A Short Introduction To Edward Teach: Part One

Do you want to know how magic works? I don’t.
Imagine how bat-shit crazy the room went the first time it looked like someone sawed a woman in half. It’s hard to think about, because now it just looks tacky. But that’s entirely my point.
In this next series of blog posts I'm going to explain how to read Edward Teach and his blog, The Last Psychiatrist. More importantly, I'm going to try and sum up the theses of the blog to provide an introduction to Teach’s book, ‘Sadly, Porn’.
I don’t think you should read this blog post. The joy of piecing together The Last Psychiatrist was like listening to The Beatles for the first time, except that to hear each song, you had to complete a sudoku. The blog was one of the most enjoyable learning experiences I’ve ever had. The joy comes from the struggle - climb the mountain yourself. Remember, the dragons only be on the map. This is your warning.

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The first article I read by Edward Teach was ‘When Was The Last Time You Got Your Ass Kicked?’. It analyses a scene from the eponymous ‘Louie’. While on a date, Louis confronts a group of teenagers about being too loud. The bully of the group walks up to him. The interaction is mock-friendly: he asks a series of questions culminating in “Louie, when was the last time you got your ass kicked?” to which Louis responds “Please don’t kick my ass”. The article analyses Louie’s behaviour. He knew the teen wanted a fight from the moment he walked up - why didn’t Louie try and get the first swing? Answer: Narcissism. 
Just to clarify, I don't mean the folk definition of narcissism. Louis doesn’t cower because he has a particularly high view of himself. Narcissism, in this context, is the process of creating a mental image and then trying your hardest to make sure others don’t see it’s a farce. For example, Louie wants to make sure his date sees him as a ‘man’. For him, that identity doesn’t come under threat until he loses a fight, so rather than destroy his identity, he takes the verbal humiliation and tries to come up with excuses afterwards. This definition of narcissism is complex, and I'll be fleshing it out fully later. 
Teach doesn’t blame Louie for this. His blog is full of examples of how culture pushes us towards this mode of thinking;

“America isn’t obsessed with sex and violence; it’s obsessed with authenticity (or avoiding it). It just so happens that sex and violence are the only two things that you can’t fake, and we keep coming back to them as the definitive “measures of the man.” We can fake wealth, intellect, status, kindness, political acumen, parenting, looks — there’s no objective measure of any of these things, a man can construct any identity he wants, people might not buy it but who are they to say? But a fight isn’t a matter of opinion, it is too real.

Same with sex. “Listen baby, I’m a great lover.” Well, we’ll know in fifteen minutes. “Am I a real man?” The response stands.

Fantastic. Reading that for the first time I screenshotted it, sent it to everyone I know, and carried on reading. A couple lines later, I had a panic attack. Just after a seemingly lucid skewering of American Commercialism, TLP launched into a multi-paragraph tirade against black teeangers. I was terrified in case somebody asked me where the quote was from - especially one of the black teenagers I sent it to. 
Rule one of The Last Psychiatrist: sometimes, he writes things and doesn't actually mean them. Confusingly enough, sometimes he writes things and, instead of actually believing them, he means exactly the opposite. Most confusingly, you’re meant to parse what he really means from him writing the opposite of what they believe. It seems simple, but it took me a few panic attacks, a series of breathing exercises and a couple of Xanax before I got the message.
Why does Teach do this? Back to Louis;

So… yeah. My wife took the kids out the other day. The most amazing thing is when you get to be alone in your house. As a dad you never get to be alone - or as a mum. And I think I'm getting older because the way I used that time has totally changed. I used to have Jerkfest 2006, are you shitting me? Jerking off in my own house? In my own bed? Taking my time? Going through my wife’s shit for pictures of her friends I wanna fuck… Everything, it was awesome! 
But I'm older now, so I don’t do that… I don’t care about that. Now, when everybody leaves, you know what I do? I just shit for hours. I take a big, long, beautifully private shit. With nobody fucking with me - that’s my dream! In Life! It’s to take a shit without people fucking with me. 
First of all, the other parent starts banging on the door - “Get out of there! Help me!” Or my four year old walks in - while I'm shitting! She just fucking walks in the room and does… a little dance? Get out of here! My asshole is this big. I’m pushing a shit out right now. I don’t want to see a cute face at this moment. That’s traumatising.
When they leave, even if I don’t have to, I just shit for fucking hours. My ass dries out, I stay there. I'm just shitting. Because that’s how old I am - I just love to shit. It’s my favourite thing. I don’t know why they call it number two, I think it’s easily number one.

Consider how Louis begins the joke - “So… yeah”. He wrote that down. He scripted his stutter. He wanted you to feel like he was coming up with it on the spot. He monologues like he’s having a conversation. Why? Because he wants you to imagine being on the other side of that conversation. It’s hard to laugh at a stranger. It’s easy to laugh with a friend.
That’s why he talks about shitting. Let’s face it, shitting can’t be the best part of Louis C.K’s day. It literally cannot be. I don’t know many millionaires. I can’t imagine they become them by spending so long on the toilet shit starts to dry on their ass. He’s pretending to love shitting, but really he means the opposite. You’re meant to be tickled, at some level, by the fact that someone who is able to tour the world by telling jokes, would list shitting at the best part of his day. 
Having to shit is probably also one of the few things you have in common. Well, and that other thing.

Teach’s rant wasn’t about his hate of black teenagers - it was about the Platonic Americans hatred of black teenagers. 
When TLP says “you” he’s addressing the average person which, in most regards, you are. Obviously, there is some self-selection involved in an audience for a blog synthesising Lasch and Herodotus. But if you’re smart enough to be here, you should be smart enough to understand that when you’re described as a pussyclart history professor who voted for Mitt Romney, you should be able to parse that Teach is making a generalisation. 

The Last Psychiatrist has posts called; “The Maintenance of Certification Exam as Fetish”,”Subtypes of OCD”, “Atypicals and Diabetes: Glucose Transport”, “What You Need To Know About The MAOI (Selegiline) Patch”, “Does Media Reporting Of Suicides and Homicides Promote Copycats?”, “The Diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder: What Does It Really Mean?”.
Don’t worry, most of his fans accusing you of narcissism haven’t read them. They just loved the one where he owned a total feminazi.

He’s trying to talk about things he cares about through a lens you care about. That’s why the most serious psychology blog of all time has multiple articles on Jay-Z. What does The Last Psychiatrist care about? Most articles will fit into one of these three theses. Each one will get an individual blog post explaining them

1. Describing the characteristics of narcissism 

2. Distinguishing between narcissism and other personality traits 

3. Describing the relationship between narcissism and violence

Are you watching closely?