Clarence Darrow was arguably America’s most famous defense attorney of the 20th century, immortalized, among other places, in the film “Inherit the Wind.” Although on the surface he brilliantly defended criminals both innocent and guilty, beneath this façade, on the level of his unconscious psychology, he was defending someone far more important and closer to home: his own true self…his inner child.

Darrow's passion, intelligence, and sophistication aside, his own autobiography reveals him as a sad, unfulfilled, angry, and unresolved man hiding behind the role of truth’s defender. He was unconsciously heartbroken over and subsequently furious at his mother for abandoning him through death. She died when he was only fourteen, and he never acknowledged, much less grieved, the impact of this devastating trauma. To protect his feelings he painted a vague and transparently idealized portrait of her to himself. And he never even came close to exploring the parental neglect inherent in being but one of eight brothers and sisters. Instead he joked about being against birth control, noting that had his parents practiced it he would have been deprived of his existence – a sad, twisted truth which belies his own inner pain, not to mention rage, at his parents’ irresponsibility…which he himself repeated through fathering a son to whom he devoted himself only half-heartedly at best.

Instead of taking true steps toward resolving his childhood wounds he attempted to bypass this process by defending others deemed criminals in court, many of whom themselves had unconsciously acted out their own repressed childhood feelings, some even through murder. Darrow felt their plight poignantly and defended them passionately and eloquently because his highly spirited soul had no other way of giving voice to his own repressed childhood feelings which were criminal from the point of view of the family system. When in a system that cannot tolerate overwhelming sadness, not to mention fury or open blame of the parents, anyone who dares to feel these feelings and express them honestly risks total alienation – the alienation only a hated criminal knows. And no fourteen year old can risk that. Few of any age can.

But in one sense Darrow’s career is defensible: criminals deserve a defense. In court they rank lowest on the totem pole, and like honest children imprisoned in a dishonest family their lives and fates have fallen literally into the hands of strangers. But it is precisely because this arena is metaphorical of the family that Darrow chose it for his home. Metaphor is safe. It protects everyone’s deepest emotional vulnerabilities. The pain of healing is forced on no one, and the worst thing that can befall you, if you are the defendant at least, is life in prison or death – a fate preferable to most than having to face the true pain of childhood traumas, because at least you can face the former two with fantasy on your side.

Thus Darrow, blocked by his arrested emotional development, had but a limited ability to be of true service to the world’s downtrodden. The ultimate defense they (and we all) need is not legal, nor financial, political, economic - nor moral. The defense needed is that which can only be offered by those enlightened few who have taken true forward steps toward resolving their own deepest traumas, and thus have stepped beyond the family system and can view it in panoramic perspective.

From the stand of their calling, witnesses of enlightenment see the truth amidst the lies and are able to sort out the two quickly, defending the victim from the perpetrator who resides within his or her own personality. The enlightened are not fooled by the meaning of acting out. The enlightened don’t risk their physical lives to keep you out of concrete prisons, or worse yet resort to bribing juries. (In his autobiography Darrow literally bragged about the first yet couldn’t quite cop to the second, which “the experts” say he probably did.) The enlightened instead offer you the potential of something far greater: a template for the key to psychic emancipation. The enlightened do not defend you to external judges or juries, because they know that you, the human being with ultimate control of your fate, are the only one with the potential to be a truly fair and impartial parent toward yourself. And the enlightened do not defend you merely in light of the laws set down by society, that blind super-agent of the family. The enlightened are lawyers of life’s deeper laws, those of true emotional maturity, with codes for respect, boundaries, compassion, and patience.

As such the enlightened have a value greater than a thousand Clarence Darrows. His passion was misplaced. Theirs is not.