X-Men as VR Archetype

Marvel's X-Men: A Literary Archetype

for the VR Counseling Field

QABradford

Rehabilitation Counseling MS Program

College of ARPE

San Diego State University

TOC

The Biological Condition: Mutation, the Perspectival Pivot of

Ability and Inability, and Adaptation… 1

Adaptive Technology: Prosthetic Functions from Bionics to

Fashion…2

The Mind and Potential:

The Counseling Styles of Magneto and Professor X… 4

Onslaught & Countertransference… 5

Psychoanalysis and the Astral Plane… 6

Cerebro & The Danger Room:

Counseling Outreach Assessment Leads, Biofeedback

technology, Training Protocols… 9

Mapping Vocational Potentials Far Beyond RIASEC… 12

Mutant Eugenics, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and

Biodiversity:

The Crux of Social Privilege-Stigma & Vitalness of Self

Advocacy… 13

The Dangers of Self-Loathing over the Human Condition and

the “Survival of the Fittest” Myth to Rehabilitation… 15

The Vitalness of Physiological Diversity… 16

Works Cited… 17

ABSTRACT

In the 1960s, Stan Lee and Marvel

Comics premiered X-Men. The book was an

enthralling narrative of people born with

congenital or genetic characteristics that made

them different from the rest of society at large.

These differences–sometimes extraordinary

powers, sometimes extraordinary disabilities

were accordingly a pivot leading to either stigma

or privilege. The story revolves around two

major characters in the book who embody those

philosophies leading people with the x-gene to

master their mutation into action of privilege or

stigma. Although the X-MEN is a pulp fantasy of

a hopeful, industrial, post War America, its

fanciful and socially relevant themes provide a

model of guidance and exploration upon the

themes of biological condition, adaptive

technology, the mind and human potential,

rehabilitation of weaknesses into strengths and

the advocacy and self-identity of the minority in

face of adversity from the majority. The book

provides a rich framework for exploring

Rehabilitation Counseling and an analysis of the

human condition.

Marvel's X-Men: A Literary Archetype for the VR Counseling Field Bradford 1

The Biological Condition: Mutation, the

Perspectival Pivot of Ability and Inability,

and Adaptation.

Both Professor X and Magneto recruit

and scout mutants (X-Men 1963). Those in dire

need and those with exceptional capacity. Of

course they both carry out the same work of

providing counsel in their two very different

ways, but they have to deal with similar

underlying issues. First the reality that the

human societies from which they are coming are

harsh, judgmental and even in some cases have

sent them into destructive behavior and self-

loathing. The X-Men universe features groups of

people who are committed to hating mutants like

the Friends of Humanity (FOH) or eugenicist

oriented politicians and governmental leaders

like Graydon Creed who are hell bent on

government programs to eliminate mutants,

seeing them as a threat to “normal” people (X-

Men ).

Second, after freeing them from the

doldrums of despair and self-esteem and self-

efficacy deficits–sometimes impossible due to

psychiatric complications like in the cases of

Sabertooth’s psychopathy or Mystique’s

personality disorders–Professor X and Magneto

spend an immense amount of time in retraining

them to hone their condition into strengths. The

series is filled with great cases studies such as

Wolverine who suffers from PTSD after

governmental experimentation and special ops

and has bouts of bloodthirsty violence in addition

to total estrangement. Then there’s Storm who

has bouts of claustrophobia. Or Jean Grey–the

highest ranking psychic mind after Professor X–

whose empathic ability is susceptible to bipolar

mania. Or even the professor himself who had to

master himself, suffering the schizophrenic


ailments of hearing voices and navigating it to

find his own.

Adaptive Technology: Prosthetic Functions

from Bionics to Fashion.

One of the earmarks of comics have

always been the gaudy costumes and outlandish

codenames and dual identities of the characters.

However we forget that many comics were

published in a hyper-nationalized, racialized and

militarized era of propaganda and espionage.

And the reality of that era included real-life spies

and public figures who often even changed their

histories and names. In our era of non-

compromising personal identities and absolute

individualism, the importance of costume and its

power is often misunderstood. Fitting into

Narrative Psychological Theory and also the

Dramaturgy Sociological Theory the idea of

context and role are penultimate. A large part of

the ritual is... "related to the idea of role

enactment is the concept of identity. Social

identity is an effect of role enactment (Sarbin &

Allen, 1968). Identities are social productions

that reflect the social definition of an individual's

reality (Weigert, 1986). An individual's identity

changes to adjust to each new social situation.

Dress becomes the vehicle that announces

one's identity to others in the same way that a

policeman's uniform announces his identity

(Stone, 1962). " (Miller 808)

In other words, clothes visually

communicate about the person to their

environment. In addition the clothes involve a

role to be played, almost like the participants of

a West African masquerade. Costumes require

an according action and illicit an according

reaction. So in X-Men comics, the costumes and

alter egos empower the characters to enter a


modality to carry out their vocations, vocations

which display their mastery of their disability.

In one study findings saw that clothing affected

the psychology of the wearer. In the study "the

findings support the significance of costume in

role enactment, since the largest percentage of

respondents perceived Halloween as a success

and believed that they could play different roles

when wearing a Halloween costume (45%); see

Table 4. This finding suggests support for the

contention as presented by Stone (1962) and

Goffman (1959) that people cannot leave their

usual roles without leaving their usual dress.

"(Miller 813)

The power of costume marks not just

our culture and national identity but also our

functions and specializations, as indicated by

Earnst Harms article in the American Journal of

Psychology, "the most important social influence

on dress is what we may call the element of

"costume." In the entire realm of dress this

element of costume is what gives the general,

inclusive stamp, while it has as its opposite the

tendency toward the differentiation of social

ranks... Costume also includes the national

characteristics of dress as well as the

peculiarities of professional groups, of soldiers,

of political groups and organizations. And

costume also includes fashion" (Harms 243)

The dynamic costumes of say, Cyclop's TBI/

vision impairment adaptive headgear, Rogue's

body contact insular jumpsuit, Gambit's

fingerless gloves, Wolverine's claw release

vents, or even Professor Xavier's telekinetic

hover chair illustrate the need of ergonomic,

adaptation tailored technology away from

generically produced adaptive technology. In

addition for matters of vocation and

professionalism the detail of what group the

clothing binds or disassociates is an important

consideration especially in job interview,

application and retention.

While the market offers stock options it

has been apparent that fitted technology,

considerate of individual physiologies increases

ability. Even in the case of veterans "...the

personal nature of disabilities in that each one

was different depending on the injury to the

veteran’s body. This required a customized

approach to the prescription and provision of the

prosthetic devices to be used by the veteran.

Artificial limbs, orthotics, wheelchairs and other

prosthetic devices didn’t lend themselves to bulk

low-bid volume contracts as prosthetic devices

had to be fabricated on a one-on-one basis."

(Downs 54-55) One of the most vibrant and

typical examples of prosthetic limbs in X-Men is

the war veteran Forge who has a cybernetic leg

and arm. As fantastic as the idea sounds, it is

the conceptual basis that essentially makes

"disability" a pivot from acute inability to acute

ability. A real-life example is Aimee Mullins.

Aimee Mullins, an infant paraplegic

amputee, grew up mastering adaptation in

accordance to the development of technology.

And incredibly the pivot of disability allowed her

the development of ability that made her bionic.

Her journey out from human frailty ironically put

her on a path of becoming more than human in

some of her life aspects. Interacting with

children in a presentation helped her realize...

"that the conversation with society has changed

profoundly... no longer... about overcoming

deficiency. It's a conversation about


augmentation. . about potential. A prosthetic

limb doesn't represent the need to replace loss

anymore. It can stand as a symbol that wearers

have the power to create whatever it is that they

want to create in that space. So people society

once considered disabled can now become the

architects of their own identities and indeed

continue to change those identities by designing

their bodies from a place of empowerment. What

is exciting is that by combining cutting-edge

technology robotics, bionics - with the age-old

poetry, we are moving closer to understanding

our collective humanity. If we want to discover

the full potential in our humanity, we need to

celebrate those heartbreaking strengths and

those glorious disabilities we all have. It is our

humanity and all the potential within it that

makes us beautiful." (Mullins 55)

This viewpoint of a malleable human

potential could only be expressed by someone

like Aimee Mullins who experienced the

debilitating restrictions of physiological

limitations and the virtually limitless freedom of

physiological augmentation. It's a viewpoint that

is the basis of X-Men lore and the congenital

disability metaphor of the mutant x-gene.

Essentially Aimee Mullins addresses that the

empty space of where a human being's function

has gone absent or has been replaced by

vacancy, in that vacancy a new function,

vocation or ability can occupy, accentuate, and

accelerate that individual, their constituency and

their environment.


The Mind and Potential

The Counseling Styles of Magneto and

Professor X

Often compared to Martin Luther King

Jr. and Malcolm X stand Professor Charles

Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr (Max Eisenhardt).

Better known as Professor X, Charles Xavier is

born with a congenital condition of acute ESP

that ironically manifested as a disabling

condition in his youth. But as he resolved his

difficulties with his condition, he realized his

ability and mastered it into powers rather than

debilitations. His political stance eventually

solidified that as the series terms “mutant

abilities” were not only a gift, but one that can

serve to benefit humanity and “mutant-kind”

mutually. Professor X grew up affluent and

privileged and accommodated.

On the converse is Magneto, Erik Lensher, his

long-time colleague, yet political and

philosophical opposite. Magneto’s stance is one

of mutant supremacy. And although some

mutations are debilitating, his view is that

humanity is less advanced and mutants should

have a more pivotal role in their own and

civilization’s destiny. Magneto’s condition is a

molecular structure that channels magnetic

forces that he has mastered, effectively

manipulating metal objects. His philosophy is

harsh, yet an immediate result of surviving the

Holocaust as a Jewish person.

The contrast between Magneto and

Professor X border on the methods of Gestalt

Theory versus Psychoanalytic theory. The

notions of superiority of Magneto versus the

notions of co-existence of Professor X mirror

that of the Deaf community versus the hearing

impaired. Within the range of people with


disabilities the acknowledgement of in-group

and outgroup cultural differences determines the

cooperation we can achieve in helping solve one

another's problems. It essentially is the equation

of accommodation and the the realization that

ability and inability are a spectrum in which

disability is merely the downward lever for an

often unacknowledged upward lever of pure

ability or power.

Onslaught & Countertransference

Onslaught, X-Man #15 (May 1996)

A very well written story arch that looks a

countertransference manifestation that affect the

Marvel universe called Onslaught--essentially a

psychoprojection of Professor X’s unresolved

transferences manifest in one catastrophic

countertransference. The saga and it’s

illustrations of interactions create a very detailed

picture of a range of moods and brooding that

illustrate the sarcasm, said doubt and general

manipulative behavior that shouldnt ever be the

conduct of a counselor. But in the manifestation

of the Onslaught countertransference monster,

Professor X becomes unhinged, essentially

affecting all of the characters in the Marvel

Universe with which he interacted. The saga

was quite powerful. And its an even more

powerful metanarrative for deployment in

counseling: 1) Believe in your clients

doubtlessly.2) Don’t pick favorites nor evidence

of favorability. 3) Share your thoughts on

approach and technique openly and evenly. 4)

Empower your clients to correct your miscouncil.

Effectively the saga ends with

Onslaught defeated thanks to the teamwork of

all the Marvel Universe but not without the

expense of major characters from throughout.

Bad practice in counseling technique is

ultimately costly and perhaps ambiguous advice

and ambiguous emotional relationships are

much stable and handier in the long run.


Psychoanalysis and the Astral Plane

Although academia has gone the route

of championing empirical evidence exclusively,

the scholars of the ancient traditions that set the

foundations of our institutions of knowledge

were much less conclusive about reality and

made much more space in the accommodation

of not just doubt, but also faith. The Astral Plane

(Strange 1963) is one of those ancient concepts

rooted in Platonic and Greek philosophical

history. In the early nineteen hundreds, when

science was gaining popularity, there was still a

populous and educated group of scholars

involved in “mystery religions” that looked at old

texts.

One prominent scholar of the era was

GRS Mead, who brought up a few valid points

on the pursuit of knowledge and the nature of

skepticism in that era. As quoted in his booklet,

The Subtle Body, a composition looking at the

idea of our human psyhco-energetic body as

perceived through various knowledge systems,

he writes in the proem: “It is, however, the

prevailing habit of the skeptical rationalism of the

present day to dismiss summarily all such

beliefs of antiquity as the baseless dreams of a

pre-scientific age, and dump them all

indiscriminately into the midden of exploded

superstitions.” His notions, though dismissed by

the proper sciences--sciences that eventually

popularly pursued eugenicist notions, by the

way--because of they’re theosophic nature,

analyzed all data addressing concepts like mind

and spirit and theology in order to understand

whether “death”, “life”, “soul” and “resurrection”

were ancient concepts that were literally about

the body, or even more deeply, devices

acknowledging the intellectual or spiritual mind.

He goes on to write of the subtle body,

acknowledging several times in the text as a

theory. He writes, “Now, in my opinion, it is

precisely this leading notion of a subtle body,

which for so many centuries has played the

dominant role in the traditional psychology of

both the East and the West, that is most

deserving of being retried, reviewed and revised

to serve as working hypothesis, to co-ordinate

and explain a very large number of these

puzzling psychical phenomena.” (Meade 1919).

What we can see in X-Men lore and in other

parts of the Marvel mythos is the utilization of

the same idea of a notion of a subtle body, but

of course writers have approached it in terms of

astral projections and astral bodies upon an

astral plane. Its curious how ancient scholars

who created the format for which we pursue

knowledge entertained such concepts, and that

such those same concepts certainly have

retained their place in today’s discussion.

The most long lasting quote that

impressed me after reading the booklet by GRS

Mead was his quote describing the scholarship

of his era, giving me great insight on the context

of academia at the turn of the century. He writes,

“On all sides we are hearing of telepathy,

telergy, clairvoyance, clairaudience,

psychometry, mesmerism, hypnotism,

suggestion and auto-suggestion, automatic

writing, trance-phenomena, mediumship of

every variety, multiple personality, exteriorisation

of sensibility, psychical materialisation,

communication with the departed, visions and

rapts, dream-psychology, the psychology of the


abnormal, with all its manifold complexities and

well-nigh inexhaustible data, psycho-analysis,

psychical research, psycho-therapeutics, mental

and spiritual healing of every kind, and so on

and so forth. The atmosphere is thick with

rumors of psychism, spiritism, theosophy,

occultism, Christian science, new thought, magic

and mystery and mysticism of every grade.

(Meade 1919)”

For those of us in counseling

psychology, the idea of our industry along with

“psycho-analysis, psychical research, psycho-

therapeutics, mental and spiritual healing” as in

the same arena as other listed is eye-opening.

Though Freud produced a large amount of work,

to the rationalists at the time, even psychology

was on the same side of the spectrum of

baseless, low-evidence science. So in X-Men as

I grew up reading about the astral plane and

Professor X’s pyschoanalytic interactions via his

own subtle body with subtle bodies of others, I

was experiencing an age old intellectual

discussion where quantifiable science had

dropped off into the realm of qualitative data and

potential fantasy. But is it not fantasy that

motivates people in the counseling field for the

goal of helping? Mustn't we have faith that

human potential is limitless?


Cerebro & The Danger Room:

Counseling Outreach Assessment Leads,

Biofeedback technology, Training Protocols.

One of the most dynamic fictional

devices is Cerebro, a sort of thought processor.

In the comic book it is used for tracking and

assessing the potential of mutants according to

a psychic resonance or signature that's

particular to each. Using old speak--brainwaves.

Although the idea of such a device is far fetched,

the evidence for the need of such psychometry

is proven in the multitude of problematic

encounters that are manifest in accommodating

individuals with disabilities or any type of

physiological, psychosocial difference. One of

the obvious indicators are the continuous human

rights struggles that occur everyday on the basis

of sex, gender, race, social class, religion, etc.

Those who have power often mis-gauge those

who do not and behaviors of dominance,

violence and marginalization befall those of

minority status.

The multitude factors that influence the

quality of another's existence must have various

ways of being measured and indicated so they

can better receive accurate and consistent

assistance. But in so many cases the

assessment is cheap and minimal or expensive

and excessive

The most effective strategy is to create

singular testing and training systems that serve

as a singular myriad test that does one hundred

things at one time or limited sittings. The Danger

Room in X-Men comics--much like Star Trek's

concept of the Holodeck, a hologram grid room

deck of their aircraft--is a simulation space

engineered to imitate multiple scenarios. With

modern technology, wall projections, touch


screens, sensors, track cameras, air

conditioning, etc, many of the simulations that

we practice as counselors as role-plays, group

therapies, one on one counseling, etc, can

easily be transferred into computer programs

and be administered in a manner that allows us

better distance to be objective observers and

adjusters of a client's behavioral processes.

Because experience is an invaluable method of

education and rehabilitation, a VR simulation

can allow for a thousand experiences in a only a

thousand seconds. Like a video game allows

unlimited chances to try and try again. However

the video game industry stays distinctly

segregated into entertainment away from

underfunded and under-mentioned rehabilitation

counseling programs.

There are rudimentary frameworks that

can develop into ideas like Cerebro and the

Danger Room such as a new device being

implemented in New Jersey knows as TACT.

The "Technology Assisted Classroom Teaching

(TACT)" device was "developed by The Center

for Neurological and Neurodevelopmental

Health (CNNH) in Voorhees, NJ, is a teacher-

initiated remote behavior capture system with

access to professional support and expertise.

This technology utilizes a camera and a small

computer to efficiently record target behaviors,

both antecedents and consequences, and also

acts as an aide in teaching new skills. Behavior

and teaching can be viewed in real time over

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability

Act (HIPAA) compliant Internet portals, or can

be captured and reviewed at a later date by a

behavior analyst or other clinician. Teachers

control the device, and data can be collected as

needed. Such an approach reduces any

“reactance” effects or distractions of an extra

observer being physically in the classroom, and

is very cost efficient, as there are no travel or

other expenses of having a behavioral

consultant attend in the classroom—often when

the target behavior does not occur. TACT will

also allow the Behavior Analyst to take data on a

daily basis and provide the necessary feedback

fostering behavioral progress and success in the

classroom. TACT technology is viewed

confidentially and in compliance with laws and

regulations." (Pelicari 2010)

Technology can be used to observe an

entire teaching group and allow teachers a more

neutral role in assessing the development of

pupils, giving them detailed attention, given

testing criteria can curriculum are broadly

measuring and without cultural bias.

The underlying ideas and mechanism

that Cerebro and the Danger Room would have

to involve an optical, analytical network in order

to adapt and anticipate the developmental needs

of the user. And similarly, in the comics, the

Danger Room featured a separate observation

and control room on the balcony of the floor

above the VR simulation grounds.

Although the pedagogical deliveries are

very manual, disintegrated and traditional, with

the developments of video gaming and virtual

reality, I would imagine the integration of VR

simulation will be the way of the future. Marvel

Comic’s X-MEN and their “danger room” and

many others. Technology and improved

graphics resolution provides many solutions and

is already available evident in products like

Google Glass, Sony VR headsets, and wall


projected touch screen as manufactured by

Panasonic like the ones I used teaching ESL in

Japan. VR simulators to cover curricula of social

and cultural interaction can improve the

comprehension of civics and more, reducing the

counseling hours necessitated and increasing

the potential number of sessions clients need for

therapy.

There is easily available evidence that

supports that digital simulations assist the

learning development particularly of students

with autism. Some digital assessment and

treatment technology already in research and on

the market include SMART-games on the Pluff

platform, which produced test results that

indicated it “Overall results suggest that Pluff is

acceptable, usable, and enjoyable for higher

functioning children with ASD and that the

directions for operating the controller were easily

understandable” (Gotsis 2015).

Another digital platform is Small Steps

Big Skills which was reviewed in two studies,

one in the Journal of Intellectual and

Developmental Disabilities and in the Journal in

Education and Training in Developmental

Disabilities. The platform was said to have very

favorable results: “Findings from the beta

version of the game showed that linking these

elements is an effective way to teach skills, and

results were published in two special education

journals. The first study results published in

Education and Training in Developmental

Disabilities in December, 2009 showed three

elementary aged students with autism mastered

all three skills taught through a beta version of

the video game and generalized the skills to

their natural environment. In a second study

published in Intellectual and Developmental

Disabilities in June, 2010 results showed three

middle school-aged students with intellectual

disabilities increased the percentage of steps

completed in the correct order after playing the

game” (Anonymous 2011). Conclusively,

platforms like Small Steps Big Skills utilize video

modeling and the Pluff platform provides real-

time empathy reading simulation without the

need of constant counselor interaction for

retraining purposes. Ultimately VR programs will

grow initially from their scripted scenario basis,

but as did table-top RPGs of the 70s and 80s ,

they too can eventually be tapped by

computerized and three dimensional GUI

technology as is standard in the highest end

entertainment systems.


Mapping Vocational Potentials Far Beyond

RIASEC

In addition to training protocols for those

venturing into and back into the job force with

developmental disabilities or after sustaining

debilitating injury, assessment batteries are a

pivotal tool in evaluating what training and

accommodations they require. While the

industry of our nation does have its modern

assessment staples like Holland's RIASEC

types, Krumbolt’s associative learning theory,

the ever popular Myers-Briggs quadri-variable

personality codes, an important scholar whose

work deserves more attention and analysis is Dr.

William Marston. While the other theories are

helpful in their analysis and measurement of

interest, Marston developed a theory that

focused on group power dynamic and

personality type. Often the discrimination against

individuals with disabilities is enacted not

because the management comprehended the

moral implications of their dehumanizing

behavior, but especially from a more elementary

bullying sort of dynamic rooted I the fact that

"they can". Marston's DISC theory looks directly

at this ability potentials aspect. The assessment

“...based on the work of psychologist William

Moulton Marston, PhD. 2 Marston was

interested in how people felt, behaved, and

interacted with the world around them. 2 The

DISC method is easy to administer and interpret.

This instrument helps determine the different

personality types (ie, Dominant, Influencer,

Steady, Conscientious) of each person in the

workplace." (Slowikowski 2005)

Although comic books--especially

historically--seem like a sociological Dramaturgy

therapeutic panacea for society, one of the

biggest reasons we've only been able to

embrace their messages in retrospect was

thanks to the moral fundamentalism of a

McCarthyist mogul of censorship, Dr. Wertham,

who essentially attacked the medium as the root

cause of unsavory behavior in youth, much like

Tipper Gore's attack on the rap and rock and roll

industry during the eighties. The 1950s

censorship of pulp publishing and comic books

ended careers, debilitated industrial growth and

essentially ended important social ties and

therefore cultural developments. Although the

stories were fanciful, graphic and provocative,

creative culture is a transmuting of thoughts--like

X-Men's Cerebro, and even psychic so-to-speak.

When person picks up a publication and

comprehends it, there is a timeless transmission

of thoughts, be they two days or two thousand

years previous. A book co-authored delivers to

its human reader a discussion and collaborative

narrative. A memoir or work of abstraction can

be an empathic device of delivering experience

and emotion. But Dr. Wertham didn't

comprehend the psychological and

psychotherapeutic importance of the creative

mediums and to this day, academia suffers an

intellectual deficiency without it... "A true arch-

enemy of the form, Wertham's critique of comics

went beyond criminological concerns: Comics

didn't just pervert children, you see, but ruined

their ability to appreciate fine literature and art

later on in life. He argued that tales about

Batman-not to mention Tales from the Crypt-

were like heavily seasoned food that destroyed

young aesthetic palates before they could be

trained to appreciate delicate, refined fare.


Shakespeare, he fretted, just couldn't follow

Superman." (Gillespie 2001)

But dynamically—in the same era the

medium was attacked—a highly educated and

inventive Harvard graduate and inventor of the

polygraph, Marston, championed pulp

publications. In a particulary comic book context,

if… “Wertham was the Lex Luthor of comics,

hell-bent on their total annihilation, then William

Moulton Marston was their Man of Steel,

dedicated to championing their cause. Marston

was a Harvard-- trained psychologist who had a

law degree to go along with his Ph.D. In the '20s

and '30s, Marston was best known as a tireless

advocate of the polygraph-he developed an

early lie detector machine-and he lobbied

unsuccessfully for its use in the courts." Marston

wrote Wonder Woman which initially was a

comic book that explored feminist ideas,

bondage themes and the dynamics of power-

play, privilege and stigma.

Marston was obviously highly educated

and understood his material as a conceptual

free-space to find solutions for human issues.

And in his intellectual acrobatics, not only did he

come up with the polygraph, he also came up

with an assessment theory called DISC, which

unlike RIASEC, focuses squarely on power-

dynamics of personality. Conclusively, though

the 1940s and 50s were an era biased towards

the WASP demographic, great minds like

Marston’s have a lasting influence. The highly

educated writers of that era simulated

application of theories like Narrative therapy in

their fiction in a sociological context. If career

counseling and other industries are economic

bodies of a macro-body we call “society”, the

rehabilitation of it--in the Dramaturgy

sociological theoretical framework that

emphasizes role and performance--requires we

approach its condition with Narrative Therapy,

imparting Jungian Archetypes for its

improvement. Science-fiction from Asimov to

Bradbury to Verne has always done this and the

intellectual cross-training of Academia and

industry must maintain the tradition for any

future to remain possible.


Mutant Eugenics, the Four Horsemen of

the Apocalypse and Biodiversity

The Crux of Social Privilege- Stigma &

Vitalness of Self-Advocacy

In a great article that addresses the

inherent biases often held by those in places of

privilege over those not--in this case those who

hold the stigma of being physiologically different-

-the presumptions, anticipations and attitudes all

expressed in our narratives serves as a very

explicit indicator of the harmony or disharmony

of our interaction. An excerpt that illustrated the

value of the minority vs minority interaction of LD

constituencies (the mother and child) versus the

constituencies of pedagogy (the teachers and

administrators) is epitomized by their narrative/

counter narrative.

"This dynamic, this narrative/counter

narrative exchange, is similar to the dynamic

that birthed the LD category. The early LD

advocates described by Sleeter (1987) were

responding to oppressive narratives that they felt

would have devalued their children — narratives

that would have stripped them of their

intelligence, their emotional stability, and/or their

affiliation with dominant cultural, narratives that

would have associated their privileged white

offspring with the children of the poor and the

ethnically othered." (Hale 2010). The frustration

of this advocacy is the exact backdrop of X-Men

comics and the Xaviers School for Gifted

Youngsters. One character, Jubilation Lee,

codenamed Jubilee has a mutation that affects

electrical circuitry. Her own mastery the crux,

uncontrolled and developing, her ability merely

damaged every electric circuit with which she

came in contact. But with mastery, she could

produce explosive results. However, like all

consumers of the VR counseling field, Charles


Xavier first discovered her in a home setting with

parents overwhelmed in dealing with the

negative narrative of the public system that

couldn’t help her and therefore stigmatized her.

And in the tragedy of what makes X-Men, the

professor intercepts her to his private boarding

school, because her “normal” parents ultimately

aimed for return to foster care. Although X-Men

is an extreme case in the failure of advocacy

and the system itself in serving physiological

diversity of a population, it also highlights the

amazing advance and potential that can be

tapped via personalized learning programs and

accommodations of learning styles and physical

capacities.

Hale’s article goes on to address the

strongly pedagogically rooted issues. The article

acknowledges that… "the protagonist is always

the social standing of a child and his parents.

The antagonists are the ideological assumptions

that underlie schooling and the perceptions and

biases of those in the school community. The

conflict is the struggle between competing views

of the child, the antagonistic view being that the

child is lazy or stupid and the parents' being an

affirmation of their child's positive essence. The

plot, driven by the central conflict, moves from

incident to incident of difference, exposition, and

shame until finally the parents, drawing on

resources only available to the relatively

privileged, enlist experts who wield the symbolic

power of science to inoculate their child from

criticisms and aspersions, while locating the

cause of his difficulties within him. The

dénouement involves a change of identity, from

"normal" to disabled, from accused to excused.

The whole process establishes a rationale to

which the parents can cling in moments of doubt

and conflict." As though the pedagogy is

unaware that they pursue a narrative in which

the system wins and bankrupts the individuals of

difference rather than tapping into the minefield

of their potential. So accordingly in our field, our

role as VR counselors is to serve as a Professor

X and channel the ability of our clientele and

consumers in order to make them heroic, in

costume, in ability, in society.


The Dangers of Self-Loathing over the

Human Condition and the “Survival of the

Fittest” Myth to Rehabilitation

What is even more compelling in

similarity to the comics is how the real-life

diagnosis of LD was influenced by socially

constructed notions of race. While in X-Men,

there are obvious genetic and evolutionary

influences on the fight for mutant advocacy, in

real life the pseudo science of race essentially

was used for eugenicist purposes against the

disabled and minority. A perfect example is a

book written most accordingly by the offspring of

science fiction legend, HG Wells, Spencer

Wells, entitled The Journey of Man, delves into

the propagandic beginnings of the history of the

“Survival of the Fittest” myth. The Journey of

Man excerpts how eventually Herbert Spencer,

rather than Darwin put forth the term initially.

(Wells 11) “As we saw earlier, Darwin wa not a

‘hard’ racist… It was the philosopher Herbert

Spencer, for instance, who actually coined the

phrase ‘survival of the fittest’, and he used it to

justify the social divisions inherent in late-

nineteenth-century Britain in a series of widely

read books and essays. If divisions within

society could be explained by science, then

surely differences between cultures had a

similar cause.

Combined with the Victorian obsession

with classification, this leap from ‘might makes

right’ to a belief that these cultural differences

must be definable using scientific methods

encouraged the growth of the eugenics

movement.” Herbert Spencer popularized

eugenics, which eventually targeted the

physiologically disabled and minority of society.

As Spencer Wells explains, “"While eugenics

began as a movement dedicated to social

enlightenment, its aims were soon perverted,

and by the 1910s and 20s it was being used in

the United States as scientific justification for the

forced sterilization of people believed to be

mentally subnormal. It was also behind the

mean-spirited implementation of racist

immigration tests and quotas (in the 1920s

desperately poor eastern European immigrants,

most of whom were illiterate, were expected to

arrive at Ellis Island in New York knowing how to

read). The systematic extermination of Jews,

gypsies, homosexuals and other supposedly

inferior groups by the Nazis in the 1940s had its

scientific justification in the application of

eugenic principles. Physical anthropology had

jumped to the head of the queue in its race to

prove 'useful'." (Wells 12). The terrorist and

eugenic pursuits of Graydon Creed (Uncanny

1993), Bolivar Trask & the mutant hunting

Sentinels (X-Men 1965) and The Friends of

Humanity Uncanny (X-Men 1992) all parallel the

reality of eugenics and the variety of government

sanctioned human rights violations that ail our

collective human history.

In the X-Universe the theme of

predation upon that psychosocial self-loathing

over biological worthiness and value recur again

and again. In another situation, a core member

of the X-Men born with wings reaches a regretful

depression and finds himself taken advantage of

by the genetic manipulator and megalomaniacal

mutant named Apocalypse. Angel is

brainwashed and further mutated into the

genetic supremacist Archangel (X-Factor 1987).

Again, a core member of the founding X-Men,


Hank McCoy, codename Beast furthers his

mutation in self-loathing pursuit of a “cure”

(Amazing 1972).

The Vitalness of Advocacy for Self-Identity

Preservation and Diversity in face of the

Majority.

Human biology has always proven a need for

biodiversity and the Bedouin of Negev, Israel are

a perfect example. An article of The New York

Times reported, “Bedouins do not carry more

genetic mutations than the general population.

But because so many marry relatives — some

65 percent of Bedouin in Israel's Negev marry

first or second cousins — they have a

significantly higher chance of marrying someone

who carries the same mutations, increasing the

odds they will have children with genetic

diseases, researchers say. Hundreds have been

born with such diseases among the Negev

Bedouin in the last decade.” (Kraft 2006). That

similar pattern was occurrent in the political age

of Western Church-states and also apparent in

Japan’s imperial lineage. Just as Spencer Wells

writings on human migration emphasize the

need for biodiversity, as cross pollination occurs

in the plant world, it also reigns true for human

civilization.


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X-Men as VR Archetype

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