Dear Colleague,

   Several years ago I taught a course presenting a foundation for the psychological study of collective forms of violence. The outline for my course appears below. I since have elaborated upon these ideas and analyzed a wide range of phenomena or "case studies."    But as I often say, "In our hearts the dream remains the same." 

   The outline for my course is directly below. I hope you find these ideas useful.

Best regards,
Richard Koenigsberg

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The Psychoanalytic Interpretation of War

Richard Koenigsberg. Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis
 

COURSE OUTLINE

Class 1: Culture and Unconscious Fantasy

Class 2: The Symbolic Meaning of the Enemy

Class 3: What are “Nations” and Why are we so attached to them?

Class 4: Fanatic Belief

Class 5: Warfare and Self-destruction

Class 6: Societal Violence as Collective Psychopathology

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Class 1: Culture and Unconscious Fantasy

Psychoanalysis extends its scope and impact by using its concepts to interrogate—not only the internal world—but also the external world. This course presents methods and theories  studying the interaction between psychological motives and culture forms. We  show how unconscious fantasies—projected into social reality—shape and give meaning to ideologies and institutions.

I present methods for uncovering unconscious fantasies contained within ideologies, viewing political rhetoric as manifest content. By identifying recurring images and metaphors within political language, one may decipher the latent meaning of political texts. Ideologies generate historical action, allowing shared fantasies to become externalized and enacted as social reality.

Ideologies are cognitive structures; templates for action. However, why do people embrace ideologies? How are we to account for their power and persistence? I hypothesize that ideologies constitute modus operandi for expressing and articulating shared fantasies. Ideologies are manifest content containing a latent meaning, allowing fantasies to be externalized and activated in society.

War is thought of an activity or form of behavior. It is more productive to view warfare as an idea or social construction. Upon what psychological roots is the idea of war constructed? This course will identify and interrogate the desires, fantasies and anxieties that are bound to the ideology of warfare.
 

Class 2: The Symbolic Meaning of the Enemy

To understand the sources of collective forms of violence--manifest as war, genocide and terrorism-I focus upon the psychological meaning of “the enemy.” Warfare is generated based on the assumption that another group or class of people constitutes a mortal threat to one’s own nation, God or ideology. Why do enemies evoke profound anxiety and rage?

Nazism represents a case-study of the psychology of enemy-creation. Since Jews did not constitute an actual threat to Germany or the German people, this case allows us to examine how enemies are constructed based on the projection of symbolic or unconscious meanings. Hitler attempted to eliminate an idea that was projectively identified with Jews. By seeking to destroy Jews, what was Hitler seeking to destroy?

I articulate the “logic of the Holocaust:” the mental processes that generated hatred of the Jews and belief that it was necessary to exterminate them. A national group often coalesces by identifying an enemy that needs to be destroyed. The reality of one’s nation is established by doing battle against another nation or ideology. The existence of an enemy gives men the opportunity to prove their masculinity—by their willingness to die and kill.
 

Class 3: What are “Nations” and why are we so attached to them?

We human beings in the contemporary world live within nations as fish live within oceans. Because we so deeply identify with countries, the idea of “the nation” is not often interrogated. What is the nature and meaning of peoples’ attachment to nations? Why do people bind their identities in such a radical way with the idea of their own nation?

In the name of protecting, preserving and rescuing one’s nation, violence is conceived as good and just, apart from any realistic danger the other nation may pose. Nations symbolize a gigantic geographic space with which individuals Identify their egos. Most of us exist in a symbiotic tie to our nation and its national life. We “love” or “hate” our nation, and readily valorize or condemn it. To provide a degree of psychic distance from national and political ideologies—allowing us to analyze them—this course will develop a posture of analytic neutrality.

The idea of the enemy is inseparable from the idea of one’s nation. Enemies provide citizens with a “rallying cry”--allowing people to unite or coalesce or come together. Conceived as groups or classes of people that threaten to destroy one’s national ideals, enemies generate the effort to “rescue” one’s nation and its ideals. Violence is considered moral because it is undertaken to preserve a good object—threatened by an evil or destructive object.

Class 4: Fanatic Belief

Collective forms of violence assert the power of one’s nation’s belief-system in the face of competing belief-systems. Fanatic believers identify profoundly with an omnipotent object; equate their sense of being with this object; and become infuriated when they realize that others do not worship the object that they worship.

Totalitarian systems have a common structure or dynamic. Just as Hitler expected everyone to love and worship Germany, so did Osama bin Laden expect everyone to love and worship Allah. Fanatic belief requires absolute faith. Those who do not worship the object that one’s group worships are conceived as “infidels.”

Collective forms of violence articulate the idea: “Death to the non-believers.” Rage is directed toward those who do not worship the object to which the believer has devoted his life. The believer wishes to punish those who do not bow down to his nation or God. Collective forms of violence such as terrorism and warfare seek to demonstrate the  power of the omnipotent object with which the believer has become identified; to compel others to believe in and submit to this object.
 

Class 5: Warfare and Self-destruction

Class 6: Societal Violence as Collective Psychopathology

Over Two-hundred million people died in the Twentieth Century as a result of violent political acts initiated by nation-states. We rarely reflect upon this extraordinary statistic.  Psychiatry claims individuals are “disordered.” Yet warfare and other forms of collective violence are conceived as "normal" dimensions of the reality. The DSM-V (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) lists nearly nine-hundred distinct forms of psychopathology. Yet nowhere do we find a “war disorder,” or “genocidal disorder.” This course explores the concept of collective psychopathology.

Daniel Goldhagen’s study of the Holocaust (1997) concludes that the Nazis were in the grip of a “hallucinatory ideology.” Their anti-Semitic writings  resembled the “collective scribes of an insane asylum.” In the midst watching a film depicting battle, people often reflect, “War is insane.” Yet we do not think of collective forms of behavior—however bizarre or destructive—from the standpoint of psychopathology. What seems insane is rendered normative.

It’s not a question of Hitler’s or Stalin’s disorder, or the disorder of any leader. Psychopathology is contained within the structure of societal ideologies. We don’t experience these ideologies as crazy or insane because we live in the midst of them. The objective of this course is to develop a psychic space separating us from these normative forms of psychopathology, with the objective of “awakening from the nightmare of history.” In oder to awaken, we must first come to terms with the fact that we are immersed within a collective dream.