You probably remember this 1969 Rock Opera by The Who. The iconic song from that opera was the Pinball Wizard. If you remember the story, Tommy witnesses the murder of his father at the hands of his mother’s lover.
His mother then tells Tommy, “You didn’t see anything. You didn’t hear anything. You won’t say anything.” Tommy experiences a Conversion Reaction. He becomes blind, deaf, and mute. In the time of Freud, such psychological illnesses (e.g., blindness in the absence of eye or nerve injury or disease) were termed Hysterical Reactions (hysterical blindness, hysterical deafness, etc.) Later, the diagnoses were revised to Psychogenic blindness, deafness, etc. Today, they are called conversion reactions – typically precipitated by traumatic events.
I was thinking about Tommy last night because of the Trump effect in which the devotees of the Trump cult become seemingly unable to believe their own eyes and ears, and instead accept Trump pronouncements and Fox News broadcasts as truth even as both stand in opposition to their own senses. It is something akin to a Cult Conversion Reaction.
Of course, my analysis is imperfect. Trump acolytes want to believe whatever their Orange Messiah tells them. Or perhaps their Orange Messiah tells them what they want to believe. Belief, I think, offers a comfort that Reality often does not. Reality can be cold; it can be harsh; and it just as often leaves us downhearted and weeping as it lifts us up in joy. I know that sucks, but there it is.
Such a shame that Trump supporters aren’t pinball wizards. Perhaps they need to be sexually abused. That seemed to do it for Tommy.