On Electronic Harassment: War And God
One of the psychoanalytic reasons war is still an insurmountable challenge for humans to overcome is because humans are born with a primal biological archaic aggressive destructive drive. The gratification of this drive imparts us with satisfaction, just like the sex drive. There is glory in the conquering.
Like the brains of all primates, humans contain a powerful impulse in their psyche towards hate and destruction. Clearly, our technological advancements are not in pace with our human psychic development to control these drives, and in spite of our strivings towards a higher moral and logical ground, the truth is, we often behave like dinosaurs.
Sigmund Freud discovery of the castration complex which shed new light on the little boy’s fear of castration by the father ushered in a new understanding for human behavior. But, most of us, are raised by a mother and a father. The psychological insights and secrets to this maternal object laid hidden during Freud’s time period. Many feminist side with the theories of matricide theorized by Melanie Klein and what Andre Green called “the dead mother". The psychic need to evacuate the maternal object from the psyche leaving a void of nonexistent emotion. It would seem men obliterate the memory of their initial dependence on a woman, over which they have no control, creating this psychic void of emotion toward maternal attachment. Men may find this detachment easier than women because they go on to identify with their fathers in their psychic development. Since the mother has been declared nonexistent in the man’s mind, she remains emotionally unreplaceable, and the guilt which is a consequence of the fantasized psychic murder fuels a rigid defense stance toward the female sex. Although it has been primarily witnessed in public statistical records and news reports when we view men raping women, use of domestic violence to control them, and murder them, some women too, find evacuating the maternal object unconsciously gratifying and we see this in female assaults on her own body. Through excessive plastic surgery, anorexia, fashion design, diet drugs, etc.
Lucy Holmes has suggested through her understanding of aged patients, there is a longing in many old people “for an inner peace, a soothing internal presence that would enable them to clasp their own hand reassuringly as they weather the challenges of aging and the solitude of dying.” (Holmes, 2013) From this perspective, death and dying is not seen as the ultimate loss, but perhaps the final fusion with the womb, with mother. This certainly would explain the human need for God and the need for religious spirituality. That is, replacing mother/father with “God”. Thus, the father, son, and holy spirit, and the holy spirit which has been designated as the presence of the feminine.
However, those who have psychoanalyzed the notion of “God" have come to the conclusion that “God" is a medical doctor. “I am the Lord your physician.” (Exodus 15:26) Who else rules over the human progression of life and ultimate death? (Perper and Cina, 2010). And those who have analyzed religious texts have concluded he suffers from some type of mental illness possibly narcissistic personality disorder. (Capps, 2008) In both cases they seem to be right. After all, isn’t God a mirrored reflection of human men in control of the politics on the world stage in the Old Testament? Today, does not this include the politics and leadership of medicine? Women, too, are included on this political stage. After all, woman was taken from man’s rib and fashioned into his likeness with some water and soil. (Genesis 2:18–25) Interestingly, in this story, Adam doesn’t have intercourse with Eve until AFTER she sinned by eating the forbidden fruit. Yes, that’s right. Woman is equated with sex, and sex is equated with the Devil! Hence, fantasies of feminine evil! (Dykstra, 1986) Thus, our ideas about the dangerous, engulfing female body, precariously ruled by its emotions stand in stark contrast to the masterful masculine will, the locus of control and power. The masculine embodies self-control and rationality. Whereas women preside over the carnal, chaotic atmosphere of infancy, she is the embodiment of the primitive. She is associated with nature, death, a body ruled by emotions, vulnerability, disappointment and pain. Father represents the world and enterprise, a path of liberation from an all-encompassing mother and freedom from the oppression of this ambivalent maternal object, of individual control and individual power.
I can’t help but think that in the minds of male and female paranoid schizoids murdering a female object with wireless electronic assaults and torture would act as the ultimate fusion with the dead evacuated psychic mother. No? As a form of surrogate selection replacing the original lost and evacuated object?
For me, I am in a technological war against an unseen enemy who is using electronic weapons (electronic harassment) to assault my body and mind. Since I am female, I can only assume that I am dealing with someone who has evacuated his psychic mother and is using me as a surrogate replacement to control his fantasy. He probably also has the presence of clinical or subclinical sadism as part of his personality constellation. As these assaults are painful and torturous and humiliating.
Citations (in order as they appear in the post)
Lucy Holmes (2013) “Wrestling with Destiny: The promise of psychoanalysis” New York. Routledge.
Joshua A. Perper and Stephen J. Cina (2010) “When Doctors Kill: Who, Why, and How" New York. Copernicus Books.
Donald Capps. “God Diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder” Pastoral Psychology: New York. Vol. 58, Issue 2 (April 2009) Published online July 10, 2008, Springer Science.
Bram Dijkstra (1986) Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of feminine evil in the fin de siecle culture. Oxford University Press.
