Psychological Roundup

Via Instapundit, I learned of a couple of very important articles (and two very good blogs) by a pair of psychologists.

The first article makes sense out of the intense hatred for Bush I have seen in some people, and I don't mean the purely malevolent anti-American Marxist types. This piece explains what is going on when you see an otherwise normal, decent person fly into a rage over George Bush.

In a word, it's displacement, a psychological defense mechanism in which there is a "separation of emotion from its real object and redirection of the intense emotion toward someone or something that is less offensive or threatening in order to avoid dealing directly with what is frightening or threatening."

First, Dr. Sanity quotes Virginia Postrel.

When I was in New York a few weeks ago, a friend in the magazine business told me he thinks the ferocious Bush hating that he sees in New York is a way of calming the haters' fears of terrorism. It's not rational, but it's psychologically plausible--blame the cause you can control, at least indirectly through elections, rather than the threats you have no control over. I thought of that insight today when I glanced at Maureen Dowd's column and read this sentence, "Maybe it's because George Bush is relaxing at his ranch down there (again) while Osama is planning a big attack up here (again)."

That is the voice of a petulant child, angry that she has a tummy ache while Daddy is at work or Mommy is visiting a friend, or the voice of a grouchy wife angry that she has a migraine while her husband is out coaching the kids' baseball team. You're upset that you're in pain (we've all been there), so you get mad at someone whose presence wouldn't make the pain any better. No mature student of politics believes the president of the United States goofs off on vacation. It's not the kind of job you escape. George Bush may be completely insane to voluntarily. spend July in Texas--as opposed to Bill Clinton's favored coastal retreats--but Osama bin Laden is no more or less a threat than in Bush were in Washington. But if blaming Bush makes people feel better, safer, or at least able to focus their anger on someone they can hurt, they'll blame Bush.

And then, after some further elaboration, she (Dr. Sanity) explains how one can spot displacement.

One way you can usually tell that an individual is using displacement is that the emotion being displaced (e.g., anger) is all out of proportion to the reality of the situation. The purpose of displacement is to avoid having to cope with the actual reality. Instead, by using displacement, an individual is able to still experience his or her anger, but it is directed at a less threatening target than the real cause. In this way, the individual does not have to be responsible for the consequences of his/her anger and feels more safe--even thought that is not the case.

This is a very well-thought-out post and deserves a full read.

Also, over at Tech Central Station is an article by Dr. Helen Smith on "Over-Humanizing the Enemy". This is an especially important article in the current war because it describes exactly how, on a psychological level, the leftist notion of appeasement plays into the hands of the Islamofascists.

I suppose it follows from this statement that [book reviewer Michael] Kakutani would rather promote understanding and empathy with respect to injuries that Muslims feel they have suffered at the hands of the United States [link removed]. No surprise here: Frum and Perle state that some commentators even suggested that Islamic anti-Americanism should be regarded as an understandable reaction to the materialism and hedonism of American life, as refracted through MTV, pornography, and the Internet. Apparently, they were anticipating Kakutani's review. In a Clintonian sort of approach, some Americans seem to believe that if we can "feel our enemies' pain," then we will be on the path to enlightenment and peace [italics mine]. This belief could not be further from the truth.

In my private practice, I don't work with terrorists but I do work with violent people. I used to believe (as many of my colleagues still do) that empathizing with my patients and increasing their self-esteem would help them on the path to self-actualization. Of course, for some anxiety-ridden patients who need faith in themselves, the technique of empathy and support works. However, for those patients with serious violent tendencies, just the opposite is true. With those patients, I've found that setting clear boundaries and making judgments about their immoral behavior works like a charm.

Those patients who threatened me backed down only when I got up in their face and told them forcefully to stop -- the slightest hint of fear or intimidation (or sympathy!) on my part was met with increased threats. In the real world of private practice, confronting real murderers, I learned to act in ways that were different from what I had been taught in graduate school.

The take-home message:

In our attempt to be overly-tolerant and empathetic, we start to identify too much with the enemy (very much like those suffering from Stockholm syndrome) and start to dehumanize the victims of terror. Surely, the victims of 9/11 deserve more from us than that. As do the potential victims who might be saved by a more realistic, and less "nurturing," approach.

This, too, is worth a full read and pertains directly as well to the national debate about torture.

Both of these problems sap our nation's effectiveness in fighting this war by causing some of us to fail to confront the terrorists for different reasons. And certainly, a nation that appeases such monsters will feel impotent against the threat and tend to descend into a mire of destructive bickering. So these are not just separate problems, but potentially synergistic ones.

Each of these authors has a blog about psychology: here and here. Check 'em out.

-- CAV