Whose Bad Objects Are We Anyway?
Updated January 11, 2025, 12:08 PM
In the course of one’s leadership, one is behooved to the act of analytic neutrality in order to clearly and unbiasedly interpret actions of others. In my opinion, this is one of the cornerstones of a fair democracy. A fair democracy is one in which a subject has the relational capacity to stand in the place of the position of the third, that is, the capacity to stand outside himself, and in-between oneself and another (ME-YOU-WE paradigm). Analytic neutrality is the capacity to move fluidly from one particular “self-object paradigm” to another without becoming mired in the repetitive reenactments of any one configuration in relational terms. All self-states are historically, socially, and temporally linked. All these self-states are intersectionally linked by race, class, gender, sexual orientation, culture, historical incident, and emerge as distinct combinations (Harris, 2017). For one to maintain analytic neutrality, one requires a type of disassociation in which an individual’s capacity to appreciate specific emotional states of consciousness and their interpersonal engagement in moments of heated and excited negotiations, ones which can be clearly ascertained. It is by far, not an easy task. But I would say, it is something we expect of our political leaders, and those in positions of authority, to possess these interpersonal skills. That is, no snap judgements, no name calling, and no aggressive, impulsive actions. This requires an understanding that “YOU” may be different from “ME” and “I” may be different from “YOU” but “WE”, together, are both inextricably linked as human subjects suffering the human condition.
Even if I got my understanding of analytic neutrality wrong, I can tell you what analytic neutrality IS NOT. It is not the continuous need to seek out, whether pathologically or otherwise, to predict, to provoke, the very worst in others in order to extrude the “badness” from oneselves, and to locate that “badness,” and to confirm that “badness” lies comfortably outside the self and inside another. This move confirms the boundary confusion, and boundary violation of the psychic integrity of the victim, as well as the collapse for the capacity of self-reflective functioning in the perpetrator. It is not, therefore, a therapeutic solution to conflict. What this form of psychic state confirms is the unconscious presence of a “self-other paradigm” in which a guilty, shame-riddled, and humiliate self-state exists, and maybe pathologically seeking to secure his or her own internal sense of goodness, righteousness, and innocence by making the object-other the sole owner of the “badness.” These types of self-states can be either conscious or unconscious motivations in psychological operations of mind control. Psychological operations, such as gaslighting and victim blaming, acts that seek out to “make the victim fall” under the sway of another in the psychic life of power, in colonizing another’s mind. A mind, that otherwise represents an independent and autonomous mind, toward the internal beliefs of a dubious operator. This behavior emerges as the “inverse unconscious paradigm”, in which the guilty, shame-riddled, humiliated self-state seeks its own psychic survival and a quest for atonement for a past moral violation suffered. It is so inevitably marked by dissociative inability (that is to say, void of therapeutic disassociation needed to maintain civil, objective analytic neutrality in therapeutic repair). This position is needed in order to establish and connect the original historical “locus of horror” and original wrongdoing done to the subject (Davies, 2004; Grand, 2000; Grand & Salberg, et. al., 2017). It is indeed, through this “beastial gesture” that the shadow of the object falls upon the ego (Freud, 1925). The “inverse unconscious paradigm” is where evil’s deformation can take hold, and the ethical collapse of respectful human interactions de-evolves. Where the human and the non-human seem linked in a reversal: that which is human is rendered and it and that which is an it, is rendered sacred. Thus, the perpetrator’s ego emerges as Greed’s Victim, filled with every dimension of non-human qualities devoid of all the enlightened shadows of human subjectivity by casting the “human other” into the role of a “non-human object.” Here, I am reminded of the “Upside-Down World” in the Netflix series “Stranger Things.”
In the executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, we see this historical locus of horror repeated in the sexist demonization of the maternal body that has historically existed in ancient philosophical text of Plato (Plato’s Cave metaphor) and American patriarchial political culture for several centuries (Walker, 1998). In the potent demeaning, sexist acts that dominated practices of certain businessmen during the 1950s, Ethel Rosenberg was rendered an “Idol of Perversity”, an image of betrayal (Dykstra, 1986). In an image of the original Eve, she became the personification of the strong-minded, recalcitrant figure, a “deceitful leader” of the family, obviously “not the right kind of woman.” Later, through retrospective analysis in 2008, we see how doomed she was. Through the disclosure of historical documents called the Verona documents, Ethel Rosenberg was never named as a spy although her name listed in association to her husband, Julius, who was probably a spy albeit a low-level spy. Testimony of Ethel Rosenberg’s involvement in the grand jury inquest was fragmentary and on its own would not have led to an indictment. Consider the following quote from Adrienne Harris:
“ Ethel Rosenberg as a spectral figure in the conscience and the consciousness of many generations of political and socially conscious women. She is a medium, a lightning rod for an intergenerational transmission of sexism (regardless of politics) in which a woman is dangerous if strong, failed if non-maternal, and endangered by any belief in the conventions of gender (quietness, loyalty, or perhaps obedience) (Grand & Salberg, et. al., 2017).”
The iconography of Ethel Rosenberg’s actual death, is the symbolic attack on the female maternal body of the mother, the violence of her execution horrific in its maternal significance — a botched execution resulting in an excruciating death. In the intergenerational transmission of trauma, the pervasive contempt and hatred of women, and the violence of the state’s suppression of information and knowledge to the contrary seems particularly self-evident today.
In the context of three relevant couples involvement with the Communist Party during the Rosenberg’s trial and execution, and with one couples non-involvement, reflecting the shadow of an ominous evil presence in the history of the atomic bomb project. Of the three couples I am here referring to the following people:
- One couple turns state evidence and their testimony is instrumental in the death sentence imposed and carried out on the Rosenbergs (David and Ruth Greenglass, Ethel’s brother and sister-in-law.)
- One couple remains silent, stoic, and this stance cost them their lives. (Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. In defense of the Rosenberg’s actions, it may have been the case that they were “lead by the nose,” once in state custody, and manipulated by the government through visitation rights to their children, with the government withholding visitation rights if the couple did not comply with the governments demands. I say this because Ethel’s, as well as Julius’ on camera performance seemed to embody a forced, coerced, fake musing as if they were posturing for the camera).
- One couple, believing in the need to share scientific information, and not to make power so asymmetric by having secret weapons, remains ‘at liberty’, and are protected by the very state groups that might have persecuted them. They end up living out their lives as productive scientists and educators in America. (Theodore and Joan Hall. Theodore Hall was the youngest scientist at the Los Alamos atomic bomb project. Ted Hall was recruited into espionage while at Harvard University and joined the Communist Party while a student there.)
Although others were suspected or even known to have passed information, no other arrest ended in the electric chair or resulted in the death penalty. The Rosenberg deaths were the horrifying specter that caught the heart and mind of anyone on the left during that time period. The Rosenbergs were made an example of, to be props on a theatre stage, on a world stage to which many had a front row seat to the political problems of America during that time period, to inform those interested in defying state authority, “one best not mess around with state authority.” The repression of knowledge surrounding Ethel Rosenberg’s innocence is the exact kind of fear mongering and repression of critical information needed to deliver fair justice which lead to a profound miscarriage in the deliverance of a fair trial. Its imposition on the human mind caused the collapse of free thought and imposed restrictions on freedom of speech.
Regarding Ethel Rosenberg, the passionate mission to predict, seek out, and unjustly render the other as “bad”, to literally locate their perceived “badness” while forgoing fair analytic neutrality is a perverse solution. In the deliverance of justice by federally licensed institutions like the CIA, NSA, and FBI to fail at the ability to “stand in the space” and be able to “stand between the space” and to “stand outside the space” by maintaining and sustaining the position of the third (Benjamin, 2018) for the fair and just deliverance of clear and unfettered justice hints towards a malignancy, a sulfureous stench, fueling the game of projective-introjective identifications that obscure the real evil being committed. In short, a cover-up. All one has to do is to look to the JFK assassinations, the government’s historical ties to organized crime, and Donald Trump’s ties to the Russian mafia as well as his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
For this I make a plea:
“ May the grace and benevolence of an unbiased, just, and unfettered wisdom of clarity be with the American people over the next 4 years.”
Sources:
Benjamin, J. (2018) Beyond Doer and Done To: Recognition theory, inter-subjectivity and the third. New York. Routledge.
Davies, JM (2004) “Whose Bad Objects Are We Anyway?: Repetition and our elusive love affair with evil.” Psychoanalytic Dialogues. 14 (6): 711-732.
Dykstra, Bram. (1986) Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of feminine evil in fin de seicle culture. New York. Oxford University Press. https://archive.org/details/idolsofperversit00dijk/page/n7/mode/1up
Freud, S. (1925). Case Histories. In the, Standard Edition of the Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Volume 3. London. Hogarth Press. https://archive.org/details/freud-1925-cp-3/page/10/mode/1up
Grand, S. (2000) The Reproduction of Evil: A clinical and cultural perspective. London. The Analytic Press.
Harris, A. (2017) Intimacy: The tank in the bedroom. International Journal of Psychoanalysis. 98: 95-907.
Trans-Generational Trauma and the Other: Dialogues across history and difference. (2017) Eds., Sue Grand and Jill Salberg. Volume 83. Relational Perspective Book Series. New York. Routledge.
Walker, Michelle Boulous (1998) Philosophy and the Maternal Body: Reading silence. New York. Routledge.
