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Thursday, February 6, 2025

Evolutionary Reconciliation: Part 5

According to Sarah Schulman, in her book, Conflict Is Not Abuse, New York City after World War 2, became a haven for psychoanalysts and other refugees who left Fascist Europe. Many of these scapegoated people had a deep desire to understand the cruelty of their accusers, in an effort towards healing the collective psyche, not just the personal. New Yorkers, flung together from all cultural corners of the globe, began to unabashedly seek out therapy. The idea that conflict is normal and can occur for reasons that arise from the unconscious, became integrated into daily life. “To think therapeutically was the definition of being an adult.” Instead of fearing the stigma of needing help from others, seeking support became normalized. Instead of blaming others for causing trauma, asking why trauma occurs was seen as productive and beneficial. Edith Weigert, a German psychiatrist, fled the Nazi regime in 1935, and in 1938, joined the US psychoanalytic circle that included Harry Stack Sullivan and Freida Fromm-Rechmann. In her book “The Courage To Love” she described the mass hysteria of Nazism as “vindictiveness directed as transference to the Jews, the socialists, and the communists.” In other words, humans tend to unwittingly externalize internal conflicts, in an attempt to avoid feeling our own pain. This denial of our own emotional pain creates suffering and trauma, not just for ourselves but for our loved ones and for society. The important difference between pain and suffering is a common theme in Buddhist psychology.

There is a famous Zen story that illustrates the power of non-reactivity in the face of potential conflict. Here is my feminist version of the story. The Zen teacher Hakuin was praised by his neighbours as one living a pure life. A teenage neighbourhood boy got a local girl pregnant. The girl tried to hide her pregnancy but her parents eventually found out. They reacted with much anger. She would not confess who the sperm donor was. But after much harassment, she named Hakuin as the father. Enraged, the parents went and stood outside his house and hurled insults so that all the townsfolk heard of his terrible misdeed. Hakuin’s response was; “Is that so?” He was ridiculed, ignored and shunned by many in the town and lost his job working for a local media outlet. After the child was born, the parents brought the baby to him and demanded he take care of it, saying it was his responsibility. “Is that so?” he replied as he took the wee bundle into his arms. Luckily, some of his students were breast-feeding their own kids and offered to help. Hakuin took good care of the child as best he could. After a year, the girl-mother felt remorse and told her parents the truth; that the father was not Hakuin. Her parents went to Hakuin to ask his forgiveness and asked him for the child. “Is that so?” he said as he held out the baby to the grandparents.

This story examines a non-violent way to de-escalate conflict and also the behaviors of blaming others and avoiding the truth. The girl cannot admit the truth, her parents refuse to make it safe for her to tell the truth, the parents do not ask the accused for his side of the story and instead shame him in front of others. They make false, unproven accusations and then make harsh demands upon Hakuin. He may have experienced some pain, e.g sleep deprivation and relentless demands from caring for a baby and from losing his reputation but he did not turn this pain into suffering. His response is self-defense in the form of “ego-death.” Ask yourself and others this week what they think. How can we tolerate being blamed for someone else’s unresolved suffering, without harming ourselves? How can people skillfully defend themselves, without adding fuel to the fire, against forces that threaten the common good? 

Let’s reflect on the ancient dictum: “furiosus furore solum punitur” which translates as “The madness of the insane is punishment enough.” And this translation from Dostoyevsky: “While nothing is easier than to denounce the unskillful person, nothing is more difficult to understand them.”

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