The Cassandra Syndrome And The Magical Elixir
By DONALD DeMARCO
Cassandra is a figure from Greek mythology. She was a daughter of Priam, King of Troy, and endowed with exceptional beauty. Apollo provided her with the gift of prophecy. But when she rejected his romantic advances, he placed a curse on her ensuring that no one would ever believe her warnings.
Cassandra’s frustration, therefore, was to know of dire events in advance of their occurring, but never to be able to convince anyone of their truth.
A number of psychologists have employed the term “Cassandra Syndrome” to characterize patients who suffer a similar kind of frustration experienced by the mythological figure.
Melanie Klein, for example, sees Cassandra as representing a moral conscience whose main task is to issue warnings.
Warren Buffett earned the title of “Wall Street Cassandra” when he predicted that the stock market surge in the 1990s was merely a “bubble.”
In relation to Asperger’s disorder, the Cassandra Syndrome is sometimes said to be applied when parents or family members seek help for a child with Asperger’s and are disbelieved.
Martha Mitchell, wife of John Mitchell, attorney general during the Nixon administration, was labeled the “The Cassandra of Watergate” when she alleged that White House officials were involved in illegal activity.
The frustrations associated with the Cassandra Syndrome are well known to pro-life advocates. They know, without being blessed with special powers from on high, that the unborn human is a human being, that abortion is harmful to women, that many women are seduced into having abortions which they later regret, and that the pro-abortion machine often operates on lies, deceptions, and distortions.
Yet, their references to these realities are often rejected as if they completely lacked credibility. The rhetoric of abstractions such as “choice” and “women’s rights” prevail in the pro-abortion world over concrete and scientifically verifiable realities.
Cassandra’s curse remained with her to her dying day. There was no magical elixir she could take that would dissolve her Apollonian curse.
With pro-lifers, on the other hand, the situation is dramatically different in one important aspect. They now have at their disposal two elixirs. And while these elixirs are not exactly magical, they are effective in getting more and more people to believe realities about the abortion issue that they formerly denied.
The first of these elixirs is ultrasound. Former abortionist Joseph Randall readily admits to the fact that ultrasound images of the unborn make it difficult for people to maintain the illusion that the unborn is not a member of the human species. The introduction of ultrasound technology in his abortion clinic was followed by high employee turnover.
Randall confessed that he would not allow women to see images of their own children on ultrasound during pre-abortion screening.
“We knew,” he stated, “even if they heard the heart beat that many times they wouldn’t have the abortion, and you wouldn’t want that. No money in that.”
The second elixir comes in the form of videotapes. In September 2015, Kellyanne Conway, president of the Polling Company, Inc./WomanTrend, showed an 11-minute tape to focus groups in Denver. The tape featured a Planned Parenthood abortionist discussing various criteria that, in her view, justified the selling of body parts gleaned from the unborn children that she and members of her staff aborted. This is just one of many videos on the same theme that have incriminated Planned Parenthood.
Conway (who became Donald Trump’s campaign manager) found that participants in her focus group, including those who were pro-abortion, undecided, or pro-life, were, across the board, disgusted.
All the participants, after watching the video, went as far as to assert that the Planned Parenthood employees caught on camera should lose their jobs. Conway told The Washington Times that the videos were “like a magical elixir” allowing viewers to see through the façade that Planned Parenthood had erected.
The eye-opening responses of people who viewed Planned Parenthood’s damning videos prompted Kristan Hawkins, president and executive director of Students for Life of America, and Lauren Enriquez, a freelance writer and communications consultant, to offer the following hope-filled sentence for all who want to have the curse of Apollo lifted:
“With mounting evidence of the many ways that abortion betrays women, scientific and technological advancements testifying to the humanity of the preborn child, and young people more pro-life than any generation since Roe, we have the wind in our sails” (Human Life Review, summer 2016, p. 29).
Wedged between taxpayers’ money and the monetary returns of abortionists, human life is lost. Society may be beginning to wake up to this dehumanizing reality.
Hillary Clinton’s mantra that “Planned Parenthood should be funded, supported, and appreciated — not undermined, misrepresented, and demonized” is sounding more and more like nothing but hot air.
The media, to a significant extent, have operated in the spirit of Apollo, cursing the public by making it difficult for people to believe in the reports of the truly horrible things that are actually going on.
Technology is a two-edged sword: It provides the armamentaria for abortion, but it also provides the windows that show what is really involved in abortion. The elixirs that were not available to Cassandra are now readily available to virtually everyone.
As the truth becomes more believable, the lie becomes less credible. The truth has a splendor that can never be entirely extinguished.
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(Dr. Donald DeMarco is a senior fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College in Cromwell, Conn., and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. His latest works, How to Remain Sane in a World That Is Going Mad; Poetry That Enters the Mind and Warms the Heart; and How to Flourish in a Fallen World are available through Amazon.com.
(Some of his recent writings may be found at Human Life International’s Truth and Charity Forum. He is the 2015 Catholic Civil Rights League recipient of the prestigious Exner Award.)
