Magical Thinking

    Thirty years ago, in counseling for depression, I learned about magical thinking. Here is a dumbed down definition:

Magical thinking, the belief that one’s ideas, thoughts, actions, words, or use of symbols can influence the course of events in the material world. Magical thinking presumes a causal link between one’s inner, personal experience and the external physical world. 

 

     From a child's perspective it could be superstition like, step on a crack, and you'll break your mother's back. Jinx! In the adult world it might take the form of wearing a lucky fishing hat or using certain lottery numbers. Shazam! A psychiatric patient I met believed that her worry for her family actually produced some beneficial outcome for them. Voila! Since her therapist could not persuade her otherwise, he advised her to limit herself to one hour a day of worry, her own private magic show.

   To an atheist, the idea that prayer affects things in the real world might seem like magical thinking. Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo! In Judaism, an example might be inserting prayer slips in the wailing wall. Tada! Catholicism attaches special power to certain rites, objects or repetition of prayers. A corruption of words in Catholic communion, corpus cristus, actually gave us the words--Hocus pocus! Magical thinking has crept into evangelicalism in the form of "name it and claim it" which teaches that prayer plus faith obligates God to grant our wishes. Open sesame! And even conservative Christians like myself can fall into thinking that if we could just get our loved ones to hear the right message, read the right book, or come to our church, their spirits will respond whether they are prompted by the Holy Spirit or just us. Presto chango!

     But the above examples are mere parlor tricks compared to the David Copperfield (the magician, not the Dicken's character) disappearing-elephant-sized, misdirection in America's magical phrase I identify. This phrase makes both medical science and physiological evidence of the differences between the sexes disappear. Be advised, the magic only works on gender. It is still not acceptable to identify as a different race, age, height etc. A waiter will not get a job as a nuclear physicist by identifying as one. I will never earn my living as a fashion model. Even in post modern America, numbers are still numbers, money is still money. You can't identify unpaid taxes as paid or a postage stamp as a driver's license. But if a little boy who identifies as a girl gets to wear dresses, take transition hormones, even have surgical alteration, what should we do for a child who identifies as a puppy? Someday the curtain will come down, the tragic trick of performing gender experiments on volunteers and children will be revealed, and the show will be over. At least, that is the future I identify. Abrakadabra!