindleberger's Manias, Panics and Crashes book will surely convince any reader that busts follow booms as night follows day. Perhaps it could be restated that panics follow extended periods of peace and prosperity.

These insights are not just emanating from a small cadre of psychologists or historians in the U.S. Nobel economist Milton Friedman thinks today's investment scene is "more of a bubble...than there was in 1929."1 And Paul Samuelson believes that we have a dangerous bubble to deal with thanks to mishandling of the money supply and that Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan (like the captain of the Titanic?) has not taken the proper precautions and is now "dealing with the physics of avalanches."

Half-way around the world in Victoria, Australia, Anne Crittenden uses the work of Carl Jung to interpret investment manias and concludes that today's "ego inflation" causes "the mass throwing off of any and all caution" and the assumption that people are "susceptible to anything that promises magical deliverance from a life of poverty and toil and that the masses are fascinated with and adulate the rich and famous," crowds "succumbing to acting out their archetypal longings with no regard for the possibility of failure."2 Her conclusion is that "this can only lead to a drastic reversal...a psychic deflation, a fixation on descent...a sickening plummet from the sky."

As an investment advisor for over 32 years, and as a survivor of the World Trade Center bombing, I have learned a number of valuable lessons. Buildings, ships and economies are never "too big to fail." Also, many financial decisions are often based on the seeming security of the fact that the rich are involved. This brings in flocks of the gullible and the envious, and often ensures catastrophic outcomes if too many people and too much attention are involved. And the biggest risk seems to materialize and erupt when the very words "there is nothing on the horizon" are used to describe the seemingly clear sailing ahead for ships, markets or almost any other trend or endeavor. It is the extreme end result of hubris and denial of risk.

We have learned two universal truths in our psychohistorical research of groups, economies and financial markets: One, fantasy precedes reality; and two, progress is always wrecked by war, depressions, or other disasters, despite all warnings. As for fantasy, the novel by Morgan Robertson, Futility, written prior to the Titanic disaster, told a tale of a huge ship, the Titan, which sailed from England and sank on its maiden voyage in the North Seas!

There are now enough danger signs and warnings present for people to be worried enough to take proper, cautious, defensive measures. Will they? History tells us they will not. So does the experience of the actual Titanic. The "unsinkable" ship hit an iceberg at 11:40 P.M., on April 14, 1912, and sank less than three hours later. Beginning at 9 A.M. that day, the Titanic had received warnings of icebergs present in almost the same location from the ships Caronia, Baltic, Amerika, Mesabe and Californian. The Titanic increased its speed, overlooking the warnings, in an attempt to set a speed record. The band on deck played ragtime as the ship sank. The rich and their envious legions had flocked to this ill-prepared ship because it was the "in" thing to do, ignoring common sense, the Titan novel, and urgent warnings. Will the world be smarter today?

William K. Joseph is a financial advisor in the New York area and a Contributing Editor of The Journal of Psychohistory.

1. John Cassidy, "Pricking the Bubble." The New Yorker, August 17, 1998, pp. 37-41.
2. Anne Crittenden, "The Stock Market Scene Today: A Jungian Perspective." The Elliott Wave Theorist Special Report. December 1997, pp. 1-8.

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