Psychoanalysis of Torture Logic

Psychoanalysis of Torture Logic

Or: Freud meets Abu Ghraib …With a little prayer at the end


“Tortured Logic”, title of Anthony Lagouranis’ New York Times (Op-ed 2.28.2006), is apt for the rationale of any process that leads to imprisonment of a soldier for following what is believed to be a legal order, in this case use of dogs in interrogations. Bringing this under incriminating definition of torture subjects him to contradictory demands: whether he follows, or refuses to follow, the orders, he gets punished.

In broad terms, no one could voluntarily will to put themselves in such a position. Therefore, on Kant’s categorical imperative, according to which whatever is impossible to will is wrong, the process leading to this point is wrong also, since contradictions are only implied by contradictions.

If, to this, is linked the subject matter leading to the contradiction, torture, the double entendre of the title vivifies the aptness. The tortured logic that has gone on in the process somewhere is the logic of torture, in which a system* creates tasks so abominable they require “being routinely brutal” in cruel, inhumane, degrading ways, and no one could want to do them. The ones at the bottom of the ladder get called upon to carry out what polite conversation wants to keep out-of-sight, out-of-mind. But that won’t work today so easily. The average German surely knew less about what Hitler’s Nazis did to Jews than average Americans know what has been done in their name in torture prisons. That is festering somewhere not too far under the surface of collective consciousness.

The inner logic captured by the double entendre is a psycho-logic: the psychodynamic playing out of a particular mentality shared by those who put Bush into office and promoted the Iraq war. “Reaganesque” is the tag Paul Wolfowitz put on its style. It was assumed from the outset that the war would be intelligence-intensive. This meant harsh interrogations to extract information from those sworn to silence. As a matter of a shared mentality -- “group-think”, as it was called in media consciousness for a brief period – carrying out these assumptions was delegated to the dark precincts, the agencies of the collective unconscious. What they do is split-off from the ambient media talk circuitry. “We don’t want to hear from that”. Then flatly denied when exposed. “We do not torture.” Even without further analysis, this qualifies as classical repression.

Further analysis comes forth, however, when the torture perversions are taken as symptoms. The sadistic content of the Abu Ghraib pictures was as if it had been scripted by Freud: “The manifest content (of the fantasies, which the performances act out) is of being pinioned, bound, beaten painfully, whipped, in some way mishandled, forced to obey unconditionally, defifled, degraded. More rarely, some kind of mutilation is included in the content.” (“The Economic Problem of Masochism”, 1924) These perverse brutalities are traced to unconscious dominance of the masochistic, self-punishing trend, reversed by the pictures into sadism on “towelheads”.

Moreover, Freud found that the suffering which a person, or group of people, inflict on themselves by self-destructive lines of thought is very much bound up with a twisted “love of Father”. This occurs when the child has been made to feel worthless and degraded by abuse that it is received by a show of affection. Still further, the deep connection between paranoia, religion and homosexuality emerge here: “We have translated the words “unconscious feeling of guilt” as meaning a need for punishment by some parental authority. Now we know that the wish to be beaten by the father, which is so common, is closely connected with the other wish, to have some passive (feminine) sexual relations with him, and is only a regressive distortion of the latter.”

If the torture that came to light at Abu Ghraib, Guantanomo and elsewhere are symptoms then the regressive masochistic trend defines the condition of which they are symptomatic. The symptom is, like the dream, an out-growth, or “expression” of the underlying processes from which they emerge, and these mark the psychic condition. Whether the term “diseased” strictly applies or not, other recognizably similar expressions point to a common source of psychic disturbance.

Another major symptom of the condition is the cul de sac U.S. policy has reached in Iraq. Never invited in, never asked to impose a government, now whether it stays or leaves, responsibility for great loss of life falls on its shoulders. This is argued in detail elsewhere.

The condition these symptoms express is conflicted ambivalence. One line of ideas and course of action is met by another exactly opposed to it. A person driving themselves to do what is instinctively resisted. The numerous cases of lethal accidents, over-reactions and “friendly fire” deaths in the Gulf War II indicate such an ambivalent condition. The latter phrase itself is the soothing token-double reversal masking the pathos. In this split-off state, commitment is unwittingly made to both sides of competing ideas or issues, thus setting up the situation of being counted the enemy of both in later clashes. This just what is happening in Iraq: “I can tell you the main reason behnd all our woes – it is America. Everything that is going on between Sunnis and Shiites, the troublemaker in the middle is America.” (Niclolad Kristof quoting a Baghdad clothing merchant named Abdul-Qader Ali, “The Soldiers Speak. Will President Bush Listen?” NY Times op-ed 2.28.2006 )

Putting this together with the above, psychoanalysis of the condition would be this: conflicted ambivalence toward the Punishing Father. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have delivered to America exactly it ordered up..

It should be added that this does not contradict, but supplements, deMausean psychohistorical analysis of the group psychic condition in terms of rebirth-compulsion. Bush’s projected Perpetual War on Terror is waged on both levels: as re-birth ritual by people who unconsciously fantasize themselves stuck in the birth canal; and as libidinized anal rape. By participating in libidinized anal rape ritual on Muslims with the Father, we can be reborn. That is the two-trauma dream thought, Oedipal and birth, driving the psychic condition.
Freud’s words near the end of “The Economic Problem of Masochis” read like a prophetic description of ’06 deconstruction: “(The hidden meaning of ) moral masochism becomes clear to us. Conscience and morality arose through overcoming, desexualizing, the Oedipus-complex; in moral masochism morality becomes sexualized afresh, the Oedipus-complex is reactivated, as regression from morality back to the Oedipus-complex is under way. This is to the advantage of neither of the person concerned nor of morality.”
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Reading: Moral masochism, the love of getting punished for wrongdoing, brings back childhood Oedipal conflict with Father, including defense against punishment by “being good”; but because this is a regressive position, morality having been a refined development of the earlier harsh external control, neither God nor morality benefit. When conscience gives way to obedience, reliance on the law replaces grace.
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“An individual may, it is true, preserve the whole or a certain amount of his morality alongside his masochism, but, on the other hand, a good part of his conscience may become swallowed up by his masochism. Further, the masochism in him creates a temptation to “sinful acts” which must then be expiated by the reproaches of the sadistic conscience (as in so many Russian character-types) or by chastisement from the great parental authority of Fate.”
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Reading: “Conscience swallowed by (reversed to sadistic) masochism” surely describes the words of one Abu Ghraib guard convicted of torture: “The half of me that was Christian said it was wrong, but the half of me that was fighting there loved to see the guy piss on himself.” The words “Chastisement from the great parental authority of Fate” lead to:
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“In order to provoke punishment from this last parent-substitute the masochist must do something inexpedient…”
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Read: bomb Iran
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“….act against his own interests, ruin what prospects which the real world offers him, and possibly destroy his own existence in the world of reality.”

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Fate’s answer, that would be. Hubris. Karma. In human terms, a psychoanalytic condition. May knowledge prevent it from happening.