I have written extensively about Societal Regression and the concept of Splitting that underlies many of the worst pathologies seen in Regressed Societies. The tendency to demonize a targeted group ("the two minute hate") depends on an initial regression to splitting whereby the designated group becomes the repository of all the negative, disowned traits in society while the larger Society ("the Volk") becomes imbued with all of the positive traits associated with an idealized vision of the society. Understanding what causes Splitting to occur and the psychological functions it serves can help anticipate its appearance and combat the tendency toward simplification that is part of the process.
To briefly review, the developing human infant has a multitude of disparate images, some good and some bad, of its first significant object, the Mother. To the infant, the good Mother who gratifies (by feeding, holding, rocking, singing, etc) is distinct from the bad Mother who frustrates by not immediately removing displeasure.
Between 8-12 months the infant develops Object Permanence, where it becomes able to maintain an internal image of an object even when it is out of sight. This is a necessary step for the later development of Object Constancy, where the toddler has been able to fuse the disparate images of mother and recognizes that the "Good" Mother and the "Bad" Mother are simply different aspects of the same Object/Person. The solidity of the Object is quite fragile and can easily re-split into the Good and Bad component parts under stress. As the child grows and develops, such splitting becomes more and more stable, such that by adulthood, splitting in the face of great stress, while ubiquitous, tends to be brief and circumscribed in time and effects.
People who have a constitutional or developmental predisposition (ego weakness) will have a greater than usual tendency to regression and splitting; as a result they tend to be unstable individuals with unstable relationships that can rapidly turn from "perfect" to "the worst ever." Little is known about what genetic loading predisposes to such ego weakness but the psychological and historical precursors that establish a tendency toward easy regression and splitting have been fairly well delineated by the Psychoanalytic community.
Consider a typical situation in which a young child is raised by a brittle, emotionally disturbed, perhaps abusive parent. In order to survive psychologically, it is important for the child to believe that its Mother cares about him and loves him. This is true for more than the obvious reasons, that we all need to feel lovable and when we are completely dependent on another for our care, we need to believe they want what is best for us. Beyond that, the core of a person's character (which informs their sense of self) contains significant identifications with his primary objects (the parents). Thus, for a child to have hateful feelings toward its parent means that he will hate part of himself. A person who consciously hates himself is someone who will be extremely self-destructive, if not overtly suicidal. As an emergency measure the child must find a way to love its parent, even when the parent is abusive and hateful. One way to accomplish the preservation of the internal representation of the parent as loving is to resort to Splitting; all the hateful aspects of the parent in question are suppressed and repressed, held out of emotional awareness. This means that when the child develops, he may consciously know that his mother was abusive, but he will change the abuse into love by telling himself that he was bad and deserved her punishments (which cannot be tolerated as abuse, but can be tolerated as punishment for transgressions.) Note that this implies that the person's sense of himself will also tend to split. How does this work?
Consider someone newly in a relationship with a desired, idealized Object. She can have no faults because she is perfect. (He may recognize intellectually that no one is perfect but emotionally, which exists on a distinct axis of reality she is perfect.) His damaged Narcissism means that in her presence, showered by her love, he feels whole, intact, and lovable. If he angers her, he knows that it is because he is worthless and has done something to disappoint her; all he can do is beg for another chance; after all, his self esteem depends on being near and with her. However, on the day that she shows herself to be imperfect (perhaps after her perfect beauty has eroded so that it no longer allows him to be seen in the mirror of her pulchritude) he may suddenly notice what a bitch she is and has always been! At that point she has become the devalued object and he preserves his own self esteem.
Of necessity, I am abbreviating a complex set of psychological processes, but the end result is that for this child, by the time he is an adult, he will have a template for relationships that include an ease of splitting of the self and object in the service of preservation of his self esteem (and secondarily, the relationship.)
Now take it up a level, from the intrapsychic to the interpersonal. Consider a child who is placed in a situation in which Splitting is a necessary adaptation to an impossible environment. We see this all the time when immature or regressed parents, in the middle of nasty separations and marital/relationship failure, insist to the child that the other parent is the embodiment of all that was bad in the marriage. If both parents are equally dysfunctional, the problem is compounded. Essentially, when with the mother the child must believe that the father is "all Bad" and the mother is "all Good"; when with the father the polarities are reversed. In this kind of situation, the child learns that when in the presence of one of the parents they must unconsciously adopt a Split in their awareness; eventually this becomes a default state vis a vis relationships and the world and a Manichean worldview becomes easy to adopt.
Many ideologies implicitly depend upon Splitting in their followers.
An important point that can be understood from this admittedly abbreviated description of the process of Splitting is that it is a two part process, only one part of which is available tot he conscious mind. When the mother insists she is the perfect victim of the child and the father is the embodiment of evil, the expectation is that the child will agree with his mother and suppress (eventually repress) all awareness of any positive attributes of his father. What the mother does not understand is that when this occurs, all of her negative attributes are also forced out of the child's awareness. Her faults then persist in the Unconscious where they are unavailable for reality to soften their edges and where they remain available for expression when circumstances are propitious. It is not uncommon for the child, once grown and able to take a more nuanced look at his past, to discover that his Mother has/had her own difficulties; there are a great many adult children of such relationships who distrust and dislike the parent who once demanded idealization; when devaluation occurs, it is not a happy event for anyone involved.
What does this tell us about our current Societal Stressors and any tendency we may have toward Regressive Splitting? As Glenn Reynolds notes, President Obama has failed to convey a sense to the American people that our leaders are protecting us adequately:
I’m against hate crimes.... But I do think that Obama’s inept approach to these issues has made the American public more fearful than it was under Bush, and as a result, more anti-Muslim. The polls certainly demonstrate this shift, and it’s hard for me to see what else would account for it. When people trusted Bush to keep them safe, they weren’t scared. They don’t trust Obama to keep them safe, so they’re more scared. As the President himself suggests, when people are scared, they tend to lash out. . . .
But more than merely leaving Americans more scared, the President's insistence on suppressing discussion of the negatives about Islam are worsening the tendencies toward Splitting that are occurring in response to the current constellation of stressors facing our nation. When the parents, ie our political/academic/cultural elites, insist upon telling us that Islam is a religion of Peace even while they refuse to acknowledge the multiple, manifest atrocities committed in the name of Islam and with the tacit, and often vocal, support of the world's Muslims, all they manage to do is reinforce tendencies toward Splitting and force the negative disowned Object Representations of "Islam" and "Muslim" underground.
Jeffrey Goldberg, in a poorly titled post, makes one valid point, but misses the process described in this post:
Conservatives and Their Poisonous Understanding of Islam
It is obviously difficult for many people to differentiate between Islam and political Islamism, the ideological strand within Islam that breeds terrorism and extremism. But it is exceedingly important to understand that difference; if we don't, we will give al Qaeda what it wants -- a civilizational struggle between the West and all of Islam.
There are certainly Conservatives who are presenting a simplistic, one sided view of Islam but Jeffrey Goldberg shows in his title how easy it is when writing to do the exact same thing. There are, in fact, many more Conservatives who are presenting a much more nuanced look at Islam than the few examples he cites. What he misses is that the typical Liberal attempt to minimize the connection between Islam and terror (as in the New York Times reporter dutifully noting that major Hasan shouted "Alahu Akbar" as he began shooting, yet professes to be completely bewildered as to what might have motivated Major Hasan) is counter-productive and ends up fueling the Splitting that makes an anti-Muslim backlash more likely. (For the record, as in most situations where Fascism is forever threatening America, it is much more likely that such a backlash will take place in Europe, where the Muslim populations are much more estranged and non-assimilated. Angela Merkel is walking a tightrope and Europe has a history of easily losing its balance: Multiculturalism is a failure)
The American people, including Muslim-Americans, would welcome an adult discussion about the tension within Islam between those who wish to become part of the modern world and those who wish for nothing less than to return to the 7th century. Our misguided attempts to protect Islam from criticism make the worst outcomes more likely.
The most powerful elements within the Islamic world today are, from the point of view of Western tolerance, the worst elements. The Muslim Brotherhood is on the ascendancy:
The Muslim Brotherhood Takes Off Its Mask
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood was never a “moderate” organization. I briefly interviewed their spokesman many years ago, and it could not have been more obvious that I was dealing with a dissembler. I know moderate Muslims when I see them, and these guys aren’t even in the same time zone.
Read the whole thing and then read Barry Rubin's article:
In calling for jihad against America, the West and Israel in terms virtually identical with Osama bin Laden’s rhetoric, the leader of Egypt’s powerful Muslim Brotherhood uttered one sentence that explains the contemporary Middle East.
Here it is: “The improvement and change that the [Muslim] nation seeks can only be attained through jihad and sacrifice and by raising a jihadi generation that pursues death just as its enemies pursue life.”
Here’s why that sentence is so important. The central question for the Middle East for many decades has been this: Why is it – especially since we are a superior people (Arabs) with a superior religion (Islam) – that we are behind the West? How that question has been answered has been the core of Middle Eastern politics. Let’s call it The Question.
Islam is increasingly answering the question in ways that impinge upon our freedoms; trying to deny and hide such facts does not make the negative thoughts disappear, it just drives them underground where they become immune to reality testing and available for expression when circumstances become propitious.
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