Journey to the end of hate

Abstract: Decreasing splitting in societies faced with nearly insurmountable anxieties, through the promotion of positive identifications towards groups that are demonized and hated (e.g., Guantanamo former prisoners), could, by working at the levels of collective (social) defenses, increase the propensity of these societies to squarely face psychosocial issues that are otherwise denied (e.g., environmental issues, wealth disparity).

Preamble

Psychoanalysis has written extensively about the existence within us all of a needed but resented internal parental object that, in turn, may be able to explain the ubiquitousness of hate towards the ‘other’; an object whose purpose is to enable individuals to evacuate disavowed aspects of themselves by projecting them in it. What begins as a trauma during early infancy continues unabated throughout our whole life; all of us constantly struggling for psychic survival in response to an unbearable anxiety of losing omnipotence and experiencing worthlessness. Although it may seem logical to derive that societies will always experience episodes of intense hate and, as a consequence, violence towards demonized groups, Socio-Analytic Dialogue argues that this does not necessarily have to be the case. Applying and adapting psychoanalytic thinking to large groups is still in its infancy. Yet, large group psychosocial dynamics are not simply derived from aggregating what is observed at the individual level since there are psychosocial mechanisms that are specific to large groups (e.g., defenses are mobilized on their own directly at the group level). As a consequence, the mechanisms involved in a large group modifying its behavior are of a different nature than those observed at the individual level. In particular, resistance is likely to be more diffused in large groups in response to the decreased propensity of societal-level interpretations to be experienced as personal attacks. Furthermore, the degree of internalization needed to foster change is also much less at the large group level. This note proposes promoting positive identifications towards groups that are demonized and hated to encourage societies to reduce their reliance on splitting. Working directly at the level of the collective defense encourages societies to become more reflective.

Rien ne va plus

Kofi Annan died this summer. Were I keeping a journal, I might have been tempted, echoing Louis XVI’s rien famously entered in his hunting diary on July 14, 1789, to ignore the death of the former UN Secretary General. After all, in spite of his achievements, he was nonetheless at the helm of an organization emblematic for its perverse organizational dynamics; perverse societal dynamics at the core of what is ailing and destroying the world today. And yet, recollecting Kofi’ statement made in Paris in December of last year, “Honestly we are in a mess”, I felt instead a deep void; another voice of reason silenced with the passing of Kofi Annan. Going further, I am with each passing day increasingly convinced, yet resigned, that Mr. Annan’ statement, which spoke so much to my own experience, underestimated the quagmire into which most societies are seemingly sinking today.

Rather than Louis XVI’s wishfully belittling the psychosocial meaning of the storming of the Bastille with “Mais c’est une révolte”, I instead, echoing the grand master of the royal wardrobe response of “Non, Sire, c’est une révolution”, prefer not to turn a blind eye. The future can only be more hopeful if we are collectively willing and able to squarely face the psychosocial dynamics impacting us. 

Although Socio-Analytic Dialogue had already written about the anxiety of “not knowing”, mankind for the first time facing threats (i.e., annihilation due to climate change) it neither fully comprehend nor knows how to handle; its earlier focus had been more on issues of global discontent, chiefly the immense structural inequalities and accompanying despair and humiliation. While these issues remain undoubtedly fundamental to safeguarding meaning and future in our societies, today’s anxieties are fast becoming nearly insurmountable. Short of urgently assessing and addressing the collective defenses mobilized in response, many societies may well reach a point of no return.

Unsurprisingly, we are increasingly witnessing indicators of large group regression almost everywhere. These include:

(1)                  Differentiating sharply between “good” and “bad” individuals, polarization increasing the propensity for “us” versus “them” visions of society (e.g., Colombia);

(2)                  Belief systems rejecting alterity, which leads to intolerance for those portrayed as transgressing ‘acceptable’ moral values (e.g., Russia);

(3)                  Wishes for increasingly authoritarian leadership capable of protecting the shared identity (e.g., Hungary);

(4)                  Increased tolerance for violation of human rights (e.g., Israel);

(5)                  Blurring between reality and fantasies (e.g., United States);

(6)                  Discourse increasingly focused on nationalism, ethnicity, and religion (e.g., Turkey); and

(7)                  Demonization of “others” (e.g., Muslims or Sub-Sahara African migrants in Europe).

While today’s conditions may still appear to be significantly less extreme than the acutely regressed psychosocial dynamics observed in the 1930’s, it is no longer reasonable to assume that this is necessarily the case. Although democratic institutions are stronger and overall tolerance for otherness greater, the level of anxieties, lack of containment, meaninglessness and the huge changes induced by technological changes that remain difficult to fully assess are such that one cannot exclude a rapid deterioration in psychosocial dynamics. The latter could be on par with some of the worse periods of the history of mankind; “not knowing” anxieties undoubtedly capable of justifying the worse atrocities in the name of saving humanity.

Seemingly irreconcilable divides and inalienable truths

As a second generation, raised in France in the shadow of the Holocaust, this is a topic of great significance to me. Echoing Wiesel’s “To listen to a witness, you become a witness”, I have now been for quite some time on a quest to bear witness the psychosocial issues capable of wreaking havoc on societies. My parents’ own experiences during WWII as well as my upbringing, having spent a lot of time as a child with German families at the instigation of my parents, encouraged me early on to cross seemingly irreconcilable divides and deconstruct seemingly inalienable truths.

Borne out of what was transmitted to me, Socio-Analytic Dialogue’s emphasis on the fundamental role played by the ability to hear others brings to my mind both Legacy of Silence, the Israeli psychoanalyst David Bar-On’s powerful and compassionate work of interviewing children of perpetrators of Third Reich and Claude Lanzmann’ Shoah. The latter, Lanzmann able to lead his viewers to experience for themselves the horrors of the Holocaust including up to the time one was led into the gas chambers, without showing a single historical footage, is a monumental achievement. It speaks to the incredible and unique power of identification as a psychosocial mechanism. The scene of a barber in Treblinka recounting years later in a barbershop in Israel years his experiences of cutting women’s hair minutes before they entered the gas chamber is likely to be etched in the viewers’ memory forever. I can still feel in my own body more than thirty years later (the film, 11 years in the making, was released in 1985) Franz Suchomel’s “Es war sehr kalt ins Schlot”. Suchomel was an SS officer at Treblinka, who stood at the entrance of the “funnel” preceding the chambers.

 Lanzmann’s interviews would never have been possible without his extraordinary capacity to make himself receptive to the experiences of all participants, regardless of them being survivors, witnesses, or perpetrators. Developing this kind of receptiveness is absolutely core to understanding the essence of what taking empathy to the frontier truly entails.

Addressing the increased propensity worldwide of societies regressing towards predicable patterns of violence directed at purposely-found “bad” objects is likely to require novel responses. In the spirit of Socio-Analytic Dialogue’s writings on taking empathic availability to the frontier, our goal is to explore ways in which a society can resist splitting by promoting positive identifications with groups that are demonized and hated.

Thou shall not split

Preventing splitting from quickly becoming one of the main collective defenses mobilized in a society requires individuals to be capable of sharing the public space together, respecting one another, and communicating across various divides. As argued in Socio-Analytic Dialogue, this will only be the case if leadership is able to decrease the incidence of both perverse and regressed psychosocial dynamics; in other words, if leadership is reparative. Reparative leadership enables a society to understand how it functions as a social system; citizens internalizing the nature and purpose of the collective defenses mobilized by various groups. Of particular importance are the existing unconscious collusions. Regardless of outcomes, they are almost certain to be present; groups often acting unconsciously on behalf of other groups. The acknowledgment of unconscious collusions encourages a society to experience outcomes as a shared societal responsibility; blame and guilt absent once a society is aware that psychosocial dynamics are driven by the social system as a whole.

Understanding the psychic reality of each society’s subgroups as well as their psychosocial functions and interactions (i.e., unconscious collusions between subgroups) is paramount. This understanding is key to the promotion, at the level of an entire society, of positive identification between various groups. Positive identifications between society’s groups are what set the stage for tolerance, compassion and empathic capability and availability. In such a social system, splitting is likely to become less prevalent as constructed mental boundaries between various subgroups start disappearing.

What is often considered taboo, thanks to splitting, may no longer be elusive once magnanimous, even transgressive, positive identifications are encouraged. Thus, while I may have inherited the trauma of the Holocaust, I also endeavored to be receptive to identifying with the sufferings inflicted on Dresden or in the aftermath of the collapse of the Third Reich. Working with Tunisian psychoanalysts and social workers on extremism, I welcomed experiencing, through identification, the anger as well as the gratitude, albeit denied, that a teenager felt for his mother who had “robbed” him of his chance at martyrdom. (The day of his planned departure for Syria to join the Islamic state, the teenager decided not to go. However, the three close friends he had planned to travel with all left that day. All three died a few months after their arrival. When I met the teenager, he was still carrying a picture of his three friends, an object linking him to them, and wished he could also have been a martyr. Incidentally, our condemnations of perverse societal dynamics were fundamentally not that different from one another and, as such, contributed to reducing the splitting between us. Upon the election of President Trump, although I felt that his presidency would significantly damage psychosocial dynamics in the United States, I nevertheless publicly advocated for a compassionate and identification driven overture towards his voters; a stance I had to muster the courage to adopt as I sadly anticipated that it would be disavowed in near unanimity by those who had not voted for him. On one of the most unsettling manifestations of extremism in the United States, alt-right demonstrators in Charlottesville, I still felt that empathy towards publicly outed participants, who as a result, lost their jobs or had to move, was warranted. Empathy does not in anyway validate a behavior or an idea; it only strives to maintain humanity in all circumstances. Feelings of victimhood can surface in many contexts, including unexpected ones.

Empathic availability as a way to decrease splitting, at least at the level of specific individuals, is not new. In Colombia, for example, encounters between ex-FARC guerilla members and victims or ex-paramilitaries took place during the peace process that originated during the administration of President Santos. By changing public perception of the FARC, these encounters had a positive impact on the society at large. In the case of the War on Terror, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights organized a meeting in Paris between Mourad Benchellali, a former detainee at Guantanamo, and high level ranking US officials. The meeting concluded with Janis Karpinski, who commanded the forces that operated the prison of Abu Ghraib in Iraq during the time of the abuses, asking forgiveness and hugging Ali Al Kaissi, one of the photo symbols of the horrors of Abu Ghraib. It was, in fact, Ali who had requested Mourad to introduce him to Janis Karpinski.

“Not knowing” and narcissistic denial

As argued in Socio-Analytic Dialogue, the loss of omnipotence that comes from the anxiety of “not knowing “ pushes societies towards creating illusions of certainty. The latter is often achieved through the adoption of rigid set of norms and of clear boundaries between groups. This, in turn, explains the resurgence of authoritarianism. The premise is that the uncertainty surrounding climate change is so overwhelming that powerful and largely unconscious social defenses are mobilized. These include shielding behind barriers, be they legal, physical, or imaginary, as insulation against dangerous “others”. These, for example, include migrants crossing boundaries erected to define a sense of “we-ness” and ideas, transgressive or not, experienced as a threat to the group’s cohesion and survival.

The feelings of powerlessness induced by climate change are not only terrifying but also hated. As a consequence, subtle forms of denial, encompassing both “knowing” and “not knowing”, are in evidence everywhere. Thus, as societies, we draw contingency plans -the “knowing” part- while continuing to pursue a logic of exploitation -the “not knowing” part- so that we become able to create the illusion of being in control. Doing so restores, albeit in fantasy only, omnipotence.

The psychosocial mechanism involved, narcissistic denial, works as follows. Problems are identified, in other words made known so that they can be addressed with known solutions. A striking example is Islamic-based terrorism. Although a genuine threat, it is almost always singled out as the single most important, if not sole, threat facing Western societies. Denying the complexity of issues plays a defensive role against the anxiety of “not knowing”. In focusing almost exclusively on the extreme violence of a few, societies choose to identify a well-defined external enemy at the expense of facing squarely more systemic environmental or economic alienation issues. This, in turn, leads to the widespread belief that the complete elimination of the “bad” objects will magically suffice. Conveniently, groups like Daesh eclipsed existential threats or loss of meaning as the most important issue.

Instead, decreasing the intensity of the negative projections towards demonized objects purposely singled out to decrease the anxiety of “not knowing” could increase the propensity for a society to face squarely the issues at stake.

Narcissistic repair after Guantanamo

This is where developing empathic capability towards former Guantanamo inmates, may be relevant. Guantanamo with its haunting images of hooded detainees in orange suits chained to the ground is one of the most potent symbols of the War on Terror. Guantanamo, controversial in the United States, denounced by human rights organizations, its mental representations deliberately reenacted by Daesh in its chilling and macabre executions of hostages, remains “in the mind” an emotionally loaded and complex object. As such, psychosocial work based on Guantanamo to reduce splitting would have to be undertaken with the utmost concern for all the sensitivities involved.

Humanizing and giving a voice to Guantanamo detainees, in a completely judgment free and compassionate approach, could go a long way towards societies, particularly Western ones, better internalizing the psychosocial mechanisms that led to such intense demonization and splitting. Extending this to US personnel involved in the War on Terror in Guantanamo could shed further light on these mechanisms. It could also help former detainees, through an understanding of the psychosocial and perverse dynamics at play in the United States in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on its soil, find meaning and narcissistic repair on their recovery and mourning journey.

Thus, what is suggested is the creation of a safe psychosocial space in which former prisoners could, by sharing parts of their inner world before, during and after their ordeal at Guantanamo, invite or authorize others to experience, as genuinely as it might be possible, their own trauma. These psychosocial exchanges would allow each group to transport itself -as if traveling on a psychosocial map- into another group’s psychic reality. In a latter phase, roles could be exchanged whereas groups, including possibly former prisoners, in nations that bore the brunt of the War on Terror would be invited to experience some of the psychosocial dynamics (i.e., shared anxieties, projections) that impacted those that, to them, are perpetrators.

Becoming aware of the nature and purpose of the social defenses mobilized by different groups brings feelings of shared meaning. It can, as such, become a prelude to dialogue in situations where it is thought to be elusive. Humanizing all sides and their affects bridges irreconcilable divides and decreases the propensity for cycle of revenges by allowing a society to come to terms with psychosocial issues of biased mental representations, need for enemies, and demonization.

As illustrated in what follows, the experiences of Guantanamo detainees have undoubtedly been varied.

Mourad Benchellali left France in June 2001 when he was 19 years old at the instigation of his brother and ended-up with Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. He spent two and a half years in Guantanamo and returned to France in 2004 where he was imprisoned until 2006. He has, since then, tried to be quite proactive in helping French authorities stem extremism by addressing youth on the dangers of radicalization. And yet, it seems that he feels that neither French society nor the authorities were able to benefit fully from what he could have contributed; the society unable to provide Mourad -he was only 25 when his ordeal in the French prison ended- with the narcissism repair that he undoubtedly needed. In a poignant moment during one of the many interviews he has given to French media, Mourad comments on the importance of finding meaning through the experience of feeling useful to society. Since then, the creation of an NGO with colleague and friend Nicolas Henin (a French former hostage of the Islamic State) and the birth of his daughter have hopefully contributed significantly to his sense of worth.

A far more blatant case where narcissistic repair went missing is that of Hedi Hammami in Tunisia. In February of 2017, Hedi was famously interviewed by the New York Times in which he stated that he not only yearned to return to the prison camp rather than continue feeling harassed in his home country but had even asked formally the International Red Cross to make it happen; a request that was unsurprisingly denied. Tunisia appears to have made it extremely difficult for Guantanamo former inmates to reintegrate into the society; finding permanent housing, for example, nearly impossible since the former prisoners often end-up being forced to move as the local police almost systematically informs the neighborhood of their presence. Although this only concerns a very small number of individuals, 12 in total, this psychosocial data has meaning. I have written elsewhere how its significance, revealed the presence of aggression in Tunisian society and its incapacity to develop empathic capability. These issues proved to be significant obstacles to the country’ social transformation since the 2011 revolution. Incidentally, the psychologist working with the Guantanamo returnees in Tunisia indicated that Hedi’s feelings were also found among the other former detainees.

There are also odd cases such as that of Chinese Uighurs, for example Adel Noori who spent seven years in the camp before being released to Palau, that were seeking refuges in Afghanistan and Pakistan but ended up being sold by local tribesmen to the US armed forces. In fact, it is thought that the local authorities or population captured over 80 percent of the prisoners. Although this maybe unsettling at first, it is important to bear in mind that most policy decisions, in this case Department of Defense advertising bounty payments to increase the number of enemy combatants available, play a psychosocial function too.

September 11, 2001 represented such a shock to the United States, the country forced to confront a vulnerability that until then had been thought completely unconceivable that several collective defenses must have been mobilized in response. The exceptional opportunities available to the majority of the population throughout the country’s history and the national romance of American exceptionalism validated idealizing the country on what probably became a massive scale. The narcissistic blow brought upon the social system by the attacks, a why don’t they like us seemingly irrupting out of nowhere, challenged the shared mental representations of being the most powerful and preferred nation like never before. The word preferred is used here not only in the sense of admired but also, and more importantly, in the sense of liked. As such, President Bush’s response to the events were, independently of the neoconservative influence that may have existed within his administration, undoubtedly influenced by what the nation, as a whole, wanted him to do, in other words what was projected on him as a leader. As such, the entire nation –as a social system seeking repair- projected onto the administration an urge to do something in response to the collective wish to undo the psychosocial damage brought upon by the attacks. Judging from what transpired at Guantanamo, the psychosocial response likely required demonizing objects that became the needed repository of the nation’s aggression.

The preliminary psychosocial analysis above, which is only meant to illustrate the type of thinking underpinning Socio-Analytic Dialogue, probably explains: (i) the creation of Guantanamo, not only outside the mainland but also on an island, Cuba that has itself been the repository of US aggression; (ii) the absence of legal protection for the prisoners (e.g., Geneva Conventions not applicable); (iii) the fact that, in the rush to fill GITMO, the majority of the prisoners, most of them low-level combatants or not even members of designated terrorist organizations, turned out not to be the “worst of the worst” as argued by the authorities; and (iv) the abuses and torture that took place.

Understandably, the majority of reactions to events such as Guantanamo encompass a wide spectrum ranging from rationalization, accomplices turning a blind eye (e.g., Canadian or German governments refusing to assist their citizens interned in the prison); legal challenges; and human rights campaigns.

The cases of prisoners incarcerated for no apparent reasons include that of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian national who was incarcerated and brutally tortured for over fourteen years. While he had fought with the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the early 1990’s, he had however but been exonerated from all terrorist activities since then. Slahi stands out for having published while being a prisoner, Guantanamo Diaries. On his first interview following his release, Mohamedou had the inner strength and generosity to state “I wholeheartedly forgive everyone who wronged me during my detention”. There is also Murat Kurnaz, a Turkish citizen and permanent resident in Germany, who was incarcerated for five years, during which he was also repeatedly tortured. Murat’s case stands out as well since it took five years for him to be able to return home in spite of both the US and German authorities having concluded as early as 2002 that he was innocent. Murat published, Five years of my life: An innocent man in Guantanamo. In the words of Patti Smith, who prefaced his book, Murat “offers us his experiences unfettered by the poison of bitterness”. Last, there exists the well-publicized case of Omar Khadr, a Canadian national who was only 15 years old when he was arrested in combat in Afghanistan. Omar, who was taken to Afghanistan by his father as a child soldier, was in a firefight with US troops and is suspected of having thrown a grenade that killed Sgt Christopher Speer. Similarly to Germany, Canada refused to assist his own citizen and Omar, who pleaded guilty after having confessed under torture, spent 10 years in Guantanamo. He was later awarded compensation by the Trudeau administration. As I listened to Omar’ story in his own words, I felt that the empathy and wisdom that he displayed during interviews made in Canada shortly after his release were both extremely genuine and of a rare intensity. This level of empathy is often found amongst individuals that have suffered intensely and mourned, to the extent that it is possible, what has befallen to them.

Another fascinating case is that of Moazzam Begg who Al-Jazeera describes as one the most outspoken of Guantanamo former detainees. Moazzam, also older than most detainees, works with CAGE, an advocacy organization that focuses on stigmatized communities that often find themselves adversely impacted by repressive state policies enacted in the name of security. Of interest to Socio-Analytic Dialogue’s approach is an interview posted on CAGE’s website in which Moazzam argues that “there has to be, there must be in order to end conflict, to resolve conflict, a desire to discuss, to talk to, to humanize those people who you have been regarding as the enemy, and those that you regard as the most unpalatable”. Nevertheless, he remains a controversial figure as he was sent to prison in the UK in 2014, albeit released seven months late without charge, in response to him having allegedly traveled to several conflict zones (e.g., Syria, Libya) in support of terrorist organizations. CAGE also states that they “also take great inspiration from a convicted terrorist by the name of Nelson Mandela”. From our perspective, this however misses the point. What makes Nelson Mandela truly inspiring and a giant of the last century is not his struggle against apartheid, there were many –blacks and whites- that fought alongside the ANC, but his extraordinary empathy. In spite of the hardships of his extremely long imprisonment, Mandela was nevertheless able to recognize that his jailers, white Afrikaners, were also victims. Furthermore, he was able to communicate this to the entire nation. It is therefore Mandela’s powerful and inspiring empathic capability, rather than his struggle, that should be the leading inspiration to anyone wishing to decrease the incidence of splitting and violence in the world. In this respect, Moazzam’s participation in a speaking tour of the UK along with one of the former Guantanamo guards is noteworthy.

These short vignettes would not be complete without also referring to the stories of pain, guilt, and sequels of witnesses on the US side who found themselves caught in the Guantanamo nightmare. These include several of the interrogators, government and military officials, prison guards, and medical personnel that agreed to be interviewed by Witness to Guantanamo (WtG). Capturing the mindset that they had or were encouraged to have, a hospital corpsman, Daniel Lakemacher described the camp as “the most hate filled place” he had ever been to continuing with, “there was something palpably different when you went behind the wire”. Furthermore, if possible, a voice should also be given to individuals that may not feel remorse about their time in Guantanamo. They are key to building bridges capable of decreasing the incidence of intense splitting in societies. To be meaningful and relevant, a journey to the end of hate should not have any boundaries.

The specificity of a Socio-Analytic Dialogue’s approach to inviting former Guantanamo detainees to share their experience is that the topics of interest would not be necessarily limited to Guantanamo. Rather, in a narcissistic repair mode, they could also include other psychosocial experiences, be it before their imprisonment or after their release. Undoubtedly many of the detainees will have thought greatly about mourning and reparation. There has to be a lot to learn, from both sides of the War on Terror about empathic capability through dialogue that crosses the divide separating “us” from “them”. In that sense, the initiative differs from the important yet rare bearing witness accounts on Guantanamo.

Desperately seeking an unforgiving super ego

While Al-Qaeda’s extremism and recourse to terrorism shocked the world, it did not strike horror in the world’s collective imagination the way the Islamic State, or Daesh, did. Perhaps, this is a reflection of the unacknowledged yet existing envy-related gratification (unconscious or conscious) that the United States, as the sole super power, was victim of Al-Qaeda. As brutal as the images were on September 11 -it is hard to forget the many individuals, some holding hands in the last instants of their lives, that fell to their death from the twin towers- they do not appear to have hit the same raw nerve on the collective psyche than the barbaric displays of Daesh did; the organization purposely staging gruesome Jouissance driven rituals in beheading helpless victims such as James Foley or Peter Kassig. Incidentally, the perpetrators included the so-called “Beatles”, a group of four Islamic State executioners whom President Trump suggested to send to Guantanamo (two of them that survived are in custody of the Kurds and were stripped of British citizenship).

While western nations were appalled by Daesh’s lust for violence, they were also fascinated by their newly found “bad” object; the extremist group, a transgressor by excellence, not only had the audacity to declare a caliphate but also seemed unstoppable in attracting recruits, including non Muslims, from all over the world. While the struggles differed and should not be compared, the seemingly sudden irruption of Daesh on the international scene (in reality it can trace its origins to the second battle of Fallujah in 2004 in Irak) nevertheless reminded me of Mandela’s writings about the sudden irruption of more radical and combative militants in the aftermath of the violence in Soweto in 1976. As Nelson Mandela writes, “these young men were a different breed of prisoner than we had ever seen before. They were brave, hostile, and aggressive; they would not take orders, and shouted Amandla at every opportunity. Their instinct was to confront rather than cooperate”. The point of my association to Mandela’s writings is not to compare Soweto youth during apartheid to today’s Islamic state fighters; the issues are radically different. Rather, it is meant to indicate that unless psychosocial issues are addressed as opposed to being dealt solely through violence or repression, it is likely that radicalization will increase rather than decrease. This holds with terrorism today; more violent and geographically dispersed groups continuing to emerge and operate.

Yet, even members of groups such as Daesh can probably be successfully reinserted if the psychosocial approach adopted draws upon empathic availability. This may seem counterintuitive and extreme but at this stage, we likely have no other choice but to try to understand through empathic identification their, or that of similar groups, experience of the world. We are in the midst of psychosocial processes worldwide that are akin to what I would call a Daeshisation of the world. The latter is characterized by the increased adoption of rigid social norms; inability to identify with others; splitting; and tolerance and lust for violence.

As argued in earlier writings, in spite of the brutality and reliance on Islamist ideas, Daesh stands out for its capacity to transcend cultures, even religions. Daesh’ significance cannot be understood without reference also to the worldwide protests of 2011 since it truly came of age during the wave of uprisings against dictatorial regimes in the Arab world. These protests, in turn, were a response to the despair and ensuing loss of dignity brought by a social system experienced as perverse and unfair; denigrated groups feeling powerless as a consequence of being shamelessly looked down upon with contempt by elites. Repeated humiliation, denial of any form of expression, and lack of economic opportunities fed desires for blind and sadistic vengeance. As such, Daesh was quickly perceived as capable of undoing narcissistic injuries, repair identity, and protect against the intrusion of alternative subjectivities in the public space. To those dreaming of going to Syria, Daesh provided exactly what the world deprived them of: meaning and containment. In response, individuals adopted an extremely harsh and unforgiving superego, God, worthy of sacrificing one’s life for. The expectation of rebirth through the creation of something entirely new and the pull of being accepted into a community of frères explain Daesh’s attractiveness to fighters that were also coming from outside the Muslim and Arab world.

Feelings of alienation and revulsion at today’s perverse societal dynamics worldwide can sometimes become unbearable. In an attempt to escape from what becomes akin to one’s psychological death, individuals may deliberately choose to exit the system. Regardless of one’s origin or religion of origin, organizations like Daesh can give a sense of belonging and restore narcissism. Furthermore, constructing a superego in a world marred by rapid changes in social norms (e.g., marriage equality, surrogacy, social media) and feelings of futurelessness may become elusive. On the other hand, extremist groups provide an unforgiving but reassuring superego.

Daeshisation can, therefore, be thought of as the enactment of rebirth or rescuing fantasies in social systems beset with nearly unbearable anxieties that rigid “us versus not us” splitting social defenses are mobilized and unforgiving super egos are increasingly adopted. This can be observed nearly everywhere.

Empathic availability to the rescue

An example of empathic availability driven response to extremism, even if it was only short lived, is the Taliban’s agreeing to a three days ceasefire in June 2018 during the Eid Muslim holiday in Afghanistan. This was the first such initiative since the Taliban were overthrown in 2001. The ceasefire stood out because there were several encounters between Taliban fighters and the general population that allowed the latter to see a side of the Taliban, a group more likely to inspire terror rather than sympathy, in a way they had never experienced before, in other words to humanize them. Taliban fighters were seen in the streets of Kabul hugging passersby, socializing with locals and talking about war and peace with civilians. Even more telling was women, who would have been flogged under the Taliban simply for being in the street without a male escort, engaging and taking selfies with extremist fighters. The latter, seen both as a form of resistance as well as hope for reconciliation, was hugely symbolic since Taliban rules had been excessively harsh on women, particularly those that defied the rigid social norms that ha been imposed at the time.

The example above, notwithstanding the fact that the FARC in Colombia had demobilized, is reminiscent of the encounters that the Colombian government encouraged between FARC members and the general population in reintegration camps or zonas veredales, in which soccer games and other social interactions took place. Of course, there exists a major difference between the Colombian FARC and the Afghan Taliban since the former demobilized and joined the political process while the latter remains involved in a conflict.

Even after the peace accord was signed in Cartagena, the FARC did not trust the Colombian population’s willingness to genuinely reintegrate them into the fold of society as they were still subject to a host of negative projections. For example, the campaign for the No vote on the referendum on the peace accord was centered on a message of hate, hence distrust, towards the FARC, El Odio al FARC. It is only once the Colombian population showed its mettle and fought to rescue the peace accord through massive pro-peace marches throughout the country, that the FARC started to feel that the general population had the capacity to show empathy towards them. This was, for example, vividly in evidence as Colombian civilians chose to line up along the paths taken by FARC combatants to welcome them as they walked away from their camps to go settle in government established zonas veredales. The FARC, in turn, developed empathic capability, which enabled it to have the credibility to return to locations where there had been massacres and ask forgiveness from victims or relatives of the deceased. The genuineness and willingness to be empathetic on the part of demonized individuals who only recently had been involved in a protracted and violent civil war highlights that goodness can be found anywhere. This has also been amply demonstrated in other post-conflict countries such as Sierra Leone or Liberia. Furthermore, while working with psychologists in Tunisia with mothers and fathers whose sons had joined Daesh in Syria, I was told that several of the Tunisians that had fought in Bosnia in the early 1990’s (a conflict considered to be the cradle of modern Jihadism since Muslim fighters fought Western nations there rather than be their ally as was the case during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan) had become humanitarian workers.

Similarly, the majority of Germans affiliated with either Aufstehen, a populist party issued from the extreme left or the extreme right PEGIDA, can be approached. Their anxieties are understandable and empathy has a role to play. In fact, this is what Ali, a 24-year-old German resident that came as refugee with his family from Turkey when he was two, did. Ali, who was wondering where the hate came from and why there was no empathy, decided to attend Alt-Right rallies in cities like Dresden and engage the militants on his immigrant experience. He then created a hotline where citizens worried about the influx of Muslim migrants to Germany could talk. Rather than confront the callers, Ali looks for similarities, in other words entry points that may allow for some positive identification. Another telling example is that of Ingo Hasselbach, a hard-core neo-Nazi who decided to leave his Alt-right group (a risky decision) in 1993 as violence escalated, who focuses on helping youth leaving Alt-right groups. The mistrust that exists between radicalized youth and police and state means that de-radicalization initiatives often fail. As such, he teamed up with a police officer (that had once arrested him) to create a group that supports youth wishing to leave neo-Nazi organizations. Their experience is that people can change and that those that wish to do so often feel that they do not have a way out; society unwilling to listen and give them a chance. This is where psychosocial approaches like those above come in. They constitute the first step towards developing, even if only marginally for some, empathic availability and capability. Empathy does not have to be constrained by boundaries. This is the reason why I stated earlier that I believed that empathy towards publicly outed participants to Alt-right demonstrations in Charlottesville, for example Tony Hovater, was warranted. In this very specific instance, these outed individuals should also be seen as victims. The audacity to reach out to them, precisely at a time when they are weak and may have the ability to experience psychosocially the dire consequences of hate and discrimination could open doors.

As also stated earlier, this is also how colleagues and I in Tunisia chose to interact with youth susceptible of joining Daesh; focusing on their experience as seen from their own perspective; identifying aspects on which we might agree; and empowering them.

Taking empathic availability to the frontier, a society might even treat its youth prone to violent nihilism (while combatting those that act upon it) as an opportunity in the sense that attempting to genuinely understand them could induce the society to reflect further on its own shortcomings and face upfront its psychosocial dynamics. Rather than prematurely forcing shared societal values upon those that reject them, one could envision a genuine empathic dialogue asking the youth, “What is it that you claim or seem to know that I may not know?” In today’ societies fixed on eradicating terrorism by simply eliminating perpetrators or would-be perpetrators a la France’s déchéance de nationalité, the mere phrasing of the question dramatically alters, in a transgressive way, the relationship between society and its extremist elements. Furthermore, asking the question would also likely be experienced by the youth as a gesture of narcissistic repair. As argued in earlier writing on terrorism, violent nihilism is often driven by a rejection of perverse societal dynamics. The latter are ultimately destroying our societies. As such, some of the youth prone to violent nihilism may very well have something to contribute if society is willing to genuinely listen to them. In other words, could there be something that they are acutely aware of (even if their response to it is unequivocally condemned) that could help society collectively shed light on the danger of perverse societal dynamics; a danger that is often denied as a collective defense.

Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, psychosocial outcomes are almost always the result of unconscious collusions, groups often acting unconsciously on behalf of other groups rather than in isolation. This implies that psychosocial outcomes, including violent ones, should not be considered as being exclusively driven by the actions of a specific group. The key psychosocial concept underpinning this is projective identification. From a psychosocial perspective, the ways in which the various subgroups interact in society are the projections and the introjections; meaning how sub groups perceive one another and internalize, or decided to ‘own’, how others see them. Projective identification captures the fact that introjection can lead a group to act upon what the rest of society projects onto it. Thus, Socio-Analytic Dialogue’s interest lies in the ways in which specific groups may act upon the role that they have been ‘assigned’ to by the rest of the society. Thus, demonization of the Muslims, the ‘bad’ object by excellence, and terrorism are intertwined in the sense that demonization engenders extremism while extremism validates demonization.

While one of the major anxieties in Western nations is, ‘in the mind’, linked to Islamist based terrorism, the profound alienation due to loss of meaning that underpins the violence is not exclusive to either youth in the Arab world or young Muslims. In an attempt to escape what is experienced as psychological death, individuals may deliberately choose to disavow the system entirely. As stated earlier, this can lead in the more extreme cases to a lust to kill others; a regressed and perverse way of repairing narcissism. Thus, Islamist based terrorism may only be secondary to deeper and homegrown psychosocial issues. As argued in earlier writings, one can think of a “folie a deux” between the West and Muslim extremists, which corresponds to the simultaneous occurrence of projective identifications between groups whose fantasies feed into one another. There are also unconscious collusions within Arab and/or Muslim societies whereas the extremists act on behalf of the rest of the society. But psychosocial affects capable of engendering violence are unlikely to be useful starting points to reduce splitting. Whenever identity is under threat, groups in conflict with one another each adhere rigidly to their own narrative while demonizing opposite groups and delegitimizing their struggle.

 Instead, a stated earlier, it is suggested to change the focus to reflectiveness.

 Reflectiveness and its elusiveness

Reparative leadership leads to reflectiveness. In a reflective society, citizens become aware of the nature and purpose of the defenses mobilized by different groups as well as of the ways in which culture impacts shared thinking and assumptions (i.e., the societal unconscious). Psychosocial dynamics, even when regressed, are the essence of a social system. Understanding those from a judgment free position creates shared meaning and contributes to a society’s aliveness.

Essentially Socio-Analytic Dialogue advocates the creation of a safe psychosocial space in which a group can ‘invite’ or authorize other groups to experience, as genuinely as it might be possible, its own trauma. In exchange, the group has to be willing to attempt to experience, as if it were its own, the trauma of the other groups. These psychosocial exchanges, each group ‘transporting’ itself -as if traveling on a psychosocial map- to another group’s psychic reality, can become a prelude to dialogue in situations where it is thought to be elusive. Humanizing all sides and their affects bridges irreconcilable divides and decreases the propensity for cycle of revenges by allowing a society to come to terms with psychosocial issues of biased mental representations, need for enemies, and demonization.

What is advocated here is applicable to all groups, extremists or not. For example, taking empathic availability at the frontier would very be warranted in countries such as France as it deals with its revenants, be it French women Jihadists languishing in jails in Irak or prisoners of the Kurds; the United States where the level of polarization has become so extreme that indecency is quickly destroying the fabric of the society; or Colombia with the wave of killings of social leaders while the authorities seemingly look the other way.

This goal is, however, likely to remain elusive.

Acknowledging “not-knowing” is not only a collective source of unbearable anxiety but also threatens the system. It delegitimizes the people in power who, as a consequence, are eager not to be burdened with the responsibility for the collapsing state of affairs. In order to deflect the guilt from bearing that responsibility, the elites attempt to create for themselves a world, albeit in fantasy only, in which omnipotence is restored. In displacement, the anxiety of “not knowing” is seemingly experienced as an anxiety of “not belonging”, which in turn explains the prevalence of narcissistic displays of power and consumption. The defense that is mobilized can be thought of as a desperate urge to gain access to a “narcissistic fortress”, from which most are hopelessly excluded. Belonging becomes a source of Jouissance as a consequence of being envied by those that are denied access to the orgy of power and conspicuous consumption. The elites can only have scorn and contempt for the rest of the population since it is precisely the fact that the majority is excluded from the narcissistic fortress that restores their omnipotence. The consequence is a social system of institutionalized humiliation towards the disenfranchised, abuse of power, and use of others, even organizations, as narcissistic objects.

The growing wealth gap, environmental degradation, and violence are the starkest manifestation of the deteriorating psychosocial environment; an environment whereas the increased tolerance of using ‘others’ as narcissistic objects bodes poorly for initiatives meant to repair narcissistically the ‘bad’ objects that the social system created.