Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Law Enforcement: Connecting the Psychoanalytical Dots

On January 15, 2010 law enforcement officers interviewed me because of concerns that were raised by my references on my blog, My Daily Struggles, to a state official who had taken action unfavorable to me several years ago. Law enforcement was concerned that I might harbor a grudge against this official and commit an act of violence against the official.

The law enforcement officers' concerns, put in psychoanalytical terms, seemed to be based on the following: The officers were concerned that the state official's action against me might have constituted a narcissistic injury for me; that the narcissistic injury was shame-endowed; and that I might use violence to defend against my unconscious feelings of shame.

It is believed, for example, that a husband may physically abuse his wife if the wife tells the husband that she plans to leave him. The husband may experience the wife's action as abandonment; the abandonment is a shame-endowed state for the husband; the husband may react violently to the wife in order to discharge, or defend against, his feelings of shame. (These dynamics have been used to explain O.J. Simpson's aggressive behaviors toward his now deceased wife, Nicole Brown Simpson.)

http://www.cgjungpage.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=624&Itemid=39

But what if I am not struggling with feelings of shame? What if I am struggling with unconscious guilt?

Suppose my affective states and behaviors are not the product of a lack of ego differentiation, a lack of object internalization, a lack of internalized antilibidinal forces, a lack of superego development, a lack of impulse control mechanisms.

Suppose, instead, that my affective states and behaviors are the product of the precise opposite: a very high level of ego differentiation; the internalization of punitive objects; the internalization of a powerful antilibidinal object; an internalized superego comprising an unmetabolized superego precursor and an unmetabolized ego ideal; the existence of a pathologically-highly developed impulse control mechanism.

What then? What complex of affects and behaviors would stem from guilt (the affect associated with pathologically highly-developed internalized structures) as opposed to shame (the affect associated with the lack of ego structuralization), where violence is called upon as a defense? What affects and behaviors will the guilt-prone individual call upon as a defense?

I am not a psychoanalyst or a forensic psychiatrist, so I have no answer. But these are interesting and important questions. It's interesting to note that terrorist groups have been compared to cults. In cults we find a group formation in which individual members look to the group-as-a-whole as a preautonomous superego. The group-as-a-whole creates the norms; adherence to those norms by group members insures the self-esteem of individual group members. In terrorist groups we may find an association between violent behaviors by group members and the lack of ego differentiation of individual group members, and group members' consequent need to preserve narcissistic integrity by membership in the group.

Speaking literally and metaphorically, I'm not a fan of team sports like football. I'm no O.J. Simpson.

By the way, I have no sympathy for cults or terrorist groups, or any groups for that matter!

http://backgrinfo.blogspot.com/2005/10/why-my-coworkers-despised-me.html

3 comments:

My Daily Struggles said...

I always had the theory that Akin Gump as a whole was a cult. The legal assistant group was definitely cult-like.

My Daily Struggles said...

Madness is rare in individuals -- but in groups, political parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.

Friedrich Nietzsche

My Daily Struggles said...

Dr. James Gilligan is on the faculty of New York University where he is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry in the School of Medicine, Adjunct Professor in the School of Law Professor, and Collegiate Professor in the School of Arts and Science. For the Department of Psychiatry he serves as a consultant and supervisor on the evaluation and treatment of the violent mentally ill.

For more than 30 years Dr. Gilligan served on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, where he directed the Institute of Law and Psychiatry and led a team of colleagues from Harvard teaching hospitals in providing mental health and violence prevention services to the Massachusetts prisons and prison mental hospital.