One goal of Psychoanalysis is to clarify the unconscious myths about oneself and the important others in our lives that exert a powerful influence on current functioning. We do this to help our patients understand themselves better and allow them to gain greater control over their lives. The classic myth of the victim is that he or she has no control over their circumstances. They are victims of their environment. This personal myth, or fantasy, organizes how the person interacts with the world, including with important people in their world.
I have written before about a young woman who felt herself to be a victim and (unconsciously) recreated her victim-hood in all manner of ways. The young woman in Unintended Consequences, "Accidents", and Unconscious Processes had a minor car accident, which ultimately led us to understand the active role she took in maintaining her apparently passive victimization:
Early in her treatment a young woman patient who consciously was highly committed to therapy, was rushing to get to her appointment on time yet ended up missing the appointment because she had been involved in a minor car accident. In the following session, she explained that she had pulled out of her garage (in the building in which she lived) and when she pulled into traffic, a car hit her from behind. She hadn't seen the car and while upset at missing her session and by the accident, dismissed its significance with an airy, "accidents happen." Therapeutic tact dictated that I approach the incident with some care.
I will not repeat here what we discovered in the course of her therapy beyond stating that the accident was the heavily over-determined outcome of complicated mental events in her mind, but it was eventually to lead her to being able to take a much greater, conscious role in the events of her life.
Sadly, those who look within to find the source of their victim-hood remain the minority. It is easier on so many levels to continue to look at the external world to support the sense of oneself as a helpless, blameless, victim. This is nowhere more true than in certain parts of the Arab world.
It is inarguably true that it is easier to destroy than to build. Destruction takes very little talent and is an easily developed skill If you are willing to kill yourself in the process, it is child's play, or Grandmother's play:
Woman suicide bomber's family: We're very proud
Explosive device strapped to 57-year-old woman suicide bomber activated near IDF soldiers operating in Jabalya area in north Gaza; three soldiers sustain light injuries in incident; 'I offer myself as a sacrifice to God and to the homeland,' terrorist says on video prior to attack.
When the dispossessed and traumatized Jews of Europe came to Israel after the Holocaust, they found swamp land and desert. There were an indigenous Arab population, Muslim and Christian, and a surviving Jewish population which had been in Palestine since ancient times. The European Jews build a democratic society, not without flaws, and have constructed for themselves a vibrant, modern state. Until Israel's victory in the 1967 war, they were considered plucky underdogs, surrounded by a sea of Arabs who continually threatened to "throw the Jews into the sea" and survived and thrived in one of the worst neighborhoods on the globe.
[In a fairly interesting bit of Blogosphere activity, Alan Dershowitz takes down many of the distortions celebrated by the anti-Zionists, thinly disguised anti-Semites, in his piece at the Huffington Post last week, The World According to Jimmy Carter. It is worth reading, not least for the comments. The Elder of Ziyon, who is rapidly approaching indispensable status, notes a particularly fascinating trend in Liberal objectivity in the HuffPo:
I was struck more by two of the less infammatory comments:
A challenge to my fellow Huffpo readers: Could anyone with a decent knowledge of this actually go through these points and offer a different perspective on them? I am of two minds on the whole thing but often find that those who accuse others of blind support of Israel rarely take time to debunk what they insist are myths. Honestly, I really want to have that ammunition, because I'm inclined to believe that Israel is not behaving itself. But it's hard to defend. Thanks!
By: TheWitch on November 22, 2006 at 12:13pm
It is difficult to miss that no one responding yet has taken on any of the factual inconsistencies Dershowitz raises. I too am dismayed by Israel's violent responses but nothing good and lasting can come from solutions which are based on ignoring, or worse, rewriting the past. I am very saddened by Carter's book if he has indeed gotten so many things wrong.
No action based on lies will further attaining peace.
By: wiredforpeace on November 22, 2006 at 01:06pm
As far as I can tell, no one actually rises to the occasion. A couple of people refer to websites but not a single one found anything actually inaccurate. People also talk about Dershowitz' biases, as if a bias means that he is wrong.]
Elder has noticed that the "narrative" of the Middle East is based on a fantasy of Palestinian passivity and victim-hood that is rarely recognized, let alone addressed, in the MSM or in diplomatic circles (as if it in not diplomatic to point out such an inconvenient truth to those who have no desire to hear it.)
It is incontrovertible that there are victims in the world. Children who are in abusive homes are victims. Unarmed woman, children, and men who are being attacked by militias and suicide bombers are victims, whether it be in Darfur, Beirut, or on a bus in Jerusalem. One could even conceive of the Palestinian people as victims, yet the question so rarely asked is who is victimizing whom?
The Palestinians have been saddled with corrupt thugs as their rulers, some freely chosen in open elections, yet they prefer to believe that their victim-hood is not in any way of their own making.
When a "victim" is seen in Psychotherapy, there is a great temptation, fully indulged in by our psycho-babble pseudo-therapeutic culture, to empathize with their victim-hood. Young therapists typically feel that they are doing their patients a service by understanding how they are being victimized and helping "empower" them against their abuser. Let me be clear that if a person is unaware that they are being mistreated, the first step is to help them recognize the mistreatment. The woman who explains that her boyfriend or husband hit her because she did something wrong, or the child who believes they are "bad" and that is why daddy and mommy hit them, need to understand that they are being mistreated and need redress. However, to stop there is to perform a serious disservice to the "victim." Beyond recognizing what is happening, they need to understand how their behavior helps shape their immediate environment. This is not in any way to imply that a therapist "blames" the victim, although interpretations made prematurely or without sufficient tact can feel that way. However, the person must learn how they evoke abusive behavior and how they manage to find abusers, because without such knowledge, they are doomed to repeat the behavior (enactment).
As an example, an adult who was abused as a child has a great tendency to find abusive relationships. Often, they unconsciously provoke abuse. By understanding that as a child they attempted to control a small piece of their environment, control that was necessary to protect them from the horrible passivity of traumatic abuse, they behaved in provocative ways, they can begin to see how their present behavior, echoes of the past, makes mistreatment more likely in the present. It is sadly not unusual for abused children to "act out", to behave badly; they already have been told, and believe, they are bad, and the only control they may have is to determine the timing of their punishment. Such control is life-saving in settings with unpredictable parental behavior. The most difficult piece of understanding is for an adult to realize that even when a child is provocative, it is never the child's fault when they are abused. (Unfortunately, yet another aspect of abuse is its effect on the person's Superego, trending to make them less forgiving of themselves for transgressions of even minor types.)
The Palestinians have three choices.
1) They can continue to believe in their own innocence and lack of responsibility for their conditions. In such a case, they will continue to believe the absolute worst of their hated enemies, the Jews, who they imagine are spending all their time trying to do to the Palestinians what the Palestinians continually claim to desire for the Jews, ie Genocide. They avoid the inconvenient contradiction that the Jews, who they build up as Supermen, are so incredibly inefficient at murdering Palestinians, but that merely shows the power of myth to overcome reality. All the evidence thus far suggest they are committed to their path. Yet even here they have a choice.
2) They could decide that despite their victimization by the Jews and the world (despite the billions the West has lavished upon them) they will start to do the very hard work required to build their own state.
3) Alternatively, the Palestinians could look at their own contribution to their current disastrous difficulties and decide to build a state rather than focus all their energies on destroying their neighbor. As I already pointed out, however, building a state is hard work; destroying a state is a gratifying exercise in the expression of uninhibited primal passions. When such destruction is sanctioned by the world and blessed by one's religious leaders (with promises of great delights int he world to come), it certainly is preferable to living in squalor or the hard work that building a society would entail. Consider this exchange with a future suicide bomber:
BOMBER: I originally decided to become a martyr after I saw what the Israeli army did in the refugee camp of Jenin in the big military campaign of April, 2002.
But this idea became stronger when I understood what status I will have in heaven if I scarify myself for Allah. Every time somebody else dies as a martyr in a suicide bomb attack, I pray for him but I feel jealous. I want to be where he is now and I pray that Allah will one day offer me this occasion and this honor.
(Editor's note: The potential bomber was referring to an Israeli anti-terror raid in his hometown of Jenin in 2002 in which Palestinian leaders accused the Jewish state of a "massacre," claiming the Israeli Defense Forces killed over 500 Palestinian civilians, including many women and children.
It was later determined 56 Palestinians, mostly gunmen, were killed in the raid, which followed a series of deadly suicide attacks inside Israel that were reportedly planned and directed from the terror infrastructure in Jenin. Twenty-three Israeli soldiers died in the Jenin battle, in which IDF troops conducted house-to-house searches to minimize civilian casualties by avoiding air attacks.)
WND: Is your main motivation for becoming a bomber is to serve Allah?
BOMBER: Yes, of course. Allah gave Muslims the possibility to gain their prize and payment in different ways. There are those (Muslims) who pray and fast only and respect Allah's commandments, and there are those who wish a higher prize. And the highest prize is given to those who scarify themselves, their lives, their bodies and everything in this world.
...
WND: You talk about fighting them, the Jews. I'm an American Jew. Do you want to kill me?
BOMBER: You are here and nobody hurts you and nobody thinks to do so. But if, unfortunately for you, if you will be in a place where my (suicide) operation will take place, I will not feel sorrow.
You American Jews are fully partners with the Zionists and even more dangerous than the Israelis because of the international support you give to the Israelis in their massacres against our people and the maintenance of the occupation.
WND: So if after today's meeting you saw me in a cafe in Jerusalem that you were sent to attack, you'd still try to blow it up?
BOMBER: At the moment there will not be a place for feelings and hesitations. If I go in an operation it means that I decided to leave behind my loved ones – my mother, my father, brothers and sisters, all my family and my friends. And if I am capable of this I would not give you a break just because we met for one time.
Meanwhile and before I drive you to hell in an operation, enjoy your tea and our hospitality. (Laughing).
It is difficult to find hope in such sentiments. The Palestinians have always had three choices and have consistently chosen the path of least responsibility and greatest expression of hate and violence. They would rather die while murdering innocents than question their own mythology.
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