a journal on the writer's role in society edited by esther altshul helfgott Contributors are invited to address the question: What is the writer's responsibility to self & society? |
from PsychArt e-list (psychoanalysis & art) Dear PSYARTers, People have been asking how one can explain the motivations of the terrorists. Let me offer a rather simple psychoanalytic explanation. Ordinarily, our superegos prevent us from robbing, raping, murdering, wrecking, and all the other things our raw impulses toward immediate pleasure might lead us into doing. But the terrorist's superego has been, so to speak bought off. How? It's not difficult, as you can see from the long history in this country of lynch mobs, slavery, the KKK, genocide of the Native Americans, etc. You persuade yourself that this act (which would ordinarily run counter to your superego) is in fact in the service of a just cause (one which your particular ego tells your superego is morally right). That could be white supremacy, avenging the wrong of Waco (like the unrepentant McVeigh), keeping people of color in their rightful place, Manifest Destiny, punishing the U.S. for its misdeeds--you name it. We humans are adept at finding things that allow us to do what we ordinarily would not permit ourselves. Religious reasons, as with bin Laden and the Taliban, do this best. A religious reason is unarguably RIGHT. So perhaps it isn't just the intellectual move of justification. Perhaps that move gets a little boost from those impulses that would like to be let loose. My wish to do violence makes it, perhaps, easier for me to accept that it is right, good Islamic teaching, to punish the U.S., including killing a lot of people who had nothing to do with the misdeeds of our country. That second move, from impulse to ego-belief to superego relaxation, seems to me possible, but the crucial one is the first. Ego-belief relaxes superego and allows us to gratify impulses we would otherwise recoil from. As you know, I've been much interested in the convergence of psychoanalysis and neuroscience. Looking at the phenomenon through both lenses, we could note that, if there is a superego, it is in the prefrontal cortex (to quote Robert Sapolsky of Stanford). That is the last part of the brain to develop, the part that fully visualizes consequences and, probably, moral strictures (hence the risky, rebellious, and inconsiderate behavior of adolescents). The cognitive element, the ego-belief that one is acting in a just cause, would also be located, if not in the prefrontal cortex, pretty far forward in the frontal lobes. In effect, the two regions are side by side, and it should be very easy for the one to influence the other. (Please note that I am winging it here; I've done no reading or research on this). The other path, from id-impulse to ego-belief to relaxation of superego, I'm afraid I can't tackle, at all. Unrestrained impulses to rape and murder would be way down in the lower, i.e. evolutionarily earlier, regions of our brain. If we believe Freud, they would be constantly pushing for expression against restrictions imposed by the later, hominid or perhaps even primate parts of our brains. The paths or systems would be exceedingly complicated, too complicated for me to guess at. Lots of emotions, like that feeling that this is RIGHT, would be involved in that route. OK, for what it's worth, there's my neuro- psychoanalytic explanation. Go to it, What do you think? -Best, Norm |
from PsychArt e-list (psychoanalysis & art) Dear PSYARTers, People have been asking how one can explain the motivations of the terrorists. Let me offer a rather simple psychoanalytic explanation. Ordinarily, our superegos prevent us from robbing, raping, murdering, wrecking, and all the other things our raw impulses toward immediate pleasure might lead us into doing. But the terrorist's superego has been, so to speak bought off. How? It's not difficult, as you can see from the long history in this country of lynch mobs, slavery, the KKK, genocide of the Native Americans, etc. You persuade yourself that this act (which would ordinarily run counter to your superego) is in fact in the service of a just cause (one which your particular ego tells your superego is morally right). That could be white supremacy, avenging the wrong of Waco (like the unrepentant McVeigh), keeping people of color in their rightful place, Manifest Destiny, punishing the U.S. for its misdeeds--you name it. We humans are adept at finding things that allow us to do what we ordinarily would not permit ourselves. Religious reasons, as with bin Laden and the Taliban, do this best. A religious reason is unarguably RIGHT. So perhaps it isn't just the intellectual move of justification. Perhaps that move gets a little boost from those impulses that would like to be let loose. My wish to do violence makes it, perhaps, easier for me to accept that it is right, good Islamic teaching, to punish the U.S., including killing a lot of people who had nothing to do with the misdeeds of our country. That second move, from impulse to ego-belief to superego relaxation, seems to me possible, but the crucial one is the first. Ego-belief relaxes superego and allows us to gratify impulses we would otherwise recoil from. As you know, I've been much interested in the convergence of psychoanalysis and neuroscience. Looking at the phenomenon through both lenses, we could note that, if there is a superego, it is in the prefrontal cortex (to quote Robert Sapolsky of Stanford). That is the last part of the brain to develop, the part that fully visualizes consequences and, probably, moral strictures (hence the risky, rebellious, and inconsiderate behavior of adolescents). The cognitive element, the ego-belief that one is acting in a just cause, would also be located, if not in the prefrontal cortex, pretty far forward in the frontal lobes. In effect, the two regions are side by side, and it should be very easy for the one to influence the other. (Please note that I am winging it here; I've done no reading or research on this). The other path, from id-impulse to ego-belief to relaxation of superego, I'm afraid I can't tackle, at all. Unrestrained impulses to rape and murder would be way down in the lower, i.e. evolutionarily earlier, regions of our brain. If we believe Freud, they would be constantly pushing for expression against restrictions imposed by the later, hominid or perhaps even primate parts of our brains. The paths or systems would be exceedingly complicated, too complicated for me to guess at. Lots of emotions, like that feeling that this is RIGHT, would be involved in that route. OK, for what it's worth, there's my neuro- psychoanalytic explanation. Go to it, What do you think? -Best, Norm |
a journal on the writer's role in society edited by esther altshul helfgott Contributors are invited to address the question: What is the writer's responsibility to self & society? |
