9/11 as a Collective Trauma

And Other Essays on Psychoanalysis and Society

Hans-Juergen Wirth

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Topic: Psychology
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134914135
• Subtopic: Applied Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Hans Juergen Wirth, a leading German psychoanalyst and editor of the journal Psychosozial, brings cultural breadth, historical perspective, and analytic astuteness to bear in considering the "collective trauma" of 9/11.  His meditation, which brings into its compass the psychic structure of suicide bombers and the psycho-political causes and consequences of the Iraq war, is especially insightful in considering the psychological meaning of 9/11 for the world outside the U.S.  In complementary forays into psyche and politics, Wirth explores the relationship of xenophobia and violence; the story of Jewish analysts who emigrated from Nazi Germany to the United States; the idea of man in psychoanalysis; and the family dynamics that sustain the AIDS phobia.  These wonderfully illuminating essays, both cautionary and constructive, show how clinical experience with the unconscious processes of violence, traumatization, and destructiveness can be foundational to new political strategies for dealing with collective violence.

9/11 AS A

COLLECTIVE TRAUMA¹

»The fateful question for the human species seems to me to be whether and to what extent their cultural development will succeed in mastering the disturbance of their communal life by the human instinct of aggression and self-destruction (…) Men have gained control over the forces of nature to such an extent that with their help they would have no difficulty in exterminating one another to the last man. They know this, and hence comes a large part of their current unrest, their unhappiness and their mood of anxiety.«

Freud (1930), pp. 111 f

»The narcissist must perpetually live with the divine.«

Grunberger & Dessuant (1997/2002), p. 379

The monstrous attack of September 11, 2001 on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington has — in Freud's words (1930) — once again demonstrated to the entire world how difficult it is for »the human species« to overcome »the disturbance of their communal life by the human instinct of aggression and self-destruction« (p. 111). However, Freud's hypothesis regarding aggression, self-annihilation, or the death instinct must not be truncated to a mono-causal interpretation of destructive action as though the terrorist act against the World Trade Center could be »conceptualized,« explained, or understood simply by reference to aggressive-destructive human instincts.

Instead, the theoretical achievement of Freud's death instinct hypothesis lies in the mere insistence that each of us carries within himself the potential toward destructiveness. The terrorist act of Sept. 11, 2001 is not by any means one of »unimaginable cruelty«, as commentaries have frequently described it. Rather, such a scenario had been painted in detail by creative minds within Hollywood's movie industry years earlier, and a public numbering in the millions came to be entertained, fascinated, and horrified by it. The human destructive potential is ever-present: basically, people are capable of any act of cruelty the human imagination can conjure up. However, to what extent the individual is beset by such destructive instincts and whether the destructive fantasies are acted out or remain within the realm of fantasy depends on many other complexly interlinked conditions — among them, those defined by the concepts of malignant narcissism, delusions of grandeur, feelings of powerlessness, individual and collective traumatizations, fanaticism, fundamentalism, and paranoid world views.

Max Klinger (1857–1919): Third Future (1880)

Neither are events such as the terror attack of September 11, 2001 »bestial« by the original definition of the word »beast« (wild animal, non-human) but, on the contrary, characteristic of the human species. Animals — barring a few exceptions for the sake of conserving their species — have an instinctual inhibition against killing members of their own kind. Animals are therefore not at all capable of committing any massacre of their own species. This is unique to humans. The potential for committing a monstrous crime is a fundamental component of the human condition. On the one hand, relative freedom from instinctual behavior holds the potential for freedom and creativity, for free decision-making, while on the other hand, it allows the freedom to choose evil. Without their freedom to choose evil, humans would not be truly free. We cannot have one without the other. »This makes evil the risk and also the price of freedom« (Safranski 1997, p. 193). It does not mean to surrender to evil. Instead, humans are confronted with the difficult task of fighting evil, yet without being able to eliminate it from human life altogether; for all attempts to do so will inevitably bring about further evil, as they prove destructive to freedom.

Alfred Kubin: War (1903)

Freud's pessimistic image of human nature, as expressed in his death instinct hypothesis, refers to the danger that even the victims of destructive force — on September 11, they were Americans — are not immune to becoming »powers of darkness« themselves in their resistance. The tragedy is that the struggle against evil engenders further evil.

The division of the world into rigidly separate categories of pure »good« and »evil« is one of the central psychological conditions for terrorism. Terrorists can only put their superegos out of action by dehumanizing their opponents and equating them with absolute evil. Conversely, in calling for a »battle of good against evil« and even a »crusade against evil«, U. S. President George W. Bush assumes the same mental division that is one of the causes of the problem — not its solution. Because in reality, as Freud (1915) wrote in »Thoughts for the Times on War and Death«,

»Evil cannot be ›eradicated‹. Psychological — or, to be exact, psychoanalytic — investigation demonstrates instead that the deepest essence of human nature consists of instinctive drives of an elementary nature that are equally inherent in all people and designed for satisfaction of certain basic needs. These instinctive drives are neither good nor evil in themselves (…) A human being is rarely completely good or evil, but mostly ›good‹ in one relationship, ›evil‹ in another, or ›good‹ under certain external circumstances, and under others, decidedly ›evil.‹« (p. 331 f)

Indeed, evil — currently embodied in terrorism — is a hydra: cut off one of her heads, and ten new heads will sprout from the stump (cf. Nitzschke 2001). The equivalent is true for American resistance. Whenever legitimate and necessary resistance itself resorts to terrorist measures and is carried out within the framework of a crusader mentality, it will continuously create its enemies anew while claiming to destroy them. An effective strategy against terrorism must address the glaring inequalities between the First, Second, and Third Worlds and also fight the psychosocial causes of terrorism if it is to succeed in the long run.

The Syndrome of Fanaticism

Terrorists, in particular suicide murderers, are fanatics. Even though fanaticism as an individual and collective phenomenon is subject to historical change and is extremely complex (cf. Hole 1995, p. 36), an attempt at a brief definition shall be made here. In his book Fanatismus (Fanaticism), Günter Hole (1995) emphasizes the fanatic's »passion« and »rashness«, the basis on which he »uncompromisingly« and »rigidly« defends his »overrated idea« (p. 37):

»Fanaticism is a personal conviction with a high degree of identification, pertaining to restricting contents and values, and influenced by personality structure; it is maintained or pursued with the greatest intensity, persistence and steadfastness, accompanied by an incapacity for dialogue or compromise with other systems or persons, who may be fought as external enemies by any means necessary and in conformity with the fanatic's own conscience.« (Hole 1995, p. 39)

Wurmser (1989) — citing Haynal and Puymège — summarizes the traits of fanaticism as follows:

»Belief, an excess of zeal, exclusivity, automatic purity, complete involvement [in an overrated ideology] to the point of suicide and crime, the certainty of possessing the truth, the knowledge of good and evil, which are seen as absolute, a dichotomizing, standardizing way of thinking, an aversion to all that is contrary to this truth or would question it, an absolute faith regarding certain ideals as sacred and promising perfection and harmony in this life or beyond, as well as the destruction of what is alien to, or opposes, this faith.« (Wurmser 1989, p. 167)

Erich Fromm (1961) particularly stresses that not every person who has a »profound belief« or has embraced a »philosophical or scientific conviction« must immediately be classified as a fanatic. In fact, the fanatic could be identified »more easily by certain personality traits than by the contents of his convictions« (p. 61). The fanatic, he states, has killed off all feelings for other people and projected them to the party or group whose ideology seems reasonable to him. He deifies the collective and its shared ideology, to which he has become enslaved. His complete submission under this idol creates a passion within him whose emotional quality Fromm characterizes as »cold fire« and »burning ice«, as »passion lacking warmth« (ibid.). The fanatic »acts, thinks and feels on behalf of his idol« (ibid.) and is prepared to sacrifice for it everything he still holds dear in life. For example, the Palestinian Nizzar Iyan confessed in a Zeit interview (cf. Schirra 2001) that he found his greatest fulfillment in his sons’ sacrifice as suicide murderers in the fight against the Israelis. When his 17-year-old son Ibrahim, whom he had trained as a »killer in the name of God« (p. 15), actually lost his life in a suicide bombing, his father said, »my son Ibrahim is dead. I never felt happier than at the moment when they came and said, ›the Jews killed your son‹.« And when the interviewer asked: »but you, after all, are his father, you must feel pain«, the father replied, unmoved, »I am quite honest, I am saying this out of conviction, I do not feel grief, I feel joy, true joy, that my son has accomplished a part of what we believe in. Life has no savor when one cannot accomplish one's dreams and one's goals« (p. 16).

What Hole (1995) says about the fanatic applies to this Palestinian father: typical fanatics »place ideas above people; their dedication to ideas is abnormally powerful, while their dedication to people is strangely blocked or defective« (p. 93). The fanatic lacks »the capacity for empathy«, for »understanding«, for »sympathy«, which »on principle is based on a capacity for love, for openness, for letting other people come close« (p. 94). The fanatic has submerged his inner emptiness, depression, and despair »in a complete submission to the idol and in the simultaneous idolization of his own self, which he has made a component of the idol. (…) Theoretically speaking, the fanatic is a highly narcissistic personality« (Fromm 1961, p. 61).

By deadening his empathy, his sympathy toward his fellow humans and his libidinous ties to his next of kin, the fanatic has, above all, rid himself of his own feelings, which he fears as the most threatening of all perils. The fanatic panics when faced with all feelings: the »disagreeable« ones of remorse, guilt, shame just as much as the »agreeable« feelings of love, gratitude, being touched and being moved, the feeling of unity. The point is a basic fear of his own emotional inner world, of the depth of his emotional life. Opening up to this world means leaving himself wide open, capable of being touched, and therefore vulnerable. Love is extremely dangerous as it is always related to a type of commitment, a self-exposure to the other, a self-dedication, a loosening of the boundaries around the self, relinquishment of claims to power, and an emotional dependence on the love object. »Fanaticism is always the result of an incapacity for genuine relatedness« (ibid.). Dependence on others and being at the mercy of the inherent dynamism of one's own feelings is felt to be the absolute risk. You must not show feelings! You must not have feelings! You must not let yourself be touched! You must not abandon yourself to feelings of love! You shall believe in the pure doctrine, in your own power, and in the power of your leader and organization alone! You shall love only your leader and the sacred doctrine! — this is what the fanatic's motto might sound like.

This thesis is not invalidated by the fact that some of the terrorists were living in Germany as inconspicuous students, and that at least the terrorist Muhammad Atta had a girlfriend, who reported to the police that he was missing. However, it is characteristic that he was ready to leave his girlfriend without one word of goodbye and to take off on his deadly mission, knowing it would end in his own death. It is characteristic of fanatics like Atta that they cannot understand anyone else's feelings about »how other people suffer from their conduct and its consequences. They are thus capable of inflicting suffering and pain, or to accept these unmoved as ethically justified and required by the Utopian ideology of the fanatical system« (ibid., p. 94).

Alfred Kubin: Adoration (c.1900)

On the day of the attacks on the World Trade Center, terrorist pilot Muhammad Atta's luggage, which had not been transferred on time, was found at the Boston Airport (cf. Der Spiegel 40/2001, pp. 32–33). Among other things, it contained the suicide pilot's last will, a psychologically informative document revealing Atta's inner world. Among the 18 items in his will, three alone dealt with his fear of the impurity of women:

»5. Neither pregnant women nor unclean persons shall say goodbye to me — I disapprove of that. 6. Women shall not apologize for my death (…)

11. Women shall neither be present during the burial nor come to my grave on any occasion thereafter.«

A. Paul Weber: The Damocles Bomb (1972)

Misogyny — in particular, fear of the emancipated, self-confident, sexually active woman — is not merely an individual characteristic of Atta's but a widespread phenomenon in the Islamic world. Within the traditionally patriarchal culture of Islam, the narcissism of Islamic males was enormously inflated by the elevation of males and devaluation of females. Western influence and its egalitarian orientation causes many male Muslims to feel injured in their selfesteem and to seek reassurance in Islamic fundamentalism, which promises them an ego boost by elevating them above women and debasing females, as demonstrated by the Taliban system with graphic clarity. Piven (2002) proposes as a thesis that the extreme social isolation, suppression, humiliation, and physical maltreatment of women which are the norm in many Islamic countries must be regarded as an indirect, psychological cause of terrorism. The women, who have been traumatized by clitoral circumcision, rape, beating, and other physical maltreatment, pass on their own traumas to their children. Suffering from depression, self-mutilation, and other post-traumatic stress symptoms themselves, they visit their humiliations upon their children — not only, but particularly their sons, inducing in them the panic fears which they themselves have suffered. The boys, having been traumatized in that way and burdened with (sexual) anxieties, develop an image of women determined by fear of fusion and longing for fusion, of contempt and hatred, and as soon as they are old enough, take refuge in the world of men, which is strictly separate from that of women. The circle is completed when the men — in order to stabilize their own identities — debase and humiliate their partners just as they have been debased and humiliated by their own traumatized mothers. Due to fear of women, who are fantasized as sadistic (= mother), small boys are often sexually abused by grown men in order to avoid sexual contact with women, who are simultaneously dreaded and despised. As may also be gathered from Osama bin Laden's biography, many fundamentalist men initially viewed the sexual freedom which splashed into some of the Arab nations together with oil dollars and Western culture as a welcome temptation. However, during a second stage, many reacted with guilt feelings and panic before the revenge of their internalized terrible mother imagoes. Western civilization came to represent their own »wicked selves« and had to be fought by all means (p. 43). It is no accident that in the terrorists’ justifications and accusations, the sexual permissiveness of the West has always played a prominent role.

German poster towards the end of WW II calling for the darkening of windows during air raids (detail)

Alfred Kubin: Power (1903)

Fear of fusion with a woman and »the development of armor against women« have been thoroughly described by Klaus Theweleit (1977, 1978) with respect to the personality type of the »military male«. His psychoanalytic-psychohistorical analysis points out the psychological and psychosomatic role played by military battle in relation to the self and the body: on the one hand, military drill promotes the creation of a »body made of steel«, a »body machine, an Ernst Jünger type of »man of steel« (Theweleit 1978, p. 185), but on the other hand, the »military male« longs for the moment when the body armor is blown open and the rigid body ego (…) disappears« (p. 208):

Being ›cold metal‹ without any feelings, and yet piercing through the twitching bodies — an intoxication with power, with crossing a boundary. The attacking military males are seeking a transformation, a breakout from their selves, by every means. They anticipate this sensation most intensely when, like missiles fired by the military machine, they finally take on the movement of the bullet themselves, racing toward the bodies under attack. The invocation of their own speed, never absent, is needed to render plausible the breakouts, the break-throughs, the contact with the body of the enemy and its penetration … The break-through occurs not in a state of intense pleasure, but rather, in a state of intense self-observation. Above all, they need their icy-clear minds so that nothing happening to their own bodies might escape them. After all, nothing must happen to this body except when it kills, or when it dies. Icy-cold thinking — awareness of their own bodies during the anticipation of the act of killing, or their own death (I kill, therefore I am. I die, therefore I was.) (pp. 209–223).

Detail from a German poster toward the end of World War II, exhorting people to observe the blackout because of bombing raids. In: Theweleit 1978, p. 209.

Theweleit's remarks may also be read as a possible interpretation of the psychological processes that might have taken place within the terrorist pilots, though with the reservation that we have very little concrete information about what these people felt during their deadly flights. Still, the analogy with Theweleit's »military men« remains striking. According to Hole (1995), the fanatic is distinguished by a »paralysis and rigidity in the affective sphere« (p. 93), complemented by »a troubled relationship with his own body« — indeed, a »marked hostility toward his body«. Hostility toward the bod...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 9/11 as a Collective Trauma
• Xenophobia and Violence as a Family and Psychosocial Disease
• Emigration, Biography und Psychoanalysis Jewish Psychoanalysts who emigrated to the United States of America
• The Idea of Man in Psychoanalysis: Creator of his own Life or Subject to the Dark Instinctual Side of Human Nature?
• About Family Dynamics and the AIDS Phobia. A Case Study
• Bibliography
• Index of Illustrations
• Index of previous publications
• About the Author