War as a "Group-Delusional Solution"
to Internal Problems of a Nation and its Government?
"Historical amnesia is the rule: In a century in which
100 million people have been killed by wars, and on a planet where there
is currently destructive power equal to 10,000 tons of TNT for every man,
woman and child, the mere suggestion that there may be more destruction
on the horizon is regularly met by blank stares and suspicions of mental
imbalance." (Lloyd DeMause, Foundations of Psychohistory,
p.191) |
In his book "Foundations of Psychohistory"
(1),
Lloyd DeMause interprets war and violent actions against foreign "adversaries"
as the "the group-delusional solution" to internal problems. This
is very close to the poular saying that this or that ruling politician
"needs a war" or "needs an external crisis" in order to regain waning popular
support.
Similarly, conventional popular
wisdom has often expressed the intuitive insight that ruling politicians
- in order to deflect attention of the masses from their inability to solve
social problems, for instance, their unwillingness or incapacity to deal
effectively with mass unemployment nd a major economic crisis, or with
other problems that "polarize" the country - do in fact need internal
or external "scapegoats."
In the years before the outbreak
of World War I, the rapid, very massive increase of electoral strength
of the Social Democratic Party in Germany (that had been outlawed not too
long ago, but then readmitted as a legal party) was disconcerting and perhaps
even frightened to the old "elites." And during the last years of
the Weimar Republic, the global economic crisis that caused mass unemployment
among the German working class and that threw parts of the German petty
bourgeoisie into misery while causing strong fears of decline among the
bourgeoisie, must have created a sense of polarization of the country similar
to what the US has experienced in recent years, except that in Germany
a strong left emerged, challenging the old and new right.
In the American context, the populist
right-wing Tea Party Movement and the Christian Right are challenging both
the so-called moderates in the Republican Party and the entire Democratic
Party. This challenging movement is largely blue collar and petty bourgeois
in content; they loathe the majority of the politicians in Washington -
moderate Republicans representing corporations, centrist Democrats, representing
other corporations, but they despise also the left-leaning liberal Democrats
with ties to unions who are also champions of so-called ethnic minority
rights, gay and lesbian rights, and so on.
In Germany, polarization - interpreted
by the old elites as lack of national consensus and thus tantamount to
dangerous destabilization - caused big business to finance those who promised
reestablishment of national consensus, in effect by relying on an extremely
nationalist and racist ideology, and by engaging on a course that would
lead to war.
If this analysis is correct, the
attempts to impeach President Obama, the questioning of whether he was
born in the US, the fact that he is blamed for the embassy bombing in Benghazi,
for not intervening militarily in the Syrian civil war, and so on, in short,
the depictions of him as week, would force him, according to those who
see the aforementioned examples as valid paradigms, to adopt a more dangerous
foreign policy and to choose perhaps a bellicose course.
It is clear that these psychological
interpretations give priority to the analysis of the "group dynamics" of
a population (whether the German one, in the two first examples, or the
American, in the last, is secondary), in so far as they identify these
psychohistorical dynamics as causative factors of war. In this way,
economic factors are relegated to a position of secondary importance, or
they are - as in the case of de Mause - totally neglected.(2)
The method of interpretation of
the psychic dynamics of a nation that are leading to confrontation with
an "external adversary" (the "Other") developed by de Mause becomes apparent
when he reflects on the changing socio-psychic relationship [a term
that he does not use, however] between the American public and President
Carter, interpreting the so-called Iranian "hostage crisis" as brought
about by the threatening break-down of group cohesion or "group fantasy"
of the American people and their need of a delusional solution to this
breakdown - an exterior conflict - in order to attain cohesion among
citizens and regain their unity with the elected "leader" (who in
turn, is also, according to de Mause, subject to a psychic compulsion to
opt for the dangerous delusional solution, in his case, a solution sought
for his waning popularity as a "leader").
De Mause writes in Foundations
of Psychohistory
"A nation's foreign policy is primarily
conducted for the purpose of keeping enough pots boiling around the world
to enable its leader to find a sacrificial crisis on foreign soil when
the nation needs one. [...]"(3)
Having shown that confidence of
Americans in themselves as a nation and in their president had been ebbing
(4),
de Mause then goes on to say (on p. 304) that "during the fall of 1979,
there was one pot that had been boiling hot during the previous months
which might provide the needed group-psychotic insight and act as the humiliating
enemy which was [in the collective imagination of Americans] responsible
for America's feelings of pollution and strangulation: Iran [...] For months,
the obvious provocation which could move the Iranians against the Americans
in Teheran was at hand: the ousted Shah of Iran had been asking to enter
the U.S. Despite efforts by Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller and others
to "save our national honor" and let the Shah in, clear reports from U.S.
advisors and from the C.I.A. stated strongly that "if the Shah were admitted
to the United States, the American Embassy would be taken and it would
be a threat to American lives."(240)
[...] [B]both Carter and Lance
stubbornly opposed letting the Shah in. Once, in late summer, when Brzezinski
and Mondale pressed Carter to let him in, Carter blew up: "Blank the Shah!
[Carter used the word "Blank" <instead of F...> in retelling the event.]
I'm not going to welcome him here when he has other places to go where
he'll be safe."(242) This resistance by Carter to the group-fantasy demands
to "get tough" and "save national honor" by letting in the Shah came from
personal strengths and a determination not to involve America in war risks
for trivial reasons.[...] In any case, Carter remained strong (for which
he was called "weak"), and continued to refuse to admit the Shah.
Yet the fact remained that the
commands of the "national will" poured into the White House from all over
America: "Get tough, find us an enemy, we can't stand the strangulation,
we can't stand hating you so much!" The group around Carter had no choice:
they had to lie to him to get his consent. Despite consistent medical advice
to Carter's staff that the Shah was in no immediate medical danger and
that his medical problems could be easily taken care of elsewhere,(244)
Carter was told that the Shah was "at the point of death" and that he needed
treatment which could only be obtained in New York. Carter, according to
the report of one person present, asked, "When the Iranians take our people
in Teheran hostage, what will you advise me then?"(245) and, according
to another, that we "would likely be faced with a situation where a group
of fanatics grab Americans."(246) Despite these clear dangers, Carter agreed
to let the Shah in. There was only one crucial condition, one important
omission, which accompanied his decision, and this was obviously Carter's
main contribution to the cave-in to group-fantasy: the Americans in Teheran
must remain unprotected. As the New York Times reporter put it,
"One option that, curiously, was never seriously
examined was the evacuation of embassy personnel prior to admitting the
Shah. "(247) The next day, the Shah had his gall bladder removed in New
York, and nine days later, exactly as predicted by everyone, Iranian revolutionaries
took the Americans hostage."
De Mause's analysis leads him to
conclude that "what was called the Iranian "Crisis" was not an external
crisis at all, but in fact the wished-for and carefully-manipulated solution
to the earlier real crisis of collapse of group-fantasy. The rage against
Carter was now split off and projected into the Ayatollah Khomeini and
his jeering mobs of demonstrators, who - having found their own solution
to the collapse of their revolutionary group-fantasy - were happy to contribute
to America's humiliation by parading bound hostages before TV cameras and
hanging Carter in effigy. Instantly, all "collapse" imagery disappeared
from the American press. As the New Yorker observed,
"President Carter's rating of approval... doubled
during the crisis. The public's sudden rush of affection for its country
seems to have included its country's President."(248)
[...] Carter was now transformed
into [...] a representative of every American fighting against the bestial
humiliating enemy. All of America projected their personal rages into the
group-delusional solution. When I asked over 800 people who attended several
speeches I gave during the first week of the crisis how they felt now,
most said "It feels good... we feel unified... we can't be pushed around
any longer... it is good to be an American again... my personal life and
disappointments don't seem so important any more. [...]"
De Mause adds,
"America felt good again. One columnist
put it bluntly. In his article "Why The Ayatollah Deserves Our Thanks,"
he explained:
"The Ayatollah and the street mobs that pass for
government in that backward, chaotic land, have done this country a hell
of a favor. And I don't mean by practically guaranteeing the reelection
of Jimmy Carter. The Iranians' contribution lies in prodding the United
States into a renaissance of national pride and unity we feared had evaporated...
"(250)
Even when Russia invaded Afghanistan,
Americans could feel good about their strength. Carter, calling the Russian
move "the greatest threat to peace since the Second World War,"(251) could
easily end detente, begin "the new Cold War," and threaten "military
force" in the Persian Gulf as though his earlier promises of military
restraint were never made.(252) With the adoption of the delusional solution,
the world made sense once more. The mood of the nation at the beginning
of 1980 was one of calm pride:
"What's it like in Washington now? Breathtaking.
Let's begin with President Carter. Crisis everywhere... He looks calm.
He invites in small groups of reporters and answers questions off the record
with such low-keyed candor that they find themselves, in spite of themselves,
feeling protective... Carter is an impressive figure... Carter looks calm..."
(253)
[...]"
According to de Mause, it was a"delusional
solution" to internal socio-psychological problems affecting both the population
and the population-political leader relationship that was found when internal
psychic insecurity and resulting "rage" were directed against the hetero-image
of the foreign "foe." De Mause relies on depth-analytic terminology, in
interpreting a cartoon that allows him to sum up his conclusion:
"The cartoon [...] shows the delusional
solution which produced this strength and calmness. The ambivalent leader
was now split into two parts. The good leader, now young, strong and determined,
wrapped in a
placental American flag and drawn
in white, is shown at the left. The bad leader, the Poisonous Placenta,
old, foreign-looking and drawn in black, is shown at the right. The price
of the split, squeezed in birth agony by the um-bilical rope the two leaders
pull between them, is the sacrificial hostages. These hostages were vitally
necessary to the delusional solution.
As William F. Buckley said, the
real danger was that they might be freed without violence:
"But what if the Ayatollah merely frees the prisoners...
The public will be left with the sense of an unconsummated transaction.
We will be looking to Carter to see what form he elects for punishing the
enduring government of Iran, and here is the rub. It is unlikely, the hostages
having been returned, that the U.S. will want direct military action of
the kind that results in death for men, women and children."(254)
During the early months of 1980,
the unconscious aim of American policy was to keep the hostages in captivity,
even to provoke their death, as a cleansing sacrifice and as a punishment
for our rage. The Shah was officially escorted around to various military
hospitals by Air Force planes, infuriating the Iranians, and the press
constantly played up Carter's speeches of his "readiness to use military
force" regardless of the consequences. After the Shah finally left the
U.S., Carter even wrote what the New York Times called an "inexplicable"
letter to the Shah's sister, asking him back, saying "Our preference now
is that he receive treatment under Dr. DeBakey's care either at Gorgas,
the U.S. hospital in Panama, or in Houston, Texas" - a move which was tantamount
to a death sentence for the hostages. "We were certain," Hamilton Jordan
recalled later, "that if the Shah exercised his right to come back to the
United States, some of the hostages would be killed. We had real warnings
to that effect."(256)
- John Waterford
NOTES
(1)Lloyd DeMause, Foundations of Psychohistory
http://www.psychohistory.com
(2) Rejecting a materialist Marxist approach to history but also the
kind of sociological analysis typical of a Weberian approach (or that of
Talcott Parsons), de Mause insists that "history
is the final receptacle for the repressed, the final resting-place for
infantile traumata, the group-fantasy which at last reenacts and makes
real that which we would most disown - our own childhood." (Lloyd
DeMause, Foundations of Psychohistory, p.116) - In his view, "the notion
of the environment causing major psychic and social change" ignores deeper
psychic experiences and dynamics that determine our motivation and the
way we shape the environment by our praxis.(Ibidem, p.125) In his view,
it is a "holistic fallacy that the group exists as an entity over
and beyond its individual constituents."(Ibidem, p.133) Such
an ideological assumption in fact amounts to hypostization. Likewise, our
understanding of society, of class, etc. amounts usually to a hypostasis.
De Mause also rejects a "holistic concept of 'culture'" (ibidem, p.133)
and
critiques the fact that an anthropologist like "Steward states that "Personality
is shaped by culture, but it has never been shown that culture is affected
by personality""(ibidem, p.133) which
latter hypothesis expresses exactly what de Mouse asserts. (Perhaps both
refuse to see the dialectical interplay, each one emphasizing one side
of the coin.) De Mause admits, however, the effect of ways of child
rearing on the individual psyche of the individual (thus of a type
of social praxis). His rejection of the assumption that economic factors
have a determining causative effect on human beings, on their motivations,
praxis, and thus history and his insistence that the psychic dynamics are
the key to an understanding of what we do and why we do it, becomes very
apparent when he writes that "hunting, like war, is the group-fantasy
men do while women gather the food which supports these religious activities.
'Kill the Beast' is mainly a game played for fetal and not for caloric
motives, whether it is acted out in a cave or in a forest."(Ibidem, p.281)
Interpreted in terms of "worship of an 'animal-soul' which rules over the
species and the forest," hunting or killing the beast "is displaced worship
of a placental beast which nourishes, threatens, kills and gives birth
to all living beings - the group itself very much included - whether it
is represented as a bear-spirit or as a Mistress of the Animals. As Eliade
points out, killing this sacred animal is a ritual each time it is done
[...]" (Ibidem, p.281) Though the assumption that the nutritional value
of animals hunted is probably lower than the calories spent by hunting
may not always have an empirical base, he makes a strong point which underpins
the hypothesis that the ritual (or psychodynamic) significance of hunting
for the "group" is of primary importance. If we transfer this argument
to his understanding of the causes of war which also reflects his rejection
of an economistic interpretation, we are forced to admit that in all likelihood
the
material destruction of value (houses, factories, infrastructure) during
World War II, the war in Vietnam, the wars on Iraq, in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan
and
the cost, in dollars, of waging war outweighed subsequently realized
or at least possible material gain by far. Still, public costs,
reckoned in terms of human lives lost and in dollars spent, are balanced
by the enrichment of the few which lets us emphasize the class nature
of war in modern times. It is also shortsighted to ignore the seductive
effect on "elites" when they are told of large oil and gas deposits in
Central Asia or large rare earth deposits in Afghanistan. It can be shown
that at least on the surface, the pipeline through Afghanistan coveted
by UNOCAL and the knowledge of large rare earth deposits in this country,
were real factors contributing to a desire to attack that country. De Mouse
would argue that what is visible on the surface hides the depth-psychological
group dynamics in a nation, just like the manifest content (or tagrest)
recounted by the analyzed patient hides the real significant of the dream.
3) De Mause, ibid, p. 304.
(4) Describing the process as a "collapse of group fantasy" (that is,
a disastrous break-down or deterioration of the collective auto-image that
the American masses had of themselves as a nation, and of their elected
leader, which - as a result - makes the masses crave a war-threatening
crisis or a war that reconstitutes group identity again, and which forces
leaders previously seen as "weak" to project strength and determination),
de Mause detailed this by relying heavily on an analysis of the media.
Discussing the US auto-image in the period leading up to the Tehran hostage
crises, de Mouse says that "American confidence in him [Carter] rapidly
declined throughout the first eight months of the year. Time magazine's
"State of the Nation" poll in April was headlined "The Trouble Is Serious;"
reporters began asking Carter at news conferences why he was "exhibiting
weakness and impotency;" George Will in Newsweek said Carter was now on
"a downward crumbling path [as] America's decline accelerates;" the Washington
Star headlined America's "SLIPPING TOWARD IMPOTENCE ACROSS THE GLOBE;"
the New York Times one day carried two articles, the first asking Carter
to resign as "the weakest and most incompetent president since Martin Van
Buren" and the second by a psychiatrist saying that Carter needed psychiatric
treatment; and a nationwide poll for the "most out-standing incompetent"
in history elected Carter hands down.(228) Speculations about Carter's
sanity multiplied; one day, when Carter simply delayed a speech he was
to give to the press, "the unexplained cancellation caused worldwide speculation
that Carter had gone bonkers," and his appointments secretary had to assure
newsmen that "Carter was sane and in charge and knew what he was doing."(229)
[...]" (DeMause, ibid, p.301)
At present, we notice that for more than a year already, President
Obama has been attacked by the media and political opponents as a weak
president. He was critiqued because of the way he handled the killing of
CIA personnel in Benghazi, and he was depicted as weak because he shunned
open military intervention in the Syrian civil war. In this context, it
is interesting that German public radio noted on July 19th, 2014 -
one day after the news that a Malaysian airliner was shot down over Eastern
Ukraine - that "the pressure in Obama to get tough is increasing." [Der
druck auf Obama wird starker, endlich harter zu werden.] This corresponds
to the group dynamics described by de Mouse in periods leading up to wars.
It reflects the paranoia he notes and the pressure for "delusional solutions."
APPENDIX
Approval ratings of Kennedy decreased in the period
leading up to the Cuban missile crisis but increased dramatically due to
the stepped-up crisis
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