This paper was published in the British Journal of Psychotherapy Volume 18 no. 3, Spring 2002, and is reproduced by kind permission of the Editor.



11 September 2001: Some thoughts on racism and religious prejudice as an obstacle.

M. Fakhry Davids


The events of 11 September were brought home to us all by wall-to-wall television coverage of airliners crashing into the twin towers like giant guided missiles, followed moments later by the towers collapsing into heaps of rubble. These were awful, shocking images of devastation on a scale that was quite simply unbearable. It is one thing to think “It’s just like a scene from a Hollywood disaster movie!”, but how can you take in the fact that there, in front of you, a jumbo jet full of people is ploughing straight into offices also full of ordinary people? And that the explosion, flames and smoke you see speak of people being burnt and suffocated to an unimaginable death at that very moment? And, in the sequence showing the collapse of the towers, you were watching perhaps thousands of people being crushed to death under tons of shattered glass, mangled steel and broken concrete? And the chilling realisation that those tiny specks hurtling down beside the towers, moments before their collapse, were real people jumping to certain death a hundred floors below – a death that must have felt preferable to an infinitely more terrible and horrifying fate inside. For all of us living in the West, here was a human catastrophe that we could not keep at an emotional distance – it was all too obvious that there but for the grace of God go you or I.

As psychoanalysts we know that psychically unbearable events call into play powerful defences whose aim is to protect us from perceived danger. To the normal mind, racist modes of thinking¹ constitute the most readily available constellation of such defences, and these have been evident from the very outset. Early that afternoon a close friend rang, deeply distressed that “they say Muslims have done it”, terrified that they were about to bomb Pakistan (where she has relatives), and desperately praying that, like the Oklahoma bombing, this would turn out to be another home-grown attack. The following day a patient addressed this same issue from the opposite end. He hoped that the victims under the rubble would turn out to represent every colour, race, creed and nationality of the human family, thus giving the lie to any simplistic notion that it was an attack by “them” on “us”.

That latter hope was in vain, and as events since September 11th have unfolded the extent to which the situation has been reframed in stereotyped racist terms has been apparent everywhere – the problem has now been reduced to a conflict between the enlightened, civilised, tolerant, freedom-loving, clean-living democrat vs. the bearded, robed, kalashnikov-bearing, bigoted, intolerant, glint-in-the-eye fundamentalist fanatic. Or, viewed from the other side, the humble believer with God on his side vs. the infidel armed with all the worldly might of the devil. As these battle lines have been drawn the near world-wide consensus that genuinely did exist in the immediate aftermath of the bombings has given way to a world sharply divided. Now, it is very difficult to find neutral ground – “if you’re not with us, you’re against us”. The unseen pressure to locate one on a side is almost irresistible, and attempts at genuine dialogue are soon bedevilled by the hidden question “but, which side are you on?” For example, a colleague shared with me his regret that, rather than face and address the underlying causes of the atrocities, we seemed to be rushing headlong into a futile bombing campaign that would only make matters worse. Somehow a way would have to be found to address the mess in the Middle East. We both nodded, then he added “And I don’t just mean Israel”. I was taken aback since I had never discussed my views on the Israeli question, or on the current crisis, with him. On reflection, I considered it likely that a fleeting suspicion that I might be one of “them” had crept into his mind at that moment.

It has long been known that racist frames of mind involve splitting and projective identification, but today we understand more clearly their extraordinary power in reducing complex anxiety-provoking situations into more straightforward black-and-white accounts that sharply differentiate good from bad. A paranoid solution to intense anxiety, this makes us feel that we know where we are, which helps, and can further justify actions designed to make us feel better, rather than to face the real problem (which requires a full appreciation of its complexity). The effects of such polarisation are powerful and pervasive since racist thought seeks to present itself as the true picture of reality, sweeping up all in its path as it imposes its agenda and seeks to buttress its views. In the process alternative views are portrayed as being in the camp of the enemy (e.g. “Hitler appeasers”), which places their proponents on the back foot as they are forced to engage in a discourse constructed around the racism. This leaves no room for freedom of thought.

As clinicians we know that when racist mechanisms are mobilised in an analysis the ordinary analytic business of understanding is easily immobilised. For instance, a black patient complains of being misunderstood by the white analyst’s interpretation, allegedly because of (unconscious) prejudice on the analyst’s part: rather than see the patient as he is, the analyst is felt to be imposing a view of the patient refracted through a white lens (to which his own ethnocentricity blinds him). The analyst sees the problem differently: the interpretation is reasonable, but brings anxiety, hence the patient’s objections are a form of resistance. These two positions become entrenched, everything said by one party is felt simply to restate his own polarised stance, and it becomes more and more difficult to find common ground on which to base communication. The result is a highly charged situation that causes us more problems than most – e.g. when we are accused of being sexist in our views. Even the most experienced and nimble clinicians can become extraordinarily flat-footed in the face of such unyielding polarisation, and often the result is impasse or unanalytical political correctness. Under these circumstances, just ensuring that an analysis survives, let alone move things on, requires a great deal of hard work, skill and perseverance.

Racist thinking causes similar problems when deployed within the broader socio-political context, where it constitutes a particular obstacle to constructive thinking. From the moment the suicide hijackers were known to be Arabs from the Middle East their religious beliefs have been held to be responsible for their murderous crimes. As psychoanalysts we know, of course, that motivation is a complex matter for any individual, and that elements of group psychology would be bound to add further complication. However, in the aftermath of 11 September the atmosphere has become pervasively racialised as the term terrorist has elided all too easily into fundamentalist, into Muslim. Hardly a day goes by without some article or report appearing in the popular press seeking to explain “the Islamic mindset” to its Western audience. It is not difficult to see that this racist abuse is a sublimated expression of moral abhorrence and condemnation of the group held responsible, in phantasy, for the atrocities. However, when ideas are used in this way they lose their ability to describe or illuminate – they become quite simply rocks hurled in anger, or are perceived as such.

Alongside Judaism and Christianity, Islam is one of the great monotheistic faiths in the world today. Among its adherents is a spread of believers as regular, rich and varied as any. Some are immersed in their religion in a dedicated and thoughtful way that clearly benefits themselves and their community: they bring people together and help to ease the strains of communal living. Others are less preoccupied with their religion, but it nevertheless provides them with a way to structure and give meaning to their daily lives: good fortune allows gratitude to be felt (towards God in the first instance), and misfortune can be borne (in the knowledge that God is all-knowing and just). Yet others understand their religion literally, which is felt to be the purest way, hence the only one acceptable to a God free of imperfection: they tend to be intolerant of Muslims who hold less restrictive interpretations of their religion. In the present climate it this latter version of Islam that is presented as its essence (for instance, with literal quotations from the Qur’an² apparently supporting it), which Muslims at large are constantly called on to disavow. Because of the racial dynamic that underpins this call, however, every restatement of Islam’s ordinariness as a religion (which incorporates many views) can only have a limited and transient effect. In addition, it is a hallmark of racist stereotyping that when deployed it provokes the object to retaliate, and this in turn makes it more and more difficult for sane thoughts to be thought and sane voices to be heard.

This is further complicated by the fact Muslims are among the poorest and most deprived peoples on the planet. In the UK there are two Muslim communities: the urban professionals and entrepreneurs gradually making inroads into British social, economic and cultural life, and the deprived inner city dweller with little such hope. This latter group is much more helpless in the face of the vicious force of Islamophobia extant in this country (The Runnymede Trust, 1997). To the disinterested observer it is clear that the despair and hopelessness of straitened economic circumstances are responsible for their plight. In a climate where they themselves are targets of racism, the individuals concerned are most likely to experience their plight in racial terms: “it was ever thus – this country hates Muslims”. This, in turn, increases the attractiveness of intolerant versions of Islam as the only ones that adequately articulate their experience of being hated outsiders. Tragically, this in turn feeds a vicious cycle in which their religion is portrayed as something monstrous.

Psychoanalysis clearly has many vital contributions to make to the debate surrounding the current crisis. In addition to clinical expertise in the area of trauma, we have specific perspectives on concretised, fundamentalist states of mind, on the perverse excitement generated by human destructiveness, on the impulse to triumph over destructiveness, on the place of revenge in mental life (which compels us to make enemies out of potential allies) and other issues. However, the effectiveness of these contributions is constrained by the current racialised context in which they are formulated and presented, and in my opinion this has to be taken into account, much in the way that we take into account the atmosphere in a session, for at least two reasons. First, it determines how our contributions are likely to be received. Second, in a divided world any contribution is likely to be perceived as partial and, given that we ourselves cannot easily rise above or opt out of that divided world, we must consider whether ours too might be. In the face of the pervasive and intense anxiety present in our world today, do we become more emphatic or dogmatic than our evidence base permits, perhaps unwittingly pushing a socio-cultural-ideological, rather than scientific, agenda? Let me explore this through a brief example.

Most of us find it hard to imagine that a murderous suicide attack can be carried out other than in a psychotic or perverse state of mind – psychically this is necessary to overrule the ordinary attachment to life that most of us have. And we are inclined to dismiss the view (from the other side) that desperation can drive people to such horrific acts, on the grounds that they ignore our detailed understanding of normal and pathological states of mind. However, our view does come uncomfortably close to the rhetoric of politicians who maintain, for instance, that “Bin Laden is paranoid and psychotic”, which is instantly recognisable as partisan propaganda in the midst of war. In any event, our views will be received differently on either side of the divide. Citizens of the West, besieged by a terrorist threat, will feel supported in facing something quite mad, while Muslims will feel accused of having a mad set of beliefs. This latter will be seen as an expression of prejudice or even blind hatred, dressed up as expert opinion. These positions are quite polarised, but notice how remarkably well each side complements the other in reducing complexity to a single issue – madness.

Psychoanalysts, unlike politicians, rely on evidence to support their propositions, but here we run into some difficulties. Suicide bombers are, of course, not available for detailed psychological study after they become identifiable as such, and we are forced to extrapolate from other work. In response to the objection that extreme frustration, deprivation etc. can produce despair, disillusionment and hopelessness so great as to lead to suicide attacks, we would answer that our view does draw on a body of work with patients from severely deprived and disadvantaged backgrounds. Though true, this glosses over the fact that this body of work has been carried out almost exclusively in the West, where the relatively stable political order provides a background of safety absent in much of the Third World. This absence is often compounded by the presence of malicious forces that become part and parcel of people’s daily lives. Our discourse excludes detailed evidence of the prolonged impact on the mind of these external factors, whether they are internalised and if so, how? This is a serious gap in our knowledge base that limits our ability to comment authoritatively.

From a theoretical point of view, these issues are not without interest. We know that in our world, once the depressive position has been negotiated the normal mind is able to maintain a balance between paranoid-schizoid and depressive functioning. Does this observation hold equally well in the Third World settings I have just described? Or does the maintenance of this equilibrium depend not only on inner psychic achievements, but also on the existence in the environment of structures consonant with it? Under what circumstances does that equilibrium break down, and with what psychic consequences? The lack of evidence regarding such issues does not mean, of course, that we must abandon our views because they are based on limited observations. Rather, we must be particularly vigilant about keeping an open mind. However, a pervasively racialised climate restricts the scope for this.

I have gone into some detail regarding one compelling psychoanalytic proposition (that suicide attacks involve perverse or psychotic states of mind) in order to point to the complexity of the issues involved, and to underscore the need for us to be aware of the limitations of our knowledge base. One could do the same for any other potential contribution. It is as well to remember that psychoanalysis is at its best when its initial observations, as well as the thinking that follows, cover as broad a range as possible, so that we might illuminate, say, both civilisation and its discontents.

Finally, I would like to suggest a strand of thinking stimulated by the current situation. In one of its few explicit references to human diversity, the Qur’an states “O mankind! We have created you as male and female, and have made you into nations and tribes, that you may know one another” (49:13). Today we live in a global village, and the twin towers, conjoined on the ground but each reaching independently to the heavens, may have been a most potent symbol of humankind’s progress in sharing a basic humanity in a way that supports each to grow and develop in their own way. But this is a description of life in the metropolitan West, where progress towards cultural pluralism, though not without its glitches, has, on the whole, gone remarkably smoothly. Our cities today are increasingly multi-cultural and tolerant, and sometimes proud of it. Have we, the privileged few in global terms, achieved this by projecting the uncertainties and anxieties connected with ordinary human frailty into excluded groups around the world, whose lives then become less precious than ours? And might this contribute to our finding the reminder that there, but for the grace of God, go you or I, so brutally shocking and unbearable?


REFERENCES

Davids, M.F. (1992). The cutting edge of racism: an object relations view. Bulletin of the British Psychoanalytical Society. 28 (11) pp. 19-29.

The Runnymede Trust (1997). Islamophobia: A challenge for us all. London: The Runnymede Trust.

Steiner, J. (1987) The interplay between pathological organisations and the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions. International Journal of Psychoanalysis. 68. Pp. 69-80. Reprinted in E. Bott Spillius (Ed.) (1988) Melanie Klein Today. vol. 1, Mainly Theory. London: Routledge.

Young-Bruehl, E. (1996). The Anatomy of Prejudices. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
 

[1] Prejudice can take many forms, each involving distinctive dynamics (Young-Bruehl, 1996). Here I am referring to a form of prejudice against Muslims that has taken hold since 11 September, which I see as underpinned by the specific dynamics of racism in the mind. These involve the use of an existing difference for the purpose of massive projective identification, resulting in fixed phantasy relationships with members of that group (Davids, 1992). This state of mind functions like a pathological organisation (Steiner, 1987), but one with a consensual gloss of normality. It is unlikely that all forms of religious prejudice involve such a mindset.

[2] This ignores the fact that in every religion the interpretation of scripture is a complex scholarly discipline in its own right.