PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

Tonight is the US Presidential Debate and tomorrow is the anniversary of 9/11/01. About a month later comes the anniversary of 10/07/23. Such anniversaries, and the associated political processes, provide an opportunity to learn from 2 international traumatic conflicts, perhaps to even help prevent future large and smaller repetitions.

It would be easy to blame the original perpetrators of these wars, and that has been done over and over. It is also easy to blame all sides and their accomplices, and that has been done, too. All of that makes justice challenging.

However, we psychiatric professionals can look below the surface and, if we do, what can we find? The same culprit in so many wars and conflicts over history. As the cartoon figure Pogo rightly said in what has become a cliche: we have met the enemy and the enemy is us!

The enemy is our human nature.

Potentially, too, human nature is also the rescuer. How so? It is built into our human nature that we tend to fear the other. Probably way back in time, that was necessary for everyday survival. With a perceived and real danger, our fight, freeze, or flight response automatically kicks in with varying intensity, which can lead to scapegoating and a quest for power over the other(s).

The other can be quite different in some important and noticeable way, or even similar, as in the Freudian concept of the narcissism of small differences. When humiliation of the other is involved, potential revenge is common, which can begin an ongoing intermittent cycle of conflict and violence. Forgiveness becomes elusive.

There seems to be an example going back thousands of years, when the ancestors of Hamas and Israel came from the same territory and land, exemplified perhaps in the story of the 2 stepbrothers, Ishmael and Isaac, respectively, who were forcibly separated in their childhood and predicted to lead 2 peoples. That there is a wider psychological context now is suggested by the fact that both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia have been concurrently rising lately.

The potential good psychological news is that the undue fears can be overcome cognitively with a lot of persistence, trust, compassion, and as much forgiveness as possible. We are quite familiar with cognitive behavioral therapy that reframes erroneous personal cognitive conclusions in patients, and a variation of that can be applied to undue fears. Moreover, child development offers an opportunity to learn how to process those fears more successfully. Teaching tolerance, as the “righteous gentiles” did during the Holocaust, goes a long way.

Leadership is also crucial and Track 2 negotiations, as worked on by 2 psychiatrists, Vamik Volkan and now Neil Aggarwal, can enhance peace prospects.1,2 As in the ongoing tension between India and Pakistan, teaching the psychological aspects of cross-cultural relationships to those in higher level governmental, has promise to positively influence their country’s policies.

I suppose that if all these interventions of rational thinking and psychiatric expertise do not have enough effect, or we give up on them, there is always faith, even faith for a miracle. It is common to view 7 as a divine number of completion, for the days of the week. Eleven tends to be a mystical number, too. The 7-Eleven convenience stores successfully played upon that, changing their name from Tote’m in the 1940s and then deciding to open at 7AM and close at 11PM. In dice gambling there is a phrase called “7 come 11,” which reflects gamblers’ optimism in the lucky power of rolling 7 to bring winning when connected with a follow-up 11. In Judaism, there is a concept called gematria, where hidden meanings of numbers are considered.

Am I serious about relying on a paradoxical positive impact of the numbers of the days, 7 and 11, of the months of these 2 tragedies? Maybe, maybe not. What else could help bring more peace? Artificial intelligence? Psychedelics? One way or another, progress is required in our age of ever-increasing real weapons of mass destruction. A window of opportunity is still open.

Note: This article originally appeared on Psychiatric Times.