We still wrestle with the political implications of human nature. History seems to be steered by shared psychological traits that are profoundly irrational and self destructive. The dark side of human nature often seems to be opposed to the idea of survival of our species, because the “survival of the fittest” is about the survival of the individual, not the species, so evolution has not stamped out antisocial behavior.
Anger is a natural emotion, so it’s not hard for people to hang onto anger if it is useful. But beyond a certain point, hanging onto anger is a choice. When anger is cultivated long enough, anger become hatred. Here we see the role of talk radio and Murdoch propaganda in turning the chronic anger into a permanent state of hatred.
This chronic anger creates supporting cognitive structures (how someone sees the world , and is able to blame everything on their enemies), which continuously produces anger and negative affect. These cognitive structures become a psychological pathology.
What they are saying here is that is someone wallows in crap like Rush Limbaugh every day, they are going to suffer actual emotional damage. These underlying hateful cognitive structures make hatred self sustaining.
But hatred is also fun for its own sake, like sex or drug. This “plesure in hatred” (Kernberg) has led some on the left to call right wing agitprop “anger porn,” which may be much more true than we think.
Hatred also leads to a life of laziness because the combination of hatred and paranoia lets someone blame their lack of progress on their imaginary enemies. Racism is a defense against shame and low self esteem.
Melanie Klein was a Freudian who pioneered many key concepts in psychology. In her work and the work of Otto Kernberg, we can see the roots of common political themes:
A “paranoid-schizoid” view of the entire world, much like the “The Paranoid Style In American Politics.”
The utter demonization of enemies but also family members and bystanders
The ability to hold absurd, contradictory, and patently false ideas (splitting)
Key to Klein’s theory is the use of anger and hatred as a defense. Hatred erases guilt, self awareness, and depression. (Notice how the biggest haters of the right always poll as “happy.”). Hatred creates a natural sense of superiority and moral self righteousness, a pseudomorality. Hatred is such a powerful denial mechanism that it can screen out reality itself, creating pseudostupidity about the world. Klein saw the mind as a far more savage place than her contemporaries, and her vision of extreme hatreds and violent impulses seems to be a very useful model of borderline and narcissistic traits.
Klein did her work 70 years ago, and some aspects are clearly outdated. Her idea of infants as having adult minds clearly conflicts with our understanding of brain development. More modern version of Klienian psychodynamics put key developmental events during the toddler years, not infancy. Modern theory steers away from stereotype Freudian themes of the breast and toilet training. The modern version of Kleinian theory no longer looks at infants as tiny adults with psychotic traits, it sees adults as monstrous infants liable to spin into psychotic states over mild frustrations.
The more modern Klienian view emphasizes attachment disorders where toddlers are neglected or otherwise kept stressed out by their caregivers, which results in a weak bond to the parent and a life-long sense of insecurity. We can see the attachment to early trauma in conservatives like Beck and Rove with their histories of abandonment and suicides. Klein would have predicted the “paranoid-schizoid” personality in Glenn Beck, and it certainly seems to describe him.
“Splitting” is an emotional defense which is hard to describe but easy to recognize if you’ve seen it. It is a primitive defense that avoids the effort of trying to resolve contradictory ideas or feelings by simply switching between extreme positions. Everything is clear cut right and wrong, good and evil, black and white, until it becomes convenient to believe exactly the opposite. These are people with rigid rules that are subject to change from day to day or moment to moment. Other people are likely to be demonized. This is not limited to people that we would consider mentally ill, but also applies to “normal” people when they are in a power struggle and they will tell any sort of lies to win by reverting an infantile or nearly psychotic state. Most people can relate to this from experiences with divorce, probate, or bad bosses. Often, their thoughts are attached to a specific emotional state – we usually think of people whose thoughts become irrational and paranoid when they are angry. But it also possible for someone to have patterns of cognition associated with other rigid emotional motifs, such as a person that can lapse into almost instantly into depression.
Splitting arises from the child’s biological drive to love their parent which is in conflict with the fear that they soon learn for their parent. Going back to Beck and various republican deviants who keep getting re-elected, their followers see them as the irresponsible parent, and no matter how creepy these public figures are, people still feel an overwhelming sense of familiarity from these conservatives.
The same people that are willing to let themselves be taken advantage of by these disorted parent figures are likely to channel their rage and hatred towards people that have never done them any harm. Even attempts to help them are likely to be experienced as abuse or a violent attack. This primitive devaluation and hatred of other people provides an enormous sense of self righteousness. Kleinian psychodynamics have been used by theologians to explain religious hatred, and a root cause of the various sins.
In the workplace, we can readily see Kleinian psychodynamics as some people struggle to recreate their dysfunctional childhood. These relationships are codependent. Let’s be clear on something – “codependency” is layman’s language for sadomasochistic. These are extensions of the Kleinian model that were developed after Klien’s death.
The boss that inflicts petty humiliations on the employees or creates needlessly stressful artificial deadlines is a sadist. The sadist may want to maintain a relationship with the hated object or they may wish to destroy them utterly. But we see a sick attachment to the hated employee, and the bad boss will often try to prevent the employee from getting another job and will give them bad references. The bad boss reacts to the departure of an employee like a bad parent who accuses the child of thinking they are “better” than the parent.
Here we see the other source of hatred – envy. Envy may be rooted in political propaganda, or personal relationships. When a neurotic person feels that another person has more than they do, envy results. The neurotic can envy another person’s possession, their family, their intelligence, their sense of humor – basically any quality. For this reason, an employee might be doomed for saying something wittier than the boss could have come up with, for being better at presentations, or knowing more than the boss about some topic. We can see this in toddlers when another child touches a toy that nobody was using. Until a child learns to share, it is enraged at the other child over a toy that nobody was using. In the same way, we can see adults that poisoned with envy over something they did not even want.
Envy is regarded as being synonymous with hatred. Because the person who harbors chronic anger probably has a much distorted sense of reality, their hatred is likely to be all out proportion to reality. Thinking of the example of the envious parent – this is a common scenario, but envy is such a powerful force that the parent is likely to abandon or physically abuse their child.
The henchman that joins the boss in spying on employees or creating rumors is their ally. The bad boss usually has helpers whose role is a mystery to other employees because everything they touch is a disaster. This helper is often the product of a horrible family background, and the helper is playing the role that they played in their home – emotional caretaker to an unreliable and often hostile parent. But this coworker is also going to feed the boss’ paranoia and envy. Again we come back to the role played by Glenn Beck.
This is not to say that everyone that got a raw deal in life will act this way, but many of them are driven to seek out positions of power over others. We certainly see politicians coming from terrible backgrounds, including Bill Clinton. The question is: can they wield power without developing an intense irrational hatred for people at every step of their journey? Is their political base driven by hatred and envy?