Ironies: Three Defenses That Have Made Us Vulnerable
How Dissociation, Delusion, and Denial may have betrayed our values.
Reactions to the crisis in Afghanistan have been oddly absent among some civilians while others have responded to the disaster with rescue efforts and appeals that echo the heroism of first responders on 9/11. It could be a problem that binds Americans across political divides because it has violated the liberal values of care and social justice as well as conservative values of loyalty and freedom. It is a problem for national security (a priority of the Right) as well as social standing with other countries (a priority of the Left). So why the curious indifference among some of us? We were not this apathetic in the wake of 9/11. Is this apathy or amnesia? Why is it that some spring into action while others check out? Should we attribute this to partisan politics when even the media has not been able to spin this in favor of their man? What are the threats that trigger such responses? Probably each of us has reacted in ways we didn’t understand or that we were ashamed of. This is a natural part of being human.
Our triggers transfer easily from micro contexts to macro ones. I often heard others (including therapists) who were disdainful of the previous administration admit to transferring their narcissistic parent onto the president (for obvious reasons). Ironically, the current administration’s actions are characterized by a) aggressive sabotage of the safety and independence of others b) aiding and abetting genocide c) betrayal and abandonment d) adding to the military’s burden of moral injuries, and e) gaslighting and blame-shifting when held accountable. Within a family microcosm, these are easily recognizable as abuse.
And when it comes to threats of violence or abuse, humans have four responses: Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn (also known as Please and Appease). Nancy McWilliams has in Psychoanalytic Diagnosis identified the unconscious processes that provoke a Freeze response in the form of Dissociation.
“primordial terror, horror, and shame are foremost among the emotions that provoke dissociation in any traumatic situation; rage, excitement, and guilt may also be involved. The more numerous and conflicting the emotional states activated, the harder it is to assimilate an experience without dissociation.”
What appears to be non-reaction to the catastrophe in Afghanistan may be a reaction of overwhelming terror, shame, and guilt. (On the basis that these responses are universal, it would be fair to suppose the same would be true of the previous president’s supporters if their man suddenly betrayed, humiliated, and endangered human rights across the world).
McWilliams also observed that dissociative symptoms often stop when an adult leaves the family of origin, only to reoccur when that adult’s child reaches the age that the adult began experiencing abuse. Perhaps this pattern applies to adults who find themselves in the role of child to an untrustworthy adult again. For adults, those with whom we share common values and beliefs become chosen family, and the leaders of these groups act as parents or God. Because the Right had no reason to transfer familial dependency to the current administration as the Left did, they were able to immediately mobilize their sympathetic nervous systems (Fight response) against threats to their chosen families, advocating for their protectors (military), friends (allies), and siblings (American citizens and religious minorities). Meanwhile, some on the Left struggle to un-freeze from the shocking embarrassment of their chosen parents. I will address the social dangers of dissociation in a future post.
Another primitive defense may appear as blissful ignorance. Denial has been called the most primitive of defenses and is observable in small children. According to McWilliams,
“Denial lives on automatically in all of us as our first reaction to any catastrophe…this reaction is the shadow of an archaic process rooted in the child’s egocentrism, in which a prelogical conviction that ‘If I don’t acknowledge it, it isn’t happening’ governs experience.”
Importantly, she has noted that denial can result in negligence that leads to more death and suffering. Joost A. Meerloo witnessed American egocentrism on a social scale during the Second World War. In Delusion and Mass Delusion he describes,
“the egocentricity of the public in viewing major problems is almost incredible. A wastebasket fire in the next office is more significant than an outbreak of war on another continent. When Japan invaded China in 1932 and the first rumors of an impending world catastrophe circled the globe the American press was preoccupied exclusively with the stolen Lindbergh baby. The press was unable (or unwilling) to launch a campaign for international intervention. The public did not want to see it. The same happened in 1939. It was as if the vast public tried to frustrate the impending catastrophe. In July, 1939, a British poll indicated that the public of Great Britain apparently gave little thought to war. One of its main concerns was astrology.”
Americans are infamous for egocentricity and selective amnesia and it should be no surprise how dissociative we can be, given the extent to which we rely on television, video games, social media, etc. Perhaps modern Americans are denying imminent threat again because it’s mentally feasible to do so, not because it’s wise or rational. Would the Greatest Generation have won World War II if they were as divided and distracted as we are? Perhaps we will learn our lesson from the pandemic and become the Greatest Generation 2.0. The question is, what will it take for us to assess threat accurately? For some of us, learning to recognize our defenses contributes to integrating objective reality with subjective states. If however, we continue to defend ourselves from reality rather than recognize and master our fears, we may have to accept World War III has happened only after we’ve already lost.
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