The
Terrorist
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Terrorist. What sort of mental image comes to mind when
you think of a terrorist? Most persons would likely think of men with assault
rifles and bombs, men who feel so betrayed by someone or something that they
will attack anyone, even the innocent, to get the territory or the recognition
they believe is due to them. Such is political terrorism. It is motivated
by bitter hearts, and it breeds bitterness and hatred.
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In his movie
The Birds, Alfred Hitchcock created horror by showing us what birds
could do, but thankfully don’t: they could viciously attack anyone and
everyone without provocation.
We humans have
the same capacity for aggression as animals, but it is fortunately contained
behind the inhibiting effect of the frontal lobe of the brain. Sometimes
this inhibition falters, as in
Tourette’s
Disorder,
when a person can involuntarily blurt out foul words. Sometimes we use alcohol
or other drugs to drown out our inhibitions so that we can feel more
“relaxed,” and then, sadly, we end up acting recklessly. And sometimes,
under the influence of group social
pressure, the inhibition can be more or less lifted entirely, to facilitate
war and other terrorist atrocities.
Considering all
this, it often seems a wonder how generally safe we are on the streets. Yet
imagine how it would be if individuals weren’t willing to restrain their
cruel and destructive impulses. In one scene of the movie Schindler’s
List, a Nazi officer, sitting at breakfast one morning on the balcony
of his luxurious house, casually picks up a rifle and randomly shoots at
inmates in the concentration camp below. All the while, his mistress lies
naked in their bed, flinching at every shot, covering her head with a pillow,
hearing what is happening—indeed, knowing what is happening—and
yet tolerating it, even desiring it, for whatever satisfaction—luxury?
prestige?—she receives from her “lover.” And so, she too is
a terrorist in her own private way. |
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Thus not all
terrorists fight with guns and bombs, and not all terrorists fight strictly
for political gain. There are men and women in this world who are terrorists
in a more subtle sense. They fight with social disobedience. Moreover, they
might even passively support those who use more lethal violence. But they
do not fight against real enemies; with their unconscious
anger they fight against old psychological wounds from early childhood
betrayals. It wasn’t political injustice that hurt these individuals,
it was fraud—intellectual and emotional fraud. And the wounds caused
by this fraud, if not properly healed, can project a subtle rancor into the
world as subversive as the bitter heart that pulls the trigger of a
gun. |
Beginning
In
Childhood
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Imagine a young child
growing up in a family with a cold, stern, autocratic father. The child yearns
for affection. She yearns for a father who will teach her about the world
and fill her heart with joy and wonder for the mysteries around her. And
she yearns for a father of tender compassion who will teach her how to face
pain and suffering with courage and forgiveness
and who will protect her when she becomes hurt. But instead, her real father
neglects her. He may be abusive—physically or emotionally or sexually.
He may be alcoholic. Or he may be so preoccupied with his work that he never
notices his family.
And yet, in public
life, he stands as a pillar of strength in his community, a seemingly great
and noble man.
But to his daughter
he is a fraud. |
Fraud
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As the child grows up,
she will unconsciously dedicate her life to exposing “fraud” in
the world. She will seek out contradictions in valued traditions, teaching
anyone who will listen to her that cherished ideals are “just myths.”
She will laugh at discipline. She will delight in disobedience. She will
attack all hypocrisy in the world with
a vengeance that is
unconsciously
directed against her father. To subvert cultural institutions is to pull
down the public statue of her father and reduce him to rubble. And she may
even feel the need to
destroy
herself in the process. And yet, in this blind hatred, all she really
wants deep in her heart is for her father to love
her.
Jacques
Lacan, the French psychoanalyst, taught that, in psychological terms,
the social world really is a fraud. All of the meaning we attribute to our
human creations, including language itself,
 has no value beyond its own reference, for, as Lacan
was fond of saying, “There is no Other of the
Other.” [1]
By this he meant that there is no absolute meaning that authorizes human
meaning. Interestingly enough, Genesis 2:19-20 essentially says the same
thing when it tells the story about God bringing the “various wild animals
and various birds of the air” to the man “to see what he would
call them.” Note that God didn’t name the animals; he simply said
that “whatever the man called each of them would be its name.”
Here God gave the man the freedom to create language, a language guaranteed
only by its own enunciation.
Now, although
Genesis speaks from the revealed religion of the Jewish tradition, and though
Lacan was not
religious [2]
and spoke from the position of secular psychology, the essential point should
be clear: no language—indeed, no human creation—has any absolute
meaning.
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The world offers
itself to us in full spectacle, but there is nothing to see except a deluded
man who calls himself “Emperor” standing naked in the
street.[3] |
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Psychology can
teach us, therefore, not only that our social world is a “fraud”
but also that it is possible to recognize and heal the pain we felt as children
when we experienced the world’s fraud. It can teach us to speak about
those childhood wounds rather than keep them as dark
secrets hidden away within ourselves, wrapped in feelings
of
victimization.
It can teach us to
let
go of bitterness and hatred and to show compassion and love for those
secrets, in the hope of healing them, rather than killing them. If those
secrets are not healed they become our
unconscious
enemies—and we become terrorists in a battle against our own
pain.
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For just as those
who, out of hatred, defile love by committing acts of terror, so anyone who
hates those who commit political terror also defiles love. Once you
let evil infect your heart with hatred you are one step closer to letting
evil possess your
soul
as well.
And if you respond
to political terrorism with fear, you serve the terrorists’ very goal:
to spread fear and
trauma.
Thus you yourself, in an odd psychological way, become a terrorist in your
own society. |
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So is there anything
that isn’t a fraud? Psychology cannot say. It has a definite
limit. |
Religion . .
.
and
Social
Activism
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Religion, however, can
transcend the limits of psychology because it can point to God in whom we
can place our complete trust. There can be genuine acts of charity in the
world and genuine acts of meaningful social change, all motivated by selfless
love and devotion.
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A child copes
with life by trying to get others to change their behavior, so as to make
things easier for himself. Persons of mature wisdom, however, cope with life
by patiently enduring suffering for the sake of love itself: to be filled
with love and to sow seeds of that love in the world around them. |
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It takes considerable
wisdom, therefore, to know when personal need—and
pride—are masquerading as social concern.
Look closely at some of the men and women in the social justice movements
and wonder to what extent they are trying to further their political careers,
sell their books, and prop up their own inner feelings of insecurity—or
perhaps, just yell and shake their fists for a sweet taste of
revenge. For at its core, activism is often just
a psychological defense against unresolved emotional
wounds from childhood: frustrated by their helplessness in the face of their
parents’ hypocrisy, activists try to impose on the world their own ideas
of what “should” be done. And only a fine line separates activism
from terrorism: the willingness to kill.
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The more you
want, the more reason you have to deceive. Therefore, all that speaks from
the place of pride is a lie. The less you want—and the greater your
humility—the less reason you have to deceive. Therefore, all that comes
from real
love is truth.
To love is to
be giving, and to be giving is to act with patience, kindness, mercy, compassion,
understanding, and, ultimately, forgiveness. Activists,
by definition, don’t love—they demand. In fact, those who clamor
the loudest for tolerance often react with hostile intolerance of anyone
who disagrees with their agenda.
And so we have
to accept the fact that peace cannot be attained through lawsuits, protest,
or terrorism. The only path to peace is through the
purification of your own heart. |
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Now it can happen
that persons who teach the principles of real peace will be persecuted by
those who have too much to lose by listening to the truth. To die, if necessary,
under such persecution is martyrdom. Martyrs proclaim their refusal
to hate, for in blessing even those who persecute them they keep open the
hope that the persecutors may repent their mistakes. And this explains why
no one who is killed for his or her political opposition to rivals, who is
killed in the act of killing others, or who commits suicide—by itself
or in the course of killing others—can be a martyr, for all these acts
psychologically foreclose all possibility of forgiveness and
healing.
And it’s
just a shame that so many persons, even many who call themselves religious,
who haven’t learned their psychological lessons about loving—and
praying for and
forgiving—their
enemies, rather than hating them, suing them, protesting them, and getting
rid of them, become terrorists in their own hearts, in their own communities,
and, ultimately, in the world at
large.[4] |
The
Real
Solution
|
So, in the end, terrorism
points to the one bitter truth about psychology: The only problem that
cannot be solved is the problem of refusing solutions. In the example
above, the woman demands nothing less than the satisfaction of seeing her
father humiliated so that he might be moved to admit he was wrong in the
way he treated her in the first place. The political terrorist demands nothing
less than for others to admit their “guilt” and change their behavior.
Even when threatened with war and destruction, he will refuse negotiation,
because negotiation would require laying down his pride. So, rather than
back down in a sputter, the terrorist will choose to go down in a blaze,
spitefully taking as much of the world with him as possible. Trapped in the
problem of refusing solutions, he refuses to accept the real solution: that
he himself must live according to the values of honesty and integrity that
he demands from others. In that refusal, he defiles the very thing he desperately
wants. He defiles love.
The
terrorist to truly fear is the terrorist in your own heart. |
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Additional
Resources
References:
1. Lacan,
Jacques. “The subversion of the subject and the dialectic of desire
in the Freudian unconscious.” In Écrits: A selection (Alan
Sheridan, Trans.). New York: W. W. Norton, 1977, pp. 310-311:
“Any statement of authority has
no other guarantee than its very enunciation, and it is pointless for it
to seek it in another signifier, which could not appear outside this locus
in any way. Which is what I mean when I say that no metalanguage can be spoken,
or, more aphoristically, that there is no Other of the
Other.”
2. Lacan, at least,
did not attempt to subvert religion like Freud, nor did he try to
“psychologize” religion like Jung and Rank. Lacan simply respected
the fact that psychoanalysis could say nothing meaningful about religion.
See “The subversion of the subject and the dialectic of desire in the
Freudian unconscious.” In Écrits: A selection (Alan Sheridan,
Trans.). New York: W. W. Norton, 1977, p. 316:
“We [psychoanalysts] are answerable
to no ultimate truth; we are neither for nor against any particular
religion.”
3. See Hans Christian
Andersen’s tale,
The Emperor’s New Clothes.
4. “What about
national defense?” you might ask. Well, I’m not about to try to
tinker with national defense strategy, whether through commentary or through
protest. Psychology concerns the individual, and love is an individual act.
No government can order you to love, and no government can order you to hate.
And for that matter, peace is also a matter of individual will, not of politics.
All politics today has forsaken real love and is lost in the no-man’s
land of competition, hatred, and vengeance. So ultimately you, as an individual,
have to live—and die—with the destiny of your own conscience and
with whatever peace you bring into the world through your refusal to hate.
For more about the nature of truth and
lying, see:
Lacan, Jacques. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis
(Jacques-Alain Miller, Ed.; Alan Sheridan, Trans.). New York: W. W. Norton
& Company, 1981.
Bioterrorism:
Trauma
and PTSD from the present website.
Child and Adolescent Mental
Health:
Helping Children After a Disaster from the American
Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Family Therapy (from the present website;
see especially the section on “The Loss of Innocence”)
Lacan:
Lacan Related Papers provides links to numerous
Lacan-related papers.
The Lacanian School
of Psychoanalysis in the San Francisco Bay area, offers training
in Lacanian psychoanalysis.
The San Francisco
Society for Lacanian Studies provides lectures and information
about Lacanian psychoanalysis.
Related pages within A Guide to Psychology
and its Practice:
Anger: Insult,
Revenge, and Forgiveness
Death—and the Seduction
of Despair
Family Therapy
Fear
Forgiveness
Identity and
Loneliness
The Limits of
Psychology
Personality
Questions and Answers
about Psychotherapy
Sexuality—and
Love
Spirituality and
Psychology
Spiritual
Healing
Trauma and PTSD
The Unconscious
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