The Galileo Effect

As an adult, Galileo had good relationships with his friends. However, with his critics he was fond of using ridicule and sarcasm as ways of belittling them. He was extremely sensitive to any slights on his reputation, and insensitive to the effects that his replies evoked. Any criticism of himself or his work, no matter how mild it was, always brought out the nastiness in his character (these were traits of character that he shared with Lenin). In his polemical writings, over the years his style progressed from course invective to satire. He could not ignore any controversies in the subjects that interested him.

Galileo’s main enemies were not the Catholic Church, but the academic Aristotelians at the universities. His work undermined the ideas of Aristotle on the celestial spheres, and hence he was regarded as a threat by university mathematicians and philosophers. So over the years he was targeted for criticism by his academic enemies.

My Analysis of Galileo

He was an independent and original thinker, like his father. However, he had an extreme degree of sensitivity and never learned how to handle it harmoniously when he encountered difficulties in his various professional relationships. In his early days as a scientist he was afraid of criticism, and in his replies to any criticism he was always over-the-top and abusive. He was given support and advice by the astronomer Johannes Kepler, but he could not acknowledge such help. He had to present the image that his success was based on his own efforts alone.The inability to accept help and praise is usually the hallmark of a deep sense of guilt (the person believes that he does not deserve such help and praise) [²]. I assume that his excessive sensitivity came from his relationship to his mother, and indicates to me that he suffered from regular denigration from her, causing slow-onset trauma [³].

He was ambivalent towards academia and Church authorities, being both afraid of them and willing to provoke high-profile confrontations with them. This suggests to me that some degree of trauma was experienced from his relationship to his father. This ambivalence made him unable to accept professional help from fellow academics in the same fields of science that he worked in. He had to avoid feeling indebted to anyone else. This tendency indicates that he felt rejected in some ways by one or both his parents.

The overall effect of these negative influences acting on him was to make him a public advocate of intellectual freedom in an era of repressive religious and academic intolerance to any ideas that threatened the stability of the status quo. He must have felt an intense need to be authentic in an age of conformity.

Galileo, Lenin and Myself

Both Galileo and Lenin could be charming when they were the centres of attention by an admiring audience. However, when they were criticised, even mildly, they became verbally offensive and intolerant. They never shied away from polemical disputes with their critics. However, when they had to confront opponents face-to-face who possessed political and legal authority, they were much less self-confident and could be easily intimidated. They could challenge authority from a distance but not face-to-face (in the Russian Revolution of 1917, Lenin was not the type of revolutionary who manned the barricades and confronted the police directly). In face-to-face confrontation with a figure of authority, the subconscious influences of trauma kicked in and affected their behaviour. Galileo’s and Lenin’s over-sensitivity when confronting male authority indicates that during their childhood they had a problematic relationship with their fathers. Many children have problematic relationships with their parents, but here I am focused on children who are excessively sensitive to their parental relationships. [4]

Most of my adult life I have been just as sensitive as Galileo or Lenin towards personal criticism of myself, and in my phantasies I was just as verbally offensive towards the person making the criticisms as they were. I had more self-restraint than either of them, and so rarely gave voice to my emotional upset.

I amalgamate my ideas on Galileo and Lenin with my own experience of childhood to produce a basic generalisation on the difficulties of a sensitive thinker within a difficult social and academic age. This generalisation I call the Galileo effect. This is the need to invalidate critics, especially if he is not currently in a face-to-face situation with them. The person may also invalidate strangers if they can symbolise something he despises.

Characteristics of Galileo Effect

Consider a person who lives in a society that does not appreciate his ideas or lifestyle. He has a sense of superiority since he feels that the society is inferior to his level of development. Yet he also feels powerless in many ways. His originality or free thinking is disapproved of by important authoritarian structures that have some degree of power over him, such as academia or the hegemonic power of a political group. He develops fear of those in authority over him.

His fear and hatred of authoritarianism gradually increases and may produce a feeling of paranoia against authoritarian structures. Eventually his desire to overcome his sense of powerlessness pushes him to seek a confrontation with those authorities. He could live quietly in the background, but instead he seeks attention. He seeks some form of validation for his achievements or his life style.

To be more accurate, if he only seeks validation, then he stays within the law. However, if he seeks power as well, he may drift outside the law and become a rebel or a freedom fighter. [5]

The issue that power and powerlessness bring is that the person is not concerned with being an anonymous critic of the system. He may seek attention since he realises that the status quo needs to change. This brings him into confrontation with the system, even though he may feel that he cannot win.

Even if he decides to remain living quietly in the background, this does not prevent authoritarian systems from upsetting him. If the hegemonic political system becomes flagrantly abusive to freedoms in some ways then it can cause serious psychological disturbance to the person. For example, during the first Gulf War in 1990, I felt that America went on the rampage in the Middle East simply to protect its cheap oil supplies – the declaration that it was protecting Kuwaiti independence was merely the pretext for its invasion. At that time the arrogance of America caused me serious psychological upsets, which I had to hide since I was working at the time with vulnerable people in a hospital. I became vehemently anti-American. There was nothing that I could do and it intensified my feeling of being powerless.

It is not just individuals who feel powerless towards authoritarian systems. Groups may feel powerless, and society as a whole may feel powerless. So at the group and social levels, such aggressive actions by foreign powers seeking to control the sovereignty of other, weaker, countries are always likely to produce a similar hostility towards the aggressor. This hostility is most extreme in the sectors of society where people feel deprived and powerless. These people feel invalidated by the aggressor. Hence in modern times we witness the aggressive stance of Muslim groups towards America and Britain.

Roots of the Effect

How does the Galileo effect arise? The roots of it lie in childhood. Consider a boy who has above average sensitivity. During his childhood he is invalidated by a significant male authority figure, and no other male figures validate him either. When the child grows into an adult he will feel acutely the lack of social validation by male authority figures. If he has grown into an individual and a free thinker, someone who can think beyond the accepted social norms of his day, then he may develop an antagonism to any significant male authority, especially any that are authoritarian. If he is the target of criticisms by authority, then he feels that this continues the invalidation of himself. He will then feel the need to invalidate such authorities, by doing to others what was done to him. Although other people can be sarcastic or satirical to their critics, the Galileo effect implies that the sensitive person will go “over the top” in his offensive replies to critics, even when the criticism is mild. As usual, it is always extreme reactions that are the focus of my analysis.

The reason that he goes over-the-top in his responses is due to the prevailing influence of intense fear in his subconscious mind. He has to surmount this fear of criticisms in order to engage in dialogue. When fear is absent, then he can respond with constructive and moderate replies to his critics. However, deep fear prevents moderation in any dialogue. The person can only rise above his fear by going over-the-top in his responses.

A central issue is that, as an independent thinker or creative artist, he is producing ideas or art which is not publicly acknowledged to be of social value. Hence he feels invalidated by the lack of a positive response to his work. Alternatively, he may keep his ideas or art hidden from the public because he knows that it will be disapproved of or ridiculed or denigrated. He fears criticisms of himself – this is the crucial point.

As a child, his invalidation by authority meant that he had no significance, no value to that authority. As an adult, the invalidation carries over to the feeling that his work has no significance, no value either. He loses the sense of being authentic in his work.

Galileo’s fear intensified with time and the continued academic criticisms of himself till it reached a point where the only way to handle it was to seek a major confrontation with authority figures. He had to make public his ridicule and criticisms of such figures in order to remain authentic to himself. And so he was precipitated, against the wishes of his friends, into open conflict with the Catholic Church.

In general, the sensitive thinker is likely to be propelled by his need to overcome his fears into making his criticisms public. Any authoritarian figure can be the target of his ridicule – he does not need to be acquainted in any way with the target figure. Any stranger will do.

Present-day academia has become just as restrictive to free thinking as it was in Galileo’s time.
It is the unwillingness to explore ideas outside of the current status quo in academia that makes academia restrictive.

[¹]. Many of the biographical notes on Galileo are taken from the book:
White, Michael. Galileo Antichrist. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London 2007. [1]

[²]. Guilt is an emotion. I have three articles on Emotion on the Home page. [2]

[³]. The speed of on-set of trauma is analysed in the article Childhood Trauma. [3]

[4]. Some books on Lenin are:
Deutscher, Isaac. Lenin’s Childhood. Oxford UP, 1970.
Ulam, Adam. Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Fontana, 1969.
Wolfe, B.D. Three who made a Revolution. Thames and Hudson, 1956. [4]

[5]. In my book Patterns of Mind, I have three articles on Power and Corruption, the first being Power. [5]

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Ian Heath
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.	Notes on Galileo I examine some psychological influences on an historical figure who strode the world stage: Galileo Galilei. He poses important issues for psychology thinkers, such as the need for a sensitive thinker to invalidate hostile critics and strangers. This need was shown too in a more contemporary figure, that of Lenin. I start with a brief account of some facts that I need for my analysis. His father had an enquiring mind and was an independent thinker and innovator in his field of knowledge (music). He was argumentative and difficult, and in his books he “vociferously attacked” the vocal style of his times. His mother had a poor education and was something of a moaner. She resented the father’s interest in developing new forms of music since it did not contribute to improving the family’s social status; she mocked his efforts. So I assume that her main negative influence on their son Galileo was finding fault with him (an aspect of denigration).[¹]
Sub - Headings
My Analysis of Galileo
Galileo, Lenin and Myself
Characteristics of Galileo Effect
Roots of the Effect
References