In a post from last year, Paranoia and Reason, I discussed some of the compensatory functions of paranoia in severely disturbed individuals:
Their illness, in reality, has estranged them from their family, made it impossible for them to maintain long term relationships or productive employment, often leaving them prone to drug and alcohol abuse, frequently victimized on the streets, in general with a bleak future outlook. A person who suffers the devastation of Schizophrenia, with rare exceptions, is emotionally and cognitively crippled. The delusion that they are being followed by the FBI suggests many compensatory attributes. They are never alone (there are always people thinking about them), they are clearly extremely important (the FBI doesn't waste time following people who are inconsequential) and often, they have grandiose fantasies that they are the key to world peace, or some other such problem. We admit them to the hospital, give them powerful medications to help them return to more appropriate reality testing, and often, have to deal with a severe, sometimes dangerous, condition referred to as a Post-psychotic Depression. Giving up their position of power and importance, and facing the bleakness of their lives is terribly distressing; for this reason suicide is a significant risk in young patients who recover from a first psychotic episode.
I drew some analogies to dysfunctional cultures, which often use similar paranoid projection to create enemies who can be blamed for all failings and become a focus of the people's passions. I expanded the concept in The Reparative Function of Paranoid Delusions, with specific interest in the plight of the Islamists and their elevation of the West, especially Israel, the Jews, and America into iconic status. The existence of a Great Satan and a Little Satan protects the fragile self-esteem of the Islamists, and the Ummah, from recognizing and facing their manifest failure as a culture:
We can see the problem for men like [Hamas Leader Khaled] Mash'al. They believe with the greatest conviction that they are chosen by Allah to rule over the infidels. The very existence of Israel in the heart of the Middle East, and American and allied troops in Iraq is a constant humiliation, not just of them but of their God. This is intolerable and they have no choice but to fight with every tool at their disposal. The alternative, to make peace and accept their humiliation, would lay bare all their grandiose fantasies and rationalizations; they would have to confront all their actual failures instead of their fantasied successes. It is unlikely that their version of Islam, which they see as indistinguishable from themselves, could survive such humiliation. Elevating suicide/murder to an ideal then becomes explicable as a measure of their need to hide their reality from themselves, even if it costs them their lives.
There is yet an additional function that such paranoid delusions and the quasi-delusions known as conspiracy theories serve for the believer.
Sigmund, Carl & Alfred, in a painful and moving tribute to the continued existence of the beleaguered state of Israel on the occasion of its birthday, makes some telling points:
Birth Of A Nation, A Garden Blooms
In the Arab world, pride can be regained not by excelling or achieving, but rather, by destroying. If the source of humiliation is no longer visible, then the humiliation no longer exists. No matter the cost to the society, culture, individual or community, destruction is preferable to achievement. Why? Because in order to achieve, you have to fail before you find the formula for success. That is the price of achievement- decades, and sometimes a lifetime of hard work. That is a formula that remains a mystery to most Arabs in the Middle East. They believe they are entitled to the successes that elude them.
Christians, Buddhists, Hindus and others had asserted their own dominion and authority and that had long been a source of resentment for Muslim populations. With the creation of the State of Israel, a nation destined from it’s very inception to succeed, was the final outrage. While there were billions of Christians, Buddhists and Hindus, there were only a few smoldering Jews. That the Arab world could nor defeat a broken people on a level playing field was more than they could bear.
What is hard to recognize in this is the fact that Arab anti-Semitism, their hatred of Jews and of Israel, serves an absolutely necessary function without which the Arab states would implode in a morass of inchoate rage.
A patient who is chronically paranoid organizes his life around his relationship to the hated and feared "persecutor". The fact that the "persecutor" does not particularly care or even know about the victim is immaterial. The paranoid delusion offers a conceptual framework, a mental structure, which the paranoid is able to use to organize his disordered thinking. No longer do chaotic sensory impressions plague him with their inexplicable messages; once the delusion is firmly in place all events can be understood and put into perspective. Where once the person may have been plagued by images of numbers, colors, glances, (all of which can have hidden meaning to the paranoid) all bombarding him in a frightening deluge of impressions, now the sight of the color red has meaning; it means that the CIA knows where they are. The number 19 is not a random event but a sign that Force 19 is onto him. A look askance is a sign he is being watched. Everything is now explained and put in its place.
In the Muslim mind, where there is no cause and effect, everything occurs at the whim of Allah. Such a world risks becoming a frightening place filled with seemingly unpredictable events and when bad things happen it is because Allah wanted them to happen. A tsunami is then evidence that Allah is displeased with his people...unless, you can find a suitable entity, an almost God, who caused the grief. After the Indonesian tsunami, rumors and conspiracy theories were rampant int he Muslim world that the Israelis (and sometimes the Americans) had caused the tsunami. No longer was Allah angry at his people; now there was an explanation that allowed the Muslim world to avoid looking int he mirror and asking the obvious question: When the Arab world is awash with oil money, how is it that they could not spare a tiny amount for their co-religionists and build a tsunami warning system? (Actually, they would have had to buy a tsunami waring system, a related issue.) If Israel and/or America had caused the tsunami, such a warning system was not only unnecessary but foolhardy. Instead of looking inward, fro one's own shortcomings that have facilitated or caused disasters, one can look outward, focus one's wrath on the feared and hated demi-God, and please Allah at the same time. No longer is a disaster a sign of Allah's displeasure, but an opportunity to gain even more of his approval by attacking his enemies.
In a similar vein, the home grow despair of failed societies, which in other nations has been redirected and used to build modern societies around the world, has no internal outlet; it must be directed outward so that the societies of the Muslim world can pretend to stay unchanged and unquestioned.
Israel is thus absolutely necessary for the Muslim world; it offers an outlet for their hatred and rage, and a framework for understanding the world that doesn't involve or require self-reflection.
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