Violent States and Creative States (Volume 1) : Structural Violence and Creative Structures. 9781784509675, 1784509671, 9781785925641, 1785925644

Table of contents :
Violent States and Creative States – From the Global to the Individual. Volume 1: Structural Violence and Creative Structures. Edited by John Adlam, Tilman Kluttig and Bandy X. Lee
Contents
Acknowledgements
Prologue – Estela Welldon
Introduction – John Adlam, Tilman Kluttig and Bandy X. Lee
Part I – Introductorily and Theoretically
1. From Human Violence to Creativity: The Structural Nature of Violence and the Spiritual Nature of Its Remedy – John L. Young, Bandy X. Lee and Grace Lee
2. Injury and Insult: Reciprocal Violence and Reflexive Violence – John Adlam and Christopher Scanlon
3. The Story of Mr A: The Interplay between Individual Trauma and Global Politics – Tilman Kluttig
Part II – Violent States and State Violence
4. Baltimore Past and Present: The Violent State of Racial Segregation – Annie Stopford with Gardnel Carter
5. Psychosocial Implications of Political Trauma and Social Recognition I: A Lacanian Approach to State Violence in South America – Gina Donoso
6. Psychosocial Implications of Political Trauma and Social Recognition II: Experiences from the Truth Commission of Ecuador – Gina Donoso
7. State Violence and State Creativity: Caring for Women and Girls Who Were Raped during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda – Bandy X. Lee, Glorieuse Uwizeye and Thilo Kroll
8. Perpetrators of Socially Accepted Violence: States of Mind beyond Pathology and Deviancy – Efrat Even-tzur
Part III – Terror in the Public Sphere
9. Terror, Violence and the Public Sphere – David W. Jones
10. ‘1 in 5 Brit Muslims’ Sympathy for Jihadis’: What It Means to Be a Muslim Living in Britain Today – Ismail Karolia and Julian Manley
11. Flight 9525: Andreas Lubitz and the Psychology of the Lone Terrorist – Klaus Hoffmann
12. Terror in the Mind of the Terrorist – Barry Richards
From the Local to the Part IV – Creative Structures: Global
13. The City Project – Aileen Schloerb
14. Social Dreaming and Creativity in South Africa: Imag(in)ing the ‘Unthought Known’ – Hayley Berman and Julian Manley
15. The International Criminal Court and Global Justice – Matt Killingsworth
16. Finding Stories in a Form that can Be Acted: Creative States in Response to Climate Change Denial and Biosphere Destruction – Lucy Neal
List of Contributors
Index
Author Index

Citation preview

‘This well-edited, wide-ranging volume of contributions is not only brilliant in its depth of insight and scholarship, but also extremely useful in clinical work.’ – Earl Hopper, Ph.D., psychoanalyst, group analyst, and organisational consultant, Editor of New International Library of Group Analysis

This is a provocative collection exploring the different types of violence and how they relate to one another, examined through the integration of several disciplines, including forensic psychotherapy, psychiatry, sociology, psychosocial studies, and political science. By examining the ‘violent states’ of mind behind specific forms of violence and the social and societal contexts in which an individual act of human violence takes place, the collection reveals the dynamic forces and processes underpinning the phenomenology of violence. Volume 1: Structural Violence and Creative Structures covers structural and symbolic violence, with violent states and State violence, and with creative responses and creative states at the local and global levels.

John Adlam is Consultant Adult Forensic Psychotherapist at the Bethlem Royal Hospital, London and a founding member of the Association for Psychosocial Studies. Tilman Kluttig is a Senior Clinical Psychologist, Psychological Psychotherapist, and Forensic Psychotherapist in the Clinic for Forensic Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the Reichenau Centre for Psychiatry, University of Konstanz, Germany.

Jessica Kingsley Publishers

www.jkp.com Cover design: www.ironicitalics.com

Edited by John Adlam, Tilman Kluttig and Bandy X. Lee

Bandy X. Lee is Assistant Clinical Professor at Yale School of Medicine, co-founder of Yale University’s Violence and Health Group and project group leader for the World Health Organization Violence Prevention Alliance.

Violent States and Creative States Vol 1

‘A superbly informative and inspiring collection…this volume is a treasure trove for everybody in all the many fields of violence reduction.’ – Friedemann Pfäfflin, M.D., Emeritus Professor of Forensic Psychotherapy, Ulm University

Edited by John Adlam, Tilman Kluttig and Bandy X. Lee

Violent States and Creative States Volume 1: Structural Violence and Creative Structures Prologue by Estela Welldon

VIOLENT STATES AND CREATIVE STATES VOLUME 1

of related interest The Therapeutic Milieu Under Fire

Security and Insecurity in Forensic Mental Health

Edited by John Adlam, Anne Aiyegbusi, Pam Kleinot, Anna Motz and Christopher Scanlon ISBN 978 1 84905 258 0 eISBN 978 0 85700 534 2

Forensic Music Therapy

A Treatment for Men and Women in Secure Hospital Settings

Edited by Stella Compton Dickinson, Helen Odell-Miller and John Adlam ISBN 978 1 84905 252 8 eISBN 978 0 85700 539 7

Psychiatry in Prisons

A Comprehensive Handbook

Edited by Simon Wilson and Ian Cumming ISBN 978 1 84310 223 6 eISBN 978 0 85700 206 8

Forensic Psychotherapy

Crime, Psychodynamics and the Offender Patient

Christopher Cordess and Murray Cox ISBN 978 1 85302 240 1 eISBN 978 1 85302 634 8

VIOLENT STATES AND

CREATIVE STATES From the Global to the Individual

VOLUME 1

Structural Violence and Creative Structures

Edited by JOHN ADLAM, TILMAN KLUTTIG and BANDY X. LEE Prologue by Estela Welldon

Jessica Kingsley Publishers London and Philadelphia

Chapter 11 adapted by permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd. Lines of ‘Boy Breaking Glass’ in Chapter 13 reprinted by consent of Brooks Permissions. First published in 2018 by Jessica Kingsley Publishers 73 Collier Street London N1 9BE, UK and 400 Market Street, Suite 400 Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA www.jkp.com Copyright © Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2018 Prologue copyright © Estela Welldon 2018 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying, storing in any medium by electronic means or transmitting) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the law or under terms of a licence issued in the UK by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd. www.cla.co.uk or in overseas territories by the relevant reproduction rights organisation, for details see www.ifrro.org. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publisher. Warning: The doing of an unauthorised act in relation to a copyright work may result in both a civil claim for damages and criminal prosecution. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 78592 564 1 eISBN 978 1 78450 967 5 Printed and bound in the United States

Contents Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Prologue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 ESTELA WELLDON

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 JOHN ADLAM, TILMAN KLUTTIG AND BANDY X. LEE

Part I: Introductorily and Theoretically

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1. From Human Violence to Creativity: The Structural Nature of Violence and the Spiritual Nature of Its Remedy . . . . . . . . . . . 29 JOHN L. YOUNG, BANDY X. LEE AND GRACE LEE

2. Injury and Insult: Reciprocal Violence and Reflexive Violence . . . 45 JOHN ADLAM AND CHRISTOPHER SCANLON

3. The Story of Mr A: The Interplay between Individual Trauma and Global Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 TILMAN KLUTTIG

Part II: Violent States and State Violence

69

4. Baltimore Past and Present: The Violent State of Racial Segregation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 ANNIE STOPFORD WITH GARDNEL CARTER

5. Psychosocial Implications of Political Trauma and Social Recognition I: A Lacanian Approach to State Violence in South America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 GINA DONOSO

6. Psychosocial Implications of Political Trauma and Social Recognition II: Experiences from the Truth Commission of Ecuador . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 GINA DONOSO

7. State Violence and State Creativity: Caring for Women and Girls Who Were Raped during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 BANDY X. LEE, GLORIEUSE UWIZEYE AND THILO KROLL

8. Perpetrators of Socially Accepted Violence: States of Mind beyond Pathology and Deviancy . . . . . . . . . . . 131 EFRAT EVEN-TZUR

Part III: Terror in the Public Sphere

145

9. Terror, Violence and the Public Sphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 DAVID W. JONES

10. ‘1 in 5 Brit Muslims’ Sympathy for Jihadis’: What It Means to Be a Muslim Living in Britain Today . . . . . . . 161 ISMAIL KAROLIA AND JULIAN MANLEY

11. Flight 9525: Andreas Lubitz and the Psychology of the Lone Terrorist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 KLAUS HOFFMANN

12. Terror in the Mind of the Terrorist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 BARRY RICHARDS

Part IV: Creative Structures: From the Local to the Global

205

13. The City Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 AILEEN SCHLOERB

14. Social Dreaming and Creativity in South Africa: Imag(in)ing the ‘Unthought Known’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 HAYLEY BERMAN AND JULIAN MANLEY

15. The International Criminal Court and Global Justice . . . . . . . . . 237 MATT KILLINGSWORTH

16. Finding Stories in a Form that Can Be Acted: Creative States in Response to Climate Change Denial and Biosphere Destruction . . 251 LUCY NEAL

List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 Author Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277

Acknowledgements If we three co-editors have brought so complex and wide-reaching a project to fruition without becoming too lost in violent states of mind ourselves – and the reader must be the judge of this – then it is only because we have felt sufficiently rooted in our membership of multiple supportive and creative communities and structures and networks that have been both sustaining and energising. Many debts of gratitude and appreciation have therefore accumulated across the three years that we have been working together on these volumes – and only some can be named here. We have drawn inspiration and support from our connections within the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy (IAFP), and it was with some idea of capturing something of the spirit of communality, solidarity, curiosity, and openness of the IAFP annual conferences through the years that we came together to develop this project. We want to commemorate at this point our dear friends and colleagues from the IAFP, Dr Gill McGauley and Dr Alan Corbett, who both very sadly died in 2016 and are much missed. Both contributed greatly to the field of forensic psychotherapy and to our shared understanding of violence and creativity. This is not – or not only – a work about forensic psychotherapy, but many forensic psychotherapists have contributed their ideas, and we feel greatly honoured that two most eminent theorists and practitioners in the fields of behavioural and structural violence and violence prevention – Dr Estela Welldon and Dr James Gilligan – have so generously contributed first and last words, the Prologue found in Volume 1 and the Epilogue found in Volume 2, to this work. Among many other professional associations of which we are proud to have membership, particular mention may be made of the Association 7

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for Psychosocial Studies (APS), based largely in the UK, and the Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society (APCS), based largely in the US. Again, many contributors to the project are associated with one or both of these organisations, and thanks and appreciation go out additionally and particularly to Professors Michael O’Loughlin at Adelphi University, NY; Lynn Froggett at the University of Central Lancashire, UK; and Sasha Roseneil at the University of Essex, UK. These three have contributed so much in so many different ways to the creative atmosphere which has shaped this work into a psychosocial as well as a global project. The APS conference in Bristol in 2016 also provided opportunity for authors in Part III of Volume 1 to offer a work-in-progress symposium on ‘Terror in the public sphere’, and our thanks go to Adam Perchard, who presented a paper there but was not in the end able to publish it in this work. One or two other contributors also had to withdraw along the way, and our thanks are very much due to those authors for their hard work and their engagement with the project. Especial but necessarily anonymous respect goes out to one author, whose paper on a violent State came under threat from the increasing violence of that State, to the point that it was no longer safe to publish it. To those authors whose contributions are featured in this work, we are enormously indebted. We are very grateful to the team at Jessica Kingsley Publishers for all their support for this project. Our families bore the burden and brunt of the preparatory work without any fair forewarning as to what was in store: Uschi Maehne and Angela Signorastri were stoic and steadfast in their support. The work carries one dedication forward to the next generation and one in honour of the last: Nathan Adlam will grow to manhood in a more hopeful world, if the premises of this work gain a wider and a deeper currency; and Inmyung Lee’s legacy will keep giving through the medicine, music, and wellspring of love she planted in all those she touched, including here.

Prologue ESTELA WELLDON

This work that seeks to integrate our understanding of acts and states of violence and creativity comes at an opportune time; so often the connection between them is overlooked, and opportunity for greater insight is missed. Take revenge, for example, which, in its violence, demands creativity to be effective. We have seen in domestic abuse love turn quickly to violence, and hate; and if not hate, then an intense need to express an unarticulated anger in ways that will hurt the other person as deeply as possible. Such are the idiosyncrasies of human nature and the vicissitudes of human social organisation. I qualified as a medical doctor in my hometown of Mendoza in Argentina in 1962, having had the great good fortune of being in psychoanalysis with Professor Etchegoyen. By this time I had already had personal experiences of institutional violence when the university had attempted to relocate two cohorts of students to another town, against our will. This would have resulted in an enormous cost to people who were not in a position to afford it. To the amazement of everyone, we organised ourselves to strike. There were many political problems at the time. A sudden change of government had meant an immediate termination of employment of professors who were opposed to the prevailing political system. Here was my education: in a place where professors were not respected, and could be ejected from their chair to the streets with the stroke of a pen. In my first few months after qualifying as a doctor, I realised that the system was like ‘el martillo de las brujas’ (the hammer of witches), a savage and archaic system. Strangely enough, or perhaps not so strangely, tobacconists and other shops in the town contributed goods to sustain 9

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the strikers, assuming that if you were on the side of the students, you were in the right. At this time Argentina was about to go through what is known as the ‘dirty war’, and I strongly believe that had I not left, I would not be alive today. The ‘dirty war’ extended from 1979 until 1983, and during the conflict psychoanalysts were commonly targeted victims, and along with children would often disappear. No one dared to speak out without fear of persecution. I wondered at the time whether we were just witnesses of ever-increasing violence towards innocent adults and children. The violence was hidden to such a degree that sometimes it was unidentifiable – neither to whom nor to where. But it was also pervasive. Not even a month after completing my studies, I applied and was accepted into training at the Menninger Institute in Topeka, Kansas. Little did I know that I was leaving what I thought was a savage country – Argentina, wild and unsophisticated – and arriving in another country with its own, unexpected prejudices. There were things in Argentina that I’d taken completely for granted and I found myself encountering novel problems in the mid-west of America. There were some extremely positive aspects such as free higher education. Had this not been the case, qualifying as a doctor would have been impossible for me. And I never encountered sexism amongst the 30 men and 30 women at our very young medical school. My being single at 26 years of age was, however, met with incredulity and much suspicion. I was also shocked that it was unacceptable not to have a religion, and occasionally I would find notes in my letterbox from religious groups apparently seeking to save me. These factors had already denoted me as ‘alien’ in that particular society. What I found most shocking was the absence of civil rights. We – those with black skin and those with white skin – were not allowed to share a social space. So when I decided to host a Wednesday meeting in my own flat I was challenged by my landlord, who had until then been extremely proud to have a student of the prestigious medical school as a tenant. He suggested that I receive my guests through the back yard. For my own integrity, I had to leave. On 22 November 1963 we were confronted by the terrible news that President John F. Kennedy had been shot dead. The reaction was surprising – some of the students were pleased – at last someone had done something courageous. For a couple of us coming from South

Prologue

America, our first assumption was that it was a conspiracy involving several people. Dr Karl Menninger had other, far more perspicuous insights in talking about Lee Harvey Oswald: Thwarted in repeated efforts to have someone pay attention to his puffed up insignificance, this nonentity had concealed himself in a warehouse whence he could overlook thousands of his despised fellow citizens. Far below him they were singing hosannas to their radiant, beloved young leader… The little man in the warehouse was no longer anonymous. (Menninger 1967, p.333)

As a show of respect for the death of President Kennedy, another South American colleague and I went to the local film theatre to ask them to stop playing the weekly movie – to our companions’ indignation. However, the following day, Saturday, Dr Karl in his seminar stated that he was proud of the courage of his students, not being aware of our incompatible opinions. I have always admired Dr Karl, especially in terms of his insights into the mind of the criminal. He was a master of forensic psychotherapy, even before it existed, and I owe him a great deal. I moved to London in 1964, when it felt like the whole world was wanting to make love, rather than war. Nonetheless, my experience in the mid-west was crucial to being able to understand violence that was not creative: the kind that kills your soul, cultivates prejudices, and closes doors in the face of anyone who doesn’t appear to be the same. Before the American presidential elections of 2016, remembering my time in the mid-west in Topeka, I was certain I would be able to predict the outcome. I felt that many of those people might have felt humiliated, in the Obama years that followed centuries of prejudice, and the retaliation they could seize upon was to vote for the most prejudicial candidate of them all, the one who promised to put America first, again. And now the whole world is enraged, ignited into factions with different and opposing doctrinal belief systems. It is fascinating to notice one particular factor that make us immediately recognisable as coming from another culture, another world: a factor which is easily recognised but does not pertain to the domains of gender or religion or skin colour. I am thinking of our different accents when we speak. Actually, as much as I felt shocked by some other differences already mentioned, the different accents of an alien culture in 1962 in the US were not particularly an obstacle, since foreigners are taken for

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granted; indeed, everyone is a foreigner in a sense. And it was even easier at the Menninger School of Psychiatry because the majority of students in my class were from abroad. But England, where I arrived in 1964, was another matter altogether. We all know what England was like: an old country with a rich system of traditions. Even a Scotsman came to London as a foreigner. No allowances were made for accents; eyebrows were constantly raised. In the early 1960s a foreign doctor was supposed to be someone from the Commonwealth, generously ‘allowed’ – indeed ‘privileged’ – to do his postgraduate studies in London before going home to practise in his own ‘underprivileged’ country. This, however, was not the case with me. So to say that everyone was shocked, when I compounded this impression of bewildering other-ness by taking my first post at Henderson Hospital in Sutton, is to put it mildly. Henderson Hospital, whose ethos I know has had a significant influence upon some of the contributors to this work, was the first therapeutic community in England, founded by Maxwell Jones in the late 1940s as a treatment centre for ‘shell-shocked’ soldiers returning from World War Two (as we would now understand it, a treatment centre for post-traumatic syndromes). Residents (still called patients in my time there) of the community were referred from all parts of the UK, including Scotland. Thus, people spoke with many different accents and in an alarming range of dialects. This was lucky for me. My accent and origin did not exactly pass unnoticed, but the shock wore off fairly quickly. Mine was not the only voice that sounded odd to the normal English ear. So I was an alien psychiatrist working in a small community run on very democratic principles with people coming from many different regions with many different modes of speech and all sharing one fundamental presenting problem: a behavioural pattern marked by acting out and very little verbal communication. In other words, these people were used to communicating by means of violent gestures such as breaking windows, throwing chairs, and at the more sophisticated level by swearing at each other. I was immersed in a world in which such basic skills as talking to each other had to be learned. The vocabulary of the residents of the Henderson community was precarious, and their use of adjectives was very limited – vulgarisms being the most popular. Language itself, one might suggest, was in a violent state. Here, my own education in English verbal skills began.

Prologue

On the one hand, I was reconfirmed in my belief that all violent behaviour, regardless of nationality, is quite similar and has its origins in similar states of mind. On the other hand, I had the possibility of sharing with the residents their initiation into verbal communication with the advantage of a milieu of many different accents. The interesting thing was that the residents did not seem to resent my poor command of English. In a way, it was rather helpful for me. I was too ignorant to experience much pain when ferocious verbal attacks were made on me. I could not experience the hurt of being humiliated, since I was just beginning to grasp the meaning of the words and did not yet understand the emotional content behind them. The result was that the patients were delighted that I did not respond in a shocked way or hurt them back, and I was thus able to ‘survive’ their destructive impulses towards me. After this initial training, I progressed to a different group of patients, not only coming from different geographical regions but also from different social classes. My work as consultant psychiatrist at the Portman Clinic dealt exclusively with patients who had a tendency to engage in acts of delinquency and criminality or who suffered from sexual deviations. In general, they belonged to a low social class and came from deprived family backgrounds. My private practice was in contrast concerned with middle and upper-class patients, mostly engaged in creative professions and suffering from blocks or inhibitions. They usually belonged to safe and secure family backgrounds and were both articulate and sophisticated. The different reactions of patients confronted with a foreign psychiatrist who was supposed to be their ‘treater’, to have empathy with them, to understand them, were both instant and obvious. The delinquent patients – as they entered the consulting room feeling rather insecure, displaying either humility or affected hippie arrogance – reacted to my accent with a gesture of ‘feeling at home’. It was as if I was ‘one of them’, an underdog, part of the underprivileged minority group as opposed to being one of them, the establishment, the ruling class, those who could charge, punish, patronise, and so forth. The reaction of my private patients, especially the British ones, then and now, is somewhat different. They come perhaps after a long period of mental torture as to whether or not they really need help. This attitude arises from the old British tradition according to which everybody is supposed to ‘pull themselves together’, all psychological problems

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being nonsense. ‘You should know how to deal with it yourself, my dear. After all, we have given you such a good education. Never talk to strangers about intimate problems. In fact, intimate problems do not exist. They might with the lower classes, but not with us.’ In other words, they have been taught a sense of embarrassment about emotional problems, which is a very British concept, a concept almost untranslatable into any other language. In this sense, American and British people present a widely differing attitude about asking for professional help for emotional problems. Whereas Americans tend to take for granted talking to a psychiatrist about their emotional problems, the British feel reluctant to admit the need for help. The British, therefore, feel evident relief when initially confronted with a psychiatrist who, like me, has a marked accent. They feel freer and more at ease. They feel I am not there to look down on them, or recriminate, or accuse them of being self-indulgent. I am alien to their culture or background and therefore freer to understand them and not to assume any rights or wrongs about their lives. Thus, I feel it is rather fortunate to have a so-very-foreign accent when working in the UK, for people can initially deposit much more trust in a psychiatrist so favoured. Among my British colleagues, a sense of bewilderment prevails. Is this mostly to do with my being a woman or because I am a foreigner? In contrast to the US, I shall always be considered a foreigner in England in spite of my British passport and English surname, probably because of my accent. At social gatherings, I am still introduced as a psychiatrist from Argentina, a description which is considered exotic, charming, attractive, and unexpected. There are many secondary gains to my rather marked and peculiar accent, so it is no wonder that I am still clinging to it. It gives me easier access to patients’ sense of trust; it gives me easier access to social situations. Finally, I become classless – perhaps the greatest privilege of all if you live in England. When I was applying, some years ago, to be consultant psychiatrist in a National Health Service clinic, I had many competitors who were both British and male. Apart from the usual questions connected with my profession, the selection board asked me about the possible difficulties I might have as a foreign psychiatrist dealing with British patients. My answers dealt with the advantages along the lines I have explained. I did not mention the handicaps. Since I got the appointment, my answers must have made sense to the appointments board.

Prologue

It is wonderful that the editors and authors of this work are seeking to metabolise these vengeful emotions into creativity, to explore that fine line between a violent state of mind (or group, or society) and a creative one. Indeed, a very high and noble ambition. Perhaps in trying to understand social injustice, intimate injustice, domestic violence, and violence of all sorts, we may be able to achieve an understanding which could lead us to heightened creativity and fewer acts of violence. The three co-editors are also joined together in their acknowledged sense of having drawn inspiration from the annual conferences of the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy (an organisation of which I have the honour to be the founder): a shared discourse in which the violent state of mind of the offender patient and the violent state of the society he attacks – both the behavioural and the structural and symbolic aspects of violence – are creatively addressed from multiple perspectives. It is obvious that a lack of understanding of a crime leads us to punish it. Donald Winnicott (1984) taught us that the antisocial tendency is inherently linked with deprivation and that criminal actions and offences always imply a sense of hope: in some sense, we might add, they are the product of creative as well as violent states of mind. He was able to understand that so many acts of violence are committed by those who feel ignored, and forgotten, and that recognising this might help us understand the full force of the trauma, not even of loss but of a complete absence and denial of any recognition as a human being. As I have noted elsewhere (Welldon 2011) I have often observed rescue fantasies and wishes for reparation in people who embark on this sort of work. It is then that I ask myself, ‘Have they all experienced some kind of emotional trauma which consciously or unconsciously they feel the need to metabolise?’ How many of those of us who feel driven into these professions have experienced not only severe traumatic losses, but also a great sense of helplessness and impotence in dealing with family disturbances, which have created a desire for reparation? I mean by this a need to achieve an internal sense of justice for whatever was felt as an inflicted pain, from the inside or outside, over which we had no control. In the field of forensic psychotherapy, where awareness of unconscious processes is crucial, we must be humble enough to acknowledge the importance of external factors and not just internal ones. At times we felt, just as our patients do almost all the time, too wounded to adjust to a ‘normative’ development or too angry to compromise and to settle down into what would have been considered a safer or more amenable

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profession. I have also wondered whether these ‘safer’ professions would have left us frustrated and irritated; we might have found them ‘futile’ and ‘trivial’. It may be our need to feel on the edge that makes it possible for us to believe that our lives are worthwhile. This might sound like a rather contentious assertion, but discussing this personal subject with friends, colleagues, and students has given me some evidence that this is a shared truth. It is also quite probable that we, as opposed to our patients, may have had some early ‘good enough’ experiences to ‘allow’ us to make such a choice from within. So we organise ourselves to work in an environment considered by most to be risky and in which we can be exposed to sudden violent outbursts. Are our patients able to sense our own vulnerabilities and propensities for violence? At times, we are fortunate enough to make use of our own violent impulses in a creative way, and that is how we can communicate with our patients. In contrast, forensic patients are driven by a lack of choices because of traumas that have been too numerous or too brutal, coupled with recurrent adverse circumstances, unmanageable emotional deprivation and neglect, and too little care. They feel ‘pushed’ into a life of revenge and hate, to create a sense of justice for themselves. In so doing, selfdestructiveness is at the forefront of their identity, perpetuating the lack of care and more precisely the lack of love that was present early in their lives. This obvious feature is frequently overlooked, misunderstood, and even ignored, not only by those around them but also by themselves. Trauma and violence are often associated with negative qualities thought to be destructive, but I believe there are also positive elements in both of them. Traumas can generate an enormous amount of creative energy, which could have remained forever underground if unchallenged. Also, learning how we can survive trauma and violence facilitates opportunities for psychological growth at times of adversity. Outbursts of violence could also be seen as attempts to break new ground, opening up new possibilities. So both trauma and violence have the potential for destructiveness, but equally for emotional growth. The experience of self-recovery achieved in dealing successfully with helplessness and life threats may trigger a sense of mastery, the capacity to establish safety and containment. Our lives are enriched through the integration of traumas – when we have effectively survived serious threats to our identity and have come out whole and not in fragments, as previously feared.

Prologue

I warmly commend this work for the rich and comprehensive understanding that is offered here of the violent states of mind and society that, together, form the context for violent acts that are often very difficult to understand – and for the creative interplay between violent and creative states that is woven through the work. I strongly encourage anybody working and creating in any of the many fields of violence prevention that are represented here to read this work with the care and attention it deserves.

REFERENCES Menninger, K. (1967) ‘The injustice of justice: Who is to blame?’ Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic 31, 325–333. Welldon, E. (2011) Playing with Dynamite. London: Karnac. Winnicott, D.W. (1984) Deprivation and Delinquency. London: Tavistock.

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INTRODUCTION JOHN ADLAM, TILMAN KLUTTIG AND BANDY X. LEE

They hang the man and flog the woman That steals the goose from off the common But let the greater villain loose That steals the common from the goose Seventeenth-century nursery rhyme

It is about time that humanity reach a comprehensive and crossdisciplinary understanding of a problem that has existed since the dawn of history. We are living through exciting times, wherein violence studies have seen rapid advances over the last few decades. It is also none too soon, as humankind has become the first species to threaten its own extinction through violence. This work aims to span the spectrum of contemporary research and thought on the part of scholars and practitioners in the field of violence prevention and peace promotion, while exploring the full spectrum of human possibility, from violence to creativity. This project came about as the world reeled from the mass graves of Shia Iraqi Army cadets that Islamic State militants had slaughtered at Tikrit; the mass murder of foreign tourists on Sousse beach in Tunisia; and the massacre of Kenyan students at Garissa University. Meanwhile, those fleeing war and terror in the Middle East and in Africa were finding both violent and creative responses greeting them at border zones in this new era of refugee crises and thousands drowned in the Mediterranean sea before the ambivalent hospitality of European holding centres could be tested. The European Union’s ‘austerity economics’ drove Greece 19

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to the edge of revolution, while the ‘1%’ whose figureheads convene yearly in Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum, increased their wealth by margins exceeding the gross domestic product (GDP) of many nations; politics in the high democracies of the West entered into a dominion-through-propaganda era, as lies and ‘fake news’ played critical roles in the UK’s Brexit referendum and the US’s election of Donald Trump, in a manner all too common in non-democracies. The Grenfell tower block in West London became a charred memorial to the unknown victims of structural violence, while Texas, Louisiana, Florida, California, Oregon, and Washington States languished from climate change-related calamities just as the US pulled federal funding that would have mitigated the devastating effects. In parallel and all too relatedly, Washington and Pyongyang are posturing across the world at each other, as the North Korean regime test-detonates nuclear devices while the Republican-dominated US government escalates the situation with equivalent bellicosity. Seventeen per cent of the Amazon rainforest has been lost since 1970, and the global mean surface temperature is up by 0.6 degrees Celsius during the same period; Bangladesh now lies one-third underwater and is considered only the first of many more countries to come. We have entered upon the Anthropocene Age, where the violent state of late-industrial humankind has become a geological marker as devastating as the great glaciers of the Ice Age and has ushered in the Sixth Great Extinction of our fellow animal dwellers upon this planet. Violence, ‘useful’ or ‘useless’, is there before our eyes: it snakes either through sporadic and private episodes, or government lawlessness… It  only awaits its new buffoon (there is no dearth of candidates) to organise it, legalise it, declare it necessary and mandatory and so con­ taminate the world. Few countries can be considered immune to a future tide of violence generated by intolerance, lust for power, economic difficulties, religious or political fanaticism, and racialist attritions. (Levi 1986/1989, p.167)

Primo Levi, reflecting on his famous dictum from The Drowned and the Saved, warned that the violence of the Holocaust could happen again, since it had happened before. At that time of writing, the Hutu genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda was still eight years in the future, and the massacre of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica another year further on. And which ‘buffoons’ did he have in mind? Not yet Trump and Pence in the

Introduction

US, nor Johnson and Farage in the UK; nor Le Pen in France, Orban in Hungary, Duda in Poland, and Erdogan in Turkey; nor Kim of North Korea – every era has them, but only when the population becomes weak and vulnerable under structural violence do they rise to power. Take these other lines, from another European critic and writer on the Holocaust and its aftermath: We are back in a politics of torture and of hostages. Public and private violence laps at the foundations of the city, mining, making an acid mark, as does the brown water in Venice. Our threshold of apprehension has been formidably lowered… Today, it is difficult to conjecture a bestiality, a lunacy of oppression or sudden devastation, which would not be credible, which would not soon be located in the order of facts. (Steiner 1971, p.57)

Almost half a century onward from George Steiner’s analysis of the crisis of Western ‘post-culture’, public and private violence continues – and while we may celebrate the decrease of one type of violence (homicides), we often fail to notice the rising importance of other types of violence (suicides, structural violence, non-State warfare, gang violence, and environmental violence). Given this situation, we cannot purport to understand even one form of violence without understanding all the others and how they relate to one another. Violence often appears to come ‘out of the blue’, but human violence is not random. This work begins with the observation that even individual or behavioural violence occurs within an ecology that encompasses not just immediate family and community but society as a whole. We find it important to examine the concept of violent states of mind in all its complexity – without compromising depth – as well as the social and societal context in which these ‘violent states’ occur – without overly narrowing focus. We hope to show that, just as an individual can be in a violent state of mind, societal structures can take on ‘violent states’ – not only in the political construct of the ‘rogue state’, but in the sense that anti-Semitism or Islamophobia or misogyny or neo-liberalism might be understood as ‘violent states’ that effect harm to the body politic (and also give rise to individual violence). These societal structures of violence urgently demand not only analysis but active challenging, lest, in Albert Camus’ warning words, the ‘unhappy intellect’ of the human race pursue negation and destruction by choosing ‘the dark victory which annihi­ lates earth and heaven’ (Camus 1951/1971, p.15).

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Exemplary of our stopping short of a full examination of limitations is the almost exclusive focus on the causes and risk factors for violence, without considering the opposite states that may not only alleviate but allow for a different unfolding altogether of individual and societal evolution. In this work, we formulate these as creative states and argue for their central importance – in their psychological contributions, their importance in human evolution and meaning-seeking, and their potential as the most powerful antidotes to violence. Immersion in the creative arts, for example, far from being impractical and irrelevant in the running of daily affairs, can become a foundation for the capacity for social consciousness and ethical governance. By corollary with our formulation of how violent states relate to violent States, we also examine what might be the nature of a creative State or an expression of State creativity. Therefore, we intend that this work should address several needs: (a) the need for interdisciplinary sharing in the approach of the subject of violence; (b) the need to address the social and societal contexts of individual violence; (c) the need to understand societal structures themselves as capable of violence or creativity; (d) the need to integrate the knowledge base that we have, from the individual to the international level; and (e) the need to understand the nature and the possibilities for societal healing through the fostering of our creative potential. The structure of this project consists of two volumes, in each of which the focus zooms in upon the intrapsychic, individual, and interpersonal domains and zooms out onto the communal, the societal, and the global – and back again. Volume 1 – ‘Structural Violence and Creative Structures’ – is mostly concerned with structural or objective and symbolic violence: with violent states and State violence and with creative responses and creative states at the local and global levels. Volume 2 – ‘Human Violence and Creative Humanity’ – is mostly concerned with  violent states of mind and with behavioural or subjective, interpersonal violence (including self-injury) and the fine distinctions between violent and creative states of mind. Throughout the work, we invite the reader to position herself in the liminal spaces between two pairs of concepts: in the interplay between violent states of mind and violent States of society; and across the subtle distinctions that might delineate the difference between a violent state of mind and a creative state of mind, or between a violent State and a creative one.

Introduction

The two volumes are symmetrically structured: each consists of 16 chapters arranged into four parts. Each volume begins with an introductory part in which theoretical and conceptual issues are set out for the respective volumes: accounts of structural violence and the interplay with behavioural violence of different kinds in Volume 1 and developmental and clinical narratives around interpersonal violence in Volume 2. The second part in each volume deals with violent States, whether at a local, national, or regional level, or with violent states of mind in the individual or group; the third part deals with terror in the public sphere or, in Volume 2, in the private, interpersonal domain; and the fourth part in each volume sets out creative states and creative approaches, responses, and practices, locally, societally, and globally. To anticipate one obvious criticism that may be laid at our door: even with 32 chapters, this work is too short. We have not found room to dedicate chapters explicitly to: the Holocaust; the genocide against the Native Americans, north and south of the equator; the ianfu of the Japanese Imperial Army in World War Two or the rape and genocide of the Yazidi by Islamic State; the Armenian massacres or the violent State of Yugoslavia; slavery; the fratricidal State of the Ottoman Sultans and the Imperial Harem; the violent States of the Crusades; the Cathar heresy and its suppression; the House of Saud and the perversion of the holy sites of Islam; gang and cartel wars in the prisons of Brazil and the towns of northern Mexico; the Civil Wars of America, Spain, Cambodia, or Nigeria; the violent State of Northern Ireland and the violent state of the Maze hunger strikers; the gulags of Siberia and the forced labour prisoner-of-war camps of the Burmese railways; homophobic and transphobic hate crimes; Jimmy Savile, the Magdalen Laundries, and Establishment cover-ups; the global weapons trade and military– industrial complexes, cigarettes, junk food, and the depredations of Big Pharma; environmental toxins, illnesses, and Big Oil; regicide and Terror in the French Revolution; the Medici and the Borgias, and violence and creativity in Renaissance Italy; the Arab Spring; Greenpeace and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament; Nietzsche and Sartre, Byron and Rimbaud, Celan and Heidegger, Shelley and de Sade; and Titian, Goya, Giacometti, and Banksy. There are many more chapters we would like to have included, but our intent is not to be encyclopaedic – rather, it is to illustrate, through examples spanning a wide range, that societal and inter-state phenomena

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and intrapsychic dynamics are profoundly interlinked, even though they are currently treated as separate and distinct areas of study. Larger, structural events and decisions play out in culture and society so as to shape the individual, whereas individual psychology and developmental makeup have important implications for communal, societal, and State conduct. We have three overarching objects in mind. The first is violence reduction – the study of violence is necessarily an activist project. The better we understand the theme we are studying, the more effectively we will be able to reduce it. Our second objective is a related one: we are committed to establishing communities of learning – and to this end we have brought together a diverse group of contributors working in a wide range of fields in different capacities. We have invited both renowned and emerging voices that would contribute uniquely sensitive perspectives from their respective fields. Academic and clinical experts rub shoulders here with activists and survivors to bridge the gap between theory and practice, and to complete the circle of violence: by juxtaposing the testimonies of victims of torture and rape alongside the testimonies of murderers and sadists. We intermix field research, clinical case studies, conceptual pieces, and the testimonies of both victims and perpetrators of violence and we bring together sociology, philosophy, psychoanalytical theory, forensic psychotherapy, ethnography, historiography, international law, hermeneutics, psychology, feminist studies, phenomenology, the history of art and literature, and emergent fields of psychosocial studies so as to encourage conversation and recognition of one another’s relevance in helping to understand violence. Thirdly and lastly, we hope that this comprehensive exchange can help shed light on human creativity: how a destructive death impulse arises from the healthy, creative life impulse, how the two are related, and how to alter human destructiveness into or through creativity. As Levi adds: ‘It is therefore necessary to sharpen our senses… [F]rom violence only violence is born’ (1986, pp.167–8). Creative responses to human violence are not optional, and not one discipline or paradigm has all the answers. However, working together, a collective transformation might be possible. Psychotherapies of multiple hues, for both perpetrators and victims of violence, are obvious examples of solutions, as are inter-state diplomacy and cooperation, but we are looking for creative interlinks and interchanges that can do far more.

Introduction

We hope nothing less than to plant some seeds of new possibilities that might help create a new kind of future for humankind.

REFERENCES Camus, A. (1971) The Rebel. London: Penguin. (Original work published in 1951.) Levi, P. (1989) The Drowned and the Saved. London: Abacus. (Original work published in 1986.) Steiner, G. (1971) In Bluebeard’s Castle: Some Notes Towards the Re-definition of Culture. London: Faber and Faber.

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PART I

INTRODUCTORILY AND THEORETICALLY Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion all the interim is Like a phantasma or a hideous dream… The Genius and the mortal instruments Are then in Council, and the state of man Like to a little kingdom suffers then The nature of an insurrection. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar: Act 2, Scene 1

…we see force in its grossest and most summary form – the form that kills. How much more varied in its processes, how much more surprising in its effects is the other force, the force that does not kill, i.e., that does not kill just yet. It will surely kill, it will possibly kill, or perhaps it merely hangs, poised and ready, over the head of the creature it can kill, at any moment, which is to say at every moment. In whatever aspect, its effect is the same: it turns a man into a stone. From its first property (the ability to turn a human being into a thing by the simple method of killing him) flows another, quite prodigious too in its own way, the ability to turn a human being into a thing while it is still alive. Simone Weil, from ‘The Iliad, or the Poem of Force’ (1939)

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Chapter 1

FROM HUMAN VIOLENCE TO CREATIVITY The Structural Nature of Violence and the Spiritual Nature of Its Remedy JOHN L. YOUNG, BANDY X. LEE AND GRACE LEE

[N]o one can judge a criminal, until he recognizes that he is just such a criminal. Father Zossima, in Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (1880)

Violence is vast and varied, but there are commonalities that we can identify. For one, all forms of violence point to essential questions of human existence: Why do humans commit violence? When it runs counter to practical ends – even survival – what purpose does it serve? What drives human beings to mutual destruction, even to potential annihilation of all their kind? What does violence tell us about what we hold most dear? In this chapter, we discuss the definition of violence, how all forms relate to the most lethal form of violence – structural violence – the notion of human creativity as an antidote to violence, and possible answers to the above questions. We will then return to the meaning of Father Zossima’s words to show how we are all interconnected and thus are responsible for all.

A DEFINITION OF VIOLENCE Even though human history has been mired in violence, for the longest time, it has been considered inevitable, something that some people 29

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inevitably do, and it has been considered that the best way to deal with it is to punish those who commit it after the fact so that they will be less likely to do it in the future. Over the last few decades, however, a radical change has been underway: humankind has begun shifting from seeing human violence as an individual, criminal justice and security issue to which we can only respond, to a preventable health problem that we can solve through systematic study. Public health and preventive medicine spearheaded this movement, beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, mostly within the USA, which had murder rates that were multi-fold those of other industrialized nations. The World Health Organization (WHO) then applied this health approach globally, which has transformed the way we view violence. Before these developments, the study of violence had long suffered from a lack of uniform definition, which hampered its proper measurement and characterization. What little early research evidence there was on violence was fragmented and chaotic because of a narrow definition or its absence. A definition of violence therefore needs to be clear but also flexible so that it can hold up over time and across space. A common mistake we make, for example, is to assume the ‘decline’ in one form means a general decline, when expression has merely shifted from one type of violence to another (for example, from international wars to low-intensity civil conflict, or from overt homicides to suicides and other insidious forms). Another mistake that is easy to make is to assume that no relation exists between different types of violence or to leave out large areas because of the different labels we give them, when different types can clearly rise and fall together (for example, suicides and homicides, or homicides and collective violence). A definition that correctly recognizes the phenomenon at the same time as adapts to growing bodies of research is thus crucial for shaping our own consciousness about the subject. Much confusion about violence thus ended when the WHO outlined a definition in its landmark World Report on Violence and Health (Krug et al. 2002). It has helped vastly to unify our concept of violence as: the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation. (p.5)

The definition is notable for encompassing different manifestations as well as drawing out a common essence. Most notably, it includes power

From Human Violence to Creativity

and not just physical force, which has widened the scope as never before; we now know that other important types of violence that may be hidden from view can be far more destructive, such as structural violence, manifesting in deprivation or unequal sharing of power. There are other ways in which it is innovative. For example, the definition emphasizes the intention to use force or power, emphasizing process over actual commission of an act. Violence may be threatened or actual, shifting the focus from the incidental act to the underlying psychology. Finally, including psychological harm, maldevelopment, and deprivation has highlighted that some of the worst forms of abuse may not be physical (Hildyard and Wolfe 2002). Whether violence is direct or indirect came to matter less, and paved the way for an ecological perspective (Bronfenbrenner 1979) of violence. As a result, we now know that sociocultural influences play a large role in individual behaviour, capable of creating epidemics of individual violence (Lee, Wexler and Gilligan 2014). Furthermore, by placing the different types of violence – selfdirected, interpersonal, and collective violence – under the same rubric, the Report welcomed efforts to understand them not just separately but in totality. Consequently, we have dramatically expanded our understanding of the causes, manifestations, and prevention of violence.

DEFINING STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE In viewing violence from a broader perspective, one type of violence that emerges as particularly important is structural violence. Although its effects are hidden and go mostly unrecognized by many people, its scope, impact, and implications in terms of causing other forms of violence make it one of the most important forms of violence (Lee, 2016). Structural violence refers to the avoidable limitations that societies place on groups of people, which prevent them from achieving the quality of life that would otherwise be possible. These limitations, which can be political, economic, religious, cultural, or legal in nature, usually originate in institutions that exercise power over particular groups. And because these limitations are embedded within social structures, it is not uncommon for people to overlook them completely, viewing them as nothing more than ordinary problems that they encounter in the course of day-to-day living. This kind of violence is manifest wherever people desperately need education, healthcare, political power, or legal

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assistance, but are unable to access them readily due to restrictions in the existing social order. Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung, in his groundbreaking essay for the Journal of Peace Research (Galtung 1969), defined structural violence as the deliberate impairment of fundamental human needs by actors of power. According to Galtung, violence occurs whenever social and/or economic forces influence human beings in such a way that their actual physical and mental realizations are below their potential. In other words, violence is the cause of difference between the potential and the actual, regardless of the presence of any identifiable actor. Galtung (1985) commented that by moving away from the actor-oriented perspective of most Western social sciences, he could focus on situations where individuals can do enormous harm to other human beings without ever intending to, merely by performing their regular duties as defined by the prevailing social, political, and economic structures. According to this paradigm, much structural violence can easily be avoided if people are made aware of the limitations that their social structures impose on them (Beyer 2008). Liberation theologians of the 1950s and 1960s in the Catholic Church in Latin America further elaborated this idea (Gutiérrez 1973), and more recently, American anthropologist Paul Farmer (2003) developed the concept of structures as a pattern of collective social actions within institutional practices, laws, economic policies, and other habitual elements such as collective thoughts and beliefs, and material manifestations of roads, server systems, hospitals, and schools. Given that the exertion of structural violence is systematic – that is to say, indirectly applied, as opposed to intentional and directly applied – by all members of a given social order, no one is at fault, while at the same time everyone who is part of that order is at fault. Unlike the more visible and obvious forms of violence, where a person or group of persons perpetrates physical harm on another person or group, structural violence occurs through institutions or structures in the form of economically, politically, or culturally driven processes which work in such a way as to limit its victims from achieving a full quality of life (Gupta 2012). For example, persons who die from acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) or any other preventable disease in a state where advanced medical care is present but unavailable to them could be considered to be victims of structural violence (Ho 2007).

From Human Violence to Creativity

It is appropriate to classify this as violence because the death or injury is preventable. It only occurs as a result of disparities in the distribution of healthcare among different social groups or regions. And the violence is structural because its harm is a product of the particular organization and structural mechanisms associated with that milieu. One of the most obvious ways in which structural violence affects people, in fact, is in the illness effects caused by disparities in healthcare. Over the past 50 years, the maternal mortality rate of black women in the USA has been four times higher than that of white women (Tucker et al. 2007), while in 2007 the infant mortality rate for non-Hispanic black women was 2.4 times higher than that of non-Hispanic white women (Mathews and MacDorman 2011). Worldwide, preventable diseases such as diarrhoea and pneumonia kill approximately two million children worldwide every year, simply because they are too poor to afford effective treatment (United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) 2012), while as of 2013, nearly 22 million children under the age of one had not received proper vaccinations against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (UNICEF and WHO 2014). In 2010, almost 300,000 childbirth-related deaths occurred globally, most in low- and middle-income countries, and most of them avoidable (WHO, UNICEF, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and The World Bank 2012). Structural violence can encompass any power system wherein social structures or institutions affect people in any way that results in maldevelopment or deprivation. This kind of social occurrence is a result of human decisions and actions, not natural events or phenomena, and they are correctable and preventable through human intervention. For these reasons, there is an increasing advocacy that we view them as acts of violence rather than mere social injustices or oppression (Winter and Leighton 2001). An important aspect of our definition of structural violence is that it is often subtle, invisible, and accepted as part of everyday life. Because it is not blatant and immediately obvious, it is often difficult to assign culpability and point to the perpetrators of this kind of violence, as the actors are often impossible to identify, hidden as they are behind the anonymous structures of institutions or organizations. From the victim’s (or observer’s) point of view, however, structural violence has effects similar to behavioural violence, including death (Morgan et al. 2014). Structural violence is by far the most lethal form of violence in many modern societies, as well as the most potent and

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immediate cause of many other forms of violence (Butchart and Engström 2002). The manner in which the social and economic structure of our society is divided into rich and poor, powerful and weak, or superior and inferior can result in disparity in terms of death and disability. Studies have shown that between 10 and 20 million incidents per year can be attributed to structural violence (Høivik 1977), more than ten times the rates of those from suicide, homicide, and warfare combined. In light of these appalling numbers, it becomes obvious why a failure to address the occurrence of structural violence is akin to letting the big fish loose while retaining ‘small fry’. From a holistic and ecological perspective, all forms of violence originate from a continuum of bio-psycho-social-environmental causes (Lee 2015). This means that no violence is individual and without an active agency. This makes structural violence an equally collective responsibility as is any other type of violence. That is to say that the societal structures, norms, and forms that any given society decides upon when organizing the distribution of the collective income and wealth that that society produces are responsible for whatever form of structural violence that may exist. Indian economist Amartya Sen (1982) won the Nobel Prize in part for demonstrating that the mass deaths occurring during famines are not the direct result of a shortage of food, but rather the result of a shortage of purchasing power on the part of the poor, who cannot afford to buy food that is actually available in their countries. Similarly, the millions of deaths resulting from the AIDS epidemic in low-income countries (particularly those in sub-Saharan Africa) are the result of poverty rather than actual natural causes – individuals in these countries are simply not able to afford the medical services that are saving millions of lives of fellow sufferers in high-income countries. The social effects of unequal control over the distribution of resources become much more severe if people with low income also have low levels of education, health, and power. This is typically the case, since these factors are often linked in contemporary societies. In order to account for all of these areas of harm, we must adopt a broader definition of violence that does not limit our analysis to a certain number of forms.

From Human Violence to Creativity

STRUCTURAL SOLUTIONS American psychiatrist and violence expert James Gilligan (1996) has drawn a relationship between structural violence (in which he includes the division between superiority and inferiority, by whatever means) and the shame, discrimination, and denigration that result from a lower status. Therefore, any intervention that decreases structural inequalities will reduce the psychological factors that generate a cascade of family violence, gender violence, racial violence, terrorism, and hate crimes. A study sponsored by the World Bank (Fajnzylber, Lederman and Loayza 2002) demonstrates that, in 39 nations around the world, homicide rates increased with inequality. Martikainen and Valkonen (1996) demon­ strated that unemployment, another measure of inequality, brings greater mortality. And these figures are valid even among more developed European nations. With statistics drawn from 26 European nations between 1970 and 2007, it has been proven (Stuckler et al. 2009) that every 1 per cent increase in unemployment led to a 0.79 per cent rise in suicides, as well as a 0.79 per cent rise in homicides. Another cross-sectional study of 165 countries showed that economic development, inequality, and poverty are significant predictors of homicide, although there are many variations in homicide for developing countries (Ouimet 2012). Inequality also allows for the abuse of power, which can manifest as police violence, state violence, genocides, massacres, and war. Power can also be used to garner more power, as in the case of corporations, which have now grown so large that they surpass the gross national products (GNP) of many nations and have wide sway over laws that are supposed to regulate them. As a result of these patterns, the earnings of a minority grow exponentially through an economy of exclusion and inequality, while the gap separating this prosperity from the majority grows apace. Structural violence is therefore more than mere exploitation or oppression: it is a systematic and entrenched way for the powerful to feed upon the powerless. Furthermore, we can draw the conclusion that cumulative historical forces and processes work together to constrain individual agency inversely – if not always neatly – with the ability to resist marginalization and oppression, while denying those individuals the benefits of social progress. Reducing this kind of violence certainly helps bring down other forms of violence that are a natural consequence, but in doing so does far more: it produces more peaceful, generative, and prosperous individuals, families, communities, and societies.

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With an understanding of the insidious nature of structural violence, and implications for how the process of violence begins, we must therefore develop a new definition of peace that includes a deeper meaning than mere appeasement or pacification. American political scientist Quincy Wright (1942) rejected a simplistic, negative definition of peace as the mere absence of war in favour of a more complex, positive definition that views peace as international justice and a spirit of co-operation. Galtung expanded this idea of positive peace to include the integration of human society (1964) and an egalitarian distribution of power and resources (1968). These modified definitions of peace should lead us eventually to a parallel distinction between violence and non-violence, wherein nonviolence indicates a state that is more than just an absence of violence (Gregg 1936). What does positive peace, then, look like? To address this query it would be well to consult the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Here we find that the key to development and peace is in creating a more inclusive society where ‘no one will be left behind’ (United Nations 2015, p.3). The answer should also find its roots in such universal attributes as spirituality, resilience, and creativity. The increasing professional attention now being directed towards these qualities is encouraging.

HUMAN SPIRITUALITY, RESILIENCE, AND CREATIVITY Spiritual aspects will not be the first to come to mind when we speak about violence. Nevertheless, as a complex human phenomenon, it is almost impossible to answer even the most basic questions about human violence without recognizing that symbolism and meaning are at its very heart. For instance: Why do humans commit violence? What is its function? Why do human beings mutually destroy each other as in warfare? What is the driving force toward nuclear warfare despite the threat it poses to everyone’s survival? What values produce a suicide bomber? Why is the killing of another person sometimes not enough, that one must also mutilate? Even when the action serves an ‘instrumental’ predatory purpose, what is the reason for this purpose that is often self-defeating, if not defeating to the system of which one is part? Why do massacres hold such poignancy? Why are human beings

From Human Violence to Creativity

far more likely to take their own lives than they are to kill others? An answer will be ever elusive for these basic questions without considering what violence symbolizes. Far from being random acts, human violence organizes around a principle that points to the most unique and basic quality in human nature: as German philosopher Ernst Cassirer (1944) put it, human beings are ‘symbolic animals’. When the explanation that humans beings are ‘rational animals’ fails – an explanation that has been dominant in Western thought since the time of Aristotle – an alternative logical basis becomes necessary. Its basis comes from seeing all humans as highly symbolic beings, for whom the seemingly most irrational act finds its method in meaning-making (Frankl 1962). Violence is an area where the centrality of meaning in human life becomes most pronounced. It may be tempting to believe that violent individuals simply act violently at random, or purely to discharge energies. After all, from a practical perspective, violence is often excessive, superfluous, and, in most cases, self-destructive. However, individuals who act in extreme ways, taking drastic measures to put themselves at risk, indicate to us to what length human beings would go for their search – and we have said that this search is for meaning. Every cognitive concept has an emotional counterpart. Whence, then, comes this sought-for meaning, which is often meaning in the self, in one’s identity, or in one’s place in the world of other human beings? A German author has stated a basic truth very simply: Eine Blume kann nicht blühen ohne Sonnenschein, und ein Mensch kann nicht leben ohne Liebe [A flower cannot bloom without sunshine, and a human cannot live without love]. (Müller 1871, p.15)

Gilligan (1996) has also articulated that love is as essential to the soul as oxygen is to the body. We learn from violence, therefore, that the central requirement for healthy emotional development and the survival of the soul is love. Love gives rise to life and health, which in turn gives rise to empathy and a capacity to love. Love animates the spiritual drive for a larger life, to care for more than just oneself, and to belong to something greater. Meanwhile, an absence of love results in contraction and a groping toward death, sometimes literally, of the self or of others. Love from the family can mitigate some lack of love from society or community, but it cannot replace it, and vice versa; one needs nurturance and acceptance at all levels of the ecology (Gorman-Smith, Henry and Tolan 2004).

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When one is deprived of love, one does not become neutral to it. One develops a psychological defence system that makes the dearth of love more endurable, but then this psychology makes one reject it in other settings. As Maslow noted, human beings become ‘perpetually wanting animals’ by thwarting actual or imminent basic needs, which leads to psychopathy (Maslow 1943). Human dependency on love is a fact of life; yet those who are violent will be the first to sneer at the very idea of it (violent offenders often state that care and affection are for ‘sissies’ and ‘wusses’ – i.e. weaklings with whom one is too strong to share rank). Resilient individuals, on the other hand, are capable of coping with negative thoughts or emotions, rather than denying them, and working through difficult experiences to develop flexibility and coping strategies (Werner and Smith 1992). This ability comes from perceiving oneself as having choices and exercising them creatively to take part in shaping one’s reality. An individual can develop this process throughout one’s life span (Rutter 2008), to fulfil an important human potential. While this capacity is dormant in everyone, and perhaps the most unique characteristic of human beings (described as ‘free will’ in religion and law, or as ‘leaps of imagination’ in art and science), the degree to which it can be accessed may depend on the environment. Violence, therefore, ironically reveals the importance of life. If creative, procreative, and life-generating energy were on the one side of the spectrum of possibilities, then the impulse of destruction, desecration, and death-generation are on the other. Why and how, then, does violence happen? In a positive sense, violence testifies to a force that permeates the creation of something new: in the world of art and ideas, the creation of a new paradigm, a new perspective, a new image, or a new approach violates the old form, authority, and rules that preceded it (see Chapter 13, Volume 1). Responding to the intensity of the creative urge, innovative individuals are intrinsically ‘violent’ to the extent that they exercise their power to impose their thoughts or visions on others (McDougall 1999). However, this ‘violence’ is of a different nature than the kind that destroys, on the battlefield or in the inner city: that kind of violence does not generate something new but is injurious and traumatic. It (Heftigkeit) is a precious vehicle for validating one’s own existence (Freud 1920). Why this similarity? We know that the complexity of the mind can sometimes make it paradoxical. Critically in need of life force and not finding it, or not believing that one can attain it, the person may turn to

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symbolism instead. Scorning or destroying the very thing one needs is a symbolic act that one performs to impress upon oneself and others that the need is not real. Or exaggerating what is too painful to admit that one lacks, for example, leads to brute force, in the form of violence, where life force is lacking. But of course the destination of a death drive is very different from that of a life drive, and the exaggeration does not thwart the fact that true force is low. Understanding this principle can allow for interventions that address the core problem, rather than collude with the child or adult who claims that he or she prefers destruction and desertion. More so than teaching ‘social skills’, which are strategies for managing behaviour, approaches that recognize behavioural manifestations as forms of unconscious, symbolic communication are showing efficacy (O’Loughlin and Johnson 2010; Rogers 2006). Programmes that emphasize acknowledgement and engagement, often initially in the face of participants’ resistance or acting out, get to the core of the need: affirmation and demonstration of meaning for the individual (Gilligan and Lee 2004).

HUMAN CARING Recognizing that structures invisibly pervade our society and personal lives, and how everyone is intertwined with everyone else through collective decisions, the words of the wise elder of The Brothers Karamazov become more compelling: ‘And that we are all responsible to all for all’ (Dostoevsky 1880/1912, p.335). Just as labelling violence as an individual problem can no longer hold with what we now know, growing evidence forces us to look at the larger social and economic structures that give rise to violence, locally and throughout the globe. We can attempt to punish or to treat every individual, in an uphill battle after one has already become violent, or we can address the larger, social, and economic structures that give rise to epidemics of violence. Ensuring just distribution of resources, including healthcare, education, and other social supports, has therefore become an essential part of preventing the excess deaths and disabilities that violence causes. Caring well is at the heart of preventing violence, be it in mental health (Masten and Shaffer 2006; Young 2006), in criminal justice (Lee and Gilligan 2005), or even in international security as the UN has now declared. We can draw on diverse spiritual traditions to learn about justice and, subsequently, caring well. The Hebrew word for ‘justice’

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(tzedek), for example, is also the root of ‘charity’ (tzedakah), making these two Judaic notions inseparable. A principal teaching of Buddha is that ‘Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love’ – implying that caring well through love interrupts the injustices that indifference or hatred can engender. Christianity interprets the most fundamental rule to be to ‘Love your neighbour as you love yourself ’, which – despite its misuses – is the foundation for democracy, equality, and tolerance of differences. Hinduism teaches that loving all leads to perceiving all living beings as a part of oneself, and allows for a model of respecting religious and cultural diversity while simultaneously holding a vision of spiritual oneness. Islam, with a heightened sense of justice, urges one to ‘Spend of the good things that you have earned…and do not even think of spending [in alms] worthless things that you yourselves would be reluctant to accept.’ Certainly, ethical cultures outside of religion have contributed to promoting compassion and caring for our fellow human beings as well, and have often been more effective. In all of them, we can find the common human principle of caring. In conclusion, any comprehensive theory for violence prevention would be incomplete without taking into account the wider ecology we all share. We can shape and contribute to the structures of this ecology in ways that either promote justice and peace or that worsen our overall condition. What seems to benefit some of us ultimately affects us all. The concept of caring well in this context includes caring for all, and it is none too soon. Our capacity for violence has now reached unacceptable levels. Ours is the first species on earth to threaten its own extinction – either instantaneously through thermonuclear war or insidiously through the irreversible destruction of our habitat. If we are not too concerned about this fact, then that unconcern itself should be a cause for concern. Not treating others well, dividing ourselves into ‘us and them’, and allowing for lethal injustices and inequalities to continue merely drives us closer to collective suicide. Just as our greatest problems are human-created, we must look to ourselves for their solutions: our human creativity, ingenuity, and imagination. In the presence of sufficient love, one sees meaning in oneself and in others, and for complex humans this becomes as important as is the emotional experience of love. While meaning is highly personal and can take almost any form, heightened psychological health is experienced cognitively as meaning, self-worth, and social legitimacy.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT We gratefully acknowledge the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy (IAFP) for providing a forum for conceiving ways to counter violence creatively (and hence this work).

REFERENCES Beyer, C. (2008) Violent Globalisms: Conflict in Response to Empire. Aldershot: Ashgate. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979) The Ecology of Human Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Butchart, A. and Engström, K. (2002) ‘Sex- and age-specific relations between economic development, economic inequality, and homicide rates in people aged 0–24 years: A cross-sectional analysis.’ Bulletin of the World Health Organization 80, 10, 797– 805. Cassirer, E. (1944) An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press. Dostoevsky, F. (1912) The Brothers Karamazov (Constance Garnett translation). New York: Lowell Press. (Original work published in 1880.) Fajnzylber, P., Lederman, D. and Loayza, N. (2002) ‘Inequality and violent crime.’ Journal of Law and Economics 45, 1, 1–40. Farmer, P. (2003) Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor. Berkeley: University of California Press. Frankl, V.E. (1962) Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy. New York: Simon and Schuster. Freud, S. (1920) Beyond the Pleasure Principle. London: International Psycho-Analytical Press. Galtung, J. (1964) ‘A structural theory of aggression.’ Journal of Peace Research 1, 2, 95–119. Galtung, J. (1968) ‘A structural theory of integration.’ Journal of Peace Research 5, 4, 375–395. Galtung, J. (1969) ‘Violence, peace, and peace research.’ Journal of Peace Research 6, 3, 167–191. Galtung, J. (1985) ‘Twenty-five years of peace research: Ten challenges and some responses.’ Journal of Peace Research 22, 2, 141–158. Gilligan, J. (1996) Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic. New York: Vintage Books. Gilligan, J. and Lee, B.X. (2004) ‘Beyond the prison paradigm: From provoking violence to preventing it by creating “anti-prisons” (residential colleges and therapeutic communities).’ Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1036, 300–324. Gorman-Smith, D., Henry, D.B. and Tolan, P.H. (2004) ‘Exposure to community violence and violence perpetration: The protective effects of family functioning.’ Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology 33, 3, 439–449. Gregg, R.B. (1936) The Power of Non-violence. London: Routledge. Gupta, A. (2012) Red Tape: Bureaucracy, Structural Violence, and Poverty in India. Durham: Duke University Press.

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Gutiérrez, G. (1973) A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Hildyard, K.L. and Wolfe, D.A. (2002) ‘Child neglect: Developmental issues and outcomes.’ Child Abuse and Neglect 26, 6–7, 679–695. Ho, K. (2007) ‘Structural violence as a human rights violation.’ Essex Human Rights Review 4, 2, 1–17. Høivik, T. (1977) ‘The demography of structural violence.’ Journal of Peace Research 14, 1, 59–73. Krug, E.G., Dahlberg, L.L., Mercy, J.A., Zwi, A.B. and Lozano, R. (2002) World Report on Violence and Health. Geneva: World Health Organization. Accessed on 27 September 2017, at http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/42495/1/9241545615_eng.pdf Lee, B.X. (2015) ‘Causes and cures I: Toward a new definition.’ Aggression and Violent Behavior 25, 6, 199–203. Lee, B.X. (2016) Causes and cures VII: Structural violence.’ Aggression and Violent Behavior 29, 3, 109–114. Lee, B.X. and Gilligan, J. (2005) ‘The Resolve to Stop the Violence project: Transforming an in-house culture of violence through a jail-based programme.’ Journal of Public Health 27, 2, 149–155. Lee, B.X., Wexler, B.E. and Gilligan, J. (2014) ‘Political correlates of violent death rates in the U.S. 1900–2010: Longitudinal and cross-sectional analyses.’ Aggression and Violent Behavior 19, 6, 721–728. Martikainen, P.T. and Valkonen, T. (1996) ‘Excess mortality of unemployed men and women during a period of rapidly increasing unemployment.’ Lancet 348, 9032, 909–912. Maslow, A.H. (1943) ‘A theory of human motivation.’ Psychological Review 50, 4, 370–396. Masten, A.S. and Shaffer A. (2006) ‘How Families Matter in Child Development: Reflections from Research on Risk and Resilience.’ In A. Clarke-Stewart and J. Dunn (eds) Families Count: Effects on Child and Adolescent Development. New York: Cambridge University Press. Mathews, T.J. and MacDorman, M.F. (2011) ‘Infant mortality statistics from the 2007 period linked birth/infant death data set.’ National Vital Statistics Reports 59, 6, 1–30. McDougall, J. (1999) ‘Violence and creativity.’ Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review 22, 207–217. Morgan, B., Sunar, D., Carter, C.S., Leckman, J.F. et al. (2014) ‘Genes, Brains, Safety, and Justice.’ In J.F. Leckman, C. Panter-Brick and R. Salah (eds) Pathways to Peace: The Transformative Power of Children and Families. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Müller, M. (1871) Deutsche Liebe: Aus den Papieren eines Fremdlings. Leipzig: Brockhaus. O’Loughlin, M. and Johnson, R. (2010) Imagining Children Otherwise: Theoretical and Critical Perspectives on Childhood Subjectivity. New York: Peter Lang. Ouimet, M. (2012) ‘A world of homicides: The effect of economic development, income inequality, and excess infant mortality on the homicide rate for 165 countries in 2010.’ Homicide Studies 16, 3, 238–258. Rogers, A.G. (2006) The Unsayable: The Hidden Language of Trauma. New York: Random House.

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Rutter, M. (2008) ‘Developing Concepts in Developmental Psychopathology.’ In J.J. Hudziak (ed.) Developmental Psychopathology and Wellness: Genetic and Environmental Influences. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing. Sen, A. (1982) Choice, Welfare, and Measurement. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Stuckler, D., Basu, S., Suhrcke, M., Coutts, A. and McKee, M. (2009) ‘The public health effect of economic crises and alternative policy responses in Europe: An empirical analysis.’ Lancet 374, 9686, 315–323. Tucker, M.J., Berg, C.J., Callaghan, W.M. and Hsia, J. (2007) ‘The Black–White disparity in pregnancy-related mortality from 5 conditions: Differences in prevalence and case-fatality rates.’ American Journal of Public Health 97, 2, 247–251. United Nations (2015) Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. New York: United Nations. Accessed on 27 September 2017, at www. un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/70/L.1&Lang=E United Nations Children’s Fund (2012) Pneumonia and Diarrhoea: Tackling the Deadliest Diseases for the World’s Poorest Children. New York: United Nations Children’s Fund. Accessed on 27 September 2017, at www.unicef.org/eapro/ Pneumonia_and_Diarrhoea_Report_2012.pdf United Nations Children’s Fund and World Health Organization (2014) Immunization Summary: A Statistical Reference Containing Data through 2013. New York: UNICEF. Accessed on 27 January 2016, at http://data.unicef.org/resources/immunizationsummary-a-statistical-reference-containing-data-through-2013.html Werner, E. and Smith, R.S. (1992) Overcoming the Odds: High Risk Children from Birth to Adulthood. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Winter, D.D.N. and Leighton, D.C. (2001) ‘Structural Violence.’ In D.J. Christie, R.V. Wagner and D.D.N. Winter (eds) Peace, Conflict, and Violence. New York: Prentice Hall. World Health Organization, United Nations Children’s Fund, United Nations Population Fund and The World Bank (2012) Trends in Maternal Mortality: 1990 to 2010 WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA and The World Bank Estimates. Geneva: World Health Organization. Accessed on 27 September 2017, at http://apps.who.int/iris/ bitstream/10665/44874/1/9789241503631_eng.pdf Wright, Q. (1942) A Study of War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Young, J.L. (2006) ‘Commentary: It’s about the fundamentals.’ Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law 34, 4, 479–481.

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Chapter 2

INJURY AND INSULT Reciprocal Violence and Reflexive Violence1 JOHN ADLAM AND CHRISTOPHER SCANLON

FORCE AND PRACTICES OF SELF-HARMING To define force – it is that x that turns anybody who is subjected to it into a thing. Simone Weil, from ‘The Iliad, or the Poem of Force’ (1939/2007, p.378)

Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Matthew 7:5, King James Bible

Attacks upon one’s own body and attacks upon others’ bodies are both experienced as forms of violent and offensive behaviour, as ‘crimes against the body’ (Motz 2008) – although the degree of offensiveness may be different in the eyes of different observers. We allocate to differ­ ent parts of the system of care the responsibility to deal with these different offences. If the individual, who, in his distress, cuts open his arm with a blade, were instead to cut open the arm of another, a different type of ‘treatment’ would be visited upon his ‘offending behaviour’ and a different category of security of accommodation would be provided 1

This chapter revisits the themes of our paper ‘Reflexive violence’, published in 2013 in Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. We are most grateful to Lynn Layton and Peter Redman for their support and encouragement in relation to that previous project. 45

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(Adshead 2002). Similarly, sufferers who starve themselves will be treated very differently depending on the sympathy and understanding that they are able to mobilise, the nature and location of their hunger (or lack of it), and whether or not their inevitable protestations represent a ‘threat’ to those of us who believe that we can more easily feed ourselves without feeling conflicted. There is therefore a gestalt configuration in which the figure of the injured individual is set against the ground that is the societal violence of ‘force’ (in Weil’s particular use of the term) and domination in which his practices are embedded. Our attention is drawn to the figure or the ground – or it can sometimes float between figure and ground – but we are also parties to the transaction and our vision necessarily is affected. In fact, whether it’s a mote or a beam in their respective eyes, neither party can see clearly, and the more intense the retaliation to the perceived offence, the more likely it is (to borrow the aphorism misattributed to Gandhi) that an eye for an eye will leave everybody blind. In this chapter we offer a psychosocial formulation to conceptualise and contextualise the reciprocally violent relationship between violent states of mind, the violent self-harming practices of individuals and social out-groups, and the greater societal violence of the in-group that is the State and its representatives. Our focus here is less on single acts of violence than on the primary, but under-discussed, clinical phenomenon of recurring acts of self-harming. We offer the term ‘practice’ in order to evoke the disciplined and serious need to repeat certain actions in order to overcome perceived insufficiency and inadequacy, towards a hoped-for greater mastery over the situation. Practices of self-harming, like the practices of the gymnasium, or the practice of chess, may require both a highly disciplined self-denial (askesis) and a determination to overcome, to triumph. However, the problem both for sufferer and for the institutional/societal response is the force of habit and pattern – of reflex – inherent in the practice. Like the repeated exercise of sport, chess, and other games, such practices succeed for a while, but the constant effort involved in maintaining these successes eventually begins to be insufficient: all players are eventually defeated or give up, and defeat is always snatched from the jaws of victory. Practices that are developed and organised around or dedicated to the harming of the self can, from time to time and to varying extents, become culturally accepted modes of expression (Turp 2002). One extreme

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example illustrative of this phenomenon is the relentless overwork in Japanese culture that can lead to ‘sudden occupational death’ or karōshi (in South Korea it is called gwarosa). The most obvious and widespread examples would be the pursuit of ecstatic or devotional practices of self-harming in religious observances, from penance, fasting, and selfdenial to flagellation. Practices of self-decoration or body modification by piercing or tattooing exist at an uneasy intersection between violence and play (see e.g. Lemma 2010); performances of suspension using hooks inserted into the skin are an example of a practice that developed in a religious subculture (the Mandan Native American tribe in the Dakota region) and is now being adapted for (ostensible) purposes of secular spectacle and entertainment. Another example of self-harming practice is offered by certain acts of politically motivated protest, such as the self-immolation of the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc in 1963, or that of Mohamed Bouazizi in 2010, which sparked the ‘jasmine revolution’ in Tunisia; or of the 16-year hunger strike of Irom Sharmila following the Malom massacre in which ten people were reportedly killed by a government-run paramilitary group in the troubled north-eastern Indian state of Manipur. Elsewhere we have contrasted societal responses to the respective hunger strikes of Bobby Sands and Ian Brady (Scanlon and Adlam 2013a). The death of Simone Weil offers an example of spiritually inspired practices of selfdenial interacting with a political commitment – she died of complications related to tuberculosis, having imposed upon herself a minimal calorific intake in solidarity with the inhabitants of occupied France in World War Two. In this, Weil and Sharmila can be located within a genealogy and aesthetic practice going back to the (anti-)heroine of Sophocles’ Antigone (see Chapter 6, Volume 2). These protests may all be understood in terms of a violent state of mind stirred up in response to State violence: protests that were often met with violent social and institutional responses. We also note, but set aside as beyond the scope of this particular chapter, the possibility that suicidal attacks in the present wave of jihadist Islamist terrorism might be understood in terms of practices of reflexive violence emerging out of the historical and continuing reciprocal violence as between the ‘Western’ and ‘Middle Eastern’ worlds (see e.g. Chapter 9, Volume 1). Returning to the ‘clinical’ domain, practices of self-harming generally present particularly difficult challenges to systems of care. Responses are

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generally characterised by the drive to objectify the self-harming subject, to ‘turn her into a thing’, as Weil would have said; to construct her as ‘other’ and to condemn her for ‘wilfully’ (insultingly?) taking up the antisocial position. In the UK at least, it appears that no matter how many position papers are published on behalf of the medical/psychiatric establishment, practitioners both medical and non-medical have continuously to battle with retaliatory urges. The terms ‘parasuicidal’ and ‘deliberate self-harm’, for example, persist in usage in clinical notes and reports, despite explicit guidance to the contrary from the Royal College of Psychiatrists (see e.g. RCPsych 2014). The following words from Lord Alderdyce, then Chair of the Working Group that reported on issues around self-harming and suicide (RCPsych 2010), amplify this tension even as they seek to mitigate it: [T]he needs, care, wellbeing and individual human dilemma of the person who harms him or herself should be at the heart of what clinicians do. We must never forget, however, that we are not just dealing with social phenomena but with people who are often at, and beyond, the limit of what they can emotionally endure. Their aggressive acts towards themselves can be difficult to understand and frustrating to address but this is precisely why psychiatrists need to be involved to bring clarity to the differing causes for the self-destructive ways in which people act and to assist in managing the problems for the people concerned including family, friends and professional carers, who sometimes find themselves at the end of their tether in the face of such puzzling and destructive behaviour. (2010, p.1, italics added)

✳✳✳ This chapter builds upon our two previous papers on these themes. In the first (Scanlon and Adlam 2009), we construed self-harming (including self-neglecting) as a psychosocial phenomenon, indicative of a group or social dis-ease. We critically reviewed the literature concerning what we described as the ‘mythology’ of ‘deliberate selfharm’ and the pathologising and stigmatising interplay between ideas around ‘deliberate self-harm’ and constructs of ‘disordered personality’. We argued that the compound term ‘deliberate self-harm’ is conceptually incoherent and that the violent attribution of conscious, calculated intent

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into the sufferer primarily evidenced a violent state of mind within the societal in-group that perpetrated this attribution. In our second contribution (Scanlon and Adlam 2013a) we developed our account of the reciprocal violence that obtains between in-groups and out-groups and we proposed the term reflexive violence to convey the sense of a violent and impulsive action unconsciously and reflexively turned back upon the embodied self. We used the hyphenated term (‘self-harm’) to emphasise how reflexive violence might be directed both at the sufferer’s own ‘embodied-multiple-selves’ and at the internalised selves of historical and contemporary others. Here we develop our accounts of reflexive and reciprocal violence using the linking theme of injury and insult. We suggest that these twinned concepts might serve as a bridge between individual acts of behavioural violence (Gilligan 1996) or subjective violence (Žižek 2008) and processes of domination, subjugation, and colonisation mobilised by ‘jurispathic’ in-groups: that is to say, by a State which rules by ‘displacing, suppressing or exterminating values that run counter to its own’ (Cover 1983, p.40; Lawrence and Karim 2007, p.292).

INJURY AND INSULT [T]he ego can kill itself only if…it can treat itself as an object – if it is able to direct against itself the hostility which relates to an object and which represents the ego’s original reaction to objects in the external world. (Sigmund Freud, from Mourning and Melancholia (1917/1957))

Practices of violence, including self-harming, can helpfully be understood as emerging from violated states of mind and body (Welldon 1996; Adshead 1997; Herman 1997; Motz 2008; Lemma 2010). The individual, understood in these terms, is most often in a violent state of mind in the ‘here-and-now’ because this state of mind has been violently pushed into him through traumatogenic (often trans-generationally transmitted) ‘there-and-then’ experiences of exclusion, violation, and neglect in his own familial, communal, cultural, and ethnic biographies. Self-harming practices can thus be understood as reflexive attempts on the part of the individual to overcome the extent of his subjugation to these culturally transmitted social forces, and to protect himself from these internalised threats to his own mind, as well as to defend against accompanying

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violent impulses that might otherwise result in his attacking the bodies of these traumatising others, or the organisational and social bodies that represent them. In the here-and-now, insult is piled on injury by the aggressive and violent, actively and passively expressed attitudes of a societal in-group that insists that people who engage in such practices do so deliberately, in order to ‘seek attention’ or to thwart and annoy us. This formulation is then deployed as a self-evident rationale for why such annoyances should be excluded, exiled from the mainstream. Like the lepers in Foucault’s account of the origins of psychiatry (1961/2001), these socially constructed out-groups are metaphorically to be quarantined, in sight of, and yet outwith, the city walls. For example, when survivors of childhood sexual abuse, who are understood to be ‘deliberately’ harming themselves, are told that they should make a ‘lifestyle choice’ to desist from such practices, a childhood experience of being subjugated, violated, humiliated, and overwhelmed is re-created. Insult is added to injury when, rather than understanding the self-harm as a sequel to what happens when ‘the child’s love, a love that is necessary for its existence, is exploited and a passionate attachment abused’ (Butler 1997, pp.7–8), these similarly authoritarian and violent voices are heard to suggest that the abuse itself might at some level have been ‘chosen’, or passively consented to, for want of the necessary will power or the strength of mind to resist. Injury is likewise violently salted with insult when distressed sufferers present to systems of care with their wounds, burnt flesh or their selfpoisoned bodies – often reluctantly or dread-fully – only to be told that it is their lifestyle choice that then restricts any help that may be made available. This response dismisses the reality that the reflexive nature of the self-harming practice has taken on a repetitive quality located in the rapidly entrenched nature of habit and pattern, and it ignores the addictive biochemistry of violence, by which repetitions of the reflex are reinforced by the release of opioids and endorphins stimulated by physical pain or tension (see e.g. Adshead 1997). Notwithstanding these repeatedly (reflexively?) forgotten realities, there is a consistent dynamic in which the sovereign power of an abusing and neglectful, paternalistic ‘establishment’ must be maintained and perpetuated by these attributions of antisocial intent into the sufferer who has thus failed in his duty to ‘know his place’ (Scanlon and Adlam 2013b) by being ‘seen and not heard’.

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Subjective accounts from service users frequently (although not uniformly) report a sense of relief in the reflexively violent act. However, both the frequency of the acts and the escalating levels of distress associated with them suggest that the sense of relief provided by the temporary housing of this pain in the dis-membered body is short lived: the unbearable shamefulness and grief returns and so must be attacked all over again – often with ever greater vigour. The heart and mind that wants to scream in pain (as does, we might imagine, the subject of Munch’s famous painting) is silenced and replaced by the mortified physicality of the dis-membered, bleeding, burnt, and poisoned body. The presentation of this silently screaming broken body is then misrecognised: rather than being understood as an attachment behaviour, instinctively or reflexively seeking care (see e.g. Adshead 1998; Sarker and Adshead 2006; Motz 2010), the response to the sufferer is instead reduced to a de-humanising encounter with a dis-spirited and psychosocially dismembered body hated and feared for its ‘attention-seeking’; at worst, space and potential for more active and vicious types of interpersonal violence described above is opened up. Freud’s famous formulation, that in the aetiology of melancholia ‘the shadow of the object fell upon the ego’ (1917/1957, p.258), allows us to understand how, at the behavioural level, both the desire for and the hatred of the violently abusive/intrusive or abandoning/neglectful other become entwined in an aggression that turns in upon itself – a reflexive violence – and that this process is neither rational nor conscious. In the context of the Freudian theory of melancholia, it would clearly be a contradiction in terms to suggest to sufferers that it is their lost and longed-for, unconsciously internalised object that they have been attempting deliberately or intentionally to assault or neglect. ✳✳✳ The ethic of reciprocity – the ‘Golden Rule’ of reciprocal respect as the model for all human relationships – generates consensus across almost all major religions and philosophical systems. Perhaps this is the universally accepted ideal precisely because the talion principle of reciprocal violence – the polar opposite – is the universal norm. The dynamics of reciprocal violence constitute a group or social dis-ease: a violent state indicative of what Foulkes (1948, p.127) described as the ‘interpersonal location

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of disturbance’ or what Bion (1961) might have called a disturbance of ‘groupishness’. Our focus is on the violent dance acted out between an inadvertently(?) self-defeatingly excluding, societal ‘in-group’ and an apparently self-destructively refusing, antisocial ‘out-group’. The term ‘reflexive violence’ denotes the turning back upon the self of the violent impulse, of both injury and insult – the identification, conscious or unconscious, with the use and with the user of force. In this analysis, practices of self-harming evidence the operation of force upon subjects that have become objectified; the invisible ink of the domination of discourses revealing itself, in a certain light, upon the tormented skin and flesh of the subjugated.

THE DOMINATION OF THE LORD AND THE INSURRECTION OF THE BONDSMAN Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance. Melville, from Bartleby the Scrivener (1853/2010, p.23)

Although practices of self-harming are often covert and hidden from view, they are ‘written on the body’ nonetheless (Adshead 2010). They constitute a form of public protest that may also be understood to be both an attack on the body’s own violated, sovereign state and a treacherous attack against the state of affairs, and so the ‘Affairs of State’: the violent states and the violent States that have brought it about. Foucault (1975/1991) charted the development of criminal law in relation to the concept that an attack upon the body of a subject of the King was a treacherous and seditious injury and insult to the body of the Sovereign himself. This principle at the heart of the Law constituted practices of domination by authorising formally decreed retaliatory assaults, by way of vengeance as well as deterrence, upon the body of the offender. If we map the Foucauldian analysis onto the familial dynamics of child sexual abuse, we can see how Sovereign power (droit de seigneur?) authorises the abuse and how the Law then is perverted to justify the transgression, to uphold the silence around it, to punish attempts to protest and, not least, often by means of sadistic grooming practices, to attribute the intent to the victim: as exemplified by recent independent inquiries such as the Ryan Commission in Ireland and the present

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seemingly ill-fated Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in England and Wales. Reflexive violence writes the otherwise suppressed protest against subjugation and objectification upon the body and refutes the violent attribution through an unconscious mimesis and parody of it. Sometimes it is not only domination but also insurrection that is written in secret languages. In an earlier paper we referred to Hegel (1807) in order to explore what happens when the contemporary ‘bondsman’ who harms himself is seen to break the terms of a societal lordship and colonial control over his body, and a taboo against any assault on it, by manifesting an embodied mind of his own. Hegel charted the dynamics of the relationship between lordship and bondage, describing slavery as an intermediate step between an encounter that is a fight to the death – a violent state of nature – and the fulfilment of Spirit in mutual recognition. He explored how the ‘bondsman’ may free himself from the dominion of his ‘lord’, only to enslave himself within the strictures of an ‘unhappy consciousness’. Hegel conceptualised the bondsman as having no self-hood outside the lord’s disavowed appropriation of his labour and his body. This is a violent state of complicit self-deception. As Butler (1997) elaborates, ‘the imperative to the bondsman consists in the following formulation: you be my body for me, but do not let me know that the body you are is my body’ (p.35, italics added). The injured may know that they are injured but the insulter must not know what insult he has perpetrated. Butler’s formulation may also offer a way of understanding the reciprocally violent relationship between Antigone and Creon in Sophocles’ ancient text (Sophocles 1947). Creon’s wrath is generated not only by the insult and injury – the offence – that Antigone commits by ministering to the corpse of her brother Polynices. He is also inflamed by the awareness, with which he is then confronted, of the depth of the domination he has claimed over his kin by his methods of statecraft; of the excess he has pursued, by the imposition of the ‘rule for all’ that Polynices’ corpse must be left for the beasts and birds to scavenge. Antigone’s reflexive violence – her suicide inside her sepulchre – makes concrete and manifest her disregard for the tyrant’s claim to authority over her practices for honouring the dead. In Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener, the Master in Chancery who employs Bartleby to clerk for him deploys a less obviously tyrannical but just as unconscious ‘rule for all’ in his Wall Street offices. When he asks

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Bartleby to read through his copy and Bartleby first declares ‘I would prefer not to’ (p.17), the Master is dumbfounded. As the encounter unfolds and deepens in complexity, the Master finds that his ordinary recourse – to dismiss his employee (to discharge his patient?) for non-compliance – is mysteriously unavailable to him. Before long it is the Master who displaces himself, leaving Bartleby ambiguously in possession of the ground on which he has taken his stand. It is the new landlords who have Bartleby forcibly removed to the Halls of Justice and it is there that Bartleby perishes, a little like Simone Weil in exile, reflexively, by means of preferring ‘not to dine’ (p.61). Here is illustrated Hegel’s ‘freedom… still enmeshed in servitude’ (1807/1977, p.119). In Genet’s The Maids (1947/2012), Claire and Solange are likewise caught up in ‘unhappy consciousness’. The play charts their transmogrification of their subjection through their fantasies of identification with and incorporation of the domination of ‘Madame’. Channelling Madame, Claire screams at her sister: ‘the maid only exists through me. Through me alone… You have no idea how hard it is to be the mistress…to be the entire pretence for your pathetic performance’ (1947/2012, p.18). Solange warns that Claire is ‘approaching the shore… The limits. The boundaries. The threshold’ (p.17); but when play collapses in the dénouement, Claire follows Antigone and Bartleby in her own way, by taking the poison that the sisters intended for Madame. In Genet’s account of this sado-masochistic dance, complicit self-deception is underlaid with secret, encapsulated awareness. Madame herself is only dimly and transiently conscious of her overthrow – the violence remains reflexive – and Claire and Solange fail to heed Foucault’s injunction, in his preface to Anti-Oedipus: ‘do not become enamored of power’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1972/2004, p.xvi). The emergence of the bondsman’s reflexive awareness of himself as some-body other than an extension of his master’s mind and body – Bartleby’s revolutionary claim to have a preference beyond what is required of him – forms part of what Foucault (1980) called the ‘insurrection of subjugated knowledges’ (p.81). In Hegel’s parable, the domination of the lord precedes the emergence of the bondsman as a separately constituted being – rather as Creon’s accession to power, following the civil war between Polynices and Eteocles, is the prelude to Antigone’s discovery of her autonomy. Foucault (1980) asserted that ‘[w]e should try to grasp subjection in its material instance as a

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constitution of subjects’ (p.97). According to Butler (1997), echoing and appropriating Freud’s (1917/1957) analysis of the reflexivity of conscience in melancholia, our attachment to our primary caregivers, on whom we are so completely dependent in early life, means that we are all of us formed with a valency for subordination, just as Hegel’s bondsman or Madame’s maids are constituted in self-abasement. Butler (1997) writes: ‘[T]he very notion of reflexivity, as an emergent structure of the subject, is the consequence of a “turning back on itself ”, a repeated self-beratement [reflexive violence]…there is no formation of the subject without a passionate attachment to subjection’ (p.67, brackets and italics added). Discourses that discriminate against those de-liberated persons who are seen to be deliberately harming their-selves likewise do not follow from the act (as many of us would prefer to believe) but precede it. If our very existence is predicated on terms that manifest the workings of ‘capillary’ power, the ‘multiple forms of subjugation that have a place and function within the social organism’ (Foucault 1980, p.96), then ‘to persist in one’s being means to be given over from the start to social terms that are never fully one’s own’ (Butler 1997, p.28). In attributing a deliberateness to the reflexively violent, we deny our own subliminal awareness of how little of any-body’s subjectivity is constituted independent of the discourses that ‘define the norm from which we each individually deviate’ (Foulkes 1948) and from which we are all, to begin with at least, excluded. Like Hegel’s ‘lord’, we deny this awareness so that we may accede to the outward roles and trappings of power without having to think too much about the experience of those who are subordinate to us. In identification with Madame, or the Master in Chancery, it may be that unless or until the sufferer declines to be a patient in the sense we recognise – unless he engages in the ‘Bartlebian politics’ (Žižek 2008, p.180) of violently preferring to do nothing – we don’t notice what sort of ‘doctors’ we have become, or how much we depend upon our patients’ discreet, deferent compliance for our very identity. ✳✳✳ The attribution of deliberate intent to practices of self-harming is a reciprocally violent, ultimately defensive flexing of discourse-bound muscle on the part of a societal in-group that has disavowed its own

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violence in order to retain and maintain its exclusive position. A widespread societal psycho(socio?)pathy ‘justifies’, even celebrates, hostility, insult, and injury towards the dis-membered: a hostility rooted in a widespread and normative il(de)lusion that ‘we’ are entitled to trample on others whilst exercising a consumerist, personalised right to choose and to determine our own exclusive and excluding destiny. It is perhaps encouraging to note that collective consciousness of these dynamics may be more present among this dis-membered population than among those who ‘treat’ them. Web-based groups such as ‘Recovery In The Bin’ are refuting the insulting discourse of ‘recovery’ that has been so effectively colonised by the medical mainstream in the UK; offering in its place the concept of ‘unrecovery’, which squarely locates the injury of the sufferer within a socioeconomic frame of the oppression of neoliberalism in late capitalism (Recovery In The Bin 2017; see also Turner, Lovell and Brooker 2011; Scanlon and Adlam 2013b). The violent attribution into the excluded, which we have analysed here using clinical, historical, philosophical, and literary sources, tells us a lot in psychosocial terms about that which needs to be disavowed within the in-group and how the out-group functions as a receptacle for projection, a kind of shadow of the societal object. However, it tells us nothing of importance about the personal experience of the individual sufferer, nor of the nameless numberless multitudes who, in their practices of selfharming, took an overdose or an incision, or made some other faltering inscription, one step too far across the borderline and into an early grave.

REFERENCES Adshead, G. (1997) ‘Written on the Body: Deliberate Self-Harm and Violence.’ In E.V. Welldon and C. van Velsen (eds) A Practical Guide to Forensic Psychotherapy. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Adshead, G. (1998) ‘Psychiatric staff as attachment figures.’ British Journal of Psychiatry 172, 64–69. Adshead, G. (2002) ‘Three degrees of security: attachment and forensic institutions.’ Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health 12, S31–S45. Adshead, G. (2010) ‘Written on the body: deliberate self-harm as communication.’ Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy 24, 2, 69–80. Bion, W.R. (1961) Experiences in Groups. London: Routledge. Butler, J. (1997) The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

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Cover, R. (1983) ‘The Supreme Court, 1982 Term – Foreword: Nomos and Narrative.’ Faculty Scholarship Series. Paper 2705. http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_ papers/2705 Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (2004) Anti-Oedipus. London: Continuum. (Original work published in 1972.) Foucault, M. (2001) Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. London: Routledge Classics. (Original work published in 1961.) Foucault, M. (1991) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Penguin Books. (Original work published in 1975.) Foucault, M. (1980) Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972– 1977. New York: Pantheon. Foulkes, S.H. (1948) Introduction to Group-Analytic Psychotherapy: Studies in the Social Integration of Individuals and Groups. London: Heinemann. Freud, S. (1957) ‘Mourning and melancholia.’ Standard Edition 14. London: Hogarth Press. (Original work published in 1917.) Genet, J. (2012) Les Bonnes. Paris: Gallimard. (Original work published in 1947.) Gilligan, J. (1996) Violence: Reflections on Our Deadliest Epidemic. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Hegel, G.W.F. (1977) The Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A.V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Original work published in 1807.) Herman, J. (1997) Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence – From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. New York: Basic Books. Lawrence, B. and Karim, A. (eds) (2007) On Violence: A Reader. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Lemma, A. (2010) Under the Skin: A Psychoanalytic Study of Body Modification. London: Routledge. Melville, H. (2010) Bartleby the Scrivener. New York: Melville House. (Original work published in 1853.) Motz, A. (2008) The Psychology of Female Violence: Crimes Against the Body (2nd edn). London: Routledge. Motz, A. (2010) ‘Self-harm as a sign of hope.’ Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy 24, 2, 81–92. RCPsych (2010) Self-Harm, Suicide and Risk: A Summary. Accessed on 28/11/2017 at www.rcpsych.ac.uk/pdf/ps03-2010x.pdf RCPsych (2014) Self-Harm. Accessed on 28/11/2017 at www.rcpsych.ac.uk/ healthadvice/problemsdisorders/self-harm.aspx Recovery In The Bin (2017) Accessed on 28/11/2017 at https://recoveryinthebin.org Sarker, J. and Adshead, G. (2006) ‘Personality disorders as disorganisation of attachment and affect regulation.’ Advances in Psychiatric Treatment 12, 297–305. Scanlon, C. and Adlam, J. (2009) ‘“Why Do You Treat Me This Way?”: Reciprocal Violence and the Mythology of “Deliberate Self-Harm”.’ In A. Motz (ed.) Managing Self-Harm: Psychological Perspectives. London: Routledge. Scanlon, C. and Adlam, J. (2013a) ‘Reflexive violence.’ Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society 18, 3, 223–241. Scanlon, C. and Adlam, J. (2013b) ‘Knowing your place and minding your own business: on perverse psychological solutions to the imagined problem of social exclusion.’ Ethics and Social Welfare 7, 2, 170–183. Sophocles (1947) Antigone. In The Theban Plays. London: Penguin Classics.

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Turner, K., Lovell, K. and Brooker, A. (2011) ‘“…and they all lived happily ever after”: “Recovery” or discovery of the self in personality disorder.’ Psychodynamic Practice 17, 3, 341–346. Turp, M. (2002) Hidden Self-Harm: Narratives from Psychotherapy. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Weil, S. (1939) ‘The Iliad, or the Poem of Force.’ In B. Lawrence and A. Karim (eds) (2007) On Violence: A Reader. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Welldon, E.V. (1996) ‘Contrasting Male and Female Perversions.’ In C. Cordess and M. Cox (eds) Forensic Psychotherapy: Crime, Psychodynamics and the Offender Patient. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Žižek, S. (2008) Violence. London: Profile.

Chapter 3

THE STORY OF MR A The Interplay between Individual Trauma and Global Politics1 TILMAN KLUTTIG

The story of Mr A is offered here as a case study in the close links between global politics and individual trauma or suffering which might be understood to generate violent states of mind. In such states of mind the person develops a valency to become a particular kind of actor in group and societal dynamics that may produce acts of violence and even terrorism. In the treatment of such individuals, often in secure settings, phenomena of splitting can develop in the treating team and the system of care around the individual, and these splits may become manifest along familiar fault lines, as between constructions of the individual patient as ‘either’ victim ‘or’ perpetrator (a necessarily false dichotomy), or as between understandings of behaviour located in individual psychopathology or in structural and sociological or psychosocial explanations. Becoming the object of violence, injustice or oppression can lead to different reactions that are informed by the interplay between the individual personality, his social, cultural, religious and ethnic environment and relational bonds and the tolerance or intolerance – the violence and/or the creativity – of the societal structures that surround him. This can lead to a more depressive reaction of resignation, the 1

The case of Mr A was first presented at the 14th annual conference of the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy in Dublin with the consent of the patient and then discussed with anonymised data in Kluttig, Odenwald and Hartmann (2009). This earlier paper focused on the links between individual trauma and readiness to offend.

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so‑called ‘inner emigration’; to engagement or protest; or to identification with powerful idealised leaders and groups and violent acting out (Volkan 2004). Feelings of powerlessness and shame threaten the self and radicalization of rhetoric and action are sought as a defence, as we can observe in the present moment across the globe: in Turkey, Russia or the United States, for example. Experiences in Third World and rapidly developing nations with selfperpetuating conflicts between groups over generations show how future perpetrators in civil wars are recruited from the ranks of the victimised. A continuing dynamic of flight, expulsion and violence arises, which the perpetrators justify by the fact that they were victims in whatever sense themselves – as a consequence of violence, political oppression or economical exploitation, therefore creating a continuous re-enactment of societal and historical trauma. Violence or threat seem to be used as a means to project as well as to identify with feelings of pride restored and potency renewed. As Volkan (2004) explains, the integration in the large group of the radicalized group stabilizes the individual, but leads to regression and a loss of reflective capacity. The in-group is idealized and will not be questioned. Differences to others are no longer tolerated: the out-group cannot be right. Unprocessed affects and impulsive reactions replace rational and tolerant discourse, as we can, for example, see in the Western democracies in relation to the politics of ‘post-truth’ and ‘fake news’. ✳✳✳ Such dynamics form an intrinsic part of the biography of Mr A. He was born in the mid-1960s in Algeria; there were many siblings but he seems to have been his parents’ favourite in childhood and there was a particularly close relation between him and his mother. In his biographic narrative his siblings didn’t play any significant role. His special role becomes clear in several pictures based on his childhood years in which he always turns up alone – the siblings do not appear. At the age of eight his family moved to Paris and Mr A was enrolled in the local school. He reported a common fantasy shared by himself and his mother, in which his talent and energy would enable him to study and become a doctor and then to care for his mother when she grew old. After finishing school he worked in a relative’s small wholesale business.

Interplay between Individual Trauma and Global Politics

He finished his apprenticeship there at the age of 18 and this milestone was celebrated with a big family party. Through his achievements in work and in sporting prowess, he was ‘the prince’ of the family, on whom all hopes were pinned. He started a further training as a confectioner – this was against the wishes of his father, who felt this could be considered an unmanly pursuit; in the end he was allowed to do this with the support of his mother. A year later his parents returned to Algeria, where his father started to run a restaurant. Mr A stayed with an aunt in Paris and finished his training. He met his first girlfriend then, and when she returned to Algeria with her family he decided to join her in 1990. Back in Algeria he worked in his father’s restaurant. He wanted to marry his girlfriend but then she was tragically killed with her family in a car accident. He became depressed in the face of this loss but reported that he recovered with the support of his parents. But shortly after this traumatic incident his family was subjected to a raid in the middle of the night by the Algerian police. He remembered his dog barking; shots were fired and about 20 policemen entered the house. His father was forced to the floor, beaten in the sight of the family, tied up and then carried away while he, his mother and his siblings were threatened at gunpoint. Mr A later found that his dog had been shot. Reflecting back upon his experiences, he recalled: ‘The whole mourning over the death of my girlfriend came back… I had the feeling that I couldn’t go on living… I lay there and thought, now I’m finished with life… I had lots of anger in me too. Anger at the shitty law in our country. I felt this anger everywhere. It felt like my whole body was screaming, about to explode to let the anger out.’ ✳✳✳ The family left behind was frozen by shock. Eventually they were able to find out what the father stood accused of and where he had been detained. He was alleged to have bought arms for terrorists under cover of a volunteer activity with an aid organization. He was convicted and sentenced to a prison term. Mr A said that there was no truth to the allegations, his father being completely out of politics. Mr A reports that until then he had felt quite a distance towards the political conflicts in Algeria, holding more affinity with his French and

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European identity. But in the aftermath of this incident he started to feel unfairly treated by the regime and wanted revenge. Although he had not previously felt particularly close to Islam, he now started to make contact with the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), positioned as an alternative to the oppressing regime. He was readily accepted into the ranks and they gave him a task as a marshal at demonstrations. He felt welcome and protected: he was warned and advised not to be involved in violent actions. A few months later he participated at a demonstration during which serious clashes with the police occurred. The police finally fired into the crowd and there were many fatalities. He felt shocked to witness people being killed or wounded around him. With friends he decided to move to Algiers and actively take part in the FIS’ fight against the government. This was clearly against the will of his family – they wanted to send him back to his aunt in France to be safe. He finally persuaded them with the argument that he wanted to go to Algiers to study the Koran. In Algiers he and his friends were soon involved with higher officials of the FIS. In 1992, Boudiaf, a founder of the anti-colonial FLN (Front de Libération Nationale), returned from Morocco where he had been in exile for 27 years. For many Algerians he seemed to be an alternative between the corrupt FLN regime and the fundamentalist FIS which was more and more influential. Mr A became for a short period of time a supporter of Boudiaf, who became chairman of the High Council of State (HCE), but then on 29 June 1992, Boudiaf was assassinated in Annaba by one of his bodyguards. As Mr A was taking part in a mourning demonstration for Boudiaf, armed forces, the military and police, fired into the crowd. Among the demonstrators there were armed people who fired back. Much later, Mr A spoke about this traumatic experience thus: ‘When I think about it today I still must cry and I have a completely dry mouth. I can’t swallow any more, and it’s hard for me to breathe. My stomach hurts… I have the experience again and again that my thoughts go away quite quickly when I’m really doing something else. It’s as though they were drawn away. When I watch TV it happens sometimes very fast. My eyes keep watching, but my thoughts are gone. For example, they’re with a man who’s lying on the ground. I see him, too. I see a bloody head, but I don’t know whether it’s the one that was shot… It looks like a battlefield. Sometimes I see a man who was hit by a big shell…’ ✳✳✳

Interplay between Individual Trauma and Global Politics

These events marked a new phase in Mr A’s radicalization and identification with the FIS. He engaged in FIS attacks on government forces, constructing and throwing Molotov cocktails and incendiary bombs. Eventually he was recruited to take part in targeted armed operations. At this turning point he was able to reflect on his situation with his friends. He realized that if he continued in this vein he would become completely embroiled with the armed forces of the FIS. Instead he returned to his family and home town and continued to work there with the unarmed section of the FIS. Algeria was immersed in an ever-bloodier civil war – Mr A explained: ‘It had become entirely normal that violence occurred constantly, and often people lay dead in the street.’ Though his family urged him to go back to France, he stayed in Algeria, travelling between his home town and Algiers. He continued to be heavily engaged in the FIS struggle against the government. He distributed political leaflets and writing and also participated in violent attacks and bombings. Finally he returned to his family, exhausted and burned out: ‘I felt drugged.’ He hid his engage­ ment in the FIS from his family, as they would have disap­proved of it. Later that same year he was arrested at home, and taken away with a sack over his head. He was accused of being part of a bomb attack on a police station, and was presumed to know names and weapons caches of the armed branch of the FIS. He was tortured by the police on the ‘dance floor’ as it was called: beaten until he fainted away, teeth knocked out, pushed under water in a bathtub, submitted to electric shock, and threatened with rape. One of his shinbones was broken. After this torture he was first treated in a military hospital and then brought to a military prison in the Sahara. It was there that he fell mentally ill: ‘After two months a djinn took possession of me.’ Suffering from auditory and visual hallucinations, he felt himself to be possessed and plagued by ‘demons’. Due to his paranoid ideas and sudden aggressive behaviour, it was difficult for him to be accepted by other prisoners who otherwise showed solidarity and mutual helpfulness. His family finally managed to arrange for him to be transferred to a psychiatric clinic, from where he was able to escape with the help of his FIS contacts. In 1993, equipped with false documents, he sailed to France, contacted his aunt in Paris and went into hiding. He travelled to Germany and applied for political asylum there. Although his application was not accepted by the authorities, it was agreed that a deportation back to

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Algeria would entail a high risk of being arrested and possibly tortured. Therefore he was allowed to stay in the status of a so-called ‘tolerated foreigner’. This status meant that he would have to apply at the end of two years for permanent residence and in the meantime was not allowed to work or to travel in Germany. Here he was suddenly in a situation which was not only foreign to him and controlled by others but which was also ghetto-like and which condemned him to inactivity. Suffering from psychogenic attacks and flashbacks, for example when the police visited the premises, he often gave way to aggressive outbursts. Around the mid-1990s he started to consume drugs – heroin and cocaine – and developed a severe dependency. He made two significant and serious suicide attempts and was in inpatient treatment. He went on using and also dealing drugs, was arrested again and sentenced to a prison term, where he made several attempts to kill himself. He was released because he was willing to start a substance misuse therapy; he managed to become stabilized, and was in a relationship with a fellow patient who became pregnant by him. He hoped to live with her after the birth of his daughter, but this was impossible because of his status as a foreigner. He was transferred back to the grim and dilapidated quarters allocated to asylum seekers, and started again with drug dealing and substance misuse and made several further suicide attempts. Following another arrest and incarceration, he was finally sent to our clinic for compulsory treatment. At around this time an amnesty for FIS activists who had not committed severe offences was offered by the Algerian government. Therefore it was quite unclear for a certain period of time if Mr A would be further tolerated in Germany – a difficult and uncertain situation in which to begin treatment. ✳✳✳ The court had decided upon a placement in forensic detoxification and rehabilitation treatment unit according to Article 64 of the German penal code. This is a time-limited treatment in forensic psychiatry (in general two years maximum) for offenders with addictive disorders. A treatment order according to Article 64 can be ended by the authorities if there appears to be no reasonable chance for a good outcome. In this case offenders are generally transferred back to prison again.

Interplay between Individual Trauma and Global Politics

The  treatment philosophy of the Reichenau Forensic Clinic is based on a psychodynamic and therapeutic community model with a strong focus on intensive individual and group psychotherapy and a multiprofessional team approach (Kluttig 2003b; Hoffmann and Kluttig 2006; Kluttig 2008). At the beginning of treatment the prognosis for Mr A did not appear promising. Previous attempts at substance misuse treatment had not been successful. Mr A denied offences of drug dealing and physical assault listed in his previous convictions; he said that he only had drugs for his own consumption and had acted in self-defence in threatening situations. In a familiar litany, he told us that he did not want to take drugs in future; he lacked insight into the deeper levels of his addictive behaviour. In personal interactions he was quite charming and he knew how to arouse sympathy in others. We asked ourselves what was true in all this and what was really wrong with him. The treatment team realized in staff and case supervision that, with his denial on the one side and his charming behaviour on the other side, there was a risk of a split between an idealizing identification with him as a victim of bad circumstances as a refugee (we being not yet really aware of his traumatic experiences) or a denigratory rejection as a ‘manipulative’ ‘junkie’ and trickster. In the early stages of treatment Mr A was encouraged to paint pictures from his life. In his drawings and paintings, material about his suffering and violent acting out appeared. This surprised us because Mr A had told us nothing about this at that time, nor was any of this mentioned in the sentences and reports about him. In individual psychotherapy he repeated superficial statements and idealized the treatment staff. As already noted, we were quite suspicious of him at this stage but later on we came to understand that the redundancy of his statements helped him to avoid talking about his post-traumatic stress and biographical facts which were negatively constructed by him: his experiences – as both victim and perpetrator – in Algeria, torture, shame over his drug addiction and his failure as a migrant, in his opinion caused by his drug dependency. Only at the end of the treatment did he feel able to communicate openly with his family about his drug addiction and offences. As treatment progressed, Mr A became very demanding and reacted sensitively and with wounded pride to knock-backs and postponements. The treatment team realized that in this way he re-enacted a transference of the relationship to his mother and gave him the nickname ‘the little

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prince’. At the same time he started to speak more openly of his until now hidden biographical themes in individual and group therapy. It was possible to confront his criminal acts and drug dependency realistically and he was able to connect his aggression with rage over his perceived failure and to draw parallels with his challenging behaviour on the ward. It was a good six months into the treatment before we began to feel able to leave behind our scepticism. More and more he presented diffuse somatic symptoms and suffered from insomnia, so that we really could perceive him as somebody under strain. It was then that we started to discuss with him the possible diagnosis of a post-traumatic stress disorder and he cautiously allowed us to draw connections between his vulnerability and his life history. He started to report previously hidden symptoms of flashbacks, panic attacks and intrusive thoughts, triggered for example by films or by contacts with policemen when he was on leave. Together with the psychology department at the University of Konstanz and their Outpatient Clinic for Refugees (see Schauer et al. 2002; Kluttig 2003a; Garieballa 2004), we offered Mr A trauma therapy. These groups have specialized in testimony therapy: in the therapy sessions, a written report about his biography is drafted by patient and therapist together; it is then handed over to the patient and thus ‘bears witness’ (Cienfuegos and Monelli 1983; Agger and Jensen 1990). The therapeutic outcome of this procedure can be compared with complex cognitivebehavioural methods, such as ‘cognitive processing therapy’, which integrate exposition, mediation of knowledge and cognitive restructuring. The trauma therapy began parallel to the individual psychotherapy and went on until his release. The trauma therapy proceeded well and Mr A continued to stabilize: he was drug free, he sustained a loving relationship with his partner and performed well in his work, such that we could make a positive prognosis and recommend his release. Unfortunately the authorities insisted that due to his status as ‘tolerated foreigner’ Mr A was still not allowed to work and even had to go back to the location where he had once been arrested as a drug dealer and drug consumer. This was the sobering end of an extensive and successful therapy which nonetheless clashed with the rules governing the immigrant population. Mr A and the treatment team both felt helpless when confronted with this situation. For both parties, resignation or aggressive despair would have been an understandable reaction.

Interplay between Individual Trauma and Global Politics

However, our patient surprised us and showed that he had really changed during psychotherapy. He remained stable, committed no criminal acts, and was able to seek help and make use of therapeutic services. Through trauma therapy and forensic psychotherapy, validating his experiences in Algeria as well as challenging his aggression and his role as a perpetrator and his trajectory towards becoming a terrorist, Mr A was able to develop again feelings of self-respect and self-efficacy and to retain his own dignity, so that even in the difficult situation of his legal status as a ‘tolerated foreigner’, he did not relapse into drug abuse and antisocial behaviour. ✳✳✳ We were able to follow up Mr A for several years – he tried in vain to get permission to work; had another romantic relationship with a young woman for some time; and he tried to keep himself busy with sports and voluntary work. But finally he decided to go underground again and to move to Paris. Here he wanted to contact his aunt and try to live there, like so many others in these troubled times, as a ‘sans papiers’. It was to begin with not in his words but in his paintings that Mr A could find a way to express his suffering. He met with a creative response to his violent state of mind and unlocked an inner creativity that served him well. However, the positive experience of treatment that he found with us in Germany was undermined by the failures of hospitality that were also played out at the State level – he was socially included by the same system that ultimately excluded him. Without a consistently supportive structure around him, he might have been vulnerable again in France to react in identification with militant Islamist groups to his enforced social exclusion from work and society. Mr A’s experiences as both victim and perpetrator originated, as we have already noted, in the violent conflict between the FLN and the FIS, in the aftermath of Algeria’s violent colonial history. The FLN fought from 1954 to 1962 against the French army, and both sides used sabotage, terrorism and torture in this war. The riots in the periphery of Paris in 2005, the militant Islamist attacks and outbreaks of anti-Semitic violence are mainly enacted by young people with an immigrant background from the former French colonies of Northwestern Africa and the Maghreb,

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who are therefore both stigmatized and socially excluded (Castel 2007). Mr A’s story is similar to those of so many of these displaced young people caught up in cycles of structural violence played out across whole continents and down through so many generations.

REFERENCES Agger, I. and Jensen, S.B. (1990) ‘Testimony as ritual and evidence in psychotherapy for political refugees.’ Journal of Traumatic Stress 3, 115–130. Castel, R. (2007) La discrimination négative. Citoyens où indigènes? Paris: Editions du Seuil. Cienfuegos, A. and Monelli, C. (1983) ‘The testimony of political repression as a therapeutic instrument.’ American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 53, 4–51. Garieballa, S. (2004) ‘Trauma, Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and Psychiatric Comorbidity in Forensic Patients.’ Dissertation, University of Konstanz. Hoffmann, K. and Kluttig, T. (2006) ‘Psychoanalytic and group-analytic perspectives in forensic psychotherapy.’ Group Analysis 39, 1, 9–23. Kluttig, T. (2003a) ‘Täter oder Opfer? Zur Bedeutung posttraumatischer Belastungsstörungen für die forensische Psychotherapie.’ Forensische Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie 10, 3, 49–69. Kluttig, T. (2003b) ‘Mutual obligation versus constraint: a systemic approach to therapeutic community in forensic psychotherapy.’ International Forum of Group Psychotherapy 11, 1, 4–9. Kluttig, T. (2008) ‘Übertragungsfokussierte Psychotherapie (TFP) in der stationären forensischen Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie.’ In F. Lackinger, G. Dammann and B. Wittmann (eds) Psychodynamische Therapie bei Delinquenz. Stuttgart: Schattauer. Kluttig, T., Odenwald, M. and Hartmann, W. (2009) ‘Fatal violence – from trauma to offence.’ International Forum of Psychoanalysis 18, 42–49. Schauer, M., Kluttig, T., Elbert, T., Junghöfer, M. et al. (2002) ‘Trauma and delinquency: psychophysiological evidence for the dysregulation of affect in traumatized forensic patients.’ Psychophysiology 39, S75. Volkan, V. (2004) Blind Trust: Large Groups and Their Leaders in Times of Crisis and Terror. Charlottesville: Pitchstone.

PART II

VIOLENT STATES AND STATE VIOLENCE Today the relationship between the state and violence is an especially intimate one. In the past, the most varied institutions – beginning with the sib – have known the use of physical force as quite normal. Today, however, we have to say that a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. Max Weber, from ‘Politics as a vocation’ (1919)

Es ist geschehen, und folglich kann es wieder geschehen. Darin liegt der Kern dessen, was wir zu sagen haben. (It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say.) Primo Levi, inscription at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin – originally from The Drowned and the Saved (1986)

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Chapter 4

BALTIMORE PAST AND PRESENT The Violent State of Racial Segregation ANNIE STOPFORD WITH GARDNEL CARTER

Yes, Baltimore is an unequal city. It is a city of low incomes. It’s a segregated city with concentrated poverty. Those are really just another way of saying, Baltimore is an American city. Alan Berube, Metropolitan Policy Program, Brookings Institute (2015)

If we conclude that conditions in black America are not inexplicable but are instead precisely what you’d expect of a community that for centuries has lived in America’s crosshairs, then what are we to make of the world’s oldest democracy? Ta-Nehisi Coates (2014)

INTRODUCTION The painful death of Freddie Gray at the hands of Baltimore police, subsequent rioting by young black men in Baltimore streets and a highly critical United States Department of Justice report have drawn attention to a culture of entrenched violence toward poor African American communities by Baltimore’s police force, many of whom are also black (The Atlantic 2016). Confronting and transforming Baltimore’s toxic police culture is essential and long overdue, but there is much more at stake. When the low-income black neighbourhoods where police 71

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abuses are most prevalent are the product of a hundred years of policies and practices designed to segregate and impoverish the city’s black population, only a profound reckoning with economic injustice and social and psychological injury will suffice.

INTERDISCIPLINARY FRAMEWORK I locate this discussion within psychosocial studies, a newly emerging interdisciplinary field that explores connections between individual subjectivities and identities, and historical and contemporary social and political formations (Roseneil 2014). Psychosocial studies challenge the false distinction between the psychological and the social and include a variety of investigative methods, including interviews, case studies and fieldwork (see for example Hollway 2010). This chapter is grounded in fieldwork in Baltimore that has gradually developed since my first visit to the city in 2011. Since then I have made numerous visits, including a one-month stint in early 2013, with my most recent visit taking place in early August 2016. Over the years I have developed ongoing connections with a number of African American men and women who have become my primary interlocutors. This chapter draws on recent interviews with Gardnel Carter, the site director for East Baltimore Safe Streets. Gardnel first joined the City Health Department’s Safe Streets initiative in 2007, the year after he had returned to East Baltimore from almost two decades in prison, during which time he became a Muslim convert and a mediator of prison conflicts. In his role as site director Gardnel provides mentorship and guidance to many people in the East Baltimore neighbourhoods where the Safe Streets team operates. Without his experience and insight this chapter would not have been possible. All interview extracts have been approved.

FOREGROUNDING THE ‘SOCIAL’ IN PSYCHOSOCIAL In previous writing about Baltimore (Stopford 2014), I focused on psychosocial perspectives on trauma and violence in distressed African American neighbourhoods, arguing that continuous traumatic stress in these neighbourhoods should be viewed as symptomatic of a national violent state of denial and dissociation about the historical creation

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and contemporary maintenance of African American ‘ghettoes’. As a researcher and writer with a clinical background I have long felt compelled to foreground psychological discussion and research, particularly psychoanalytic perspectives, in my psychosocial explorations of specific issues and locations (see for example Stopford 2007); but reading more deeply about the devastating impact of the policies and practices at the root of what sociologists Massey and Denton call ‘American Apartheid’ (1993) has shifted my focus for this chapter more toward the ‘social’. What that means is that as well as diverse academic disciplines including history, law, economics, sociology and psychology, I draw on many nonacademic sources, including newspaper articles, radio interviews and government reports.

‘TWO BALTIMORES’ Any discussion about what’s wrong with a place or an institution runs the risk of presenting a one-sided story. My Baltimore respondents and friends have all at different times expressed their frustration with the media’s portrayal of Baltimore as a particularly dangerous, povertystricken and crime-ridden city. As Gardnel puts it: Now you got everyone in the world thinking Baltimore is such a bad place. I mean it was good to have people interested and wanting to do this and do that, but realistically if Baltimore is as bad as they say you wouldn’t have people living here, you know what I’m saying, so like I said the news doesn’t do a good job of promoting the good Baltimore. There’s a lot of good going on grass roots in Baltimore City, we have a young artist movement going on across the city, but that never makes the front page because violence sells.

Baltimore is of course just one of many American cities characterized by disturbing differences in black and white wealth, segregated neighbourhoods and high homicide rates, as well as by many positive phenomena, including excellent universities, countless socially conscious projects, and dynamic arts communities. As Gardnel implies, plenty of people with means choose Baltimore as their home and passionately love the city. There are many attractive neighbourhoods in Baltimore City whose residents work hard to make a constructive contribution to their immediate area and to the city as a whole.

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But there are also many people, most of them African American, who were born into poverty and violence, and who barely leave their neighbourhood, let alone the city or state; the people who are ‘stuck in place’, to use sociologist Patrick Sharkey’s term (2013). These are the people whose lives have been shaped in the most obviously destructive ways by a hundred years of policies and practices designed to segregate and impoverish African Americans. I have met some of them over the last four years at cook-outs and Christmas parties organized by the East Baltimore Safe Streets team. Many struggle with poor physical and mental health; inadequate education; continuous traumatic stress brought on by repeated exposure to violence or threat of violence; the lack of safe recreational opportunities for children and young people; and limited access to fresh food. Children who grow up in certain neighbourhoods in East Baltimore and West Baltimore (Freddie Gray’s home), especially boys, are demonstrably disadvantaged in numerous ways, including physical and mental health (see for example the Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute 2007 report) and likelihood of incarceration (The Baltimore Sun 2015a). In Chetty and Hendren’s groundbreaking research (2015) on the role that geography plays in shaping a child’s chance of future economic success, Baltimore ranked last on the list of the 100 largest counties in America – for every year a poor boy spends growing up in Baltimore, his earnings as an adult fall by 1.5 per cent. While Gardnel is frustrated with what he feels is a lopsided media portrayal of Baltimore (as well as criticism of CNN coverage of the Freddie Gray riots, I also have heard him and many others blame the television series The Wire for painting a bleak picture of the city), he does not downplay the economic struggles of his constituency. This particular area that I work in, this is one of the poorest areas economically, I believe that there’s been data collected that shows that in McElderry Park and probably other parts of East Baltimore the average income for a family is below $20,000 a year and so you got everyday folks they on a grind to just make it and how that’s done, a lot of jobs that people getting don’t take care of the basic necessities so some of them are out here hustlin’, and I don’t mean just the drug trade, you have guys hacking, which means the illegal Uber or taxi cab service, that’s a big thing in Baltimore, people trying to find other means to bring in some income and to maintain whatever they have and wherever they live at, because everything is going up except people’s pay checks, you know.

Baltimore Past and Present

‘THE WHITE NOOSE’: FROM GOVERNMENT POLICIES TO REAL ESTATE PRACTICES Chetty and Hendren’s research confirms what sociologists Massey and Denton have been saying for over two decades; that ‘racial segregation – and its characteristic institutional form, the black ghetto – are the key structural factors responsible for the perpetration of black poverty in the United States’ (1993, p.9). From the late nineteenth century until the present day, white Americans at all levels of society, from government agencies to real estate agencies to neighbourhood enhancement groups, have been instrumental – often deliberately, sometimes inadvertently – in the creation and maintenance of what are usually euphemistically described as ‘inner-city neighbourhoods’ that keep low-income black families trapped in intergenerational poverty. Government policies included the underwriting practices of federal agencies that led directly to the redlining of certain inner-city areas, thereby freezing African Americans out of affordable mortgages and ‘the greatest wealth building opportunities in American history’ (Shapiro 2006, p.67). Other institutions, policies and practices have played their roles in the perpetuation of residential segregation and discrimination against African Americans, especially financial institutions, which reject African Americans for home mortgages at much higher rates than whites, despite their equivalent credit worthiness (Oliver and Shapiro 1995, pp.141–7), and frequently charge African Americans higher rates of interest on home loans than white buyers (Shapiro 2006, p.67). When you add to that the fact that home equity is greater for white owners than black as homes appreciate in value in most communities apart from poor, predominantly black urban neighbourhoods (Shapiro 2004, pp.121–2), plus the deliberate targeting of African Americans for subprime loans that led to many losing their homes in the financial crash of 2008 (Rugh, Albright and Massey 2015), it is clear that there is still a ‘white noose’ (Nomination of George W. Romney 1969) around predominantly black inner-city neighbourhoods.

RESIDENTIAL SEGREGATION, BALTIMORE STYLE As the first American city to pass a housing segregation law, Baltimore has a shameful place in America’s history of racial segregation. The Residential Segregation Ordinances were signed into law on 15 May 1911

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by Baltimore’s mayor Barry Mahool ‘for preserving peace, preventing conflict and ill feeling between the white and colored races in Baltimore city, and promoting the general welfare of the city by providing, so far as practicable, for the use of separate blocks by white and colored people for residences, churches and schools’ (Power 1982, p.305). A number of cities in South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina and Kentucky quickly followed suit (Power 1982) before the United States Supreme Court struck down the Louisville, Kentucky ordinance, thus making all the other ordinances unconstitutional. However, as Power wrote in 1982, ‘the historical significance of Baltimore’s segregation ordinances remains’ (p.280). It still does to this day. After the Supreme Court invalidated residential segregation ordinances, white Baltimoreans developed other means to create  and  maintain segregated residential areas. Pietila (2010) lays out in detail the ways in which residential real estate practices – restricted covenants, redlining, blockbusting and predatory lending – have kept African Americans confined  as much as possible to particular neighbourhoods in Baltimore with all their concomitant economic, social and psychological disadvantages.  Restricted covenants were residential segregation ordinances by another name, designed to enforce white control over real estate and exclude black Baltimoreans from the more ‘desirable’ neighbourhoods. No attempts were made to disguise their racist agenda. A covenant recorded in Baltimore courthouse in September 1925 was typical. The 27 home owners who signed the covenant agreed that ‘none of said respective properties nor any part of them shall at any time be occupied or used by or conveyed, mortgaged, leased, rented or given to any Negro or to any person or persons in whole or in part of Negro or African descent’ (Pietila 2010, p.48). Other American cities followed suit and Baltimore-style restrictive covenants became a national model until the Supreme Court prohibited their court enforcement in 1948 (Power 1982, p.322).

CONTEMPORARY BALTIMORE While the ‘white noose’ has loosened in Baltimore in the decades since restrictive covenants were struck down, racially segregated housing patterns persist. The poorest and most distressed neighbourhoods continue to be predominantly African American. In my visits to the East

Baltimore Past and Present

Baltimore Safe Streets office over the last four years I have been struck by the extreme differences between some neighbourhoods, often separated by just a few streets, where turning a corner can mean a sudden change from nearly all white faces to all black, or vice versa, and where neat row houses with tidy gardens turn into blighted, treeless streets with numerous boarded-up houses. The differences within Baltimore are mirrored in the differences between Baltimore City, which is 62.9 per cent African American and has a median household income of $42,579, and Baltimore County, which is 62.8 per cent white and has a median household income of $68,156 (The New York Times 2016). In the words of Stephen Sachs, a former Maryland attorney general: ‘There’s a noose around Baltimore City and as a consequence we have economic apartheid. In terms of education, jobs, transportation, housing, you name it. It’s been that way for decades. The counties do nothing to accommodate the poor, and nothing changes’ (The Baltimore Sun 2015b).

HOUSING SEGREGATION AND POLICE VIOLENCE: LINKS BETWEEN THE PAST AND THE PRESENT Freddie Gray’s death has drawn unprecedented attention to the many problems and struggles of Baltimore’s hyper-segregated neighbourhoods, including of course the impact of rampant police violence and abuse of power. The Department of Justice report on their investigation of the Baltimore City Police Department (launched in the aftermath of Freddie Gray’s death) is blunt about the patterns of unconstitutional stops, searches and arrests, racial bias, and use of excessive force in lowincome black neighbourhoods. However, it also acknowledges that ‘law enforcement officers confront a long history of social and economic challenges’ (2016, p.4) in many areas of Baltimore that are ‘rooted in poverty, racial segregation and deficient educational, employment and housing opportunities’ (2016, p.3). The need for reform of the Baltimore City Police Department is critical, but as the Department of Justice report implies, and as Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute explicitly says in an NPR interview (Morning Edition 2015), there’s much more at stake. In Rothstein’s words:

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[T]he police behavior is something that should be remedied. It’s a terrible criminal operation on the part of the police departments. But it doesn’t start with police departments. When you have a low-income population concentrated in one area, little hope, unemployment rates in places like the inner city of Baltimore are two and three times the rate for whites, well, you get behavior in those kind of communities that reinforces police hostility. It becomes a cycle of misbehavior and police aggression, and it’s attributable to the concentration of disadvantaged families in very crowded inner-city communities. …I do think that Americans have forgotten this history of a purposeful, racial segregation… We once knew, the American public knew…that the federal government had established the segregation, and they understood it was a federal government obligation to undo it. But since that time we’ve forgotten this history, and we think somehow these ghettos arose by accident and there’s nothing we can do about them to reverse the segregation.

Even those most impacted – perhaps especially those most impacted – may see little or no connection between historical events and contemporary conditions. When I asked Gardnel what he thought about Baltimore’s historical segregation laws and restrictive covenants, he responded: To the academic people, I’m gonna say people of higher learning, this historical evidence that shows the racial design of the city and stuff like that is relevant to them but for the everyday striving common people in Baltimore City, white, black and Latino, um these are probably not of great concern to them, their concern is trying to live every day, you know what I mean.

The conversation continued: A: Well they’re economic issues really, I mean economic struggles of poor African Americans and others, but this is quite specific in some ways, in that African Americans have been targeted and deliberately economically suppressed. If people don’t understand the roots of oppression how do they change it? G: You know it’s really hard because when you try to educate people about stuff they don’t care.

Baltimore Past and Present

A: They don’t care because? G: I mean they don’t see no real relief coming. What matters to them now is their everyday living. Like one of my co-workers’ experiences is that he’s been trying to apply for housing or apartments so he always has to pay this registration fee for the apartment or the house, and this we finally realized is a hustle because they already know from the income that they’re not going to give you the house but they still get the $40 registration fee out of you, so we look at 10, 15, 20 people that come to these houses and they’re gathering all these application fees, registration fees, I mean they makin’ a killin’. A: So what do you say to people in this area who are just trying to survive a day at a time? What do you say to them about the future? Do they look to you in any way? G: No, not really, I must say here you know if it ain’t already established in the family to look for something in the future and if it’s not being inspired in schools then there’s not a lot of aspirations here. The aspirations are becoming the next best killer or the next best drug dealer, which doesn’t have longevity at all, but that’s the most, the biggest aspiration around here. Most of the young kids around here they’re not looking at even getting a job. The young kids around here, no-one in their family has probably ever had a full-time job. You have families in the black community that used to work for GM or whatever but you don’t have them companies around any more, they haven’t been around here for 30 years, so they all ended up breaking their backs in low-paying jobs or in the streets. Kids don’t see that as a future because it can’t buy them the things they really want, they like to party, they like to stay fresh, stuff like that, so the economics of the streets is what is more attractive to them. When you don’t have real resources in the community that will boost hope and aspiration then all you gonna get is a society filled with hopelessness.

Gardnel’s point is well taken. People ‘of higher learning’ (like myself) may have the income and the time to explore Baltimore’s history, but when daily life is a constant struggle, when trying to secure decent affordable housing is still an uphill battle for many African Americans in Baltimore, when the future is far from bright, thinking about the past can seem like a waste of time.

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For the very poor, the social unrest that erupted after Freddie Gray’s death was a brief opportunity to grab some basic provisions. In a conversation with Gardnel about the numerous pharmacy robberies that took place (leading some to speculate that the dramatic increase in homicides was connected to street wars over sale of the stolen drugs), Gardnel had this to say: Well it was an opportunity to rob the pharmacies, people took prescription drugs, they took toilet paper, they took what they needed. There was regular people too, everyday citizens, people took what they could get, they’re poor. If anyone wants to say this country is so great, I hear that and I hear that and I hear that, but we got the highest homeless, unemployment, sickness, we treat our elderly like they don’t even exist no more.

RESIDENTIAL SEGREGATION AND MULTIGENERATIONAL TRAUMA Besides the lack of jobs, fresh food, good schools and good healthcare, Baltimore’s segregated neighbourhoods and communities also contend with the threat of violence. Homicide rates have been high in Baltimore’s distressed black communities for a long time, and 2015 was the bloodiest year ever (per capita), with 344 homicides and hundreds of non-fatal shootings. Ninety-three per cent of homicide victims were black, and 87 per cent of the murders were committed with firearms, predominantly handguns (Open Data). Some of the shootings are connected to ‘the economics of the street’, particularly the drug trade, which nowadays according to Gardnel is more focused on pharmaceuticals than heroin or crack. Gardnel also says that it’s a relatively small number of people involved in the gun violence. When you look at East Baltimore, there’s say 200,000 people in East Baltimore, well out of that 200,000 there are only about 500 who are committing chaos.

But for every man, woman or child who is shot or stabbed or burned there are many others who are affected, including witnesses, family members, friends and neighbours. The impact on children is particularly concerning. Hundreds of children in Baltimore’s distressed neighbourhoods are

Baltimore Past and Present

woken almost nightly by the sound of police and ambulance sirens, and regularly hear gunshots or see fights and stabbings. This ‘ripple effect’ (Osofsky 1995) of the impact of children’s exposure to violence has serious implications, not only for the children themselves, but also for their communities and wider society. The psychological injuries to children who experience and witness community violence range from temporary distress to full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder (Osofsky 1995), including hyper-vigilance, feelings of powerlessness and rage, sleep disturbance, loss of trust and expectation of danger (Wilson and Raphael 1993; Parson 1994; Kostelny and Garbarino 2001). Moreover, if they are from the poorest African American neighbourhoods in Baltimore, many of the children who are exposed to violence come from homes where their parents have also been affected by violence. Sadly, if they stay in the same neighbourhoods, then unless there is a dramatic change in accessibility to affordable housing, good education, good mental and physical healthcare, and decent jobs in the next two decades, their future children will also be exposed to violence. Intergenerational trauma is as much an issue as intergenerational poverty in hyper-segregated areas of Baltimore where generations of black families have lived for many decades.

FACING THE VIOLENCE OF SEGREGATION Clinicians who work with traumatized patients know that dissociation from painful memories and the feelings associated with those memories can compel the individual to expose themselves to situations that are reminiscent of the original trauma. Until they start to make the connections with the help of their therapist, most people do not consciously understand that these ‘behavioral re-enactments’ (Van der Kolk 1989, p.389) are related to earlier traumatic life events. Similarly, as psychiatrist Sandra Bloom writes, when ‘the nation refuses to deal with long-term consequences of a failure to fully claim responsibility for the criminal acts of our ancestors…this failure compels us to repeat similar acts in the present’ (Bloom 2005, p.106). If we refuse to deal with the fact that distressed, segregated neighbourhoods like Sandtown-Winchester in West Baltimore and McElderry Park in East Baltimore are the product of a hundred years of policies and practices designed to isolate and impoverish African

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Americans, it can seem as though residential segregation is irreversible. But when we know the historical facts, we cannot deny that the poverty and also the violence and criminal activity in poor black neighbourhoods are symptomatic of a national condition of white denial and dissociation from a shameful history (Gilligan 1996). When we know that federal policies were instrumental in the creation of ‘ghettos’, then we also know that they can be instrumental in creating constructive change and offering opportunities for people to move out of these neighbourhoods if they so desire. In fact, Baltimore City Housing Authority, in compliance with a federal court order, has been quietly buying homes for the last few years in more prosperous suburbs (most of them in Baltimore County) to provide public housing for low-income Baltimore City residents (The Baltimore Sun 2015b). Almost all the beneficiaries are African American families headed by single mothers. Once word got out about the programme there was a predictably hostile response from residents of predominantly white middle-class Baltimore County neighbourhoods. The journalist who wrote the article about the housing programme, Doug Donovan, told a New York Times reporter that many reactions were ‘outright racist’ (The New York Times 2016). In the words of one resident: ‘They don’t deserve to have what my family worked hard for’ (The New York Times 2016). This is a common response to efforts to increase affordable housing in more comfortable and peaceful neighbourhoods. Most middle-class home owners deny the long history of various policies and practices that have undermined African American economic security. They also tend to believe that they have attained their suburban homes entirely through their own effort and do not recognize that they have been the beneficiaries of significant government help, including federally backed loan programmes, mortgage interest deductions and freeway construction subsidies (Massey et al. 2013, p.7).

CONCLUSION Until very recently there has been little recognition in either scholarly or public discourse of the multi-faceted multi-generational impact of deliberate policies of residential racial segregation in Baltimore (and other American cities) and their ongoing toxic legacy for African Americans. Freddie Gray’s death triggered the greatest social and racial unrest in

Baltimore Past and Present

Baltimore City since 1968 and drew renewed attention to the underlying and historical causes of contemporary suffering in hyper-segregated, low-income, black neighbourhoods. But Freddie Gray’s neighbourhood, Sandtown-Winchester, and the other distressed black neighbourhoods in Baltimore City, have been this way for a long time. Sandtown is going through the same stuff, a lot of people want to use the Freddie Gray incident, but Sandtown was going through stuff way before that you know, so Baltimore has been going through stuff way before that.

While police brutality must be addressed, it is all but impossible to transform community and police violence without reversing the violent state of racial segregation.

REFERENCES The Atlantic (2016) ‘The horrors of the Baltimore Police Department.’ 10 August 2016. Accessed on 27/3/2016 at www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2016/08/the-horrorof-the-baltimore-police-department/495329 The Baltimore Sun (2015a) ‘Report: Sandtown-Winchester leads state in number of people incarcerated.’ 25 February 2015. Accessed on 10/9/2016 at www. baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-ci-baltimore-incarcerationreport-20150224-story.html The Baltimore Sun (2015b) ‘Housing policies still pin poor but some escape to suburbs.’ 15 December 2015. Accessed on 30/7/2016 at www.baltimoresun.com/news/ maryland/bs-md-housing-segregation-20151212-story.html Berube, A. (2015) ‘Beyond Baltimore: thoughts on place, race, and opportunity.’ Accessed on 7/11/2016 at www.brookings.edu/research/speeches/2015/09/29baltimore-race-place-opportunity-berube Bloom, S. (2005) ‘Neither liberty nor safety: the impact of fear on individuals, institutions, and societies, Part III.’ Psychotherapy and Politics International 3, 2, 96–111. Chetty, R. and Hendren, N. (2015) ‘The impacts of neighborhoods on intergenerational mobility: childhood exposure effects and country-level estimates.’ Accessed on 17/7/2016 at http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/hendren/files/nbhds_paper.pdf Coates, Ta-Nehisi (2014) ‘The case for reparations.’ Accessed on 2/8/2016 at www. theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631 Gilligan, J. (1996) Violence: Reflections on Our Deadliest Epidemic. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Hollway, W. (2010) ‘Conflict in the transitions to becoming a mother: a psycho-social approach.’ Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society 15, 136–155.

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Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute (2007) ‘Health disparities in Baltimore City: is geography destiny?’ Accessed on 10/7/2016 at http://urbanhealth.jhu.edu/media/ reports/healthdis_baltimore.pdf Kostelny, K. and Garbarino, J. (2001) ‘The War Close to Home: Children and Violence in the United States.’ In D.J. Christie, R.V. Wagner and D.A. Winter (eds) Peace, Conflict, and Violence: Peace Psychology for the 21st Century. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Massey, D.S. and Denton, N. (1993) American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Massey, D.S., Albright, L., Casciano, R., Derickson, E. and Kinsey, D.N. (2013) Climbing Mount Laurel: The Struggle for Affordable Housing and Social Mobility in an American Suburb. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Morning Edition (2015) Richard Rothstein interviewed by Steve Inskeep. ‘How Some Baltimore Neighborhoods Reflect Segregation’s Legacy.’ NPR. 6 May 2015. www. npr.org/2015/05/06/404441478/troubled-neighborhoods-reflect-segregationslegacy-researcher-says The New York Times (2016) ‘Can Hillary manage her unruly coalition?’ 18 August 2016. Accessed on 20/8/2016 at www.nytimes.com/2016/08/18/opinion/campaignstops/can-hillary-manage-her-unruly-coalition.html?emc=eta1&_r+0 Nomination of George W. Romney. Hearing before the Committee on Banking and Currency, United States Senate, Ninety-First Congress, First Session, on the Nomination of George W. Romney to be Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Affairs, January 16, 1969. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, pp.10–11. Oliver, M.L. and Shapiro, T.M. (1995) Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality. New York: Routledge. Open Data: https://data.baltimorecity.gov/Public-Safety/Shootings-homicides-2015current/amca-tmss Osofsky, J.D. (1995) ‘The effect of exposure to violence on young children.’ American Psychologist 50, 9, 782–788. Parson, E.R. (1994) ‘Inner City Children of Trauma: Urban Violence Traumatic Stress Response Syndrome (U-VTS) and Therapists’ Responses.’ In J.P. Wilson and J.D. Lindy (eds) Countertransference in the Treatment of PTSD. New York: Guilford Publications, Inc. Pietila, A. (2010) Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City. Chicago: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group. Power, G. (1982) ‘Apartheid Baltimore style: the residential segregation ordinances of 1910–1913.’ Maryland Law Review 42, 2, 289–328. Roseneil, S. (2014) ‘The psychosocial challenges of establishing the field of psychosocial studies.’ Journal of Psycho-Social Studies 1, 8, 103–134. Rugh, J.S., Albright, L. and Massey, D. (2015) ‘Race, space and cumulative disadvantage: a case study of the subprime lending collapse.’ Accessed on 1/9/2016 at http:// socpro.oxfordjournals.org/content/62/2/186 Shapiro, T.M. (2004) The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality. New York: Oxford University Press. Shapiro, T.M. (2006) ‘Race, homeownership and wealth.’ Washington University Journal of Law & Policy 20, 53–74.

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Sharkey, P. (2013) Stuck in Place: Urban Neighborhoods and the End of Progress toward Racial Equality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Stopford, A. (2007) ‘Psychoanalysis and interraciality: asking different questions.’ Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society 12, 205–225. Stopford, A. (2014) ‘“There’s No Trust at All, in Anything”: Psychosocial Perspectives on Trauma in a Distressed African American Neighborhood.’ In M. O’Loughlin and M. Charles (eds) Fragments of Trauma and the Social Production of Suffering. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. United States Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division. Investigation of the Baltimore City Police Department. Accessed on 14/8/2016 at www.justice.gov/opa/ file/883366/download Van der Kolk, B.A. (1989) ‘The compulsion to repeat the trauma: re-enactment, revictimization, and masochism.’ Psychiatric Clinics of North America 12, 2, 389–411. Wilson, J.P. and Raphael, B. (1993)  ‘Theoretical and Conceptual Foundations of Traumatic Stress Syndromes.’ In J.P. Wilson and  B. Raphael (eds) International Handbook of Traumatic Stress Syndromes. New York: Plenum Press.

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Chapter 5

PSYCHOSOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF POLITICAL TRAUMA AND SOCIAL RECOGNITION I A Lacanian Approach to State Violence in South America GINA DONOSO1

INTRODUCTION Massive atrocities, such as massacres and systematic use of torture and rape in contexts of dictatorships and violent, repressive States, not only impact deeply upon victims and communities, but also have consequences in national and international political and legal arenas (although tragically many of them are overlooked by the international community). As a result, mechanisms to prosecute and convict both individual and State perpetrators of these human rights violations have been designed (see Chapter 15, Volume 1). International Law and various forms of transitional justice2 aim to assist and provide justice and acknowledgement to victims 1

2

The present Ph.D. research is funded by the Scholarship Program (Convocatoria Abierta 2012) of the National Secretary of Superior Education, Science, Technology and Innovation (Secretaría Nacional de Educación Superior, Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación), SENESCYT – Ecuador and the Research Foundation Flanders, Belgium (FWO). Transitional justice refers to the set of judicial and non-judicial measures that have been implemented by different countries in order to redress the legacies of massive human rights abuses. These measures include criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, reparations programmes, and various kinds of institutional reforms.

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and societies in post-conflict scenarios. Different kinds of reparations have been designed as part of these processes, which may include symbolic reparations such as memoralization sites and monuments, scholarships, medical and psychological services and public apologies, among others. Other reparations have a material element, including economic compensation. By 2017, nearly 40 truth commissions had been launched around the globe: in South Africa, Argentina, Canada, Rwanda, Tunisia, Uruguay and the Philippines, to name but a few (International Center for Transitional Justice 2008). This study proposes to explore how social recognition after a political traumatic event may affect the recovery process. Empirical literature that investigates the role of recognition as an important element within psychotherapeutic services and other reparative spaces for victims is still scarce (Lykes and Mersky 2008; Wemmers 2009). Donoso (2014) and Fletcher and Weinstein (2002) affirm that these processes are poorly understood. There have been virtually no studies that systematically attempt to examine or measure the contribution of judicial processes to social reconstruction. Using a Lacanian framework, this study proposes an inter-subjective approach that permits an actual confluence between individual and society. The Lacanian aspect resides in the use of the concepts of ‘The Real’ and ‘The Other’. The Real is the traumatic event itself: as Laurent (2002, p.6) puts it, ‘it is a hole in the interior of the symbolic’. The Other is not a subject, but a place, the place where the Law is inscribed (Lacan 1957/1999). The Other combines the effect of the society and the dominant discourse: ‘The Other is the symbolic order which mediates the relationship with that other subject’ (Evans 1996, p.133). This study comprises two segments. The first presents a metatheoretical Lacanian-informed discussion on trauma and recognition, within the contextual overview of State violence in South America, located specifically in Ecuador’s recent history. In the second segment, in the next chapter, I present the findings of my research connected to the Truth Commission of Ecuador. The research question for this study is to identify how recognition via the relationship of the victim with the Other3 (within psychotherapy 3

Lacan’s ideas regarding the Other are based on the works of Saussure, Hegel, Heidegger and Levi-Strauss, among others. Lacan equates the Other with language and Law, thus the Other is a symbolic order. For Lacan, the social world is constructed through regulated forms of personal relations and exchange as the language which is the base for Lacan’s symbolic order.

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or other reparative processes) may facilitate positive trauma integration. Overall, this study aims to offer a comprehensive macro (political) and micro (individual) perspective on social recognition in order to promote comprehensive reparatory processes for victims and their families, as well as to avoid potential secondary victimization. The proposition is that both micro- and macro-social recognition by the Other/other facilitates trauma recovery.

STATE VIOLENCE IN SOUTH AMERICA Most countries of the Latin American region experienced dictatorships and repressive regimes that perpetrated gross human rights violations during the 1970s and 1980s. In South America the infamous Condor Operation was the epitome of State violence. The Condor Operation or Plan Cóndor was a clandestine co-ordination of actions and mutual support among the leaders of the dictatorial regimes of the ‘Southern Cone’ of Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia, and sporadically Peru, Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador – with the participation of the United States. This co-ordination officially involved monitoring, surveillance, detention, interrogation with torture, transfers between countries and disappearance or executions of thousands of people who were suspected of having affiliations with radical leftist movements considered by those regimes as ‘subversive of the established order’ (McSherry 2005). Many of these crimes have remained in impunity, quashing victims’ expectations of social validation and leaving them in despair and helplessness. The silence and the lack of effective official reparative mechanisms and institutions have generated secondary trauma. The silence and the lack of the Other produced a deeper traumatic sequence. Latin America is a region with great economic inequality and the majority of people living in poverty. Many of these conflicts were rooted in deep political, economic and social divides. By 2014, the richest 10 per cent of the population of Latin America had amassed 71 per cent of the wealth of the region. According to Oxfam, if this trend continues, in just six years the richest 1 per cent of the region would have more wealth than the remaining 99 per cent (Bárcena 2016). This extreme inequality has intensified the problem of social exclusion of indigenous populations, women and other vulnerable groups.

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The numerous Latin American processes of political or post-conflict transition have great similarities and, at the same time, strong peculiarities derived from their social, historical and political conditions. In countries such as Peru and Guatemala, ethnic discrimination and social class exclusion were decisive for the State violence against indigenous peoples who were the main victims. In Argentina and Chile, the persecution of dictatorships targeted mainly women and men in urban progressive sectors, while the Salvadoran conflict claimed many lives among the poorest rural population (IDEA-IIDH 2005, p.230). In Colombia, after more than four years of negotiations between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrilla in Havana, President Juan Manuel Santos signed on 5 April 2017 a decree-law establishing the Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence and NonRepetition, and the Special Unit for the Search of Missing Persons, in the context of a conflict which has lasted almost 60 years. Democratic transition has made significant progress in the last quartercentury and achieved several goals: among them the contributions that emerged from Argentina’s experience in the social registration of the memory and the recourse to justice that culminated in the repeal of the laws which had granted total impunity for perpetrators and which allowed the opening of 662 cases of human rights violations (Verbitsky 2016). Nevertheless, a new threat to democracy and human rights has emerged in Latin America in the last years. It is the so-called Lawfare which is a weapon for fighting political enemies, combining apparently legal actions and widespread media coverage. Through lawfare strategies the political enemies are shamed, becoming extremely vulnerable to the baseless accusations and, once weakened, they lose popular support and any power of reaction. This has been the case of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in Argentina, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil and Jorge Glas Espinel in Ecuador (Zanin Martins, Teixeira Zanin Martins and Valim 2017).

ECUADOR AND STATE VIOLENCE Ecuador is a small presidential republic which became independent from Spain in 1830. About 25 per cent of its population of 14 million live below the poverty line, 8 per cent of whom are in extreme poverty (ENEMDU 2014). The modern history of democracy in the country

A Lacanian Approach to State Violence

began when elections were held under a new constitution in the wake of a military government which lasted from 1972 to 1979. In 1984 León Febres Cordero was elected president. Febres Cordero promoted a neoliberal economic model. His government imposed an authoritarian style of permanent confrontation with all sectors that disagreed with its political project, especially with ‘left-wing’ movements. Alfaro Vive Carajo (AVC) and Montoneras Patria Libre were social armed groups that (among others) demanded social and economic changes in the country. The Febres Cordero regime responded with a policy of State terrorism, in order to protect ‘national security’. During this period, torture as an investigative method used by police and military officials became an institutionalized practice. Other human rights violations, such as enforced disappearance, extrajudicial executions of detainees under military or police custody and illegal deprivation of liberty, also became commonplace: The Government repression of Leon Febres Cordero was framed within the National Security Doctrine and the National Security Act issued by the military triumvirate (1976–1979). This doctrine, imported from the U.S. and Brazil, started from the proposition that within the society there was an internal enemy, who had to be neutralized or even eliminated. Any organization or individual who fought for social demands was classified as a communist or subversive. The strikes, meetings, and demonstrations were considered as actions that disturbed the peace and order of the State that should be repressed by the police or the military. (Truth Commission of Ecuador 2010, p.31, author’s translation)

The impact of the strategies used during the period 1984–1988 far outlasted the Febres Cordero regime itself. While the extent of violations of human rights declined in terms of State policy, many of these practices persisted for years in different institutions without substantial changes. Rafael Correa Delgado was the President of Ecuador from 2007 to 2017. He took office in January 2007 and was re-elected president in 2013 (El Comercio 2014). He brought political stability to the country after a decade in which eight governments were not able to finish their mandate, although he faced strong opposition from some environmental, indigenous and right-wing conservative groups and there was an attempted coup d’état in September 2010. His government sought to improve people’s quality

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of life (buen vivir) by strengthening public sectors such as education and health, consolidating the transformation of the judicial system and promoting environmental sustainability (Senplades 2013).

THE TRUTH COMMISSION OF ECUADOR The Truth Commission of Ecuador (TCE) began its work in 2008. In June 2010, its Final Report, ‘No Justice without Truth’, was officially launched. The TCE worked from the statements of victims of human rights violations and the information of more than 300,000 documents declassified by the State, mainly from the National Security Council, the Ministry of Defence and the National Police. The Commission received more than 600 testimonies that allowed it to identify 118 cases involving the violation of the rights to life, integrity and personal freedom, including disappearances, extrajudicial executions, torture, sexual violence and illegal deprivation of liberty. The TCE’s analysis included serious human rights violations committed between 1984 and 2008. The report identified a State policy of human rights violations during the period 1984–1988 and stressed the need for structural changes in several public institutions where violations continued until recent times. The Truth Commission registered 434 victims. Of these, 287 suffered human rights violations during the presidential term of León Febres Cordero. The main alleged perpetrators were the police and the military. Torture featured in 88 per cent of the cases and unlawful deprivation of liberty in 68 per cent. A range of psychosocial impacts at individual, familial and community levels were also analysed and recounted in the Final Report. After the closure of the TCE in 2010, the National Prosecutor’s Office opened a special office for the TCE’s cases. To date, three cases from the TCE have held judicial proceedings: (a) Vaca-Cajas; (b)  Gonzáles et al.; and (c) Damián Peña; as a result, police and military officers are currently on trial. On 10 December 2014, on International Human Rights Day, a mural commemorating the victims was built on the external wall of the Prosecutor’s Office in Quito and an international seminar was organized on the issues of truth, justice and reparation in the region. Victims from all over the country were invited to attend these events. This raised ambivalent feelings on the victims’ part because, although these activities were appreciated, many

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of those directly affected felt they should have participated actively in the organization of these events and felt marginalized and frustrated because of their limited participation.4 The Reparation Unit of the Ombudsperson Office5 began its work in November 2014. Psychosocial considerations were emphasized; however, there is a structural lack of training and sensitization to the complexity and specificities of psychosocial work in political trauma scenarios (Valencia 2011). A member of one of the very few organizations working with traumatized victims in this country affirmed that the ‘demand is higher than the capacity of the centre to provide psychosocial rehabilitation’ (PRIVA – Ecuador in International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims 2014, p.49).

RESEARCHER’S POSITIONALITY My interest in the topic of this research began many years ago. My academic and professional journey took me to different contexts where human rights violations occurred. Working in the field of human rights and psychosocial interventions in different settings – Ecuador, Colombia, Guatemala, Argentina, the Netherlands, Democratic Republic of Congo, Spain and Iraq, among others – I witnessed the unfulfilled psychological needs of victims of State violence regarding reparations. I worked for the Truth Commission of Ecuador from March 2009 to November of the same year. My work consisted mostly of the systematization and analysis of the testimonies previously collected by the Commission. Nevertheless, I had direct contact with some victims through other work-related activities. Victims’ voices are often unheard and under-researched. In this sense, my academic concerns are directly focused on the psychological well-being of victims. I have been neither ethically nor emotionally immune to the suffering and the brutality of the harm done to my research subjects. Nowadays in Ecuador, victims’ movements are politically divided, some supporting the current government and others opposing it. 4 5

Mesa Nacional de Víctimas, personal communication of December 2014. Comprised of an interdisciplinary team of sociologists, psychologists and lawyers. External training, including informal meetings and interchanges with the researcher, have helped to establish their working principles and guidelines.

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I  sympathize with their struggling in search of justice and I admire their strength to maintain it. As an Ecuadorian I have also my political position, which aligns with the former President Correa’s administration, but as an academic I have to maintain my objectivity; especially during field trips and data analysis, listening to the different perspectives and offering my support indiscriminately when needed.

TRAUMA, RECOGNITION AND RECOVERY Freud defined trauma as an excess that cannot be assimilated by the subject – an overstimulation from an unexpected and excessive force of excitation and the breaking through of the protective shield against stimuli (Freud 1926). Freud argued that the traumatic effects persist because the system was initially unprepared for the stimulus and seeks to master it retroactively (Freud 1950). Lacan (1964/1987) observes that traumatic encounters ‘resist signification’, and what cannot be symbolized returns in the Real, meaning the unconscious that cannot be represented or processed along the chains of associations and communicated to others, causing disruption of usual ways of being and functioning in the social, symbolic order (living with others). From a Lacanian perspective, the failure of symbolizing the trauma is a failure of the Other, meaning the symbolic order and significant others. Trust is importantly damaged in this sense: hence the importance of doing clinical work on two levels, the subjective and the social. Herman (1997) defines trauma as ‘an affliction of the powerless. At the moment of trauma, the victim is rendered helpless by overwhelming force… Traumatic events shortcut the ordinary systems of care that give people a sense of control, connection and meaning’ (p.24). According to Hamber (2004), political trauma is about the destruction of the individual and/or the social and political structures of a society. It impacts the subject but also affects whole communities. Political trauma often aims to undermine the social relationships between individuals, as well as between individuals and society at large. In this sense, political trauma relates to a close, ongoing circular interaction between an individual’s psychological state and his or her social environment. The concept of recognition emerges from the master–slave dialec­ tic developed by Hegel in his The Phenomenology of Spirit in 1807

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(Hegel 1977/1807). For Hegel, recognition is the mechanism by which individual identity is generated. Therefore, successful integration as ethical and political subjects within a particular community is dependent upon receiving (and conferring) appropriate forms of recognition. As Vanheule, Lievrouw and Verhaeghe (2003) affirm from a Lacanian perspective, symbolic recognition of the other is the foundation of intersubjectivity. ‘Only because they are recognized by other people can human beings acquire a place in a social network’ (p.323). The notion of recovery is a complex one. The term comes from the medical and PTSD fields, entailing categories of health and sickness, cure, rehabilitation and healing, among others. It refers to systems that can restore and maintain a healthy and potentially optimal model of functioning (Wilson, Friedman and Lindy 2004, p.9). For Herman (1997, p.94), recovery is based upon a sense of basic safety, trauma reconstruction and connections between survivors and their community. Recovery may be signified by the mobilization of faculties such as the basic capacities for trust, autonomy, initiative, competence, identity and intimacy. The present study offers a psychosocial perspective on how victims produce new symbolizations (understanding, integrating and proving new meanings) in response to their experiences of horror through the presence or absence of social validation (with the Other as a social-cultural discourse).

THE REAL AND THE (IM-)POSSIBILITY OF SYMBOLIZING TRAUMATIC EVENTS In situations of extreme violence, when individuals are directly confronted with death or with radical situations of abuse and loss, it becomes very difficult for them to find words to create a narrative of events. When remembering such atrocities, individuals usually experience overwhelming feelings of shame, guilt and anger. It is frequently observed that when the subject tries to communicate his deepest and most hidden emotions, representation of the trauma becomes a difficult task and the subject is confronted with a lacuna, a failure of inscription in the psyche. Some authors suggest that what is not thought, the unthinkable, is maintained through repetition and contained in a psychic extra-territoriality that represents the traumatized individual (Kaës 1988; Ulriksen de Viñar 1997).

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Trauma becomes a non-symbolic, unchallengeable remnant of the Real ingrained in the psyche. In Lacanian terms, trauma is represented as a lack of form, content and space; pure emptiness as such or the Real itself (Sorbille 2008, p.88). There are no representations, there is no symbolization, only marks, primitive anguish, physical sensations. Trauma (the Real) speaks through symptoms like a ‘hole in the mind’. Sorbille (2008) writes that ‘the layers of symbolic language (signifiers) try to cover the traumatic non-symbolic Real, the latter always inhabits language. As a result of this operation, the Real has grown to be an indivisible part of the Symbolic: it is the grain of sand around which the pearl has formed’ (p.88). There is no final point; as Herman (1997, p.142) states, ‘the reconstruction of the trauma is never entirely completed; new conflicts and challenges at each new stage of the lifecycle will inevitably reawaken the trauma and bring some new aspect of the experience to light’. The same endlessness quality applies to recovery and reparation processes: as Figlio, from a more Kleinian perspective (2014, p.440), states: ‘Reparation has no endpoint, no moment to declare…what reparation brings into discussion the question of “when is it enough?”’

THE ‘OTHER’ AND THE ROLE OF SOCIAL RECOGNITION From a psychoanalytical perspective, social and intimate elaboration in the symbolic plays an important role for the preservation of the psyche. Both the individual sense of the trauma and the possibility of maintaining or obtaining the adequate social support are linked to the social processing of the traumatic situation (Kordon and Edelman 1995, p.103). Marcelo Viñar, repeating the demands of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and relatives of the disappeared in Chile and Uruguay, affirms that: ‘It is necessary to disclose, to know what has happened.’ These are the most intense desires of all survivors: to break the silence, to raise awareness, finding and receiving recognition from the other. Without this disclosure each missing family, every child of a tortured prisoner carries within his psyche a living corpse (Viñar 1990, p.57). As Verhaeghe (2004, p.327) affirms, ‘In cases where the Other doesn’t respond, all the subject can do is to take the guilt upon itself.’ Viñar

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(2012, p.101) suggests that after social catastrophes ‘a great obstacle exists: none or almost any of the love and common human kindness can have the necessary quality and intensity to counteract the amount of horror suffered. Only a long journey will allow the restoration of faith (and maybe only partially) in the goodness of another human being.’ Unlike trauma as a result of natural disasters, when trauma is experienced in social catastrophes (where usually destructive intent is present), basic human trust is dissolved. Political trauma transforms its victims into strangers, aliens to a story that they cannot recognize as their own (Kaës 1991, p.162). Even when a portion of the traumatic experience can be transformed into words, there is always another portion that will never be able to be symbolized. There is a quantum of horror that is impossible to symbolize, that belongs to the category of the unthinkable (Díaz 2005a). Whereas many psychologies conceptualize trauma as something that emotionally ‘wounds’ the subject (from Greek, trauma equals wound), for Lacanian psychoanalysis, trauma is what destabilizes the reality of the subject (Sorbille 2008, p.92). As Laurent (2002) points out, a different Other must be created after trauma. Recognition at the social and therapeutic level would entail the association of current feelings to the history, assigning potential words to horror. Symbolism establishes continuity in the history and lets the victim build and rebuild a sense of identity that enables the recognition of both past and present, filling with meanings the gaps in the psychic structure, linking fragmented pieces of memory, and rebuilding the continuity of existence (Díaz 2005b, p.6). ✳✳✳ Having described the socio-political context, I have set out and explored the theoretical and conceptual territory. Now, following Stavrakakis (1999, p.4), in the next chapter Lacanian theory will be used to sustain an interplay between psychoanalysis, socio-political analysis and victims’ own experience. I will present research material in order to explore the role that positive reparatory effects of social recognition at the macro and micro level may have on how subjects experience trust, self-confidence and relief. I will stress through concrete examples that interventions with an ethical focus on the subject may not only constitute means to desired ends but may become positive reparatory interventions in themselves:

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encouraging solidarity, agency and a sense of shared experience, which are important elements for recognition and repair.

REFERENCES Bárcena, A. (2016) América Latina y el Caribe es la región más desigual del mundo. ¿Cómo solucionarlo? CEPAL. Accessed on 28/11/2017 at www.cepal.org/es/ articulos/2016-america-latina-caribe-es-la-region-mas-desigual-mundo-comosolucionarlo Díaz, M​. (2005a) ‘Efectos traumáticos de la represión política en Chile: una experiencia clínica.’ Revista Chilena de Psicoanálisis 22, 1, 19–28.​ Díaz, M. (2005b) ‘Aspectos clínicos del reconocimiento y reconstrucción e la subjetividad en pacientes severamente traumatizados.’ Revista Virtual ILAS, Vol. 4. Accessed on 29/12/2017 at www.ilas.cl/revista.html# Donoso, G. (2014) ‘La Reparación Como Proceso. La Contribución de los Espacios Psicosociales para una Justicia Reparativa. La Experiencia de la Corte Penal Internacional.’ In J.A. Mejía and G. Ballesteros de León (eds) Tres Miradas Latinoamericanas a la Justicia Penal Internacional. Colombia, Honduras y México. Tegucigalpa: Guaymuras. El Comercio (2014) ‘Los 7 triunfos de Correa en las urnas.’ 15 January 2014. Accessed on 28/11/2017 at www.elcomercio.com/actualidad/politica/triunfos-de-correaurnas.html ENEMDU (2014) Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas y Censos, Encuesta Nacional de Empleo, Desempleo y Subempleo, ENEMDU Indicadores de Pobreza y Desigualdad. Accessed on 26/1/2015 at www.ecuadorencifras.gob.ec/documentos/web-inec/ POBREZA/2014/marzo-2014/140415%20PobrezaMarzo.pdf Evans, D. (1996) An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge. Figlio, K. (2014) ‘Psychoanalysis, reparation and historical memory.’ American Imago 71, 417–444. Fletcher, L. and Weinstein, H. (2002) ‘Violence and social repair: rethinking the contribution of justice to reconciliation.’ Human Rights Quarterly 24, 573–639. Freud, S. (1926) Hemmung, Symptom und Angst. (Inhibition, Symptom and Anxiety.) Vienna: Int. Psychoalytischer Verlag. Freud, S. (1950) Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Translated by J. Strachey. London: Hogarth Press. Hamber, B. (2004) ‘The Impact of Trauma: A Psychosocial Approach.’ Keynote Address. Paper presented at the A Shared Practice–Victims Work in Action Conference, Radisson Roe Park Hotel, Limavady, Northern Ireland, 7–8 April. Hegel, G.W.F. (1977) The Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A.V. Miller. Oxford: Clarendon Press. (Original work published in 1807.) Herman, J. (1997) Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. New York: Basic Books. IDEA-IIDH (2005) Verdad, Justicia y Reparación. Desafíos para la Democracia y la Convivencia Social. San José: IDEA.

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International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) (2008) Global Truth Commissions. Accessed on 2/5/2017 at www.ictj.org/publication/truth-commissions International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT) (2014) In Pursuit of Justice: The Importance of Psychosocial Support for Torture Victims Participating in Legal Proceedings. Copenhagen: IRCT. Kaës, R.​​(1988) ​‘La realidad espíquica y el sufrimiento en las instituciones.’ Dunod. Institución e instituciones. Psychoanalytical Studies 978, 1, 49, 128–133. K​aë​s, R. ​​(1991) ‘Apuntalamiento múltiple y estructuración del psiquismo.’ In Revista de la Asociación Argentina de Psicología y Psicoterapia de Grupo. Tomo XV, nos 3 and 4, Buenos Aires. Kordon, D. and Edelman, L.​(​1995)​‘Asistencia psicoterapéutica.’ In D. Kordon et al. La Impunidad. Una perspectiva psicosocial y clínica. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana. Lacan, J. (1999) Seminario V. Las formaciones del inconsciente. Buenos Aires: Paidós. (Original work published in 1957.) Lacan, J. (1987) Los Cuatro Conceptos Fundamentales del Psicoanálisis, Libro 11. Barcelona: Paidós. (Original work published in 1964.) Laurent, E. (2002) ‘El revés del trauma.’ Virtualia, June–July, II, No. 6. Lykes, B. and Mersky, M. (2008) ‘Reparations and Mental Health: Psychosocial Interventions Towards Healing, Human Agency, and Rethreading Social Realities.’ In P. De Greiff (ed.) The Handbook for Reparations. International Center for Transitional Justice. New York: Oxford University Press. McSherry, J.P. (2005)  Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Senplades (National Secretariat of Planning and Development) (2013) National Development Plan/National Plan for Good Living 2013–2017. Summarized Version. Quito. Accessed on 29/12/2017 at www.forosecuador.ec/forum/ecuador/ educaci%C3%B3n-y-ciencia/3193-resumen-del-plan-nacional-para-el-buenvivir-2013-2017 Sorbille, M. (2008) ‘Argentine military terrorism (1976–1983). Insatiable desire, disappearances, and eruption of the traumatic gaze-real in Alejandro Agresti’s film: Buenos Aires Viceversa (1996).’ Cultural Critique 68, 86–128. Stavrakakis, Y. (1999) Lacan and the Political. London: Routledge. Truth Commission of Ecuador (2010) No Justice without Truth. Quito: TCE. Ulriksen de Viñar, M. (1997) ‘Notas para pensar el terror de estado y sus efectos en la subjetividad.’ [‘Notes on thinking about the terrorism of the state and its effects on subjectivity.’] Revista Uruguaya de Psicoanálisis 86, 129–144. Ulriksen de Viñar, M.U. (2012) ‘Political violence: transgenerational inscription and trauma.’ International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies 9, 2, 95–108. Valencia, A. (2011) ‘Paraguay y Ecuador: Memorias Compartidas: Las Comisiones de Verdad de Paraguay y Ecuador.’ In Instituto Interamericano de Derechos Humano (eds) Contribución de las políticas de verdad, justicia y reparación a las democracias en América Latina. San José: IIDH. Vanheule, S., Lievrouw, A. and Verhaeghe, P. (2003) ‘Burnout and intersubjectivity: a psychoanalytical study from a Lacanian perspective.’ Human Relations Journal 56, 3, 321–338.

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Verbitsky, H. (2016) ‘Malditos sean los datos.’ Página 12, 7 March 2016. Accessed on 1/5/2017 at www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-293968-2016-03-07.html Verhaeghe, P. (2004) On Being Normal and Other Disorders: A Manual for Clinical Psychodiagnostics. Translated by S. Jottkandt. New York: Other Press.​ Viñar, M. (1990) ‘Foreword.’ In D. Gil, El Terror y la Tortura. Colección Biblioteca de Psicoanálisis, EPPAL Ltda., Uruguay. Wemmers, J. (2009) ‘Victims and the International Criminal Court (ICC): evaluating the success of the ICC with respect to victims.’ International Review of Victimology 16, 2, 211–227. Wilson, J., Friedman, M.J. and Lindy, J.D. (2004) Treating Psychological Trauma and PTSD. New York: Guilford Press. Zanin Martins, C., Teixeira Zanin Martins, V. and Valim, R. (2017) The Case of Lula – The Fight for the Affirmation of Fundamental Rights in Brazil. Buenos Aires: Editorial Astrea.

Chapter 6

PSYCHOSOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF POLITICAL TRAUMA AND SOCIAL RECOGNITION II Experiences from the Truth Commission of Ecuador GINA DONOSO

INTRODUCTION As discussed in the first segment of this study, in the previous chapter, transitional justice, and more specifically psychosocial interventions in the form of reparations processes, can provide recognition to victims of State violence in an effective and sensitive way. I addressed the intraand inter-subjective dimensions of the impacts of gross human rights violations and focused on how social recognition to victims may help to produce new symbolizations, integrating and providing new meanings to their experiences of horror. I explored the role of social recognition in the reparation processes of victims from both macro (political-judicial) and micro (psychosocial) perspectives, aiming to fill a gap that remains largely unstudied in political trauma. In the second segment of this study, in this chapter, I will present testimonies from victims of State violence in Ecuador (specifically from a sample of cases of the Truth Commission of Ecuador (TCE)). Using the Lacanian concepts of the Real, the Other and the symbolic order, this chapter shows, through the recognition of victims’ voices, how expectations of social validation may generate frustration, mistrust and 101

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perceptions of unfairness when these expectations are not met. The positive reparatory effects of social recognition and solidarity as creative responses to State violence are explored both at the macro, societal level (the work of the TCE) and at the micro, interpersonal level, within the research model itself.

METHODOLOGY Participants A sample of participants was chosen based on the cases of the Final Report of the TCE. Thirty-seven subjects were invited to participate. Participants were selected using the following criteria: (a) level of access to justice; (b) level of political involvement; and (c) geographical location. In my role of researcher, I approached the leaders or more visible figures of the various cases, either face to face or by telephone, with the assistance of various current or former officials of the TCE.1 The objectives and methodology of the study were explained to the participants, and once they accepted, these persons were asked to extend the invitation to five to seven other persons involved in their cases. Participants who had experienced horizontal recognition (social or media acknowledgement) participated in three focus groups. Four groups were formed by individuals who had experienced vertical recognition (justice, compensation or political involvement). This distinction was made in order to compare how social recognition impacts differentially in the different groups. Contrasts were expected, based upon the distinction of the power inter-relations behind them. An official recognition from the Other (e.g. public judgement, public apologies or State compensation) will have different value and significance from any other act of recognition, for instance from one’s social circle. Research suggests (Martín-Baró 1990) that a methodology based on groups is the best way to work with survivors of torture and political violence in order to create a conscious, political understanding of the traumatic events (Lira 1991; Sveaass 2000). ‘For survivors of prolonged, repeated trauma, groups can be a powerful source of validation and 1 Among others, the Director of the National Committee of Victims of Human Rights Violations and their Relatives – Truth Commission, the Director of the Truth Commission’s Unit of the Office of the Prosecutor, and the Advisor of the Ombudsperson Office and former Executive Director of the TCE.

Experiences from the Truth Commission of Ecuador

support’ (Herman 1997, p.157). A participatory and ethical dimension was thus given to the data collection process. Background of the focus groups and their participants Sabanilla Case

This case concerns 35 students who were arbitrarily detained and tortured by the army in Célica, Loja, in August 1986, after attending a student camp (TCE 2010, p.358). Damián Peña Case

This case concerns a secondary school student, Damián Peña, who was executed by a police officer in January 2002 while participating in a demonstration at the University of Cuenca (TCE 2010, p.379). Miners’ Association ‘10 de Enero’ Case

This case concerns the violent mass eviction of 59 miners of the miners’ association Cooperativa de Mineros 10 de Enero, and their families, conducted by the National Police in November of 1987, in the province of El Oro (TCE 2010, p.365). Some individuals were detained and later died at the hands of the National Police. The Governor of El Oro province, Carlos Falquéz Batallas, was also held to be responsible (TCE 2010, p.258). The ‘Jorge IV’ Case

The fishing vessel ‘Jorge IV’ was sunk on 6 June 2002, allegedly by the US Navy, which was carrying out operations against drug trafficking in Ecuador and operating from a military base located in the Ecuadorian coastal city of Manta. The TCE briefly analysed the case and merely recommended that further investigations should be conducted. Thus the case has not yet been included in the relevant legislation covering reparation and prosecutions.2

2

Ley para la Reparación de las Víctimas y la Judicialización de Graves Violaciones de Derechos Humanos y Delitos de Lesa Humanidad Ocurridos en el Ecuador entre el 4 de Octubre de 1983 y el 31 de Diciembre de 2008, R.O. No. 143, 13 December 2013.

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Name of the case

Sabanilla Case

Miners’ Association ‘10 de Enero’ case

Desaparecidos del Jorge IV Case

Damián Peña Case

Alfaro Vive Carajo (AVC) Case

Taura Case

Alfaro Vive Carajo (AVC) Case

Focus group number

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Table 6.1: Participants

7

Number of participants

Illegal detention, torture 1984–8

Torture 1986

Illegal detention, torture, sexual abuse 1984–8

Student murdered by the police 2002

Enforced disappearance 2002

4

6

5

5

5

Murder, torture 5 1987

Torture 1986

Type and date of the violations

Preliminary investigations have started. Partial commemorative measures have taken place.

An amnesty law was passed in their favour in 2008.

Preliminary investigations have started. Partial commemorative measures have taken place.

Trial (accused was acquitted).

Judicial proceedings had not started at the time of the research process. This case was included a posteriori in the TCE final report.

Judicial proceedings had not started at the time of the research process.

Judicial proceedings had not started at the time of the research process.

Status of the legal proceedings

Loja

Geographical location

Manta

Some members work for the current government.

No political involvement.

Some members work for the current government.

Guayaquil

Guayaquil

Quito

Leading member Cuenca became a social activist for their case.

Mostly local in their city and province and specifically for their case.

Machala/ Leading member Cuenca became a social activist for their case.

Some of the participants work for the current government.

Political involvement

Pedro, Jimmy, Pedro

Alfredo, Daniel, Juan, Dimas, Pedro, Jimmy

Mireya, Ketty, Tere, Patricio, Yolanda

Sonia, Fanny, María, José, Pancho

Cruz, Estrella, Gladys, Hermengildo, Tomás

Victor, Rosario, Daniel, Rubén, María

Augusto, Yoder, Miguel, Manito, Anibal, Jefferson, Carlos

Participants

Experiences from the Truth Commission of Ecuador

Alfaro Vive Carajo Cases (two focus groups: Quito and Guayaquil)

During the Febres Cordero government, the organization Alfaro Vive Carajo (AVC) committed armed propaganda actions and bank robberies as a method of financing its operations. The regime responded to AVC with a policy of State terrorism: extrajudicial executions, physical and psychological torture, arbitrary detention and rape. This persecution extended to other social and political leftist leaders, students and syndicalist groups (TCE 2010, p.32). The Taura Case

This case concerns a military revolt against President Febres Cordero in different cities in January 1987. Members of the Air Force were detained incommunicado, tortured and court-martialled. Around 60 officers received long prison sentences. In 1998 a new law granted them a pardon.

Measures All focus groups were facilitated by the author. At the beginning of each focus group, all participants were instructed about the objective and methodology of the study and they received information on the potential psychological effects of disclosing distressing situations. The respondents were also informed of their right to cease collaboration at any point. Based on this information, all participants signed an informed consent form. Focus groups were asked semi-structured questions about what helped them to cope with their experiences (e.g. justice, psychotherapy) and what they would have liked to happen (or still to happen in the future). Each focus group session was audiotaped.3 There was considerable flexibility in terms of topics and discussion time (two to three hours). At the end of each session, participants were offered the author’s contact details in case they needed future assistance. The author made random calls to different participants after each focus group session to check their well-being. All participants agreed to continue and no incidents were reported. Most sessions were emotive, and the participants recalled and explained their traumatic events with lively feelings. They experienced the support of the author, but also, most importantly, of other group members. The environment of confidence, trust and rapport 3

Audios and transcriptions in the author’s possession.

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allowed the participants to share intimate information and to find some comfort alongside their peers. Two special measures were built into the methodological design of this study in line with the theoretical assumptions: 1. In order to avoid adverse reactions that could not be properly contained and might lead to secondary victimization, the author attended psychotherapeutic sessions when working in the field and continued personal analysis throughout the research. As Herman (1997, p.102) states, ‘work with traumatized people requires an ongoing support system to deal with these intense reactions. Just as no survivor can recover alone, no therapist can work with trauma alone.’ 2. In order to encourage participation and agency from the respondents, validity-check sessions were implemented during the second field trip to Ecuador in 2015. In these sessions, the author shared the most relevant ideas and conclusions of this study, and invited active participation and discussion. Two important findings emerged: the participants agreed with the key ideas and conclusions and they unanimously requested that their anonymity be waived in this study. They explicitly requested this identification since they considered this research on their stories to constitute another form of recognition.

Analysis Transcriptions of the audio files were made by two Ecuadorian transcribers and the author, in a literal format to preserve the original narrative and interaction. All transcriptions were reviewed for accuracy against the audio-recordings. Each transcript was then methodologically processed using Grounded Theory.4 The interviews were analysed in detail and coded using the qualitative research software NVivo. After initial coding, which included thematic and inductive forms, the author reviewed the coding of all seven cases and resolved any discrepancies. Codes were grouped 4 Grounded Theory is an inductive methodology in the social sciences involving the construction of theory through methodological gathering and analysis of data.

Experiences from the Truth Commission of Ecuador

into co-ordinating codes and matrices, using a Lacanian theoretical frame to explore how recovery from political trauma may be connected to recognition.

RESULTS The experience of the group participants was classified and analysed using six variables: 1. State recognition 2. Social memory 3. Geographical location 4. Access to justice 5. Access to psychosocial interventions 6. Solidarity and political agency

1. State recognition5 Political violence is exercised by the State, which should be the guarantor of rights: it is the Other with the capacity to resignify this inverted order. This explains why participants from both sub-groups demanded comprehensive reparations from the State. However, most participants from the non-political groups were living in disadvantaged socioeconomic conditions, and the analysis shows that they tended to focus more on economic reparations. Mostly these were requested for the benefit of relatives or other companions. You can imagine… If I could buy a little house…ehmm maybe my children might say – the suffering of my parents or their own suffering, well…it was worth it…perhaps, that may help to soften that resentment against

5

In principle, participants of both groups studied are victims of political violence, since the State has either actively participated in the violence or has omitted its actions. However, for research analysis purposes, the groups were divided into groups with differing political involvement: on one side, those who suffered violence specifically because of their political actions and ideology; on the other side, those who suffered violence not linked to any political motivation on their own part.

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humanity they have…for example…in the case of my son, he wanted to commit suicide…those are consequences that still endure…look…he was a little boy who felt despair and he witnessed the shootings and people fleeing…this is very sad… (Rubén)

There has been historical stigmatization around economic reparation, with victims and survivors systematically accused of wanting money as their ultimate goal (Correa, Guillerot and Magarrell 2009; Letschert and van Dijk 2011). One participant showed some embarrassment at stating her request for compensation: María: I don’t know how you take this…but our hope is the…economic compensation…that is why we have organized ourselves here…to get compensation and mmm…maybe we think to start a small business, and that’s the hope we have. Interviewer: And why is it important for you what I think about that? María: …Because…many people…say…that we are interested in money… they don’t know what we are going through. They think that we, as women, want the money for something else…like we want the money for that…as they say…to buy a man…but no, it’s not like that!

On the other hand, sub-groups with a political background were more preoccupied with vertical recognition and the acknowledgement of abuses of power and assaults upon their good name. For them the OtherState is important in its more symbolic functions. The key issue is the social repair of our names, of our dignity. Here in the province and at national level…I have personally said that I do not want to have a feeling of revenge and to see Gallardo [the alleged perpetrator] in jail. I want him to recognize his mistakes publicly on the media. That he abused his authority… He has to recognize it. For me, it is not necessary that he spends 20 or 40 years in prison, what is important is that he recognizes. (Augusto)

Political sub-groups spoke more about their need and capacity to integrate traumatic experiences into their current lives. For most of them their political backgrounds allowed them – not without a lot of suffering and broken life projects – to signify their experiences of horror. It is noteworthy that most of the participants who discussed

Experiences from the Truth Commission of Ecuador

this symbolization process were involved in the political project of the former President Correa’s administration and found in public service their possibility for reparation.6 Research on political trauma has emphasized the role of political activism as catalyser of anger and bereavement (Herman 1997). Psychoanalytically speaking, rage, feelings of revenge and other difficult emotions can be creatively redirected into more socially accepted manifestations such as political actions or artistic expressions. None of this, however, means giving up the quest for justice, but it may be transformed into a collective process in pursuit of solidarity. On the personal side, I managed to link my study and my work to finish school and go to college. Like Anibal and Juanito, we come from a very poor social strata. We were the heads of our homes, so we worked on the construction, in mechanics, carpentry. In my case I managed to study and pay my studies at school and university. I learned to do theatre. We did it with Augusto for about ten years, looking for some kind of recognition in another aspect that is to show people who we were and that we are good people… We didn’t miss the idea of being political and social leaders. Almost all of us continue working in politics. This experience has served me to affirm my ideological and political positions, entrenching good, convinced that the path of change is on the left… I work with people and multi-problematic families where there is domestic violence, there are addictions. Then I have worked in jails in Quito, and I understand, somehow, what it is to be imprisoned, those people also went through torture, when I talk with these people I find it sometimes easier, I feel that my voice cracks at times but this allows me to identify with the people I talk…but these things move me so much because this recall is very hard…but we are overcoming… This has helped me a lot personally and professionally to grow. I did not build the life project I wanted, but I built another one and I still continue building it with great difficulty but ehmm… The government thought it could break us, remove our entire political ideas. They did not make it. Most of us are still in this process. (Yoder)

Within both sub-categories of focus group, participants discussed feelings  of loneliness and helplessness which they experienced in the aftermath of the violations committed against them. There was a 6

One of them is Mireya Cardenas, who started the struggle for the establishment of the Truth Commission in Ecuador.

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profound sense of the absence of the Other in the figure of the State, the authorities and society in general. These feelings were especially strong after specific key moments such as public testimonies: Patricio: I remember that I was giving my testimony at the Truth Commission. It took six hours. Then I left and I was completely disoriented… That was very hard… I re-experienced the former reality with such intensity that I said, what now? What do I do with my life? Mireya: I remember when I presented my testimony the first time. When I left… My god! What a helplessness! I felt a terrible helplessness!… Patricio: That’s the term. It is helplessness. I hadn’t found it. I felt helpless, I said life is pointless. Tere: Helplessness…because you give something that was exclusively yours, it is uniquely yours, the experience was exclusively for having released, somehow…it is not yours any more.

2. Social memory Groups were also analysed according to the political period during which the violation was committed. Participants victimized during the period 1984–1988, when the commission of human rights abuses was State policy, showed more interest in discussing the roles of justice and historic memory. For these groups, questions of social memory and justice matter because it is important that the whole societal discourse in its Otherness position recognize them. I think that it is important that [the violations] have come to the public light…because young people do not know what they did to us. I think this helps us to keep alive…alive…all the torture that occurred at that time, at the time of…Febres Cordero, the rancid oligarchy, as I said, to not commit again the same kind of atrocities that were committed against us, deaths and torture… (Pedro)

One focus group debated what should be recognized. Some participants (mainly women) argued for the subjective hardship that they endured for their ideological convictions to be recognized. The male participants believed that what should be recognized is the political struggle itself and the social value of their ideological and political position.

Experiences from the Truth Commission of Ecuador

3. Geographical location Participants from smaller cities, usually from lower socio-economic levels, discussed economic compensation and psychosocial support more than other forms of recognition. Although their demand appears to be entirely economic, it inevitably includes important psychological needs as well. From a psychosocial perspective, it is absolutely a given that the psychological and the social interact; however, this doesn’t seem well understood in legal and political spheres. In countries like Ecuador where important segments of the urban and rural populations still face high levels of poverty and difficulties in accessing the public healthcare system (especially psychological services), compensation plays a particularly important role. Cruz: The general doctors do not refer me to a specialist, they send me to a psychologist. Interviewer: And…why have you not consulted a psychologist? Cruz: Because it is very expensive and time consuming. Sometimes I don’t have the money. Sometimes I have to work and we work, most of the time, just to eat. A psychologist costs the same as a doctor: $40…and $40 for me… It’s almost a month of work…

The absence of the Other in terms of public healthcare is experienced by these participants as a concrete area to be repaired by the State.

4. Access to justice Participants who had started judicial trials discussed more frequently the need for other forms of horizontal recognition (e.g. media attention), whereas people whose legal trials had not started or were in preliminary stages more frequently demanded justice. A member of one focus group (Sabanilla Case) of youth leaders who suffered tortures and illegal detention because they were accused of being ‘terrorists’, and whose case had yet to come before the courts, confirms this very clearly: We have a feeling of powerlessness. When someone attacks us, we have to respond. It’s like a defence mechanism. We try to say ‘do not see us like that, do not judge us’. Like trying to not feel powerless and not feeling judged as we felt at the moment when we were arrested. We were tortured atrociously.

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Then we react with anger. It is like a sense of justice. When they arrested us illegally and tortured us, we feel powerless. Then, when we find people who judge us, we feel free to answer them with anger. Because we haven’t found justice until now, the people who tortured us were even promoted… We are outraged and we continue to be stigmatized. Sometimes we have tried to overcome it with humour. It has affected our families, our wives and children. We felt powerlessness that somehow our names are stained or our person is stained and we do not find a sense of justice. Maybe they need to go to jail, or just recognize that we were not, were not responsible for this. I think this will fill in a big void in our lives because I feel persecuted…and sometimes we do not react well with innocent people. (Yoder)

A difficult discussion on impunity and re-victimization likewise took place with members of a family group that lost a 14-year-old child, shot by police in 2002 (Damián Peña Case). The judicial trial had finished just a few days before we held the focus group, with the main defendant acquitted of the charge of involuntary manslaughter.7 When expectations of reparation, recognition and social validation from the Other generate frustrations because of silence and injustice, a more intense traumatic sequence obtains, exacerbated by feelings and experiences of impotence, helplessness and social exclusion.

5. Access to psychosocial interventions Horizontal recognition, in the form of social recognition, was especially important for people from lower economic and social classes, reflecting the absence of the Other (State) in several aspects of their lives. People who have suffered violent acts from the very entity who should protect them (the State) will find that any form of recognition from the political sphere represents a big gesture that may even change their own perspective of their position as victims, survivors and even social actors. Rubén: …we never thought that this government would actually do this… they would count on us. It is partially…a joy, a hope…

7

In May 2015, the National Court of Justice declared the proceedings null and the case will be investigated for human rights violations (El Comercio 2015).

Experiences from the Truth Commission of Ecuador

Victor: One day they called me and told me ‘the President has ordered us to communicate with you… And in two days they were already here. ‘The President has ordered us to follow your instructions and put ourselves at your service’… I felt happy and even happier because they asked me ‘help us to find your companions’, meaning it was not just me. I was happy. I was the happiest man when I read the reply of the President, signed by the President of the Republic!… Rosario: Which President has ever replied to a letter from poor people like us!

One especially interesting and rewarding result was the spontaneous acknowledgement of ‘being seen’ and ‘being heard’. This was especially important to those participants who had not experienced any kind of vertical recognition. There was a shared feeling of being recognized and understood for the first time. It is not uncommon, in Ecuador and elsewhere, to find survivors’ histories full of mistreatment, negligence and secondary victimization, especially from legal operators and State functionaries. Victims may be seen, or may fear being seen, as difficult and irritating, full of impossible demands. During the present research this subjective inter-relation became a key element. The author was initially experienced across a power differential which then gradually became more horizontal. Participants felt recognized and willing to share thoughts, share ideas and plan new actions. Cruz: I feel hope because we think ‘well, she has been interested in our problem’, you are sharing our pain… In other cases, it hasn’t been like this. You instead have taken care for us, you are concerned about us, and that gives us a hope… Gladys: …I’ve talked… We’ve heard ourselves… Estrella: You are the only one who has heard us, because the others came and didn’t care. Cruz: Yes, because we were already desperate you didn’t come. We were leaving, but with your words, with your tranquillity, with your serenity and listening to us, we’ve been sitting and staying here… (laughs) Interviewer: Thank you. I really appreciate your trust. Gladys: I was working… I left the business unattended with a daughter just to be here… Hermengildo: I did not go to mass either…

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Cruz: It is a hope that you give us, because this is making us feel like…if we were…important…

As victims and survivors themselves affirm, social recognition is not enough and will not replace justice or economic compensations. The fact victims could trust to an ‘other’ to tell their story, to experience a transitory recognition by this other who can share their grief in a safe environment, and who makes them feel ‘important’, is something that certainly helps and gives them some hope. These victims of State violence were injured in a legal, political and social arena, and only in such arenas will they be able to integrate their trauma. Often this integration must be done at a purely symbolic level: the disappeared will not come back, and torture injuries will always leave scars. However, the strength of reparations, their function, is to produce the legal, social and political components that allow people to mobilize their psyche, their subjectivity, towards processes that integrate trauma to their lives.

6. Solidarity and political agency One element across all the focus groups was that participants found some relief when they found support from an ‘other’. Also they felt recognized when they realized that they had the capacity to contribute to someone else’s well-being with their actions, usually someone from their close family and social network. For groups with a political background, their ideological beliefs were a strength and a resource to contribute to the whole society…to change or improve the Other. The focus groups were one of the few places where participants could share their traumatic experiences among themselves. They shared this need to be seen as someone who can contribute to the community. Repairing trauma from State violence can take place only within the socio-political context. The traumatic experience was produced on the macro level, affecting important capabilities such as trust, autonomy, identity and intimacy also at the more subjective level. Victor: My poor wife always looking for me, carrying me when I was drunk… She is ‘Iron Woman’… She has supported me even with my day and night drunkenness. She took care of me… I no longer cared about my life, absolutely nothing…

Experiences from the Truth Commission of Ecuador

Rosario: Neither your family’s lives. Victor: Nothing… I am recovering and leaving the evils… It was terrible… I thank God…I thank her. I owe her my life… Mireya: That’s when I remember that Julie [former therapist for refugees in Australia] told me ‘while they were doing things for themselves, you were fighting for others, even for them’.

CONCLUSION This study has discussed the effects of social recognition after traumatic events within political settings. It has reviewed concepts of State violence, political trauma, justice, impunity and reparation. Mooij affirms that justice is related to the field of the ‘lack’ (Mooij 2010, p.227). Justice is human, imperfect, scarce: its wheels turn proverbially slowly. The legal principle of restitutio in integrum (restoration of an injured party to the situation prior to the violation) is not achievable in cases of gross human rights abuses. Processes of reparation are paradoxical, in the sense that victims need them to be unlimited, but to be truly reparative, their boundaries must be accepted. In both sets of focus groups (vertical and horizontal recognition), participants discussed feelings of loneliness and helplessness that they have experienced throughout their lives. Both groups experienced a lack of response from the Other in the figure of the protective State. Social recognition differentially impacted upon the groups depending on the level and type of recognition received, which in turn depended upon the different power inter-relations behind them. Official recognition from the Other (e.g. public judgement, public apologies or State compensation) has different value and significance from any other act of recognition, for instance from one’s social circle. Both types of social recognition are necessary, but their urgency depends on the internal (local stigmatization) and external (real access to justice) circumstances of the victims. They reflect the micro and macro roots of the traumatic experience and the consequent areas to be repaired. Vertical processes are essential to rebuild a real sense of order and justice, but the role and impact of diverse forms of horizontal recognition should also be further researched.

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The shared bond that is created during the encounter between victims and researchers and other practitioners may generate a reparative impact on the survivor’s life. Only when the victims feel that they are recognized as subjects with a specific history of victimization, and with a specific demand to be repaired, might they be willing to live with the cleavage, the duality of their existence: might they accept the unacceptable and at the same time continue their existential struggle. A restitutio in integrum might be a utopia, but, as Galeano (1993, p.230) wrote, the idea of this utopia is essential to the path of reparation and the pursuit of justice: La utopía está en el horizonte, me acerco dos pasos, ella se aleja dos pasos. Camino diez pasos y el horizonte se corre diez pasos más allá. Por mucho que yo camine, nunca la alcanzaré. ¿Para qué sirve la utopía? Para esos sirve: para caminar. (Utopia lies at the horizon. When I draw nearer by two steps, it retreats two steps. If I proceed ten steps forward, it swiftly slips ten steps ahead. No matter how far I go, I can never reach it. What, then, is the purpose of utopia? It is to cause us to walk.)

REFERENCES Correa, C., Guillerot, J. and Magarrell, L. (2009) ‘Reparations and Victim Participation: A Look at the Truth Commission Experience.’ In C. Ferstman, M. Goetz and A. Stephens (eds) Reparations for Victims of Genocide, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity: Systems in Place and Systems in the Making. Leiden: Brill. El Comercio (2015) 31 May 2015. Accessed on 29/11/2017 at www.elcomercio.com/ actualidad/cuenca-damianpena-muerte-asesinato-derechoshumanos.html Galeano, E. (1993) ‘Las palabras andantes.’ Catálogos Editorial, Argentina. Herman, J. (1997) Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. New York: Basic Books. Letschert, R. and van Dijk, J. (2011) The New Faces of Victimhood: Globalization, Transnational Crimes and Victim Rights. London: Springer. Lira, E. (1991) ‘Psicoterapia de Víctimas de Represión Política Bajo Dictadura: Un Desafío Terapéutico, Teórico y Político.’ In ILAS, Derechos humanos: todo es según el dolor con que se mira. Santiago: CESOC. Martín-Baró, I. (1990) ‘Democracia y Reparación.’ In ILAS, Derechos humanos: todo es según el dolor con que se mira. Santiago: CESOC. Mooij, A.W.M. (2010) Intentionality, Desire, Responsibility: A Study in Phenomenology, Psychoanalysis and Law. Leiden: Brill. Sveaass, N. (2000) ‘From war hero to cripple: an interview study on psychosocial intervention and social reconstruction in Nicaragua.’ Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 6, 2, 113–133. TCE (Truth Commission of Ecuador) (2010) Final Report ‘No Justice without Truth’. Quito: TCE.

Chapter 7

STATE VIOLENCE AND STATE CREATIVITY Caring for Women and Girls Who Were Raped during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda BANDY X. LEE, GLORIEUSE UWIZEYE AND THILO KROLL

INTRODUCTION Sexual violence not only inflicts injury on the immediate victim but also results in community isolation, shame, and rejection of children born of rape. For many survivors of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, rape has had consequences far beyond the physical and psychological trauma associated with the attack, decades after the event. To mend injuries so profound, we need to make the leap to view them comprehensively as societal phenomena that require highly creative institutional solutions. Intervention at the governmental level, preferably with international collaborations, may then help co-ordinate the kind of rebuilding of a health care system capable of addressing them. This is exactly what the Rwandan example has done, to a greater or lesser degree, but in groundbreaking, creative ways at the State level that can be instructive. In this chapter, we review the literature as well as reports from clinical interviews to demonstrate the nature and the scope of harm from conflict-associated rape as well as approaches to social and individual healing. Sexual violence has long been a part of violent conflicts, although with great variation as to scale, type of violence, who is targeted, and whether such violence is the result of a specific tactic and plan (Wood 2006). Gender-based violence (GBV) is a broader umbrella term referring to any harm perpetrated against a person’s will that is rooted in socially and 117

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culturally ascribed power inequities through gender roles (Joachim 2003; also see Chapter 8, Volume 2). Research must take into consideration the different types of violence that can arise from culturally rooted gender norms and their dynamics as they play out in conflict situations. This can lead to guidelines for programme planning that effectively address the health and social needs of survivors while being sensitive to the interplay of personal, situational, and socio-cultural factors (Watts and Zimmerman 2002; Henttonen et al. 2008). Sexual violence represents a serious public health problem, which can later lead to debilitating illness and further violence, and seriously impede reconstruction efforts (Linos 2009). Enduring health and social consequences of wartime and genocidal rape are well established in the literature as well as in subjective reports. The pervasive harm to society, in particular, is the reason why sexual violence has become a weapon of war (Buss 2009) – highlighting the importance of building community reintegration and culturally appropriate educational and health care systems. Rwanda has found some creative responses that have been effective and can continue to inform and propagate efforts elsewhere.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF THE GENOCIDE IN RWANDA For centuries, Rwanda was a centralized monarchy. The population all came from the same cultural/linguistic group and was categorized into three social classes (Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa) based on economic status, which was measured by numbers of cows. Broadly speaking, Tutsi prosperity was vested in cow ownership and milk production, while Hutu socioeconomic status was located in land ownership and crop production. Rwandan kings were notionally drawn from the Tutsi class, although as monarchs they stood outside and above these classifications. The country became a German colony from 1899 until 1919, before Belgium took over after the First World War. It was during Belgian rule that these three social classes were constructed as official ethnic groups. Belgian anthropologists sought to define the body features that characterized each ‘ethnicity’. The tension mounted between the three ‘ethnicities’ that had previously lived in symbiotic harmony, and the introduction of ‘ethnically’ categorized identity cards created more concrete legal and social barriers between the different groups.

State Violence and State Creativity

In 1950, during the decolonization wave, colonialists augmented the tension between Hutu and Tutsi with the aim of creating division so as to be able to retain political control. They supported the Hutu to start a Hutu peasant revolution that claimed majority power and ultimately established a Hutu-led republic in 1962 (Republic of Rwanda 2017). The intent to decimate the Tutsi was prepared in the post-colonial period, during which episodes of murders and systematic violence against Tutsi families were carried out, the main ones being in 1963, 1973, 1991, and 1993 (Rutembesa 2009). The conflict came to a head in 1994, with a State-driven genocide. Crimes against humanity including systematic rape took place in Rwanda, perpetrated against the Tutsi. Over a period of only one hundred days, over one million Rwandans were killed. More than one million perpetrators were involved, including Hutu militias, government officials, soldiers, and policemen (Human Rights Watch 1996; Gacaca National Service 2012). It is now well known that the United Nations and the international community had information about the genocide since its early preparation stage and that prevention measures or early intervention would have saved many thousands of lives (Human Rights Watch 1996; Mutwarasibo 2012).

INSTRUMENTS OF STATE VIOLENCE: GENOCIDE AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN Throughout the genocide, individual rape, gang rape, sexual slavery, rape with objects, and sexual mutilation of women resulted in the degradation and humiliation of victims, and the destruction of communities (ReidCunningham 2008; Mullins 2009). Sexual violence against women in this context becomes a systemically organized military tactic of terror to generate fear in subdued populations, to humiliate the population, to denigrate the women, and to create a cohort of mixed ethnic children to maintain the humiliation, spoilage, and domination (Mullins 2009). Reports of use of rape in this manner have arisen from places such as Yugoslavia, Bangladesh, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Sharlach 2000; Diken and Lausten 2005; Bosmans 2007). Rape in Rwanda has generated up to 350,000 women victims (Diken and Lausten 2005). Some women suffered rape unto death, while others died slowly of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) or from the serious

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injuries resulting from rape (Human Rights Watch 1996; Wax 2004; Mukamana and Brysiewicz 2008). Unlike the Holocaust and other genocides in history, the genocide against the Tutsi is unique in its close proximity between victims and perpetrators (Mutwarasibo 2012). Victims experienced murder, mutilation, and violation by the very people they knew as neighbours, colleagues, and family members; some rape survivors continue to live in the same communities with their perpetrators. Other women would not return to their village to avoid facing their perpetrators or their families, as well as those who assisted in their rape (Human Rights Watch 1996; Wax 2004). Living with the long-term traumatic impact of rape is difficult under these circumstances, and psychosocial support needs for the female survivors and families persist. Unfortunately, war-torn regions that have the greatest health care needs are the very places that have undergone a dismantling of health care systems. These are also the regions where a fruitful collaboration with the Global North as a creative response to violent States can help alleviate the greatest suffering. In this review, we will juxtapose the stories of six women whom we clinically interviewed in the context of preparing a larger qualitative study 14 years after the Rwandan genocide. The purpose was to outline with social and cultural sensitivity areas of need and potential solutions where they exist. Table 7.1 characterizes the six women, whose names and identities have been altered for their protection. Table 7.1: Participant characteristics Pseudonym

Age in 1994

Brief presentation of participants

Faith

24 years

Faith is a single mother of three. Her firstborns are twins resulting from rape. Faith was raped by many men, and she does not know the father of her twins. She is not even interested in knowing him. She does not work but lives with her sister.

Claire

15 years

Claire is a single mother of a girl born as a result of being raped during the genocide. She was raped by many men, but one took her for a wife and had a child with her. She is not interested in knowing where he is. She owns a small business in town. She studied law but dropped out after her second year due to an inability to pay tuition fees.

Chantal

14 years

Chantal is a married woman with two children: an older daughter who is a result of rape, and a three-week-old son from her current husband. Through the rapes, she acquired HIV.

State Violence and State Creativity

Rose

16 years

Rose is a single woman. She is a farmer and a volunteer at Gacaca court (Rwandan tradition community justice). She survived with her grandmother and a younger sister who were also raped during the genocide. She cannot count how many men raped them, and she is not interested in getting married.

Alphonsine

39 years

Alphonsine is a widow whose husband was killed during the genocide. She survived with her children. She experienced multiple rapes on the roadside by anybody who wanted to rape her. She fled to Kabgayi, where she was also raped.

Marie

42 years

Marie is a widow who survived the genocide with her son and two daughters. Her daughters were raped with her and acquired HIV. One of them died. Marie’s hip was broken when men took turns raping her, and she still undergoes physiotherapy.

PHYSICAL CONSEQUENCES OF RAPE: CHRONIC ILLNESS AND DISABILITY The physical consequences of rape are significant (Peterman and Johnson 2009). Some women experience physical injuries for which they need to undergo surgical reconstruction (Human Rights Watch 1996). In Rwanda, among those who have survived, some are living with human immunodeficiency virus infection (HIV), AIDS, and other sexually transmitted diseases, as well as traumatic fistulae. Some victims are living with physical and cognitive impairments due to the brutality and physical injury during rape and the attempts to kill the victims. The nature and extent of these consequences and the handling of them vary over time. Rose stated that she acquired curable sexually transmitted illnesses (STIs). Chantal is infected with HIV; Marie has chronic leg pains as a daily reminder of the rape. Others reported disabilities and chronic pain such as a broken hip, back pain, and chronic headache.

PSYCHOSOCIAL CONSEQUENCES OF RAPE In the National Trauma Survey (NTS) of 1995, only one year after the events, ‘probable’ post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was identified in 62 per cent of the 9 to 18-year-old survivors (Neugebauer et al. 2009). On the other hand, estimations of the enduring prevalence of either PTSD or major depression as a result of the genocide is at 31 per cent, and co-occurrence of PTSD and major depression at 17.8 per cent (Eytan et al. 2014). Another study demonstrated that exposure to traumatic

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stressors, level of physical illness, and level of social integration were statistically significant predictors for PTSD symptom severity, while neither economic status nor age and gender were predictive (Rieder and Elbert 2013b). The lasting traumatic experiences of the women who were rape victims in the context of the Rwandan genocide thus extend well beyond the physical impact on their bodies and health.

Humiliation Violence against women in general causes physical or psychological harm, humiliation, or arbitrary deprivation of liberty in ways that perpetuate female subordination (Heise, Ellsberg and Gottmoeller 2002). A significant factor in the Rwandan genocide was that women underwent rape in the presence of their loved ones, such as fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, siblings, and other kin, in addition to friends and neighbours. This was purposeful, with the intent to increase the psychic and social pain on the part of both the victim and her family. Chantal described her experience in these words: ‘They raped me as well as my mother and my sister in our sitting-room close to my dad and my brother, whom they had seriously beaten, and forced them to watch us being raped.’ Rose said: ‘Interahamwe [members of a Hutu paramilitary group] and soldiers would rape me and my sister on my grandmother’s bed, while she was sleeping on the other side. She could do nothing.’ Women reported multiple rape experiences by known and unknown perpetrators, in different locations. Alphonsine put it this way: ‘I was raped by many people on my way to Gitarama. Anybody who would want me would take me on the road side and rape me; then I would get up and go crazy as I continued my journey… That is the worst death ever.’ Women reported a sense of enduring humiliation. For example, Claire and Chantal felt like running away from their villages, where their rape occurred in a context where neighbours knew or had witnessed what had happened to them. Chantal in fact had spent some time in Uganda before she was able to return home to Rwanda.

Impact on intimate relationships Mukamana and Brysiewicz (2008) discussed the loss of identity among girl rape survivors. They lost their status and became neither girls nor

State Violence and State Creativity

women. Faith, claiming that she cannot feel any love for men, stated: ‘Because of what I have seen, I did not get married. I feel I cannot live with a man in a house and feel happy with him.’ Chantal married in the year before the interview but felt that if she had not gone through what she experienced, she would have married a better man: ‘We were a happy family, we had everything, and on weekends my parents would take us out, so if I were not raped and got HIV, I would not have married this man and live in such a house and poverty.’

Children born of rape Rieder and Elbert (2013a) found that the level of child maltreatment in the context of the genocide in Rwanda was predictable by female sex, poverty, loss of the mother, and exposure to war. In addition, parents’ level of PTSD and reported child maltreatment were predictive. Poor physical health, exposure to war and genocide, parental PTSD, and childhood trauma showed significant association with depressive and anxious symptoms, while only exposure to war and genocide and poor physical health predicted the level of PTSD.

Acceptance and mother–child relationship Unwanted children are one of the women’s lifetime reminders. According to rape survivors interviewed by Mukamana and Brysiewicz (2008), rape babies cause ‘eternal torture’ (p.382). Human Rights Watch estimates that between 2000 and 5000 children were born as a result of the rape (Human Rights Watch 1996); others believe the number to be much higher, between 10,000 and 25,000, with under-reporting due to the shame and the stigma of rape (Wax 2004). Unlike in other countries where perpetrators intend babies of rape, the assumption in Rwanda is that perpetrators did not aim to have children with the Tutsi women (Sharlach 2010). In fact, some reports mention rejection of children by their fathers (Wax 2004). Whereas in some families there is support for these women to raise these children, others are alone in their responsibility to care for the children themselves. When children were born, some of the mothers had strong negative emotions toward their babies. Claire said: ‘When she was born, she was ugly, I did not breastfeed her, the breast-milk stopped shortly after she

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was born.’ Although Claire finally accepted her daughter, she sometimes views her behaviour as that of an Interahamwe: ‘She is very aggressive. When we have a conflict, I think that there is no good that can come from Interahamwe, but I do not tell her this.’ Chantal has never loved and accepted her daughter, so that the daughter has to stay with Chantal’s sister. On rare occasions, Chantal feels sorry for her daughter because what happened was not the daughter’s fault, but these thoughts do not lead to acceptance.

Children’s identity and behaviours Being born with an identity violently formed through wartime politics often handicaps children for life (Weitsman 2008). In our interviews, mothers reported that their children did not feel that they belonged to any group. They did not know their fathers, their fathers did not know them, and even those children who received their mothers’ acceptance do not necessarily experience acceptance by the mothers’ relatives and friends. Mothers reported behavioural problems among their children: withdrawal, talking to other children but not to the rest of the family, and aggression. These observations are consistent with the finding that children born of genocide rape experience obstacles to their psychological development (Van Ee, Kleber and Mooren 2012).

IMPLICATIONS FOR FUTURE PRACTICE AND PROVISION OF PROPER CARE In addition to being a survivor of war, genocide, death, and destruction, women who have experienced rape have to cope with the aftermath of the sexual violence (Human Rights Watch 1996). Victims describe the compounding of their horrors with overwhelming physical and psychological problems, poverty, and social isolation (Mukangendo 2007). Many in our sample described it as ‘worse than death’ because of the loss of dignity and identity, the ostracism – especially if pregnancy followed (Mukamana and Brysiewicz 2008) – and loss of hope for the future. These living conditions negatively affect the mental health of the survivors, and some have committed or attempted suicide (Wax 2004; Mukamana and Brysiewicz 2008).

State Violence and State Creativity

These findings call for specialized medical interventions to reduce and mitigate the effects as much as possible. However, this becomes difficult in resource-limited countries without a health system capable of delivering needed services. In the case of Rwanda, the entire health care system underwent destruction and needed rebuilding before any provision of care. An exceptional way in which Rwanda has dealt with this problem has been through collaborations: the Ministry of Health, initially through the Clinton Health Access Initiative, extended invitations to leading universities and academic medical centres from across the US for the establishment of an academic consortium (Binagwaho et al. 2013). Sixteen academic medical centres, six schools of nursing, one school of public health, and two dental schools forged a seven-year partnership to focus on knowledge transfer, collaborative training programmes, and visitation by US faculty for one-year periods. While the benefits have been enormous to the Rwandan health care system, American faculty and trainees also benefited through research collaborations and would return to their home institutions to strengthen their global health curricula (Syed et al. 2012).

Caring for the women and girls Foreign assistance programmes have traditionally contracted third-party non-governmental organizations (NGOs) through agreements that allow little room for recipient-country input (Binagwaho et al. 2013). The model the Rwandan Ministry of Health has used, on the other hand, allows for direct input on the part of the government based on country priorities. This partnership model allows for greater collaboration with the country in need, and by extension with the clients in need. Caring for the women and girls who have suffered rape during the genocide requires listening to them. Only under these conditions is it possible to forge a proper South– North collaboration, as Rwanda is using to rebuild a health system capable of handling the consequences of the genocide. It is critically important that comprehensive rehabilitation programmes addressing the physical effects of rape also take into consideration the mental health impacts. Rape during childhood can have serious and long-lasting posttraumatic effects including the possibility of revictimization, inadequate sexual behaviours, sexual dysfunction, and mental disorders such as

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depression and anxiety (Beitchman et al. 1992). The psychological effects that the women we interviewed expressed included feeling shame, low self-esteem, humiliation, fear, ongoing insecurity, and a lack of hope. These effects are common among women who have undergone the same experience (O’Callaghan, Murphy and Clare 2003; Mukamana and Brysiewicz 2008). Some argue that the mental health consequences of rape are lasting and may be irreversible (Diken and Lausten 2005). Different in nature from the mental health problems we see in ordinary settings, rape during genocide requires greater sensitivity to context, for a population’s disempowerment for its gender, and for the stigmatization due to their rape experience. This approach has implications for how psychosocial and mental health interventions should be designed. Social implications also require consideration. Rwandan culture places great value on creating a family, and in particular, there is encouragement of female orphans to marry not for survival but to rebuild the family. Such opportunity is limited for rape survivor girls, while the genocide has destroyed their natural support systems. Survivor support groups need to become an essential part of interventions. In terms of individual care, based on the complexity of the effects of genocide rape, specialized competence in multiple domains is necessary. In particular, the health sector has to be competent in handling the complicated physical and psychological effects of genocide and rape. A number of sources have documented the outcome of support groups and counselling mainly conducted by lay counsellors trained in a particular approach (Mukamana and Brysiewicz 2008; Zraly and Nyirazinyoye 2010; Walstrom et al. 2013). While these could provide some relief, specialized psychotherapy is necessary in order to help these women properly. In response to this situation, soon after the genocide Rwanda launched an advanced diploma for Mental Health Nursing and a degree in Clinical Psychology. The Rwanda Human Resources for Health programme provided a promising model to bringing effective and sustainable care. In addition, a community-based health insurance affordable to all Rwandans came into existence. Further tailoring of advanced services to the particular needs of rape survivors would help build on these efforts.

State Violence and State Creativity

HARNESSING CREATIVITY AFTER VIOLENCE The example of Rwanda shows how violent assault on the sanctuary of family leaves a sustained traumatic legacy with complex mental, physical, and social consequences for families, communities, and the country as a whole. Women who undergo rape during genocide face significant problems, including daily reminders of shame and humiliation, social isolation, economic problems, problems in the mother–child relationship, interpersonal difficulties, psychological and physical disability, and behavioural and psychological problems in their children. Special interventions – such as counselling interventions for mothers, children, and mothers and children together – should therefore be culturally sensitive and clinically appropriate, and be accessible to such women and their children. Support groups are very important to the mothers, and it is necessary to equip providers with the knowledge and skills to run the groups effectively, and to explore the use of support groups in creative ways. Even this may fall short of a comprehensive approach to tackling the social and economic impact of rape and genocide on these women. Therefore, in addition to providing basic psychosocial and mental health support, an innovative approach to engaging victims, to diminishing stigma, and to creating opportunities for women to pursue education and employment, as well as to re-establishing social ties, as in the Rwandan example, is necessary. The complex legacy of the rape, with all its implications for mother– child relationships; the need for support for children born of rape; and the value of integrating social and community supports into the mental health care for survivors all require a multiprofessional health and multi-agency support system underpinned by robust legal and financial frameworks that is sensitively matched to the needs of survivors over time. Parental training, income-generating activities, and educational opportunities for children, as well as improved legal systems and governmental policies, benefit not just survivors and their children but society as a whole by preventing potentially drastic consequences. In focusing exclusively on the human suffering, it would be easy to overlook the creative potential and the resilience that survivors have brought to bear in the design of appropriate and needed responses to the impacts of rape and violence. There is considerable scope for involving survivors as experts by experience, as co-designers and ‘co-producers’

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of a system of services that effectively meets their needs. Also of help would be further collection of qualitative and quantitative data and evidence-informed psychological and social interventions that tailor to this particular group, making use of governmental, international, and academic resources. Reducing the suffering of women and preventing the creation of a generation of citizens who feel marginalized, humiliated, and discriminated against – and doing so sensitively and culturally appropriately – is essential to providing needed care, to minimizing injury, and ultimately to building and maintaining peace.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge Grace Lee for her help with the preparation of this chapter.

REFERENCES Beitchman, J.H., Zucker, J.H., Hood, J.E., DaCosta, G.A., Akman, D. and Cassavia, E. (1992) ‘A review of the long-term effects of child sexual abuse.’ Child Abuse and Neglect 16, 1, 101–118. Binagwaho, A., Kyamanywa, P., Farmer, P.E., Nuthulaganti, T. et al. (2013) ‘The human resources for health program in Rwanda – a new partnership.’ New England Journal of Medicine 369, 21, 2054–2059. Bosmans, M. (2007) ‘Challenges in aid to rape victims: the case of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.’ Essex Human Rights Review 4, 1, 1–12. Buss, D.E. (2009) ‘Rethinking “rape as a weapon of war”.’ Feminist Legal Studies 17, 2, 145–163. Diken, B. and Lausten, C.B. (2005) ‘Becoming abject: rape as a weapon of war.’ Body and Society 11, 1, 111–128. Eytan, A., Munyandamutsa, N., Nkubamugisha, P.M. and Gex-Fabry, M. (2014) ‘Longterm mental health outcome in post-conflict settings: similarities and differences between Kosovo and Rwanda.’ International Journal of Social Psychiatry 61, 4, 363– 372. Gacaca National Service (2012, June) Administration Report of National Services of Gacaca Courts. Kigali: Gacaca National Service. Accessed on 28/11/2017 at http:// rwandapedia.rw/archive/gacaca Heise, L., Ellsberg, M. and Gottmoeller, M. (2002) ‘A global overview of gender-based violence.’ International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics 78, S5–S14. Henttonen, M., Watts, C., Roberts, B., Kaducu, F. and Borchert, M. (2008) ‘Health services for survivors of gender-based violence in northern Uganda: a qualitative study.’ Reproductive Health Matters 16, 31, 122–131. Human Rights Watch (1996) Shattered Lives: Sexual Violence during the Rwandan Genocide and its Aftermath. New York: Human Rights Watch.

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Joachim, J. (2003) ‘Framing issues and seizing opportunities: the UN, NGO’s and women’s rights.’ International Studies Quarterly 47, 2, 247–274. Linos, N. (2009) ‘Rethinking gender-based violence during war: is violence against civilian men a problem worth addressing?’ Social Science and Medicine 68, 8, 1548–1551. Mukamana, D. and Brysiewicz, P. (2008) ‘The lived experience of genocide rape survivors in Rwanda.’ Journal of Nursing Scholarship 40, 3, 379–384. Mukangendo, M.C. (2007) ‘Caring for Children Born of Rape in Rwanda.’ In R.C. Carpenter (ed.) Born of War: Protecting Children of Sexual Violence Survivors in Conflict Zones. West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press. Mullins, C. (2009) ‘“We are going to rape you and taste Tutsi women”: rape during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.’ British Journal of Criminology 49, 6, 719–735. Mutwarasibo, E. (2012, April) ‘18 years of writing the genocide perpetrated against Tutsi: reflections and positions on the literature.’ Revue Dialogue 197, Kigali. Neugebauer, R., Fisher, P.W., Turner, J.B., Yamabe, S., Sarsfield, J.A. and Stehling-Ariza, T. (2009) ‘Post-traumatic stress reactions among Rwandan children and adolescents in the early aftermath of genocide.’ International Journal of Epidemiology 38, 4, 1033–1045. O’Callaghan, A.C., Murphy, G. and Clare, I.C.H. (2003) ‘The impact of abuse on men and women with severe learning disabilities and their families.’ British Journal of Learning Disabilities 31, 4, 175–180. Peterman, A. and Johnson, K. (2009) ‘Incontinence and trauma: sexual violence, female genital cutting and proxy measures of gynecological fistula.’ Social Science and Medicine 68, 5, 971–979. Reid-Cunningham, A.R. (2008) ‘Rape as a weapon of genocide.’ Genocide Studies and Prevention 3, 3, 279–296. Republic of Rwanda (2017) History: A Brief History of Rwanda. Accessed on 28/11/2017 at http://gov.rw/home/history Rieder, H. and Elbert, T. (2013a) ‘The relationship between organized violence, family violence and mental health: findings from a community-based survey in Muhanga, Southern Rwanda.’ European Journal of Psychotraumatology 4, 1. Rieder, H. and Elbert, T. (2013b) Rwanda – Lasting Imprints of a Genocide: Trauma, Mental Health and Psychosocial Conditions in Survivors, Former Prisoners and Their Children. Konstanz: Bibliothek der Universität Konstanz. Rutembesa, F. (2009) ‘Ecrits sur le génocide des Tutsi. Constat et perspectives de recherche, in collectif, Rwanda. Quinze ans après. Penser et écrire l’histoire du génocide des Tutsi.’ Revue d’Histoire de la Shoah 190, 67–82. Sharlach, L. (2000) ‘Rape as genocide: Bangladesh, the Former Yugoslavia, and Rwanda.’ New Political Science 22, 1, 89–102. Syed, S.H., Dadwal, V., Rutter, P., Storr, J. et al. (2012) ‘Developed–developing country partnerships: benefits to developed countries?’ Global Health 8, 17, 1–10. Van Ee, E., Kleber, R.J. and Mooren, T.M. (2012) ‘War trauma lingers on: associations between maternal posttraumatic stress disorder, parent–child interaction, and child development.’ Infant Mental Health Journal 33, 5, 459–468.

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Walstrom, P., Operario, D., Zlotnick, C., Mutimura, E., Benekigeri, C. and Cohen, M.H. (2013) ‘“I think my future will be better than my past”: examining support group influence on the mental health of HIV-infected Rwandan women.’ Global Public Health 8, 1, 90–105. Watts, C. and Zimmerman, C. (2002) ‘Violence against women: global scope and magnitude.’ Lancet 359, 9313, 1232–1237. Wax, E. (2004) ‘Rwandans struggle to love children of hate.’ Washington Post, 29 March. Accessed on 28/11/2017 at www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A298882004Mar27_2.html Weitsman, P.A. (2008) ‘The politics of identity and sexual violence: a review of Bosnia and Rwanda.’ Human Rights Quarterly 30, 3, 561–578. Wood, E.J. (2006) ‘Variation in sexual violence during war.’ Politics and Society 34, 3, 307–341. Zraly, M. and Nyirazinyoye, L. (2010, May) ‘Don’t let the suffering make you fade away: an ethnographic study of resilience among survivors of genocide in southern Rwanda.’ Social Science and Medicine 70, 10, 1656–1664.

Chapter 8

PERPETRATORS OF SOCIALLY ACCEPTED VIOLENCE States of Mind beyond Pathology and Deviancy EFRAT EVEN-TZUR

‘Accepted violence’ – shouldn’t this phrase be taken to be an oxymoron? It may certainly be considered contradictory when viewing ‘violence’ as an essentially transgressive phenomenon, as implied by the term’s aetiology. Indeed, many studies on violence take for granted the inherent illegitimacy of violence, perceiving violence as a deviation or delinquency – as a problem to be resolved. This ethical and conceptual premise, that perhaps is most easy to accept at first glance, often serves as an axiom so obvious that one does not bother to support it or even to acknowledge it explicitly. The focus of this chapter is upon the psychological processes behind instances of violence that are perceived as non-transgressive, and the states of mind such acts may arouse in their perpetrators. Socially accepted violence can be defined as violence that is considered legitimate by the social environment surrounding its perpetrators. Yet the attempt to name specific examples of such accepted violence immediately brings up difficulties. Consider the following (non-exhaustive) list of various test cases that can or could be included as demonstrations of socially accepted violence within certain social discourses: American football game; male infants’ circumcision; female circumcis­ ion; ‘educational’ disciplining of children by spanking; incarceration of criminals; sentencing to or carrying out State executions; bombardment 131

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of enemy in wartime; taking part in genocide; killing civilians within a national liberation struggle; administering an electric shock to a human subject within a scientific research experiment; dissecting a human body as part of a medical procedure; euthanasia; abortions; meat-eating.

Each of the above items raises different kinds of questions. Some may raise protesting suspicion: is this in fact violence? Some refer to actions that seem unquestionably legitimate and yet undeniably violent; others appear as clear examples of inappropriate violence and it is less clear how anyone, if ever, could see them as acceptable. The above questions show how the reliance of our definition of socially accepted violence on the concept of ‘legitimacy’ evokes serious difficulties, since the term ‘legitimacy’ has both a descriptive and a normative meaning that often gets confused (Fabienne 2014). Take for example certain cultural rituals or rites of passage, such as male infants’ circumcision. On the normative level of legitimacy, outside the community where such practices are practised, they might be rejected as unacceptably violent and harmful. At the same time, from the insider point of view, they may not even be recognized as a form of violence. Conversely, on the descriptive level, it can be agreed that the states of mind of those who practise circumcision (the perpetrators?) are affected by the extent of the legitimacy this practice gains within circumcising communities. In any case, such discords raise questions regarding the intersections between competing discourses of legitimacy (Beek and GÖpfert 2013) and their potential impact on the understanding of the subjective experiences of those who commit socially accepted violence. The idea of competing discourses of legitimacy helps us to perceive legitimacy as a multi-faceted concept rather than a binary one. There is an additional set of questions raised by the above list, regarding subjective states of mind attributed to perpetrators. Some of the items seem to refer to actions that might leave emotional scars or long-lasting traumatic effects, while for others it is less clear whether significantly troubling psychological processes are involved. The alleged social acceptability of such forms of violence does not necessarily suggest that the perpetrators of the violence are psychologically indifferent to it. For example, while seeing violence as an inevitable path for indigenous liberation from violent colonial oppression and thus accepting it in this context, Fanon (1961/2004), as a psychiatrist, was among the first to acknowledge the haunting psychological toll of this legitimized violence.

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When describing the compulsive post-traumatic symptoms of a freedom fighter who participated in the killing of civilians, he stated: ‘our actions never cease to haunt us. The way they are ordered, organized and reasoned can be a posteriori radically transformed…but can we escape vertigo?’ (p.185, n.23). Several authors have significantly contributed to our understanding of the diverse motivations which may drive people to take part in the perpetration of socially accepted violence. For example, Milgram (1974), writing about his obedience experiment,1 refers to Arendt’s famous insight into the ‘banality of evil’ (Arendt 1963), stressing that perpetrators are usually not monstrously violent, but rather ordinary men who rely on banal human social conventions (such as ‘following orders’) and are affected by powerful social legitimizing factors. Arendt, Milgram and others have turned attention away from explanations focusing on the perverse ‘violent states of minds’ of perpetrators – for example, ‘the Mad Nazi’ thesis, previously applied to those accused in the Nuremberg trials (see Waller 2002). Instead, they highlight the social and symbolic contexts of such violence, including the situational and discursive factors it entails. In this spirit, some authors focus on what Gilligan (1996) calls ‘structural violence’ or what Žižek (2008) calls ‘objective violence’: the essentially anonymous aspect of violence, ascribed to a system or social order rather than to identified people. Nevertheless, while contributing much to the eradication of the biased pathologizing and demonizing explanations of perpetrators of socially accepted violence, this approach tends to overlook the subjective experiences of individual agents of such violence. This is unfortunate, since even if individuals who serve as agents of socially accepted violence function only as cogs in a greater machine, their psychologies (which are not necessarily pathologies) may be of great scholarly interest. To name only one significant research question, we can ask in which cases perpetrators of socially accepted violence would experience aversive 1

Milgram’s experiment was presented to its participants as part of a study of learning. They were asked to serve as ‘teachers’, using an electroshock generator to punish ‘learners’ (who were in fact accomplices of the experimenter) in response to errors in a learning task, inflicting what they were led to perceive as increasingly painful shocks. The results showed that about two thirds of the participants obeyed the experimenter’s orders to the point of maximum pain, regardless of the presented (fake) distress of the ‘learner’ and their own clearly shown discomfort.

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emotional reactions (such as guilt) to their own infliction of violence; and when, contrarily, we might find the non-transgressive component of their experience renders it almost transparent psychologically: carrying no significant emotional value. This chapter will present some preliminary lines of thought concerning the psychological understanding of the complicated states of mind involved in the perpetration of socially accepted violence. Special attention will be given to a certain form of socially accepted violence: sanctioned violence committed by those defined as State agents, or ‘agents of law’. The discussion will address states of mind, violent or perhaps less violent, that might be involved in cases when the violence of States (or violence authorized by a State) receives high support within a particular population.

A PSYCHOLOGICAL BLIND SPOT? Clinical psychology is perhaps the natural field one should turn to when looking for insights in regard to subjective states of mind, including the psychologies of those who harm others in a context in which the use of physical force is perceived as permissible. However, writing on perpetration of violence in the field of clinical psychology usually focuses on either intra- or inter-personal processes and insufficiently addresses the mutual influence between social structures of violence and individual aggressive acts and states of mind. The shortcomings of this literature are clearly demonstrated in the writings on soldiers’ violence in various contexts (for example: Beckham, Feldman and Kirby 1998; Elizur and Yishay-Krien 2009). Such works usually share a common attention to ‘atrocities’ – acts that can be defined by almost all their readers as exceptional and illegitimate. Nevertheless, in real life, soldiers and other State agents are required and authorized to use violence as part of their ordinary duty. In the writings on soldiers’ violence, however, only rarely can one find references to these more (perhaps troubling, but still) routine and regular practices of carrying out State-sanctioned violence. What is missing is attention to the notion that some forms of violence that soldiers tend to take part in are not considered unusual or prohibited within their broad social group – but could still be psychologically significant. Other psychological writings analyse the state of minds of individuals who carry out violence that is actually considered legitimate in their

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society, for example in Nazi Germany (Lifton 1986). Nevertheless, these authors too focus on perpetrators of extreme forms of violence. Moreover, they (understandably) perceive the social value-system upon which the violence was sanctioned as illegitimate. The implications for psychological research on socially accepted violence should be carefully considered: it sharply takes the researchers out of the circle of those who legitimize violence and locates the centre of the discussion ‘outside’, in other societies or groups. The violence is taken as transgressive in nature: therefore their psychological explanation again skims over some of the complicated difficulties evoked by the issue of non-transgressive violence and by the possibility that it is not only ‘others’ who legitimize violence. In fact, socially accepted violence – in varying forms and intensities – can be traced in every society, since every State can be seen as a violent State, to some extent. At least in some cases, agents of socially accepted violence may experience aversive states of mind, such as distress and guilt, even when involved in violent situations much less extreme than those which would be perceived as genocidal or atrocious. Exploration of such states of minds and their consequences should take into account the psychological influences of the nature of the legitimacy granted to State violence.

‘AGENTS OF LAW’ AND THE LEGITIMATION OF STATE VIOLENCE As already noted, the definition of socially accepted violence relies heavily on the concept of legitimacy. Law has a central role in the literature on socially accepted violence, and political thinkers since the time of Plato have explored the question of the legitimacy of the State and of its law-enforcing institutions: perhaps particularly since the dawn of the democratic era (see Fabienne 2014). One of the most noted ideas regarding socially accepted violence is the Weberian notion of the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence granted to modern States (Weber 1921). According to this formulation, the State’s rule of law rejects the legitimacy of interpersonal violence and forbids it, while permitting only State institutions and their agents the right to use violence, in a regulated form. The legitimate violence of the State is manifest in the authority granted to the law and to State institutions which interpret it and enforce it. One of the sources

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of legitimation of the State’s violence stems from its assumed rational character – the accordance of its own acts with the rules – with the same law it enforces – and the impersonal (and thus impartial) manner of the enforcement (Weber 1921; Fabienne 2014). Military soldiers, prison staff, policemen and others are all members of ‘executive organs’ of the State monopoly of violence (Elias 1989, p.175). The members of these bodies can be seen as ‘agents of law’ – official representatives of State authorities who are required to commit acts of violence as part of their role. Thus, while most members of modern society are required to delegate their aggressive wishes to the State (Freud 1972, p.166), the acts of violence demanded of ‘agents of law’ are considered sanctioned and necessary and are even valued and praised. Drawing on both Weber and Freud’s concept of the superego, Elias (1989) shows how, over the course of the last few hundred years, a historical change in personality structure emerged and a ‘taboo against violent acts’ was ‘imprinted deep into the minds of the youth’ (Elias 1989, p.176). Agents of law – just like other members of society – grow up receiving messages that connect acts of violence with punishment and condemnation, leading people to develop a relatively strong reservation, even anxiety, around using physical force. Elias writes that this may result in situations of personal imbalance, discomfort and internal conflicts. The State’s legitimized authority to carry out violence is delegated to each of its individual agents. Their definition as representatives and the legitimacy it entails is based on a fabric of regulated symbolic and ritual displays of endorsement and investiture, such as titles, uniforms, rites, etc. (Bottoms and Tankebe 2013). One may expect these processes of legitimation and investiture, then, to play a major role in the psychologies of agents of law who inflict State-sanctioned violence. When considering distressful states of mind related to the perpetration of socially accepted violence, special attention should be granted to times of legitimation crises or crises of investiture (Santner 1996), in which struggles between competing discourses of legitimacy damage the credibility assigned to symbolic sanctioned forms. What is degenerated in these times, Santner explains, is the performative power of the symbolic functions to elicit belief in the authority of office-holders. Such social crises, according to Santner, potentially impact not only upon the conscious thoughts of these power-holders, but also upon psychosomatic experiences and unconscious mental processes.

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THE PLEASURES OF VIOLENCE: CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS When states of mind related to socially accepted violence are at stake, the issue of pleasure and satisfaction derived out of violence and the motivational function of enjoyment is critical. For example, during the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, perpetrators of violence who testified to their deeds and applied for amnesty were required to prove they had not gone beyond the violence required by their role as agents of law and by their specific task definition within the oppressive regime (Hoffman and Reid 2000). The infamously defensive assertion ‘I was just following orders’ (the ‘Nuremberg defence’) is even less applicable when it turns out the violence was excessive and exceeded the given command for purposes of sadistic pleasure. In his discussion on Milgram’s obedience experiment, Alford (1997) noted a detail that has received little attention: Milgram’s subjects not only complied with authoritative orders to supposedly give an electric shock to their peers, but also showed nervous and embarrassed giggling or clumsy fits of laughter. Alford proposes a possibility that was hardly mentioned in Milgram’s discussion: that those ‘ordinary people’ generating the electric shock experienced some sort of enjoyment of their hurtful actions. I suggest that such a visceral excited reaction might be considered as excessive enjoyment, partly unconscious, which has a non-intuitive adversary aspect.2 This notion of enjoyment reintroduces the issue of perversion to the discussion on socially accepted violence. Like the term ‘sadism’, perversion is usually identified with deviant modes of behaviour. It is used in a rather similar manner in some of the psychoanalytical writings on violence perpetration, in the discussion of offenders who have derived sadistic satisfaction and excitement out of their violent crimes (Yakeley and Meloy 2012). However, Alford’s point suggests that the discussion on socially accepted violence carried out by agents of law may require a more complex concept of perversion. The aforementioned disadvantages of pathologizing explanations for socially accepted violence, together with the need to take into account 2 Such excessive enjoyment is what Lacan would call jouissance – a unique type of pleasure that goes beyond the point in which pleasure becomes pain. According to Evans (1996, p.93) jouissance is ‘the suffering that [one] derives from his own satisfaction’. Other nuances of this Lacanian concept exceed the scope of this chapter.

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established ideas about the importance of situational and institutional influences on behaviour and about the banality of violence committed by ordinary men, suggest that what seems to be missing is a concept of perversion that connects unconscious processes with the psychological role of the law. Such a concept is provided by Lacan (1962, 1986), and a Lacanian frame of work is particularly suitable for the current task, given its unique integration of psychological and social aspects (Hook 2008). Lacan considers perversion not as an abnormal deviation or as a cluster of pathological symptoms, but rather as a clinical structure (one of three basic structures, alongside Neurosis and Psychosis): a basic stance of the subject towards the Other. The Lacanian Other, as explained by Hook (2008), can be understood as the fantasmatic embodiment of a set of symbolic codes, rituals, roles and institutions – ‘the rules that govern the game’ that define a given societal situation. For Lacan, perverse subjects, by definition, turn themselves into instruments for what they fantasize as the Other’s desire. Lacan relates the concept of perversion to the issue of Law, when he describes the Other as the fantasized punitive source of law. Lacan (1962, 1986) detects perversion not only in the position which directly enjoys harm and injury, but in the fantasy of complete knowledge of the nature of the right moral deed, or, in Lacanian terms, a pretence of complete knowledge regarding the desire of the Other – the fantasized figure of he who determines the Law. The perverse subject identifies with the violent demand of the punitive Other, but unconsciously disguises it with a sense of mission and commitment to justice and ethics (Rothenberg and Foster 2003). Lacan speaks of the obscene gratification that the perverse subject achieves while supposedly acting in the name of a greater Other, or in the name of moral duty. Perpetrators can thus hide behind obedience to the law while renouncing responsibility for their actions and ascribing it to duty, disavowing any pleasant sensations.3 Agents of law with perverse identifications act on the assumption of absolute certainty regarding ‘the desire of the Other’ and therefore of an unshakeable belief in the legitimacy of their own authority. This selfrighteousness thus protects them from the distress that can be aroused when thrilling bodily sensations accompany violent acts. 3

As a central model of perversion, Lacan points to the perverse aspect of Kantian ethics. Interestingly, Arendt (1963) reports that, during his trial, Adolf Eichmann justified his murderous actions as a senior Nazi official through explicit reliance on Kant’s categorical imperative.

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ISRAELI SOLDIERS AS AGENTS OF LAW The duties of soldiers in the Israeli military who spend their service in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) may be understood to include representing the State’s authority and the policing of civilians who are under martial law. Different studies (e.g. Ron 2000; Gazit and Ben-Ari 2012) point towards more than one type of violence characteristic of Israeli military acts in the OPT. Relatively more media and scholarly attention was given to more brutal, self-initiated instances of violence, of the sort considered prohibited by the army itself. Researchers who have investigated subjective states of mind attributed to Israeli soldiers identified a certain group of soldiers who legitimize, support and sometimes even avowedly find satisfaction in the use of force against civilians (Maoz 2001; Elizur and Yishay-Krien 2009). These soldiers demonstrate ‘over-motivation’ (Gazit and Ben-Ari 2012) and tend to feel overly identified with the military task as they understand it. This category of ‘agents of law’ includes soldiers who may relish and exploit the available permission for brutal aggression and the overstepping of customary social restraints. They occasionally express overt enjoyment of the feeling that the law is ‘in their hands’ (Elizur and Yishay-Krien 2009). This can helpfully be viewed through the Lacanian lens of the perverse position with its ‘over-motivation’ and ‘overidentification’ with the law (although some of them may relate to the pathological concept of perverse sadism). Elizur and Yishay-Krien (2009) have described another contrasting group which they called the incorruptible soldiers, who participate in various modes of violence against civilians while keeping their violence within the norms of the army’s rules and regulations. This group of soldiers reports experiencing internal conflicts due to the gap between their ethical self-expectations on the one hand and the violent reality they have found themselves inducted into, on the other. The violence does not serve as a source of conscious enjoyment but rather as a source of distress (Liebes and Blum-Kulka 1994; Maoz 2001). They take part in it due to their identification with the army as a moral and law-abiding system, despite their ambivalent position towards their own acts. Ambivalence here lies, to a large extent, in the fact that the State of Israel defines itself as a democracy and expects its military to comply with legal decrees that limit the use of force. The soldiers are thus bound

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by and to a law that is the foundation of the regime they represent. At the same time, unlike the soldiers, the Palestinians in the OPT are indigenous residents deprived of civil rights and thus excluded from State sovereignty and from governmental representation (Ben-Naftali, Gross and Michaeli 2005). Military rule in the OPT allows Israeli forces to engage in actions that are not consistent with legal conventions in Israel (such as imposing curfews and administrative arrests for unlimited lengths of time). The discriminatory and arbitrary nature of the law these ambivalent soldiers are asked to represent thus undermines the sense of legitimacy that could have stemmed from a more rational and egalitarian law system. In addition, competing discourses of legitimacy exist in relation to the soldiers’ authority to use the type of violence they practise in the name of military rule. On the one hand, this violence is largely considered by the Israeli public and Israeli law as a legitimate aspect of their role. The stated purpose of the violence includes protecting State security and human life – a widely accepted aim in the soldiers’ social circles.4 At the same time, criticism and doubts regarding the justifiability of their authority are voiced from inside and, mainly, outside Israeli society, and the occupation as a whole is a frequent target of condemnation by parts of the international community. One might therefore expect to find a crisis of investiture influencing the soldiers’ subjective experiences. However, a significant portion of the distress these soldiers experience does not stem solely from these two conscious elements – that is, the irrational nature of the martial law and the competing discourses of legitimacy – or from other conscious political or moral attitudes. Rather, it is rooted in their combination with another element that is partially unconscious: visceral thrilling sensations they occasionally experience while inflicting violence. Indeed, interviews with Israeli ex-soldiers show that experiences of excessive excitements during and after the perpetration of acts of violence are not rare, even in those who show ambivalence toward their own violence (Even-tzur and Hadar 2014). The prevalence of words like ‘adrenalin’ and ‘action’ in soldiers’ testimonies

4

See, for example, the Israeli military reaction to the case of a soldier who was filmed killing an injured Palestinian attacker (The Guardian 2017). Of course, the fact that it is generally only filmed incidents that lead to military trials and the controversial leniency in sentencing are complicating the case once again, suggesting that cases of transgressive violence are, in fact, implicitly encouraged by the military (see e.g. Ron 2000).

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serves as additional evidence of some of these powerful embodied experiences.5 Thus, while the agent of law in the perverse position relies on a sense of mission and on an absolute belief in the righteousness of violent commands as a way to renounce responsibility for the pleasure he obtains from this violence, the ambivalent soldier’s doubts make this defence unavailable. For him, confusing visceral excitement and arousal mark a menacing proximity to perversion and therefore serve as a source of distress and guilt.

CONCLUSION I started this chapter by reviewing how psychological explanations focusing on sadism were shown by theories from social psychology and other fields to be potentially less relevant for cases of socially accepted violence performed by agents of law. I then suggested that clinical psychology did not offer satisfying enough alternatives and sufficiently complex descriptions of the states of mind of the perpetrators of State-sanctioned violence, due to the limited attention given to nontransgressive and less extreme forms of violence. I attempted to fill in some of these gaps by offering preliminary thoughts on the psychology of perpetrators of socially accepted violence, using political theory around the concept of legitimacy on the one hand and Lacan’s concept of perversion on the other. The discussion of the situation and experience of Israeli soldiers in the OPT allowed me to sketch an ambivalent state of mind arguably typical of agents of law in times of legitimation crises and to highlight both its distinct features and those features it shares in common with the perverse position, in terms of the interaction between embodied thrill and arousal and the perceived legitimacy of authority. The example afforded by the ‘ambivalent soldiers’ shows how, under certain conditions, agents of law may experience distressful consequences from the violence they carry out, even in cases when they find it legitimate in principle (and therefore, at least on some level, choose to participate in it). I emphasize the centrality of the unconscious

5

For example, at the ‘Breaking the Silence’ web archive: www.breakingthesilence.org.il.

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aspect of psychosomatic processes in this state of mind, alongside other, more conscious processes. Lastly, the contribution of the Lacanian concept of perversion to the understanding of perpetration of socially accepted violence is clearly not to be located in the labelling of State agents as ‘perverts’. Its importance lies rather in demonstrating how psychological insights into State violence committed by agents of law can be enriched by the challenging of the usually strict boundaries between understandings of incidents of brutal transgressive violence, on the one hand, and of presentations of more restrained violence, on the other. While extreme violence is usually attributed either to out-groups or, at most, to deviant members of the in-group, realizing the continuous spectrum spreading between these two types of violence requires a transition from split, black-and-white formulations to a grey area of complexities and dilemmas. Such dilemmas are faced by real people, whose potential psychological injury and distress must be investigated by the society that assigned them with their authority to inflict sanctioned violence. The society that sent agents of law on their missions owes them a thorough public discussion of the question raised in this chapter; maybe more than that, it owes their potential victims a reflective, critical deliberation of this violence and a constant examination of the legitimacy granted to it.

REFERENCES Alford, C.F. (1997) What Evil Means to Us. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Arendt, H. (1963) Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Viking Press. Beckham, J.C., Feldman, M.E. and Kirby, A.C. (1998) ‘Atrocities exposure in Vietnam combat veterans with chronic posttraumatic stress disorder: relationship to combat exposure, symptom severity, guilt and interpersonal violence.’ Journal of Traumatic Stress 11, 4, 777–785. Beek, J. and Göpfert, M. (2013) ‘Police violence in West Africa: perpetrators’ and ethnographers’ dilemmas.’ Ethnography 14, 4, 477–500. Ben-Naftali, O., Gross, A.M. and Michaeli, K. (2005) ‘Illegal occupation: framing the occupied Palestinian territory.’ Berkeley Journal of International Law 23, 551–614. Bottoms, A. and Tankebe, J. (2013) ‘Voice Within: Power-Holders’ Perspectives on Authority and Legitimacy.’ In J. Tankebe and A. Liebling (eds) Legitimacy and Criminal Justice: An International Exploration. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Elias, N. (1989) ‘Civilization and Violence: On the State Monopoly of Violence and its Transgression.’ In The Germans: Power Struggles and the Development of Habitus in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Translated by E. Dunning and S. Mennell. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.

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Elizur, Y. and Yishay-Krien, N. (2009) ‘Participation in atrocities among Israeli soldiers during the First Intifada: a qualitative analysis.’ Journal of Peace Research 46, 2, 251–267. Evans, D. (1996) An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. East Sussex: Routledge. Even-tzur, E. and Hadar, U. (2014) ‘The Law and the violent thrill: a psychoanalytic view on the image of “The Good Soldier” and its crisis in the Israeli discourse.’ [Hebrew.] Theory and Criticism 42, 47–70. Fabienne, P. (2014) ‘Political Legitimacy.’ In E.N. Zalta (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2014 Edition). Accessed on 28/11/2017 at http://plato. stanford.edu/archives/win2014/entries/legitimacy Fanon, F. (1961/2004) The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by R. Philcox. New York: Grove Press. Freud, A. (1972) ‘Comments on aggression.’ International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 53, 163–171. Gazit, N. and Ben-Ari, E. (2012) ‘Prolonged Military Occupation, Political Order and Military Violence.’ In Y. Elizur (ed.) The Blot of a Light Cloud: Israeli Soldiers, Army and Society in the Intifada. [Hebrew.] Tel-Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad. Gilligan, J. (1996) Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic. New York: Vintage Books. Hoffman, D. and Reid, F. (dirs.) (2000) Long Night’s Journey into Day: South Africa’s Search for Truth and Reconciliation [documentary film]. Berkeley, CA: Iris Films. Hook, D. (2008) ‘Absolute Other: Lacan’s “big Other” as adjunct to critical social psychological analysis?’ Social and Personality Psychology Compass 2, 1, 51–73. Lacan, J. (1962) ‘Kant with Sade.’ In Écrit: The First Complete English Edition. Translated by B. Fink. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. Lacan, J. (1986) The Seminar of Jacques Lacan – Book VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959–60. New York and London: Norton Company, 1997. Liebes, T. and Blum-Kulka, S. (1994) ‘Managing a moral dilemma: Israeli soldiers in the Intifada.’ Armed Forces and Society 21, 1, 45–68. Lifton, R.J. (1986) The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. New York: Basic Books. Maoz, I. (2001) ‘The violent asymmetrical encounter with the other in an army–civilian clash: the case of the Intifada.’ Journal of Peace Psychology 7, 3, 243–263. Milgram, S. (1974) ‘Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View.’ In R.E. Nisbett and L. Ross (eds) (2001) The Person and the Situation: Perspectives of Social Psychology (2nd edn). London: Pinter and Martin. Ron, J. (2000) ‘Savage restraint: Israel, Palestine and the dialectics of legal repression.’ Social Problems 47, 4, 445–472. Rothenberg, M.A. and Foster, D.A. (2003) ‘Beneath the Skin: Perversion and Social Analysis.’ Introduction in M.A. Rothenberg, D.A. Foster and S. Žižek (eds) Perversion and the Social Relation. Durham: Duke University Press. Santner, E.L. (1996) My Own Private Germany: Daniel Paul Schreber’s Secret History of Modernity. Princeton: Princeton University Press. The Guardian (2017) ‘Israeli soldier jailed for killing injured Palestinian attacker.’ 21 February 2017. Accessed on 28/11/2017 at www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ feb/21/elor-azaria-israeli-soldier-jailed-18-months-killing-palestinian

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Waller, J. (2002) Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Weber, M. (1921) ‘Politics as a Vocation.’ In H.H. Gerth and C. Wright-Mills (eds and trans.) (1958) From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press. Yakeley, J. and Meloy, J.R. (2012) ‘Understanding violence: does psychoanalytic thinking matter?’ Aggression and Violent Behavior 17, 3, 229–239. Žižek, S. (2008) Violence: Six Sideways Reflections. New York: Picador.

PART III

TERROR IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE ‘No,’ Naptha went on. ‘Liberation and development of the individual are not the key to our age, they are not what our age demands. What it needs, what it wrestles after, what it will create – is Terror.’ Thomas Mann, from The Magic Mountain (1924)

They said one to another, behold, here cometh the dreamer…let us slay him…and we shall see what will become of his dreams. Genesis 37: 19–20 (Inscription outside the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, Memphis – site of the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.)

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TERROR, VIOLENCE AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE DAVID W. JONES

INTRODUCTION The past two decades have witnessed huge global interest in acts of ‘terror’. Many commentators have observed how the various mass media appear to play a key role in the transmission of this terror (e.g. Burke 2016; Weimann 2011). This chapter argues that the link with ‘the media’ is not incidental but is fundamental to an understanding of the nature of the phenomena and that an important framework for this understanding can be provided via the notion of ‘the bourgeois public sphere’ that Habermas (1962/1989) claimed was a product of western secular thought and economic and political development. He argued that this space, emerging at the end of the seventeenth century, was fundamental to the development of democratic processes and civic life that underpinned the development of statehood in the west. An understanding of the history of the public sphere suggests that it also contains an inherent violence, as it was at birth inextricably linked to processes of colonisation that were so integral to the development of modern European states. One reading of some acts of extremist violence might be to understand them as responses to the perceived violence and colonialism of the western secular public sphere. Examining the killing of staff of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo as a case study can provide a psychosocial understanding of acts of terror within the public sphere. This chapter will: briefly review the need for a psychosocial approach to understanding acts of terror; give a description of the history of the ‘public sphere’ as outlined by Habermas; use Maalouf ’s (1996) thesis that 147

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the encounter with modernity can offer threats to the identity of those who feel themselves to be marginalised within that experience; and look in some detail at the lives of the perpetrators of the massacre. It is at this level that it becomes clear that an understanding of grand historical narratives needs to be brought together with the details of the particular lives of the perpetrators.

CRIMINOLOGY, TERRORISM STUDIES AND THE NEED FOR A PSYCHOSOCIAL APPROACH Since the middle of the last century criminology has become largely dominated by sociological models that focus on societal structures as causes of crime and how social constructions might inform our definitions of crime (Garland 2002; Jones 2008). Studies of terrorism have largely followed this orthodoxy (Pape 2003), and it has been consistently argued that the crucial variables in understanding terrorism were social and geopolitical, and that there was nothing very useful to be found of interest within the psychological worlds of the terrorists (Silke 1998). Whilst there is no doubt that an understanding of social and political conditions is important, there have been efforts to make the case that the exclusion of the world of emotions and fantasy from understanding crime is importantly to miss the point in many ways (Gadd and Jefferson 2007; Katz 1988). It was to this end that I wrote Understanding Criminal Behaviour: Psychosocial Approaches to Criminality (Jones 2008). There I sought, broadly speaking, to integrate psychological theories (most particularly elements of psychodynamic thought) with more sociologically orientated criminology and I used data on homicide to make the point that a great deal of violence can be understood as shaped more by feelings rather than instrumental rationality. It is particularly notable that many acts of violence occur in the context of intimate relationships, particularly sexual and more general familial relationships. Analyses of incidences of violence point to the fact that intimate relationships can lead to feelings of vulnerability and shame that can trigger serious violence (Gilligan 1997). I decided not to include anything on terrorism in that version of the book. It seemed too obvious at that time that terrorist violence was something that could be understood in social and political terms and that the topic would not really benefit from the addition of a more

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psychosocial approach. The events of the last 10–15 years, that have seen many seemingly ordinary people take up extreme positions and act with murderous violence towards their fellow citizens, have made that position less tenable (Atran 2006; Sageman 2008; see also Chapter 12, Volume 1). It now seems to me worthwhile to make distinction between acts of violence that occur between individuals (often within the relatively intimate context of familial and sexual relationships, or within specific circumstances of interpersonal confrontation) and those acts of violence that are aimed at the ‘public sphere’. I do not mean simply that these are acts of violence that are carried out in public spaces (such as the street) but that they are deliberately aimed to impact within a more general ‘public sphere’, the nature of which the following section will explore. Meanwhile, it is worth noting that the category of ‘violence of the public sphere’ might be used to understand not only ‘terrorism’ but also ‘celebrity assassination’, ‘school shootings’ and ‘rampage killings’ (Newman and Fox 2004). Studies of school shooters and rampage killers suggest that, compared to other perpetrators of serious crime, they are more likely to be relatively educated, often coming from comparatively privileged backgrounds (Kimmel and Mahler 2003; Newman and Fox 2004). Whilst they might apparently lack overt political motivations, their actions can be understood as attempts to create terror. Similarly, at least some of those responsible for acts of terror in recent years clearly come from backgrounds that are not notably materially deprived (as noted in the extensive work on the 9/11 plotters, e.g. McDermott 2005). Whilst these points are suggestive of some important differences and lines of enquiry, I will be focusing here on the nature of the public sphere itself as an explanatory factor.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE Habermas’ notion of ‘the bourgeois public sphere’ was set out in his book The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Habermas (1962/1989) argued that this space was a product of western secular thought, of economic and political development that was itself then fundamental to the development of civic life and the democratic processes that were to evolve over the following centuries. Important mechanisms that served the emergence of the public sphere were the availability of paper, printing presses and relative freedom of speech. Different interest groups, such as

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the established churches, the aristocracy, industrialists and writers, could have a voice in this public sphere, but no one voice could dominate. Thus new perspectives could be reached and decisions made based on rational discussion rather than the exercise of crude power. According to Habermas (1962/1989: Part III), events in England were of particular significance. Prominent was the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688 that saw a remarkable declaration of parliamentary power, as King James II was removed from the throne and William and Mary were effectively invited from the Netherlands to take over. The subsequent Bill of Rights enshrined the power and legitimacy of parliament and established basic principles of free speech (Holmes 1969).1 Other significant moves followed, notably the lapsing of the Licensing Act in 1695, which led to a proliferation of new publications over the course of the eighteenth century (Black 1987). Habermas has long been criticised for presenting a rather idealised view of the public sphere and for ignoring the ‘structural violence’ that led to the exclusion of many voices such as those of women, the nonwealthy and least powerful (Calhoun 1992). Indeed, it is worth noting how Habermas locates the birth of the public sphere very precisely in the coffee houses around the City of London at the end of the seventeenth century, that had strong links to the enterprises of Empire. The coffee houses came to prominence as a social force not only because they nurtured debate on the issues of the day but also because they provided important sites for the exchange of stocks and shares. The establishment of the Bank of England in 1694 was another significant and related development. Its chief role was to service government debt, and the subsequent access to high levels of credit was used to buy the shares that funded the colonial overseas voyages. The coffee houses were therefore right at the heart of the melding of global finance with a national banking system that was to fund colonial adventures on a grand scale (Dugaw 1998, Schubert 1988). Whilst such a historical perspective on the public sphere, as both the vehicle of free speech and of western colonialism, might have its own poignancy, the deeper question would be as to how such forces might play their part in the contemporary world. It will be argued in the 1

All this occurred in the continued aftermath of the Civil Wars in 1652–7 that had witnessed the execution of the King, Charles I (Miller 1983). So never again (thus far, anyway) was England to experience untrammelled monarchic rule.

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following section that the work of Amin Maalouf, on the feelings that might be engendered within those who feel themselves marginalised by the ubiquity and power of ‘western’ civilisation, provides a helpful framework for understanding the role of the public sphere in contemporary scenarios of public violence.

WESTERNISATION – MODERNITY AND IDENTITY In his book In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong (1996), Maalouf expresses his concern that violence will continue to emerge from those who feel that their identity is being threatened or disparaged by the dominance of western culture. He writes from the perspective of his own upbringing in Beirut, in Lebanon. He left in 1977 at the age of 27, soon after the civil war that was to tear the country apart broke out. The bloodshed in Lebanon featured conflict between Christians, Jews and Shia and Sunni Muslims, involved the hostile participation of Syria, Israel, Palestine and Egypt and was part of the Cold War and broader processes of colonisation and de-colonialisation (Khalaf 2002). This civil war, itself arguably only another episode of violent upheaval in the region, was to foreshadow a great deal of the contemporary Middle Eastern conflict that has since spread and is in many ways being fought out in the streets of Europe. So, despite the fact that Maalouf wrote this before the great upsurge in acts of ‘global terror’, his views were prescient in his gloomy prediction of the possibility of ‘millions of our fellow human beings’ becoming drawn into reactions of ‘furious, suicidal, systematic rejection’ (Maalouf 1996, p.119), as those who felt themselves belonging to cultures that were endangered by the forces of globalised modernity may ‘sink into a permanent state of bitterness, resignation and passivity, from which they emerge only through suicidal violence’ (Maalouf 1996, p.125). Maalouf does not dwell on the psychological mechanisms that might be at play, but his emphasis on the link between the experience of disparagement of identity and subsequent violence is compatible with the idea that a great deal of violence stems from feelings of shame and humiliation (Gilligan 1997; Jones 2008). He argues that the differential experiences of modernity across the world were sowing the seeds of violence. The problem for many people in ‘non-Western’ parts of the world is that ‘modernity’ came to be understood as inextricably linked

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with western culture that has, over the past few centuries, ‘seized the reins of the planet’; and that its own understanding of progress, whether in terms of science, technology, art or philosophy, came to be understood as the orthodox view of progress: ‘Its science became Science, its medicine Medicine, its philosophy Philosophy, and from then on that trend towards concentration and standardisation has not stopped’ (Maalouf 1996, p.71). Whilst there are ‘great achievements’ to be found that bear ‘the imprint of other civilisations’, he argues that ‘everything that is newly created – buildings, institutions, aids to knowledge or improvements to life-styles – all of these are produced in the image of the West’ (Maalouf 1996, p.71). Maalouf discusses the possibility that it might have been the influence of different religions that led to east and west taking different paths, but concludes that if anything it was Christianity, rather than Islam, that had a clearer track record of trying to block scientific progress in the period before the ‘Enlightenment’. It is perhaps Habermas’ understanding of the public sphere that can help us understand this perception of the domination of western culture and how religion itself came to be relatively marginalised within conceptualisations of progress. The public sphere not only provided a means of controlling the message; but its very existence came to be understood as evidence of western dominance. The proliferation of global media outlets meant this message could impinge upon the lives of ordinary individuals across the globe. This reality, according to Maalouf, is ‘experienced differently by those born in the dominant civilisation and those born outside it’. Those who feel themselves to be a part of the modern western project ‘can change, advance in life, adapt without ceasing to be themselves’; indeed perhaps ‘the more Westerners modernise themselves the more completely in harmony they feel with their culture’ (Maalouf 1996, pp.71–72). The experiences of the inhabitants of the ‘rest of the world’ are very different as ‘modernisation has constantly meant the abandoning of part of themselves’, so even when ‘modernity’ has ‘been embraced with enthusiasm’ in the ‘rest of the world’, it has ‘never been adopted without a certain bitterness, without a feeling of humiliation and defection. Without a piercing doubt about the dangers of assimilation. Without a profound identity crisis’ (Maalouf 1996, p.72). Some of the ambivalence expressed by British Muslims about ‘integration’ is discussed elsewhere in this work (Chapter 10, Volume 1). It is only those westerners who themselves reject modernity who might find themselves ‘out of touch’.

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FREE SPEECH, CHARLIE HEBDO AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE The attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo on 7 January 2015 might be understood in terms of a violent response to the threat of modernity. The assault by the two brothers Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, in which they killed 12 people working for the satirical magazine, was in revenge for the publication of cartoons that represented and mocked the prophet Mohammed. The attack has been portrayed as being part of a battle between the ideals of free expression of a civilised society and a more primitive culture still dominated by religion, albeit in the form of an extreme version of Islam (Murray 2015). An alternative narrative would suggest that the violent response to offence offered to the Islamic religion might be understood as a form of resistance to the overt colonialism of western secularism. It will be argued here that a closer analysis of the broader social context, and of the lives of the perpetrators of the attack on Charlie Hebdo, points us to a better understanding of this event that may also help us to understand other instances of terror-related violence. France has been very proud of its tradition both of free speech and of the overt separation of the affairs of the nation state from religion. The elimination of any special status accorded to religion goes back to the Revolution of 1789 that triggered the erosion of blasphemy laws. The formal separation of state and religion was given legal status in 1905 and became part of the post-war constitution of 1945 (Liogier 2009). Thus in deliberately publishing cartoons that were known to cause offence to many Muslims, Charlie Hebdo was acting in a rather long and honoured history of the French state acting to create and protect a public sphere in which religious ideals would be accorded no special status. To many French people the principle of freedom from religious repression has strong cultural resonance: associated with freedom from the tyranny of the Ancien Régime and the liberation from occupation during World War 2. As Maalouf ’s work suggests, however, the sense of such liberation might well be experienced differently by those who do not identify with this version of French modernity. Despite the fact that the perpetrators were French citizens, it might be possible to characterise the murders committed that day as an attack on a ‘public sphere’ that was perceived as a vehicle of western domination. This was after all an episode in an

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ongoing battle over the publication of the cartoons that was occurring not only in France. Staff on the Danish publication Jyllands-Posten that published cartoons of Mohammed in September 2005 had previously been seriously threatened with death. Kurt Westergaard, who created one of the most controversial images in the Jyllands-Posten edition, had suffered a number of serious attempts on his life and has lived under police protection since 2008. The editor of Charlie Hebdo, Stéphane Charbonnier, was informed that he had been added to an al-Qaeda list of ‘most wanted’ and lived under police protection. Meanwhile, the man responsible for publishing that list of most wanted targets, Anwar al Awlaki, was controversially targeted and killed by a drone in Yemen in 2014, an act condemned by the New York Times (2014) as an ‘extrajudicial’ execution. To understand why disagreement over cartoons has been so bloody, it is necessary to use a closer focus.

The Kouachi brothers Some of the details of the lives of Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, the perpetrators of the Hebdo killings, can help us understand the historical and psychosocial dynamics at play here. They were born in France, in 1980 and 1982 respectively, but both their parents were immigrants from Algeria, a country with a very bloody colonial relationship with France, elements of which are very much alive in living memory. Algeria was, after a number of skirmishes, invaded and occupied by French military forces in 1830 and remained under French control until 1962 (Phillips and Evans 2007). Algeria’s armed struggle to liberate itself from colonial rule began in earnest in 1954 as the National Liberation Front (NLF) declared a war of independence in response to the apparently everdeepening commitment of the French (then Socialist) government to maintain Algeria as a part of France. The war was gory and particularly bitter, involving alliance between French troops with the Pieds-Noirs (those with roots in France but having formed a colonising population of Catholics and Jews) and the Harkis (who were Muslim Algerians who had often fought for the French military during World War 2) fighting against the FLN-led Algerian rebels. As the death toll rose, the French government was eventually forced to cede Algeria its independence in 1962. In the aftermath of independence, hundreds of thousands of Pied-Noirs and Harkis either

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fled (many to France, where they were not made that welcome) or were left to suffer deadly reprisals in Algeria. There was considerable animosity between those in France who identified with Algeria’s struggle for independence and elements of the establishment that were resisting. In Paris itself in November 1961 a large, but peaceful, demonstration by Algerians was fired upon by police who killed as many as 200 protestors, with many of the corpses being thrown in the Seine. Subsequently around 11,000 Algerians living in France were rounded up and interned (Einaudi 1991). Even more recently the French government supported the coup which suspended the Algerian election process that seemed to be heading towards victory for the Islamic Salvation Front in 1991. Subsequent clashes between the army and the Armed Islamic Group have led to the deaths of tens of thousands and have created many refugees (Phillips and Evans 2007). Such is the Algerian diaspora into which the Kouachi brothers were born in Paris. Whilst little is known about the lives of the parents, the brothers’ start in life amidst the banlieues was inauspicious. We know that their mother was left to bring up her children on her own, but struggled with this task. According to newspaper reports, the two brothers, aged just 10 and 12, found her dead body in their housing project apartment in 1992. She died, pregnant with her sixth child, of a drugs overdose. It may well have been suicide, although a definitive judgement on her death was not made as she was thought to regularly abuse drugs, funding her habit through sex work (The Telegraph 2014). The boys were taken into care and spent two years with a foster family in Brittany and two years later ended up in residential care in Corrèze (with their younger brother and sister). A childhood friend from the time recalled the orphanage as a violent place, but as the boys could ‘look after themselves’ they were respected (Malta Today 2015). They moved back to Paris around 2000, staying in an apartment in the 19th Arrondissement, where their lives appeared to resemble those typical of a ‘suburban ghetto generation’, that were ‘marked by exclusion, harder access to unskilled jobs, spatial segregation and police checks’ and limited social relations (Le Monde Diplomatique 2015). However lamentable that typicality might be, the next steps in the brothers’ lives were to be more radical. Around the time of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the brothers began attending the Adda’wa Mosque on Rue de Tanger. Here they met Farid Benyettou, then 22, who was also

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the son of Algerian immigrants. Chérif had become sufficiently enamoured with the idea of jihad that he made an attempt to go to Iraq to be part of the armed insurgency against the US-led occupation in January 2005. His attempt was blocked by French police acting on intelligence reports. At the time he was portrayed as being somewhat relieved to have had his trip obstructed. His subsequent time in the notorious Fleury-Mérogis prison awaiting trial introduced him to further extremist influences. Imprisoned at the same time was Djamel Beghal, an Algerian who had trained in one of Osama bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan, before being convicted in France of plotting to blow up the American Embassy in Paris in 2001. He also met the 23-year-old Amedy Coulibaly who was a convicted petty criminal but who was very affected by the teaching of Djamel Beghal (Walklate and Mythen 2016). Coulibaly was to attack the kosher Hypercacher Jewish supermarket in tandem with the Charlie Hebdo attack. Released under judicial supervision in 2006, Chérif returned to Paris, where he was reunited with his brother Saïd and eventually with Coulibaly and Beghal. The latter two were convicted of further plots to instigate attacks in France in 2010, whilst Chérif was acquitted. Trial documents related to the contents of Chérif ’s computer evidence that the rationale for the Charlie Hebdo attack was in place five years earlier. Chérif had written of his approval of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, and his anger about French writers and journalists who disparaged Islam, turning ‘blasphemy into a form of sadistic entertainment’ (New York Times 2015). It is believed that Chérif received training and funding from al-Qaeda, and certainly when it occurred the attack was coolly executed and the extensive planning had remained hidden. They seem to have kept any views about Charlie Hebdo or current politics largely to themselves and they dressed in ways that did not draw attention to any process of radicalisation. Both brothers died in a shoot-out with police, having escaped from the scene of carnage that they had created at the weekly editorial meeting. To make it entirely clear that they were carrying out acts that were intended for the public sphere, Chérif Kouachi gave an interview with the French TV channel BFM-TV whilst they were making their last stands. Chérif located their acts within global Islamicist struggles and networks: …we are defenders of the Prophet. I, Chérif Kouachi, was sent by alQaeda in Yemen. I was over there. I was financed by Imam Anwar al-Awlaki. (Lichfield 2015)

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CONCLUSION The Charlie Hebdo atrocity provides a useful case study that may help us understand some acts of ‘terror’ as deeds of violence aimed at the public sphere. The public sphere is not a neutral or abstract space but contains within it a history of bloody colonial struggle with which individuals are engaged at multiple levels that include the religious, the political and the personal. Awareness of the public sphere can help us understand the religious dimension of the acts that Cottee (2014) argues has been neglected by criminology and terrorism studies. The Kouachi brothers were after all keen to let the media know about their jihadi links and intentions, and religion cuts across various dimensions of their lives. Analysis of the role played by the public sphere can help us understand the meaning of religion in their lives in a way that avoids the destructive cul-de-sac indicated by declarations of religious, or cultural, warfare. There is no doubt that the Kouachi brothers were caught up with geopolitical conflicts that surround the Middle East and beyond, but there are also inevitably more localised layers to the brothers’ stories. They were part of an Algerian diaspora within which the commitment to free speech and the official restraint of religious influence could easily be viewed as part of an alien and hostile ideology that would have been experienced as an affront to the Kouachi brothers’ sense of identity (Maalouf 1996). That there may be something important within the particular French context of colonial conflict is indicated by the Bataclan (November 2015) and Nice (July 2016) massacres. There are also the finer-grained details about the lives of the perpetrators themselves. Within that Algerian diaspora, they were born into traumatic family circumstances that saw them effectively orphaned by mid-childhood and catapulted into the institutions of French welfare that included fostering, institutional care and finally prison. With little educational achievement and limited prospect of further conventional success, it may well be that identification with a ‘heroic’ struggle against historic oppression provided considerable meaning. Whilst their murderous acts were viewed as an assault on ‘free speech’, considered to be one of the central tenets of the western public sphere, perhaps their own engagement with the public sphere is symptomatic of an important shift in terms of the fabric and structure of that sphere. The availability of new media forms facilitated by the worldwide web allows

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individuals and groups access to a public sphere in ways not previously imaginable. Perhaps, paradoxically, the evident engagement with the public sphere (albeit marked by violence) is symptomatic of some shift in the identity of the public sphere away from its narrow association with westernisation. The question for all of us is whether the public sphere, so rooted in western development, with all its triumphs and shameful abuses, can become a space where such opposing voices feel that they can be heard without violence.

REFERENCES Atran, S. (2006) ‘The moral logic and growth of suicide terrorism.’ The Washington Quarterly 29, 2, 127–147. Black, J. (1987) The English Press in the Eighteenth Century. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press. Burke, J. (2016) ‘How the changing media is changing terrorism.’ The Guardian, 25 February. Calhoun, C. (1992) Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Cottee, S. (2014) ‘We need to talk about Mohammad: theistic violence and the murder of Theo Van Goch.’ British Journal of Criminology 54, 981–1001. Dugaw, D. (1998) ‘“High change in Change Alley”: popular ballads and emergent capitalism in the eighteenth century.’ Eighteenth-Century Life 22, 2, 43–58. Einaudi, J-L. (1991) La Bataille de Paris. Paris: Sueil. Gadd, D. and Jefferson, T. (2007) Psychosocial Criminology: An Introduction. London: Sage. Garland, D. (2002) ‘Of Crimes and Criminals: The Development of Criminology in Britain.’ In M. Macguire, M. Morgan and R. Reiner (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Criminology. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gilligan, J. (1997) Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic. New York: Vintage Books. Habermas, J. (1989) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Translated by Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge: Polity Press. (Original work published in 1962.) Holmes, G. (1969) Britain after the Glorious Revolution, 1689–1714. London: Macmillan. Jones, D.W. (2008) Understanding Criminal Behaviour: Psychosocial Approaches to Criminality. Abingdon: Willan/Routledge. Katz, J. (1988) Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Seductions of Doing Evil. New York: Basic Books. Khalaf, S. (2002) Civil and Uncivil Violence in Lebanon. New York: Columbia University Press. Kimmel, M.S. and Mahler, M. (2003) ‘Adolescent masculinity, homophobia, and violence: random school shootings 1982–2001.’ American Behavioral Scientist 46, 1439. Le Monde Diplomatique (2015) ‘After the Paris killings: the guys from the ghetto.’ Laurent Bonello, Le Monde Diplomatique, 1 February 2015.

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Lichfield, J. (2015) ‘ Paris attackers interview with French TV station.’ The Independent, 10 January 2015. Liogier, R. (2009) ‘Laïcité on the edge in France: between the theory of the Church– State separation and the praxis of state–church confusion.’ Macquarie Law Journal 9, 25–45. Maalouf, A. (1996) In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong. Translated by Barbara Bray. New York: Arcade Publishing. Malta Today (2015) ‘Witnesses come forward with details of Kouachi brothers’ childhood.’ Malta Today, 19 January 2015. McDermott, T. (2005) Perfect Soldiers. The Hijackers: Who They Were, Why They Did It. London: HarperCollins. Miller, J. (1983) The Glorious Revolution. London: Longman. Murray, C. (2015) ‘“Religion of peace” is not a harmless platitude: to face Islamist terror, we must face the facts about Islam’s history.’ The Spectator, March 2015. Accessed on 19/8/2016 at www.spectator.co.uk/2015/01/religion-of-peace-is-nota-harmless-platitude New York Times (2014) ‘A thin rationale for drone killings.’ 23 June 2014. New York Times (2015) ‘From scared amateur to Paris slaughterer.’ Rukmini Callimachi and Jim Yardley, 18 January 2015. Newman, K.S. and Fox, C. (2004) Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings. New York: Basic Books. Pape, R.A. (2003) ‘The strategic logic of terrorism.’ American Political Science Review 97, 3, 343–361. Phillips, J. and Evans, M. (2007) Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed. New Haven: Yale University Press. Sageman, M. (2008) ‘The next generation of terror.’ Foreign Policy (March/April), 37–42. Schubert, E.S. (1988) ‘Innovations, debts, and bubbles: international integration of financial markets in Western Europe, 1688–1720.’ The Journal of Economic History 48, 2, 299–306. Silke, A. (1998) ‘Cheshire-cat logic: the re-occurring theme of terrorist abnormality in psychological research.’ Psychology, Crime and Law 4, 1, 51–69. The Telegraph (2014) ‘Charlie Hebdo killers “traumatised by mother’s suicide”.’ 19 January 2015. Accessed on 23/8/2016 at www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/ europe/france/11354847/Charlie-Hebdo-killers-traumatised-by-mothers-suicide. html Walklate, S. and Mythen, G. (2016) ‘Fractured lives, splintered knowledge: making criminological sense of the January, 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris.’ Critical Criminology 24, 333–346. Weimann, G. (2011) ‘Cyber-Fatwas and terrorism.’ Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 34, 765–781.

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‘1 IN 5 BRIT MUSLIMS’ SYMPATHY FOR JIHADIS’ What It Means to Be a Muslim Living in Britain Today ISMAIL KAROLIA AND JULIAN MANLEY

INTRODUCTION On 13 November 2015, 130 people died in terrorist attacks in Paris. Ten days later, The Sun published the headline ‘1 in 5 Brit Muslims’ Sympathy for Jihadis’ (Dunn 2015). The Paris attacks and the backlash on British Muslims were followed by further ISIS-inspired attacks in Brussels, Nice and Berlin. Across Europe, far-right parties with anti-Muslim sentiments have grown in influence (The New York Times 2016); the British EU Referendum has led to incidents of overt racism in the UK (The Independent 2016). This chapter is about understanding the effect of these events upon British Muslims and the tendency to associate the Muslim faith with violent ‘Jihadi’ terrorism as a national problem and a collective, indiscriminate object into which a whole nation can project its deeper fears. In framing this projection, the so-called ‘Islamic State’ becomes synonymous with a violent state of being. In our chapter, we show how the British Muslims who participated in our research felt identified with the incursion of this ‘Islamic State’ into the UK as a sovereign ‘State’. The Islamic ‘State’ is at once an invading State and a psychic state. Both States/states become a single locus for the intolerable fear that must be expelled once it can be identified as an object to be targeted. The frustration of British Muslims emerges at the node of a simultaneous need to expel such hatred and fear coupled with the psychic impossibility 161

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of accepting this expulsion as a projection into one’s self, leading to a limbo of combined projection and rejection held in relationship through mutual tension and a determination to ‘resist’ on all sides.

BEING A MUSLIM IN BRITAIN The Sun apologised after the Independent Press Standards Organisation found the headline to be misleading (BBC News 2016; IPSO 2016). Nevertheless, the story continues to play a dangerous game, equating ‘sympathy’ with support for ‘Jihadis’ and terrorists. The distortion of meaning in language, particularly when used in reference to minority communities, is symptomatic of a violent state that creates a sense of ‘other’ (Said 1978). As an example of this, the word ‘jihad’ has been perverted to equate it with terrorism, making any Muslim interested in ‘jihad’ a potential terrorist, ignoring the fact that ‘jihad’ is actually understood by many Muslims as being an inner struggle towards selfimprovement (Islamic Supreme Council of America 2016). The wording and timing of The Sun’s article present a crude separation of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Muslims, reminding us of Richardson’s ironic observation of what it means to be a ‘good’ Muslim: The Hallmark of a good Muslim is not so much that they are decent and law abiding…but they do not seek to apply their faith to social and political affairs, do not criticise British foreign policy…do not wear Islamic dress…or seek separateness. (Richardson 2011, p.160)

The way this definition is linked to the ‘other’ emerges in The Sun’s own efforts, in the same edition, to quote a ‘respectable’ Muslim, Sadiq Khan, candidate for the Mayor of London. Khan’s ‘respectability’ includes not displaying any overt visual manifestations of Islamic culture – unlike the image of ‘Jihadi John’ on The Sun’s front cover – and being reported as saying that ‘Britain needs to take its head out of the sand and tackle extremism.’ While he is a practising Muslim and was vilified for being so in the London Mayoral elections, Khan’s quoted opinion makes him sufficiently ‘like us’; ‘us’ being the supposed white British and ‘Christian’ Sun readership. As a result, we are confronted with a violent ‘with us or against us’ culture. As Sardar (2006) points out, a shift from a ‘backward’ culture

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to a different, more ‘advanced’ one ‘leads quite naturally to the loss of self-esteem’, leading to a ‘redoubled quest for self-esteem [which takes the form of] cultural self-affirmation and attempts to retain the unique features of one’s culture [which have to be] cherished and defended as the essence of one’s self-identity’ (p.290). This is why the idea of ‘integration’ is difficult to accept if ‘integration’ means rejection of culture and faith, lack of self-esteem and crisis of identity. According to Bhimji (2012), for many British Muslims, the word ‘integration’ tends to be associated with the ‘withdrawal of basic religious rights, such as the right to pray during work hours, the right to wear the hijab or the niqab…resulting in the incorporation of Muslims into a falsely constructed homogeneous British society’ (p.144). This creates a Lévi-Straussian ‘anthropophagic’ society, where the ‘other’ is violently coerced or forced into assimilation in order to be accepted (cited in Young 1999, p.56). Diversity within Muslim communities is rarely acknowledged, certainly not in The Sun’s headline. Instead, ‘the evidence shows an overwhelmingly negative picture, where threat, otherness, fear and danger posed or caused by Muslims and Islam underpins a considerable majority of the media’s coverage’ (Allen 2012, p.10). Research shows that much media reporting of Islam is negative, often using the logic of ‘us and them’ discourse to frame discussions of Muslims in the UK (Bleich et al. 2015; Sian 2013). As such, Muslims ‘are almost always constructed as belonging outside the nation’ (Sian, Law and Sayyid 2012, p.264). Ansari (2005) comments that, ‘increasingly, media coverage had come to be regarded [by Muslims] as Western propaganda for consumption by its own public’ (p.162). True or not, this reveals a tone and discourse that might genuinely feel as if it were so by a British Muslim dealing with complex emotional realities. This is exacerbated by the government’s response: the Prevent agenda (HM Government 2011) asks communities and institutions to act upon any suspicious terrorist-related activity. Prevent has been widely criticised for being damaging to children; generating fear, suspicion and hysteria; encouraging blind conformity and downplaying dissenting opinions; and enforcing a culture of self-censorship (Sian 2013; Kundani 2014; Khan and Mythen 2015). Reactions to this state of affairs from the British Muslim community include the development of organisations like MEND and Tell Mama,

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which provide advocacy services and challenge Islamophobia. Activists such as Miqdaad Versi work to counter the negative news stories put out by the media, many of which are found to be misleading (The Guardian 2017). One youth group has made a film challenging editors to meet with them to understand the impact of the messages (Political Scrapbook 2017). Compared to Prevent, these efforts appear to have had little coverage.

SOCIAL DREAMING WITH BRITISH MUSLIMS Social dreaming (Lawrence 2005; Manley 2014; see also Chapter 14, Volume 1) is a group-based method for between 5 and 35 people. First, participants gather in a room with chairs arranged in a ‘matrix’ for between 40 and 60 minutes, during which time they are free to express dreams, images and associations. Second, this is followed up by a post-matrix dialogue or discussion where the facilitator supports the participants in making sense of the dreams, images and associations of the social dreaming matrix. We used social dreaming to allow for the expression of what Christopher Bollas called the ‘unthought known’ (1987). We were hypothesising that British Muslims had feelings about Muslim identity that were difficult to talk about due to the generation of a state/State of violence typified by the shame, guilt, humiliation and depression that comes from one’s own cultural and religious identity being linked to expressions of fear, hate and violence. Although our aim in the use of social dreaming in this study was to gather data for our research, it became clear that it was also providing a Winnicottian space for the transformation of raw emotion into visual metaphors, which acted as transitional objects for the participants and supported an alternative creative state of reflection as a form of intervention in the status quo.

UNCOVERING THE UNCONSCIOUS Three social dreaming matrices for British Muslims were held in the north-west of England: two with groups of young people and one with a group of adult Muslim women. We wanted to understand the journey and mindset of young Muslims, who are regularly labelled as being vulnerable to radicalisation, and who have grown up under the shadow

What it means to be a Muslim in Britain today

of the World Trade Center attacks. A mixed-gender adult group was intended to provide a contrasting set of data; however, only the women actually presented themselves on the day. We took this unintended focus on gender into account in our analysis.

First session: Social Dreaming 1 (SD1) The first session took place at a youth club in Blackburn, with young people between the ages of 13 and 19, alongside two adults, a youth worker and the facilitator. There were ten males including the youth worker and facilitator, and three females. The local area is ethnically mixed. Ten members of the group were Muslim and from a Pakistani or Indian background, and three participants were white British and not from Muslim backgrounds.

Second session: Social Dreaming 2 (SD2) The second group was held at another youth centre in Blackburn. Eleven individuals attended, including a different youth worker and the facilitator: three females and eight males, mostly aged between 17 and 19. The group were all British Asian, largely from a Pakistani background.

Third session: Social Dreaming 3 (SD3) The group consisted of five Muslim women aged between 20 and 50. Two were from a white British background, one from a Pakistani background and two from an Indian background. The session took place at the University of Central Lancashire. ✳✳✳ Each social dreaming session lasted 40 minutes and was followed up with a post-matrix discussion session for 15 minutes. Both the matrices and the post-matrix discussions were recorded and the social dreaming matrices were transcribed. The authors met a few weeks after each session to analyse the transcripts.

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VIOLENT STATES AND THEIR EXPRESSIONS In the quotations from the social dreaming matrices below, the letter ‘D’ indicates a dream, while ‘C’ indicates any other comment or association. The source of the quotations is indicated by the letters ‘SD’ followed by the number of the session in question.

1. The difficulty in distinguishing a British Muslim reality All the groups expressed confusion about what constituted their ‘real’ identities. In SD1 and SD2 the participants used the dreams to question this reality, expressing a sense of conflict in owning a British identity and living in Britain and subsequent changes and questions about how this identity might now be experienced. The displacement of a previous reality brings one of the participants to layer the unreality of one dream into another, emphasising a distance from a reality once perceived: D: I had a dream once, it felt like I was in a different country, and I was in a different country, it felt real… D: All right, I believe I once had a dream, it was a wonderful place, and yet I find myself here, I feel great but you know, things have happened… D: I had a dream that I had a dream. (SD1)

In SD3, a similar sense of confusion between reality and the dream was expressed in a series of references to sleepwalking. One of the descriptions described a state between reality and dream: D: I was paralysed on the bed and it took me a while to come around and move. But I knew I was in my own house and everything but I’d seen myself wake up. There was no dream, but I knew I was asleep. In a way, sleepwalking, but in my own way. (SD3)

Another participant described unlocking the door of the house in a sleepwalk, bringing to the fore questions of ‘home’ and security: C: I just thought they’d forgotten to lock the doors, but it was me sleepwalking, unlocking the doors and going back to bed. Not opening the door, just taking the locks off. (SD3)

What it means to be a Muslim in Britain today

2. Can you be a British Muslim and enjoy a sense of power? Unscrupulous power was identified with icons of ‘Christian’ leadership, for example the UK Prime Minister, the President of the US or the Pope. In the following dream, the speaker goes further than giving a political reason for the exercising of power at war – ‘for the greater good’ – and delves into the ambiguous desire to wield power for its own sake: D: In my dream when I was the Prime Minister I sent the country to war. I was on the phone with the President of America and I realised that we had to kill loads of people, but it was for the greater good…it was like something crazy. It kind of felt good because I had all that power. (SD1)

This dream of ‘feeling good’ about power contrasts with powerlessness or persecution. It describes the need for power as strength and freedom to act in a way that establishes identity, that of being Prime Minister. In the dream, the ‘tables are turned’ and the British Muslim is on the phone to the President of the US. Although it is ‘crazy’, it still serves a purpose. The dream delves into the unspeakable paradox of justifying power through what it means to have it, even if ‘loads of people’ are killed. In the same matrix we are reminded of the Christian, anti-Muslim justification of the use of this power: C: That just reminds me of the crusades, the goal is justice said the Pope, who should have been against it. Ironic really, wonderfully ironic. (SD1)

Again, the ‘tables are turned’ in the dream, and the unjust ‘holy war’ is that of the Christians against the Muslims. This fear of white, ‘Christian’ power came up again in the form of inverted terrorism: D: I had a dream that I was on holiday and one of the engines blew up and the plane crashed. C: That reminds me of terrorists. C: That reminds me of George Bush. (SD2)

In the same matrix, this same white ‘Christian’ power is the source of prophetic fear:

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D: I had a dream that Donald Trump became President. Scared the hell out of me. (SD2)

3. Being a British Muslim means persecution and fear of disaster and death There was anxiety in the association of Muslim identity with persecution, imprisonment and death. In the following example, being in a dream seems to protect the speaker from death, as if only dreams can save you: D: I fell off the building, I didn’t jump, and I wasn’t even pushed, I just started falling and just before you land, you wake up. C: Yeah, I’ve had that dream. C: It’s like that moment, you just wake up like that. C: What happens if you don’t wake up? C: You die, don’t you? (SD2)

In another dream, Muslims identified together as friends are put into prison for no apparent reason: D: I once had a dream that basically me and most of my friends were being sent to prison. And we didn’t know what we did but we were going to prison. And we sat there in the waiting room. (SD1)

Prison is seen as very much part of life, where escape is impossible: D: I was in jail, and then I smashed the wall and I escaped. I passed out and then they put me back in jail. (SD2)

Another dream indicates that escape might be worse than the prison itself and suggests the desperate lengths people may go through to escape persecution: D: …them weird toilets that are in the ground, we were getting robbed and then we went to the toilet and locked the door. And so we jumped in the toilet. (SD2)

What it means to be a Muslim in Britain today

4. Being Muslim in Britain means giving a special place to the family. Maybe there is hope in the role of women Family clearly holds an important place in the lives of the participants: D: My family members died and…it was a very dark place, you know, being there… You realise life is short, you’ve got to make the most of it, so show love to your family and friends. (SD1)

In the face of persecution, there appears to be solace in the family and especially in women, as in the following dream: D: We were at the train station, and then I got lost and then some old lady came and she goes ‘are you all right?’ and then, and then I was ducking away from the cops and I found my sister. (SD2)

In this example, the male protagonist of the dream seeks respite from the police through an old lady, perhaps a source of maternal wisdom, and subsequently his female other – that is to say, someone who is not in conflict – as represented by his sister.

5. Can Muslims identify with some other place or other time, if it’s so difficult in Britain? We come across a desire of flight to some other real or imagined place where the pressures of being British and Muslim might not intrude. For example, there were references to Pakistan, India and Dubai, the first two referring to countries of ancestral origin and the latter to a Muslim place of riches and power. There was a struggle between the Britishness implied in supporting Liverpool Football Club and the feeling that this might not be ‘home’ for a Muslim: D: I had a dream Liverpool won the league…

and the feeling that home might be somewhere else: C: That reminds me, I don’t want to live in England when I’m old. (SD1)

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6. Being a British Muslim woman and recourse to a religious identity In the third matrix, held with adult Muslim women, the dreams and associations were more developed compared to the previous matrices and included difficulties in defining a British Muslim identity not simply connected with terrorism. In the following dream, for example, the rows of men evoke a military or terrorist-style procession, creating a sense of being under attack by outside forces: D: I had this dream, my daughters were telling me ‘they’ were coming to get me. I don’t know who, but ‘they’ were coming to get me and they [the daughters] were trying to hide me in the house and lock me in the room to protect me. And suddenly all these full rows of men were coming towards the house and coming through and I’m stood there and I’m just constantly repeating [in Arabic] ‘God is Great, God is Great, God is Great’ and they’re coming towards me and I can see them getting closer and closer and I’m really scared. But I don’t move, I just keep saying ‘God is Great’… (SD3)

In the final invocation of this dream, religion takes a central place in the participant’s identity and re-occurs in other dreams as a point of refuge. ‘God is Great’ in Arabic is the same cry that is used by many ‘Jihadi’ terrorists to justify their acts. Just as in The Sun’s eliding of ‘Jihadi’ with terrorism, we might wonder about the effect of twisting the sense of the words ‘God is Great’ to a terrified, angry nation and how this perversion of meaning might affect British Muslims. In the women’s matrix, an appeal to religion was repeated in several moments, as in the following example: D: My daughter…had an accident… I think she’s dead… I woke up and I was really scared. That same day the feeling stays with you and you say [in Arabic] I seek refuge in God from the rejected Satan. (SD3)

The acute feeling of violence and aggression in the women’s matrix was emphasised by the fact that identification with the Islamic faith was not sufficient to prevent a sense of persecution from the male Muslim community itself, as demonstrated in the following detailed dream:

What it means to be a Muslim in Britain today

D: There’s this gentleman with a beard, a bit like a sheikh [Islamic scholar] walking with me and talking…and there’s like all these men. Some have beards, some don’t, but they’re all Muslims and I’m stood there, and I see something go past me and I realise I’m on the bottom of the ocean suddenly even though I’ve been talking, I’ve just realised, oh my god I’m on the bottom of the sea and I can’t breathe. And I start panicking and thinking how am I breathing underwater so I start fighting for the top and…all these others are coming after me and I just burst out of this river and someone’s shouting ‘are we to get her?’ and they’re like ‘don’t worry, she’ll be back’. And as I come up I just remember taking this massive breath of fresh air coming out of the water and I just look around me and there’s this river but either side there’s trees and forests, and this massive expanse of water. And all this water come off me, and after seeing that I woke up. (SD3)

POST-MATRIX DISCUSSION The post-matrix discussions enabled the participants to enter a reflective space where they could identify themes emanating from the social dreaming matrices. The young people in SD1 acknowledged a sense of the barriers they experience to fulfilling personal and professional aspirations; in SD2, they linked their dreams to a desire to seek affirmation from a wider society, often manifested through communications on social media, a space simultaneously real and unreal, perhaps similar to the sense of the social dreaming matrix for them; the women in SD3 reflected upon the feeling of guilt at not presenting a positive image of Islam by adhering to their religion more strongly. They discussed the reality of the constant and uncomfortable feeling of having to explain oneself following major attacks.

THE DESIRE FOR FLIGHT AND THE DIFFICULTY OF ACCEPTANCE It comes as no surprise that Muslims face everyday racism and discrimination. What the social dreaming sessions reveal, however, is the depth of feeling that the special circumstances of terrorist events associated to Islamic faith generates in British Muslims and their sense of identity. It is as if ‘mainstream’ discrimination has been replaced

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with what British Muslims experience as a wholesale attack on all manifestations of Islamic culture and identity; as if this identity were evil and impossible to maintain, requiring a dismantling of inherited identities and roots with nothing to replace them, except cultural rejection and a pragmatic acceptance of a ‘better’ and ‘Christian’ British version of identity, euphemistically labelled ‘integration’. The impossibility of accepting this as the only solution to solving an identity crisis comes across in the social dreaming in the vacillations between waking realities and dream states, leaving a sense of identity in limbo between an exterior reality that cannot be embraced and an interior dream state that cannot be made real. With no obvious choices to adopt, the participants in the social dreaming matrices expressed disempowerment. The anxiety engendered provoked expressions of fear of persecution, futility, imprisonment and death. Images of imprisonment allude to potential segregation, separation and isolation from mainstream society. This echoes Zempi and Chakraborti’s (2015) conclusion, that Muslim women avoid Islamophobia ‘by removing themselves from public spaces’ (p.49; see also Chapter 9, Volume 1). The outdoors has become a place of risk. The women’s matrix expressed a sense of persecution from the outside while at the same time being stifled, persecuted or chased by their own communities, making the sanctuary of home a less obvious one. The dreams revealed a yearning for something outside the British context: fantasies of escape to places of Muslim identity, communities or countries. This phantasy yearning leads to desperate flight rather than fight. To fight might associate Muslims with terrorism. There are many who believe that the current state in which Muslims find themselves is one where it is difficult to loudly oppose the current state of affairs without appearing to support the enemy. The desperation in the dream about jumping into a toilet shows the extent and hopelessness of the ends people will go through in a bid to escape. Reflecting upon this dream reminded us of two films by Danny Boyle: Trainspotting (1996) and Slumdog Millionaire (2008). In the former, the lead character, Renton, plunges into the toilet to retrieve his opiate, and for a moment finds himself out at sea. In the latter, a young Jamal, locked in, jumps into the toilet to see a famous film star who is visiting his village. These images feel like appropriate metaphors for a British Muslim experience that seeks escape towards the unknown and supposed happiness of ‘elsewhere’.

What it means to be a Muslim in Britain today

Using the creative method of social dreaming to better understand the psychosocial realities of this community challenges the negative, blocking narratives offered in the current state of violence that encapsulates fear, hatred of the other and an overall questioning of identity and nationhood. We believe that social dreaming can contribute to supporting British Muslim communities to address those violent states associated with their identities, which hinder the development of a combined identification of self as being indivisibly both British and Muslim. Social dreaming was originally inspired by Charlotte Beradt’s (1968) use of dreams to demonstrate an ‘unthought’ knowledge – that of the fate of the Jews in Nazi Germany. In her book, Beradt shows that German Jews were able to somehow foresee – in their dreams – a future threat to the Jews in Nazi Germany. Beradt showed that many Jews, living in Germany before the beginnings of overt persecution, were dreaming of their fate  before it happened. It seems that the dreams were revealing feelings and thoughts about a present malaise that could only be expressed in dreams. Similarly, we suggest that the dreams of British Muslims may warn us about the social, political and national dangers that might be before us. Just as the Jews in Beradt’s study saw a future of persecution and tyranny, it is uncomfortable to feel that British Muslims might have a similar sense of victimisation. This is not to say that we believe that Muslims are fated to replay the Jewish fate during the Second World War; neither are we suggesting that communities of British Muslims are like the Jewish communities in Germany in the 1930s. However, we would do well to pay attention to how the ‘war on terror’ will also seek its victims.

ENDNOTE BY ISMAIL KAROLIA At the age of 33 and at the time of co-writing this chapter, I made my first trip to Surkhai, India, the village in which my parents were born. There, I was able to see extended family and places that would have been significant to my parents. Instead of a sense of connection and belonging, I was left with the feeling of being other and different. Clearly influenced by my lack of fluency in the language (Gujarati) and distance between my culture as a British Indian and theirs as rural Indians, I was conscious of the findings of this research: the sense of escape to achieve a sense of belonging may just as well prove to be a flight in which one is perceived

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as and feels ‘other’. It was a reminder that identity is constantly fluid and constituted as much in an outsider’s perceptions as it is dependent upon an internal understanding. This oddity of self-perception will be understood by many minority communities, many of whom search for a sense of belonging away from their places of birth, but never truly find it.

ETHICS The research was approved by the University of Central Lancashire’s Ethics Committee.

REFERENCES Allen, C. (2012) ‘A review of the evidence relating to the representation of Muslims and Islam in the British media.’ Institute of Applied Social Studies, University of Birmingham. Ansari, H. (2005) ‘Attitudes to Jihad, Martyrdom and Terrorism among British Muslims.’ In T. Abbas (ed.) Muslim Britain. London: Zed Books. BBC News (2016) ‘The Sun’s UK Muslim “jihadi sympathy” article “misleading”, Ipso rules.’ Accessed on 8/8/2016 at www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35903066 Beradt, C. (1968) The Third Reich of Dreams. Chicago, IL: Quadrangle Books. Bhimji, F. (2012) British Asian Muslim Women, Multiple Spatialities and Cosmopolitanism. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Bleich, E., Stonebraker, H., Nisar, H. and Abdelhamid, R. (2015) ‘Media portrayals of minorities: Muslims in British newspaper headlines, 2001–2012.’ Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 41, 6, 942–962. Bollas, C. (1987) The Shadow of the Object. New York: Columbia University Press. Dunn, T.N. (2015) ‘1 in 5 Brit Muslims’ Sympathy for Jihadis.’ The Sun, 23 November 2015. The Guardian (2017) ‘Press publishing consistent stream of inaccurate stories about Muslims.’ Accessed on 24/1/2017 at www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ jan/19/press-publishing-consistent-stream-of-inaccurate-stories-aboutmuslims?CMP=share_btn_link HM Government (2011) Prevent Strategy. Accessed on 3/6/2016 at https://www.gov. uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/97976/preventstrategy-review.pdf The Independent (2016) ‘UK entering “unchartered territory” of Islamophobia after Brexit vote.’ 27 June 2016. Accessed on 15/8/2016 at www.independent.co.uk/news/ uk/home-news/brexit-muslim-racism-hate-crime-islamophobia-eu-referendumleave-latest-a7106326.html IPSO (Independent Press Standards Organisation) (2016) ‘IPSO upholds complaint that Sun article was significantly misleading.’ Accessed on 3/6/2016 at https://www. ipso.co.uk/news-press-releases/press-releases/ipso-upholds-complaint-that-sunarticle-was-significantly-misleading

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Khan, F. and Mythen, G. (2015) ‘Double standards and speech deficits: what is sayable for British Muslims after Paris?’ Sociological Research Online 20, 3. Accessed on 29/11/2017 at www.socresonline.org.uk/20/3/2.html Kundani, A. (2014) The Muslims are Coming: Islamophobia, Extremism and the Domestic War on Terror. London: Verso. Lawrence, W.G. (2005) Introduction to Social Dreaming. London: Karnac. Manley, J. (2014) ‘Gordon Lawrence’s Social Dreaming Matrix: background, origins, history and developments.’ Organisational and Social Dynamics 14, 2, 322–341. The New York Times (2016) ‘How far is Europe swinging to the right?’ Accessed on 3/6/2016 at www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/22/world/europe/europeright-wing-austria-hungary.html?_r=0 Political Scrapbook (2017) ‘Video by young Muslims asking Daily Mail and Sun for a meeting over coverage goes viral.’ Accessed 24/1/2017 at https://politicalscrapbook. net/2017/01/video-by-young-muslims-asking-daily-mail-and-sun-for-a-meetingover-coverage-goes-viral Richardson, R. (2011) ‘The Demonisation of Islam: Concepts, Terms, and Distinctions.’ In J. Petley and R. Richardson (eds) Pointing the Finger. London: One World Publications. Said, E.W. (1978) Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books. Sardar, Z. (2006) How Do You Know? London: Pluto Press. Sian, K. (2013) ‘Spies, surveillance and stakeouts: monitoring Muslim moves in British state schools.’ Race, Ethnicity and Education 18, 2. Accessed on 29/11/2017 at http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2013.830099 Sian, K., Law, I. and Sayyid, S. (2012) ‘The media and Muslims in the UK.’ Centre for Racism and Ethnicity Studies, University of Leeds. Accessed on 3/6/2016 at www. ces.uc.pt/projectos/tolerace/media/Working%20paper%205/The%20Media%20 and%20Muslims%20in%20the%20UK.pdf Slumdog Millionaire (2008) Directed by Danny Boyle [film]. 20th Century Fox Ltd. The Islamic Supreme Council of America (2016) Jihad: A Misunderstood Concept [online]. Accessed on 15/8/2016 at http://islamicsupremecouncil.org/understanding-islam/ legal-rulings/5-jihad-a-misunderstood-concept-from-islam.html?start=9 Trainspotting (1996) Directed by Danny Boyle [film]. Miramax Films. Young, J. (1999) The Exclusive Society. London: Sage. Zempi, I. and Chakraborti, N. (2015) ‘“They make us feel like we’re a virus”: the multiple impacts of Islamophobic hostility towards veiled women.’ International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy 4, 3, 44–56.

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FLIGHT 9525 Andreas Lubitz and the Psychology of the Lone Terrorist1 KLAUS HOFFMANN

INTRODUCTION As has been published so far from the files of the state attorney in Marseilles, France, and from the governmental Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) in Paris, on 13 March 2016 the 27-year-old Andreas Lubitz intentionally crashed a plane with 149 passengers on board in the French Alps on 24 March 2015, killing all on board including himself. During the investigations it emerged that Lubitz had prevented his senior pilot from re-entering the cabin after having gone to the toilet; that Lubitz had breathed very calmly when bringing the plane to its final crash; and that he executed this action in cold blood. Prosecutors found information on his computer showing that he had prepared the locking of the cabin door very thoroughly and that he also researched cyanide, valium, and other lethal pharmaceutical agents. It furthermore became known that Lubitz had consulted 41 medical doctors, including several psychiatrists and psychotherapists, because of complaints like depressive moods, anxiety disorder, suicidal crises, and somatoform disorders such 1

The original version of this chapter was previously published as ‘The psychology of the lone terrorist: identification with the aggressor in individuals and in societies’ by Klaus Hoffmann (2017) in the International Forum of Psychoanalysis, DOI: 10.1080/0803706X.2017.1298837, © The International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies. This present chapter is reprinted here in adapted form by permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd (www.tandfonline.com) on behalf of The International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies.

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as functional blindness: he was persistently afraid of losing his eyesight. A psychotic crisis had been diagnosed two weeks before the crash. The BEA summary from 13 March 2016 reads as follows: The co-pilot had been flying for Germanwings since June 2014 and was the holder of a class 1 medical certificate that was first issued in April 2008 and had been revalidated or renewed every year. Since July 2009, this medical certificate had contained a waiver because of a severe depressive episode without psychotic symptoms that had lasted from August 2008 until July 2009. This waiver stated that it would become invalid if there was a relapse into depression. In December 2014, approximately five months after the last revalidation of his class 1 medical certificate, the co-pilot started to show symptoms that could be consistent with a psychotic depressive episode. He consulted several doctors, including a psychiatrist, on at least two occasions, who prescribed anti-depressant medication. The co-pilot did not contact any Aero-Medical Examiners (AME) between the beginning of his decrease in medical fitness in December 2014 and the day of the event. In February 2015, a private physician diagnosed a psychosomatic disorder and an anxiety disorder and referred the co-pilot to a psychotherapist and psychiatrist. On 10 March 2015, the same physician diagnosed a possible psychosis and recommended psychiatric hospital treatment. A psychiatrist prescribed anti-depressant and sleeping aid medication in February and March 2015. Neither of these health care providers informed any aviation authority, nor any other authority, of the co-pilot’s mental state. Several sick leave certificates were issued by these physicians, but not all of them were forwarded to Germanwings. No action could have been taken by the authorities and/or his employer to prevent him from flying on the day of the crash, because they were informed by neither the copilot himself, nor by anybody else, such as a physician, a colleague, a family member… The BEA investigation concluded that the process for medical certification of pilots, in particular self-reporting in case of decrease in medical fitness between two periodic medical evaluations, did not succeed in preventing the co-pilot, who was experiencing mental disorder with psychotic symptoms, from exercising the privilege of his license. The following factors may have contributed to the failure of this principle: the co-pilot’s probable fear of losing his right to fly as a professional pilot if he had reported his decrease in medical fitness

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to an AME; the potential financial consequences generated by the lack of specific insurance covering the risks of loss of income in case of unfitness to fly; the lack of clear guidelines in German regulations on when a threat to public safety outweighs the requirements of medical confidentiality.

The BEA as well as politicians in the European Community and specifically in Germany are considering changes in relation to confidentiality of therapeutic knowledge for patients working in responsible positions, such as pilots. They have referred to already existing rules in Israel, Canada, and Norway. Against such solutions, it is argued that patients would no longer tell therapists about their inner situation if confidentiality were loosened. The public too is discussing whether psychological tests for such professional groups can exclude mentally ill or problematic persons from such professions. Psychoanalysts in Germany have publicly stressed Lubitz’s personality disorder, which had led to a lack of honesty with his seniors, and that the doctor had declared him unfit for work, with the result that he forced 149 people to die with him. A depression or a psychosomatic disorder could not explain his crime. Other colleagues have stressed the deep narcissistic level of Lubitz’s depression, which compelled other human beings to die with him and to become immortal in his destructivity. From a psychoanalytical viewpoint, Lubitz must have been filled with despair and rage resulting from his anxieties that his flying, his main aim in life, might be damaged by his problems; on the other side he was very keen to get a job where it was technically possible to kill many people. To date we have no information that missionary ideologies such as holy wars or psychotic messages had ordered Lubitz to act as he did. He had taught himself very thoroughly from the internet how to change the autopilot and how to exclude his pilot colleague from the cabin – just as the terrorists of 9/11 had become highly trained in how to perform their attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Lubitz was never a member of a terrorist or political group. He seems to have been identified solely with private preoccupations such as his parents, the separation from or at least problems with his girlfriend, and his goal of working as a pilot, which was torpedoed by his mental problems. Thus, psychoanalysts as well as the general public have not in this case discussed fundamentalism as a societal problem, but rather have focused on the responsibility of the

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therapeutic profession to reveal to the authorities destructive topics that are identified in the therapy of patients working in responsible positions. The court case now beginning will likely reveal if and how professional decisions are evaluated, and whether psychotherapists, for example, could have been obliged to put Lubitz into involuntary treatment pursuant to civil law because of his suspected danger to the public. Psychoanalysts can help many depressive and narcissistic patients to cope better with their life and their partners, colleagues, and friends; but they are not omnipotent saviours who can somehow heal everybody and prevent destructive actions in all cases. On the contrary, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy can become the targets of destructive actions and fantasies in such a way that they are seen as an alibi to remove responsibility from the individual and from the society which chooses what controls are exerted and where. The psychiatric and psychoanalytic discussion around the lonely terrorist Lubitz reveals psychoanalytic as well as societal attitudes and hopes that psychoanalysis can help in addressing violent states of mind and reducing destructivity.

TERROR AND TERRORISM – HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMES In Civilization and its Discontents, Sigmund Freud (1930) stressed that human beings are prone to destructive aggression and that society’s difficult task consists of formulating and imposing rules that will enable human beings, working together, to create a civilized world: The element of truth behind all this, which people are so ready to disavow, is that men are not gentle creatures who want to be loved, and who at the most can defend themselves if they are attacked; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness. As a result, their neighbour is for them not only a potential helper or sexual object, but also someone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work without compensation, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and to kill him. Homo homini lupus. Who, in the face of all his experience in life and history, will have the courage to dispute this assertion? As a rule this cruel aggressiveness waits for some provocation

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or puts itself at the service of some other purpose, whose goal might also have been reached by milder measures. (Freud 1930, p.111)

Freud ended Civilization and its Discontents with these lines: 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. It may be that in this respect precisely the present time deserves a special interest. 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 larger part of their current unrest, their unhappiness and their mood of anxiety. And now it is to be expected that the other of the two ‘Heavenly Powers’, eternal Eros, will make an effort to assert himself in the struggle with his equally immortal adversary. But who can foresee with what success and with what result? (1930, p.145)

Aggression and destructions accompany mankind’s history; today there are more unnatural deaths than ever before – a ‘lone terrorist’ is part of a world where many people are fighting against each other in ‘official armies’ or in ‘terrorist groups’ – who defines what is what? – and where many people are killed or severely injured by others. Psychoanalysts have a lot to do with aggression and destruction in their clinical practice. They see many persons who have been tormented and abused, and they deal with the phenomenon of repetition compulsion – that many people who have suffered from traumatizations themselves become abusers of other people. The first ‘terrorist’ was the Old Testament’s Samson (Judges: 13–16). A very powerful warrior for the nation of Israel against the Philistines, he was a man who could be hurt only when his hair was cut. He divulged his secret to his wife Delilah, a Philistine herself, a woman belonging to the group of his enemies. She identified more strongly with her group (or nation) and had him captured and his hair cut. Once his hair had grown back, Samson, in a terrible rage of vengeance, destroyed a Philistine temple and killed the 3000 people within it. The term ‘terrorist’ has existed in its recognizably modern form since the eighteenth century, when the opposition in the last years  of the French  monarchy was cruelly oppressed, and the King and his

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government were labelled as terrorists. In turn, the revolutionaries, when they came to power, took cruel revenge. Between 1793 and 1794, there ruled the ‘terror of the convent’, and the royal family and other members of the former ruling class were executed on the guillotine. Terror creates anxiety and fear by exercising cruel and destructive power, and does not correspond to war with its defined declarations and rules. On the other hand, the terms ‘terror’ and ‘terrorist’ are used to denounce oppositional or resistance groups: today the terrorist is blamed as society’s enemy. Resolution 1566 of the United Nations Security Council, dated 8 October 2004, formulated the ‘imperative to combat terrorism in all its forms and manifestations by all means, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and international law’. Terrorism has become the main enemy of civilized mankind and has ideologically replaced the evil existing in traditional religions. Andreas Lubitz can be considered a lone terrorist as he killed many people including himself and acted as a cruel enemy against the rules of civil aviation and the prerequisites of performing the job of a pilot. Fundamentalist and extremist attitudes are important prerequisites for organized terror, be it the attack on the Israeli sports team during the Olympic Games in 1972 or the attacks on the United States in 2001, after which the American president called for a ‘war on terror’. Organized terrorists are convinced that they have to fulfil a destructive mission for purposes called religious, to bring about a godly society and/or their own salvation. Psychologically, these perpetrators must be convinced that there is a strict separation between good and bad, and that there is zero tolerance. This separation happens both in the outer world and in the inner psychic world. Quite often, terrorists-to-be have led lives in problematic social situations, have used drugs, or have spent time in prison due to assaults, and converted there before their entry into the terrorist group. A ‘lone terrorist’ who has been known quite recently in Germany was the then 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer. He underwent psychotherapy in a youth psychiatric department in 2008. On 11 March 2009, in his school in Winnenden, close to Stuttgart in Baden-Württemberg, he killed 15 people, mainly pupils and teachers, and then killed himself with a gun he took from his father’s closet. In 2011, his father was sentenced for not having locked up his weapons in accordance with German law.

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He was also sentenced to make financial reparation to the teachers and relatives of those who had been killed. Attempts by the father to get reimbursement from the mental hospital where his son had been treated failed in court. Public debate continues as to whether computer games involving killers – which Tim Kretschmer had often played before his attack – should be forbidden by law. Three generations ago, the same south German town, Winnenden, and its mental hospital, where Tim Kretschmer also killed one person, was where a famous lone terrorist in psychiatric history, Ernst August Wagner, was confined.

ERNST WAGNER: THE LONE TERRORIST AND HIS SUBJECTIVE WORLD In September 1913, Wagner, a senior teacher, killed his wife and four children, and then set fire to four houses at a former place of residence, shot and killed nine persons, and seriously wounded 11 others. He is known today in the psychiatric public field largely thanks to the report of his examining psychiatrist Robert Eugen Gaupp. In 1919, Hermann Hesse took up this story in his novella Klein & Wagner (1920), describing how closely fantasies of mass murder, revenge, and destruction are linked to fantasies of persons living in bourgeois society. The mentally ill murderer and his deeds became societal narratives. In the history of psychiatry, Wagner and his deeds, as depicted by Gaupp, presented striking examples of the development of serious and dangerous illusions out of certain biographical motifs. Gaupp had already, in the context of his expert position paper, introduced Wagner to his medical students in the lecture room. Later on, he expounded the case to his students as an important example of his theory of delusion, in which, similarly to Freud’s Schreber interpretation (1911), suppressed homosexuality played an important role. As part of the eugenics discussion under National Socialism, Gaupp published Wagner’s family tree in 1943. And now, a grandson of Gaupp has brought well-preserved documents from Wagner’s pen into the archives of the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Munich. Therefore, almost exactly 100 years after the facts, Wagner’s own description of his mass murder can be

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published (Weber, Farin and Burgmair 2015). The editors emphasize in their preface the significance in social and psychiatric history of this amply documented amok attack and its prequelae as well as its sequelae up to Tim Kretschmer’s 2009 attack in Winnenden, in which he killed a staff member at the facility where Wagner had been treated. Published here for the first time is a play – The Nazarene – completed by Wagner a few months before his rampage, as well as autobiographical testimonies and minutes of interrogations. The editorial introduction to the texts examines these not only through psychiatric or psychopathological lenses but also as historical documents displaying important contemporary tendencies. As in present-day fundamentalist discourses, the Christian message serves in Wagner’s case actively to combat immorality and sodomy, as well as to redeem the world through killing (‘Kill!, kill those whom you hate, for by doing so you create good…’ (Weber et al. 2015, p.102)). Long before his attacks, Wagner had been preoccupied with killings (‘In thoughts, I have already killed hundreds in the most dreadful ways’ (p.118)), even at the end of the play thinking about how ‘I could wipe out the entire human race’ (p.119). The suffering that resulted from being disadvantaged and from immorality, with the focus on the redemption of the world, ends with the earth’s entire destruction, carried out by Jesus himself or by someone identified with him. In his foreword, Wagner consistently reveals himself as a pessimist, and, like all pessimists, as ‘always conceited, demanding, and hugely self-centered’ (p.121). His autobiographical writings from the year 1909 similarly portray a fluctuation between identification with the great figures of history like Caesar or Nero and dreams of being himself torn limb from limb (p.132). The editors let Wagner himself speak for substantial passages and they use the terminology in Gaupp’s reports – psychopathological and psychodynamic – at the same time suggesting subtly that the psychiatric viewpoint alone is much too narrow. Today’s readers are reminded of the controversy centred around the Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik, who in the first round of psychiatric examinations was judged to have a considerably impaired sense of responsibility, but from the next round of psychiatrists was assessed as being fully responsible. Wagner’s orientation toward fascist thought is beyond all doubt.

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TERRORISM, PSYCHIATRIC DIAGNOSES, AND PSYCHOSOCIAL PERSPECTIVES In German psychoanalytic discussions, authors have stressed that depression as a mental illness can never explain such a destructive act and that Lubitz also suffered from a personality disorder in which disrespect for others played a central role. Patients who are labelled as depressive – who account for nearly 50 per cent of all patients in outpatient psychotherapy in Germany – cannot be put into the same diagnostic pot as terrorists (see e.g. Holm-Hadulla 2015). Narcissism, not depression, was Lubitz’s problem. On the other hand, Eickhoff, a psychoanalyst from Tübingen, has stressed (personal communication) that the psychoanalytic conception of depression includes narcissistic destructiveness and grandiosity, which is in line with Swiss psychoanalyst Ludwig Binswanger’s concept of depressive grandiosity. Landauer (1922) had already commented in detail on social elements in psychiatric diagnoses: Social necessities have created the concept of the psychopathologies for that circle of human beings between the psychotic and the normal who cannot cope with the demands of today’s complicated life, who have fallen into illness, crime, and poverty, a burden to themselves and others. More primitive times, from similar, not scientific, grounds, distinguished psychotics from the healthy… Social points of view have decided up to now what was to lie within the borders of psychopathology. Above all, the needs of courts of law for an exact nomenclature were taken into account by psychiatrists. The division failed already when we wanted to use it as a basis for influencing human beings. No wonder! Only that can be healed for which we know the causes, not just the appearances; the causes themselves must be attacked. (Landauer 1922, p.530; author’s translation)

In a lecture series at the Frankfurt Institute on ‘disturbances in social life’, Landauer spoke about ‘narcissistic characters, neuroses and psychoses’, beginning with the words: ‘We know the human being only as a being in society. From the very beginning he lives in symbiosis. But he does not yet experience this. This alone would be a worthy object for psychological research’ (1991, p.195). In an essay in Das Psychoanalytische Volksbuch (Landauer 1929), he adds:

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Is it possible that a psychotherapist can attain the recovery of a woman when she, e.g. through social circumstances, is tied to the man? Here only the treatment of the man could result in success. We see thus that neurotic illnesses are often built into the community in which the neurotic lives. In one case, like that of the woman drinker, they are even the best way to deal with an unhealthy situation. Real recovery then brings only the rehabilitation of this entire circle. Thus children’s disorders are often a real adaptation to the disturbances of the mother and not treatable in the dependants; they may, however, cure themselves when the mother or other care person changes. (1929, p.219; author’s translation)

In 1930, Landauer presented a case study at the Frankfurt Psychoanalytic Institute (Landauer 1991) with which he expanded his psychoanalytic findings into the societal context: The sick person who comes to us stands subjectively outside the family, school, professional, or other collective. To the subconscious of the other members of the collective the whole thing looks otherwise. There he doesn’t stand outside the collective, but in it as a struggler, as a bone of contention, as a necessary lightning rod for the tensions that inevitably arise in the collective. The ruler and the collective members who feel united with him need him as an object of energy-laden drives to make them conscious and justify them. He serves the need of self-torment and self-punishment. That is the function of the poor and those incapable of work in a working society, so that everyone can admire his own achievement, feel sorry for himself for working so hard, and cover his violence with the mantle of morality. (1991, p.193; author’s translation)

In his 1944 paper about psychoanalysis and crime, Foulkes would go on to develop a group-analytic application of these ideas to the criminal individual. In the winter semester of 1930–31 at the University of Frankfurt, Fromm held a course titled ‘The criminal and the punishing society’ (Laier 1994). Here he presented a socioeconomic criminality analysis proceeding from the teaching of the criminal law expert von Liszt (1851–1919): Every crime is the product of the criminal’s own characteristics on the one hand and the social relations obtaining in the surrounding society

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at the moment of the crime on the other. (Fromm 1931/1989, p.11; author’s translation) The punishment of the criminal represents a gratification of the aggressive and sadistic drives of the masses which makes up for the many renunciations forced upon them and in particular makes it possible to transfer the aggression which naturally prevails toward the ruling and oppressive layer of society onto the criminal and thus experience a catharsis. (1931/1989, p.27; author’s translation)

Revenge stands in the way of a rational criminal policy: ‘The just punishment corresponds merely to the unconscious need for punishment in the criminal himself and works frequently not as a hindrance but as an incitement to crime’ (Fromm 1931/1989, p.27). The results of this knowledge lie, according to Fromm (in contrast to Foulkes 1944), not in the therapeutic but in the theoretical area of social analysis.

CONSEQUENCES OF LONE TERRORISM IN THE LIGHT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS Andreas Lubitz’s destructive deed – as well as those of Ernst August Wagner and Tim Kretschmer – had elements of a dream, of a contemporary computer game. Foulkes’ famous dictum comes to mind: ‘The neurotic acts in his dreams, the criminal dreams in his actions’ (Foulkes 1944, p.31). Lubitz may be understood as having been in a violent state of mind, yet in the video footage he carried out his plans cold-bloodedly. Many people were killed, and many others were severely injured in other ways: his victims included the crew and the passengers in the plane and also the airline, the psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and other doctors who had been consulted by the perpetrator, and last but not least the family members and friends of the murdered passengers and of Lubitz himself. There were lively discussions in the psychiatric and psychoanalytic world about the stigmatizing nature of psychiatric diagnoses. Are depressive patients so dangerous that they could even kill others when executing a grandiose suicide? Are personality disordered patients any more prone to destructive acts than others? Should persons given the contested diagnosis of personality disorder somehow be viewed as equating to ‘bad’, whereas all others are ‘good’? Will the rules of discretion in the treatment of responsible people like pilots be changed

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internationally, in line with already established controls in Israel, Norway, and Canada? Will courts in Germany or France condemn psychiatrists or psychotherapists because they had not ordered Lubitz to go into an involuntary treatment because he was a danger to others? Lubitz was seen by several psychotherapists. Already in 2009, he himself had informed his employers that he suffered from depression and was advised to go into hospital treatment. Psychotherapists became a central target for the patient’s aggression. Lubitz not only killed 149 passengers in his plane; he also damaged his therapists and forced the legal authorities to discuss the issue of therapeutic confidentiality. Lubitz also attacked his employers by not following the rules: he should have gone into the mental hospital. He fought successfully to get and maintain a licence to kill others and himself, thereby attacking a legal system built on trust and discretion in therapeutic relationships. In their (hopefully) neurotic dreamwork, psychoanalysts might identify with the lone terrorist who might take as many people as possible into death with himself, people he has not known before, like Samson in the Old Testament story. The internet and other technologies convey powers that have not previously existed and that make it unnecessary to discuss the act in advance with others. One wonders then why Lubitz even consulted psychiatrists and psychotherapists, and it will be interesting to read and hear what information comes out about his complaints and symptoms. He had known the psychiatric and psychotherapeutic world from his youth, and it seems, at least until now, that he hid important parts of his dreams as well as of his actions from our professional colleagues. Psychoanalysts may also (again, hopefully) be identified with the murdered personnel and passengers, and their surviving friends and relatives. They have been traumatized severely and may themselves require psychotherapeutic help. Quite a few of them are also interested in obtaining legal and financial compensations for the damage they suffered, and one will have to see what the courts identify as faulty action – the BEA has suggested it in the course of the psychiatric and psychotherapeutic testimonies and is asking for new legal procedures. Psychotherapists might be challenged once again between the task of helping their patients and that of protecting others from their patients’ destructive acts. Our professional colleagues may even treat lawyers or groups of relatives and friends of those who have been killed as well as psychiatrists and psychotherapists who have been accused of negligence.

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Psychoanalysts are most likely also to be identified with our professional colleagues who had seen Andreas Lubitz. They are of course severely traumatized; they might well have doubts about their professional identity and integrity, and they may themselves seek professional help. There is never complete safety when dreams reach the level of action, and we do not yet know whether and how Lubitz had related his actions to one of our colleagues via the computer, which is where he investigated the technical means to crash his plane. One can expect a psychotherapeutic discussion over how to secure a safe reality with our patients in the world of destructive dreams. Psychoanalysis needs to avoid clear splits between good and bad and, now and into the future, to follow Freud’s realism concerning destructiveness in mankind. No diagnostic label protects against destructive actions. Of course, traumatized children and socially excluded youths more frequently get into problems with alcohol, drugs, and illegal actions. Quite a few are labelled as personality disordered once they have been in court or a psychiatrist’s office. The psychoanalytic theory of melancholia or depression stresses violent identifications, revenge, and hate, and in accordance also with classical psychiatry, for example of Wilhelm Griesinger (1867, pp.211ff), it cannot entirely preclude destructive actions carried out by persons suffering from such conditions and violent states of mind often secretively concealed. On the other hand, destructive acts are also performed by persons who have never seen a psychiatrist and who might be called mentally sane. Destructiveness is not a disease. As a theory, psychoanalysis can formulate quite well the combination of destructive identifications with narcissistic and antisocial tendencies, but it should avoid moral evaluations resulting merely from diagnostic labels.

REFERENCES Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (2016) Report. 13 March 2016. Foulkes, S.H. (1944) Psychoanalysis and Crime. Toronto: Canadian Bar Association. Freud, S. (1911) Psychoanalytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia. Standard Edition 12, 1–82. Freud, S. (1930) Civilization and its Discontents. SE 21, 1–56. Fromm, E. (1989) ‘Zur Psychologie des Verbrechers und der strafenden Gesellschaft.’ In E. Fromm, Gesamtausgabe. Herausgegeben von Rainer Funk. Vol. 1: Analytische Sozialpsychologie. Munich: dtv. (Original work published in 1931.)

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Griesinger, W. (1867) Die Pathologie und Therapie der psychischen Krankheiten. Zweite, umgebaute und sehr vermehrte Auflage. Stuttgart: Adolph Krabbe. Hesse, H. (1920) Klein und Wagner. Berlin: S. Fischer. Holm-Hadulla, R.M. (2015) ‘Der kalte Hass des Narzissten’. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 13 April: 25. Laier, M. (1994) ‘Das Frankfurter Psychoanalytische Institut (1929–1933).’ Materialien aus dem Sigmund-Freud-Institut Frankfurt 9 (2nd edn). Landauer, K. (1922) ‘Das Tetanoid. Klinische Studie zu einem neurologischpsychiatrischen Symptomenkomplex.’ Archiv für Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten 66, 530–576. Landauer, K. (1929) ‘Erkranken und Gesunden’. In H. Meng and P. Federn (eds) Das Psychoanalytische Volksbuch. Bern: Huber. Landauer, K. (1991) Theorie der Affekte und andere Schriften zur Ich-Organisation (edited by H.-J. Rothe). Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. Weber, M.M., Farin, M. and Burgmair, W. (eds) (2015) Ernst Wagner – Der Nazarener. Autobiographische Zeugnisse. Munich: Belleville.

Chapter 12

TERROR IN THE MIND OF THE TERRORIST BARRY RICHARDS

THE POLITICISATION OF PSYCHOPATHOLOGY When Marxism was established as a powerful influence on many politically engaged people in the 1970s, a familiar battle-cry concerned the need to understand everyday life and its problems in political terms. All of life’s woes, more or less, had to be seen as the product of capitalism. The revolutionary movement would be built, in part, by showing people how their problems would all be solved if capitalism were replaced by a socialist society. Mental health was one terrain where this education of the people was conducted. I worked in clinical psychology in the UK for most of the 1970s, and in the early years of that decade I was involved in activities which were part of what was known variously as radical psychology (e.g. the magazine Red Rat), radical psychiatry and anti-psychiatry (as in the network called ‘People Not Psychiatry’). According to the mix of Marxist and libertarian ideas which informed those movements, the afflictions of depression were due to adverse life events, and it was capitalism that determined our life events. Collapses of the mind into psychosis were due to the nuclear family, which was the microcosm and the underpinning of capitalist social relations. Or they were due to cultural dislocation and disrupted identity, which were part of the damage caused in the mass migrations demanded by capital’s heartless drive for profit. Such were the tenets of this politicisation of psychopathology, which still has its advocates today. This analysis picked up on important links between society and psyche. Our psychic lives are fundamentally shaped by the societies we 191

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inhabit, and the forms which psychological disturbance and breakdown take are closely linked to cultural forms and social mores. However, these insights were trussed in an ideological straightjacket which could paralyse thought and undermine the case for therapeutic intervention. Nonetheless, in those days, to politicise was (for some people at least) a good thing – it meant understanding the roots of mental disorder in the societal system. ‘The personal is political’ was a summary slogan, for the radical psychology of mental health as it was for feminism. However, it was not acceptable to look from the other end of the bridge and say that the political is personal. In relation to political activism, that would have touched a very raw nerve. It would have been seen as saying that someone’s anger with the capitalist system was not based on an objective and realistic appraisal of the external world – of how capitalism impacted upon people – but rather, on some anger coming from within (due perhaps to unresolved Oedipal anger with the father, or some other developmental issue). In relation to psychological disturbance, to suggest that the political is personal would have been to ‘de-politicise’ mental health problems: to try to turn attention away from their fundamentally political nature, as the allegedly bourgeois ideology of psychiatry did in presenting them as individualised medical conditions unrelated to social context. I recall being on a training placement in a large psychiatric hospital in North London, and sitting in a community meeting on a secure ward. One of the patients there was compulsorily detained as a result of being convicted of involvement in a recent wave of terrorist attacks. I did not approve of terrorism, which was seen in the Marxist outlook as ineffective individualistic action, but under the influence of Marxist orthodoxy I would have had difficulty with the idea that someone’s involvement in it was in any way due to psychological difficulties. Observing his participation in the meetings, I could not figure out whether it was a case of just playing along in order to secure an earlier release, or of actual capitulation to the ‘bourgeois’ line that treatment was called for. In the decades since then, there has developed a culture of greater emotional literacy and psychological curiosity, such that links and influences both ways between the personal and political are now quite widely recognised and discussed. In the academic world the emergence of psychosocial studies (see e.g. Day-Sclater et al. 2009, and the Palgrave book series ‘Studies in the Psychosocial’) is one of many indicators of

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this trend. More generally, there has been the emergence of what can be called ‘therapeutic culture’, which includes the growing influence of the idea that our inner lives are always active in shaping our actions.1 Yet despite this cultural shift, the psychology of terrorism persisted for some time in stating that there is nothing to be learned about terrorism from the study of psychological disturbance. The ‘terrorists are normal guys’ thesis was widely accepted. Evidence apparently supporting it had been found in superficial psychiatric assessments. Common-sense reactions, along the lines of ‘there must be something wrong with individuals who choose to embark on the mass killing of innocent people’, were discounted in favour of a perverse embrace of the legacy of neo-Marxism, which asserts that while the personal is political, the political cannot be personal. Regarding the phenomenon of terrorist violence, a lot of political psychology has therefore been stuck in the 1970s. However, in the last few years that position has come under increasing challenge, as evidence mounts of the major role that individual disturbance and damage is playing in driving involvement in violent extremism (e.g. Lankford 2012; Lloyd 2012; Richards 2014; Ahram 2015; Van San 2015; Corner, Gill and Mason 2016; van Zuijdewijn and Bakker 2016; Yordanova 2016). There have long been individual cases of political activists (including many political leaders) in which it has been clear that an internal, psychological conflict or need is being projected onto the external world, and that action in the external world is being undertaken in order to act out or resolve an internal conflict, to meet a psychological need. In the context of global terrorism, an entwining of internal problems with external conflicts is now happening on a larger scale. As we ponder the numbers of people who have gone to be part of the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere, or who have carried out attacks in their home countries on behalf of a global movement, we might even say it is happening on a mass scale, and that this constitutes a new sociological phenomenon. The Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka has captured this global development in his comment that we are witnessing ‘a viral mutation of the human psyche’ 1

There are of course controversies around the overall meaning and value of therapeutic culture; the sociologist Frank Furedi (2003) amongst others has been very critical of the therapeutic turn. On the other hand, as I have argued in a publication with Joanne Brown (Richards and Brown 2002), a strong case can be made for seeing a net societal benefit, such as the greater capacity for reflection on inner emotional life and its impact in the outer world.

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(Soyinka 2013). While this phrase powerfully reflects the malignancy and scale of the phenomenon, a biological metaphor is probably not the most appropriate. What is happening is a fusion or compression together of two domains of human experience and action which hitherto had tended to exist in separated spheres. Mentally disordered individuals have always had a range of possible ways in which to express their disorder. Generally, these ways have been shaped by the cultures and societies in which they have occurred. Now, one such way is increasingly to identify one’s problems in terms of some political vision, however crude or counter-factual that vision may be, and to see the solution to them in a commitment to political violence. This phenomenon brings a second meaning to the phrase ‘the politicisation of psychopathology’: a meaning which is very different to that emanating from the 1970s. Then, it meant a political understanding of mental disorder; here, it means a political mobilisation of mental disorder. In an ironic way, this development can be seen partly as a consequence of the 1970s wave of radicalisation which swept over the intellectuals and educated classes of the West. Alongside the many progressive products of that wave – its ideas, energies and humanising sentiments – came the promotion of identities of grievance, in which the cause of the grievance was seen to be in society and its present arrangements: variously defined as capitalism, the ‘system’, the military–industrial complex, the establishment, etc. Yet more ironically, the cosmology of grievance promoted by – inter alia – the Leftist wave of the late twentieth century has arguably helped to fuel the wave of anger with liberal democracies which many populists of the Right are riding today. Violent takfiri Islamism is currently the most prominent force which is using an ideology of grievance to recruit ‘soldiers’ from amongst the psychologically troubled, although there is no reason why recruitment to terror linked with other ideological causes will not increase in similar fashion. The major examples of Timothy McVeigh in the US and Anders Breivik in Norway, and other cases of (loosely speaking) extreme rightwing terror such as those in the UK of David Copeland and Thomas Mair, show that deep psychological disturbance is available for mobilisation by other insurrectionist and millenarian ideologies, which can offer opportunities for the acting out of profoundly violent states of mind which match those from al Qaeda and Islamic State. Overall, this is a very complex development. But whatever its causes, and whatever its scale, a politicisation of psychopathology can be

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seen in numerous cases of individuals who in recent years have been convicted of terrorist offences and whose minds have clearly been deeply troubled. I have argued elsewhere (Richards 2015), as have the American criminologist Adam Lankford (Lankford and Hakim 2011; Lankford 2013) and others (e.g. McCauley, Moskalenko and Van Son 2013), that the suicide terrorist is very similar in important ways to the typically un-politicised school shooter or rampage killer, principally in the type and degree of psychological disturbance involved (see also Chapter 11, Volume 1). It could be suggested that other comparisons, perhaps more appropriate ones, would be with those who joined the International Brigade to fight in the Spanish Civil War, or in the present day the few Westerners who have gone to Syria to fight against IS. Are today’s transnational terrorists also acting from a deep sense of moral responsibility, an idealism which, however misguided, we should respect? Or were the Spanish volunteers driven by their inner needs and phantasies? Without going into the more nuanced arguments which could be put around these questions, we can say that there are some fundamental and distinctive features of the present ‘viral mutation’: the levels of brutality it requires, or permits, and the totality and intensity of the delusional world-view which it presents. Nonetheless, we still have some way to go before we have a good understanding of the kinds of disturbance which are most likely to be associated with the extremes of political violence. In the rest of this chapter I will offer the suggestion that the violent state of mind which must be present for an individual to carry out terrorist attacks is, at least in part, a defence against a terrified state of mind.

IDEOLOGY AND STATES OF MIND While the richest information about what is going on in the minds of terrorists is likely to be derived from interviews with them, another important type of data, which comes direct from the minds of terrorists and their close associates, is to be found in what they have written and what they read. Accordingly, this chapter reports on some of the findings from an ongoing analysis of the content of the magazine Dabiq, the online magazine of Islamic State. Dabiq is the name of a town in Syria, near where – according to IS ideology – there will be a final battle between the armies of true Islam and

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its enemies, which the true Muslims will win. The magazine is strikingly designed, with much use of photographs to create a strong visual appeal. It is for the most part written in very good English, in a style very similar across most of the content. Dabiq began publication in July 2014, and before it was discontinued in September 2016 had run to 15 issues. The report here is based on material in the first ten issues. Some of the content might seem to be unlikely to appeal to the average prospective recruit. It is heavily laden with transliterated but untranslated Arabic words, which may be very familiar to Islamic scholars but not to potential IS recruits, most of whom know nothing of Islamic scholarship. There are frequent articles about the sins of those whom IS considers to be amongst the enemies of true Islam – al Qaeda and other rival jihadist groups, all Shias, and the entire ‘kufr’ world of non-Muslims. Catalogues of the evil actions of numerous individuals whose names will mean nothing to the reader, especially when they lived in the twelfth century, are not going to get people on planes to Syria. But whatever the rationale for the more esoteric articles, Dabiq presents a valuable research opportunity. It is an accessible source of extended statements, analyses and guides to living, in which we see IS propaganda and the ideology it seeks to promote laid out in articles covering many aspects of politics, philosophy and everyday life. My approach to such material is based on the principle that propaganda and ideology can express states of mind. In seeking to persuade or to demand allegiance, propaganda must articulate needs or desires which are present in readers’ minds and which it can promise to meet. Like a lot of advertising, it may speak to anxieties in readers’ minds, and promise to banish them. So we can read propaganda as a mediation of states of mind, perhaps especially those parts of propaganda which set out an ideology, and which are therefore pointing us towards the psychological appeal of the cause in question. This principle does not lend itself to conventional methods of textual analysis. The method used here is a variant form of thematic analysis and of hermeneutics in a broad sense. The material is scanned for any statement which can be interpreted as expressing or invoking a state of mind: an emotion, or a mood, or that rather more complex psychic configuration of emotion and perception which psychoanalysis calls ‘unconscious phantasy’. This term refers to a state of mind in which, at an unconscious level, the individual experiences a particular type

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of relationship with a person or object in the external world, or with a more general aspect of their environment. For example, someone may unconsciously feel themselves to be under attack, or admired, or dependent, or seduced, or humiliated, or in one of a variety of other powerful and often disturbing situations. Such feelings may also be conscious, but what remains unconscious is the internal template (the ‘phantasy’) which is shaping the experience of external realities. All statements, which can be read as expressions of conscious and unconscious states of mind, ranging from direct expressions of emotion to highly intellectualised didactic points of theology, are then collated to generate a profile of an internal world as expressed in the material.

THE TERROR OF DABIQ So what can the content of Dabiq tell us about the states of mind present in IS recruits and potential recruits and which draw them towards it? Many observers have noted the sense of identity and community which recruitment to the IS cause may seem to promise. Similarly, the pride and dignity which jihad can seemingly offer its recruits are often seen as important elements of the appeal of ‘radicalisation’. These values are clearly present in Dabiq’s depictions of life in the IS caliphate. They represent something which is common to most fundamentalisms – the yearning for purity, for an ideal community in which can be found pure goodness, harmony and peace. At one level, the desires for community and dignity are very plausible and important factors. However, there is a risk that if we focus on them, we will see the motives for joining IS in a sanitised way, as if any young Muslim could possess them. Who does not want to feel they are part of a community, and who does not need a sense of dignity and self-respect? While some young Muslims may feel that these experiences are not as freely available to them as to others, the majority do not feel that in order to obtain them they must violently reject everything in Western societies, must attack the broadly defined ‘enemy’ and risk their own lives in doing so. For that to be the outcome, I suggest, the idealistic element at the core of the fundamentalist mindset must have been invaded and captured by a very destructive impulse. So we need to look deeper, at the level beneath these understandable and usually conscious desires for belonging and respect, and ask why the

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idealism was vulnerable to that capture. The content of Dabiq suggests to us that at the heart of the needs for community and dignity, which IS is seen to offer, is not an ordinary need for good relationships with others but a desperate need to overcome an overwhelming sense of fear and humiliation. This sense of fear and humiliation can be described as a state of terror. I am therefore proposing that one of the drivers of terrorism is a state of terror in the mind of the terrorist. For some individuals in that state of mind, engaging in actual terrorism is a way of trying to escape that internal terror by passing it on to other people, by trying to become the one who inflicts it rather than the one who receives it. The most tragic and destructive aspect of this process is that while the terror which persecutes the terrorist is in the internal phantasy world, the attempt to transfer that terror onto others involves violence and death in the real world. The process here is therefore not like the inter-generational transmission of violence or sexual abuse, whereby the victim becomes perpetrator. While some terrorists are people who were initially victims of actual terror, and then chose to respond in kind, many IS recruits are not. But the terrible phantasy must come from somewhere. The disturbed histories and psychological difficulties of many of the individuals convicted of terrorist offences of all ideological sorts suggest that its origin lies in their formative relationships. Of course these will be influenced by the socioeconomic environment, and by societal relations of domination, but the influence of cultural traditions in family relationships and in social life may be paramount in emotional development, as may idiosyncratic combinations of various adversities not reducible to any sociological variable. Whatever the roots of the terror, the evidence for saying that Dabiq addresses its readers as people who are in a state of terror lies in its graphic descriptions of the individual’s relationship to God, to Allah; this is a relationship characterised by fear and humiliation. Allah is, first and last, to be feared. Dabiq repeatedly tells us that absolute obedience to his will is demanded, with brutal punishment guaranteed for those who fail to obey unceasingly. In fact, the individual has no real agency, except to reject Allah, which would bring eternal damnation. People should not be allowed choices in relation to religion or politics, because there is only one correct path and, given any opportunity to choose, some may fail to choose that path. Good Muslims are ‘slaves’ of Allah, which is the only way to seek safety amidst a universe of constant preoccupation

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with violence and punishment. And when blessed by Allah in some way, one must ensure he is properly thanked, or else one will be punished for ingratitude. Our purpose on earth is to pay homage to and glorify him. We were given our senses only for us to be able to behold and admire him, not for us to learn about the world or ask questions about it. No judgement is made here on how this presentation of the individual’s relationship to God compares with other presentations in mainstream Islam or in various forms of Christianity. There are certainly points of similarity with some versions of the Christian god. There are important issues here, but they can be separated from the task of assessing the psychological meaning of this particular vision. From a psychological point of view, any theological narrative can be taken as a description of an individual’s internal world. In this case, that world is dominated by an all-powerful and vengeful being, before whom the individual is helpless and humiliated. For all of us, our perceptions of the external world are shaped by the scenarios which dominate our internal world. Yet the psychological processes involved in the interactions of inside and outside become quite complex. At the heart of the internal world described here is fear of a terrible power. While this power is experienced in the external world primarily as the power of God, it can also be linked to the image of an enemy. The narrative of Muslims as the victims of a centuries-long oppression by the West both gives expression to, and, independently of its historical truth-value, is strongly supported by, the internal scenario of terror. Thus the feared internal object is split into two in the external world: a rejected, denigrated object (the West), which for all its power is fundamentally weak and can be overcome, and an accepted, idealised object (Allah), which holds the absolute, terrible power and to which total obedience must be maintained. So what is presented in Dabiq is a world of fear and humiliation – in fact, of terror, based on the constant possibility of incurring the wrath and vengeance of an omniscient and omnipotent being. This supreme being is described as a patriarch of greater ferocity and power than any that could have actually existed. In the world of unconscious phantasy, however, such scenarios can and do exist, and play a major part in shaping the individual’s emotional life and relationships with others. Someone with that kind of phantasy strongly active in their uncon­ scious will recognise themselves in Dabiq’s theological commentary.

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Crucially, they will also find there a solution to the problem of being trapped in this nightmare of submission. The solution is to merge themselves with the source of the terror, which Dabiq tells them is Allah. This defensive move is a version of the psychic manoeuvre observed in children by Anna Freud, and named by her as ‘identification with the aggressor’ (Freud 1936/1946). Merging with our oppressor enables us to become part of the punishing force, rather than being on the receiving end of it (or having to tolerate the guilt and ambivalence which accompany the desire to vanquish rather than merge with the oppressive father). In this case, the path of subjugation will not only protect those who choose it from hellfire, but (paradoxically perhaps) will also enable them as proud jihadis to rise with dignity, to become knights of Allah, or sisters and wives of the knights. As part of this great army, the soldier can negate the inner sense of humiliation by slaying the rejected bad object, the West, into which all weakness and corruption has been projected. Moreover, a community is thereby gained. This community is – like the commitment to Allah – an absolute one. There can be no differences between people, and no crack can be allowed to appear. A repeated quotation insists on the need for unity ‘behind a single man’ – Allah’s only representative, the emir of the Caliphate. This phantasy of fusion with the protector offers a kind of pseudo-containment of the underlying fear, and underlies an image of community very different from the complex, contradictory ones posited in the more sophisticated models of liberal democracy (see Chapter 9, Volume 1). These are the primitive depths of the needs for dignity and community which drive the recruit, and which differentiate those needs from their more common and non-pathological forms. It is not suggested that the minds of all IS recruits are dominated by this unconscious phantasy. There is no single psychological blueprint for the ‘terrorist’ state of mind. However, given how much it dominates the pages of one of their regular publications, it is plausible to suggest that this is at least an important element in the psychological dynamics of many IS recruits and potential recruits.

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WHAT IS THE UNCONSCIOUS COUNTER-NARRATIVE? The focus in this chapter has been on identifying the state of mind represented in the propaganda and ideology narratives of IS, since an understanding of these should be key to the task of developing ‘counternarratives’. It is likely that this violent state of mind which I have described is closely linked to the condition of destructive or malignant narcissism as described by psychoanalytic clinicians (Rosenfeld 1971; Kernberg 1984). It has also been suggested (e.g. Miller 2006) that other diagnostic terms, especially those concerning personality disorders (e.g. antisocial, narcissistic, hysterical, schizoid), may be relevant to various subsets of recruits to and leaders of terrorist groups. While these terms should be used with great caution, it is important to try and link analyses of terrorism with the diagnostic language of psychiatry and mental health services, in order to highlight that terrorist violence is in part a mental health issue and to argue in support of whatever service provision might help to address the problem. However, diagnostic labels can be applied only in the context of full clinical assessment of individuals. Where researchers are working with samples of public discourse, a more appropriate and useful focus is on ‘vulnerable’ states of mind rather than on complete syndromes and their diagnosis. We all have the potential to experience any state of mind; the task of combating ideologies which promote or incubate violent politics may be supported or guided by research which can identify the states of mind underpinning vulnerability to those ideologies. In this chapter I have considered how one such state of mind can be described. But that is just a start. Having identified some of the states of mind that constitute ‘vulnerability’ to ‘radicalisation’, can we identify those individuals who are caught in these states, who inhabit them in a way that most people do not? And if so, can we intervene in the lives of those individuals to help them to manage their fears and their resentments in ways that don’t lead to violence? These questions have been asked for some years now in the UK by the Prevent programme, though unfortunately Prevent has not had any understanding of the states of mind underlying ‘vulnerability’.2 The basic dynamics of the appeal of 2

Prevent has also had problems of credibility and trust, and has been derided by some of its critics as an instrument of Islamophobic social engineering. Space prevents an exploration of these issues here, though it is worth mentioning that the support for and involvement in it of many Muslims is often overlooked.

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terrorist propaganda have not been addressed; the search for effective ‘counter-narratives’ has focused on common-sense critiques of violent Islamism. Pointing out the merciless nature of a creed to someone drawn towards it will not be effective if that person is drawn to it precisely because it is merciless. Moreover, there is a more fundamental form of prevention, which addresses whatever social, cultural and psychological contexts produce the states of mind which are appealed to by ideologies like that of IS and which render people capable of inflicting terror. Can we identify the societal origins of these states of mind? What social conditions or relationships can generate and feed them? And can we envisage whatever social, political and cultural initiatives may be effective in countering the sources of toxicity? Both levels of prevention require more study of the kind represented in this work.

REFERENCES Ahram, A. (2015) ‘Sexual violence and the making of ISIS.’ Survival 57, 3, 57–78. Corner, E., Gill, P. and Mason, O. (2016) ‘Mental health disorders and the terrorist: a research note probing selection effects and disorder prevalence.’ Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 39, 6, 560–568. Day-Sclater, S., Jones, D., Price, H. and Yates, C. (2009) Emotion: New Psychosocial Perspectives. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Freud, A. (1946) The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense. New York: International Universities Press. (Original work published in 1936.) Furedi, F. (2003) Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age. London: Routledge. Kernberg, O. (1984) Severe Personality Disorders: Psychotherapeutic Strategies. New York: Yale University Press. Lankford, A. (2012) ‘A psychological autopsy of 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta.’ Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology 27, 2, 150–159. Lankford, A. (2013) The Myth of Martyrdom. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Lankford, A. and Hakim, N. (2011) ‘From Columbine to Palestine: a comparative analysis of rampage shooters in the United States and volunteer suicide bombers in the Middle East.’ Aggression and Violent Behaviour 16, 98–107. Lloyd, M. (2012) ‘Learning from casework and the literature.’ Prison Service Journal 203, 23–30. McCauley, C., Moskalenko, S. and Van Son, B. (2013) ‘Characteristics of lone-wolf violent offenders: a comparison of assassins and school attackers.’ Perspectives on Terrorism 7, 1, 4–24. Miller, L. (2006) ‘The terrorist mind: II. Typologies, psychopathologies and practical guidelines for investigation.’ International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology 50, 3, 255–268.

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Richards, B. (2014) ‘What drove Anders Breivik?’ Contexts, Fall 2014, 42–47. Richards, B. (2015) ‘The Voices of Extremist Violence: What Can We Hear?’ In H. Savigny, E. Thorsen, D. Jackson and J. Alexander (eds) Media, Margins and Civic Agency. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Richards, B. and Brown, J. (2002) ‘The Therapeutic Culture Hypothesis: A Critical Discussion.’ In T. Johansson and O. Sernhede (eds) Lifestyle, Desire and Politics: Contemporary Identities. Goteborg: Daidalos. Rosenfeld, H. (1971) ‘A clinical approach to the psychoanalytic theory of the life and death instincts: an investigation into the aggressive aspects of narcissism.’ International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 52, 169–178. Soyinka, W. (2013) ‘Mali needs more than a call to arms.’ The Guardian Online, Accessed on 14/3/2018 at www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/01/ mali-viral-mutations-human-psyche Van San, M. (2015) ‘Lost souls searching for answers? Belgian and Dutch converts joining the Islamic State.’ Perspectives on Terrorism 9, 3, 47–56. van Zuijdewijn, J. de R. and Bakker, E. (2016) ‘Analysing personal characteristics of lone-actor terrorists: research findings and recommendations.’ Perspectives on Terrorism 10, 2, 42–49. Yordanova, K. (2016) ‘Troubled journeys: some motivations of young Muslim men to join the Islamic State.’ American Journal of Psychoanalysis 76, 3, 240–254.

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PART IV

CREATIVE STRUCTURES From the Local to the Global

The rain it raineth on the just And also on the unjust fella; But chiefly on the just, because The unjust hath the just’s umbrella Charles Bowen (1835–1894)

It’s not new forms of art that are needed but new forms of revolutionary everyday life. Guy Debord (1931–1994)

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THE CITY PROJECT AILEEN SCHLOERB

What is at the heart of violent and creative states? The ‘Boy Breaking Glass’ of Gwendolyn Brooks’ (1987) poem of the same name cries out a poignant clue: ‘I shall create! If not a note, a hole. If not an overture, a desecration.’1 Many have noted how well extremist movements and gang membership recognize this imperative in young minds to latch easily onto convictions in the form of explosives (Patel with Williams, 2006). However, we often miss the shared core that is harboured within both violence and creation. What common source gives rise to these strikingly different acts? While this question does not intend to minimize the very real effects of economic, political, and socio-cultural factors that impact the manifestation of one over the other, our focus here is on the intrapsychic mechanisms at play so as to rethink what we are dealing with in our work with young people like the boy in Brooks’ poem. By offering group services in their school setting to children who have been exposed to violence and who are chronically affected by it, the ‘City Project’, which is run under the auspices of our local Psychoanalytic Institute, provides an alternative form of engagement to these young minds hungering to construct an identity and make a place for them­selves in the world (Schmidt, Schloerb and Cohler 2013). Originally conducted in a community health centre, this project has been implemented over the past nine years in six kindergarten-through-eighth-grade public schools in one of our city’s most disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Families living here struggle with a variety of complex social situations that may involve multi-generational physical or sexual abuse, engagement with substance 1

Reprinted by consent of Brooks Permissions.

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use/abuse, separation or loss of family members due to incarceration, murder/death or suicide, and gang affiliations, as well as homelessness and a high rate of unemployment. Police rank the violent crimes in this poverty-stricken enclave as among the worst in the city (Moore 2012). Many of the traumatized children who participate in our programme are referred by the school, by their parents, or by themselves for help with problematic behaviours such as violence and aggression against school staff and peers, truancy, low academic performance, emotional instability, and lack of focus and attentiveness. It is well known that traumatized children frequently act out, set off by a plethora of seemingly insignificant triggers and their constant vigilance, incessantly on the lookout for danger. They struggle to stay focused or connected with others; they often suffer from depressed or irritable moods and feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness. Their minds and bodies get stuck in anxious states induced by recurrent thoughts or images and strong emotional and behavioural reactions to these preoccupations. This often occurs at an unconscious level wherein seemingly non-traumatic experiences trigger reactions that appear illogical or disproportionate to the situation at hand. Children who have been exposed to violence become caught up in a repetition of violence against themselves or others without an awareness of what is pushing them to act out. It is our belief that any violence prevention programme that treats the manifestation of violence simply as a ‘behaviour’ to be changed and that prioritizes behaviour modification strategies without attention to the root cause will miss the underlying message that this behaviour seeks to communicate. Such an approach simply leads to a repetition of the message in another form because it is usually unconscious and therefore not within a child’s awareness or the scope of the intervention. This chapter will present the rationale that distinguishes our approach from other school-based trauma and violence intervention programmes, the assumptions underlying our therapeutic frame, and, most significantly, examples of the creative responses of the children to our therapeutic interventions.

RATIONALE UNDERLYING OUR APPROACH The task here is to articulate a particular view of the nature of violence within the child that expresses itself as violent behaviour. It manifests in

The City Project

either outwardly destructive and/or inwardly directed, more subtle forms such as avoidance and withdrawal or in aggression against the self. The perspective one brings on the nature of violence and the way in which it impacts human experience will necessarily inform the way it is treated. Our questions include: what is at stake in violence as well as in human creativity, and in what do these forces consist? By insisting on his need to create, even if it means to destroy, the ‘Boy Breaking Glass’ teaches us that the primary force driving potential expressions of violence is also the basis for the need to create. Clues about what is at stake here are embedded in the history of words, the antidote humans once invented and continue to reinvent to manage the unruly forces within ourselves and between members of our human community. The etymologies of ‘violence’ and ‘creation’ reveal the forces at work within the human as well as the need for a means of grappling with them. While ‘violence’ came into the occidental vocabulary of thirteenth-century French to mean ‘physical force used to inflict injury or damage’, it was related to violare, which comes from vis, meaning ‘strength, force, power, energy’, as inscribed in the expression ‘vim and vigour’, and the past participle latum of the verb ‘fero’, which means ‘to carry’. Vi is suspected to be an irregular derivative of vis from the Proto-Indo-European root *weie – meaning ‘to go after, strive after, pursue vigorously, desire’ (Watkins 2011). The term ‘vi-olence’ thus bears within it the traces of a quest, a force carried forth in a particular way. In a positive sense, the construction of the concept of ‘vi-olence’ testifies to a carrying forth of a force that is present in any creation of something new. In the world of art and ideas, the creation of a new paradigm, new perspective, new way of being in the world, new idiom, new image, new approach is a vi-olation of the old form, authority, and rules that preceded it. ‘Apart from the force and intensity of the creative urge, innovative individuals are intrinsically violent to the extent that they exercise their power to impose their thought, image, dream or nightmare on others’ (McDougall 1999, p.211). When the unknown is set before us in a work of art, we are unsettled. Such works ‘so profoundly move the spectator that they arouse a sort of vertiginous fascination, a kind of insidious anxiety’ (Bergeron 2002, p.181). Yet, on the battlefield, in the inner city, in any relation between humans or within us, the carrying forth of strength by one against or upon another is something very different. It cannot be perceived as creative; it is injurious and traumatic.

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What exactly about violence is problematic? The human problem is not the ‘strength, force, power, energy’ contained in ‘violence’ but the use to which it is put, the end towards which it is carried, the form through which it expresses itself in the world. Vi is also at the root of ‘viril’, of a particular kind of life-giving force that cannot be eliminated but rather helped in finding its place with the aid of ethics and aesthetics (Apollon 2002a). If one does attempt to efface it, it will fight back because what is at stake is the very life force on which we depend to make our lives in ways that matter to us. In the clinical work, this view of the nature of violence informs the way in which we approach it and its manifestations. The ‘problematic behaviour’ is not perceived as something to be corrected or extinguished but first as a communication of something that has found no other form through which to convey its urgency. What seeks expression is experienced by the child and young person as a vehicle for a precious part of his own existence. We are dealing with the human longing to exist even at the expense of self-destruction (Freud 1920/1955; Lee 2016).

WORKING THE FORCES OF VIOLENCE This view of violence entails a particular therapeutic frame. A child exposed to violence experiences it as a trauma to the extent that it exceeds his capacity to manage and make sense of its effects. The experience of trauma is redoubled by the context in which it occurs and is revisited. To help a child manage the effects, it is critical that the therapeutic space receive all of his attempts to communicate aspects of the experience, including those that are wordless, sometimes chaotic forms of acting out. In our project, the children referred are invited at the beginning of the school year to participate in ‘Growth Groups’ to talk about whatever is on their minds and ‘things that matter’ to them. Groups of three to six children attend weekly meetings throughout the year, from one year to the next, for as long as they are students at the school. Typically, based on their own wishes, they continue to participate until they graduate or move away. The meetings occur on a consistent basis and are organized as places of inquiry where the therapist embodies an attitude of curiosity about what each member thinks, feels, and ‘does’ in an exploration of ‘inner worlds’ and ‘outer worlds’ and the relationship between the two.

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INVITING VI-OLENCE TO SPEAK Different from a ‘social skills’ group, which would seek to ‘teach’ a set of strategies for managing behaviour, in our psychoanalytic approach we acknowledge feeling states and their behavioural manifestations as forms of unconscious communication seeking forms of symbolization (Dolto 1982; Mathelin 1999; O’Loughlin 2010; Rogers 2006). Further, we locate the source of meaning within each child: ‘Wow – it sounds like you were furious! Where did all that anger come from?’ Even questions that one might not anticipate that a child could answer provoke a response or the possibility of an alternative way of reflecting on a behaviour – not as something to be punished but as the bearer of a message about which one can think and ask. Let us emphasize two ideas entailed here. First is the assumption that the behaviour has meaning: ‘So you punched him. What was that punch trying to say? What did you feel inside when he said that about your mother? What did you think in your mind?’ Second, we assume that something in the child has the answers. A child is often startled by this shift in perceiving that punch as ‘bad’ to perceiving it as a signifier of a meaning within him. At first the message may be unclear. Then a sense is revealed, and the sense-making generates relief. It is not he who is ‘bad’ but something ‘feels bad’ inside him that is looking to make itself known. The notion of the child as source of knowledge about his own inner life ascribes a particular position to the psychoanalytic clinician (Apollon 2002b). Within this frame, her role is not to ascribe meaning but to articulate questions that the child can use to organize his own thinking about what the behaviour is trying to say, questions that he can make on his own and ask himself in time. Without a signifying space and receptive ally to help him to find the words he needs to ‘think’ an overwhelming and distressing experience, the experience remains wild and unbounded, disorganizing his mind and body, and erupting into fights and cognitive confusion. The child must have a reliable space and time with which to give voice to what stirs him up. He needs to ‘author’ his own agenda for the group meeting. Our work is organized around the construction of a symbolic space through the cultivation of conditions in which aspects of traumatic experience that haunt a child’s body and mind can find a signifying form and place within a reality shared with others. We offer a space and time where the forces that push a child to manifest his inner imperative can be expressed and received. It is this

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aesthetic and ethical work of finding and creating such expressions that invites ‘creativity’ into the process. What is this creativity exactly?

CREATIVITY Within this therapeutic context, creativity is a way of working with the imperative that vi-olence carries within itself, shaped by the singularity of the one it inhabits. The act of creation also engages this force which can lead humans to fear as well as desire the experience of creativity. It is historically present in human conceptualizations of that which exceeds verbal signification, such as images of God as either benevolent or terrifying or attempts to distinguish between divine inspiration and madness. The relevance of this ambiguity for our project exists in the question of how to approach the expressions of violence that can be either constructive or destructive. Both the child and the therapist must be able to tolerate and contain the chaos and anxiety generated by creative/violent potential. Perceiving hints of or full-blown violence as an expression with meaning is no easy task, and when anxiety and fear are ignited, it becomes difficult for both parties to think. Without enough emotional fuel, signifiers have little meaning, and too much impedes the possibility of making sense of anything in the moment. One needs an observing structure and position outside of the chaos from which to say ‘Something important is happening here, let’s try to figure out what it is’. The creative act is a useful form with which to engage unbound force insofar as it presupposes the presence of a subject who is free to ‘make and do’ according to his own design. Without the anchor of an inner sense of authority, real creativity can be feared. Because it accesses the same force that is at the heart of violence, it may trigger a traumatic memory or may be experienced as a transgression (McDougall 1999). External authorities have only limited power to quell and interrupt the cycle of its repetitions. The history of the concept of ‘creativity’ (Runco and Albert 2010) helps us to understand how human creativity experienced as self-agency came into existence. The Proto-Indo-European root of the Latin term creare was *ker, which originally meant ‘to grow’ (Watkins 2011). Many ancient cultures lacked the concept of creativity as it is understood today and viewed art as a form of discovery and not creation. The possibility of creating something new was not at first conceived of as a human capacity but rather as something of divine origin. The later-evolving Latin creare

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which signifies ‘to bring forth, create, produce’ begins to mark the emergence of a subjective agency. It is commonly suggested that the notion of ‘creativity’ was linked in the West to the concept of divine inspiration. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, ‘creativity’ was attributed to God; humans were not envisioned as able to create anything new except as vehicles for God’s work. Similarly, in Greek culture, muses were conceived as mediators of inspiration from the gods just as the Greek and Roman concepts of an external creative ‘daemon’ or ‘genius’ were associated with the sacred or the divine. It was not until the Renaissance that the capacity for creation was attributed to humans (Runco and Albert 2010). Throughout human histories, we locate this mysterious force, first outside and then within ourselves. As this etymological and conceptual thread suggests, the capacity for creativity is a developmental achievement that shifts the source of creative authority from outside to within the human subject. On what does this capacity depend? For a child to perceive himself as a source of creativity rather than destruction, he must either come to experience himself in this way through recognition of his own inner world as a valuable source of knowledge and/or to be perceived this way by another. If a child is perceived as violent rather than creative, he is often savvy enough to comply with the perception so as to belong in the world with others. In an effort to exist, humans push to make known aspects of our inner lives that make us who we are. Brooks knew something about the impulse behind the creative act when later she carried forth more words of the ‘Boy Breaking Glass’: ‘It was you, it was you who threw away my name. And this,’ he says of his act, ‘is all I have for me.’ What is at stake in the act of creation/violence is existence itself. The solution is not to eliminate this impulse but to help it find or make a form through which to be within the social link rather than outside of it. Many teachers understand that if the only way a child can carve out an identity for himself in the group is to be a clown, bully, or troublemaker because those are the perceptions others make available, then the choice is simple. The alternative – not to be perceived at all – is too painful. In a world that offers these children very limited identities, it is critical to make available the conditions and experience of creativity, a making and doing that gives them an experience of themselves as sources of authority/authorship through which to express their inner imperatives. This begins with the process of naming that identifies a child with his own potential singularity.

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ONE GROUP One of our groups is a cohort of five sixth-grade boys, referred primarily for fighting on the playground and with teachers, for distractibility in the classroom, and for low academic productivity. Four out of the five of these boys live with one parent or guardian and have experienced the loss of family members through death, absence, and/or incarceration. At our first meeting, the boys reveal a preoccupation with the outside world they live in. Their descriptions of life on the streets erupt in a series of small explosions – how they are afraid to walk outside – how girls get raped and boys too – how they are followed around by crazy men and have to run as fast as their legs can carry them – how there are gangs and shootings out there. The boys speak with their bodies, bouncing and shifting, full of unregulated energy and undigested experiences. Paralleling their preoccupation with chaos and threat outside, these boys initially demonstrate little awareness of their inner lives. At our second meeting, when they are invited to represent their ‘inside worlds’ – the thoughts and feelings they carry inside of them – they name the organs: lungs and stomach, muscle tissue, the brain. They also want to know if anyone can get thrown out of the group.

Naming Being perceived as troublemakers by their school and community, these boys, like the ‘Boy Breaking Glass’, are identified by their ‘bad’ behaviour. On what basis could they be anything else? ‘Nobody knew where I was, and now I am no longer there.’ Not seen as anything beyond an anonymous delinquency, any other identity the ‘Boy Breaking Glass’ might have disintegrates under the weight of indifference. Like this boy, the boys in the group are often called ‘Boy’ if they are called anything at all, adding insult to exclusion from the general social contract of the larger society in which they live. How often do we pronounce their names and in what context? Young citizens are attributed this status from the moment they are registered through a birth certificate into public life with a name they will bear for a lifetime, and it is through language, through one’s use of language, that one inscribes oneself into the world (Dolto 1998). It is the role of society to open up the possibility of civility by recognizing and acknowledging its young citizens as such and thereby opening up

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a place for them within it. We begin our group meetings with acts of witnessing and naming. We name each other’s names and look one another in the eyes as we address each other. It does not come easily at first. The difficulty with which group members acknowledge one another is startling. The boys initially insist on the use of impersonal pronouns like ‘him’ or deny that they know the name of the other. We practise. A collaborative memory game in which they must name each other’s names and begin to acknowledge and articulate each other’s desires and fears joins them in a web of merging singular and collective identities. As an alternative to namelessness and the eruption of violence that emerges as its solution, what does our group intervention offer these boys in their longing for a place to be, to grow, and to create? Together we begin to build a space in which this could happen, a shared place and time to hold any budding sense of existing in a way that matters.

Collaborative symbolization The human challenge is to find or make a form through which our inner imperatives can exist within the social link. Language provides one such form. Davoine and Gaudillière (2004) offer a framework for understanding the interpersonal and intrapsychic effects of violence at the social level and the importance of symbolization as a means of working with them. In this group, symbolization engenders a particular kind of socialization and emerges through spontaneous acts of collaborative storytelling. One boy starts a story with his piece and each other boy adds his own. They move in close, strain to take in details the others recount, and excitedly fit their own bits to the whole to carry the narrative forward. They recognize the nature of the story bits the others tell, and meaning emerges as one boy’s piece fits together with another and larger chunks of signification take form. All members of the group are invited into the fray through the establishment of relationships where members work together to listen to and articulate ‘things that matter’ in an engagement of symbolic exchange. The language they create together determines the nature of the social link they form, one made out of the inscription of their own truths. The boys tell stories of destruction, loss, failure, betrayal, and separation. It is telling to track the inscriptions of violence and the forms through which it plays out in the story-creations. In the first story, a boy

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is so angry that ‘it was like there was a volcano inside him’. He turns hairy and puffs up and starts destroying the town. Cops shoot at him and he blows up a car. He goes from town to town eating everyone except one girl. He begins to feel like he is going crazy. His end comes in the form of a self-explosion. Just before he explodes, he kisses the girl and she takes up where he left off, perpetuating his destructive rampage of killing. In the end, she gets hunted down and finally shot. Another story tells of a boy’s longing for his father and his cheating to win a competition so as to win his father’s love. The cheating backfires when, instead of love, his father shoots him with an arrow in a place ‘where he could get a little hurt’. In the end, his father ‘defeats him in the last round’. In the course of this process of creative and collaborative storytelling, the paradigms of violence and retributive ‘justice’ that manage it in the first stories slowly begin to shift. The initially isolated protagonists slowly begin to join forces, just as the boys themselves realign in group. They create a group name – a composite of their own first initials; they begin to take the initiative of running the meetings. The stories produced mirror the process of collaboration taking place within the group. Their alliances in storytelling translate the relationships between them in vivo, in the room. They inscribe themselves in the collective space they create by fitting together elements from their own psyches into a shared symbolic order. Exposure to violence leaves scars on the intrapsychic life of the child (Murphy, Pynoos and James 1997) and manifests its effects through disorganization, gaps, and ruptures in the structure and content of discourse just as in the structure and content of experience. For children who cannot symbolize their trauma coherently or meaningfully, who have difficulty expressing what is at the heart of their experiences, an essential part of our intervention is to open this possibility. These children, referred as a result of their attempts to communicate their experiences of violence by acting out, found a way to scaffold one another, recognizing signs of shared experiences and ideas. The forms these boys were able to provide for each other through their collaborative accounts served as resources they could use to make sense of the experiences on their own. The group continued to fit together their symbolic forms, and the characters of their stories became teammates and comrades-in-arms, working together with special super-heroic powers to bring Justice to the City. It is worth noting that the final story they told near the end of the year they entitled ‘Justice Force’. In the end, their storytelling

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was as much about the process of coming together collectively to bear witness to each other and create something as a social group as about the symbolic representations they produced. As their stories reveal, their self-representations shifted from embodiments of destruction to ethical acts as their protagonists came to symbolize themselves no longer as outlaws but rather as keepers of justice. ✳✳✳ We have focused on the rationale underlying our approach and an example of how it plays out in one group. Lest I have painted too tidy a picture of our project, let us not forget the chaos: the earlier days in our process when one boy insulted another, when two stood up to fight. When the rawness of pain pushes a group member to lash out, our faith that the act has meaning keeps us fixed on our purpose: to perceive it as a communication, to hear it out and help it find its way into a form that we can speak about together. This work takes time, patience, and belief that even the ‘worst’ days have much to offer. Stepping into the fray and working with the chaos becomes the basis for new forms of experience. By trying to hold steady to our frame, experience becomes symbolized in new ways. Trauma interventions can facilitate the communication of the effects of violence that seek expression but they also run the risk of foreclosing access to that which is beyond interpretation (Slade 1994). A critical question for the therapeutic frame becomes – how is the source of violence and of creativity perceived? What conditions are established to recognize what is unsaid or even unsayable? The signifier is chosen by what is at work, unspoken within the body, not offered by someone else but found or created by the subject himself (Cantin 2010). In this way, the communications of the children as subjects create meaning by discovering, as they speak, truths of which they were previously unaware, a speech given the freedom to emerge according to its own design. The position of the therapist vis-à-vis the child as source of knowledge and authority/authorship mirrors the position of the children vis-à-vis that which inhabits them as an unknown force and source of strength and vitality. The task is to ally with it so that its potential can be used to create something of value for humanity rather than to destroy it. The Growth Group listens for what cries out in acts of creativity and violence and it offers a place of belonging to what is at their common root.

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REFERENCES Apollon, W. (2002a) ‘The Jouissance of the Other and the Sexual Division in Psychoanalysis.’ In R. Hughes and K.R. Malone (eds) After Lacan: Clinical Practice and the Subject of the Unconscious. New York: State University of New York. Apollon, W. (2002b) ‘The Letter of the Body.’ In R. Hughes and K.R. Malone (eds) After Lacan: Clinical Practice and the Subject of the Unconscious. New York: State University of New York. Bergeron, D. (2002) ‘Violence in Works of Art, or, Mishima, from the Pen to the Sword.’ In R. Hughes and K.R. Malone (eds) After Lacan: Clinical Practice and the Subject of the Unconscious. New York: State University of New York. Brooks, G. (1987) ‘Boy Breaking Glass.’ In Blacks. Chicago: Third World Press. (Original work published in 1967.) Cantin, L. (2010) ‘The Borderline or the impossibility of producing a negotiable form in the social bond for the return of the censored.’ Konturen 3, 1, 186–201. Davoine, F. and Gaudillière, J.M. (2004) History Beyond Trauma. New York: Other Press. Dolto, F. (1982) Séminaire de Psychanalyse d’Enfants. Paris: Seuil. Dolto, F. (1998) L’Enfant Dans la Ville. Paris: Editions Gallimard. Freud, S. (1955) ‘Beyond the pleasure principle.’ Standard Edition 18, 7–64. (Original work published in 1920.) Lee, B. (2016) ‘Causes and cures IV: the symbolism of violence.’ Aggression and Violent Behavior 27, 152–157. Mathelin, C. (1999) Lacanian Psychotherapy with Children: The Broken Piano. New York: Other Press. McDougall, J. (1999) ‘Violence and creativity.’ Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review 22, 207–217. Moore, N. (2012) ‘Chicago’s highest murder rate in Englewood.’ Accessed on 9/1/16 at www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/chicagos-highest-murder-rate-inenglewood/40131fd0-3876-47cd-af3d-613bfc5d47fb Murphy, L., Pynoos, R.S. and James, C.B. (1997) ‘The Trauma/Grief-Focused Group Psychotherapy Module of an Elementary School-Based Violence Prevention/ Intervention Program.’ In J. Osofsky (ed.) Children in a Violent Society. New York: The Guilford Press. O’Loughlin, M. (2010) ‘Ghostly Presences in Children’s Lives: Towards a Psychoanalysis of the Social.’ In M. O’Loughlin and R. Johnson (eds) Imagining Children Otherwise: Theoretical and Critical Perspectives on Childhood Subjectivity. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Patel, E. with Williams, E. (2006) ‘Religion and national security: strengthening pluralism, defeating totalitarianism.’ National Strategy Forum Review 16, 1, 9–11. Rogers, A.G. (2006) The Unsayable: The Hidden Language of Trauma. New York: Random House. Runco, M.A. and Albert, R.S. (2010) ‘Creativity Research.’ In J.C. Kaufman and R.J. Sternberg (eds) The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Schmidt, E., Schloerb, A. and Cohler, B. (2013) ‘Growth Groups for Kids: A SchoolBased Psychoanalytic Group Intervention Project for Children Exposed to Community Violence.’ In M. O’Loughlin (ed.) The Uses of Psychoanalysis in Working with Children’s Emotional Lives. Plymouth: Jason Aronson. Slade, A. (1994) ‘Making Meaning and Making Believe.’ In A. Slade and D.P. Wolf (eds) Children at Play: Clinical and Developmental Approaches to Meaning and Representation. New York: Oxford University Press. Watkins, C. (ed.) (2011) The American Dictionary of Indo-European Roots (3rd edn). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

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Chapter 14

SOCIAL DREAMING AND CREATIVITY IN SOUTH AFRICA Imag(in)ing the ‘Unthought Known’ HAYLEY BERMAN AND JULIAN MANLEY

INTRODUCTION In this chapter, we introduce social dreaming and image-making as a visual research method illuminating some of the more unconscious and latent psychic textures of the complexities of the South African psyche and the resilience and creativity that can emerge. The process makes manifest realms of experience that can be actively spoken about, engaged with, and utilised as a public story with the potential to bring about social justice and a reflective social engagement. It also facilitates understanding and experience as channelled through collective acts of transformation that might usefully be applied to other situations afflicted by acts of violence leading to trauma. The data used in this chapter come from ongoing art therapy programmes for processing traumatic processes in South Africa. These programmes form part of the Lefika la Phodiso – ‘The Rock of Healing’ – project in Johannesburg. Lefika was founded by Hayley Berman to contribute to the process of healing trauma through art therapy. Lefika’s training programme empowers community workers to work psychodynamically and creatively in groups as ‘Community Art Counsellors’ (Berman 2011, 2016).

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CONTEXT AND BACKGROUND South Africa is a country with a complex history. In 1994 Nelson Mandela became President in the first non-racial democratic elections in South Africa, quickly followed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1996, which held hearings on human rights crimes during the apartheid era. In 1999, Thabo Mbeki became President. By May 2008 a wave of violence directed at foreigners had hit the country and thousands of Zimbabweans, Malawians and Mozambicans had to return home. In 2009, Jacob Zuma became President, and in 2015, South Africa was hit by another wave of racial violence that echoed the troubles of 2008. Although cursory observations would suggest that there has been a declining trend in violence in South Africa since the end of apartheid, the overall situation remains complex: South Africa has very high levels of fatal violence. Its 17,805 murders recorded last year in a population of a little under 55 million make for a murder rate of 33 per 100,000. This compares very poorly, at about five times the global average. (Kriegler and Shaw 2016)

The struggle with inherited and generated violence and trauma is a continuing one. Political violence is part of the South African landscape (Gottschalk 2016). Unmetabolised layers of oppression have manifested in a form of repetition compulsion. It is not a simple matter of atoning for the white racist past of the pre-Mandela legacy. In South Africa today, one is equally likely to find racism directed towards non-South African black Africans on the one hand, and the native white population of South Africa on the other. Xenophobia is commonplace: Apartheid has not only left a deep legacy of white-against-black racism. The apartheid system, by forcefully ghettoising ethnic groups, those with different shades of skin or languages, has left a legacy of not only interracial group and colour prejudice, but also prejudice against Africans from outside the country. (Gumede 2015)

Atrocity – as xenophobic thoughts are translated into multiple levels of physical, psychological and emotional violence – repeats itself (Eagle and Kaminer 2013), and the forms of repetition speak of inadequate spaces to think. As a nation, South Africa is left in a state of unconscious

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grief with attempts at repair through remorse and forgiveness (GobodoMadikizela 2002). This is a psychic state described by Qunta (2016) as: a type of post-traumatic stress disorder of a nation, one that cannot be treated because it has not yet been diagnosed. [We are a country] where forgiveness is overrated and justice is underrated.

Our research seeks an understanding of the traumatic realities of the South African psyche, which may be held back or repressed from the conscious mind but released in the unconscious processes stimulated through the shared dreams of participants in a social dreaming matrix (see also Chapter 10, Volume 1). We do not make claims for any kind of comprehensive ‘diagnosis’ given the small scale of our work; however, we do believe that our results suggest new thinking about how socially shared trauma such as that of South Africa might be approached.

SOCIAL DREAMING Social dreaming encourages people to think visually. A temporary community is established that leads the group – in social dreaming called a ‘matrix’ – through various stages of image-making, ranging from the creation of free associative images in the mind to – in our adaptation of the method – physically created images or objects. This leads to the creation of a space that is immediately as open and ‘democratic’ as possible, with democracy being both a long-standing claim for the essence or feel of social dreaming – non-judgemental, non-hierarchical, respecting of the space and autonomy of each of the participants – and also the chief aspiration of South Africa as a nation. The importance of this feeling of democracy in the social dreaming matrix is highlighted by Hahn’s (2007) work with social dreaming in a South African context, where one of the participants reports that ‘the whole Dream Matrix… was the first time she had been at a professional meeting where she did not experience some degree of racism’ (p.67). Social dreaming differs from therapeutic practice with its emphasis on the dream rather than the dreamer (Lawrence 2005, p.46). However, in the Lefika social dreaming sessions, the approach has allowed for a holistic application of the method, leaving space for therapeutic elements to emerge in a natural, ‘organic’ way.

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THE USE OF SOCIAL DREAMING AND ART THERAPY PRACTICE Social dreaming helps participants to discover and share unconscious and difficult-to-discover, complex emotional and social ideas, which might otherwise have remained hidden as a result of painful withholding or traumatic retention. Full descriptions of the processes and theories behind social dreaming, which is beyond the scope of this chapter, can be found elsewhere (Lawrence 2005; Manley 2014). The literature on social dreaming has often referred to this retained knowledge as the ‘unthought known’ (Bollas 1987). Social dreaming can be used to allow the participants to open themselves out to thinking and feeling visually, so that obstacles that might present themselves in the matrix – due to traumatic forgetting, for example – might be given a chance to be experienced, expressed and reflected upon with others. The specific context for the matrices we are discussing in this chapter emerged out of a call for action in 2015 by various community organisations in Johannesburg following a recurring violent spate of attacks on foreigners. In the 2008 xenophobic crisis Lefika had been the primary psychosocial provider in a camp for 900 residents (Berman 2010). However, this time, in 2015, a Lefika Collective meeting suggested that a different sort of engagement was required. It felt important to create a thinking space to determine whether the violence being experienced was really about ‘xenophobia’, or if it was actually a symptom/diversion/ defence against something else. Social dreaming was amalgamated with art therapy practice in the following way: 1. The social dreaming matrix (primary process): a group of 14 senior Community Art Counsellors (familiar with social dreaming as a method of engagement) were asked to sit on chairs arranged so as to avoid direct eye contact, promote optimum free association, and discourage group dynamics. The facilitator invited the participants to share their night-time dreams and their feelings and associations to those dreams; and to make links and connections between the dreams which might lead to new thoughts. Participants were encouraged to avoid interpretation or judgement and to allow the dream material to ‘float’ without definition, opening out the possibility of freely interlinking dream images together (45 minutes).

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2. Creating visual art and/or objects (secondary process): group members were invited into the art studio after the matrix and given a range of materials to work with. They were encouraged to explore aspects of the social dreaming matrix that resonated for them. This time is spent listening internally to what emerges and allowing the unconscious expansion of the process. The artworks become evocative objects, pregnant with possibility, which help to articulate the participants’ experiences of the matrix (Bollas 2009) (60 minutes). 3. Reflection and integration (tertiary process): finally, the images/ objects were brought back into the previous room, where the chairs have been re-arranged into a circle, and the images/ objects were placed in front of their creators. Whoever wanted to begin placed her/his image/object in the centre of the group, and the group was invited to free associate to the image/object. Participants are encouraged not to interpret images but rather to free associate to them from their own experiences and to make links and connections between the artworks (60 minutes).

ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION Analysis took place through a series of reflections upon the data, beginning with (2) and (3) above; a series of meetings between the authors; and the presentation of the material in a Psychoanalytic Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma (PITT) research group, facilitated by Mark Solmes, as well as the presentation of the material to a psychoanalytic writing group. Both these groups are affiliated to the South African Psychoanalytic Confederation and provided a triangulation of interpretive resources, thus avoiding ‘wild analysis’ (Clarke and Hoggett 2009). We also took into account the role and influence of gender in the analytical process. Bollas in The Mystery of Things (1999) speaks of the ‘gendered’ experience in psychoanalysis as the potential ‘maternal’ function being the state of dreaming and holding and the ‘paternal’ function the penetrative, thinking space of interpretation. We are assuming that our co-authorship of this chapter emerges as a conversation between both capacities. At the same time we are aware that we also bring our specifically gendered selves to the fore. The primary function of the researcher facilitating the social dreaming matrices (Berman)

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was understood as embracing the maternal capacity: containing and embedded in the traumatic context; while the primary function of the male researcher (Manley) is providing the necessary ‘third’, with sufficient space and distance to think and creatively weave meaning together. Both these functions are intrinsic to meaning-making, particularly in a South African context with a government that fails to provide a containing presence within a traumatised nation.

FINDINGS: DREAMS AND IMAGES Matrix 1: social dreaming (Lefika, 6 May 2015) One of the recurring images from the matrix was the ambiguous nature of blood associated with death and life and the emotional and psychological redemption and rebirth that might come about from facing up to death. These multiple considerations and their connections to the theme of xenophobia were expressed in the opening dream: I had a dream [of ] a priest from Nigeria, drinking blood out of a bowl. He was looking into my eyes and saying that I need to pay for the xenophobia attacks that have been happening.

The idea of thirst being quenched by blood brings out the need for facing up to the reality of death, to open ‘my eyes’ to that reality by literally ‘drinking it in’. This is accompanied by unknowns: the role or need for a priest-like figure to support this confrontation, and the disturbing reference of having somehow to ‘pay’ for the xenophobia attacks. The matrix immediately engages with ideas that are made known in ways that resonate with the principal aim of social dreaming: the emergence of the ‘unthought known’. In this case the complex connection between life and death, and the question implied in how these may be connected through some priest-like agency, means that the question of xenophobia can be opened out to thought rather than left to a despair emanating from feelings of plain horror and consternation, which would obliterate any potential thinking space. The matrix therefore works to create this thinking space that replaces the action space. The validity of this thinking space resided in the feeling in the participants that the action space may lead to short-term, superficial solutions that have not been filtered through a process of reflection.

Social Dreaming and Creativity in South Africa

In this new space, the image can be developed by questioning the identities of the victims – ‘Red, white and black images of xenophobic victims with their faces chopped, with blood all over their faces’ – where the racial differences ‘white and black’ are painfully joined in what unites them – the ‘red’ of blood. Later, an impossibly tall figure, twice the height of the person dreaming the image, is cut down at the knees: He is so tall, let me just cut under his knees and just cut the things behind his knees. I started cutting them and I started to see the blood come out. He eventually kneeled down and when I looked…it was full red blood.

This giant is the source of shootings and killings in the dream, and the ‘little person’ cuts the problem down to size, so to speak. In the drawing (Figure 14.1) that the dream teller drew to illustrate this dream, the ‘little person’ and the giant, both standing and kneeling, are reflected in the pool of blood, as if it were water, and once again uniting the ‘big’ problem of xenophobia and the ‘little’ sufferers.

Figure 14.1: The energy from within

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The violence against the victims is then redirected back at the perpetrators, with the whole image being combined and reflected in the blood/water. This is how the dream teller explains the image: On the ground it was so red in the way that I could see the reflections of us down there. I was so short from this guy, he was so tall like a giant. I could bring him down as he wanted to do something terrible to me.

There is a return to the religious or spiritual element later in the matrix in a further reference to blood and how Christ’s blood in dying could wash away people’s sins: People were trusting the blood of Jesus to wash away the blood of the people that were being killed, the innocent people.

In this reference there is a return to the figure of the priest of the first dream, even if in a different guise, and a return to the idea of life and death being combined as a way to try to cope with the violence and death associated with xenophobia. Other images take up the theme of drinking, which initiated the matrix. This time the drinking is of water and milk. In one dream a woman is thirsty and approaches a line of people all wanting to drink from a tap. The dream teller feels obliged to serve the others before herself. When the water is running low, she decides to take some water but is jostled by an old man, and much of this precious water is spilt. The line of people is identified later as being people queuing to vote, and therefore a reference to the hope of the new South African democracy. In this context, then, the water is a reference to the quenching of that thirst for democracy and the lack of equity and the difficulty of working with all kinds of people and between generations: Before I could drink that water there was a queue full of people of all ages, somewhere crawling and somewhere walking. Some were beautifully dressed and some were in very old clothes and they were all asking for water from me. And I could not help but gave to them, the first person I gave to was an old lady, I gave the water to her and she drank. I then had to open the tap again for the next person, then for the next person until I was finished with those people, I was thirsty but I felt I could not give to myself,

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I had to give to everybody that was there. And when I could see that the water was about to finish from that bucket, I thought it was unfair because I wanted the water. Then I filled up the cup, but when the cup was right next to my mouth, when I was about to sip, an old man pulled my elbow and the cup fell. I could not drink the water and the water fell onto the ground…

This deliberate act sows discord in what would otherwise be a hopeful scene, as if the beginnings of the blood drinking (xenophobia) could be traced back to the drinking of water (democracy). If this is the case, then what hope is there for the children of democracy? This is a question that emerges in three separate dreams: There were no children in any of the schools, the whole street and the whole area did not have a child inside, the school gates were open and the playgrounds were empty. (Dream A) Running up to this building looking through the port holes to see her face appear, then vanish. It was like she was in another world. And when I woke up in the morning I was disoriented thinking I had lost my child. (Dream B) I had a revelation today, the children are not there because they see xenophobia as a big man. The children are confused. (Dream C)

In the third of these dreams, we have a reference to a ‘big man’ that resonates with the earlier image of the tall man who was cut down. In a later dream there is a reference to the child in a way that explicitly links the problem of caring and nurturing with racial issues. In this dream, the mother appears to have a child who is not of her race: I ask my sister, to look after my baby. When I looked up at the baby, the toddler he is not of my colour. But yet I am referring to the baby as my baby, giving my baby to my sister to look after.

The mother subsequently loses the baby, which symbolically represents the fledgling multi-racial society, and questions herself as a mother. In this way, the participants in the matrix are questioning their own abilities to deal with xenophobia and the quality of nurturing that is necessary or possible. The idea of the failure of maternal nurturing was combined with the frustration of knowing that there was enough milk for all, that is

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to say South Africa is rich in resources, but there seems to be a question about how to reach for and distribute these resources: The image that came to me was of a starving person who was holding this huge pot that had milk in it. They are starving but they are not able to actually drink the milk, they don’t know how to use it. Because they have a huge pot of milk but they are not able to access it… Something about humans being disconnected from the mother not knowing how to get what they need.

Matrix 2: social dreaming (Lefika, 1 August 2015) The second matrix – without a theme, but following on from the first – shows how resilience has been built up among the participants so that instead of the threat of being overwhelmed they concentrate on dreams and images of bonding, solidarity and relationship building. The matrix begins with the angry and powerful menace from some ‘other’, represented in a male lion, reduced by age and illness and contained in a van: I was driving a van and there was a male lion locked in the back of the van. And I stopped the car and opened the door. People outside were very afraid of this lion. And I was wondering why because he is very old and very sick. And he just kind of slowly went out of the van.

In this dream, the imagined fear is demonstrated to be unwarranted. Instead, a new-found resilience is connected to the idea of containment. For example, beautiful images are contained inside glass towers in one dream, and the value of a jug that belongs to Lefika becomes another container: And it was lots of artworks inside and looks very nice and beautiful even outside. All the buildings were like art galleries. (Dream A) The jug was in a shop, then I saw it and said no, this jug belongs to Lefika, I saw it there… I ran with the jug. Then suddenly I saw the Portugese man on a bicycle that was so high he could see me from high up. Then I remembered that there was a toilet where I could go hide. There was an old woman in the

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toilet and I said this jug belongs to Lefika, I have a problem. I don’t know if I should keep the jug or take it back to Lefika. (Dream B)

In the second dream, the value of the containing jug is such that the dream teller considers whether to keep it or return it to Lefika. This dream resonates with other images in the matrix – for example, of sandals that are passed down in the family with no obvious owner – that reflect upon the role and value of bonding and solidarity in order to be able to do the work of Community Art Counsellors in a violent world. This was pointed out by the facilitator: A lot of the dreams have such connections, the struggle of what it means to hold your dreams, to have it when it’s not really yours to have. The sandals that you want to give. Have a relationship. The vase; is it really yours or not? The city with artists that are waiting for you. Parents that are no longer around, which leaves such a huge void. The lion at the back of the van who is gentle and old and sick…

NEW KNOWLEDGE, NEW STRENGTH These two social dreaming matrices illustrate the value of using a shared, participative dream and creative image-making process to develop a resilience for Community Art Counsellors who have to confront extreme situations of violence and trauma. The subtleties of imagemaking at many levels can make a palpable difference in participants’ understanding and self-expression. In the first social dreaming matrix, the participants were able to confront complex and deeply uncomfortable issues related to extreme violence and xenophobia. The pervasive fear in the matrix is overcome through the expression of dreams. This fear is not just the personal fear as expressed in dreams of murder and death, but social too. There is a shared fear of losing the fabric of society, not just the personal dream but the ‘dream’ of a newly born democratic nation: And the young that gets lost, when you think about democracy. There was so much hope, that the child will be nursed and nurtured into being something more fruitful. So seemingly there is a fear that we are losing the dream, the child that we gave birth to. (SD1)

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A member of the PITT research group that Berman presented to after the first matrix commented on the power of social dreaming to process the unspeakable: It’s so gruesome in parts and so painful, and the trauma is so vivid and visceral. At the same time it has created and weaves together… It feels more real than sometimes we do intellectually in a room with an individual in a sense. It feels the blood and the guts, and the gore is present.

The clue to how this works is in the comment ‘It feels the blood…and the gore is present.’ In other words, the social dreaming matrix has emphasised the affect within the dream images in a way that would otherwise have been difficult to express. Through this expression, the affect is named and meaning can be made through the interconnections between the various dream images and associations rather than through interpretation of a single instance. Meaning is made, therefore, through the sharing process itself, as well as through the embodied image-making process. This is the ‘weaving together’ described in the observation above. The process of interconnecting the dream images and associations is never truly over. In the social dreaming matrix it is completed by the facilitator according to time boundaries and a ‘good enough’ sense of assimilation of the new ideas from the participants. But its ramifications can endure and continue to spread within each individual in different ways that are relevant to that person in his/her context. The social experience of social dreaming is thus internalised as new thought, owned by the individual and used as knowledge in his/her social interactions. This can be used to bolster resilience in the face of traumatic situations, where memory can be transformed into thought. The necessity for transformational thought is expressed in Derrida’s instigation to go beyond memory, to remember in another way: Beyond internalizing memory, it is then necessary to think, which is another way of remembering. (Derrida 1991, p.203, original italics)

It is precisely the ability to think that constitutes the process of the South African social dreaming matrices, where the internalised memory may block that thinking space. With the social dreaming matrices held in Lefika, we have the beginnings of an intention not to be enveloped in repetitive cycles of traumatic violence, to reconsider, to think again: to balance action with new thinking.

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CONCLUSION Unconscious linking allows new perceptions to take on idiosyncratic significance, structuring an alive and dynamic internal world. (Parsons 2014, p.3)

In social dreaming, Lefika as an organisation and the participants in the Community Art Counselling programme have been seeking ways of thinking within a context where the unthinkable happens. Participants found or invented a necessary capacity for things to be continually deconstructed, unravelled and reconnected, a place where meaning could be found and lost and found again. The invitation within the integrity and possibility of such a psychoanalytic paradigm was to allow for spaces that continually invite the individual to keep expanding, and discovering – not necessarily reaching a destination. We found that social dreaming was a particularly apt way of working through different intensities of shared unconscious fears and trauma. It is partly because of the capacity of social dreaming to allow for this continuous expansion of language to be contained in its most poetical and metaphorical form that the participants to the Community Art Counselling programme were able to create hypotheses of meanings, which were reflected upon and then reconstituted. Such repetitions work as positive correlatives to the cycles of repetitive violence that preceded the social dreaming matrices. The impetus to develop and expand the potential of the social dreaming matrix within the realm of creativity and image-making aims to de-differentiate and reduce the splits that occur in most psychoanalytic literature between worded free association and imaged/non-verbal psychic elaboration. Even when analysts have developed thinking that includes the ‘figurative’, this is still within a psychic-worded experience (see Botella and Botella quoted in Parsons 2014). Freud’s work on dreams and free association (Freud 1900/1991) brings in the possibility of an inventive thinking with image-making in the mind, and makes cogent and powerful arguments for the possibility of meaning-making from what might sometimes appear to be disordered images, thoughts and ideas. In the context of the repeated cycles of xenophobic violence that re-emerged in the South African context in 2015, we felt that the use of dreams, mental images and associations followed by the creation of actual images would keep rational thinking implied in the use of words and language at bay; instead, these would provide a creative space for

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feeling the irrational. It was through sharing the affective processing of imagery that we were able to confront the violence and make new spaces available for thought. The interweaving of social dreaming and creative art practice supported the Community Art Counsellors in a project of aliveness. Participants found hope in invention and discovered a new space for meaning. Within that newly created space, they discovered a potential for developing new thoughts and, with that, a re-imagining and reimaging of the ‘unthought known’: they were revealing, through this process, something that had previously been too unbearably traumatic to be converted into thought.

REFERENCES Berman, H. (2010) ‘Active witnessing – Lefika la Phodiso’s response to the South African xenophobic crisis.’ Journal of Psycho-Social Studies 4, 1. Berman, H. (2011) ‘The development and practice of art therapy as “community art counselling” in South Africa.’ ATOL: Art Therapy Online 1, 3. Berman, H. (ed.) (2016) Bodies in Action, Community Art Counsellors. Johannesburg: Lefika Publications. Bollas, C. (1987) The Shadow of the Object. London: Free Association. Bollas, C. (1999) The Mystery of Things. London: Routledge. Bollas, C. (2009) The Evocative Object World. London: Routledge. Clarke, S. and Hoggett, P. (2009) ‘Researching Beneath the Surface: A Psycho-Social Approach to Research Practice and Method.’ In S. Clarke and P. Hoggett (eds) Researching Beneath the Surface. London: Karnac. Derrida, J. (1991) ‘Psyche: Inventions of the Other.’ In P. Kamuf (ed.) A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds. Chichester: Columbia University Press. Eagle, G. and Kaminer, D. (2013) ‘Continuous traumatic stress: expanding the lexicon of traumatic stress.’ Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 19, 2, 85–99. Freud, S. (1991) The Interpretation of Dreams (Standard edition). London: Penguin. (Original work published in 1900.) Gobodo-Madikizela, P. (2002) ‘Remorse, forgiveness and re-humanization: stories from South Africa.’ Journal of Humanistic Psychology 42, 1, 7–32. Gottschalk, K. (2016) ‘Political violence in South Africa points to rising tension in the ANC. ’ Accessed on 22/6/2016 at https://theconversation.com/political-violencein-south-africa-points-to-rising-tensions-in-the-anc-61440 Gumede, W.M. (2015) ‘South Africa must confront the roots of its xenophobic violence.’ The Guardian, 20 April 2015. Accessed on 29/11/2017 at www.theguardian.com/ commentisfree/2015/apr/20/south-africa-xenophobic-violence-migrant-workersapartheid Hahn, H. (2007) ‘Social Dreaming and the Birth of South Africa’s Democracy.’ In W.G. Lawrence (ed.) Infinite Possibilities of Social Dreaming. London: Karnac.

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Kriegler, A. and Shaw, M. (2016) ‘Facts show South Africa has not become more violent since democracy.’ The Conversation, 21 July 2016. Accessed on 29/11/2017 at https://theconversation.com/facts-show-south-africa-has-not-become-moreviolent-since-democracy-62444 Lawrence, W.G. (2005) Introduction to Social Dreaming: Transforming Thinking. London: Karnac. Manley, J. (2014) ‘Gordon Lawrence’s social dreaming matrix: background, origins, history, and developments.’ Organisational & Social Dynamics 14, 2, 322–341. Parsons, M. (2014) Living Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge. Qunta, C. (2016) ‘Of political hair, Jewish noses and South Africa’s failure to become a nation.’ The Conversation, 9 August 2016. Accessed on 29/11/2017 at https:// theconversation.com/of-political-hair-jewish-noses-and-south-africas-failure-tobecome-a-nation-63528

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Chapter 15

THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT AND GLOBAL JUSTICE MATT KILLINGSWORTH

According to Michael Howard (2000, p.1), war, or armed conflict between organised groups, ‘has been the universal norm in history’. Adopting one of the core themes of this collection, war is possibly the most established and indeed entrenched form of structural violence. And while there have always been taboos with respect to how wars are fought, punishment for violating these taboos remained inconsistent (when there was punishment at all) and characterised by so-called victor’s justice. Thus, the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002 represents, albeit with important limitations, a creative structural response to the challenges of long-established norms regarding the use of violence in the international realm. The creation of the ICC was lauded as the realisation of a cosmopolitan legal order, where those crimes that most outraged the collective human consciousness, namely genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, would no longer be tolerated merely as the realities of war, and where heads of state could no longer claim impunity for their crimes. More broadly, the Court was viewed as an integral part of an emerging constitutional system, informed by universally acknowledged core values, increased rights for individuals under international law, and sanctions (most importantly for heads of state), for violating these rights (Weller 2009). While multilateral laws of war that call for punishment for violations are relatively new, efforts to limit excess during war are as old as the 237

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phenomenon of war itself. Informed by the seemingly paradoxical idea of humanity in warfare, there is a well-developed intellectual heritage articulating the need for limits concerning both the right to go to war and conduct during war (Killingsworth 2016a). Existing first as general, often vague, rules of expected behaviour between warring European parties, they evolved over time into the complex set of treaty and customary laws that exist today. The nation-state is central to this evolution. As war fighting in continental Europe became increasingly monopolised by the emerging nation-state, so too was the consent of nation-states a key principle in the establishment of mechanisms that sought to place legal boundaries around organised violence (Killingsworth 2016a, p.101). Thus, for much of the modern period, international laws pertaining to the use of violence were not only determined by states, the state also exercised jurisdiction over prosecutions of crimes committed on its territory or by its citizens (Armstrong, Farrell and Lambert 2012, p.193). Indeed, until relatively recently, ‘states, and those who act on behalf of states…mainly operated with impunity towards individuals and have operated in a vacuum of accountability for transgressions towards individuals’ (Smith 2012, p.1). Thus, we arrive at the aims of this chapter. Popular assessments of the ICC to date have tended to polarise around two often exaggerated views. Critics assert that the ICC represents an unwarranted and unworkable erosion of state sovereignty, whilst supporters have seen the Court as representing the vanguard of a post-state international order. In this chapter, I argue for a more nuanced assessment that debunks over-stated fears about the erosion of state sovereignty, whilst recognising that states retain the power to make or break the operations of the Court. To this end, this chapter will first explore how the post-1991 evolution of legal mechanisms to prosecute gross violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) might challenge traditional understandings and interpretations of the right of states to use violence and, in turn, the states assumed primacy in prosecuting violations. Second, considering that violence and statehood have historically been closely linked,1 it will explore the limitations of achieving global justice in an international society of sovereign states. 1

For example, consider Charles Tilly’s (1975, p.42) famous mantra that ‘war made the state and the state made war’ and Max Weber’s (2002, p.13) observation that ‘the relation between the state and violence is an especially intimate one’.

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This chapter is presented in three sections. The first provides an overview of the Court, with an emphasis on recognising its existence as being both necessitated and facilitated by the legal responses to the violent break-up of Yugoslavia and the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Having demonstrated what the Court can and cannot do, the second section will focus on some of the controversial aspects of the Court: accusations that it ‘hunts Africans’; the US’ fraught relationship with the Court; and, through focusing on the high-profile case of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, how successful the Court has been in prosecuting ‘big fish’. In the final section, the conclusions reached in this chapter will attempt to locate a middle ground of cautious optimism regarding the degree to which the ICC has been successful in achieving its aims of ensuring that the ‘most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole’ do not go unpunished. It will argue that while the ICC has done much to delegitimise the long-evolved norm that violations of IHL can be tolerated as a legitimate tool of statecraft, there remain structural limitations to attempts at subjugating justice in war to international legal mechanisms.

THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF THE ICC The genesis of an international criminal court can be traced all the way back to the founding of the International Committee of the Red Cross. One of the co-founders, Gustave Moynier, proposed in 1872 that international criminal courts be established by combatants at the outset of hostilities, his rationale being to deter and, if necessary, adjudicate violations of the 1864 Geneva Convention (Schiff 2008, p.20). However, arguably it was the International Military Tribunal of Nuremberg and the Tokyo Military Tribunals that were of the most significance to the subsequent formation of the ICC. Although heavily criticised, both at the time and in later years, especially over allegations of so-called victor’s justice, Timothy McCormack (2011, p.3) is correct to identify these temporary tribunals as constituting ‘historic precedents for the now unassailable principle of individual criminal responsibility for violations of IHL’. The growing Cold War antagonisms, however, quashed any enthusiasm there might have been for establishing a permanent international court. Hence the importance of the end of the Cold War in

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creating a fertile environment for new efforts to create a permanent international criminal court. The era immediately following the implosion of the Soviet Union was one of renewed optimism, described by George H.W. Bush (1991) as constituting a ‘new world order’ which would be defined by a reinvigoration of the United Nations (UN) Security Council and ‘respect for human rights…among all nations’. The second factor that created the impetus for the ICC was the shocking and barbaric violence that characterised the break-up of Yugoslavia and the 1994 Rwandan genocide. In response to each of these wars, the UN Security Council established the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), the creation of which, for Ben Schiff, demonstrated that ‘states had overcome their inhibitions to prosecute individuals suspected of international crimes’ (Schiff 2008, p.38). In turn, the atrocities that were committed in Rwanda and Yugoslavia served as a catalyst to reinvigorate the International Law Committee (ILC) which, in 1994, produced a draft statute for the International Court. In the period between 1994 and 1998, critiques and criticisms of the draft, offered by states and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) alike, were considered, the result being the final Rome Conference held in 1998, immediately after which 120 states voted in favour of the final text, seven against, with 21 abstentions, enabling the Rome Statute, the Court’s governing document, to be opened for signature and ratification (Harrington, Milde and Vernon 2006). The Statute received the required 60 ratifications in April 2002, entering into force in June of the same year. Thus, established under treaty law, the ICC has jurisdiction over the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole, namely genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes (The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court 2002). The Court can exercise its jurisdiction over individuals who are nationals of a State Party to the Rome Statute or have committed crimes on the Party’s territory; when the case is referred to the Court by the UN Security Council; or when initiated by the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP). Finally, as outlined in Article 12, chapter 3 of the Statute: ‘If the acceptance of a State which is not a Party to this Statute is required under paragraph 2, that State may, by declaration lodged with the Registrar, accept the exercise of jurisdiction by the Court with respect to the crime in question.’

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With respect to the operational limitations of the Court, two sections of the Statute are especially important. The first of these is Articles 17–20 of the Statute, which articulate the principles of complementarity. As with the ad hoc tribunals, the complementarity principle essentially holds that ‘states are entitled prima facie to investigate and prosecute, but that the Prosecutor reserves the right to launch their own investigation if he or she determines that the national judiciary has not conducted a genuine investigation or trial’ (Roach 2009, p.9). The second of these relates to cooperation with the Court, which is heavily reliant on the cooperation of its Member States to fulfil its mandate. It does not have a police force to satisfy arrest warrants, nor does it have the requisite bodies to seize documents or freeze assets. Thus, Part IX of the Rome Statute outlines the ways that signatories are expected to cooperate with the Court, including a general obligation for States Parties to ‘cooperate fully with the Court in its investigation and prosecution of crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court’. The most important aspect of cooperation, however, is that concerning arrest and surrender of individuals sought by the Court; faced with such a request, Article 89 of the Statute obliges a State Party to ‘comply with the request to arrest and surrender’. Finally, the Court may only prosecute crimes that occurred after June 2002 (no retrospective justice), and the Office of the Prosecutor’s decision to proceed with a case is informed by a gravity threshold; thus, the establishment of the ICC, as McCormack (2011, p.5) notes somewhat sombrely, was not the ‘time for delusion that all major IHL violations will be prosecuted’. We can therefore draw the following conclusions about the operational limitations of the ICC. First, as noted by Benjamin Schiff (2008, p.68), the Statute ‘reflects states’ agreement over how to institute a broad range of international criminal justice norms while still protecting national sovereignty’. Second, the complementarity principle makes it clear that judicial mechanisms of the state remain the primary focus in efforts to punish violators of IHL. Finally, despite Kirsten Ainley’s (2011, p.315) claim that ‘the Court has significant actual power over leaders and nationals of those states that have ratified the Statute, and significant potential power over leaders and nationals of those states that have not’, there is strong evidence to suggest otherwise. While the preamble to the Statute makes references to cosmopolitan ideals of common humanity

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and global justice, its most substantive articles make it clear that while making large inroads towards delegitimising sovereign impunity, the Court’s capacity to operate is still heavily reliant on the cooperation of sovereign states. As a result, the metaphorical tentacle of global justice does not yet exist, or is at least highly selective based on state preferences and/or their capacity to withstand it (see Killingsworth 2015a).

COURTING CONTROVERSY When one considers the broad mandate of the Court, it is not surprising that it has faced (and indeed still faces) a number of challenges and conundrums. Thematically, these challenges and conundrums can be best understood as a series of mutually opposed paradoxes; sovereignty versus universalism; power politics versus institutional cooperation; and peace versus justice. We can now explore these themes through a series of case studies.

The US and the ICC The US’ relationship with the ICC, from the negotiations leading to the formation of the Rome Statute in 1998, to the establishment of the Court in 2002 and the subsequent years of operation, has ranged from outright hostility to pragmatic engagement. Initially supportive of the creation of a permanent international criminal court in the early days of drafting the ICC treaty, the US became concerned over two facets of the Statute in particular (see Feinstein and Lindberg 1999; Wedgewood 2000). The first of these concerned the broad jurisdiction of the Court. Taking particular umbrage with Article 12 of the Rome Statute, the US delegation were content for the Court to have jurisdiction over nationals of signatory states, but objected to the proposal (eventually adopted in the Rome Statute) that the Court be able to exercise jurisdiction over nationals of non-States Parties, provided the alleged crime took place on the territory of a signatory to the Statute.2 The second concern voiced by the US related to the eventually diminished role of the UN Security Council vis-à-vis the Court. The US 2

The head of the US negotiating team in Rome, David Scheffer, referred to the provisions of Article 12 as the ‘single most fundamental flaw in the Rome Treaty that makes it impossible for the United States to sign the present text’ (cited in Scharf 2001, p.69).

The ICC and Global Justice

was supportive of the original ILC draft proposal for an international criminal court, which effectively subordinated the court to the UN Security Council (see Smith and Smith 2009; Bosco 2014). However, delegates at the Rome Conference, led by the so-called like-minded group, rejected this proposal. Despite intense lobbying by the US, the final version of the Rome Statute provided a much more diminished role for the Security Council than that advocated for by the US.3 While disagreeing with many of the decisions made in Rome, the US nonetheless remained engaged with the Court in its formative years. However, under the first G.W. Bush administration, US objections to the Court became outwardly hostile. Its first act was to ‘unsign’ the Rome Statute, with Under Secretary of State John Bolton informing the UN that the US now had ‘no legal obligations arising from its signature on 31st December, 2000’. In coordinated messages, Marc Grossman (2002), Under Secretary for Political Affairs, still railing against Article 12 of the Rome Statute, argued that ‘while sovereign nations have the authority to try non-citizens who have committed crimes against their citizens or on their territory, the US has never recognised the right of an international organisation to do so absent consent or a UN Security Council mandate’. Echoing common conservative objections to the Court, Grossman (2002) argued that the US’ opposition to the Court was premised primarily on the belief that it undermined the central role of the UN Security Council in maintaining international peace and security and that, in creating a prosecutorial system that is ‘an unchecked power’, the Rome Statute was undemocratic. The US’ relationship with the Court has since become more congenial, while at the same time making it clear that they are no closer to re-signing the Rome Statute. How then should we understand the US’ ongoing reservations about the Court? Its actions vis-à-vis the ICC should not necessarily be interpreted as being opposed to global justice per se. As Jason Ralph (2011, p.71) notes, ‘it agrees that human rights abusers should be prosecuted when states are unwilling or unable to do so’. Rather, the US’ concerns with the Court remain underpinned by two broad, interrelated concerns: first, that the Rome Statute, in undermining the historically central role of the Security Council to maintain 3

According to William Schabas (2004, p.720), the Rome Statute represents an ‘attempt to effect indirectly what could not be done directly, namely reform of the United Nations and amendment of the Charter’.

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‘international peace and security’, simultaneously fails to acknowledge the ‘great power’ status of the US; and second, in asserting jurisdiction over citizens of states that have not signed the Statute, the existence of the ICC threatens US sovereignty. That these concerns are generally unfounded has been discussed elsewhere (see Ralph 2003). Of most interest to the arguments being made here, though, is the demonstrated tension that remains between visions of global justice, as espoused by the ICC, versus obduracy informed by a combination of power politics and narrow interpretations of Westphalian sovereignty.

Africa and the ICC Up until October 2015, when the Office of the Prosecutor opened an investigation into the situation in Georgia, all of the ICC’s cases were focused on crimes allegedly committed in African countries. This has led to accusations against the Court of selectivity bias, sentiments neatly encapsulated by Chad’s president, Idriss Déby, when he argued that ‘elsewhere in the world, many things happen, many flagrant violations of human rights, but nobody cares’ (The Guardian 2016a). Expressing a related but slightly different dissatisfaction with the Court vis-à-vis its hitherto focus on Africa, Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn has accused the Court of ‘hunting’ Africans (see Killingsworth 2013). Finally, as part of their campaign against the ICC, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto, indicted for crimes committed during post-election violence in 2007–2009, regularly claimed that the Court was nothing more than a tool of Western imperialism (Campbell 2013). There are a number of reasons why the above claims, while not necessarily true, find a degree of popular support in some parts of Africa. The Court’s focus on Africa, while appearing to ignore arguably more serious war crimes (Sri Lanka and Syria, for example), is frustrating for Africans and non-Africans alike, especially for those who viewed the Court as a realisation of global justice. Similarly, for historical reasons, claims of Western imperialism have powerful resonance. On closer inspection, however, these claims are at best unhelpful and at worst disingenuous. As Mark Kersten (2015) notes, in none of the situations in Africa where the Court has intervened was it incorrect

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to do so – every one of the situations warranted an ICC intervention. Furthermore, perceived bias against Africa is often underpinned by misunderstandings about the nature of these particular cases. Of the eight African situations currently being investigated or tried, four (Uganda, Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic) are self-referrals; that is, states party to the Rome Statute have referred crimes committed on their own territory. Only two situations (Libya and Darfur) have been referred to the Court by the UN Security Council; while the situations in Cote D’Ivoire and Kenya were initiated by the Office of the Prosecutor and only progressed after being approved by an ICC pre-trial Chamber (see Killingsworth 2015b). More recently, and perhaps most disconcerting, is the recent decision by the African Union (AU) to push for withdrawal from the ICC, repeating claims that it unfairly targets the continent. At the same time, the AU has proposed amending the protocol on the Statute of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights to cover individual criminal liability for serious crimes committed in violation of international law. However, in what amounts to a regressive step, the protocol gives immunity to sitting heads of state before the African Court (Human Rights Watch 2014). The case that best demonstrates the tensions between the principle of universality under which the Court operates, and the system of sovereign states in which it functions, is that of Omar al-Bashir, President of Sudan. The situation in Sudan was the first to be referred to the ICC by the UN Security Council, and al-Bashir was the first sitting president indicted by the Court. He is charged with five counts of crimes against humanity, two counts of war crimes and three counts of genocide, all relating to the conflict in Darfur (International Criminal Court 2015). While Sudan is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, the UN Security Council Resolution through which al-Bashir was referred to the Court obliges ‘the Government of Sudan and all other parties to the conflict in Darfur [to] cooperate fully with and provide any necessary assistance to the Court and the Prosecutor pursuant to this resolution’ (UN Security Council 2005). At the time of writing, the Sudanese government, in not surrendering al-Bashir to the Court, had failed to comply with the Resolution. While this is not necessarily surprising, the failure of a number of countries, namely Kenya, Djibouti, Chad (twice), Malawi, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo (all signatories to the Rome Statute), to arrest and surrender al-Bashir to the Court when he

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has visited is of concern. Most recently, the South African government, despite being obliged to arrest al-Bashir under its obligations as a signatory to the Rome Statute, failed to do so when he visited South Africa for an AU summit in June 2015. Subsequently, the South African Supreme Court of Appeal ruled that the government was wrong not to arrest al-Bashir, going as far as to describe the government’s conduct as ‘disgraceful’ (The Guardian 2016b).4

CONCLUSION The modern nation-state, through a long and often bloody process, emerged as the dominant form of political organisation from the various overlapping authority types that characterised the pre-modern order. As identified above, war making assumed a central part of its emergence. As a result, the state assumed the right to monopolise authority over the use of violence within its borders and claimed for itself the right to go to war and, in turn, the right to determine which acts were justified (and hence legitimate) during war. Thus, a norm was established whereby the use of force was justified, and indeed legitimated, through references to raison d’état. For much of the modern period, these established, interrelated norms have been the primary informants about how we have traditionally thought about the relationship between law and war. Long considered oppositional terms, the laws of war have often been cynically violated or even completely ignored; as long as the state assumed for itself the role of primary arbiter in matters concerning prosecution of possible violations of the rules, and later the laws, of war, punishment of gross violations remained rare to non-existent. This reality was merely a by-product of a system of self-interested sovereign states. But following the end of the Cold War, much of what was once understood as acceptable has gradually been challenged, if not eroded. The prosecution of individuals, including former heads of state and military leaders, for the crimes of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity at the ICTY and ICTR serve as tangible demonstrations of this. Likewise, the trials at the ICC of Jean-Pierre Bemba, a former Vice-President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, who was found 4

For more information on this issue, see Tladi (2015).

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guilty on two counts of crimes against humanity (murder and rape) and three counts of war crimes (murder, rape and pillaging), and Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi, who was found guilty of the deliberate destruction of historical and religious monuments in Timbuktu, Mali, provide evidence of a subtle yet important shift away from state primacy vis-à-vis the prosecution of violations of IHL. In the case of prosecutions at both the ICTY and ICTR, it is unlikely that any form of justice would have been achieved had the matter been left to domestic judiciaries. Similarly, rape and destruction of religious and cultural artefacts during war have traditionally been tacitly accepted, understood as ‘spoils of war’. Yet through its most recent rulings, the ICC has served to further distinguish what is legally not permissible during conflict, something that was once the sole domain of the state (see Killingsworth 2016b). When one considers the historical primacy of the state with regard to the use of force in the international system, the speed at which these changes have occurred is extraordinary. The Court is an institution whose existence and actions simultaneously undermine the norm of sovereign impunity and the state’s historically informed claim to be the primary arbiter in matters concerning the violations of the laws of war. In this respect, it is an innovative structure designed to challenge, if not undermine, evolved notions of the right to use violence. Nonetheless, it would be mistaken, maybe even naive, to argue that the advent of the ICC represents a panacea in attempts to realise universal justice vis-à-vis the most serious violations of IHL. As demonstrated above through the examples of the US and the ICC situation in Sudan, the state continues to reserve its historically informed right not only to use violence where and when it sees fit, but also to be the prime arbiter when determining the legality of such violence. Thus, while the advent of the ICC is representative of a definitive shift in the way that we think about the legitimate use of force, the modern nation-state, arguably the example par excellence of ‘structural violence’, remains resistant to changes designed to undermine its claim to monopolise the legitimate use of violence in the international realm.

REFERENCES Ainley, K. (2011) ‘The International Criminal Court on trial.’ Cambridge Review of International Affairs 24, 3, 309–333.

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Armstrong, D., Farrell, T. and Lambert, H. (2012) International Law and International Relations (2nd edn). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bosco, D. (2014) Rough Justice: The International Criminal Court in a World of Power Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bush, G.H.W. (1991) ‘Address before a Joint Session of Congress on the end of the Gulf War (March 6, 1991).’ Accessed on 9/2/2016 at http://millercenter.org/president/ bush/speeches/speech-3430 Campbell, J. (2013) ‘Is the International Criminal Court a tool of Western imperialism? No.’ Christian Science Monitor. Accessed on 16/4/2016 at www.csmonitor.com/ World/Africa/Africa-Monitor/2013/1015/Is-the-International-Criminal-Court-atool-of-Western-imperialism-No Feinstein, L. and Lindberg, T. (1999) Means to an End: U.S. Interest in the International Criminal Court. Washington, DC: Brookings Institute Press. Grossman, M. (2002) ‘American foreign policy and the International Criminal Court.’ Accessed on 9/6/2015 at http://2001-2009.state.gov/p/us/rm/9949.htm The Guardian (2016a) ‘African Union members back Kenyan plan to leave ICC.’ 2 February. Accessed on 19/4/2016 at www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/01/ african-union-kenyan-plan-leave-international-criminal-court The Guardian (2016b) ‘South African court rules failure to detain Omar al-Bashir was “disgraceful”.’ 16 March. Accessed on 8/6/2016 at www.theguardian.com/ world/2016/mar/16/south-african-court-rules-failure-to-detain-omar-al-bashirwas-disgraceful Harrington, J., Milde, M. and Vernon, R. (2006) ‘Introduction.’ In J. Harrington, M. Milde and R. Vernon (eds) Bringing Power to Justice? The Prospects of the International Criminal Court. Montreal: McGill–Queen’s University Press. Howard, M. (2000) The Invention of Peace. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Human Rights Watch (2014) ‘Statement regarding immunity for sitting officials before the expanded African Court of Justice and Human Rights.’ Accessed on 7/6/2016 at www.hrw.org/news/2014/11/13/statement-regarding-immunity-sitting-officialsexpanded-african-court-justice-and#_ftn2 International Criminal Court (2015) ‘Case information sheet. Situation in Darfur, Sudan: The Prosecutor v. Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir.’ Accessed on 7/6/2016 at www.icc-cpi.int/darfur/albashir/Documents/AlBashirEng.pdf Kersten, M. (2015) ‘The Africa–ICC relationship – more and less than meets the eye.’ Justice in Conflict. Accessed on 18/4/2016 at https://justiceinconflict. org/2015/07/17/the-africa-icc-relationship-more-and-less-than-meets-the-eyepart-1 Killingsworth, M. (2013) ‘International Criminal Court is not just for hunting Africans.’ The Conversation. Accessed on 18/4/2016 at https://theconversation. com/international-criminal-court-is-not-just-for-hunting-africans-18072 Killingsworth, M. (2015a) ‘Limiting the Use of Force: The ICTY, ICTR and ICC.’ In M. Killingsworth, M. Sussex and J. Pakulski (eds) Violence and the State. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Killingsworth, M. (2015b) ‘Why the International Criminal Court is going OK.’ The Policy Space. Accessed on 17/4/2016 at www.thepolicyspace.com.au/2015/15/54why-the-international-criminal-court-is-going-ok

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Killingsworth, M. (2016a) ‘From St Petersburg to Rome: understanding the evolution of the modern laws of war.’ Australian Journal of Politics and History 62, 1, 100–115. Killingsworth, M. (2016b) ‘The International Criminal Court: new legal precedents.’ Australian Outlook. Accessed on 19/6/2016 at www.internationalaffairs.org.au/ australian_outlook/the-international-criminal-court-and-humanitarian-lawnew-legal-precedents McCormack, T. (2011) ‘The importance of effective international enforcement of international humanitarian law.’ International Humanitarian Law Magazine 1, 3–5. Ralph, J. (2003) ‘Between Cosmopolitan and American democracy: understanding US opposition to the International Criminal Court.’ International Relations 17, 2, 95–211. Ralph, J. (2011) ‘The International Criminal Court and the State of the American Exception.’ In A. Crawford (ed.) International and Comparative Criminal Justice and Urban Governance: Convergence and Divergence in Global, National and Local Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Roach, S. (2009) ‘Introduction: Global Governance in Context.’ In S. Roach (ed.) Governance, Order and the International Criminal Court: Between Realpolitik and a Cosmopolitan Court. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schabas, W. (2004) ‘United States hostility to the International Criminal Court: it’s all about the Security Council.’ European Journal of International Law 15, 4, 701–720. Scharf, M.P. (2001) ‘The ICC’s jurisdiction over the nationals of non-party states: a critique of the U.S. position.’ Law and Contemporary Problems 64, 1, 68–117. Schiff, B. (2008) Building the International Criminal Court. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, C. (2012) The Rise and Fall of War Crimes: From Charles I to Bush II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, C.M. and Smith, H.M. (2009) ‘Embedded Realpolitik? Reevaluating United States’ Opposition to the International Criminal Court.’ In S.C. Roach (ed.) Governance, Order and the International Criminal Court: Between Realpolitik and a Cosmopolitan Court. Oxford: Oxford University Press. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (2002). Accessed on 29/11/2017 at www.icc-cpi.int/nr/rdonlyres/ea9aeff7-5752-4f84-be94-0a655eb30e16/0/rome_ statute_english.pdf Tilly, C. (1975) ‘Reflections on the History of European State Making.’ In C. Tilly (ed.) The Formation of National States in Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Tladi, D. (2015) ‘The duty on South Africa to arrest and surrender President Al-Bashir under South African and international law: a perspective from international law.’ Journal of International Criminal Justice 13, 5, 1027–1047. UN Security Council (2005) ‘Resolution 1593.’ Accessed on 9/6/2016 at www.un.org/ en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/RES/1593(2005) Weber, M. (2002) ‘Politics as a Vocation.’ In C. Besteman (ed.) Violence: A Reader. Houndmills: Palgrave. Wedgewood, R. (2000) ‘The Constitution and the ICC.’ In S.B. Sewell and C. Kaysen (eds) The United States and the International Criminal Court: National Security and International Law. New York and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield. Weller, M. (2009) ‘The Struggle for an International Constitutional Order.’ In D. Armstrong (ed.) Routledge Handbook of International Law. London and New York: Routledge.

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Chapter 16

FINDING STORIES IN A FORM THAT CAN BE ACTED Creative States in Response to Climate Change Denial and Biosphere Destruction LUCY NEAL

Climate change is a very complex problem. The great thing about complexity is that it has emergent properties. The good thing is that it gives every person, all 7 billion of us, a role as an agent of change. Most of our ideas will wither and die on the vine, but a few seeds will flower and come forth, and the role of society is to nurture those ones, to fertilise those ones, scale them up…and if you see the world as a complex problem, you’re no longer relying on the Prime Ministers and the leaders, you’re relying on all of us, as part of that change…we could see change emerging from different places, to give ourselves all some scope for thinking differently about the future. (Professor Kevin Anderson, climate change scientist, Paris climate change talks, December 2015 (COP 21))

Finding one’s role as an ‘agent of change’ today is as exciting as it is daunting. We live in an age in which the primary definer of geological and ecological change is not fire, nor ice, nor stone, but our own species: humankind. Our species, along with every other living creature on the planet, has recently stepped from the relatively temperate, stable 12,000-year Holocene period, into the Anthropocene (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000) – a geological era (formally announced at the International Geological 251

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Congress in Cape Town in 2016) in which human activity is considered such a powerful influence on the Earth’s four billion-year-old planetary systems that it will leave a long-term signature in the strata record. A ‘new normal’ is characterised by a warming planet, a sixth mass extinction, ocean acidification and the loss of much of the planet’s majestic, rich biodiversity: a planetary ‘violent state’. As humans, it is hard to wake up to the fact that, as a planetary force, we are accountable for reimagining our world on behalf of ourselves, subsequent generations and all other species in the biotic community. How do we collectively reimagine a world in which life on Earth is actively celebrated, cherished and sustained rather than extinguished and destroyed? Our drama’s timeline has a finite trajectory: in 2013 the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) was ‘unequivocal’ about global warming being the result of human actions; 400 parts per million of carbon were registered for the first time in human history. The year 2016 was the hottest on record. Wildfires have significantly increased in frequency; floods, typhoons, hurricanes and other extreme weather events occur on an almost daily basis. In December 2015, at ‘COP 21’ in Paris, the Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) produced an unprecedentedly unanimous agreement, adopted by 196 countries, to attempt to limit global warming to no more than two degrees. Outside such hopeful conventions, however, our dominant day-to-day public, social and political culture remains one of wilful climate change denial. In June 2017, US President Donald Trump, a climate change denier, withdrew from the ‘irreversible’ Paris agreement, and in a recent general election in the UK, climate change barely registered in political discourse (Carbon Brief 2017). Despite the connections between resource use, carbon emissions, consumption and economic growth, many governments and commentators continue to focus on policies and pronouncements in pursuit of achieving growth at all costs. When evidence-based facts and figures about climate change cannot catalyse the shifts needed, it is possible that the creative work of artists can nurture emergent space to rethink the future – collectively. The artist Emily Hinshelwood walked through Wales for a year asking each person she met three questions about climate change. She discovered that everyone she met was aware of climate change, but

Finding Stories that can Be Acted

none of them discussed it with anyone they knew; nor did they feel able to act in the face of its overwhelming complexity. Coming across her unexpectedly, however, out and about, they talked about it to Emily for hours, demonstrating great care and concern. She made their responses into a resonant verbatim poem (Hinshelwood n.d.). ‘Is it necessary to feel pain, to care?’ someone asked her. Yes, she thought it was. In an age that is keen to reduce what eco-philosopher Joanna Macy and her colleague Molly Brown would call ‘the pain of the world itself ’ (Macy and Brown 2014, p.21) to personal pathologies, our reluctance to embrace suffering could be a factor in keeping our culture in denial. This chapter seeks to illuminate the role our creativity can play in waking us up to rethinking the future and to being ‘players in action’ rather than the reasons for or psychological dimensions of climate denial itself (see e.g. Marshall 2014). Gripped by the evident extent of our denial and powerlessness to ‘act’, I set out to investigate the role our collective creative skills play in responding with imagination to such a historic moment in time. With poetry and metaphor, the arts can explore the language of the heart, the pain of what we’re losing and the deep yearning in us for the restoration and celebration of life. We seek celebratory social spaces to look backwards and forwards in time, where our collective knowledge, intuition and a sense of wonder at what is possible can come together (Neal 2015). Exploring how artists create emergent social and imaginative space for new ways of being human on Earth, I decided to stand by the story of art. ✳✳✳ A lot of opportunity is going to arrive in the next 20 years disguised as loss. (Shaw 2012)

Zoe Svendsen, a theatre maker, whose productions engage audiences directly in imagined climate change scenarios, finds that when confronted with having to ‘act’ in the big change stories of the planet, a certain ‘scriptlessness’ descends on us: we lose the thread of the part we’re to play and our agency for making change. My own moment of scriptlessness came in 2006. Nightmares about the biosphere had me fretting I was making things worse just by getting up and being human. I read about economic and ecological collapse,

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until I became ill with existential scriptlessness. I couldn’t imagine a future for myself, let alone a world beyond my lifetime. The personal was planetary and I needed a new story to live by. The poet Gary Snyder advises: ‘Find your place on the planet. Dig in, and take responsibility from there’ (Snyder 1974, p.101). Insight into imagining and creating a socially just and liveable world came from my involvement locally in South London, in Transition Town Tooting, part of the global social change movement, making change in how we live, where we live. Transition initiatives connect communities across the globe to imagine a world beyond fossil fuels, beyond what Bloom (2015) calls our ‘petrosubjectivity’, a sense of self comprehensively enmeshed in fossil fuels and their climate-warming industries. From 2008, lines between art making and community making, community activism and art became blurry for me. Both facilitated participative, collaborative processes in the public realm to explore new fields of possibilities, conjuring with alternative futures and imaginary worlds. Between the boundary of what is possible and what is not, there is a space of transformation rich in potential for change: a field in which, as Kevin Anderson proposes, we can plant as many seeds as we can to flower and come forth. The alchemy of people, ideas and possibility manifests only through action – trying, failing, trying again. Acting to make things happen locally, the staging of events in Tooting taught me much: the large-scale ‘Trashcatchers Carnival’ (Neal 2015, pp.316–320), which took to Tooting’s High Road, invited the town to imagine a low carbon future for Tooting. The Encounters Transition Shop1 was more intimate: an empty shop with ‘nothing for sale but lots on offer’ invited people to leave a trace of themselves, creating what Encounters’ Ruth Ben-Tovim calls ‘a remote dialogue’ across Tooting generations and cultures. It conjured with connection between people’s greatest hopes and deepest fears about what it is like to live now at such an historic time. A more recent event in July 2017, ‘The Tooting Twirl’, invited local residents to ‘dream’ a bus-turning circle into an actual physical village green for the day. The event contributed to the new Tooting Bec and Broadway Neighbourhood Plan, now consulting local residents on the good change they wish to see – and take responsibility for – in their area.

1

See www.encounters-arts.org.uk/index.php/tooting-transition-shop-2012

Finding Stories that can Be Acted

In these events, I saw capacities of the human heart to directly engage with the knowledge of global challenges, with a yearning for a narrative of positive change. I saw people thinking ‘OK, if we can do this, we can do anything.’ I saw that we could reclaim a more liveable world, but only if we had the actual space to first imagine and inhabit it. The participatory arts then became charged for me in new ways with this practice of a great imagining, living within ecological limits and with community at its heart. Gablik (1991/1994) refers to such capacity of reimagining as the ‘reenchanting’ of our culture, where personal and collective creativity connect to social, moral, ethical and ecological responsibility. Not responsibility for the world in general, but one that is specific and practical and different for each one of us. ✳✳✳ The lived local experience provided a new definition of dramaturgy for me – finding stories in a form that could be acted; finding scripts for action and creating everyday parts for people to play. I became interested in the dramaturgy of transition and change: how perspectives shift from one of ‘non-agency’ to being players in action or citizen artists and how the imaginary helps us transform and renew the real. I see this expanded concept of dramaturgy as increasingly key to designing the transition to a more ecological age: if we are all players in action, how do we choose to act? What role can we play? The arts have a tradition of sparking cultural change and speaking differently – as Emily Hinshelwood did – creating emergent space to reinvent the future collectively. Ann Jordan, co-founder of Wales’ Elysium Gallery, suggests that artists ‘can get different people in a room talking to one another when no one else can’ (Allen et al. 2014). In an era of pathological individualism, the artist’s capacities to convene and host people across difference to find commonality could be key to their most transformative powers. In the UK, over the last decade, a widespread arts and cultural movement has recognised the power collaborative arts practices have to build societal reinvention and resilience. The Coming of Age programme, part of ArtCOP 21 internationally, demonstrates the movement in the UK cultural sector to respond creatively to the urgency of climate change. Initiatives such as Platform London, Cape Farewell,

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Julie’s Bicycle, Tipping Point, Artsadmin, Emergence, Creative Carbon Scotland and others have created a step change in recognising the role the arts community plays in reimagining a more viable future on the planet, shifting society’s rules and values from consumerism and commodity towards community and collaboration. A letter from over 350 artists and creative leaders from the worlds of music, film, theatre, literature and art to Christiana Figueres at COP 21 in December 20152 called for an ambitious climate agreement from the world’s decision makers. Figueres acknowledged the letter as a key signifier of the shift taking place in the public narrative towards care for the planet. Artists can be ‘outriders and alchemists in the vanguard’ speeding up a public process of seeing and feeling the ‘truth’ of climate change. A subsequent movement of ‘Coptimists’ signed a Creative Climate Coalition on 4 May 2016, recognising a key role in joining climate activists, researchers, economists, scientists and energy specialists in leading cultural change. And the ‘Season for Change’, in 2018, sees 150 UK arts organisations joining together nationally to programme events, conversations and performances, highlighting responses and inspiring creative actions on climate change. Such occasions can extend our imaginations, giving people a chance to recognise they are part of a larger whole rather than existing as separated entities. Finding stories in form that can be acted is also a place of play – the ground of art’s being and how we – and other mammals – learn what we need to know to survive. In our imaginations, play allows us to rehearse possible futures, saying ‘if that happens, I’ll do that’. We draw on these memories of the future to make decisions about how to ‘act’ in the real world. Play opens us to creativity and change, extending the range of possibilities we draw on (see e.g. Winnicott 1971/1982). But play can be disrupted by fear, which our present dangers elicit. Artists can be circuit breakers, speeding up a public process of seeing and feeling the ‘truth’ of climate change. It can feel counterintuitive at such a time to play but it can be taken very seriously. In emboldening our imaginations, glimpsing other ways of seeing and feeling, artists create liminal space, where nothing is fixed and anything becomes possible. We return from this parallel imaginary universe subtly altered, sometimes forever. It’s from these experiences, and the re-enfranchisement of our imaginations, that different futures can emerge. 2

See http://dev.juliesbicycle.com/work/cop21/cop21-letter

Finding Stories that can Be Acted

✳✳✳ In my book Playing for Time (Neal 2015) I look to reclaim a traditional role for artists in the community as truth-tellers and agents of change. I build upon my own experience over 35 years in the ‘participatory arts’ – where boundaries blur between maker and spectator, and works are co-created by groups of people, sometimes (not always) people who have never previously engaged with or identified themselves as artists. I’m a theatre maker: along with Rose Fenton, I ran the London International Festival of Theatre for 25 years. It taught me a great deal about people, place, story and social change. Building auditoriums out into the River Thames and lighting giant flames from Bankside Power Station, we made theatre happen in unusual places. I learnt that the laws of possibility can be risked and gambled upon. The emergent ‘transitional arts practice’ explored in Playing for Time will be familiar to anyone rooted in traditions of ‘relational’, ‘socially and ecologically engaged’ art or Joseph Beuys’ ‘social sculpture’.3 Aesthetic vision and social engagement are equally important, and often what is created between people is the art. Worlds emerge not from a single author, but from the breadth and depth of many people’s perspectives and experiences. The wider and deeper the engagement, the more validating and transformative the work proves to be. Transitional arts practice aims to establish a realistic basis for collective action on which to build compelling narratives of a more sustainable future and proposes how ‘macro’ challenges such as energy, finance, food, community resilience, activism, climate change, kindness and wildness are transformed creatively by a daily ‘micro’ personal practice. Artists use the word ‘practice’ to describe what they do and how they do it, but anyone can use it to describe a daily life that combines creativity and intentional change. A practice embodies an attitude towards the future and embraces the ‘cognitive dissonance’ of living in two realities at once: the way the world is and the way we want it to be. A creative role is to reimagine and reconfigure the systems of the current stories we live by breaking through their blind spots to transform culture, attitudes and behaviours. In Playing for Time I set out ten ‘Transitional Arts Practice Principles’ that map the capabilities and skills of transitional arts practice. Some 3

See e.g. the Social Sculpture Research Unit: www.social-sculpture.org

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appear so obvious as not to warrant special mention, but in the explicit context of planetary challenges, they have the potential to create a narrative  of change, building community from as many people’s stories as possible and creating momentum for rethinking the future. In combination they draw, hold and conjure energy and life for a new narrative: 1. Intention: the intention is to create conditions for change. Open-ended, with no precise plan, this is a felt sense that pulls us forward, requiring us to act. Maintaining the artist’s instinct to come at things sideways and risk the unknown, engaging in intent gives life to the choices we make to bring about change. 2. Ignition: like a call and response, this is where the practice begins, turning an idea into something that exists in the real world. Ignition catalyses energy in others and comes back, enriched. When we commit to action, the universe comes to meet us in unforeseen and providential ways. 3. Frame: a frame creates a boundary or structure within which the freedom to play exists. It shapes the aesthetics of a project with parameters for decisions and details and is a filter to direct attention at something new, or something familiar in an unfamiliar way. A frame creates a context or narrative for people to explore. 4. Work with community: a practice of community fosters the selfawareness, empathy, vulnerability and realism to help us evolve. We must relate to each other for our survival, but we’re not yet community creatures. Communities can be accountable to people and place over the long term, building new shared knowledge. Each project becomes a rehearsal for the next, and people can embark on even greater experimentation. The practice brings people that are not like-minded together with different backgrounds and experiences who wouldn’t normally meet to create communities that didn’t previously exist and newly connect communities that do. Narratives can emerge that transcend people’s individual world views. In this context people behave differently; they see themselves as integrated and part of a larger, celebratory whole.

Finding Stories that can Be Acted

5. Facilitate: with a project underway, there are obstacles to overcome. Facil means easy, and facilitation means getting things to flow and making it all look effortless. Some aspects of facilitation can be predicted and organised but much needs improvising and intuiting with a willingness to respond to what’s needed, often without prior specialised knowledge. Facilitation often involves crossing boundaries between disciplines and sectors; building networks in local places; engaging people in power; negotiating with institutions; opening doors and roads; making celebratory spaces; and setting partnerships up to enable work to happen. 6. Hold space: at best an invisible art, holding space focuses the attitude and energies of a group. Holding space creates boundaries within which people feel safe to participate creatively so that new possibilities emerge. No one feels judged and everyone can contribute equally to what’s happening. Transitional arts practice holds collective space for creating a new narrative of change. 7. Connect: the practice creates a story of interconnection which counters a sense of isolation and separation people feel in a society of pathological individualism. Connecting makes space for coherent and holistic narratives of where we are now: connecting the narrative of Earth to a new narrative of community and positive change. People act differently when they feel this sense of interconnection. Serendipities spring from such connections between ourselves, the non-human world, the cycles of the seasons, the visible and the invisible, the just and the unjust and between the past, present and future. 8. Work from commonality: this requires paying attention to what people have in common: their humanity and common values. In a culture of separation, looking at what we hold in common breathes new possibilities into a public realm depleted of empathy by a culture of commodification and adversarial debate. Empathy lies at the heart of working with commonality and opens people up to a breadth and depth of human experience. Empathy is key to how people change: it creates liminal space in which people see and feel the world through new eyes. Making space for emotional and intimate narratives in this way connects people. This shared

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space of imagination is a new commons seeding the chances of acting together to build relationships of trust and the creation of a communal or social brain. 9. Collaborate: collaboration is a transformative, complex human process and requires surrender of some control, but not of rigour and care. The word includes laborare, which means work, often challenging work. It needs humour, open-heartedness and negotiation, all of which are part of its creative dynamic. It requires an active openness to working with others to allow creative journeys to be co-created, rather than shaped by a single author with a predetermined vision, and can involve staying with some difficulty and discomfort. 10. Change: people’s perspectives and sense of capabilities can change. The story of change happens on many levels at once: within our lives; within other people’s lives; within society and within the world. These stories build into a larger narrative of change. (Neal 2015, pp.81–92) A dramaturgy of action can be created in which everyone finds a part to play. The conditions in which change happens can be nurtured: the intention with which the practice began. All are aligned to deeply held values and accountabilities. This is art emerging chameleon-like in the spaces in between people and places, joining dots between key drivers of change in energy, finance, climate change, food and community resilience. Paying attention, disrupting, growing food, planting trees, making theatre, creating ceremony, digging clay, walking, building cairns – these are creative skills for building connection between ourselves, our communities and the natural world. Anne-Marie Culhane’s ‘Fruit Routes’ plants edible fruit and nut trees across Exeter University campus to connect ecology, art and the sustainable management of land. Deirdre Nelson’s ‘Bird Yarns’ draws attention to the plight of Arctic Terns whose long-distance migrations have been disrupted by climate change. ‘Human Cost’ marks the anniversary of the BP Deep Water Horizon explosion, launching an ambitious (and increasingly successful) campaign to end fossil fuel sponsorship

Finding Stories that can Be Acted

of the  arts.4 Norway’s Eva Bakkeslett works with micro-organisms to celebrate culture’s resilience – microbial and social – when fermented, exchanged and shared. Amy Shelton honours honey bees, tracking nectar and pollen-bearing plants, to map a bee year chronologically into an exquisite installation, ‘Florilegium’ (Neal 2015, passim). These practices set a new era for the arts. Although found in theatres, galleries and museums, such art is likely to be found away from the conventional places of art: in apiaries, playgrounds, hospitals and community gardens, and on bandstands, shorelines and mountain tops. Emerging in the spaces in between people and places: creating everyday parts for people to play. No one person’s practice is reproducible, but there are invitations here to have a go – and see what happens: to be one of the seeds that could flower and bear fruit. Few fall into the conventional, silo-ed categories of ‘dance’, ‘music’ or ‘visual arts’ – or art that can be purchased, coveted or consumed. ✳✳✳ We are what we imagine. Our very existence consists in our imagination of ourselves. The greatest tragedy that can befall us is to go unimagined. (Scott Momaday 1979, p.167)

The great cultural theorist Stuart Hall distinguished between globalisation from above and globalisation from below. Globalisation from above was imposed economically, militarily and culturally with an attendant ‘amnesia of Empire’.5 A homogenising force, it drives the world towards injustice and conflict, and the polarisation of wealth and resources. It moves freely and is without commitments and must be resisted. Globalisation from below celebrates diversity, is people-led and makes alliances across differences. It leads to interdependence, attachment, commitment. It needs visible space on the ground as a dynamic place for people to live together, belonging to societies that are inclusive, pluralistic, multicultural and fair. 4 5

This debate is growing stronger by the day with the announcement of the withdrawal of BP sponsorship of the Tate and from the Edinburgh Festival, whilst pressure is being put on Hartwig Fischer, the British Museum’s incoming Director, not to renew BP sponsorship. Interview with Pnina Werbner on the theme of Cosmopolitanism, 2006: www.sms.cam. ac.uk/media/1119965

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Drawing on patterns of belonging, empathy, kindness, community resilience, stewardship and reskilling, alternatives to ‘limitless’ growth, the arts can energise people’s capacities for action, activate their skills and transform their capabilities. Such practices must grow resilient in response to the radical changes required to live within ecological limits. Their celebratory social spaces have the power to build this resilience and reinvent us. They hold the things we care about; give us moments to begin again from; and extend our imagination, collective courage and knowledge we’re part of a larger whole. Public debate – or policy – has not yet fully recognised the role the arts and culture play in accelerating and nurturing change for a sustainable future. These practices themselves draw on the perspectives of everyone to create a future we want to live in: their metaphors, dreams, disruptions and symbolism provide that ‘other space’ from which a new exploration of the self and the world can emerge and an unshakeable belief that change can and does happen. In studies of systemic interconnectedness, the energy and resilience of a system are where connections and links are the strongest; participation, diversity, plurality and variability the greatest. The dualities of an adversarial culture fall away when contradiction and opposites are explored holistically: sorrow and gladness, isolation and connection, problems and solutions. Transitional arts practice simply manifests and gives expression to the participatory universe of which we’re a part. Opportunities to play for time and reweave our world are within our imaginative grasp. Finding a way to belong on Earth is the most radical thing any of us can do, individually and collectively. The dots are yet to be joined between research underpinning the methodologies of transitional and participatory arts practices explored in Playing for Time and the great reimagining of a liveable world. The seeds of the case lie in what’s already known about how the real is explored through the imaginary: through story, memory dreams and play. Elliot Eisner (2014: cognitive processes of art making, critical for all walks of life); Jerome Bruner (2002: how we use stories to make sense of our lives); and Donald Winnicott (1971/1982: transitional objects and phenomena at the heart of culture and the arts) provide some beginnings: the use of metaphor and symbolism provide the ‘other’ space for exploration of oneself and the world. There are many blueprints, such as the Centre for Alternative Technology’s Global Scenarios: Who’s Getting Ready for Zero? (2015)

Finding Stories that can Be Acted

and Making It Happen (2016), that demonstrate how societies across the globe can and are transitioning to low-carbon futures.6 There’s no collective map yet though of how these blueprints are invented socially, or how a cultural commons is created for the future we want and can find our place in. However, growing numbers of people are ‘waking up together’ to ask questions, getting in touch with their fears for the planet and yearning for a more connected, healthier, open-hearted way of living. With Europe and world nations sticking to the Paris ‘irreversible’ climate agreement; widespread civil actions against a Trump administration; London being declared the world’s first National Park City championing the need for 100 per cent of children to have abundant access to the natural world; an All Party Parliamentary Group Inquiry linking Arts and Health;7 and a UK ‘Season for Change’ coming up in 2018 – there is fun to be had collectively and an expectation of change in the air for a new social contract based on care and social justice. Systemic mechanisms for these will take time, but if we recognise we are all players in action, together, we know the part we each can play. Arts organisations such as the Devon-based Encounters, at the learning edge of the artist’s role today, seek to ‘create the conditions for a creative, caring, connected world in which all can learn to flourish living together within the Earth’s ecological limits’.8 Their work seeks to create connection between ourselves, others and the natural world where ‘the beauty, wonder and dynamics of that world are better felt and understood as a complex ecosystem to inspire awe, learn from and belong to’.9 As one of these artists, I play a role exploring a collective culture and creative commons of resilience and restoration. Art in the service of life may play a major role in ushering in what Albrecht (2015) conceptualises as the Symbiocene, the geological age to follow the Anthropocene, as fast as possible – an age of companionship with Earth, affirming the interconnectedness of life and all living things (Scofield and Margulis 2012) – an age for the making and sustaining of creative states.

6 7 8 9

See the Centre for Alternative Technology at www.cat.org.uk See www.artshealthandwellbeing.org.uk/appg-inquiry For Encounters’ mission statement, see www.encounters-arts.org.uk For Encounters’ Story of Change see www.encounters-arts.org.uk

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REFERENCES Albrecht, G. (2015) ‘Exiting the Anthropocene and entering the Symbiocene.’ Accessed on 29/11/2017 at https://glennaalbrecht.wordpress.com/2015/12/17/exiting-theanthropocene-and-entering-the-symbiocene-via-sumbiocracy-symbiomimicryand-sumbiophilia Allen, P., Hinshelwood, E., Smith, F., Thomas, R. and Woods, S. (2014) Culture Shift: How Artists are Responding to Sustainability in Wales. Cardiff: Arts Council of Wales. Accessed on 2/1/2017 at www.arts.wales/arts-in-wales/sustainabilityculture-shift Bloom, B. (2015) Petro-Subjectivity: De-Industrializing Our Sense of Self. Ft Wayne, IN: Breakdown Press. Bruner, J. (2002) Making Stories: Law, Literature, Life. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Carbon Brief (2017) ‘Election 2017: what the manifestos say on energy and climate change.’ Accessed on 29/11/2017 at www.carbonbrief.org/election-2017-whatminfestos-say-energy-climate-change Crutzen, P. and Stoermer, E. (2000) ‘The “Anthropocene”.’ Global Change Newsletter 41, 17–18. Eisner, E. (2014) The Arts and the Creation of Mind. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Gablik, S. (1994) The Reenchantment of Art. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd. (Original work published in 1991.) Hinshelwood, E. (n.d.) ‘A Moment of Your Time – a verbatim poem.’ Accessed on 29/11/2017 at http://emily-hinshelwood.co.uk/a-moment-of-your-time-averbatim-poem Macy, J. and Brown, M. (2014) Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work that Reconnects. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers. Marshall, G. (2014) Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains are Wired to Ignore Climate Change. New York: Bloomsbury. Neal, L. (2015) Playing for Time. London: Oberon Books. Scofield, B. and Margulis, L. (2012) ‘Psychological Discontent: Self and Science on Our Symbiotic Planet.’ In P.H. Kahn and P.H. Hasbach (eds) Ecopsychology: Science, Totems and the Technological Species. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Scott Momaday, N. (1979) ‘The Man Made of Words.’ In G. Hobson (ed.) The Remembered Earth: An Anthology of Contemporary Native American Literature. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Shaw, M. (2012) Martin Shaw interviewed by Rob Hopkins on Transition Culture, 17 September 2012. Accessed on 29/11/2017 at http://transitionculture. org/2012/09/17/an-interview-with-dr-martin-shaw-a-lot-of-opportunity-isgoing-to-arrive-in-the-next-20-years-disguised-as-loss Snyder, G. (1974) Turtle Island. New York: New Directions. Winnicott, D. (1982) Playing and Reality. London: Routledge. (Original work published in 1971.)

List of Contributors John Adlam is Consultant Adult Forensic Psychotherapist at River House MSU, Bethlem Hospital, where he has particular responsibility for Reflective Practice Groups across the forensic pathway. He is also Principal Adult Psychotherapist and lead for inpatient psychological therapies with the SW London and St George’s Adult Eating Disorders Service. He was formerly Principal Adult Psychotherapist with the Henderson Hospital Democratic Therapeutic Community Outreach Service and Vice-President of the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy. He is a founding member of the Association for Psychosocial Studies and an independent researcher who has published widely on the psychosocial dynamics of homelessness, dangerousness, disorder and social exclusion; on the phenomenology of eating distress and the psychodynamics of force-feeding; and on working in and with traumatised teams in traumatised organisations. He is co-editor of The Therapeutic Milieu Under Fire: Security and Insecurity in Forensic Mental Health and Forensic Music Therapy (both Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2012). Hayley Berman is an art psychotherapist, artist and social entrepreneur. Her thinking is informed by psychoanalytic theory as applied to practice. Hayley’s writing, image making and practice reflect an embodied manifestation of her approach. Essential aspects of her work include the facilitation and replication of safe spaces; the presence of an ethical empathic other; art materials within a holding space – all within an applied psychoanalytic frame. This work takes place in private practice with individuals – curious about their internal worlds – and in large groups as a process of creatively deepening internal and social group dynamics. This group work has been implemented within research, training, organisational, governmental and non-profit organisational contexts. Hayley started the non-profit organisation Lefika la Phodiso in Johannesburg, South Africa. She remains an active Board member. Currently her role is Programme Leader for the MA in Art Therapy at Hertfordshire University.

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Gardnel Carter is Site Director of the East Baltimore Safe Streets project. Gardnel first joined the City Health Department’s Safe Streets initiative in 2007, the year after he had returned to East Baltimore from almost two decades in prison, during which time he embraced Islam and became a mediator of prison conflicts. Gardnel works with other ex-offenders and former gang members to mediate disputes with a high risk of continuing violence in East Baltimore neighbourhoods. Gina Donoso is a clinical psychologist; Ph.D. Researcher, Department of Psychoanalysis and Clinical Consulting, Ghent University (Belgium); Consultant for the International Criminal Court (ICC), UN-Women and Justice Rapid Response (JRR); and Former Regional Host for Latin America and the Caribbean of the Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Network. Her research and professional experience lie in the fields of psychosocial recovery after traumatic events and reparations. She has 14 years of international experience (Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Argentina, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Jordan, Iraq and Thailand, among others) working on programmes of transitional justice and psychosocial support processes for victims and communities involved in political violence. Efrat Even-tzur is a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Psychological Sciences in Tel Aviv University. She is also a clinical psychologist and a fellow of the Minerva Humanities Center at Tel Aviv University. Her research explores the meeting points between the psychoanalytical, the political and the ethical. Her doctoral work deals with psychoanalytic perspectives on perpetrators of socially accepted violence. She has published in journals such as The Psychoanalytic Review, The International Journal of Law and Psychiatry and The International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies. Klaus Hoffmann is a psychiatrist and an individual and group analyst. He studied medicine at Ulm University and in the 1980s worked for three years as general practitioner in Botswana. After graduation in the specialties of psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine in Reichenau Mental Hospital in Southern Germany, he has been working since 1997 as Medical Director of the forensic hospital in Reichenau. Since 2002 he has been the head of the Institute of Psychoanalysis Zürich-Kreuzlingen (Switzerland), a member institute of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS). Graduated as a group analyst, he has been a leading member of the Gruppenanalytisches Seminar (GRAS) in Bonn, Germany, since 2009. He is a lecturer in the psychology department of Konstanz University and is Regional Editor of the International Forum of Psychoanalysis for Central Europe. His publications deal

List of Contributors

mainly with psychoanalytic approaches with severely disturbed patients, with the history of psychoanalysis and with transcultural psychiatry. David W. Jones is currently Senior Lecturer in Psychology at The Open University, UK, having previously been Head of Psychosocial Studies at the University of East London for some years. He has a long-standing interest in the development of psychosocial thinking for the insight it gives to understanding the relationship of the individual to the wider social group. He is joint Editor of the Journal of Psychosocial Studies, and is founding member and Treasurer of the Association for Psychosocial Studies. His research has focused on issues of mental health and in particular the relationship between mental health and criminality. He has published Understanding Criminal Behaviour: Psychosocial Approaches to Criminality (Routledge, 2008). Subsequent interest in the diagnosis of personality disorder, as it is used in forensic settings, led to the publication of Disordered Personalities and Crime: An Historical Analysis of Moral Insanity (Routledge, 2016). Ismail Karolia has a background as a community development practitioner in both the local government and voluntary sectors. He currently teaches at the University of Central Lancashire, with a focus on community development practice and strengths-based approaches. He is a joint module leader, with Julian Manley, on the module ‘Social Action and Social Change’ and leads on practice-focused modules on the Community and Social Care degree programme. Ismail’s research interests include community development, strengths-based approaches, the voluntary sector and psychosocial constructs of identity. Matt Killingsworth is Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Head of Politics and International Relations at the University of Tasmania. He is the author of Civil Society in Communist Eastern Europe: Opposition and Dissent in Totalitarian Regimes (ECPR Press, 2012) and the co-editor of Violence and the State (Manchester University Press, 2015). He has published book chapters and journal articles on opposition and dissent in Communist Eastern Europe, justice in post-Communist Eastern Europe, the changing nature of war and the laws of war. In 2013, he was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict, and in 2014 he was the recipient of a US Department of State ‘Study of U.S. Institutes for Scholars’ grant. His current research focuses on the evolution of the modern laws of war. He is the Chair of the Tasmanian Red Cross International Humanitarian Law Committee and he is a regular contributor to local and national media.

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Tilman Kluttig is Senior Clinical Psychologist in the Clinic for Forensic Psychotherapy and Psychiatry in the Reichenau Centre for Psychiatry, Germany. He trained in psychodrama, systemic therapy, cognitive-behavioural therapy and psychoanalytic psychotherapy for psychosis. After more than 30 years in clinical psychotherapy he is now part of the Reichenau research group in forensic psychotherapy and psychiatry and also of the Reichenau forensic outpatient services. He is an external supervisor for forensic and addiction services in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. He is a forensic expert in court and the prison and probational services in Germany. He has published on art therapy and theatre in forensic psychotherapy, on the forensic psychiatric system in Germany, on addiction and psychosis, on the psychotherapy of psychosis and on group psychotherapy in the forensic system. He has been for many years a Board member of the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy and was formerly its President. Thilo Kroll is Professor of Health Systems Management in the School of Nursing, Midwifery & Health Systems and the UCD Geary Institute for Public Policy at University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland. He has a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Bremen, Germany, and he has conducted interdisciplinary health- and disability-related research over the past 25 years in Germany, Scandinavia, the US, the UK and Ireland. This work is underpinned by a human rights-based ethos and is focused on understanding the social dimensions and system-immanent factors that compromise access to health services and social participation of people with disabilities. His work has included studies on gun violence and rehabilitation, homelessness and health, sensory disabilities and ageing, health promotion and disability, and inclusive and participatory research methods. Bandy X. Lee is on the faculty of the Law and Psychiatry Division of Yale School of Medicine. For 17 years, she served as Director of Research for the Center for the Study of Violence (Harvard, U. Penn., N.Y.U. and Yale). She co-founded Yale’s Violence and Health Study Group and leads an academic collaborators group for the WHO Violence Prevention Alliance (VPA). In addition to her research in Tanzania as a fellow of the US National Institute of Mental Health, she has helped to set up violence prevention programmes internationally, as well as to reform New York City’s Rikers Island. She teaches students representing asylum seekers and studying to be public defenders at Yale Law School, as well as a Global Health Studies course of her design, ‘Violence: Causes and Cures’. She has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and chapters, edited 11 academic books and authored the textbook Violence (Wiley-Blackwell, 2019). At the time of this publication, she has just released a compendium of

List of Contributors

mental health expertise for the public in The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump (Macmillan, 2017). Grace Lee, Ed.D., directs the Arts for Social Change Research Group for the Education Studies Program at Yale University, exploring the role of creative exchange across age groups for violence prevention and peace promotion. She is also a psychotherapist, former professor and author. Julian Manley researches and teaches at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan). He has a background in English literature, social dreaming and psychosocial studies. He is Module Leader for Psychosocial Studies at UCLan, while his research focuses on the development and use of affective, visual and imaginative methods, with special expertise in the area of social dreaming. He is Vice Chair, Trustee and Director of the academic research committee of the Gordon Lawrence Foundation for the Promotion of Social Dreaming. He is also a member of a number of professional bodies in the field of psychosocial studies, including the Association for Psychosocial Studies and the Climate Psychology Alliance (CPA), where he is a member of the Executive Committee and a founder member of CPA Scotland. He has published widely on the use of social dreaming and the visual matrix in a variety of contexts. Lucy Neal has a background in theatre and making things happen. Co-founder Director of the influential London International Festival of Theatre (1981– 2005), she has always been interested in how celebratory events act as a catalyst for change. Active in the global grassroots Transition movement since 2008, she is Creative Associate of Devon-based Encounters; Happiness Associate of the Happy Museum; and Trustee of the Aluna Foundation. She co-produced The Making of London as a National Park City in September 2016. She is author of Playing for Time: Making Art as if the World Mattered (Oberon Books, 2015), co-written with 60 artists and activists to map collaborative arts practices emerging in response to planetary challenges; The Great Imagining: How the Arts Spark Cultural Change in Zero Carbon Britain’s 2017 Making It Happen; and co-author of The Turning World: Stories from the London International Festival of Theatre (Gulbenkian, 2005). She was awarded an OBE for her services to drama in 2005. Barry Richards is Professor of Political Psychology in the Faculty of Media and Communication at Bournemouth University. Prior to moving to Bournemouth in 2001, he was Professor and Head of the Department of Human Relations at the University of East London. His books include Images of Freud: Cultural Responses to Psychoanalysis (Dent, 1989), Disciplines of Delight: The Psychoanalysis of

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Popular Culture (Free Association Books, 1994), The Dynamics of Advertising (with I. MacRury and J. Botterill, Harwood, 2000), Emotional Governance: Politics, Media and Terror (Palgrave, 2007) and What Holds Us Together: Popular Culture and Social Cohesion (Karnac, 2018). He is a founding coeditor of the Sage journal Media, War and Conflict, and of the interdisciplinary online journal Free Associations. His major interests are in the psychosocial bases of ideology, especially concerning extremism and nationalism, and more generally in the psychosocial dimensions of cultural change. Christopher Scanlon is an Independent Psycho-socialist Consultant and Researcher, Training Analyst at the Institute of Group Analysis (London), Professional Associate at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR), Founder Member of the Association for Psychosocial Studies (APS) and Visiting Professor of Psychosocial Studies. He was previously a senior psychiatric nurse, then Consultant Adult Psychotherapist and Lead for Training and Consultation at Henderson Hospital’s Democratic Therapeutic Community. He then worked as Consultant Adult Psychotherapist and Lead for the Reflective Practice Team Development (RPTD) project at Medium Secure Forensic Services, in South London; and Consultant Psychotherapist in Forensic Psychiatry at a specialist MSU for personality disordered violent offenders in East London. He has published widely on psychosocial processes of traumatisation and acted as expert professional adviser to the Department of Health, Ministry of Justice, Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) and numerous non-statutory organisations working in the field. Aileen Schloerb is the Clinical Consultant and a therapist with the City Project and with the Center for Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. She completed academic degrees in Modern Letters at the University of Chicago and University of Paris VII and Graduate Fellowships at Northwestern University and the University of Michigan in the fields of Communication Sciences and Disorders and Education. She has received psychoanalytic training from the Freudian School of Quebec and currently serves on the Board of the Chicago Psychoanalytic Circle. Her work has aimed to bring psychoanalytic principles to bear on the experience of trauma and violence in marginalised communities in the US as well as with non-governmental humanitarian organisations in France and the Middle East. Annie Stopford is co-founder and director of BlueSpark Collaborative: A Film and Research Company, based in New Orleans. She is also a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in part-time private practice, adjunct research fellow at the Center for Multicultural and Global Mental Health, William James College

List of Contributors

(Boston), and a contributing editor to Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. Annie’s work on race, culture, social justice and trauma has been published in the disciplines of psychoanalysis, critical psychology, trauma studies, African studies and critical mixed race studies. Current film projects include ‘Slow Drag’, about criminal justice reform efforts in New Orleans, and ‘Bound by Blood’, about the 1919 massacre of black sharecroppers near Elaine, Arkansas. Glorieuse Uwizeye is a Registered Mental Health Nurse. She is currently studying for her Ph.D. while working as Teaching Assistant at the College of Nursing, University of Chicago, Illinois. Her research interest is in the area of sexual violence in the context of genocide. She has also done studies on HIV/ AIDS, human resources for health and organisational partnership. She has extensive experience in management of health programmes at the community, central government and international organisation levels. Estela Welldon is a psychoanalytical psychotherapist who worked for three decades at the Tavistock and Portman Clinics. She is founder of the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy and its Honorary President for life; a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists; a Senior Member of the British Association for Psychotherapy; and an Honorary Member of the Institute of Group Analysis and of the Society of Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists, Tavistock Clinic. She has written extensively about group analytical psychotherapy as the essential tool in forensic psychotherapy. Her book Mother, Madonna, Whore: The Idealization and Denigration of Motherhood (Free Association Books 1988) quashed the myth that ‘perversion’ was largely a male preserve and opened up a whole new field of therapeutic enquiry. In 1997 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Science by Oxford Brookes University for her contributions to the field of forensic psychotherapy; in 2014, she was invited to become an Honorary Member of the American Psychoanalytic Association for her work in helping to understand women who harm children. John L. Young is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Yale working currently with the Department’s Law and Psychiatry Division. He was an attending psychiatrist with the Whiting Forensic Division of the Connecticut Valley Hospital (CVH) in Middletown for 21 years. He chaired the hospital’s pharmacology, education and research committees. He also supervised forensic fellows in Yale’s programme. Before taking the CVH post, he was for six years Director of the Hill Mental Health Clinic in a ghetto neighbourhood. He directed the transformation of the facility into a day hospital. He sits on five ethics committees. He has over 50 peer-reviewed papers to his credit, along with editorials, commentaries, case studies, chapters and book reviews. Also

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a Catholic priest, he is interested in relating religion to psychiatry, science and law, as well as assessment and treatment for forensic patients, support for staff members, ethics, and cultural and international concerns.

Subject Index Africa and International Criminal Court (ICC) 244–6 see also South Africa agents of change 257 agents of law 135–6, 138, 139–41 Alfaro Vive Carajo (AVC), Ecuador 91 Algerian immigrants, France 60–4, 67–8, 153, 154–6, 157–8 ambivalence: Israeli soldiers 139–40, 141–2 Anthropocene 20, 251–2 and Symbiocene 263 Baltimore, US contemporary inequalities 76–7 death of Freddie Gray 71–2, 77–8, 80, 82–3 East Baltimore Safe Streets (Gardnel Carter) 72, 73, 74, 78–80 interdisciplinary framework 72 multigenerational trauma 80–1 police violence 71–2, 77–8 residential segregation 75–6, 77–82 ‘social’ in psychosocial studies 72–3 ‘behavioural re-enactments’ 81 bio-psycho-socialenvironmental causes of violence 34 Breivik, Anders 184, 194 British Muslims 162–4 and Islamic State (IS) 161–2

researcher position 173–4 social dreaming 164–5 discussion and analysis 171–3 family and role of women 169 persecution and fear of disaster and death 168 ‘real identities’ 166 sense of ‘home’ 169 sense of power 167–8 women and religious identity 170–1 Buddhism 40 capitalism 191, 192, 194 caring 39–40 Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack 153–6, 157–8 childhood sexual abuse 50, 52–3 children born of rape 123–4 rape of 125–6 residential segregation 80–1 see also city project Christianity/JudaeoChristian tradition 40, 45, 181, 184, 228 creativity 213 and Islam 151, 152, 162, 167–8, 172, 199 city project 207–8 collaborative symbolization 215–17 creativity 212–13 ‘Growth Groups’ 210, 214–17 naming 214–15 psychoanalytical approach to violence 211–12 273

therapeutic rationale 208–10, 217 climate change and biosphere destruction 251–63 colonialism and decolonization Algeria 67–8, 154–5 Rwanda 118–19 communication, violence as 210, 211, 217 communities of learning 24 community arts and climate change activism 254–6, 257, 258, 260 see also South Africa: Community Art Counsellors community and dignity 197–8, 200 Condor Operation, South America 89 containment 230–1 pseudo-containment 200 creativity, etymology and concept of 212–13 culture police, Baltimore, US 71–2, 77–8 practices of self-harm 47 see also British Muslims Dabiq (Islamist magazine) 195–200 democracy 223, 228–9, 231 transition to 90–2 depression and capitalism 191 ‘inner emigration’ 59–60 melancholia 49, 51, 55 and narcissism 179, 180, 185 and rape 121, 123, 125–6

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dramaturgy, expanded concept of 255–6, 260 dreams lone terrorists 184, 187, 188, 189 social dreaming see British Muslim; South Africa: Community Art Counsellors drug dependency, compulsory treatment and psychotherapy 64–7 Ecuador (political trauma and social recognition) analysis 106–7 measures 105–6 methodology 102–7 participants (TCE) 102–5 results 107–15 access to justice 111–12 access to psychosocial interventions 112–14 geographical location 111 social memory 101 solidarity and political agency 114–15 state recognition 107–10 state violence and democratic transition 90–2 summary and conclusion 115–16 Truth Commission (TCE) 91, 92–3 environmentalism 251–64 fear 168, 199, 200, 230, 231 France Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack 153–6, 157–8 individual trauma and global politics (Mr A case study) 60–4, 67–8 free speech 153–6, 157–8 Germany drug dependency, compulsory treatment and psychotherapy (Mr A case study) 63–7 lone terrorists 177–89 global justice see International Criminal Court (ICC)

global media 152 global perspective on violence 19–21 global terrorism 193–4 globalisation and creativity 261–3 grievance, ideology of 194 ‘Growth Groups’ 210, 214–17 gun violence 80–1 healthcare disparities 33 ‘recovery’ and ‘unrecovery’ concepts 56 Rwanda 124–6 and self-harm 50–1 helplessness 109–10, 115 Hinduism 40 HIV/AIDS 119–20, 121 Holocaust 20–1, 173 homicides 35 Baltimore, US 80 humiliation 122, 198–9, 200 ‘identification with the aggressor’ 200 identity children born of rape, Rwanda 124 City Project children 213, 214–15 Westernisation 151–2 see also British Muslims incorruptible soldiers 139 individual trauma and global politics (Mr A case study) 59–68 inequality 35 South America 89 inner and outer worlds 210, 211–12, 213 inner-city violence see Baltimore, US; city project International Committee of the Red Cross 239 International Criminal Court (ICC) 237–8, 241–2, 246–7 and Africa 244–6 and US 242–4 International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) 240, 246–7 International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) 240, 246–7

International Law Committee (ILC) 240, 243 International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg 239 Iraq war 155–6 Islamic notion of justice 40 Islamism/jihadis and British Muslims 161–2 Charlie Hebdo attack 153–6, 157–8 and extreme right-wing terror 194 individual trauma and global politics (Mr A case study) 59–68 recruitment 62, 63, 195–200 see also terrorism Israeli soldiers 139–41 Judaism 40 justice Ecuador, access to 111–12 global see International Criminal Court (ICC) and religious traditions 39–40 Kouachi brothers (Charlie Hebdo attack) 153, 154–6, 157–8 Kretschmer, Tim (school shooting), Germany 180–3 lawfare strategies, South America 90 Lebanon 151 legitimacy see socially acceptable violence libertarianism 191 lone terrorists: psychoanalytical perspective 177–89 loneliness 109–10, 115 love 37–8, 40 and child sexual abuse 50 Lubnitz, Andreas (pilot), Germany 177–80, 182, 185, 187–9 ‘Mad Nazi’ thesis 133 Marxism 191, 192 neo-Marxism 193 meaning-making and imagemaking 232 media 152, 163–4

Subject Index

melancholia 49, 51, 55 memory 232 social 101 Middle East conflicts 151 modernity and identity 151–2 Montoneras Patria Libre, Ecuador 91 mother–child relationship children born of rape, Rwanda 123–4 social dreaming 229–30 motivations 133 naming 214–15 narcissism 179, 180, 185, 201 nation-states see International Criminal Court (ICC) national post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) 223 obedience experiments 133, 137 ‘objective violence’ 133 Other lack of 89, 111, 112, 115 Muslim 162, 163 perverse subjects 138, 141 Real and 88, 94, 95–6 and role of social recognition 96–7 State as 107–10, 115 overwork 47 peace, new definition of 36 personal and political 192–3 personality disorders 179, 185, 187–8, 189, 201 perversion, concept of 137–8, 139, 141, 142 political activism as public service 108–9 self-harm as 47 political trauma definition of 94 and social recognition 87–101 see also Ecuador politicisation of psychopathology 191–5 post-conflict transitions 87–8, 90 post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) 121–2, 123, 133 national 223

power asymmetry 35, 52–5, 111–12, 167–8 Prevent, UK 163, 201–2 Psychoanalytical Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma (PITT) 225, 232 psychosocial approaches Baltimore, US 72–3 Ecuador 112–14 terrorism 148–9, 185–7 psychotherapy 64–7 public sphere 147–8 free speech and Charlie Hebdo terrorists 153–6, 157–8 history and transformation of 149–51 Westernisation – modernity and identity 151–2 punishment of criminality 186–7 Islamist view 198–9, 200 racism see Baltimore, US; British Muslims; South Africa radical psychiatry/antipsychiatry 191, 192 rape see Rwanda: raped women and girls Real and symbolizing traumatic events 95–6 reciprocal violence 49, 51–2, 53 recognition, concept of 94–5 recovery notion of 95 and ‘unrecovery’ concepts 56 reflexive violence 49, 51, 53, 54–5 reparations 96, 107–9, 111, 114, 115 residential segregation, Baltimore, US 75–6, 77–82 resilience social dreaming 230–1, 232 spirituality and creativity 36–9 Rome Statute 240–4, 245, 246 Rwanda: International Criminal Tribunal (ICTR) 240, 246–7

Rwanda: raped women and girls 117–18 historical context 118–19 implications for future practice and care provision 124–6, 127–8 instruments of state violence 119–20 participant characteristics 120–1 physical consequences: chronic illness and disability 121 psychosocial consequences 121–4 children born of rape 123–4 humiliation 122 impact on intimate relationships 122–3 self-denial (askesis) 46, 47 self-harming domination and insurrection 52–5 forces and practices of 45–9 injury and insult 49–52 reciprocal dynamics 55–6 social dreaming see under British Muslims; South Africa: Community Arts Counsellors social memory 101 social recognition and political trauma 87–101 see also Ecuador socially acceptable violence 131–4 conscious and unconscious pleasures 137–8 definition of 131–2 Israeli soldiers 139–41 psychological blind spots 134–5 state violence 135–6 subjective states, motivations and reactions 132–3 summary and conclusion 141–2 societal out-groups/ingroups 50, 52, 55–6 society and psyche 191–2 solidarity and political agency 114–15

275

276

VIOLENT STATES AND CREATIVE STATES

South Africa and International Criminal Court (ICC) 246 Truth and Reconciliation Commission 137, 222 South Africa: Community Art Counsellors 221 context and background 222–3 social dreaming 223 analysis and interpretation 225–6 and art therapy 224–5 findings 226–31 new knowledge, new strength 231–2 summary and conclusion 233–4 South America 89–90, 96–7 see also Ecuador spirituality 36–9 state sovereignty see International Criminal Court (ICC) storytelling, collaborative 215–17 structural violence defining 31–4 perpetrators vs social and symbolic concepts 133 and structural solutions 35–6 war and nation-state 237–8, 247 subjective states of perpetrators 132–3 ‘sudden occupational death’ 47 superego, concept of 136

Symbiocene 263 symbolism/symbolization collaborative storytelling 215–17 and Other 88, 94, 97 and Real 95–6 structural violence 133 violence as 37, 38–9 terrorism criminology and psychosocial approach 148–9 historical perspectives and conceptual frames 180–3 ideology and states of mind 195–200 lone terrorists: psychoanalytical perspective 177–89 politicisation of psychopathology 191–5 psychiatric diagnoses and psychosocial perspective 185–7 unconscious counternarrative 201–2 see also Islamism/jihadis; public sphere thirst 226, 228–9 Tooting: low carbon future arts events 254–5 torture Algeria 63 and other human rights violations, Ecuador 91, 92–3, 103–5, 111–12

Transitional Arts Practice Principles 257–61 trauma definitions of 94 recognition and recovery 94–5 unconscious counter-narrative 201–2 grief 222–3 phantasy 196–7, 198, 199–200 pleasures 137–8 see also social dreaming under British Muslims; South Africa: Community Art Counsellors United States (US) and ICC 242–4 violence definition of 29–31 etymology of 209–10 violence reduction as activist project 24 ‘vulnerability’ to ’radicalization’ 201–2 Wagner, Ernst, Germany 183–4 war and nation state 237–8, 247 Westernisation 151–2 women British Muslim 169, 170–1 see also Rwanda: raped women and girls

Author Index Adlam, J. 47, 48, 49, 50, 56 Adshead, G. 46, 49, 50, 51, 52 Agger, I. 66 Ahram, A. 193 Ainley, K. 241 Albert, R.S. 212, 213 Albrecht, G. 263 Albright, L. 75 Alford, C.F. 137 Allen, C. 163 Allen, P. 255 Anderson, K. 251, 254 Ansari, H. 163 Apollon 210, 211 Arendt, H. 133 Armstrong, D. 238 Atran, S. 149 Bakker, E. 193 Baltimore Sun 74, 77 Bárcena, A. 89 BBC News 162 Beckham, J.C. 134 Beek, J. 132 Beitchman, J.H. 126 Ben-Ari, E. 139 Ben-Naftali, O. 140 Beradt, C. 173 Bergeron, D. 209 Berman, H. 221, 224 Berube, A. 71 Beyer, C. 32 Bhimji, F. 163 Binagwaho, A. 125 Bion, W.R. 52 Biswanger, L. 185 Black, J. 150 Bleich, E. 163 Bloom, B. 254 Bloom, S. 81 Blum-Kulka, S. 139

Bollas, C. 164, 224, 225 Bosco, D. 243 Bosmans, M. 119 Bottoms, A. 136 Boyle, D. 172 Bronfenbrenner, U. 31 Brooker, A. 56 Brooks, G. 207, 21 Brown, M. 253 Bruner, J. 262 Brysiewicz, P. 120, 122–3, 124, 126 Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) 177–9, 188 Burgmair, W. 184 Burke, J. 147 Bush, G.H.W. 240, 243 Buss, D.E. 118 Butchart, A. 34 Butler, J. 50, 53, 55 Calhoun, C. 150 Campbell, J. 244 Camus, A. 21 Cantin, L. 217 Carbon Brief 252 Cassirer, E. 37 Castel, R. 68 Centre for Alternative Technology 262–3 Chakraborti, N. 172 Chetty, R. 74 Cienfuegos, A. 66 Clare, I.C.H. 126 Clarke, S. 225 Coates, T.-N. 71 Cohler, B. 207 Corner, E. 193 Correa, C. 108

277

Cottee, S. 157 Cover, R. 49 Crutzen, P. 251 Davoine, F. 215 Day-Sclater, S. 192 Deleuze, G. 54 Denton, N. 73, 75 Derrida, J. 232 Díaz, M. 97 Diken, B. 119, 126 Dolto, F. 211, 214 Donoso, G. 88 Dostoevsky, F. 29, 39 Dugaw, D. 150 Dunn, T.N. 161 Eagle, G. 222 Edelman, L. 96 Eisner, E. 262 Elbert, T. 123 Elias, N. 136 Elizur, Y. 134, 139 Ellsberg, M. 122 ENEMDU 90 Engström, K. 34 Evans, D. 88 Evans, M. 155 Even-tzur, E. 140 Eytan, A. 121 Fabienne, P. 132, 135, 136 Fajnzylber, P. 35 Fanon, F. 132–3 Farin, M. 184 Farmer, P. 32 Farrell, T. 238 Feldman, M.E. 134 Figlio, K. 96 Fletcher, L. 88 Foster, D.A. 138

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Foucault, M. 50, 52, 54–5 Foulkes, S.H. 51–2, 55, 186, 187 Fox, C. 149 Frankl, V.E. 37 Freud, A. 200 Freud, S. 38, 49, 51, 55, 94, 136, 180–1, 183, 189, 210, 233 Friedman, M.J. 95 Fromm, E. 186–7 Gablik, S. 255 Gacaca National Service 119 Gadd, D. 148 Galeano, E. 116 Galtung, J. 32, 36 Garbarino, J. 81 Garieballa, S. 66 Garland, D. 148 Gaudillière, J.M. 215 Gazit, N. 139 Genet, J. 54 Gill, P. 193 Gilligan, J. 31, 35, 37, 39, 49, 82, 133, 148, 151 Gobodo-Madikizela, P. 223 Göpfert, M. 132 Gorman-Smith, D. 37 Gottmoeller, M. 122 Gottschalk, K. 222 Gregg, R.B. 36 Griesinger, W. 189 Gross, A.M. 140 Grossman, M. 243 Guardian 164, 244 Guattari, F. 54 Guillerot, J. 108 Gumede, W.M. 222 Gupta, A. 32 Gutiérrez, G. 32 Habermas, J. 147–8, 149–50 Hadar, U. 140 Hahn, H. 223 Hakim, N. 195 Hall, S. 261 Hamber, B. 94 Harrington, J. 240 Hartmann, W. 59 Hegel, G.W.F. 53, 54, 55, 94–5 Heise, L. 122 Hendren, N. 74 Henry, D.B. 37 Henttonen, M. 118 Herman, J. 49, 94, 95, 96, 103, 106

Hesse, H. 183 Hildyard, K.L. 31 Hinshelwood, E. 252–3 HM Government 163 Ho, K. 32 Hoffman, D. 137 Hoggett, P. 225 Høivik, T. 34 Hollway, W. 72 Holm-Hadulla, R.M. 185 Holmes, G. 150 Hook, D. 138 Howard, M. 237 Human Rights Watch 119, 120, 121, 123, 124, 245 IDEA-IIDH 90 Independent 161 Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) 162 International Centre for Transitional Justice 88 Islamic Supreme Council of America 162 James, C.B. 216 Jefferson, T. 148 Jensen, S.B. 66 Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute 74 Johnson, K. 121 Johnson, R. 39 Jones, D.W. 148, 151 Kaës, R. 95, 97 Kaminer, D. 222 Karim, A. 49 Katz, J. 148 Kernberg, O. 201 Kersten, M. 244–5 Khalaf, S. 151 Khan, F. 163 Killingsworth, M. 238, 242, 244, 245, 247 Kimmel, M.S. 149 Kirby, A.C. 134 Kleber, R.J. 124 Kluttig, T. 59, 66 Kordon, D. 96 Kostelny, K. 81 Kriegler, A. 222 Krug, E.G. 30 Kundani, A. 163 Lacan, J. 88, 94, 138, 141, 142 Laier, M. 186–7 Lambert, H. 238

Landauer, K. 185–6 Lankford, A. 193, 195 Laurent, E. 97 Lausten, C.B. 119, 126 Law, I. 163 Lawrence, B. 49 Lawrence, W.G. 164, 223, 224 Lederman, D. 35 Lee, B. 210 Lee, B.X. 31, 34, 39 Leighton, D.C. 33 Lemma, A. 47, 49 Letschert, R. 108 Levi, P. 20, 24, 69 Lichfield, J. 156 Liebes, T. 139 Lievrouw, A. 95 Lifton, R.J. 134 Lindy, J.D. 95 Linos, N. 118 Liogier, R. 153 Lira, E. 102 Lloyd, M. 193 Loayza, N. 35 Lovell, K. 56 Lykes, B. 88 Maalouf, A. 147–8, 151–2, 153, 157 McCauley, C. 195 McCormack, T. 239, 241 McDermott, T. 149 MacDorman, M.F. 33 McDougall, J. 38, 209, 212 McSherry, J.P. 89 Macy, J. 253 Magarrell, L. 108 Mahler, M. 149 Malta Today 155 Manley, J. 164, 224, 226 Maoz, I. 139 Margulis, L. 263 Marshall, G. 253 Martikainene, P.T. 35 Martín-Baró, I. 102 Maslow, A.H. 38 Mason, O. 193 Massey, D. 75 Massey, D.S. 73, 75, 82 Masten, A.S. 39 Mathelin, C. 211 Mathews, T.J. 33 Meloy, J.R. 137 Melville, H. 52, 53–4 Menninger, K. 11 Mersky, M. 88 Michaeli, K. 140

Author Index

Milde, M. 240 Milgram, S. 133, 137 Miller, L. 201 Monde Diplomatique 155 Monelli, C. 66 Mooij, A.W.M. 115 Moore, N. 208 Mooren, T.M. 124 Morgan, B. 33 Morning Edition 77–8 Moskalenko, S. 195 Motz, A. 45, 49, 51 Mukamana, D. 120, 122–3, 124, 126 Mukangendo, M.C. 124 Müller, M. 37 Mullins, C. 119 Murphy, G. 126 Murphy, L. 216 Murray, C. 153 Mutwarasibo, E. 119, 120 Mythen, G. 156, 163 Neal, L. 253, 254, 257, 260, 261 Neugebauer, R. 121 New York Times 77, 82, 154, 156, 161 Newman, K.S. 149 Nyirazinyoye, L. 126 O’Callaghan, A.C. 126 Odenwald, M. 59 Oliver, M.L. 75 O’Loughlin, M. 39, 211 Open Data 80 Osofsky, J.D. 81 Ouimet, M. 35 Oxfam 89 Pape, R.A. 148 Parson, E.R. 81 Parsons, M. 233 Peterman, A. 121 Phillips, J. 155 Pietila, A. 76 Political Scrapbook 164 Power, G. 76 PRIVA – Ecuador in International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims 93 Pynoos, R.S. 216 Qunta, C. 223 Ralph, J. 243–4 Raphael, B. 81

Recovery in The Bin 56 Reid, F. 137 Reid-Cunningham, A.R. 119 Richards, B. 193, 195 Richardson, R. 162 Rieder, H. 123 Roach, S. 241 Rogers, A.G. 39, 211 Ron, J. 139 Roseneil, S. 72 Rosenfeld, H. 201 Rothenberg, M.A. 138 Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych) 48 Rugh, J.S. 75 Runco, M.A. 212, 213 Rutembesa, F. 119 Rutter, M. 38 Sageman, M. 149 Said, E.W. 162 Santner, E.L. 136 Sardar, Z. 162–3 Sarker, J. 51 Sayyid, S. 163 Scanlon, C. 47, 48, 49, 50, 56 Schauer, M. 66 Schiff, B. 239, 240 Schloerb, A. 207 Schmidt, E. 207 Schubert, E.S. 150 Scofield, B. 263 Scott Momaday, N. 261 Sen, A. 34 Shaffer, A. 39 Shapiro, T.M. 75 Sharkey, P. 74 Sharlach, L. 119, 123 Shaw, M. 222, 253 Sian, K. 163 Silke, A. 148 Slade, A. 217 Smith, C. 238 Smith, C.M. 243 Smith, H.M. 243 Smith, R.S. 38 Snyder, G. 254 Sophocles 53 Sorbille, M. 96, 97 Soyinka, W. 193–4 Stavrakakis, Y. 97 Steiner, G. 21 Stoermer, E. 251 Stopford, A. 72–3 Stuckler, D. 35 Sun 161, 162, 163, 170 Sveaass, N. 102 Syed, S.H. 125

Tankebe, J. 136 Teixeira Zanin Martins, V. 90 Telegraph 155 Tolan, P.H. 37 Tucker, M.J. 33 Turner, K. 56 Turp, M. 46 Ulriksen de Viñar, M.U. 95 UN 36 UNFCC 252 UNFPA 33 UNICEF 33 UNSC 182, 240, 243, 245 United States Department of Justice 77 Valencia, A. 93 Valim, R. 90 Valkonen, T. 35 Van der Kolk, B.A. 81 van Dijk, J. 108 Van Ee, E. 124 Van San, M. 193 Van Son, B. 195 van Zuijdewijn, J. de R. 193 Vanheule, S. 95 Verbitsky, H. 90 Verhaeghe, P. 95, 96 Vernon, R. 240 Viñar, M. 96–7 Volkan, V. 60 Walklate, S. 156 Waller, J. 133 Walstrom, P. 126 Watkins, C. 209, 212 Watts, C. 118 Wax, E. 120, 123, 124 Weber, M. 69, 135–6 Weber, M.M. 184 Weil, S. 27, 45, 46, 47, 48, 54 Weimann, G. 147 Weinstein, H. 88 Weitsman, P.A. 124 Welldon, E.V. 15, 49 Weller, M. 237 Wemmers, J. 88 Werner, E. 38 Wexler, B.E. 31 Wilson, J. 95 Wilson, J.P. 81 Winnicott, D.W. 15, 256, 262 Winter, D.D.N. 33 Wolfe, D.A. 31 Wood, E.J. 117 World Bank 33, 35

279

280

VIOLENT STATES AND CREATIVE STATES

World Health Organization (WHO) 30, 33 Wright, Q. 36

Yakeley, J. 137 Yishay-Krien, N. 134, 139 Yordanova, K. 193 Young, J. 163 Young, J.L. 39

Zanin Martins, C. 90 Zempi, I. 172 Zimmerman, C. 118 Žižek, S. 49, 55, 133 Zraly, M. 126