Richard Lloyd Jones: The faces of its perpetrators are hidden behind hoods and stockings. Its acts are captured on handheld home video cameras in dank prisons or God knows where. Its strikes are sudden and unexpected. But we think of it only in terms of our enemies. We, we declare self-righteously, never engage in terrorism. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and today I'm Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, truly combating terrorism.
A special presentation today. A complete replaying of an interview I did with Dr. Norberto Keppe five days after 9-11. The views of a leading psychoanalyst on one very crucial topic we need to probe much deeper in our society. The roots and solutions to terrorism. More in a moment. First, an update on our upcoming congresses and conferences on Analytical Trilogy, Dr. Keppe's Science of Psychosociopathology.
If you've been listening for a while now, you'll know we have two similar events planned for 2008, one here in Brazil and one in San Diego. If you're interested in learning more about Analytical Trilogy, how do you make a choice? Well, let me help you a little bit. Our International Congress on Analytical Trilogy here in Brazil, July 4th to 6th, will be for those of you who are resonating with the work we're doing in Brazil.
In terms of economy, business, residences, publishing, our integral psychoanalysis clinic, the pulse of Norberto Keppe's work. We'll have our congress at our hotel conference center about four hours out of São Paulo in a very beautiful city in the hills, surrounded by the Atlantic rainforest and coffee plantations and the best mineral waters in the world. We bought a fabulous Art Deco hotel there, restored it to its original splendor, and used it to conduct festivals and congresses and workshops on Dr.
Keppe's extraordinary work. This international congress will be a deep immersion in Keppe's work and the work of our NGO, STOP the Destruction of the World Association. You can get more information on that at www.trilogycongress.org. In San Diego, our World Conference on Analytical Trilogy will be looking at the many applications of Keppe's Analytical Trilogy in a wide range of areas, from family counseling to the arts to drug rehab to media and journalism.
Lectures, workshops, symposia, all looking at the influence Analytical Trilogy could have in a wide area of human activity. Information on that is at www.wcatus.org. You know, I moved to Brazil from New York City in July 2001. That's about two and a half months before 9-11. So when that infamous incident occurred, I was keenly aware of it and shocked, like most of us.
I asked Dr. Keppe to sit down with me and record an interview about his views on terrorism and the situation and how we could begin to process this and even understand and respond to it. Keppe hit some deep chords in that interview about maturity and consciousness, and he drew a much bigger circle than any commentator I've ever heard then or since on the subject.
I thought that I would run that interview in its entirety today. It's about one year now after Virginia Tech hit, and I thought this was very pertinent to any situation of terror. Plus, with the U.S. Elections coming up and Iraq becoming a more important issue in that election, I thought it would shed some light on the whole situation. I've got the interview in original Portuguese, dubbed into English by my friend Gilbert Gambucci.
The quality is acceptable, but not fantastic. I've cleaned it up as much as possible, including re-recording my questions. The content is startlingly original in this interview and deeply therapeutic. I hope you enjoy, and I hope you let me know what you think. Rich at richjonesvoice.com. Dr. Keppe, we've all been watching this situation and ongoing situations around the world of terrorism and war and wondering, how do we respond to this?
And I'm really interested in your view of this. You've been watching this situation quite closely, and I'd really like to have your opinion. What are you seeing, what are you thinking about as you observe the scenes from New York and around the world?
Gilbert Gambucci: Society
Richard: has
Gilbert: to be seen through the eyes of sociopathology. That is, human society has the same psychological problems, the same pathology that individual human beings have.
And so, what does it mean, these people who are terrorists, or those who create severe problems for society? They are mentally sick
psychotics, acting in
Gilbert: the larger field of
society. So, if we see society
Gilbert: as a body, a big body, it has the same problems that a person has. The act of terrorism occurs when people who are mentally sick psychotics try to attack and destroy the social body.
The society is pathological, just like the human
being, and so,
Gilbert: in this case, we have to
study ways of how we can change society in order for it to become
Gilbert: saner. That is, we need to do social therapy,
therapy for society,
Gilbert: so the whole society can stop having terrorists strange and sick people that try to destroy society
Richard: what exactly do you
mean by pathological dr.
Keppe means sick. It
Gilbert: refers
to
Gilbert: people who are sick. We don't see this only in the psychiatric field, in mentally sick people such as schizophrenics, depressive people, people with manias, this
kind of of thing. But
Gilbert: it also applies in the social field, criminals, delinquents
and terrorists as well.
Gilbert: They are people that are socially sick, that offer a danger to society. They have the same sickness that the individuals in the psychiatric hospital have.
So
we need to
Gilbert: see not only that criminals are dangerous but that they are also mentally sick. They should
be treated. It doesn't work just to create
Gilbert: prisons or hospitals where we can put the
mentally sick. Prisons only increase a person's sickness, the same as the psychiatric hospital does. A society that
Gilbert: requires many fines
and controls and many prisons,
Gilbert: this is a sign that such a society is very sick.
And so we can conclude that the more prisons psychiatric hospitals a country uses, the sicker it
is. If a country has
Gilbert: a lot of criminals,
it means that it has a very sick structure underneath. And this
Gilbert: structure creates
an enormous group of pathological
Gilbert: people who are very sick and as a result are dangerous to the society. So how
Richard: do we begin to treat society then to
make it less sick?
Richard: Society
needs
Gilbert: to
modify its
Gilbert: fundamental structure because peace comes from
social justice. Any society,
Gilbert: whether
it's
Gilbert: capitalist
or communist or any other
Gilbert: type, that doesn't offer to all individuals the opportunity of living equally and reasonably, at least in economic and social terms, this society creates revolt against this structure, which gives a chance to the more delinquent and sicker
ones to attack the society.
So the only way to treat a
Gilbert: sick society, as are all the world societies today, is to create it so everyone suffers less injustice, so that all. All
people have the same rights.
Gilbert: Modern society doesn't have
the democracy that they say they have.
Gilbert: Not all people have the
same chance to
Gilbert: develop. Not all people have the same level socially and
Richard: economically. You've been talking a lot about sick people in society.
Some sick people rising to positions of power
Gilbert: in your view? Yes, yes. The problem in society is that there are certain people in power who impose a type of society that is unjust to many people, for example economically, some people who have. Economic power. Who give economic orientation. Who have economic influence. They want everything to function for their interests. They are sick people who establish a very bad social environment that creates a revolt against society.
So these sick people gather together other powers, along with themselves, and create a situation that we can only call pathological – sociopathological. My work for years has been to create a new science called sociopathology that addresses this need to do social therapy. What I mean by this is to treat these people who are very sick in this social setting so so that they are stopped from creating problems.
And so, there are the delinquents below, the individually sick, and the really sick people above with an enormous gap between these two extremes. They clash because their interests are completely different. So there are these two types of pathology that society needs to be conscious about. Well,
Richard: you know, Dr. Kepley, it's really easy to see the problem as being something out there, isn't it?
The case of the World Trade Center or any other terrorist act, and there are many, we can tend to see the problem as a terrorist problem out there. Is this dangerous?
Yes. It's very
Gilbert: dangerous to everybody, because
even things
Gilbert: that happen to us from other societies give consciousness to us that the same things are also occurring inside
our society. And
Gilbert: And if we experience terrorism, then this brings consciousness that we may have the same problem, but we prefer to accuse others for it.
In many cases, we have the same problems as we are seeing in the others whom we wish to
attack.
Gilbert: The society must begin to see that they have the same problems. In fact, I have noticed that the more a society is evolving economically or even in the more human area, the more development it has, the more terrorism it also has. The modern society has created an extremely unjust economical state in the world, which has caused very strong reactions to it.
The more powerful nations have more conditions to create more problems to the world than the more underdeveloped nations. After all, economic injustice is a form of terrorism.
Richard: You seem to be suggesting that the external terrorism is just a projection of what you call internal terrorism. In other words, the terrorism we see outside just being a reflection of the terrorism we have inside but don't want to see.
How can you help us understand that better? Well,
Gilbert: when we notice terrorism outside ourselves, we need to see that in a certain way that terrorism also exists inside as well. In this case, in the nation that sees the terrorism only outside itself. So we cannot say that certain nations are dangerous and others not, because the question of terrorism is not a question of this or that nation.
It's a universal question. So if a nation sees terrorism coming only from the outside and not from inside as well, it is actually in more danger than the one who is willing to look at its own internal terrorism and take care of it in a more careful way. So it is very dangerous to see the problem only on the outside. This brings up the question of psychological projection, which is a process where the person sees the problems that he has in the other person.
So a nation that sees the problem outside becomes a very dangerous nation to itself because it doesn't see that the problems are actually inside itself.
Richard: What exactly do you mean by internal terrorism anyway? How does this occur in daily life?
Gilbert: Well, this question of terrorism, this terror of terrorism, shows to the people the terror they have of their own internal terrorism. And explaining this in the pathological sense, the individual has inside himself ideas of destruction, ideas of self-destruction.
And it becomes very dangerous for him because by thinking that he is a victim of external terrorism, of external destruction, he forgets to see that he also has this, not exactly tendency, but that he has this attitude of destroying himself. So, it is very important for him to have consciousness of his own pathology, so that he can protect himself. In the larger social sense, it is very important for a nation like America that they begin to get conscious of the need to see the internal problems, so they can protect themselves from themselves.
Back in the 80s, I wrote
Gilbert: a book about fighting the American decay. And this book showed that if a country does not perceive its own pathology, its own social pathology, that country will destroy itself, as the Roman Empire did, as the British Empire did, like the French Empire did, like the russian empire, the soviet union did. Each country will destroy itself when it doesn't have consciousness of the problems, the dangers that it creates to its own existence.
Richard: Dr Keppe, could you talk a little bit more about psychological projection? Help us to understand your ideas about this a little
bit better, please. This
Gilbert: question of projection is the central point of sickness in the human being and in society. The individual who refuses to see his own problems begins to see the problems outside of himself. So it is with a nation that doesn't see the problems it has.
It will begin to see those problems in other nations. So this is a source of tension between nations because instead of taking care of its problems, the nation comes to believe that it has to destroy to get rid of a problem. A problem that is not out there but is actually inside itself. It is very important to see this. In the study of pathology we call this paranoia.
Paranoia occurs when human beings do not see the problems in themselves and as a result they create enormous difficulties for themselves, even to the point of entering into deliriums. The same thing happens with a nation. It will have delusions and bad relationships with other nations, as in these cases of countries that don't have much consciousness of their own problems. But
can we really see
Richard: it as projection in this situation, like 9-11, Dr.
Keppe? There appears on the surface, and many people think of it this way, that this was the work of some enemy. How do we begin to look differently at this particular situation?
In this case, we need
Gilbert: to talk about the question of maturity. We should assume, for example, that the more advanced nations should be more mature, more evolved, more developed than the underdeveloped nations.
But of course, an underdeveloped nation is sicker and it tends to attack the more advanced nations. Therefore, let's examine, for example, a developed society where there are individuals who are sick. But these sick people, just because they attack others, that doesn't mean that they should be attacked themselves, or killed, or put in prison, or in mental hospitals.
What that
Gilbert: society has to do is help the sick people become conscious of themselves, of their sickness.
Likewise, at the nation level,
Gilbert: the most important role of a more advanced society is to demonstrate a better society so that underdeveloped nations can see things better, can develop culturally and receive information, so that the more sick and underdeveloped nations can rise up to the same level as the more developed ones. At an individual level, if a person that is sick attacks another, if the attacked person is mature, he can handle this attack.
This happens in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy all the time, where a sick individual attacks the analyst. It is the analyst's obligation, of course, to calm the person down, to help that person become conscious, so that he can see that his problem is inside himself. So, if an advanced nation is attacked by another I don't know. Then it must work to make the other nation conscious about their evil, because if the more advanced nation attacks in response, then it puts itself on the same level, at the same level of sickness as the attacking nation.
So when it comes to the question of war, if a leader declares war on another nation, it shows that his nation is very sick. Only a nation or a person that is very sick will attack another physically or wage war against another. So
Richard: I'd imagine that this war on terrorism then is a really bad idea
Gilbert: in your view. Yes, because the idea to create a war, for example, this is the biggest terrorism that exists.
The situation of making war, as we are presently experiencing, is terrifying the whole world. When an individual terrorist or a group attacks a country, attacks a society, the society can defend itself because it is much, much bigger than that act of terrorism. But when a big society, or when the biggest power in the world creates a war, well, a greater terrorism than this doesn't exist because this places that society on the same level as the terrorist.
How do
Richard: you think the U.S. Should handle the situation then as a
Gilbert: mature nation? Now, it has to accept consciousness, a very big consciousness, of what is really going on, because it's when the problem appears that the country has to become aware of it. It is not the problems themselves that actually cause evil to the country. What causes all the difficulties is when the country tries to attack problems that exist, that are showing up.
So, in the case of individual sickness, for example, If a mentally sick or neurotic person or someone with a physical condition has some kind of difficulty, he must learn to perceive the problem in order to treat it and not try to hide it. In this case of terrorism in the United States, for example, the Americans have to become aware and see why is there this terrorism, what happened there.
Because if this terrorism from the outside is not made conscious by the Americans or by any country that has been attacked, if it is not seen in terms of internal problems as well, then the country will not know how to effectively deal with any type of problems. It's not the problem of terrorism that ruins a country, but rather not knowing how to deal with it and then wanting to create war as a way of dealing with it.
This is what can ruin a country, destruction from within.
Richard: One of the larger problems that you think we need to have consciousness of, Dr. Keppe,
Through my discoveries in psychopathology
Gilbert: and sociopathology, I have discovered that all people are sick. Nobody is a sane person. So what does this mean? It means that humanity doesn't have consciousness of its sickness, that it is an ill humanity.
And not
Gilbert: only individual sicknesses, the traditional organic and psychic illnesses, but also in a much bigger way, those sicknesses that are of a social character and which have turned society into something quite different. There is a very big difference between the various societies, economical difference, availability of food, whether African society or white in color or yellow, and so society must begin to become aware of these problems, not to solve them at first but to become conscious about the problems, so they can know how to live with them maturely, how to live with them until they are able to solve them.
When an individual has a problem, it's not right for that ill person to just try to eliminate the problem, like with an ulcer. If somebody has a stomach ulcer and they deal with it by taking out the stomach, this solves nothing. Similarly, a society cannot just look to eliminate people and problems with wars, with terrorism, etc. To solve the problem, society must begin to ask, what really are the problems that exist,
so they can
Gilbert: learn to live with them and with time solve them as they have conditions to
do so.
If
Gilbert: you attack a problem, you hide it, and then the problem will get even
worse. That's why
Gilbert: the last century had two world wars. And if there is a third one, especially if it is an atomic one, it will be the end of humanity. Because here is the paradox. The more humanity develops, the more consciousness it has, the more problems it sees.
Society doesn't want to see these problems. That doesn't mean it should use more and more repression or destroy more. A society that has so much repression, so many prisons and mental hospitals, lots of ways to eliminate criminals, sick people. This is a sign that such a society is very sick. If a society has lots of sick people, it is because it is a very sick society.
So society has to perceive its degree of sickness in order to have a better existence.
Richard: If you could say one thing to help the americans and the rest of us understand terrorism better, what would that one thing
Gilbert: be? When i went to america in 1984, my intention was to help the the American people. I think the American people are the ones who suffer the most in this situation, in this orientation that insists in attacking others with
war.
But we
Gilbert: all know that at the end of the day, in this context of war, the ones who are going to die are the people. And no problem will be solved, because any war brings enormous underdevelopment for the nation who declares it and for the whole world. You don't get to good by going through evil. And any war is an enormous destruction to society.
Any war that the world has, like the ones in the last century, sets civilization back to an unbelievable degree. Through war, nothing can be solved. Much to the contrary, in fact. War brings lots of big problems to the people and the socially unjust situation continues without any consciousness of it. It is very important to become conscious of the problems that exist and try to solve everything through dialogue, through conversation, through agreements.
So I would like to say that the person who makes war, a powerful person that wants war, he doesn't have good intentions.
We
Gilbert: have to begin to see what is behind this intention. If a person wants a war to solve
any problem, no matter what that problem is, that
Gilbert: person is either being directed and controlled by evil-intentioned
people working from behind the scenes, or he
Gilbert: doesn't have enough maturity to know how to
deal with anything.
Gilbert: No leader in the world should even think about making a war. So
what
Gilbert: I'm saying is that absolutely no individual who has maturity will try to solve a problem through a fight
or through a war. There is
Gilbert: a Chinese saying that says when you see two people talking, two people discussing, watch for the one who loses his cool and physically
attacks, that is the one who has
Gilbert: lost his reason.
So if a country declares war on another because of terrorism, it is because it has put itself on the same plane, on the same level as
the other one,
Gilbert: an inferior level, a
level with no reason.
Gilbert: Therefore there is absolutely no reason that justifies a war.
Richard: Keppe's view reflects his deep study of the human psyche and an understanding that before him has proven elusive.
Thanks to Keppe, now it's all clarifying. This is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones. Talk to you next time.
