The evasive psychology of the ‘real me’
Her conclusion that ‘it’s not good for Wayne to be left alone’ is an incredible assessment of a man aged 36
According to the footballerturned-manager Wayne Rooney, his newly released documentary offers an “insight into me as a person” as well as an account of the career of one of England’s most successful players of recent decades. It presents Rooney as a good family man and team player – to be distinguished from his public image of drunken brawling and serial infidelities. Congratulated by the pundits for his courage in “opening up” about his episodes of depression and binge drinking, Rooney now emerges as a celebrity promoter of some of the key concepts of the therapeutic society.
Rooney champions what the psychiatrist and writer Theodore Dalrymple characterises as the “admirable evasions” through which psychology undermines morality.
The notion of “the real me”, an innocent and virtuous Wayne Rooney as featured in his documentary, is counterposed to the “phenomenal me”, which is expressed in his notoriously bad behaviour, both on and off the pitch.
This conduct is not the essential Rooney but is a result of a range of external factors for which he cannot be held responsible. These include his upbringing on a Liverpool council estate (although he appears to come from a comfortable and stable family with devoted parents and siblings and a doting “nan”). Rooney’s loutish behaviour is repeatedly attributed to a combination of falling in with “the wrong crowd” and drinking alcohol, activities over which he, implicitly, has no control. He also blames a lack of emotional “support” from managers and team mates in the early stages of his (stellar) career.
The recurrent theme is that, as Dalrymple puts it, “it is up to others to ensure that the phenomenal me acts in accordance with the real me”. Rooney’s wife, the long-suffering Coleen, endorses his apologetic explanation that he has, on occasion, “put himself in horrible situations” and made “bad decisions”. Her conclusion that “it is not good for Wayne to be unsupervised” is a remarkable assessment of a man of 36, with four children and now embarking on a new career in football management.
The psychology of “the real me” amounts to a celebration of fatalism and passivity and a refusal of personal responsibility. As Dalrymple notes, the dismissal of astrology by Edmund, the villain in Shakespeare’s King Lear, might be equally be levelled at modern psychology: “An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star!”.
Cats and dogs
The observation of the 19th-century historian Thomas Babington Macaulay that “no spectacle is so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality” comes to mind in relation to the furore over Kurt Zouma, the West Ham footballer filmed kicking and slapping his cat.
A petition demanding prosecution has attracted more than 300,000 signatories, the club fined him £250,000 (two weeks’ wages) and he was dropped by sponsors including Adidas and Vitality. When selected to play, Zouma was barracked even by home supporters every time he touched the ball.
Alerted to the film of this incident circulating on social media, the RSPCA promptly dispatched its animal welfare officers to take Zouma’s two cats into protective custody, pending consideration of further action. This brought me back to my experience a few years ago of pleading – in vain – for the RSPCA to confiscate a pit bull terrier living in an overcrowded flat with several young children, including a baby. Nor could I persuade the police or social workers to take preventive action – even though a number of recent cases of dog attacks on children had featured prominently in the media.
Sentimentality towards animals flourishes in Britain alongside tolerance of cruelty towards children, inflicted by adults as well as by dogs. It is sobering to recall that the RSPCA was founded in 1824 but the NSPCC not until 65 years later, after early cases of child abuse were prosecuted under animal protection legislation.