MISSOURI WATCH: MAYBE SIGMUND SAID IT BEST

Sigmund Freud, the man who once was revered as the "father of modern psychiatry" but who has now been disowned, if not discredited, by may of his professional brethren, was a firm believer in the effects of environment on human thought and behavior. If you thought all Herr Doktor was interested in were sex-crazed hallucinations and dreams, think again. Sigmund was a plain out and out environmentalist, contending, as do many psychiatrists who have disowned other parts of his mental dogma, that where we live and work influences to a great extent how and what we think.

Whether you accept or reject Freud's environmentally influenced theory, you might want to visit any state capital and observe its denizens before reaching a final decision. For the sake of proximity, let's take Missouri's Capitol, located as all good Missourians should know by now, in the City of Jefferson. For purposes of clarity, let's include not only the marbled corridors of he Capitol building itself but other structures located in the same city housing components of state government, such as the Truman and Jefferson Office Buildings.

Anyone who has ever visited Missouri's capital city learns, after only a brief period of time, that persons whose desks, computers and telephones are located in the Capitol have a slightly different view of life and its various pursuits than those of us who work elsewhere in what the Division of Employment Security no doubt refers to as "the private sector."

The first difference is what can be called The Irritability Level. Copious books have been written about the implacable anger of the typical governmental bureaucrat, but as is sometimes the case, the authors of these books exaggerate. Without even thinking I am able to list scores of happy state workers whose sanguine outlooks would put Norman Vincent Peale to shame. Government workers are not rude, they are merely harassed. Picture a clerk situated somewhere in the middle of a large room housing scores of similar clerks and who is employed as a clerk-typist in the Enforcement Section of the Compliance Division of the Department of Weights and Measures. It is this employee's job to deal with butchers, bakers and candlestick makers whose scales have been found to be operating, shall we say, inefficiently, a term that may also include any slight discrepancy that just happens to favor management.

If you were employed by private industry rather than public government, you could handle your job with dispatch, threatening to impound the imperfect set of scales if they weren't quickly repaired---and that means today, buster!

Now consider this job located in the Missouri Capital. The targeted business owner is, first of all, dealing with an entity he either dislikes or detests, depending on whether he is a Democrat or a Republican. Either way his demeanor is about as pleasant as Jesse Helms discussing William Weld or Hillary Clinton when speaking of Paula Jones. In other words, the conversation is messy and gets worse, even violent.

With the passage of a brief period, the caller reveals whether he is a Democrat or Republican by the nature of his threats against the now-perspiring state worker. "I'll call the Governor's office about this" marks the businessman as one who supported, although probably not with any checks, the Carnahan-for Governor group. If the caller intimates that he will soon be in touch with the office of a U.S. senator or the state auditor, you can mark him down as a Republican who knows where his friends work.

If there is a reference to Speaker Bob Griffin or Attorney General Webster, the state employee is dealing with someone who may be out of touch but should be considered dangerous nevertheless. Callers who drop the name of Gov. Forrest Smith or Sen. Jim Kem can pretty well be discounted.

If you worked for private industry, you wouldn't put up with such nonsense, but working for Uncle Sam or some other relative, such abuse is considered par for the course. Some state workers have even told me they actually miss it when a day goes by without a taxpayer's threat to get his or her job.

What gives state workers the will to comparative lives of comparative happiness? Perhaps Freud said it best: "The nature to view authority as an adversary manifests itself when the patient is emotionally in need of friendship."

The moral is obvious: Take a bureaucrat to lunch. You'll improve everyone's mental health.

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.