What follows is the fifth section of my new book, Politics on the Couch. Because we live in an interactive world and this election is an interactive process, I am conducting a new experiment - posting sections of the manuscript twice weekly on my blog at HuffingtonPost.com and inviting readers' comments which may be folded into the final print edition.
Politics on the Couch: Splitting and Reparation, Part Two
Healing splits between warring nations is virtually impossible, largely because healing requires each country to directly face its destructiveness. But reparation has to start somewhere, even if prospects of fundamental psychic growth seem unlikely. So, where do we start? Groups generally organize around partial truths - whether the group is a political party or factions within a party. And each group contains active and passive subgroups. The active members are those who take the lead and who use their partial truth to deny other aspects of reality.
During the last phases of the Democratic primary this process of inter-group splitting evolved almost to the point of militarization of both Obama and Clinton supporters. In part, this violent split resulted from active group members internalizing the dominant defense mechanisms of each leader's personality. Now that it looks like the nominee will be Obama, the new task for Democrats is to repair the damage done.
I see defenses ultimately employed to protect against anxiety - anxiety that takes the form of fear and mistrust of the other group. Looking at splits inside a political party we can see how passions about good and bad can be as violent within one supposedly ideologically coherent party - the Democratic Party - as between fundamentally divergent parties - Democrats and Republicans.
What are the predominant ways the two leading Democratic contenders manage their anxiety? Hillary Clinton seems to manage hers by feeling aggrieved and ganged up on by the media, even by Obama himself. Her anxiety is fundamentally paranoid in nature, so her group unites in real and imagined victimhood. By the end of her primary effort, Senator Clinton probably felt less of a victim than her group thought she was. In fact, since the delegate votes were tallied, some Clinton supporters declared that they would never vote for Obama.
Obama, other than by smoking, seems to manage his anxiety by remaining calm, urging others to remain calm. However, his writings make me think that he has been looking for a father to replace the one who abandoned him at two. He found a father by becoming a good father himself. To paraphrase, he is the father he's been waiting for.
When a father leaves, a split occurs in the child's mind - the image of a good, idealized father who is gone opposite one of a hurtful father who stays behind. In this way, the child personalizes the pain inflicted by abandonment, and sequesters off his yearnings. Then the father who left is the one yearned for in fantasy while the pain of everyday life is linked to an internal image of an ever-present hurtful father.
This process of searching for an ideal father can be projected into voters who are more than ready to replace their incompetent and indifferent one, George W. Bush. Nobody has been a worse father figure than President Bush who turned his back on his own troops - not only by lying them into battle but also by withholding needed equipment. We all know that Bush cut health benefits for the survivors of this war, and that he has presided over a series of burgeoning economic catastrophes.
Hence the perfect match: a candidate who yearns for a father becomes the yearned-for father. Obama not only promises change, but urges voters to actively participate in the process, encouraging genuine growth. But if his followers idealize him excessively they will blind themselves to his weaknesses and will defend him - often irrationally - against what they see as unfair attacks by Clinton.
This is how groups function in times of strife, like nations in times of war. Each group holds on to a partial truth and uses it to discredit the other group. The other group, meanwhile, has its own partial truth which it also uses as a weapon. Barack was always against the war - so what difference does it make if in his speech to AIPAC in early June he sounded just like President Bush? Hillary holds onto the partial truth that she is tough and strong, so what does it matter if she doesn't listen to other people - she knows what must be done. She beats up Obama as being naïve for wanting to talk to the "enemy"; he beats her up for being too militant and hard-line (just like he sounded at AIPAC).
Clinging to partial truths makes thinking a source of potential danger for group life. As Americans we have a long tradition of wanting to ignore what we don't want to know, from the distant past's "Know-Nothing" Party to our current willfully incurious Fox News. Clinging to partial truths, we continue to be drawn to leaders who support our wish not to know, who support our needs to split our external world into good and bad - whether it be against Iran or against Washington lobbyists. What we really don't want to know is that sometimes we ourselves do things we don't understand, things that might eventually force us to face tough facts.
The first unpleasant fact a group must face is that the other group has a similar attitude. Only by recognizing this symmetry can reparation of intra-group splits begin. And even then, groups need reparative leaders to guide them. For the purposes of this discussion I will go back and forth between intra-Party splits on the one hand, and foreign policy splits on the other. Starting the healing process begins by recognizing that Iran may have similar fears about us, since all groups use splitting mechanisms in order to survive. They need to keep the enemy outside so they can feel homogenous and safe inside.
Group safety is threatened when projections fail. Splitting mechanisms start to break down and paranoid anxiety gets re-internalized. We see this happening today as it becomes harder for Bush to create enemies abroad; he now looks inside America, accusing Democrats of being the enemies of gas prices, and insisting that every American is a potential enemy who must undergo secret surveillance. No longer can we see ourselves as purely good, because there may be traitors in our midst - traitors like Scott McClellan who betrayed his boss. Accusations escalate, and Bush responds by trying even harder to externalize threats by demonizing Iran. That isn't hard to do, since their President is a Holocaust denier who hates Israel and who may be developing nuclear weapons. Maybe we can be all good once again, like we were at first against Iraq. But voters are more suspicious than ever of manipulative splitting - some recognize that Bush is painting Iran as a one dimensional evil force, much the same way we are painted by Iran.
Inside a large group we also can disguise from ourselves our own hatred first by relocating it outside the group, and then displacing it. For example, we displace our own racism onto Iran. They are the racists and anti-Semites. American Jews who fear Iran justify Israel's sometimes cruel treatment of the Palestinians. What enables Israel to bulldoze homes and attack refugee camps is that -bulldozing their homes or attacking refugee camps - is having been attacked as well. Because of this complex mix of reality and projection, a leader like Obama who supports peaceful solutions is seen by many American Jews as a potential traitor to Israel, as too soft.
What most readers know about Obama's speech to AIPAC is far from soft: his plans for Jerusalem enrage and surprise those urging a less belligerent two-state solution. What most readers don't know, however, is that Obama ended that self-same speech as a reparative leader rather than as an "us-them" paranoid leader like McCain and Bush or even Clinton. I will therefore quote the end of his speech at length to conclude this section on repairing splits:
"There is a commitment embedded in the Jewish faith and tradition: to freedom and fairness; to social justice and equal opportunity; to tikkun olam - the obligation to repair this world.
I will never forget that I would not be standing here today if it weren't for that commitment. In the great social movements in our country's history, Jewish and African Americans have stood shoulder to shoulder. They took buses down south together. They marched together. They bled together.
And Jewish Americans like Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were willing to die alongside a black man - James Chaney - on behalf of freedom and equality.
Their legacy is our inheritance. We must not allow the relationship between Jews and African Americans to suffer. This is a bond that must be strengthened. Together, we can rededicate ourselves to end prejudice and combat hatred in all of its forms. Together, we can renew our commitment to justice. Together, we can join our voices together, and in doing so make even the mightiest of walls fall down.
That work must include our shared commitment to Israel. You and I know that we must do more than stand still. Now is the time to be vigilant in facing down every foe, just as we move forward in seeking a future of peace for the children of Israel, and for all children. Now is the time to stand by Israel as it writes the next chapter in its extraordinary journey.
Now is the time to join together in the work of repairing this world.
The history of inter family feuds antedates the Capulets the Montagues, the Hatfields and McCoys. Intra family feuds also last for generations where parents don't speak to children or siblings remain estranged. Reparation is much harder to achieve than splitting, and the next section will develop thoughts about reparative leadership. What are your thoughts about these ideas? Are you surprised by the last bit of Obama's speech? And do you think it is reparative or simply more of the same?