From Remorse to Relational Reparation: Mature Hope, Communication, and Community in our Responses to Social Conflict and to the Virus as a Persecuting Object
In this paper, based on two brief panel presentations [1], I will consider several neglected aspects of the collective or mass hysteria associated with the Covid Pandemic (Syndemic) (Mendenhall, 2017) in terms of my theory of Incohesion: Aggregation/Massification as a fourth basic assumption in the unconscious life of social systems, especially those in which trauma is prevalent (Hopper, In Press [a], 2003a, 2019). I will also consider some aspects of mature hope, communication, and community in our responses to those forms of social conflict that are associated with the syndemic.
I
According to the theory of Incohesion, failed dependency is the essence of trauma. Aggregation is a consequence of various kinds of social trauma. Massification is a defence against aggregation. Processes of fundamentalism and scapegoating are the twin pillars of massification. Intolerance and its vicissitudes can be understood in these terms (Hopper, In Press [b] and In Press [c]).
In the context of this theory, I would hypothesise that what Trump has called the “China Virus” is unconsciously experienced in terms of what Freud (1915) would call the “return of the repressed”, what Fairbairn (1943) would call “repressed objects”, but what Lacan would call the “return of the real” (Johnston, 2018) from a “negative social psychic retreat” (Mojovic, 2011) in the “East” into which and into where, in the form of “various people and groupings”, they have been scapegoated. Following the rupture and dissolution of the boundaries of their “desert”, these transgenerational scapegoats have returned to haunt those who they deem to have been responsible both for negative projections into them and into their ancestors, and for their subsequent exclusion from the group. This often takes place in terms of the dynamics of chosen trauma (Volkan, 2001). Scapegoating processes do not end with sacrifice and exclusion, but with the return of those who have, directly or indirectly through their ancestors, been sacrificed and excluded. Transgenerational scapegoats are determined to realise their rightful but righteous and revengeful demands for restitution and equity. These processes are amplified and magnified through projective and introjective identification, which can involve the enactment of narratives of trauma, and which are associated with malignant mirroring and malignant echoing. How these scapegoats are met by the Establishment is an important part of the process (Hopper, 2020a, 2021a and 2021b).
The Establishment struggles with, for example, BIPOC, “difficult” women, and rebellious young people, among other oppressed and excluded groupings. The current patterns of social conflict throughout the world are unconsciously associated with the viral syndemic and with our attempts to defend ourselves against it. This is a dynamic association, and not merely a statistical coincidence, which is not to suggest that the conflicts are caused by the syndemic, or vice-versa, but to suggest that they are unconsciously associated, as are our responses to them.
I have many clinical examples of these processes both in my long-term therapy groups and in my psychoanalytical and psychodynamic work:
- A group of adults, including psychotherapists, rejected a new member of the group who was a BIPOC woman from a country in the Middle East. It seemed to me that this rejection was based on prejudice concerning her social identity, which prevented attempts to work through various difficulties connected with her personal identity. In turn, she acted like a revengeful and self-righteous person, and was treated in an increasingly rejecting way, which she insisted was a matter of racial prejudice and xenophobia.
- A woman who is in full psychoanalysis has become obsessed with attempts to avoid immigrants and people of colour, Africans and West-Indians, and especially people from Asia. She has become not merely careful about contagion, but phobic. She regards immigrants as though they were viruses from the “Land of Nod”. Given the depth of her anxieties, it is likely that she experiences these intruders not only as “like” viruses and as carriers of viruses, but as “actual” viruses themselves. I am sure that it is not really necessary for me to spell out here that she feels that she was displaced in her parents’ affection by the birth of a younger brother, who she regarded as dirty and disruptive.
I have struggled with transferences to me and to the group as parents who have failed to provide the safety which patients assumed that psychotherapy would provide. Patients have expected that psychoanalytical psychotherapy would be a prophylactic against all traumas, including, it would seem, viral infections. Of course, I have also been obliged to analyse transferences to me as “Trump”, an arrogant fundamentalist who was unable to appreciate how scared people were about Covid and about social conflict. Leaving Trump to one side, however, it is important for us to appreciate the development of disappointment and disillusion with psychoanalytical therapies and therapists in the context of trauma during treatment. Like vaccination, our therapies are imperfect.
I have also struggled with my countertransference to some patients who have made me feel guilty for my clinical mistakes, and especially to those patients who are devoid of feelings of gratitude and are driven by their ruthless lack of concern for me. After all, when it comes to a viral syndemic, we are all in the same boat, even if not in the same class of seats. My feelings of helplessness have made it difficult to analyse their need to blame me for their magnified and amplified vulnerabilities.
The dynamics of Incohesion as a consequence of the trauma of failed dependency have also been evident in our professional organisations. Although patterns of conflict among various social categories of membership were becoming more pronounced even before the onset of the syndemic, a general sense of disappointment with authority structures and leadership seems to have erupted. It is reported that many organisations in our field have suffered from a decrease in the number of their members, and from the disaffected – if not disillusioned – withdrawal of many members of the older generations. Questions about equity, prejudice and discrimination have suffused matters of governance and the provision of professional services. The email Forums of these organisations have become characterised by aggression and vituperative arguments about what is called “power, position and privilege”. Restitution and protection are demanded.
There is a long history of association among social trauma, scapegoating, and the fear of persecuting objects, often involving poisoning, polluting, and the spread of diseases. For those who are helpless, poisoning is the most efficient form of social violence. It always involves the violation of boundaries in our internal and external worlds. It is often a woman’s weapon of choice (Navaro, 2007). Poison was employed in the slave rebellions in the American South and in the Caribbean. More recently we have learned how a band of survivors of Nazi death camps attempted to poison the water supply of a German town, and when this proved to be impossible, they succeeded in poisoning the bread supply. “The Merchant of Venice” (Shakespeare, 1596) was informed by stories of Jews who poisoned a well near Venice. Similarly, Indignation (Roth, 2008) was based on an epidemic of polio in the North-East of the United States, during which anti-Semitic sentiment and violence became rife, the battle between Italian Americans and Jews repeating the archetypical battles between Roman Soldiers and Jews.
Social trauma often tends to be experienced and discussed in terms of the contamination of the so-called “race”. The first responsibility of the Establishment is to protect the purity of it. This is virtually atavistic. The recent accusations in France by the leaders of various Right-Wing political parties that the Jews are responsible for the syndemic suggests that such fantastic conspiracy theories have hardly disappeared. To the contrary: they are virtually waiting to be applied. In Britain extremely Right-Wing Brexiteers have opined that the syndemic is a punishment organised by revengeful Remainers, who are assumed to be Jews and other “new” immigrants of colour. In fact, references to “race” and to “purity” almost always indicate that fantasies have prevailed over external realities.
In La Peste Camus (1947) was aware of what group analysts call processes of equivalence within the tripartite matrix of any social system, i.e. the foundation matrix of the contextual society, the dynamic matrix of a particular group within it, and the interpersonal matrices of the participants in it (Hopper, In Press [d]). In the novel, rats and fleas refer to Nazi collaborators and sympathisers, which was an ironic reference to the description of Jews by Nazis as “vermin”. They were also punishments from “Mother” Earth from where they came and to where they eventually returned, not to be entombed or encapsulated (Hopper, 1991) for ever, but in order to hibernate.
Such patterns of hibernation also apply to the so-called “China Virus” and the forms of social conflict associated with the rampant spread of it. We have interludes during which we must strive to minimise the likelihood that the virus will return yet again, and to minimise the virulence of the consequences of it. We also have opportunities to minimise the extent of social conflict and social violence that are likely to be associated with this.
II
It is essential for us to try to “keep hope alive”. This involves holding many projections from depressed and oppressed people and clients. In the context of the psychoanalytical study of aggression and violence, I associate myself with the views of Fairbairn (1944) and Winnicott (1956), who argued that what he called the “anti-social tendency” is “…characterized by an element in it which compelsthe environment to be important”. The anti-social tendency is based “…on a true deprivation…”, and on “a loss of something good”. The enactment of the anti-social tendency is really an attempt to gain restitution from the personal and the environmental mother. Winnicott argued that ultimately “…the anti-social tendency implies hope”, although he did not define what he meant by it.
I also appreciate the somewhat later work of Rycroft (1979) who noted that in English hope is usually defined in terms of “desirous expectation”. He argued that in the beginning of life, hope is directed towards the breast and its contents. As the poet said, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast”. Where there is life, there is hope, and when there is hope, there is life. However, Rycroft also suggested that as life unfolds and develops, hope as desirous expectation becomes more and more complex, and is directed towards a multitude of goals, including those which are based on the sublimation of desire for primary objects.
Coming from a background in sociology as well as psychoanalysis and group analysis, I (Hopper, 1981) have argued that from conception onwards desirous expectation is rooted in relationships that are embedded not only within the family, but also within economic, political and religious institutions. Moreover, there are many kinds of desirous expectation, for example, normative expectations, aspirational expectations, anticipatory expectations, and so on. Levels of normative expectation are associated with the formation and maintenance of ego-ideals and with convictions of entitlement, as well as with super-ego judgements. There are also many kinds of achievements and levels of them. However, variations in discrepancies between levels of achievement and levels of normative expectation with respect to objects that have been valued as goals are associated with variations in feelings of relative deprivation. Such discrepancies are also associated with feelings of shame and of guilt.
The dynamics of such discrepancies are several and various, as are the aetiologies of them. However, I will not be able to consider these processes here.
In order to cope with feelings of relative deprivation, people are likely to engage in various forms of instrumental adjustment or coping strategies (Freud, A. 1967). When people are blocked from full access to political institutions, and/or when such institutions are systemically biased against them, people are likely to engage in forms of instrumental adjustment such as “retreatism” and “ritualism”, or criminality and rebellion. From the point of view of the Establishment these forms of instrumental adjustments are “illegitimate” – if not illegal, and must be tightly regulated. However, from the point of view of people who feel themselves to be systemically blocked, excluded, and marginalized, illegitimate and/or illegal forms of instrumental adjustment are entirely necessary. Not only are they a way of re-establishing connections with a lost maternal object, and of continuing to live in a state of desirous expectation, they are also a way of restoring a sense of social justice and natural order. Another form of instrumental adjustment, which might be called “legitimate innovation”, involves attempts to change the situation that has given rise to the anxieties in question.
In the context of legitimate innovation as a form of instrumental adjustment, I (Hopper, 2003b, 2019) have defined mature “hope” as the ability and willingness to exercise the transcendent imagination concerning the sources of feelings of relative deprivation and to the patterns of anxiety associated with them. As Sartre suggested, hope is more of a verb than a noun. (The challenge is how to make the world a better place, while accepting the old adage: what can’t be cured, must be endured.) I have often argued that in this sense hope is a psychological achievement, a step in the process of personal maturation.
In order to exercise the transcendent imagination, it is necessary to move from a world characterised by wishes for retaliation, revenge, and restitution to a world characterised by wishes for reparation and restoration (Steiner, 1993). This requires authentic mourning and remorse (Cox, 1999). However, the work of grief (Samuel, 2018) can hardly be initiated – let alone completed – in isolation from others. Processes of forgiveness are paramount (Ofer, 2017). These processes apply to social groupings as well as to persons. [i]
This brave new world of remorse, restoration, and reparation is based on communication in its deepest relational sense. In resonance with the ideas of Winnicott (1956, 1963), Foulkes (Foulkes & Anthony, 1957) suggested that what the Establishment might regard as an antisocial act is often a way of trying to convey a crucial message: if the message is heard and acknowledged, it becomes a communication; but if the message is unheard and unacknowledged, it becomes an autistic symptom. Failed communication is a traumatic experience characterised by failed dependency, and social violence is a form of social autism. Social violence is a profound complaint that the message of despair has not been successfully conveyed.
I believe that Bion (1962) would have argued that extreme social violence involves a search for an external container who is strong enough to withstand the explosion of beta elements. Such explosions are of course destructive, but they are also an expression of the fear of psychic death, which is more or less synonymous with nameless dread, aphanisis, petrification, etc. (Hopper, 1991). However, as we have learned from the survivors of Nazi death camps: the fears associated with terrorism are at least no greater than those associated with psychic death (Hopper, 2020b).
As mediating and bridging people, our public tasks are intertwined with our clinical tasks. Our public tasks include attempting to communicate with those who feel themselves to be systemically unseen, unheard, and oppressed. In so far as the dispossessed and helpless lack voices of their own, it might also be necessary for us to speak for them (Scanlon & Adlam, 2022). Maturity is not synonymous with political acceptance and passivity. It is important to understand that envy is primarily an emergent defence against helplessness, for which we must all share responsibility (Hopper, 2003a). In other words, it is important to have a trauma theory of envy, not one based on the assumption of a so-called death instinct.
It must be acknowledged that in the management – if not the elimination – of social violence, the holding of hope, both our own and that of our most distressed patients, and engaging most fully and authentically in processes of communication, both in the public sphere and with our own patients, are highly unlikely to be sufficient. It is also necessary to respond to the material and social sources of the discontent from which social violence originates. I have little doubt that social violence is mainly a manifestation of the discontents of those who are systemically deprived – if not actually oppressed. As Blackwell (2012) notes, Sartre, in his Foreword to Fanon’s (1961) The Wretched of the Earth, argues that “…when the oppressed resort to violence, the initial violence is to be found in the system of oppression”. I would add that systemic oppression violates a sense of social justice and natural order, and is a continuous assault on personal integrity and self-respect. [ii]
One of the greatest problems in the study of social violence and social movements in general, is that very often, if not always, sudden and extreme improvements in levels of achievement lead to further and extreme discrepancies between levels of normative expectation and levels of achievement. This is true both for individuals, social groupings, and for societies as-wholes. Raising levels of achievement of people and social groupings who are at the lower ends of various hierarchies does not in and of itself bring about a sense of relative satisfaction!
It is not within my remit here to outline the practical steps that might be taken with respect to the modification of the material and political realities of systemic oppression. We need spaces for the acknowledgement and working through of “oppression trauma” (Stoute, 2021). It is important to continue and to develop our work with large groups. In recent years, this has involved the Reflective Citizens Movement (Mojovic, 2019). Although it may be too optimistic to assume that this will lead to what Pat de Maré, who was much influenced by the work of Fairbairn, called the “humanizing of society”, this Movement is consistent with the initial hopes and aspirations of the founding ancestors of our profession.
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Notes
[1] The first part of this paper was for a Greek Symposium on Relational Psychoanalysis and Group Dynamics entitled “Socially Unconscious Aspects of the Covid Pandemic: Changing and/or Maintaining the Frame of our Group Therapy Practice”, 2 October 2021. The second part was for The International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (IARPP) Symposium entitled “The Enemy Within and Without: Exclusion and Belongings in Intrapsychic, Interpersonal and Socio-cultural Experience”, 23-24 October 2021.
[i] Intrapsychic and interpsychic processes should not be confused with the enactments of them. Similarly, ideas from the study of individual persons should not be applied to the study of groups and other more complex social systems without respect for the fact that what might be true for persons and interpersonal relations is not necessarily true for group dynamics and intergroup relations, and vice-versa. If nothing else, extreme amplification and magnification must be taken into account. It is important for us to be open to ideas from the social sciences. The study of the “social unconscious” is very important (Hopper, 2003a; Hopper & Weinberg, 2011, 2016, 2017).
[ii] Of course, this does not in and of itself justify further social violence. In fact, it is understandable that in no society can its Establishment tolerate unauthorized violence, especially when it involves the destruction of citizens who are regarded as “innocent bystanders” of it. Although the political connotations of his argument remain exceedingly complex, many agree with Elias (1938) that the state monopoly of violence is an indication of the civilizing process.