Primitive anger is often experienced as rage. The desire to not just remove, but destroy, mutilate, and eviscerate one's enemy is an expression of the primitive rage that lives within each of us. As we become more civilized, ie mature, our rage is ameliorated by offsetting tender feelings and empathy. By the time we are adults, we have managed to minimize those occasions when our rage finds its way into open expression. Healthy adults rarely experience true rage unless under extreme duress. Adults who are unaware of their own capacity for rage tend to deny, suppress, and in other ways disavow their own rage, but like all conflicted thoughts and feelings, it constantly seeks avenues for expression.
In Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, a caretaker, generally the mother, expresses her need for attention and (fantasied) love though her child:
Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MSP), a type of factitious disorder, is a mental illness in which a person acts as if an individual he or she is caring for has a physical or mental illness when the person is not really sick. People with MSP assume the role of a sick person indirectly by producing or lying about illness in another person under their care, usually a child under 6 years of age. However, cases have been reported of adult victims of MSP. (The term "by proxy" means "through a substitute.")
MSP most often occurs with mothers—although it can occur with fathers—who intentionally harm or describe non-existent symptoms in their children to get the attention given to the family of someone who is sick. A person with MSP uses the many hospitalizations as a way to earn praise from others for her devotion to the child’s care, often using the sick child as a means for developing a relationship with the doctor or other health care provider.
People with MSP might create or exaggerate the child’s symptoms in several ways. They might simply lie about symptoms, alter diagnostic tests (such as contaminating a urine sample), falsify medical records, or induce symptoms through various means, such as poisoning, suffocating, starving, and causing infection.
...
This disorder can lead to serious short- and long-term complications, including continued abuse, multiple hospitalizations, and the death of the victim. (Research suggests that the death rate for victims of MSP is about 10 percent.) In some cases, a child victim of MSP learns to associate getting attention to being sick and develops Munchausen syndrome him or herself. MSP is considered a form of child abuse, which is a criminal offense.
The caretaker convinces herself that the child is "really" ill and will often cause harm to the child in order to fulfill her conscious need for care and, more importantly, the unconscious rage at the child whose overwhelming real primitive demands on the mother force her to hide her own (unconscious) primitive needs.
In this way the mother behaves as if she is a loving, caring person (and convinces herself of the same) all the while channeling her unconscious rage toward her child. The Doctors who take part in the fantasy enactment, often by doing invasive and dangerous procedures, are unwittingly pulled into the drama and become the agent by whom some of the rage is expressed. Again, the Doctors typically imagine they are doing their jobs of helping the unfortunate child, all the while exacting terrible damages upon the innocent victim.
We would all recognize that anyone who encouraged the mother to continue obtaining medical consultations in the face of negative findings, who encouraged such a mother to insist upon invasive testing, especially once faced with evidence of the mother's contribution to the child's disorder, would be nearly as culpable as the mother in the abuse of the child. We would imagine that the abettor would likely be channeling his or her own unconscious rage through the mother and child dyad for enactment by the Doctors.
What happens when such expressions of "unconscious rage by proxy" occur in the international arena? This is courtesy of Dan Schueftan in YNET:
Palestinian society remains politically immature, addicted to excuses
Part 1 of analysis
The recent Temple Mount riots and Mahmoud Abbas’ renewed request for a UN discussion of the Goldstone Report again point to the deep structural failure inherent in the Palestinian political culture.
The Palestinians are proving yet again that even the responsible elements among them cannot act in a constructive manner in order to build society and promote stability, welfare, and an agreement with Israel. They cannot do it because, as it turned out again, at the moment of truth we see the irresponsible, violent, and demagogical radicals who incite and fan the flames gain the upper hand.
The radicals win because the Palestinian public is unwilling to back an ongoing and responsible effort that would ensure a better future for its sons, while the radicals present a vision of violence and self-righteousness that offers fleeting achievements and twisted satisfaction in the immediate and short term.
Nidra Poller has an excellent summary of the events that led to Dan Schueftan's article, well worth reading to appreciate how the international press promulgates stories that are so distorted as to constitute modern blood libels:
Palestinian Muslims Pelt French Tourists and Blame it on the Jews
As the story goes, Palestinians attacked a group of French tourists who were visiting the “esplanade des mosquées” (French for Temple Mount). Israeli police intervened. Calls for help broadcast from the minarets drew Palestinian youths who scuffled with the police here and there in the Old City. It took several hours for calm to be restored. A dozen Palestinians and 17 policemen were injured.
Reports then make a quantum leap to flaming declarations from Palestinian officials. Saeb Erekat accuses Israel of “deliberately escalating tensions in Jerusalem” by sending police to the mosque compound just when President Obama is striving to bring peace to the region. The Palestinian Authority Information Ministry accuses “Israeli occupation police and extremist settlers of breaking into the courtyard of the mosque, firing tear gas bombs and live bullets” against Palestinian worshipers. The PA demands an emergency meeting of the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Gaza government spokesman Tahar an Nazou calls the Islamic nation to defend the al Aqsa mosque against aggression. Hamas authorities order the PA and Fatah to break off “useless” talks with the “occupation,” and advise Arab governments to speak out forcefully against Israeli crimes against al Aqsa Mosque and the Palestinian people, and stop hoping for an American solution. Islamic Jihad leader Abdallah Chami calls the Palestinian people to unite against Israeli plans to undermine the al Aqsa mosque and “Judaize” al-Quds (= Jerusalem). The residents of al-Quds, he adds, will firmly resist Zionist attempts to attack the mosque. PA President Mahmoud Abbas accuses Israeli authorities of “a crime that calls for an immediate intervention of the international community” and warns that these actions “destroy all efforts to bring peace and establish an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.”
Granted, these extravagant declarations are the stock in trade of Palestinian leaders and their international fan clubs. But what exactly is the war crime that was committed on the Temple Mount / Mosque Compound on the 27th of September? Countless newspapers big and small picked up and retailed the story in French or English without giving it a second thought. If Israeli soldiers harvest the organs of their Palestinian victims and committed a variety of war crimes in the 2008 Cast Lead operation in Gaza, why question their guilt in this admittedly minor incident?
Did any news editor actually read the accounts before publishing them? How would a journalist pitch the story? Palestinians throw stones at French tourists visiting the mosque compound. Jerusalem police forces intervene. Skirmishes in the Old City pit police against Palestinian youths. X injured, x arrested. Saeb Erekat calls for an emergency session of the Arab League. Mahmoud Abbas declares that all hopes of peace are dashed. Hamas calls the faithful to defend al Aqsa mosque against assault by the occupation forces. Ban Ki Moon… International Court… Amnesty & the gang… everyone is up in arms.
Yesterday Richard Landes wondered how supposedly ethical and humane people could encourage the worst in the Palestinians:
Of course it doesn’t help that intellectuals in the West encourage the worst of their tendencies. Like Saïd’s appalling rant at the end of his life, they’re the most ardent defenders of Arab honor, even if they do present themselves as militating for Palestinian “human rights.” What hatred must move people to encourage these deeply destructive, dysfunctional phenomena?
Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy is obviously not an exact analogue of the kind of rage by proxy expressed by leading intellectuals in the West, yet the dynamics (not confined to Munchausen by proxy but evident in many circumstances) show some similarities. The leading intellectuals fancy themselves concerned, caring people wishing only for the best for the poor, downtrodden Palestinians, "children" dependent on the goodness of the international community. At the same time their "care" ends up facilitating murderous rage by the Palestinains and provoking defensive attacks from Israel that, even in the best case scenarios, still harms the innocent.
[I will not here discuss the concept of projective identification, a difficult topic which is impossible to disentangle from the Gordian knot of the Israeli-Palestinian relationship. It surely deserves its own post one of these days.]
They further make their rage evident, under the rubric of justice and peace, by attempting to prevent the Israelis (indeed, any democracy) from defending themselves from the predations of the worst, most hateful among us.
[For a counter to the Goldstone Report, consider the letter from Col. Richard Kemp, noted by Elder.]
Primitive rage is an unacceptable, intolerable affective state for civilized human beings to experience. Thus, we see it most often expressed under great duress or in circumstances where the person can escape the shame of surrendering to it (road rage, for example.) By finding others who are ready, willing, and able to channel the rage, the sophisticated intellectual can imagine himself to be a creature of refined sensibilities, removed from such distasteful expressions of rage, caring for the downtrodden and oppressed (as long as they don't move in next door) and committed to justice. In their virtue they cause mass suffering while celebrating the release of their disowned rage.
Recent Comments