US: Patriotic pride and fear
by By Ritt Goldstein

Exploring questions of societal madness and contemporary fascism, Goldstein interviews political scientist Michael Parenti and psychologist Daniel Burston.




US: Patriotic pride and fear
By Ritt Goldstein
Asia Times, 8 July 2004

While some critics of US President George W Bush have charged that his administration is pursuing policies of madness, such a charge is clinically incorrect, but it may convey an extraordinarily disturbing reality. Both an eminent psychologist and a noted political scientist perceive a particularly virulent social pathogen as the basis for much of the present global strife, with Washington at the center of the epidemic.

"It certainly seems that the world is going mad," Canadian psychologist Dr Daniel Burston told Asia Times Online, quickly noting that an increasing retreat into "social phantasy systems" would be more accurate. Burston - whose work has been acclaimed in the mainstream media - noted that famed social psychologist Erich Fromm had written on "socially patterned defects" that enabled large groups of people to adjust themselves comfortably to a system that, humanly speaking, is "fundamentally at odds with our basic existential and human needs". Burston observed that this resulted in "deficiencies, or traits, or attitudes which don't generate internal conflict when, in fact, they should".

He saw the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal as raising a number of questions, noting that "there seems very little doubt that it was sanctioned from above". Burston labeled the guards' behavior as "sadistic".

Fromm, in his 1941 classic Escape from Freedom , wrote: "A person can be entirely dominated by his sadistic strivings and consciously believe that he is motivated only by his sense of duty." And on June 23, the Associated Press (AP) reported that an August 2002 US Justice Department memo "argues that torture - and even the deliberate killing - of prisoners in the terror war could be justified", with torture being redefined as "only actions that cause severe pain akin to organ failure".

AP also reported that the Justice Department had now "backed away" from the memo.

Burston named Nazi exterminator Adolf Eichmann as representing the "prototypical example" of what the phenomenon of "socially patterned defects" can engender. He cited philosopher Hannah Arendt's famous work on Nazism.

In her book Eichmann in Jerusalem: The Banality of Evil, Arendt highlighted the unexceptional nature of the Nazi bureaucrat responsible for killing untold numbers in extermination camps. Burston noted that "with one very questionable exception, Eichmann tested normal on all psychological tests that were administered to him by mental health experts before his trial".

Clinically speaking, Eichmann - an individual who worked daily at mass murder for a period of years - was quite sane.

In instances where a group's behavior becomes deviant, even destructive to themselves or others, "it [the pathological action] becomes a source of solace and security for a person who adapts that way", said Burston. Eichmann had "adapted". And Fromm noted that, in most cases, destructive impulses are rationalized, ensuring "at least a few other people or a whole social group share in the rationalization and thus make it appear to be 'realistic' to the members of such a group".

Link to full piece
 http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FG08Aa01.html