Dialogues in Philosophy, Mental and Neuro Sciences Crossing Dialogues ORIGINAL ARTICLE The other or the enemy E R ,I G Association ,M M ,E Department of Psychiatry, Sant’Andrea Hospital, Sapienza University of Rome (Italy) S Once in Europe, migrants often face an aggressive and stigmatizing inclination against themselves by the residents. European often feel them as enemies. From a psychiatric point of view, we identify peculiar Ego defense mechanisms that are able to produce this feeling that amplifies social conflicts. In the essay The Uncanny, Freud links this word to something removed from the “unconscious” that is fearful but reflects and connotes our identity. In this way, we need to put outside the uncanny part of us and “the other”, the “different one”, could easily become the enemy. In a parallel, the gothic medieval buildings show monstrosities in their facades. Without any architectural structural function, they may have the symbolic role to maintain the demoniac presence outside. It suggests that we can only feel safe inside the holy buildings, together with the believer “extra ecclesiam nulla salus”.The approach described above is opposite to a phenomenological one, which confers several meanings to the discourse about the other. As human beings, we are all in a relationship, which needs a sort of ethical approach. Phenomenology is a science based on this ethics in aiming the other as an understandable human beings and this represents a sort of ethics that influences phenomenology as a science to understand the other. Keywords: migrants, otherness, uncanny, unheimlich, Ego defense mechanisms, relationship, phenomenology DIAL PHIL MENT NEURO SCI 2018;11(2):68-71 INTRODUCTION Europe is currently being crossed by deep cultural and political identity crises, a kind of present Zeitgeist, which feeds populist, nationalistic, and selfish attitudes. The immigration phenomena to Europe, that we are currently coping with, seems to cause conflicts between European nations. Once in Europe, migrants often face an aggressive and stigmatizing inclination against themselves by the residents. This ambiguous welcome could transform them in undesirable people and in enemies more than guests. Having an enemy, Umberto Eco (2011) says, points out his own substantial foreignness: the stranger is a different individual par excellence because his habits are far from ours. Such a difference could be misunderstood in terms of a threat against us. The migrant, who lives among us, dresses and behaves in different cultural ways, most of the time speaking our language incorrectly, is far from our usual beauty canons and far from our kindness and aesthetic culture. From our point of view, they sometimes look enviously towards us, transforming them into a kind of dangerous enemy. The anthropological model that builds up an enemy character has always been the same www.crossingdialogues.com/journal.htm throughout the centuries, whether we refer to a heretic, a Judean, an infector or an immigrant. From a social and political point of view, the problematic presence of migrants characterize our daily life and our politicians do not seem to have a long term plan to solve such a deep political, economic, and sociological conflict. Despite the inexistence of easy solutions to the problem, politicians are currently demonstrating to have confused the emotional approaches with the sociological ones, transforming problems into an insoluble social crash. From a psychiatric point of view, such a social conflict allows us to identify peculiar Ego defense mechanisms, most of which are primitive ones and are able to produce violent and unaware social reactions, which amplify social conflicts. When members of a community use the same defense mechanism, for example Projection, the community of “others” becomes a kind of “black box” full of sins, where justice is not applied. Consequently, a society which might have favorably become a prosperous multicultural society becomes a group of multiracial entities, somewhat autonomous, not communicating enclaves, in constant conflict with each other. In this perspective, each racial 68 Rosini et al., 2018 SETTING UP THE ENEMY As human beings, but essentially as mental health care givers, we all have to face the tricky theme of the “otherness”. In our western traditional ethics, the otherness theme has been a point of reference that has guided our “phenomenological” existential philosophy and have led our reflection trough the “intersubjectivity”, since the pioneering work by Martin Buber. In its essay The Uncanny (“Das Unheimliche” in German language), Freud (1919/2018) links this word to everything that is generically fearful, where the anxiety is linked to something initially removed which reemerges from the “unconscious”. It is a long time ago hidden scary; something that is connected to what is known and familiar, something that had to remain hidden and unknown, in a typical “animistic” approach to the real world. Freud cites as an example of uncanny “the doubt that something, as a human being, could be apparently alive or not alive, the doubt that an object without life-signs could be otherwise alive”. Freud lists a group of things that provoke the impression of being alive. Among them wax made puppets or robots, related to death, some kind of coming back of dead human beings, some kind of spirits or phantoms. As Freud (1919/2018) says, the uncanny experiences, which we directly describe as a consequence of childhood removed complex, come to consciousness because they are ignited by an impression or a perception. They are a kind of validation of ancient and overcome primitive beliefs. The frame of reference of this process and the appearance of uncanny feeling depends on the dilemma connected to the possibility that overcome convictions could reappear, even if we have made it through them. Recently, a major accident happened on a Turkish beach, involving a group of immigrants who reached the coast after a storm. Many of them died in the sea during the journey. The body of a dead child, that washed up on shore, was photographed and broadcasted by media all over the world. In the picture, the child seemed alive and sleeping on the shore, dressed as any other European child. Because of this, a deep and strange feeling hit the audience, close to what we define uncanny. Because of the uncontrollable anxiety that everybody felt in front of this image, more than every other news showing people dead in the sea, an emotional reaction boosted all kinds of rescues that was possible to set up. That was the typical frame of reference of the “uncanny experience”. We are all afraid of certain kinds of visions and pictures which could surprise us, something unusual and unpredictable, that is able to provoke anxieties, especially when we are not trained or prepared to cope with it. Such experience works as if the picture was a mirror of something removed, which is inside ourselves, belonging to the category of the Uncanny. What we see in this kind of mirror reflects and connotes our identity; in the meantime, it is also the recognition of a sudden and unexpected removed part, which comes to us. In this perspective, it is an alienated part of ourselves that is recognized, our doubled, and a worrying Ego image transformed from a familiar part in its contrary, a far and demonic one. Therefore, the mirror allows us to perceive an “other” world, an alarming “double”. The uncanny is the opposite of tranquilizer, something which is not familiar anymore but unknown and crazy, able to twist reality in a way that corresponds to losing control, as it happens in the brief psychotic disorder, hysterical psychosis and bouffeé delirante. The experiences of this disorder are the root of madness. In this way, from a psychoanalytic point of view, the patient shows himself to the community or in his reference with the unpredictable appearance of the ghost or the supersensible scary “double”. Art is able to introduce us to the fantastic and imagining world. The gothic medieval art, as Baltrusaitis (1993) says, evolves through the life foundations and the western realism, but it has a surrealistic part too. With its tricks and exoticisms, the medieval art, full of monsters and prodigies, is inserted in many fields of humanistic and evangelic approach to life. These jolts and 69 DIAL PHIL MENT NEURO SCI 2018; 11(2):68-71 group is always waiting for the “enemies” to come. This is a very simple and easy emotional solution, apparently free from conflicts, as often happens in the big metropolis suburbs, between different culture ethnicities connoted by a sort of incurable diversity. restless spiritual disquietudes grew up with fantastic forms that will need centuries to decline. This supernatural foundation is an important part of the gothic art, where it is possible to recognize the previous century’s teratology, imaginative obsessions and phantasmagoria of culture transposed into a more efficacious reality. This attitude will increase during the medieval age in different artistic fields: strange and stupefacient motifs until the end of the 4th century, becoming increasingly dramatic during the 5th and the 6th century. In the ancient classical age, other than the diffusion of the beautiful forms, a wide range of monstrous creatures of the past will emerge. In the Triptych of the Temptation of St. Anthony by Hieronymous Bosh, full of grilli (a kind of bizarre human forms), we can see bunches of heads, animals, men with multiple faces, heads attached to legs, quadrupeds and bipeds coming out from seashells, precious and minute figures. During the following centuries, these themes will become a peculiar form of exoticism that will join with the muslim poetry. From the 10th century, all these monstrosities and half beast half human beings will appear on holy buildings as symbolic guardians, without any architectural structural function, but with symbolic roles that will be able to maintain the demoniac presence outside. Because of these fantastic features that appear demoniac in themselves, they suggest us that we can only feel safe inside the holy buildings, together with the other believer “extra ecclesiam nulla salus”. CIRCUMSCRIBING THE ENEMY Our mind acts without any awareness of the psychological defense mechanisms. In order to circumscribe the enemy, sometimes they act provoking limits to their own freedom and dangerous consequences to the individual. One of the primitive defense mechanisms is the socalled projection, a kind of barrier against the instinctual needs of the Es. This is a psychic mechanism that could influence a relationship negatively and that could give us the erroneous impression to be freed from something, which is now “inside our enemy”. The use of projection could influence the diffuse and shared social behavior. As a result, independent and non- www.crossingdialogues.com/journal.htm communicating enclaves represent a defeat of the multiculturalism of the present metropolis. When the migrant comes to Europe, we try to create a sort of relationship with him. Sometimes, our psychological defensive attitude towards him may become complex and push us to control him as if he was an enemy. On the other hand, with projective identification, which is another defense mechanism, we have the impression to free ourselves from something that we don’t like of us, putting it in the so called “enemy”. In doing so, we are able to control the migrant, putting in him what we don’t like of us. This is the best way to control him and to push him to become what we want him to become. This defense mechanism is very commonly shared and it also allows people to become group. According to this view, Freud (1977) says that the Uncanny of the group underlies mesmerisation phenomena and a psychological regression close to the so-called “primordial horde”. For a group of people, the chief is always a sort of primigenial father. The mass of people desires to be dominated by no-boundaries voice and it is always hungry of authoritarianism and obedience. The mesmerisation dominates people through beliefs based on eroticism instead of perception and reasoning. As it happens to see in the extremist group’s dynamics, the individual gives up on his ideal Ego to follow the collective ideal one represented by the chief. Therefore, the individual feels a triumphant mood and satisfaction, in absence of any self-criticism. This approach is far from the phenomenological one, which confers several meanings to the discourse about the “other”. This is the distinctive, recognizable cipher and foundation of the “politics of the experience”, which we call phenomenology. This implies an assumption of responsibility when we cope with the discourse of the other, a kind of petitio principii to the presence of meaning, which links together the different parts of the discourse. This is why phenomenology could be considered a romantic, utopic and ideal approach that needs a strong emotional and intellectual “cathexis”. From this point of view, we are now able to understand why phenomenology and certain aspects of its political aspiration, based on unshakeable 70 Rosini et al., 2018 and respectful individuality of the other, has determined the appearance of a lot of enemies and criticisms against its approach. CONCLUSION The words of Giovanni Stanghellini (2018) are a sort of ethics that influences phenomenology as a science to understand the other. As human beings, we are all in a relationship. Moreover, Umberto Eco (2011, p. 31) says: “it seems that we can’t deal with the absence of an enemy. The civilization process cannot abolish the need of an enemy. His need is deeply present even in the mild human being, friend of peace, who can move the concept of enemy from another human being to a natural or social power, which could threaten us, for example the capitalistic exploitation, the pollution, the third world famine. Even if these are virtuous examples when we deal with ancestral need to have enemy, does ethics becomes powerless? I should say that the need of ethics cannot survive when we say enemies don´t exist but when we try to understand them and to put ourselves in their shoes” In a phenomenological manner, he adds: REFERENCES Baltrusaitis J. (1993) Il Medioevo fantastico. Adelphi, Milan: 293-296. Eco U. (2011) Costruire il nemico. Bompiani, Milano: 2011: 14-33. Freud S. (1919/2018) The uncanny. Dial Phil Ment Neuro Sci, 11: 84-100. Freud S. (1977) Psicologia della masse e analisi dell’Io. Opere vol.9. Boringhieri, Torino: 314-320. Stanghellini G. (2018) Postfazione. In: Binswanger L. Daseinsanalyse Psichiatria Psicoterapia. Raffaello Cortina, Milano: 208-209. Corresponding Author: Enrico Rosini Department of Psychiatry Sant’Andrea Hospital Sapienza University of Rome (Italy) Tel.:+39 063375639 Fax: +39 06 33775342 e-mail: [email protected] Copyright © 2018 by Ass. Crossing Dialogues, Italy “Trying to understand the other means destroying cliché without destroying the otherness” 71 DIAL PHIL MENT NEURO SCI 2018; 11(2):68-71