Terrorists and Freedom Fighters Part 6

http://samvak.tripod.com/faq11.html

http://samvak.tripod.com/msla7.html

4. Political and economic circ.u.mstances and emerging narcissistic group behaviours Pathological narcissism is the result of individual upbringing (see: "The Narcissist's Mother" and "Narcissists and Schizoids" ) and, in this sense, it is universal and cuts across time and s.p.a.ce. Yet, the very process of socialization and education is heavily constrained by the prevailing culture and influenced by it. Thus, culture, mores, history, myths, ethos, and even government policy (such as the "one child policy" in China) do create the conditions for pathologies of the personality.

The ethnopsychologist George Devereux ("Basic Problems of Ethnopsychiatry", University of Chicago Press, 1980) suggested to divide the unconscious into the id (the part that was always instinctual and unconscious) and the "ethnic unconscious" (repressed material that was once conscious). The latter includes all our defence mechanisms and most of the superego. Culture dictates what is to be repressed. Mental illness is either idiosyncratic (cultural directives are not followed and the individual is unique and schizophrenic) - or conformist, abiding by the cultural dictates of what is allowed and disallowed.

Our culture, according to Christopher Lasch teaches us to withdraw into ourselves when we are confronted with stressful situations. It is a vicious circle. One of the main stressors of modern society is alienation and a pervasive sense of isolation. The solution our culture offers us - to further withdraw - only exacerbates the problem.

Richard Sennett expounded on this theme in "The Fall of Public Man: On the Social Psychology of Capitalism" (Vintage Books, 1978). One of the chapters in Devereux's aforementioned tome is ent.i.tled "Schizophrenia: An Ethnic Psychosis, or Schizophrenia without Tears". To him, the whole USA is afflicted by what came later to be called a "schizoid disorder". C. Fred Alford (in "Narcissism: Socrates, the Frankfurt School, and Psychoa.n.a.lytic Theory", Yale University Press, 1988) enumerates the symptoms: "...withdrawal, emotional aloofness, hyporeactivity (emotional flatness), s.e.x without emotional involvement, segmentation and partial involvement (lack of interest and commitment to things outside oneself), fixation on oral- stage issues, regression, infantilism and depersonalization.

These, of course, are many of the same designations that Lasch employs to describe the culture of narcissism. Thus, it appears, that it is not misleading to equate narcissism with schizoid disorder." (page 19).

Consider the Balkan region, for instance:

http://samvak.tripod.com/pp25.html http://samvak.tripod.com/pp29.html

5. Christopher Lasch, American "culture of narcissism" and the long term effects of the September 11 atrocities Lasch and his work are increasingly relevant in post September America. This is partly because the likes of bin Laden hurl at America primitive and coa.r.s.e versions of Lasch's critique. They accuse America of being a failed civilization, not merely of meddling ignorantly and sacriligeously in the affairs of Islam (and the rest of the world). They fervently believe that America exports this contagious failure to other cultures and societies (through its idolatrous ma.s.s media and inferior culture industries) and thus "infects" them with the virus of its own terminal decline. It is important to understand the left wing roots of this cancerous rendition of social criticism.

Lasch wrote: "The new narcissist is haunted not by guilt but by anxiety. He seeks not to inflict his own certainties on others but to find a meaning in life. Liberated from the superst.i.tions of the past, he doubts even the reality of his own existence. Superficially relaxed and tolerant, he finds little use for dogmas of racial and ethnic purity but at the same time forfeits the security of group loyalties and regards everyone as a rival for the favors conferred by a paternalistic state.

His s.e.xual att.i.tudes are permissive rather than puritanical, even though his emanc.i.p.ation from ancient taboos brings him no s.e.xual peace. Fiercely compet.i.tive in his demand for approval and acclaim, he distrusts compet.i.tion because he a.s.sociates it unconsciously with an unbridled urge to destroy. Hence he repudiates the compet.i.tive ideologies that flourished at an earlier stage of capitalist development and distrusts even their limited expression in sports and games. He extols cooperation and teamwork while harboring deeply antisocial impulses. He praises respect for rules and regulations in the secret belief that they do not apply to himself. Acquisitive in the sense that his cravings have no limits, he does not acc.u.mulate goods and provisions against the future, in the manner of the acquisitive individualist of nineteenth-century political economy, but demands immediate gratification and lives in a state of restless, perpetually unsatisfied desire."

(Christopher Lasch - The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an age of Diminis.h.i.+ng Expectations, 1979) There is no single Lasch. This chronicler of culture, did so mainly by chronicling his inner turmoil, conflicting ideas and ideologies, emotional upheavals, and intellectual vicissitudes. In this sense, of (courageous) self-doc.u.mentation, Mr. Lasch epitomized Narcissism, was the quintessential Narcissist, the better positioned to criticize the phenomenon.

"Narcissism" is a relatively well-defined psychological term. I expound upon it elsewhere ("Malignant self Love - Narcissism Re- Visited"). The Narcissistic Personality Disorder - the acute form of pathological Narcissism - is the name given to a group of 9 symptoms (see: DSM-4). They include: a grandiose Self (illusions of grandeur coupled with an inflated, unrealistic sense of the Self), inability to empathize with the Other, the tendency to exploit and manipulate others, idealization of other people (in cycles of idealization and devaluation), rage attacks and so on. Narcissism, therefore, has a clear clinical definition, etiology and prognosis.

The use that Lasch makes of this word has nothing to do with its usage in psychopathology. True, Lasch did his best to sound "medicinal". He spoke of "(national) malaise" and accused the American society of lack of self-awareness. But choice of words does not a coherence make.

"The Culture of Narcissism - American Life in an Age of Diminis.h.i.+ng Expectations" was published in the last year of the unhappy presidency of Jimmy Carter (1979). The latter endorsed the book publicly (in his famous "national malaise" speech).

The main thesis of the book is that the Americans have created a self-absorbed (though not self aware), greedy and frivolous society which depended on consumerism, demographic studies, opinion polls and Government to know and to define itself. What is the solution?

Lasch proposed a "return to basics": self-reliance, the family, nature, the community, and the Protestant work ethic. To those who adhere, he promised an elimination of their feelings of alienation and despair.

But the clinical term "Narcissism" was abused by Lasch in his books.

It joined other words mistreated by this social preacher. The respect that this man gained in his lifetime (as a social scientist and historian of culture) makes one wonder whether he was right in criticizing the shallowness and lack of intellectual rigor of American society and of its elites.

There is a detailed a.n.a.lysis here, in a reaction I wrote to Roger Kimball's "Christopher Lasch vs. the elites""New Criterion", Vol.

13, p.9 (04-01-1995): http://samvak.tripod.com/lasch.html

6. Are all terrorists and serial killers narcissists?

Terrorists can be phenomenologically described as narcissists in a constant state of deficient narcissistic supply. The "grandiosity gap" - the painful and narcissistically injurious gap between their grandiose fantasies and their dreary and humiliating reality - becomes emotionally insupportable. They decompensate and act out.

They bring "down to their level" (by destroying it) the object of their pathological envy, the cause of their seething frustration, the symbol of their dull achievements, always incommensurate with their inflated self-image.

They seek omnipotence through murder, control (not least self control) through violence, prestige, fame and celebrity by defying figures of authorities, challenging them, and humbling them.

Unbeknownst to them, they seek self punishment. They are at heart suicidal. They aim to cast themselves as victims by forcing others to punish them. This is called "projective identification". They attribute evil and corruption to their enemies and foes. These forms of paranoia are called projection and splitting. These are all primitive, infantile, and often persecutory, defense mechanisms.

When coupled with narcissism - the inability to empathize, the exploitativeness, the sense of ent.i.tlement, the rages, the dehumanization and devaluation of others - this mindset yields abysmal contempt. The overriding emotion of terrorists and serial killers, the amalgam and culmination of their tortured psyche - is deep seated disdain for everything human, the flip side of envy. It is cognitive dissonance gone amok. On the one hand the terrorist derides as "false", "meaningless", "dangerous", and "corrupt" common values, inst.i.tutions, human intercourse, and society. On the other hand, he devotes his entire life (and often risks it) to the elimination and pulverization of these "insignificant" ent.i.ties. To justify this apparent contradiction, the terrorists casts himself as an altruistic saviour of a group of people "endangered" by his foes.

He is always self-appointed and self-proclaimed, rarely elected. The serial killer rationalizes and intellectualizes his murders similarly, by purporting to "liberate" or "deliver" his victims from a fate worse than death.

The global reach, the secrecy, the impotence and growing panic of his victims, of the public, and of his pursuers, the damage he wreaks - all serve as external ego functions. The terrorist and serial killer regulate their sense of self esteem and self worth by feeding slavishly on the reactions to their heinous deeds. Their cosmic significance is daily enhanced by newspaper headlines, ever increasing bounties, admiring imitators, successful acts of blackmail, the strength and size of their opponents, and the devastation of human life and property. Appeas.e.m.e.nt works only to aggravate their drives and strengthen their appet.i.tes by emboldening them and by raising the threshold of excitation and "narcissistic supply". Terrorists and killers are addicted to this drug of being acknowledged and reflected. They derive their sense of existence, parasitically, from the reactions of their (often captive) audience.

APPENDIX - Responses in a correspondence following the publication of this interview Zionism has always regarded itself as both a (19th century) national movement AND a (colonial) civilizing force:

See - Herzl's Butlers -

http://samvak.tripod.com/pp27.html

The Holocaust was a ma.s.sive trauma NOT because of its dimensions - but because GERMANS, the epitome of Western civilization, have turned on the Jews, the self-proclaimed missionaries of Western civilization in the Levant and Arabia. It was the betrayal that mattered. Rejected by East (as colonial stooges) and West (as agents of racial contamination) alike - the Jews resorted to a series of narcissistic defences reified by the State of Israel. The long term occupation of territories (metaphorical or physical) is a cla.s.sic narcissistic trait (of "annexation" of the other). The Six Days War was a war of self defence - but the swift victory only exacerbated the narcissistic defences. Mastery over the Palestinians became an important component in the psychological makeup of the nation (especially the more rightwing and religious elements) because it const.i.tutes "Narcissistic Supply".

Bin Laden (and by extension Islamic fundamentalism) is the narcissistic complement of the State of Israel. His narcissistic defences are fuelled by unrequited humiliation (Millon's "compensatory narcissism"). The humiliation is the outcome of a grandiosity gap between reality and grandiose fantasies, between actual inferiority and a delusional sense of superiority (and cosmic mission), between his sense of ent.i.tlement and his incommensurate achievements, skills, and accomplishments.

When narcissists are faced with the disintegration of their narcissistic "infrastructure" (their False Self) - they decompensate. I have outlined the possible psychodynamic reactions here:

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/npd/87772

Narcissism is always concomitant with the "civilizing"

components of colonialism ("White Man's Burden") - though not with the mercantilist elements.

"Pathological narcissism is a well defined (and phenomenological) mental health theoretical construct. No doubt, narcissists engage in anti-Other discourse and other virulent and pernicious narratives. But the existence of such a discourse is not a DETERMINANT of pathological narcissism - merely its manifestation.

What GIVES RISE to the grandiosity gap IS socio- economic reality.

The gap is between the REAL and the IDEAL, between the ACTUAL and the (self- DELUSIONAL and FANTASIZED. Socio-economic factors breed narcissistic injury and narcissistic rage.

Return

The Crescent and the Cross Introduction "There are two maxims for historians which so harmonise with what I know of history that I would like to claim them as my own, though they really belong to nineteenth-century historiography: first, that governments try to press upon the historian the key to all the drawers but one, and are anxious to spread the belief that this single one contains no secret of importance; secondly, that if the historian can only find the thing which the government does not want him to know, he will lay his hand upon something that is likely to be significant."

Herbert b.u.t.terfield, "History and Human Relations", London, 1951, p.

186

The Balkans as a region is a relatively novel way of looking at the discrete nation-states that emerged from the carca.s.ses of the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires and fought over their spoils.

This sempiternal fight is a determinant of Balkan ident.i.ty. The nations of the Balkan are defined more by ornery opposition than by cohesive ident.i.ties. They derive sustenance and political-historical coherence from conflict. It is their afflatus. The more complex the axes of self-definition, the more multifaceted and intractable the conflicts. Rabid nationalism against utopian regionalism, fascism (really, opportunism) versus liberalism, religion-tinted traditionalism (the local moribund edition of conservatism) versus "Western" modernity.

Who wins is of crucial importance to world peace.

The Balkan is a relatively new political ent.i.ty. Formerly divided between the decrepit Ottoman Empire and the imploding Austro- Hungarian one - the countries of the Balkans emerged as unique polities only during the 19th century. This was to be expected as a wave of nationalism swept Europe and led to the formation of the modern, bureaucratic state as we know it.

Even so, the discrete ent.i.ties that struggled to the surface of statehood did not feel that they shared a regional destiny or ident.i.ty. All they did was fight ferociously, ruthlessly and mercilessly over the corrupted remnants of the Sick Men of Europe (the above mentioned two residual empires). In this, they proved themselves to be the proper heirs of their former masters: murderous, suborned, Byzantine and nearsighted.

In an effort to justify their misdeeds and deeds, the various nations - true and concocted - conjured up histories, languages, cultures and doc.u.ments, some real, mostly false. They staked claims to the same territories, donned common heritage where there was none, spoke languages artificially constructed and lauded a culture hastily a.s.sembled by "historians" and "philologists".

These were the roots of the great evil - the overlapping claims, the resulting intolerance, the mortal, existential fear stoked by the kaleidoscopic conduct of the Big Powers. To recognize the existence of the Macedonian ident.i.ty - was to threaten the Greek or Bulgarian ones. To accept the antiquity of the Albanians was to dismantle Macedonia, Serbia and Greece. To countenance Bulgarian demands was to inhumanly penalize its Turk citizens. It was a zero-sum game played viciously by everyone involved. The prize was mere existence - the losers annihilated.

It very nearly came to that during the two Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913.

Allies s.h.i.+fted their allegiance in accordance with the s.h.i.+fting fortunes of a most bewildering battlefield. When the dust settled, two treaties later, Macedonia was dismembered by its neighbours, Bulgaria bitterly contemplated the sour fruits of its delusional aggression and Serbia and Austro-Hungary rejoiced. Thus were the seeds of World War I sown.