Pinky: Hmm. I know you started out by saying that it's difficult to generalize these kinds of things to the social sphere, but are there maybe like, at least general patterns that psychiatrists can see that might help us to approach these kinds of problems at a societal or international scale?
Soldz: Yeah, I mean we know some things and they're not profound. I wish I had the profound answers but I don't think anybody does. I think, you know, we psychoanalysts are just one small part of trying to piece together these issues. I don't want to foster the megalomania that any field has the answers to human problems. But we certainly know that belligerence is the opposite of understanding and it's not gonna lead to increased harmony. That you have to come to try and understand others and understand that they're different. Part of the problem that the Bush administration got into Iraq was that they had this image of Iraqis as children. I mean they wouldn't quite express it that way, but you know, there are phrases like "we have to help them grow up", "we have to educate them", "we have to teach them democracy" or whatever it is. And the problem is, Iraqis aren't children. They're grown ups. And they have their own wishes, their own fears, their own desires, and their own culture. And that psychological orientation, which is often been the one of colonialism, that the Natives are children who, you know, we need to be this paternalistic parent. It doesn't work very well, and in the modern world seems to work not at all.
So... I mean I don't know if we can generalize exactly from the consulting room, but we know that you have to develop a greater awareness of others, the ability to talk and to listen, and the acceptance, and this is for Americans a major major problem, the acceptance that our country, like all other countries, it's good and it's bad, and our motives are no less pure than any other countries' motives. This is something that Noam Chomsky has focused on a lot. You know, the myth of American exceptionalism, that the United States is somehow the only country in human history which only has pure motives. So for example, the history of the Vietnam War has been re-written in the school books and even in the newspapers and the press as one of American idealism that was sort of too idealistic and pure to deal with a dirty world. So we went in to bring democracy and all these good things to Vietnam and we couldn't really acknowledge that, you know, Vietnam was corrupt and had these dictators and things, but it was all the goodness of our motives, which is a total violation of history. The United State's motives were anything but pure and democracy was the last thing on the US agenda there as witnessed at the elections that were called for and a number of treaties were always cancelled under US pressure because the North Vietnamese would win them. And a similar thing in Iraq. There's this myth that the United States went into Iraq to bring democracy and yes, there's the language of democracy, but we know that in fact one of the first actions of Paul Bremer was to cancel local elections. And why did they cancel local elections? Because they didn't think that the pro-US factions who had been in exile, and didn't have local roots, they thought that they would lose. So democracy simply meant electing a pro-US government. So in that sense, one step is to become self-aware. To accept that the United States, no worse than any other country, but also not much different than other countries, has its own interests, and pursues them, and sometimes for good, and sometimes for ill, but unless we can recognize our own motives, how in the world are we gonna deal with other people with their complex motives?
So that's one lesson we have there, and certainly an increased belligerence toward the world that we've seen in the last number of years is little question that leads to increased belligerence on the other side. You know there was the belief that the United States was so powerful with its shock and awe, that we could overwhelm any country, and we see how well that worked - this tiny little country of Iraq with about a twelfth our population and no military to speak of has defeated the United States military. So, at some point you have to come to terms and listen to others, which unfortunately we're not ready to do in Iraq. I mean, we still have Congress debate "What's the proper government for Iraq?" It doesn't occur to Congress that it's not for the United State's Congress or anyone in the United States to choose that. [laugh] You know, whether or not federalism is a good policy, I don't know, but that's for Iraqis to decide. It's not for the US Congress to adopt. And until the U.S. learns that lesson, it's not going to have much success. So I don't know if I've answered your question there or not because I think, you know, it takes psychoanalysis, it takes years for an individual. And I wish I knew what the analog at the social level is, but it's hard to do that, other than to know that some of what we need to accomplish is the same.
Pinky: Yeah, thank you. I mean, I think that gives us something to think about because that's not the direction that public discourse is going over the last few years, to say the least.
Soldz: Yeah, and unfortunately it's on all sides. I mean, all a politician has to say is "Why don't we try talking to Iran?" and they're in deep trouble.
Pinky: Right. I was wondering if I could ask you this semi-personal question. Psychoanalysts are not popularly known as being very politically engaged. I mean, we don't generally see a ton of you guys on television protesting this or that. What has been the connection for you that's led you to be more public in your opposition to the so-called 'War on Terror', and to empire building in general?
Soldz: Well let me say two things. One, I think your assumption is partly wrong. Psychoanalysis was born as a radical set of ideas. It was a great challenge to the status quo and in fact almost all of the early psychoanalysts were political radicals of one stripe or another. In pre-war Europe, it was often allied with various social movements. But when it came to the United States, what happened was that psychoanalysts came from Europe as the Nazis took over and in this country, they sort of gave up their radical beliefs partly out of fear I think, and partly out of the general processes that it were occurring in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, and it became a much more sedate and established profession in this country. But that's not been its history everywhere and for example, in Latin America, there are long traditions of psychoanalysts working very closely with social movements in Argentina, in Nicaragua, in Brazil, and so in some sense the United States' form of psychoanalysis in its particular sort of social quietism is the exception, perhaps more than the rule. But even in this country, there's been an increasing number of psychoanalysts who are becoming more activist. There are a lot of people. It's not the dominant mainstream, but it's not a total excluded fringe either. So I think to some degree psychoanalysis gets a bad rap from some of the sort of Hollywood-ish stereotypes.
For me personally, I mean, in fact, my history is sort of the other way. I was a political radical first from very early in my teens and the social movements of the 60s. Now that said, that was a long time ago and I have been less active over the decades. I have a family and you know, like many of us, we're raising kids, and doing this and that, but when the Iraq war came, my activism came out. I could not believe that at the end of the Cold War, we had an opportunity to try and create a more peaceful world, to try and reduce belligerence, to reduce the number of, or even eventually abolish the nuclear weapons in the world, and I couldn't believe that the country and the world were launching into another round of belligerence and warfare. That without without much thought, without much opposition, without anybody really discussing "Why are we doing this?" I don't mean "Why Iraq in particular?", but realizing the magnitude of what we gave up. By doing this we gave up the possibility for a long time of trying to find more peaceful solutions. And this is an enormous loss, as I think people are just starting to realize. And so, I could no longer remain quiet and so I thought, well, where's the place to start? Well you know there are all kinds of activists but why don't I start among my own? Among psychoanalysts and more recently among other psychologists, and try and get them more involved, and try and take some of the tools that we have because I think one of the lessons of psychoanalysis is that we're all complex and that ambivalence is central to life, that no one is all good and probably no one or very few are all bad, that we all have anger, we all have destructive tendencies, and we all have constructive and loving tendencies, and the world has to accept that that's in all of us. And creating myths of us good, them bad is a recipe for failure as we've seen in the last ten years or so.
Pinky: Well, thank you Dr. Soldz, this has been really helpful.
Soldz: Well thank you, I appreciate it.
Pinky: Okay, take care.
Soldz: Okay, well thanks. Okay, bye bye.
Pinky: Thank you. Take care. Oh! Bye bye. [ laughs ] That was Dr. Stephen Soldz, Director at the Center for Research, Evaluation, and Program Development, Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Soldz: Yeah, I mean we know some things and they're not profound. I wish I had the profound answers but I don't think anybody does. I think, you know, we psychoanalysts are just one small part of trying to piece together these issues. I don't want to foster the megalomania that any field has the answers to human problems. But we certainly know that belligerence is the opposite of understanding and it's not gonna lead to increased harmony. That you have to come to try and understand others and understand that they're different. Part of the problem that the Bush administration got into Iraq was that they had this image of Iraqis as children. I mean they wouldn't quite express it that way, but you know, there are phrases like "we have to help them grow up", "we have to educate them", "we have to teach them democracy" or whatever it is. And the problem is, Iraqis aren't children. They're grown ups. And they have their own wishes, their own fears, their own desires, and their own culture. And that psychological orientation, which is often been the one of colonialism, that the Natives are children who, you know, we need to be this paternalistic parent. It doesn't work very well, and in the modern world seems to work not at all.
So... I mean I don't know if we can generalize exactly from the consulting room, but we know that you have to develop a greater awareness of others, the ability to talk and to listen, and the acceptance, and this is for Americans a major major problem, the acceptance that our country, like all other countries, it's good and it's bad, and our motives are no less pure than any other countries' motives. This is something that Noam Chomsky has focused on a lot. You know, the myth of American exceptionalism, that the United States is somehow the only country in human history which only has pure motives. So for example, the history of the Vietnam War has been re-written in the school books and even in the newspapers and the press as one of American idealism that was sort of too idealistic and pure to deal with a dirty world. So we went in to bring democracy and all these good things to Vietnam and we couldn't really acknowledge that, you know, Vietnam was corrupt and had these dictators and things, but it was all the goodness of our motives, which is a total violation of history. The United State's motives were anything but pure and democracy was the last thing on the US agenda there as witnessed at the elections that were called for and a number of treaties were always cancelled under US pressure because the North Vietnamese would win them. And a similar thing in Iraq. There's this myth that the United States went into Iraq to bring democracy and yes, there's the language of democracy, but we know that in fact one of the first actions of Paul Bremer was to cancel local elections. And why did they cancel local elections? Because they didn't think that the pro-US factions who had been in exile, and didn't have local roots, they thought that they would lose. So democracy simply meant electing a pro-US government. So in that sense, one step is to become self-aware. To accept that the United States, no worse than any other country, but also not much different than other countries, has its own interests, and pursues them, and sometimes for good, and sometimes for ill, but unless we can recognize our own motives, how in the world are we gonna deal with other people with their complex motives?
So that's one lesson we have there, and certainly an increased belligerence toward the world that we've seen in the last number of years is little question that leads to increased belligerence on the other side. You know there was the belief that the United States was so powerful with its shock and awe, that we could overwhelm any country, and we see how well that worked - this tiny little country of Iraq with about a twelfth our population and no military to speak of has defeated the United States military. So, at some point you have to come to terms and listen to others, which unfortunately we're not ready to do in Iraq. I mean, we still have Congress debate "What's the proper government for Iraq?" It doesn't occur to Congress that it's not for the United State's Congress or anyone in the United States to choose that. [laugh] You know, whether or not federalism is a good policy, I don't know, but that's for Iraqis to decide. It's not for the US Congress to adopt. And until the U.S. learns that lesson, it's not going to have much success. So I don't know if I've answered your question there or not because I think, you know, it takes psychoanalysis, it takes years for an individual. And I wish I knew what the analog at the social level is, but it's hard to do that, other than to know that some of what we need to accomplish is the same.
Soldz: Yeah, and unfortunately it's on all sides. I mean, all a politician has to say is "Why don't we try talking to Iran?" and they're in deep trouble.
Pinky: Right. I was wondering if I could ask you this semi-personal question. Psychoanalysts are not popularly known as being very politically engaged. I mean, we don't generally see a ton of you guys on television protesting this or that. What has been the connection for you that's led you to be more public in your opposition to the so-called 'War on Terror', and to empire building in general?
Soldz: Well let me say two things. One, I think your assumption is partly wrong. Psychoanalysis was born as a radical set of ideas. It was a great challenge to the status quo and in fact almost all of the early psychoanalysts were political radicals of one stripe or another. In pre-war Europe, it was often allied with various social movements. But when it came to the United States, what happened was that psychoanalysts came from Europe as the Nazis took over and in this country, they sort of gave up their radical beliefs partly out of fear I think, and partly out of the general processes that it were occurring in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, and it became a much more sedate and established profession in this country. But that's not been its history everywhere and for example, in Latin America, there are long traditions of psychoanalysts working very closely with social movements in Argentina, in Nicaragua, in Brazil, and so in some sense the United States' form of psychoanalysis in its particular sort of social quietism is the exception, perhaps more than the rule. But even in this country, there's been an increasing number of psychoanalysts who are becoming more activist. There are a lot of people. It's not the dominant mainstream, but it's not a total excluded fringe either. So I think to some degree psychoanalysis gets a bad rap from some of the sort of Hollywood-ish stereotypes.
For me personally, I mean, in fact, my history is sort of the other way. I was a political radical first from very early in my teens and the social movements of the 60s. Now that said, that was a long time ago and I have been less active over the decades. I have a family and you know, like many of us, we're raising kids, and doing this and that, but when the Iraq war came, my activism came out. I could not believe that at the end of the Cold War, we had an opportunity to try and create a more peaceful world, to try and reduce belligerence, to reduce the number of, or even eventually abolish the nuclear weapons in the world, and I couldn't believe that the country and the world were launching into another round of belligerence and warfare. That without without much thought, without much opposition, without anybody really discussing "Why are we doing this?" I don't mean "Why Iraq in particular?", but realizing the magnitude of what we gave up. By doing this we gave up the possibility for a long time of trying to find more peaceful solutions. And this is an enormous loss, as I think people are just starting to realize. And so, I could no longer remain quiet and so I thought, well, where's the place to start? Well you know there are all kinds of activists but why don't I start among my own? Among psychoanalysts and more recently among other psychologists, and try and get them more involved, and try and take some of the tools that we have because I think one of the lessons of psychoanalysis is that we're all complex and that ambivalence is central to life, that no one is all good and probably no one or very few are all bad, that we all have anger, we all have destructive tendencies, and we all have constructive and loving tendencies, and the world has to accept that that's in all of us. And creating myths of us good, them bad is a recipe for failure as we've seen in the last ten years or so.
Pinky: Well, thank you Dr. Soldz, this has been really helpful.
Soldz: Well thank you, I appreciate it.
Pinky: Okay, take care.
Soldz: Okay, well thanks. Okay, bye bye.
Pinky: Thank you. Take care. Oh! Bye bye. [ laughs ] That was Dr. Stephen Soldz, Director at the Center for Research, Evaluation, and Program Development, Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis in Brookline, Massachusetts.
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