The Psychological Abuse of the U.S. Government

By: Dr. Denise Renye

At Whole Person Integration, we’ve been following the back and forth regarding the government’s student loan repayment/forgiveness situation with great interest because of the psychological impact of this situation for many people and the nation overall. To recap, President Biden pledged to cancel some federal student loan debt while he was campaigning to be president. Then in August 2022, he announced a student loan forgiveness plan. The back and forth, or push and pull, is fraught with inconsistency and unreliability.

The plan would forgive up to $20,000 in student loan debt for certain borrowers. Many people, 26 million in fact, applied for the program as soon as it opened but then in November 2022, the program was blocked by lower courts who said the Biden administration overreached. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in late February and is expected to issue a decision in late June or early July.

All the back and forth is putting people into turmoil. The backtracking behavior of “loans will be forgiven, oh wait, no they won’t” is intermittent conditioning and causes emotional instability. Also known as intermittent reinforcement, intermittent conditioning is emotional manipulation and abuse. There are occasional and sudden displays of reward-giving instances (such as a loan being forgiven) that are then taken away.

The American public grows dependent on the federal government. The government is a larger “family” in the sense that people are relying on them like children rely on their parents. The authoritative father (aka, the government) said “he” will fix the problem. But the messaging is only occasional and sporadic so the American public becomes hooked, and even addicted. They keep checking websites to see if student loan forgiveness is happening or not. Anticipation is high, especially because the reward is so large -- $20,000 could do a lot for the people who need it. The public starts to place trust in the government to help with their student loan problem even though relying on the government is proving detrimental

“In some ways, it feels like we are one step closer now that they’ve heard the oral arguments, but until a decision is made, it still feels like we are in limbo,” said Lindsay Clausen in a CNN article. She has about $68,000 in student loan debt and works as an instructional designer at a university.

She filed for student loan forgiveness as soon as the application was open and if forgiven, she and her husband planned to save for a new home and expand their family. “I felt relief, and then it was like a rug was pulled from underneath me,” Clausen told CNN.

Clausen isn’t alone in her feelings. Many people feel as if they’re being yanked around. Some even started investing their money in other things because they thought they were about to be better off financially. Their hopes rose and then they were dashed. This amounts to psychological abuse. In abusive relationships, promises are made and then broken repeatedly. The abuser keeps someone “on the hook” with lofty statements, stringing them along, and then doesn’t follow through.

The government’s wishy-washy behavior is psychological abuse whether they intended it to be or not. Most abusive behavior could be described as “unintentional” by the one serving the abuse. By definition, psychological abuse is any cruel, abusive act that causes mental suffering, a feeling of powerlessness, fear, or depression. We see evidence of the mental suffering in the statements from people like Clausen who said she feels in limbo and as if the rug was pulled out from underneath her. The federal government is not putting Clausen and others like her at ease. Quite the contrary.

It’s hard to feel safe, at ease, or be able to plan your life if you don’t know whether your student loans will truly be forgiven or not. Also, let’s be honest about whom this sort of abuse from the federal government hurts the most: People who don’t come from affluent backgrounds or have generational wealth.

Take the case of Angel Enriquez, a 30-year-old meteorologist with about $61,000 in student loan debt whose parents immigrated from Mexico. They couldn’t afford to help him pay for college and he wanted to get a degree and have a competitive edge by acquiring a master’s. “[I]f you talk to someone who comes from poverty, or someone who’s a person of color, they are going to benefit from the forgiveness program the most because they’re the ones that have to jump through extra financial hoops in order to get where everyone else in the educated country is,” he told CNN.

Politics reflect society both in beliefs and in behaviors and what we’re seeing now is the prevalence of abuse and white supremacy. If the federal government cared about U.S. residents, it would follow through on its promises and forgive student loan debt. We would all be better off if it did.

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Reference

Lobosco, Katie. “‘We are in limbo’: Student loan borrowers still face months of uncertainty about Biden’s forgiveness program.” CNN.com. March 5, 2023. https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/05/politics/biden-student-loan-forgiveness-scotus/index.html