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Fascism and Democracy in the Human Mind
A Bridge between Mind and Society
By I. W. Charny
University of Nebraska Press
Copyright © 2006
University of Nebraska PressAll right reserved.
ISBN: 0-8032-1550-9
Introduction
A New Bridge between Mind and Society
An Introductory Description of Fascism and
Democracy in the Human Mind
Many years ago I decided in my role as a psychologist and psychotherapist
that I would try to contribute my understanding of how our human mind
works to the vital study of the Holocaust and genocide; that is, to see
what psychology can contribute to our understanding of how everyday,
ostensibly ordinary human beings turn into the rotten destroyers that
many of us become. Now, after many years also as a genocide scholar,
I am returning to my ongoing home field of psychology in the hope
of contributing new understanding about the workings of the human
mind based on what I have learned about our species from the study of
genocide.
The larger theoretical frame and goal of this work is to explore the
building of a new bridge in social science theory between concepts of
collective structure and functioning in society and a theoretical model
of the functioning of the individual mind.
Over the years I have come to the conclusion that our human mind,
brilliant as it is, is so poorly evolved - such an early "software" version
from the"manufacturer" - that it is basically organized around what I am
calling a software program of paradigms of fascist thinking. Or, continuing
in modern computer talk, that the "default" with which we go into the
world - until some of us learn better and upgrade our software - causes us
to think along the lines of a fascist like absolutism: certainty, suppression
of contrary information, and the exercise of violence toward those who
differ or disagree with us, and even toward those parts of our own selves
that do not conform to the rules we have made for ourselves.
In this book we are looking at two major ways of organizing our minds.
I call the one a paradigm of a fascist mind and the other a paradigm of
a democratic mind. Each of these ways of organizing our minds may be
said to contain a large number of software programs for different areas of
experience characterized by guiding principles we characterize as fascist
characteristics of mind versus democratic characteristics of mind.
What Does the Study of Genocide Teach Us about
Fascism and Democracy in the Human Mind?
I propose that the paradigms of FASCIST MIND and DEMOCRATIC MIND are
not only political constructions but that the same kinds of psychological
organizational structures that characterize fascism or totalitarianism in
society - which lead to grave suffering, a breakdown of a decent society,
and finally to widespread destruction of human life - are also at work in
the construction of psychological or mental and relationship disorders
of doing harm to oneself and disorders of doing harm to others. Here
too fascist-type thinking leads to grave suffering, breakdowns of the
normal organizational ego of individuals and their relationship systems,
and to a shutting off of the opportunities for life. Just as democratic
organization is the only hope-alternative to fascism in society, so too
the workings of "democracy in the mind" present the healthy alternative
for individuals managing their minds and their intimate relationships in
mentally healthy ways.
Fascist programs tell you what to do with certainty, without questioning
or alternative frames of reference; they punish you for not obeying;
they instill in you a sense of superiority toward all those you consider
inferior because they don't know or observe the one and only correct
way to do things. They open the door to violence and then to denials
of the very violence they have you wreak on anyone who doesn't obey,
including yourself. FASCIST MIND compels the person, couple, or family
to conform and obey the totalistic dictates of its ideology. Any deviation is
treated as deserving of retaliatory punishment by unforgiving symptoms
in the functioning of the self or of the interpersonal system. Such fascist
paradigms will be seen at the center of many psychological problems,
such as the inner rules that dictate major eating disorders; instances
of self-hypnotic suicide processes; hedonistic insistence on "must have"
pleasures such as continuous extramarital relationships; runaway escalating
processes of hurt and revenge that culminate in marital separation
and divorce; patterns of chronic anger and nastiness; flights from yielding
to dependency or tenderness; obsessive-compulsive symptoms; chronic
panic or anxiety reactions; or psychosomatic illnesses, including some
unconscious decisions to die where the inner paradigmatic language is,
"You are unable to perform as demanded, therefore you shall suffer as
follows for your failure."
In contrast, the software of DEMOCRATIC MIND invites responsibility for
choosing one's direction in life with an awareness that there are multiple
possible directions from which to choose. It supports questioning and
the testing of behaviors so to speak scientifically against their outcomes,
accompanied by a readiness to change ideas as new information comes
in. In the process, it encourages experiences of anxiety and humility,
abhors superiority, and strives for a basic equality with other people
even when one is in a leadership role. DEMOCRATIC MIND rejoices in one's
existence and claims the inherent right to self-defense against dangers and
extremes. But, along with protecting one's own life, it is always committed
to deep respect for the rights of others to live and to rejoice in the quality
of their lives.
Democratic thinking leaves one more uncertain and more aware of
one's incompleteness and inability to solve all problems. It is anxiety
provoking because it is known that one must often integrate contradictory
ideas into a single policy and choose between imperfect possibilities.
But because democratic thinking is sworn to protect the integrity of life
and one's continuous opportunities to choose between competing ideas,
it is ultimately safe for human life and generates a joy in being alive to
choose and do.
DEMOCRATIC MIND software carefully enjoins violence as anti-sacred;
but if one does end up nonetheless doing some kind of harm to others,
it calls for acknowledging and accepting responsibility for having done
this harm and ceasing to do it.
Although fascist thinking creates a certainty, and hence a sense of
safety, security, and pleasure in having all loose ends tied down, slowly
but surely its relentless quest for power and certainty destroys everything
(life) that stands in its way, and eventually its own life as well. Fascism in
the mind or in society is a nightmare of hell.
I prefer the democratic way.
In this vein, I view psychotherapy as an alternative "democratic mindset"
in which various aspects of humanness are encountered, processed,
and integrated with one another to create a healthier flowing process that
includes contradiction, complexity, and acceptance of natural ambivalences
within one's mind and in intimate family relationships.
The Significance of a Bridge between Mind and Society
If the application of a paradigm of fascist thinking to explanations of
everyday behaviors and human relationships holds up satisfactorily to
the rigors of intellectual clarification and the scrutiny of clinical observations,
we will have succeeded in bringing together in a new way two
worlds that hitherto have largely remained split apart from each other: the
realm of phenomena of the human mind and intimate relationships, and
the realm of the social and political. If this thesis is true, then it opens an
extraordinarily important door and builds an intellectual bridge between
the study of mind and society.
These are, admittedly, the heady words of a large challenge, and I
confess to a sense of wonderment. If successful, this theoretical bridge will
strengthen the philosophic underpinnings for education for democracy
on all levels of society. If successful, this application of societal-process
concepts to the mental functioning of individuals will create a new, I
believe deeply exciting, bridge between understanding the dynamics of
repression and democratic freedom at the collective level of society, and
the dynamics of repression and democratic freedom at the molecular
level of individual mind.
It is deeply meaningful to me to dare hope for a breakthrough linkage
in conceptualizing the conditions for fascist destruction and democratic
health in both society and mind, thus taking us important steps forward
toward a unity-of-science model of psychological process. From the point
of view of a philosophy of science that posits a greater value or strength
to models that are successfully applicable at different levels of experience,
successfully applying concepts of fascism and democracy simultaneously
to society and mind will strengthen the meaningfulness of the paradigmatic
concepts at each of these levels and may shine persuasive new light
on the importance of overcoming fascism with democratic processes in
all human affairs.
Finally, I am also moved by the thought of making a possibly meaningful
contribution to psychotherapeutic practice that can have practical
consequences for increased prevention of psychopathology and for enriching
peoples' everyday experiencing, thereby enabling them to lead
healthier lives. I hope we can demonstrate that the same fascist thinking
that destroys societies lies at the root of the ways in which people drive
themselves to personal despair and dysfunction and also to damaging
and destroying their primary intimate relationships.
In the long run, for me as a lifelong researcher of the destruction of
masses of human lives in genocide, the fascist-democratic metaphor is
part of a still larger paradigm humanity must develop that will provide
a convincing psycho ethical underpinning for the sanctity or right to
protection of all human life against destruction.
If fascism on the societal level refers to the pursuit of certainty and absolutism;
a totalistic definition of truths; escape from anxiety, complexity,
and humility; demands for obedience, conformity, and oppression of
contradictory information; posturing in claims of superiority accompanied
by prejudice and intolerance for others; excessive power strivings
and domination of others; violence and retaliation against dissent; and
denial of doing harm to others, it is suggested that fascism on the level
of managing one's own mind or one's personal relationships is also constructed
of various of the same dynamics and principles. When people
demand of themselves a given way of life - purity of thoughts, or clear-cut
success, or expect-insist in a relationship (say with their children,
that they be loving, honorable, and respectful) - and when the outcome
that must be achieved is not, all manner of crushing mental health or
relationship consequences ensue. Life has failed the person, the person has
failed life. And in the fascist paradigm, there may follow renewed efforts
at regaining absolute control, or remonstration, punishment, and rage - turned
against the self, the other, or both.
The Epistemology of This Work
The fascist paradigm constitutes a mindset that is intrinsically available
to all of us in the nature of the human mind. It is based on earlier or
more childish forms of thinking, where right and wrong and truth and
falsehood are neatly divided from each other. It is based on the mind's
need for logic and consistency. It is also based on peoples' weakness in
needing so much to be part of a confirmed social consensus or "to be in
the right" - even when one has to decide in favor of a position that runs
contrary to one's own senses and logic. An example is the classic Asch
study in which actual participants agree to call the shorter of two lines
longer, after they are set up by stooges in a group situation, all of whom
say that the shorter line is the longer one!
I suggest that, ultimately, the fascist mindset thrives on our powerful
anxieties of incompleteness, fears of not becoming what we can be, and
dread of our mortality and limitations. We make certain that our way of
life is the one and only right way in an effort to spare ontological dread
of anxiety, limitation, and knowledge of one's finality.
In contrast to a fascist or totalitarian mindset, a democratic paradigm
of mind calls for, first of all, free speech or inner acceptance of the many
different voices in one's own mind, including the lustful and the aggressive
voices in us, and then follows up with a method of responsible
"checks and balances" for processing emotions and thoughts toward ethical
and realistic choices for how best to achieve one's real goals and to
improve one's relationships with others. A democratic model of mind is
an alternative to rigid, totalistic ways of demanding of oneself and one's
environment obedience to absolute demands. Just as democratic organization
is the only hope-alternative to fascism in society, so too a model
of DEMOCRATIC MIND is the alternative to dark currents within a human
being's inner self and interpersonal relationships. Thus the democratic
use of mind accepts and even savors hostile impulses and fantasies toward
other people but does not succumb to acting out these impulses in actual
violence. Democracy of the mind includes the freedom to experience
anger, rage, and wishes of violence with full self-acceptance and even
pleasure as a natural right of healthy personalities and as a first line of
natural strength for self-defense to be mobilized and organized against
emotional threats and attacks. The democratic mind treats impulses as
mind desires, which are different from action plans. It processes impulses
acceptingly along with an ability to make ethical and realistic differentiations
between what we feel like doing or wish to imagine happening
and what we shall actually do in our real-life behavior.
Want to kill so-and-so? Of course.
The sonofabitch has been causing me endless grief
(at home)(at work)(wherever).
Go and kill so-and-so for real? Most certainly not!
A democratic mindset not only protects one from doing coercive and
violent harm to others, it also induces confidence and relaxation in oneself.
The tolerant cathartic allowance of emotions and thoughts that
well up in the heart releases people from many possible emotionally entrapped
spaces, while the balanced interplay of emotions and thoughts
allows each sphere of mind experience to correct and modify one another,
so that one can head out to sound "policy" applications in how
one conducts oneself in egalitarian, noncoercive relationships with other
people.
DEMOCRATIC MIND rejoices in one's own existence and claims inherent
rights for self defense against dangers and extremes but is always committed
to deep respect for the rights of others to live and to rejoice in
their lives along with our own.
In one's participation in the larger community, DEMOCRATIC MIND
stands up for political democracy and tolerance of diversity and stands
against totalitarianism and any use of violence except in self-defense.
It is my hope that this book will be in the tradition of pacesetting works
like those of Erich Fromm on the escape from freedom and the capacity
of the human mind for good and evil, Hannah Arendt on totalitarianism
and the banality of evil, and Rollo May on the constructive meaning of
anxiety along with the destructiveness of malignant power, all of which
inspired me deeply years ago. For me this work represents a continuation
of the Jewish ethical traditions of respect for all human life, as well as my
lifelong conviction and dream that science - in this case the psychological
science of mind - has much to contribute to amore ethical way of life for
human beings. I pray that this book will make a notable contribution to
more peaceful minds both in the daily lives of individuals and in society.
On Straight Talk and Sense versus
Double Talk and Nonsense
I would like to reach those parts of the mind, even in intellectuals, that
often are given over to serious falsehoods, such as reversing facts so
that black and white (for example, victimizers and victims) are white
and black; fact twisting; open deception and the fabrication of lies and
untruths; the confusion of "some" and "all"; post hoc fallacious reasoning
(if some Jews survived the Holocaust, then the Nazis did not intend to
kill all Jews); obsessive defining, which kills the ability to see the essential
larger picture; camouflaging; splitting off details from a larger pattern of
information; distorting and implanting false counter-information and
disinformation; cynical, self-serving, grandiose claiming of knowledge;
competitive, rivalrous power seeking; saying anything that will advance
one's status and seeking prominence or notoriety regardless of the consequences
for truth and integrity; displaying obtuse, hard-to-understand,
intellectual constructions in a manner that causes the subject matter to
fade into obscurity; putting up smokescreens of sincerity and justice-seeking
while intending to cover up unfairness, hate, celebrations of violence,
dehumanization, and prejudice; self-serving realpolitiking; and for
me (an incurable idealistic dreamer, says my wife lovingly), the ultimate
betrayal of all knowledge - using one's knowledge and scientific skills
to support totalitarian policies and megamilitary or destructive terrorist
projects.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Fascism and Democracy in the Human Mind
by I. W. Charny
Copyright © 2006 by University of Nebraska Press.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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