This paper originally was delivered at the International Self-Psychology Symposium in Dreieich, Germany, May, 2001. It is published here for the first time. Note post-September 11 addendum.Our topic for tonight, the problem of group violence, is one of the most important issues facing society. Not only is this a most crucial topic for our American society but we are confronted with events that are occurring all over the globe, on all continents and in all countries. While it is obvious that the daily news pin-point the current hottest areas of conflict, such as the Middle East, the Balkans, and certain regions of Africa, there seems to be no spot on this earth that is safe from unreasoning violence. Individuals as well as groups are in danger of being destroyed. How are we to understand these phenomena?
I will attempt to bring two psychoanalytic perspectives to bear on these questions.
A classic Freudian view derives the anger that is being expressed in hostile actions to an instinctual drive of aggression which is more or less modified by the ego. In addition to this basically bio-psychological basis, Sigmund Freud also recognized some strictly psychological factors such as the common desire to turn a passive experience into an active one and thereby assert some control over one's life and self. Freud also assigned a pivotal role to an innate self-destructive death instinct which, however, has not generally been accepted by psychoanalysts. Along similar lines, Anna Freud stressed the mechanism of identification with the aggressor as a very common dynamism. As a consequence, children treated sadistically by their parents tend to act out sadistically by identification with those parents when they reach adulthood. Melanie Klein and her followers do attribute a dominant and primarily destructive quality to an aggressive drive and its elaboration in object relations.
The other, mainly non-biological and more psychological approach to aggressive behavior is associated with Heinz Kohut as he developed it into a psychology of the self.
Comment: Ernest Wolf wrote:
Talking about rageful behavior he observed that underlying the rage one often finds an uncompromising insistence on the perfection of the idealized other. The infant experiences itself still in a state of limitlessness power and knowledge, a state that we as outsiders deprecatingly call the child's grandiosity, its grandiose self. If for a variety of reasons this infantile grandiose state of narcissism is prevented from maturing into healthy self-esteem we meet with what looks like an adult but really is a very shakily put together oversensitive and shame-prone narcissist.
This is the point at which the current theories about NPD collapse. If the infant experiences itself in a state of limitless power and knowledge, a state called "grandiosity", how does it translate into an adult that is "shakily put together", oversensitive and shame-prone? Where is the transformation? If the infant state is prevented from maturing, then it doesn't change. If that is the case, then the adult narcissist is exactly like that baby: he or she experiences him or herself in a state of limitless power and knowledge and there's nothing shaky about it - it is a rock solid structure; it is unshakable. There is no "oversensitive" nor is there any "shame-proneness" because sensitivity and shame are consequences of maturation.
Attributing the narcissists rage to compensatory reactions underpinned by "over-sensitive" or "shame-proneness" is projection on the part of the therapists.
Ernest Wolf wrote:
Thus, not being in full control over self and over a narcissistically experienced world gives the afflicted individual an experience of utter powerlessness. Such powerlessness and the sense of helplessness via-a-vis the world are unbearably traumatic experiences that must be ended by any means whatsoever. The offending other must be wiped out.
If the above statements about the infantile state of the narcissist hold true, then narcissists do not feel "utter powerlessness" or helplessness, nor are they traumatized. That's what a "normal person" who had been "narcissistically injured in the process of maturation might feel, but not a real Narcissist, an individual who is personality disordered. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is very possibly on the spectrum of psychopathy, so let's discuss it in those terms.
The psychopath (and true narcissist) is an individual who divides the world into black and white, good and evil, and this division is very rigid in a particular way. That is, the psychopathic reality is organized around a very simple structure: "feels good, is good / feels bad, is bad." But, just because this structure is rigid, that doesn't mean it is rational or stable! Things are sharply divided into good or bad, but what is good or bad depends on the immediate circumstances, i.e. what the psychopath wants at the moment, it is contingent upon the whim of the psychopath.
But this is not a "defense mechanism," it is just simply that, for the psychopath, the locus of reality is centered in what "feels good" with no reference to any other human being at all except as objects that can serve this need. You might almost say that the psychological structure of the psychopath is equivalent to a newborn infant, and it never develops, never grows up.
An infant has no internal self other than being a hunger at the center of a bundle of neurological inputs and outputs that seek pleasure and reject discomfort. Of course, with a grown up psychopath, there are highly complex neurological circuits that have developed in the process of learning what works to get his needs and demands met. But that internal core of being nothing but a hunger at the center of a bundle of neurological inputs and outputs is static - it never changes. In other words, there is no core self, just a sort of black hole that wants/needs to suck everything into it.
Under the influence of this internal structure - this ever-present, never fulfilled, hunger - the psychopath is not able to appreciate the wants or needs of other human beings, the subtle shades of a situation or to tolerate ambiguity. The entire external reality is filtered through - made to conform to - this rigid and primitive internal structure.
When the psychopath is frustrated, i.e. doesn't get what it wants, satisfaction of the hunger is denied or delayed, what it seems to feel is that everything in the world "out there" is against them while they are only being good, long-suffering and only seeking the ideal of love, peace, safety, beauty, warmth and comfort that comes with satiation (never mind that they can never achieve it). That is, when a psychopath is confronted with something displeasing or threatening to his hunger, that object (person, idea, group, whatever), is placed in the "all bad" category because, of course, if the psychopath does not like it, it cannot be good! There is never even an instant when the psychopath feels "traumatized" or "shamed" or "helpless." The grandiosity is ever present.
When the evidence mounts that some choice or act of the psychopath created a problem or made a situation worse, this, too, must be denied as part of the self and projected as coming from "out there."
That is, anything that is defined as "bad" is projected onto someone or something else because the internal structure of the psychopath will admit to no wrong, nothing bad, no errors. And keep in mind that this is not because they choose to do that, it is because they cannot do otherwise. There is nothing at the core but a hunger connected to neural inputs and outputs, wrapped up in grandiosity; that is the way they are made.
As a consequence of having such a primitive core structure with access to a complex brain, psychopaths become masters of Projective Identification. That is, they project onto and into others everything that is bad (remembering that "bad" changes according to what the psychopath wants), and seek in manipulative ways to induce in that other person what is being projected, and seek to control the other person who is perceived as manifesting those "bad" characteristics. In this way, the psychopath gains enjoyment and feels "in control."
Keep in mind that what the psychopath considers to be good has nothing to do with truth, honor, decency, consideration for others, or any other thing than what the psychopath wants at any given moment. In this way, any violation of the rights of others, any foul, evil deed, can be perpetrated by a psychopath and he will still sleep like a baby (literally) at night because he has done nothing wrong!
Now, let's turn to Andrew Lobaczewski's work,
Political Ponerology, for a more reasonable answer to this problem which he identifies as a matter of societal maladjustment taken advantage of by pathological elements within a society.
If various circumstances combine, including a given society's deficient psychological world-view, in order to force a particular individual to exercise functions which do not make full use of his talents, said person's professional practice would be no better, and often even worse, than that of a worker with satisfactory talents; he would feel cheated and inundated by duties which prevent him from achieving self-realization. His thoughts would often wander from his duties into a world of fantasy, or into matters which are of greater interest to him; in his daydream world, he is what he should and deserves to be. Such a person always realizes it if his social and professional adjustment has taken place in a downward direction; at the same time, however, he fails to develop a healthy critical faculty concerning the upper limits of his own talents. His daydreams allow him to "fix" an unfair world, "all you need is power". Revolutionary and radical ideas find fertile soil among people in downward social adaptations.
Some people, on the other hand, achieve important posts because they belong to privileged social groups or organizations which have gained power; their talents and skills are therefore not sufficient for their duties, especially the more difficult problems. Such persons then avoid the problematic and dedicate themselves to minor matters quite ostentatiously. A component of histrionics appears progressively in their conduct. Tests indicate that their correctness of reasoning deteriorates after only a few years' worth of such activities. In order to maintain their position, they direct their attacks against anyone with greater talent or skill, removing him from the appropriate posts and playing an active role in degrading their social and professional adjustment, which of course engenders a feeling of injustice. Upwardly-adjusted people thus favor whip-cracking governments which would protect their positions.
Upward and downward social adjustments, as well the qualitatively improper ones, result in a waste of any society's basic capital, namely the talent pool of its members. This simultaneously leads to increasing dissatisfaction and tensions among individuals and social groups; any attempt to approach human talent and its productivity problematics as a purely private matter must therefore be considered dangerously naive. Development or involution in all areas of cultural, economic and political life depend on the extent to which this talent pool is properly utilized. In the final analysis, it also determines whether there will be evolution or revolution. [...]
In any society in this world, psychopathic individuals and some of the other deviants create a ponerogenically active network of common collusions, partially estranged from the community of normal people. Some inspirational role of the essential psychopathy in this network also appears to be a common phenomenon. They are aware of being different as they obtain their life-experience and become familiar with different ways of fighting for their goals. Their world is forever divided into "us and them"; their little world with its own laws and customs and that other foreign world full of presumptuous ideas and customs in light of which they are condemned morally. Their sense of honor bids them to cheat and revile that other human world and its values. In contradiction to the customs of normal people, they feel non-fulfillment of their promises or signatures is customary behavior. They also learn how their personalities can have traumatizing effects on the personalities of those normal people, and how to take advantage of this root of terror for purposes of reaching their goals. This dichotomy of worlds is permanent and does not disappear even if they succeed in realizing their youthful dream of gaining power over the society of normal people. This proves that the separation is biologically conditioned.
In such [pathological] people a dream emerges like some youthful Utopia of a "happy" world and a social system which would not reject them or force them to submit to laws and customs whose meaning is incomprehensible to them. They dream of a world in which their simple and radical way of experiencing and perceiving reality would dominate, where they would of course be assured safety and prosperity. Those "others", different, but also more technically skillful, should be put to work to achieve this goal. "We", after all, will create a new government, one of justice. They are prepared to fight and to suffer for the sake of such a brave new world, and also, of course, to inflict suffering upon others. Such vision justifies killing people, whose suffering does not move them to compassion because "they" are not quite conspecific. They do not realize that they will consequently meet with opposition which can last for generations.
Subordinating a normal person to psychologically abnormal individuals has a deforming effect on his personality: it engenders trauma and neurosis. This is accomplished in a manner which generally evades sufficient conscious controls. Such a situation then deprives the person of his natural rights: to practice his own mental hygiene, develop a sufficiently autonomous personality, and utilize his common sense. In the light of natural law, it thus constitutes a kind of illegality--which can appear in any social scale--although it is not mentioned in any code of law.
We have already discussed the nature of some pathological personalities, e.g. frontal characteropathy. Essential psychopathy has exceptionally intense effects in this manner.
Something mysterious gnaws into the personality of an individual at the mercy of such a [pathological] person and is then fought like a demon. His emotions become chilled, his sense of psychological reality is stifled. This leads to de-criterialization of thought and a feeling of helplessness, culminating in depressive reactions which can be so severe that psychiatrists sometimes misdiagnose them as a manic-depressive psychosis.
Many people evidently also rebel much earlier and start searching for some way of liberating themselves from such an influence.
Many other life-situations involve less mysterious results of many other psychological anomalies upon normal people (which are always unpleasant and destructive) and their carriers' unscrupulous drive to dominate and take advantage of others. Governed by unpleasant experiences and feelings, as well as natural egoism, societies thus have good reason to reject such [damaged] people, helping to push them into marginal positions in social life, including poverty and criminality.
It is unfortunately almost the rule that such behavior is amenable to moralizing justification in our natural world-view categories. Most members of society feel entitled to protect their own persons and property and enact legislation for that purpose. Being based on natural perception of phenomena, and on emotional motivations instead of an objective understanding of the problems, such laws are in no position to safeguard the kind of order and safety we would like; those others perceive them as a force which needs to be battled.
Such a social structure dominated by normal people and their conceptual world easily appears a "system of force and oppression" to individuals with various psychological deviations. Psychopaths reach such a conclusion as a rule.
If a good deal of injustice does in fact exist in a given society, pathological feelings of unfairness and suggestive statements can resonate among those who have truly been treated unfairly. Revolutionary doctrines may then find approval among both groups, although their motivations will actually be quite different.
Except for his extremely clear and accurate descriptions of narcissistic rage, this guy, Ernest Wolf, hasn't got a clue. It is clear that his attempt to 'normalize' and spread around the phenomenon of narcissistic rage is merely apologetics for NPD and psychopathy. His political 'take' is hopelessly naive and the logic used to explain narcissism as a "shaky" construct is contradictory and twisted.
Comment: Ernest Wolf wrote: This is the point at which the current theories about NPD collapse. If the infant experiences itself in a state of limitless power and knowledge, a state called "grandiosity", how does it translate into an adult that is "shakily put together", oversensitive and shame-prone? Where is the transformation? If the infant state is prevented from maturing, then it doesn't change. If that is the case, then the adult narcissist is exactly like that baby: he or she experiences him or herself in a state of limitless power and knowledge and there's nothing shaky about it - it is a rock solid structure; it is unshakable. There is no "oversensitive" nor is there any "shame-proneness" because sensitivity and shame are consequences of maturation.
Attributing the narcissists rage to compensatory reactions underpinned by "over-sensitive" or "shame-proneness" is projection on the part of the therapists.
Ernest Wolf wrote: If the above statements about the infantile state of the narcissist hold true, then narcissists do not feel "utter powerlessness" or helplessness, nor are they traumatized. That's what a "normal person" who had been "narcissistically injured in the process of maturation might feel, but not a real Narcissist, an individual who is personality disordered. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is very possibly on the spectrum of psychopathy, so let's discuss it in those terms.
But this is not a "defense mechanism," it is just simply that, for the psychopath, the locus of reality is centered in what "feels good" with no reference to any other human being at all except as objects that can serve this need. You might almost say that the psychological structure of the psychopath is equivalent to a newborn infant, and it never develops, never grows up.
An infant has no internal self other than being a hunger at the center of a bundle of neurological inputs and outputs that seek pleasure and reject discomfort. Of course, with a grown up psychopath, there are highly complex neurological circuits that have developed in the process of learning what works to get his needs and demands met. But that internal core of being nothing but a hunger at the center of a bundle of neurological inputs and outputs is static - it never changes. In other words, there is no core self, just a sort of black hole that wants/needs to suck everything into it.
Under the influence of this internal structure - this ever-present, never fulfilled, hunger - the psychopath is not able to appreciate the wants or needs of other human beings, the subtle shades of a situation or to tolerate ambiguity. The entire external reality is filtered through - made to conform to - this rigid and primitive internal structure.
When the psychopath is frustrated, i.e. doesn't get what it wants, satisfaction of the hunger is denied or delayed, what it seems to feel is that everything in the world "out there" is against them while they are only being good, long-suffering and only seeking the ideal of love, peace, safety, beauty, warmth and comfort that comes with satiation (never mind that they can never achieve it). That is, when a psychopath is confronted with something displeasing or threatening to his hunger, that object (person, idea, group, whatever), is placed in the "all bad" category because, of course, if the psychopath does not like it, it cannot be good! There is never even an instant when the psychopath feels "traumatized" or "shamed" or "helpless." The grandiosity is ever present.
When the evidence mounts that some choice or act of the psychopath created a problem or made a situation worse, this, too, must be denied as part of the self and projected as coming from "out there."
That is, anything that is defined as "bad" is projected onto someone or something else because the internal structure of the psychopath will admit to no wrong, nothing bad, no errors. And keep in mind that this is not because they choose to do that, it is because they cannot do otherwise. There is nothing at the core but a hunger connected to neural inputs and outputs, wrapped up in grandiosity; that is the way they are made.
As a consequence of having such a primitive core structure with access to a complex brain, psychopaths become masters of Projective Identification. That is, they project onto and into others everything that is bad (remembering that "bad" changes according to what the psychopath wants), and seek in manipulative ways to induce in that other person what is being projected, and seek to control the other person who is perceived as manifesting those "bad" characteristics. In this way, the psychopath gains enjoyment and feels "in control."
Keep in mind that what the psychopath considers to be good has nothing to do with truth, honor, decency, consideration for others, or any other thing than what the psychopath wants at any given moment. In this way, any violation of the rights of others, any foul, evil deed, can be perpetrated by a psychopath and he will still sleep like a baby (literally) at night because he has done nothing wrong!
Now, let's turn to Andrew Lobaczewski's work, Political Ponerology, for a more reasonable answer to this problem which he identifies as a matter of societal maladjustment taken advantage of by pathological elements within a society. Except for his extremely clear and accurate descriptions of narcissistic rage, this guy, Ernest Wolf, hasn't got a clue. It is clear that his attempt to 'normalize' and spread around the phenomenon of narcissistic rage is merely apologetics for NPD and psychopathy. His political 'take' is hopelessly naive and the logic used to explain narcissism as a "shaky" construct is contradictory and twisted.