The Psychology of Demonization

Promoting Acceptance and Reducing Conflict

Nahi Alon, Haim Omer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781135599775
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy Counselling
• Index: Psychology

Throughout human history, the relationships of individuals and groups have been disrupted by what the authors sum up as "demonization, " the attribution of basic destructive qualities to the other or to forces within the self. Demonization results in constant suspicion and blame, a systematic disregard of positive events, pressure to eradicate the putative negative persons or forces, and a growing readiness to engage in escalating conflict. Richly illustrated with 24 case stories, this book explores the psychological processes involved in demonization and their implications for the effort to effect change in relationships, psychotherapy, and beyond the office or clinic in the daily lives of families, organizations, and societies.Recent popular psychology--the authors argue--has tended to encourage demonization. An appropriate alternative to this view is known as the "tragic view": Suffering is inevitable in life; negative outcomes are a result of a confluence of factors over which one has only a very limited control; there is no possibility of reading into the hidden "demonic" layers of the other's mind; the other's actions, like our own, are multiply motivated; escalation is a tragic development rather than the result of an evil "master plan"; and finally, skills for promoting acceptance and reducing escalation are necessary for diminishing interpersonal suffering. The authors describe and illustrate a series of these skills both for psychotherapy and for personal use. Finally, they lay out an approach to consolation and acceptance, the neglect of which they attribute to the dominance of demonic views. The Psychology of Demonization: Promoting Acceptance and Reducing Conflict will be appreciated by all those professionally and personally concerned with the state of relationships.

Chapter 1

The Demonic Experience

The demonic view is a way of experiencing, an evolving attitude that begins with doubt, thrives with suspicion, ends with certainty, and aims at decisive militant action. When it seeps into a relationship, a highly negative view of the other evolves, which in turn may lead to symmetrical counter accusations. Thus a vicious circle arises in which both sides become more and more entrenched in their negative positions.

A few years ago one of us went on a trek to the Himalayas with two friends. The trek was long and difficult and we lost our trail. For 3 days we searched for the trail in vain. One of our friends was injured and we decided to go back. To ease our burden,we buried a large part of our equipment in a hiding place. On our way, we met shepherds and they helped us go back to town. After a few days of recovery, we decided that my friends would stay in town to continue recuperating while I went back to get the equipment we buried. I invited the shepherd, Greeboram, who had helped us find our way to be my guide and porter. I thought that even though he did not speak English, we could communicate— after all,we already had; he had rescued us and we were friends.

My Indian friend, Sani, a mountain climber himself, thought I was making a big mistake:

You may be doing the right thing and your friend may be a saint. But he knows a lot of money is hidden on your body, and that your equipment is valuable. Even a saint can be tempted. A little shove into an abyss and he’ll have enough money for himself and his family for the rest of his life. And who could find you in these wild mountains? Who would look for you?

That thought, which had not entered my mind at all when I agreed with the shepherd to accompany me on the return journey, shook my confidence. My sleep wandered. I was afraid. I imagined a nightmare scenario: Greeboram is walking behind me, the path is lost, mud, fog, a little push, a fall off the cliff. Maybe I was taking a big risk because of naiveté.

I decided to go anyway. Sani did what he could to deter “the potential murderer”; he spoke to Greeboram and explained to him that if we were not back in 5 days a search party would be launched.

We went on our way. In the crowded bus, he was the ideal comrade. He made sure I had a seat. When a woman carrying a child got on, he sat the child on his lap. When an old man got on he moved everybody over to make room for the old man. In the break he helped a passenger who threw up. “False suspicion!” I thought. I was relieved. A potential murderer does not treat people that way. But on the other hand, a potential murderer has to make a friendly impression in order to dupe the intended victim.

At night, Greeboram decided we would not sleep in a hostel. He had relatives where we could sleep and that way we would save money.An isolated hut in the mountains, a few men, food and alcohol. As they drank my hosts got very loud. They urged me to drink. “Maybe they want to get me drunk so it will be easier for them to overcome me,” I thought, and politely declined. Now I felt completely alien, alone in a group. Greeboram started getting drunk too. “Alcohol might remove his last inhibitions,” I thought, and tried to prevent him from drinking. He responded angrily. At night he decided I would sleep in the only bed in the house, while he would sleep on the doorstep “to guard me.” “There!” I thought. A person who did not have malicious intents would not think you needed to guard someone in the home of relatives. I could not sleep. Now there was a conspiracy of murderers against me.

The morning was wonderful. Greeboram and his friends were friendly and breakfast was generous. “What a stupid suspicion,” I thought.

We started walking on a narrow and damp path cut into the cliff’s edge. Hundreds of meters beneath us the river gushed. Greeboram walked in front of me. There were shreds of ice on the path. Occasionally I faltered. Greeboram would turn around, alarmed, and try to grab me. “Let me walk behind you,” he said with hand gestures. “If you slip I can catch you.” “Aha!” I thought. “If he walks behind me I will not be able to see when he attacks me.”

For 2 days I went back and forth between the two stories— the murderer and the friend. Most of the time I was tense and suspicious and kept a suitable distance. I had to avoid excessive closeness that would make him think I was gullible. I could not enjoy the clumsy conversations with him, because they might have all been deceptive. The hardest thing was that I could not decide which version was true. “When he offers me an apple, is it a gift of generosity or a way to blunt my alertness?”“When he invites his cousin to go with us on the last day, is he doing it as part of the murder plan or only to help the cousin?” The uncertainty was grueling and exhausting.

On the third day, we reached our destination. He carried the heavy equipment. Only then was I relieved. With a load like that you cannot make a serious murder attempt. He had not tried to kill me after all, and I was still there. Greeboram and I parted as friends. Sometimes I wonder whether he picked up any of the doubt and worry I went through with him.

In the demonic mindset, a person looks for hints and signals and scrutinizes the other person for his hidden negative motives. One has to be alert and beware of calm appearances. There is no detail, however small, that cannot become a sign. Seeking for the hidden negative essence, one discards the transient and the innocent as irrelevant. The search for certain truth obviates contradictions and flattens the picture.

The mental attitude that characterizes this process is suspicion, and its inseparable companions are fear and hatred. Once the fear that another intends to harm us enters our hearts, we can no longer be calm. Thinking is impoverished and action rigidified, drying up the positive dialogue between the sides. No stable standing point is left. Many would then prefer the worst certainty to this torture of doubt.

At the beginning of my acquaintance with Greeboram I was grateful and trusted him. I thought, “He wants to help me because he is a good person.” That positive view lost its clear hold on my mind when a competing view appeared: “He wants to come with me to kill me and take my money.” Each of the two images conformed to the facts; each was in itself reasonable and consequent, but they were not mutually compatible. The negative image spurs the collection of negative evidence, growing more negative in the process. The very existence of doubt may then deepen the threat. In my view of Greeboram, this process did not attain demonic proportions: wavering continued right to the end, and a stable negative view did not prevail. However, the nagging suspicion and the torture of indecision can be a fruitful ground for the development of a full-fledged demonic attitude.

The demonic view is not only something a person keeps to himself. Once doubt and suspicion are cast, trust and openness disappear. Sooner or later the other feels the relationship has become tainted. This may arouse the other’s own suspicion, furthering a symmetrical negative process. Things often worsen when one side demands acknowledgment and confession from the other. This demand presents the other with a trap: if she owns up even to a small part of the accusation, she will find out that she has incriminated herself far more than she intended; if she does not, this is viewed as proof of her deviousness. A destructive pattern of “inquisitor and accused” may then come to rule the relationship.

CASE 1

Robert, a friendly and good-tempered 35-year-old designer, remembered one day that when he was 20, he decided to break up with his girlfriend, Silvia, but a month later changed his mind and married her. Now, 15 years later, he began to be plagued by doubts: What did she do in the month they were not together? He asked her and she told him she had been heartbroken, but to ease her suffering had engrossed herself in work and went out with another boy a few times.A terrible suspicion gnawed at him: Did they have sex? The thought was unbearable. Silvia denied it, but Robert did not believe her. He remembered that at the time, she was gloomy and somber. Was it because she had given up the relationship with the other boyfriend? Was it because she missed the good sex she had had with the boyfriend? He did not believe her denials and demanded she swear to them. She swore about the truth of her denials but Robert went on disbelieving her. She had to prove she did not have sex in the month of September, 15 years ago; only conclusive evidence could erase the stain that was cast upon their love. Silvia had been given the impossible task of wiping off the stain and bringing the two of them back to the lost paradise of their relationship before the fateful break.

Silvia tried to be helpful. She reconstructed her movements in the difficult month and showed Robert that she did not have time for an affair. Robert raved: “The fact that you remember so many details after such a long time proves your conscience is not clean.” Robert interrogated her in detail, promising that he only needed to have a full picture in order for him to calm down. The more Silvia cooperated, the more he pressed her. She feared that if she stopped answering, things would get even worse. Still, Robert felt she was evasive. Perhaps she was doing this purposely in order to hurt him. Silvia, in turn, suspected that Robert only wanted to torment her, that he did not love her anymore, and might be actually scheming to break up the relationship. “Maybe he has somebody?” Each of the partners was now engaged in uncovering negative motives in the other. Sex became less and less frequent, providing each of them further proof of the other’s lack of love. Silvia told the story to a friend, who hypothesized that Robert was acting out of repressed guilt because of his forbidden wishes. “He ought to go to therapy to understand his real motives,” the friend concluded. Robert responded to Silvia’s suggestion with rage: “You are trying to shun the real issue by blaming me for psychological problems! No way!” The deadlock was now complete; both were sure the other was underhandedly motivated, and both looked for ways to catch the other in a revealing slip.

In this case, the demonizing process has grown beyond mere suspicion. The mutual assumption of hidden motives, the dynamics of the inquisitor and the accused, and the redemptive wish that the relationship be returned to its pristine condition are typical to this kind of interaction. Still, some classical demonizing elements are missing in this case. Thus there is still just the germ of what we shall term a psychodemonic hypothesis, postulating that the person stands under the control of a hidden power foreign to her consciousness and intentions, which demands uncovering and radical treatment. Such a development is illustrated in the following case.

CASE 2

Rose came to therapy with a strange dilemma. She was in the 6th month of pregnancy and had undergone an experience that convinced her she should by no means become a mother. She wanted to have an abortion, even though at this advanced stage of pregnancy, the abortion actually meant a forced delivery. She believed that only if she succeeded in reliving her early experiences of abuse with her own mother, would she become ripe to be a mother herself. Because of the time pressure, she wanted a very intensive and extremely short treatment. She believed that only deep hypnosis could help her relive her childhood trauma and rid herself of the perverted mother image she carried within herself. Failing this, she insisted on getting rid of the baby.

Rose and her husband had lived abroad until the 3rd month of her pregnancy. There she had participated in a group treatment for future mothers. In this treatment, she became aware that she nurtured narcissistic fantasies about her future daughter that would, in all probability, turn her into a psychologically abusive mother who would exploit her daughter for her own self-aggrandizement. She also found out in the group that she had been psychologically abused by her mother in exactly the same way. The group experience had been powerful, but had not led her to contemplate an abortion. Rose hoped she would overcome her fantasies by confronting her mother and by coping with her own memories of psychological abuse. She continued in individual therapy with the group leader and had a series of lengthy phone conversations with her mother. She wanted to remember what exactly the mother had done to her and wanted the mother to own up to her transgressions. By this confrontation, Rose hoped to become able to vent her repressed anger and get rid of the internalized image of her mother in her unconscious. This would allow her to become the free person she might have always been, making her also ready to be a mother herself. Rose remembered how the mother had made stringent demands on her that she be an outstanding student. She was extremely critical whenever Rose failed, and beamed when she received a prize at school. Rose’s feeling, however, was that the mother needed Rose’s achievements for herself, to fill in the emptiness inside her. She never cared whether her demands fitted Rose’s needs or not, at times riding roughshod over her feelings. Rose remembered hating her ballet school, and yet the mother kept her there for 3 years against her will. The mother would also force Rose to dance before whomever came into the house, to show off Rose’s accomplishments. Rose remembered how unwilling and humiliated she felt, and how the mother smiled and her face got red with pleasure at Rose’s expense. To Rose’s consternation and anger, the mother denied that it had been so. She had never forced Rose to anything at all. The mother’s tone in the phone was self-justifying and apologetic; she had meant well and she believed Rose would be thankful afterward. At times, the mother would burst out crying, failing to understand what had made Rose hate her so much. In one of the conversations, the mother changed her tone, and instead of justifying herself, started yelling back at Rose. Suddenly, Rose had a feeling of cringing physically in fear of her mother’s voice. She talked to her therapist (the group leader) about this feeling, and the therapist commented that probably the mother had used more than mere moral pressure to get Rose to comply. Rose feared confronting the mother with this possibility. When she came back to Israel (now on her 6th month of pregnancy), she decided to get to the root of this experience, and only then bring the mother face-to-face with the truth.

Rose’s new therapist was in a quandary. He knew that a hypnotic attempt to relive the childhood trauma might bring up pseudomemories of things that had never happened. The recent history of psychotherapy is full with such examples, which often end in families breaking up, the patient’s condition deteriorating and, sometimes, with the therapist being sued by the patient for having led her to believe in false memories. The therapist explained this to Rose and presented her with the evidence about the unreliability of hypnosis in the recovery of repressed memories. Rose was shocked. She asked the therapist what could be done. The therapist proposed to have a series of sessions to discuss Rose’s pregnancy, her feelings about impending motherhood, and her relationship with her mother. Luckily, Rose agreed, and the therapist felt he had bought time.

The therapist saw Rose for about 2 months. He told her that she was in a position to avoid making the same mistakes her mother perhaps had made. They talked about Rose’s fantasies about the baby. She had dreamt, to her horror, that the baby would become a famous ballet dancer! In another dream, she was attending her own funeral, but when the coffin was opened, there was a baby lying inside it. This dream had been interpreted by her former therapist as a repetition of Rose’s relationship with herownmother; the mother had kept herself mentally alive at the price of her daughter’s life. The new therapist consoled Rose that such fantasies, both positive and negative, were common in pregnancy. By no means did they mean that she would force her wishes on her daughter, or rob the daughter of her vitality to serve her own needs. He promised Rose to help her if, in the future, she felt she was in danger of so doing. Rose smiled in relief. Actually, she said, she did not believe she would be like her mother at all. The therapist did not feel strong enough at this stage to challenge Rose’s view of her own mother. This was perhaps a mistake, for Rose’s relationship with her mother quickly deteriorated. Rose’s mother knew most of Rose’s old friends because they used to visit their house before Rose’s trip abroad. She approached some of these friends, asking for their help in improving her relationship with Rose. Rose reacted furiously, interpreting the mother’s action as proof of her manipulative character. She cut off all communications with all of her previous friends. She then moved with her husband to another town without letting the mother know where she was living. She would phone the mother once a month, usually for very short conversations peppered with biting remarks. Rose had no intention of letting her mother see her future granddaughter for quite a long time. The therapy sessions came to an end under this inauspicious star.

Rose’s story illustrates how a series of mental and interpersonal elements, which perhaps might not be seen as necessarily belonging together, cluster and conglomerate, creating a coherent set of attitudes that lead to highly repetitive interactions. Some of these elements are already familiar to us from the previous case: a suspicious and blaming attitude, the dynamics of the inquisitor and the accused, the attribution of ulterior motives, and the hope of reattaining a condition of purity by ridding oneself of the negative memories. Some elements are new to this case: a theory of trauma explaining how unconscious “implants” are created (the mother’s psychological abuse of Rose), a professional who is able to detect and interpret the hidden signs of trauma (the group therapist), a therapeutic procedure to bring the hidden elements to consciousness and expel them (deep hypnosis), and a growing belief in conspiracies (e.g., between the mother and Rose’s friends). We argue that these elements form a whole and fit together as in a puzzle because they follow a cultural blueprint that ha...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• FOREWORD
• PREFACE
• CHAPTER 1: THE DEMONIC EXPERIENCE
• CHAPTER 2: THE DEMONIC AND THE TRAGIC VIEWS
• CHAPTER 3: THE ANTIDEMONIC DIALOGUE IN THERAPY
• CHAPTER 4: NONDEMONIC FIGHTING
• CHAPTER 5: THE TRAGIC WISDOM OF CONSOLATION
• REFERENCES