Pinky: When people construct these kinds of - can I call them
self-narratives? - if these narratives differ from outward 'reality'
too much, is this merely annoying or can this be dangerous?
Soldz: That's a good question. I mean, all of our self narratives, as
you put it, differ from reality in various ways. None of us lives
totally 'in reality'. So, but, if too much of it differs from... and
especially the internal reality, for example, someone who thinks of
themselves as only being a nice person who never gets angry, that can
be very limiting. There are many things in the world that do get one
angry and if one has to keep that out of awareness that one never gets
angry, then it can express itself in various other ways that can cause
problems. So no, it's not always a problem, but it often is.
Pinky: In one of your talks, I heard you characterize America as
suffering from a sort of 'social narcissism'. Can you please explain
what you mean by this?
Soldz: Well, I'm sort of using a metaphor from clinical narcissism,
which involves a self-absorption, a general unawareness of other
people. It's not that you don't know that there's physically another
person and they, you know, they've got a different body and a different
name, but you're not really aware that they're different than you, that
they have different thoughts, different wishes. You think that they're
just like you. You know, like a patient who says "I know what you're
thinking!", and it's what they're thinking. It doesn't occur to them
that you might be thinking something different than what they're
thinking or you might have different feelings than them. So, in a
clinical sense narcissism involves this sense that others are just like
oneself, and therefore an unawareness of others as real, separate
people.
In some sense I think the United States suffers from this at a social
level. We have this ideal that we're the best people on Earth.
President Reagan described it as the, I think it was "the shining city
on a hill" from the New Testament, you know, we're this beacon to the
world and all and the rest of the world should just realize that and
emulate us. They should aspire to have our cars, our political system,
our Coca-Cola, and there's very little interest in or concern that
different cultures have different values, different interests. You
know: "Why are they so weird?". And I think that, you know, it's true
of all countries to some degree, but I think the United States has been
particularly true partly because we've been relatively isolated by the
oceans and by being such a big country, you know we've had a huge
influx of immigrants over the centuries. And we've been relatively
spared from internal wars, at least since the Civil War, and... many
Americans do not travel overseas, knowledge of foreign languages is
like much lower than most other countries, at least most other
industrial countries, and there's just a lack of curiosity about other
people. I mean, the most extreme of this is our president, you know, I
believe who just about never traveled outside of the country, he can
barely stand to sleep in a bed different than his own, he needs a very
controlled environment, and he just doesn't seem to be curious about
anyone in the rest of the world. It never occurs to him that maybe
Iraqis have different interests. Maybe they don't want what exactly
what he thinks we want. But I think it's true of a lot of Americans in
general.
Pinky: Okay, so I assume that these kinds of problems are only
compounded when the individual or the nation is very powerful, is that
correct?
Soldz: You probably can only keep it up either in isolation or when
you're extremely powerful. You know, those at the bottom of the rung
probably don't have the luxury of really believing that because they're
constantly impinged upon by others. So, in that sense, I think you're
probably right.
Pinky: In one of your talks I was listening to, you cited a very
interesting statistic re: trust in America. You said that from 1960 to
2000, the amount of people who would agree with the statement "Most
people can be trusted" dropped from approximately 55% to 35%, and
something like 25% among high school students. What's happening?
Soldz: Well we seem to have a much more fearful society. Since 2001,
we've seen the results of this, and the deliberate exploitation of it
by certain politicians. But I think it's been true for a long time.
There was this myth of this shining city on a hill that lasted through
much of the Cold War to a great degree, and it got challenged. In the
60s, it got challenged by the Civil Rights Movement, by the social
movements spawned in opposition to the Vietnam War. I know I'm of that
generation. In the sense that our country was doing something pretty
wrong in Vietnam. It was a pretty rude awakening for a lot of people.
And, we've also had increased social tensions around the cities, and
then, especially since around 1980, a large increase both in
inequality, you know, it's now become accepted, but it's been true for
a long time, there's been a large and growing gap between the upper few
percent of the population and the majority of the population in income,
in social power, which I think is probably almost as important as
income. The institutions of popular power in the country have
decreased, say, unions, neighborhood organizations, things that allowed
ordinary people to exert influence over their lives have decreased
radically. So there's much more of a sense of powerlessness, of being
driven by external forces.
To a large percentage of the population, there's a decline of security.
We know that, for example, retirement, that there used to be a good
number of jobs which had pension plans that were guaranteed pension
plans, and you put in your 20 or 30 or whatever years and you were
taken care of pretty well. And that's gone. Now we have a fractured..
you take care of yourself with a 401k that's never anywhere near equal
to an old pension plan. You know, the social welfare net has been
frayed in various ways, and people sense it. They don't have a good
understanding of it but, there's in many ways people just feel afraid.
Unfortunately, I think people often end up attributing it to sort of
the wrong things. For a long while the danger was from poor people, and
essentially black people, that was exploited. You know, the fear of
crime. And I don't want to say that crime isn't a real problem, but
we've noticed that as violent crime has declined for the last almost 15
years now, fear of crime has increased. The amount of crime and the
danger doesn't reflect your fear of it. I mean, it partially has to do
with the media, but it also partially has to do with there's a
reflection of an overall sense of just 'Danger', of that things are not
safe. And we focus on particular things like crime or most recently
like terrorists in order to give some structure to this sense that
something's not quite right, that things are getting worse. You know,
we've seen in recent polls that there's a radical increase in the sense
that the nation is going in the wrong direction, and that leads to this
general sense, well, it's easier to find a scapegoat in some sense than
to live with that uncertainty and fear.
Pinky: So... into this era of instability and insecurity, from a
psychoanalytic perspective, how does one control the population by
manufacturing fear in the form of an external enemy?
Soldz: Well, it seems the structure the way people think and in certain
circumstances it pulls people together. You know, you think of WWII and
the sense of the nation 'being together'. In recent years, is this odd
quality. We have this external enemy which is of a very unfocused
character, you know, terrorism, which is - "What in the world is
terrorism? Where is it located? Who does it manifest?" The
administration if they wanted to mobilize, and I'm sort of the opinion
that they had at some level consciously or not that unconsciously were
aware of creating a new enemy to replace the Cold War enemy. I remember
watching Bush's speech after 9/11, his speech to Congress, and I was
struck how he defined terrorism in very vague terms, so that the 'war
on terrorism' could never be won. I mean, how can you win a war on a
tactic? Terrorism has been around for thousands of years. There's no
way you can win this war, so therefore, you know, he didn't define it
in terms of Al-Qaeda or any particular enemy. And, I think it was
deliberate, but we have this war combined with this sort of lack of a
war footing in the country because I think that they guessed that they
couldn't sustain it, that opposition to their policies would have
increased a lot if they actually asked for sacrifice. So if I recall
correctly, the same speech told people to go to the mall and go
shopping in order to prevent some economic collapse.
So you have this formless enemy. I mean, terrorism can be anywhere, can
be anyone, and this sense that there's nothing concrete you're doing
about it. This is in some sense the worst situation. If you remember
you know you have these fears, go out and buy duct tape, and other
nonsense like that that just leads to this increase in fear, but in a
formless fear. It's not a fear of the Nazis which is much more
concrete. So, it becomes our manifestation of all our worst fears, and
it also becomes I think to some sense a manifestation of our guilt,
that Americans in some sense know that we have this privileged status
in the world, we use a far greater fraction of the resources of the
world than our population, which suggests we should, and that it's
built upon a world where other people have to be kept down if we're
going to keep having these resources. So there is a real danger, and it
gets focused but in it's undifferentiated way so that it doesn't work
as well psychologically, as more traditional enemies, and I think it
leads to greater anxiety.
Pinky: Hmm, this is really interesting. It kind of sounds like, sort
of, a cycle, like we're projecting ... Is that what you're talking
about? Projection?
Soldz: Yes, yeah, I'm talking about projection, trying not to use the
technical word! [laugh] But yes, projection. And remember, projection
is projecting what's in us. Which doesn't mean, you know, there's the
old saying "just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean that someone's
not out to get you" but, it's our own fears and our own hatred, you
know, "it's not me who hate those other people for trying to get what
I've taken from them or what I'm getting unfairly, but it's them who
hate me" is the process of projection. And in fact, it goes to a
further step, to what psychoanalysts now call 'projective
identification'. Projective identification is where you project your
feelings, wishes into another person and you then act in such a way as
to get that person to enact it. So you act in such a way as to get the
other person to give you grounds to be paranoid of them. You make them
so uncomfortable, you know, "Why are you staring at me?" You say that
and someone's likely to get hostile. Again these are somewhat
metaphors. But in projective identification it's analogous to
'blowback' that Chalmers Johnson and others have talked about. We do
things in such a way as to arouse others to take us on and to be a
greater danger. I'm not trying to claim, I don't want to be
misunderstood as saying that there aren't dangers, let's say Al-Qaeda,
or certain Islamic extremists aren't potentially dangerous, but that we
act in such a way as to magnify those dangers and increase them rather
than to reduce them. Take the war in Iraq, which is you know, in every
poll around the world has led to precipitous decline in respect for the
United States. That can't be making us safer.
Pinky: Okay, in terms of your work, how would you go about trying to
help someone who's suffering from these kinds of mental projections, or
narcissism? How do you help them to overcome this?
Soldz: Well, that's a good question, and unfortunately it doesn't
easily generalize to the social sphere. You know the first thing is you
have to create a safe environment, and that's what we try and do in the
office. One where a person can have any thought or feeling and not be
afraid that's going to cause problems for them. So it's of course a
gradual process. Then, you have to be not too challenging, you don't go
telling people, "Hey, you're projecting! Why are you projecting on to
me?" That doesn't usually work, that usually arouses greater
defensiveness. So you accept whatever it is the person has to say,
whatever it is they feel and at the same time you try not to be too
alien to them, not to be so "good and understanding" that we increase
the feelings a person has for themselves. And so then there's a gradual
process of trying to get a person to put into words rather than act to
experience. Because a lot of what people do is they act in order not to
experience - in order not to feel angry, or not to feel ashamed, or not
to feel terrified - they act. You know, it feels safer and more in
control if I yell at you instead of having some feeling that I'm in
danger or I don't understand what's going on. Or, I'm terrified of
myself. It takes a long time for people to get to a point where they
will admit that it's primarily themselves that they're most scared of -
what they don't know, or what they think they shouldn't know about
themselves that's most terrifying. I mean if you can accept that then
you can deal better about the external world.
Pinky: Hmm. I know you started out by saying that it's difficult to
generalize these kinds of things to the social sphere, but are there
maybe like, at least general patterns that psychiatrists can see that
might help us to approach these kinds of problems at a societal or
international scale?
Soldz: Yeah, I mean we know some things and they're not profound. I
wish I had the profound answers but I don't think anybody does. I
think, you know, we psychoanalysts are just one small part of trying to
piece together these issues. I don't want to foster the megalomania
that any field has the answers to human problems. But we certainly know
that belligerence is the opposite of understanding and it's not gonna
lead to increased harmony. That you have to come to try and understand
others and understand that they're different. Part of the problem that
the Bush administration got into Iraq was that they had this image of
Iraqis as children. I mean they wouldn't quite express it that way, but
you know, there are phrases like "we have to help them grow up", "we
have to educate them", "we have to teach them democracy" or whatever it
is. And the problem is, Iraqis aren't children. They're grown ups. And
they have their own wishes, their own fears, their own desires, and
their own culture. And that psychological orientation, which is often
been the one of colonialism, that the Natives are children who, you
know, we need to be this paternalistic parent. It doesn't work very
well, and in the modern world seems to work not at all.
So ... I mean I don't know if we can generalize exactly from the
consulting room, but we know that you have to develop a greater
awareness of others, the ability to talk and to listen, and the
acceptance, and this is for Americans a major major problem, the
acceptance that our country, like all other countries, it's good and
it's bad, and our motives are no less pure than any other countries'
motives. This is something that Noam Chomsky has focused on a lot. You
know, the myth of American exceptionalism, that the United States is
somehow the only country in human history which only has pure motives.
So for example, the history of the Vietnam War has been re-written in
the school books and even in the newspapers and the press as one of
American idealism that was sort of too idealistic and pure to deal with
a dirty world. So we went in to bring democracy and all these good
things to Vietnam and we couldn't really acknowledge that, you know,
Vietnam was corrupt and had these dictators and things, but it was all
the goodness of our motives, which is a total violation of history. The
United State's motives were anything but pure and democracy was the
last thing on the US agenda there as witnessed at the elections that
were called for and a number of treaties were always cancelled under US
pressure because the North Vietnamese would win them. And a similar
thing in Iraq. There's this myth that the United States went into Iraq
to bring democracy and yes, there's the language of democracy, but we
know that in fact one of the first actions of Paul Bremer was to cancel
local elections. And why did they cancel local elections? Because they
didn't think that the pro-US factions who had been in exile, and didn't
have local roots, they thought that they would lose. So democracy
simply meant electing a pro-US government. So in that sense, one step
is to become self-aware. To accept that the United States, no worse
than any other country, but also not much different than other
countries, has its own interests, and pursues them, and sometimes for
good, and sometimes for ill, but unless we can recognize our own
motives, how in the world are we gonna deal with other people with
their complex motives?
So that's one lesson we have there, and certainly an increased
belligerence toward the world that we've seen in the last number of
years is little question that leads to increased belligerence on the
other side. You know there was the belief that the United States was so
powerful with its shock and awe, that we could overwhelm any country,
and we see how well that worked - this tiny little country of Iraq with
about a twelfth our population and no military to speak of has defeated
the United States military. So, at some point you have to come to terms
and listen to others, which unfortunately we're not ready to do in
Iraq. I mean, we still have Congress debate "What's the proper
government for Iraq?" It doesn't occur to Congress that it's not for
the United State's Congress or anyone in the United States to choose
that. [laugh] You know, whether or not federalism is a good policy, I
don't know, but that's for Iraqis to decide. It's not for the US
Congress to adopt. And until the U.S. learns that lesson, it's not
going to have much success. So I don't know if I've answered your
question there or not because I think, you know, it takes
psychoanalysis, it takes years for an individual. And I wish I knew
what the analog at the social level is, but it's hard to do that, other
than to know that some of what we need to accomplish is the same.
Pinky: Yeah, thank you. I mean, I think that gives us something to
think about because that's not the direction that public discourse is
going over the last few years, to say the least.
Soldz: Yeah, and unfortunately it's on all sides. I mean, all a
politician has to say is "Why don't we try talking to Iran?" and
they're in deep trouble.
Pinky: Right. I was wondering if I could ask you this semi-personal
question. Psychoanalysts are not popularly known as being very
politically engaged. I mean, we don't generally see a ton of you guys
on television protesting this or that. What has been the connection for
you that's led you to be more public in your opposition to the
so-called 'War on Terror', and to empire building in general?
Soldz: Well let me say two things. One, I think your assumption is
partly wrong. Psychoanalysis was born as a radical set of ideas. It was
a great challenge to the status quo and in fact almost all of the early
psychoanalysts were political radicals of one stripe or another. In
pre-war Europe, it was often allied with various social movements. But
when it came to the United States, what happened was that
psychoanalysts came from Europe as the Nazis took over and in this
country, they sort of gave up their radical beliefs partly out of fear
I think, and partly out of the general processes that it were occurring
in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, and it became a much more sedate and
established profession in this country. But that's not been its history
everywhere and for example, in Latin America, there are long traditions
of psychoanalysts working very closely with social movements in
Argentina, in Nicaragua, in Brazil, and so in some sense the United
States' form of psychoanalysis in its particular sort of social
quietism is the exception, perhaps more than the rule. But even in this
country, there's been an increasing number of psychoanalysts who are
becoming more activist. There are a lot of people. It's not the
dominant mainstream, but it's not a total excluded fringe either. So I
think to some degree psychoanalysis gets a bad rap from some of the
sort of Hollywood-ish stereotypes.
For me personally, I mean, in fact, my history is sort of the other
way. I was a political radical first from very early in my teens and
the social movements of the 60s. Now that said, that was a long time
ago and I have been less active over the decades. I have a family and
you know, like many of us, we're raising kids, and doing this and that,
but when the Iraq war came, my activism came out. I could not believe
that at the end of the Cold War, we had an opportunity to try and
create a more peaceful world, to try and reduce belligerence, to reduce
the number of, or even eventually abolish the nuclear weapons in the
world, and I couldn't believe that the country and the world were
launching into another round of belligerence and warfare. That without
without much thought, without much opposition, without anybody really
discussing "Why are we doing this?" I don't mean "Why Iraq in
particular?", but realizing the magnitude of what we gave up. By doing
this we gave up the possibility for a long time of trying to find more
peaceful solutions. And this is an enormous loss, as I think people are
just starting to realize. And so, I could no longer remain quiet and so
I thought, well, where's the place to start? Well you know there are
all kinds of activists but why don't I start among my own? Among
psychoanalysts and more recently among other psychologists, and try and
get them more involved, and try and take some of the tools that we have
because I think one of the lessons of psychoanalysis is that we're all
complex and that ambivalence is central to life, that no one is all
good and probably no one or very few are all bad, that we all have
anger, we all have destructive tendencies, and we all have constructive
and loving tendencies, and the world has to accept that that's in all
of us. And creating myths of us good, them bad is a recipe for failure
as we've seen in the last ten years or so.
Pinky: Well, thank you Dr. Soldz, this has been really helpful.
Soldz: Well thank you, I appreciate it.
Pinky: Okay, take care.
Soldz: Okay, well thanks. Okay, bye bye.
Pinky: Thank you. Take care. Oh! Bye bye. [ laughs ] That was Dr.
Stephen Soldz, Director at the Center for Research, Evaluation, and
Program Development, Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis in
Brookline, Massachusetts.
Click here for an audio of this interview.
Stephen Soldz is psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health
researcher, and faculty member at the Boston Graduate School of
Psychoanalysis. He maintains the Psychoanalysts for Peace and Justice web site and the Psyche, Science, and Society blog.
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