Last week about 40 thousand persons (almost one thousand from Japan) marched in the streets of Manhattan past the United Nations and into Central Park to demonstrate against nuclear arms proliferation and to mark the 60th anniversary of the atomic bomb being dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (the Hiroshima bomb killed in an instant 140,000 persons and damaged countless others). Survivors from the blasts as well as current mayors of both cities spoke on the madness and horror of nuclear weaponry. Among those present at the demonstration were Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR). PsySR uses psychological knowledge to promote peace with social justice at community, national and international levels.Their very informative website is:
http://www.psysr.org
Hanna Segal, Kleinian psychoanalyst, has written cogently and sanely on the threat of nuclear proliferation making us more aware of the madness inherent in our attitude towards nuclear war (see her excellent volume “Psychoanalysis, Literature and War: Papers 1972-1995”). In 1983 along with Moses Laufer, she helped to organize the PPNW (Psychoanalysts for the Prevention of Nuclear War) within the British Psychoanalytical Society. Segal pointed out that the idea of ‘deterrence,’ a justification for nuclear arms development, may actually lead to an escalation of anxieties and instability. Segal (1997) notes:
“Preparing for war on both sides promotes the likelihood of a pre-emptive strike out of fear, and the equilibrium of a system of mutual deterrence is inherently unstable. Hatred leads to fear and fear to hatred in an ever-increasing vicious circle.”
“It is often contended that psychoanalysis can only speak authoritatively of their work in the consulting room and of individual psychology. Socio-political phenomena should therefore be left to specialists in other spheres, economists, sociologists, politicians, and, in the area of war, even generals. But I contend that psychoanalysis has as its field the manifold aspects of the human mind and its activities and that therefore the exploration of its social aspects is a legitimate field of psychoanalytic inquiry. Moreover, I think that psychoanalysis has a unique contribution to make to the understanding of these phenomena; in particular, because of our experience of the conflicts between constructive and destructive attitudes in the individual we are able to shed light on some of the destructive forces we have to deal with socially.”
Segal believes that the psychoanalyst is concerned not just with the individual, but with the interaction between the individual and her/his environment, including the family and larger social group participation. She notes:
“One reason why psychoanalysis has a particular contribution to make to the understanding of social phenomena arises from the fact that group behavior is very often very irrational. For society to behave in such irrational ways, evident in our destructive activities to the planet we depend upon, in particular the destruction of our habitat by greedy exploitation and pollution, and the continuation of the insane nuclear arms race, it is necessary to assume that powerful unconscious forces are at work” [Harold Searles presented his paper “Unconscious processes in relation to the environmental crisis”-it is included in his volume “Countertransference and Related Subjects”-at a Chestnut Lodge Hospital annual symposium, and, according to Ann-Louise Silver, was greeted with a standing ovation].
Freud proposed that persons form groups to combat the forces of nature and to bind destructive forces. Group functioning, as proposed by Bion and Segal, are often influenced and disrupted by psychotic processes. Destructive feelings are dealt with through massive splitting processes, the group idealizes itself and projects destructiveness into other groups (e.g., seeing nations divided into good and evil in absolute terms). Vulnerability (e.g., after 9/11) is projected into others and then attacked in order to ward off one’s own sense of fragility and powerlessness. Our psychotic parts, since they are the most disturbing to personality integration and a background sense of safety (Joseph Sandler’s term), tend to be projected into groups of people or individuals of a particular social or ethnic group.My Finnish colleague, Martti Siirala spoke of collective splitting processes underlying such processes as racism, genocide, sexism, homophobia, etc. Segal suggests:
“Group defense mechanisms are primarily directed against psychotic anxieties which individuals cannot contain in themselves, and they use mechanisms in a way that if used by an individual would be considered psychotic...Groups under the sway of psychotic mechanisms tend to select or to tolerate leaders who represent their pathology. But not only do those groups choose unbalanced leaders; they also affect them. The groups thrust omnipotence onto their leaders, and push them further into megalomania. There is a dangerous interaction between a disturbed group and a disturbed leader, increasing each other’s pathology.”
In genocide another element is added: contempt and dehumanization, i.e., a stripping away of the other’s humanity. The victim must be seen as non-human in order to mitigate depressive anxieties and guilt. So-called Christians in the crusades cannibalized Arabs, the Nazis called the Jews “untermensch”-subhuman, the Americans called the Vietnamese “gooks.”
Recent examples are the dehumanizing practices in certain prisons in Iraq. The code signal for the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima was “baby is born,” while the code for the Nagasaki bomb was “fat man.” These words cover the utter destructiveness of what was actually being done, a form of psychotic denial. “Nuke them” sounds so every-day, almost innocent, what if we were to say “let’s annihilate several million people”?
Segal argues that the very existence of nuclear weapons arouses the most primitive psychotic anxieties about annihilation, and therefore mobilizes the most primitive defenses. The existence of these weapons actualizes the inner world of psychotic persons, obliteration of internal and external phenomena and the fear of annihilation. Omnipotent destructiveness is the primitive defense against the threat of catastrophe and terror and it can become vested in the omnipotence of the nuclear bomb. When destructive projections are withdrawn from the ‘evil empires,’ groups are faced with their internal situation, e.g., unemployment, environmental crises, racism, poverty, guilt over destructiveness, etc.
Segal suggested:
“In the case of the United States, the guilt over the Vietnam War, both for the damage done to the enemy and for the humiliation and failure to the United States itself, was, until recently, not recognized and is only now partially being faced. This unacknowledged guilt was one of the factors making the Gulf War necessary; it was intended to wipe out the depression about Vietnam [and the sense of vulnerability emergent after 9/11?].
Segal wisely concludes:
“...it is not pathological to hope for a better future-for instance, for peace-and to strive for it, while recognizing how hard it is to attain, and that the opposition to it comes not only from others but also has its roots in ourselves.”
Brian Koehler PhD
New York University
80 East 11th Street #339
New York NY 10003
212.533.5687
mailto:brian_koehler@psychoanalysis.net
