Tim Romano wrote:

<< I think Pound had a fervent, sincere,
idealistic belief in the power of certain key political documents, the
US Constitution and the Magna Carta among them.  These documents
represent the unwobbling, the precise, the firm, the inheritance of
western civilization, the clearly and simply stated Will of the Founding
Fathers.>>

I think this is a pretty good general principle. It even can work in the
case of  irony. Try reading "A Modest Proposal" on the assumption that
Swift himself is the Projector and "sincerely" believes his proposal and
the arguments for it. Your estimation of the *man* Jonathan Swift changes
radically -- but your reading of the essay remains the same. That is, the
Projector is the "same" character, and the reader's relationship to him
the same, whether or not you identify him with an actual historical
character (Swift).

It works the same in politics. If, as most people seem to assume, Stalin
was merely a scoundrel and an opportunist, then the Soviet experience
is without content. That is, there is some point to Pound's observation
somewhere that "Criminals have no intellectual interest." But if one
views the USSR from 1925 to 1950 on the assumption that the
membership of the CPSU (up to and including Stalin) were a cohort
of men and women struggling within concrete historical conditions
to build socialism as they (were able) to conceive it, then regardless
of one's "judgment" of that period, it becomes a historical drama of
great interest.

The same goes in respect to those suffering from mental illness. You
can make more sense of the behavior of someone suffering from
schizophrenia if you see her as rationally and sincerely struggling
with the world as it comes to her -- the voices are for all practical
purposes real for her, and it is as false to identify her merely with
the voices as it is to identify a friend solely by his taste in breakfast
cereals.

Carrol Cox

Alexandra Draxler's observation that " the whole question of
diagnosis is suspect" is correct but misleading. Knowledge of the
brain has advanced greatly in the last 30 years but is still primitive,
and while I would not dispute her implicit claim that the fields
of psychiatry and clinical psychology contain large numbers of
incompetents and even scoundrels, again it offers a clearer view
of the field, both its strengths and its weaknesses, if you view
its work (e.g., the DSM) as expressive of the limited knowledge
rather than of pure bumbling or skulldruggery.

[Chatting with my therapist once I expressed some skepticism of
the diagnosis of "Borderline Personality Disorder." She said, Yes,
it may be just a way for a psychiatrist to say Fuck You to a
patient.]