SUBPERSONALITIES - HEALING OF NATIONS' SOULS
Tomislav Krsmanovic; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
1. Introduction
The mental health of individuals and nations strongly predetremines
their fate. In order to reach a flourishing of creative potentials
of
human personalities one requires liberty. And conversely, a lack of
liberty suppresses, splits and reduces human personality.
On this occasion I would like to explain how liberty and lack of liberty
act upon human personality and how mental health determiness fates of
individuals and natiuons, and to throw light on the mechanisms that
make
some peoples wage wars between them and thus live in poverty, whereas
the others have more peace and welfare.
In her work Global Balkanization that was written already in 1977, Ayn
Rand anticipated the present-day wars in the Balkans and the world.
According to Ayn Rand, the Balkan and other tribalisms are in a discord
with independence and reason; they have drawn their origin from a
distant past and are atavistic. Today, on the threshold of the 21st
century, the peoples of the Balkans, in Africa, Ireland, Algeria and
elsewhere are engaged in wars without any rational reasons for them.
Ayn
Rand recommends a psycho-analytic approach, a revealing of the atavisms
and suppressions that have been implanted in the deep spheres of
national personalities and their drawing out onto the surface of
cosncience. She, therefore, speaks in favor of coming to one's senses
rather than resorting to wars. The atavisms, the suppressions, the
historical traumas, the myths and the archetypes - they are all parts
of
the national personalities: in fact, they are subpersonalities.
Ayn Rand says that historical or some other determinisms do not exist
but rather the people that keep creating the world. Dr. Mary Ruwart,
in
her book Healing Our World which has become a kind of international
bestseller and which we have translated into South Slavic languages,
says that, if we want to change the world, we must first change
ourselves, and not other people, to become responsible for our fates.
Ayn Rand concludes that local nationalist profiteers are abusing
national feelings of the helpless people to gain the latters' votes.
This was exactly what happened in the Balkans: the Balkan peoples have
come out of the 50-year old tyranny of Communism as weakened in every
respect and found themselves in a deep crisis of identity, which
circumstances were abused by the profiteers to rule their people by
way
of nationalisms.
The self responsibility principle is contained here in a delicate
context because the previous rule was imposed on them - it was not
their
free choice. American sociologist Nathan Glazer said already thirty
years ago that conveniences or inconveniences are given to people
automatically - with their birth in a given nation. It seems to me
that
Dr. Mary Ruwart places things to where they belong when she says, "Self
responsibility works in both the political and personal realm. The
exploration of this crossover would indeed create a new model of human
kind".
We have also translated another international libertarian bestseller
-
The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible by Professor Ken Scholland, as
well
as libertarian pamphlets, so all of them are now strngly influencing
the
public opinions in the Balkans. Civil options are now supported there:
Bosnia and Herzegovina is divided into cantons after the Swiss model
-
the way that was suggested by Leon Lowy and Francess Kendall in their
books - whereas in the Serbian entity of Bosnia and in Montenegro the
politicians in power, as well as the opposition forces in Serbia itself,
are favoring such options more strongly than ever.
It was Ayn Rand who twenty years ago pointed towards the contradictory
trend in Europe and the world: the global integrative changes were
promoted at the time when new nationalisms and separatist tendencies
were just appearing. The current wars in Europe and beyond are a
confirmation of this message of hers.
But we are also witnessing a great progress of democracy after the fall
of Communism. Nine years thereupon we are in a unified Berlin, liberty
succeeded. In fact the current conflicts in the Balkans and other places
can be observed as passing events of the era of transition. It is a
withering away of nation states - the bureaucratic dinosaurs that are
incapable of ensuring a further growth and which are, therefore,
crumbling. In order to preserve their positions, the endangered
politicians are resorting to nationalisms and are producing conflicts.
A German psychologist once said that psychology is universal. In his
work The Law Frederic Bastiat said 150 years ago that the God had
created human being and his capabilities and had placed him in the
center of natural resources, but human being could not achieve his
role
because he was being prevented by government which was abusing laws
or
otherwise by ordinary criminals, whereby the creative development of
individuals was being fettered. The role of personality was worked
out
by Ayn Rand more than a century later when she developed her theory
of
"sense of life": "Everyone has a subconscious view of Universe and
of
Man's place in it. It is a person's most personal, emotional response
to
existence".
The contemporary man can not estimate and accomplish the "sense of life"
and the libertarian dream of happiness if he does not possess an
adequate mental health.
The mental health of contemporary man is massively and drastically
endangered throughout the planet.
2. The conception of SUBPERSONALITIES
This mental disorder fascinates, while at the same time causes skepsis.
It became broadly known after the films Three Faces of Eve and Sybil.
The essential features of the illness is existence within the person
of
something like two or more distinct personalities or personality states.
The MPD is, according to some estimates, present among one percent of
the total USA population, and the figure may increase. Changes in the
societies bring new illness cases.
Professor Dr. Ralph Slavenko from Wayne State University claims that
each of these subpersonalities can have his own name, sex, age, accent,
tone of voice, knowledge of foreign languages, artistic talents,
handwriting, facial expressions and even different brain waves and
different responses to a given dose of medicine. Dr. Kampman says that
he has been able to create under hypnosis multiple personalities in
32
of his 75 hypnosis subjects, whereas some other scientists report that
even normal persons have some kinds of subpersonalities, which brings
more optimism into this, clearly still unexplored illness.
The MPD is linked with the abuses in childhood that are used to avoid
pains of experience, but is believed to be acquirable during one's
life
as the mental health deteriorates.
Every person has some kind of subpersonality, or the mental drawer:
everyone is now and then timid, feels inferior, frightened, becomes
needlessly aggressive or obsessed with some thoughts. But still, these
may not be subpersonalities in terms of this work.
3. How is a subpersonality created?
This was duly explained by French psychiatrist Pierre Janet who lived in
the second half of the last century and the first half of this century,
and by contemporary Belgian psychologist Pierre Dacco.
There are two essential factors: CIRCUMSTANCES and one's ADAPTATION
to
them. A mentally healthy person keeps reacting to everyday events,
stresses and frustrations - the CIRCUMSTANCES - in such a way that
he
succeeds to absorb them mentally, that is to say, to assimilate
these
events into a new common quality and, thus, to integrate them into
the
general tank of his own EGO. He does that elegantly, without fatigue,
because he has a strong mental tension and energy, as well as capability
for synthesis. Those who lack the strong mental tension and the
capability for synthesis - which lack is a consequence of fatigue or
illness - are not in position to assimilate and integrate these events
into their EGO, the events remain unintegrated outside of EGO and begin
to lead a life of their own. That is how several mental satellites
are
formed which block the emotions, split the personality, create internal
tensions and produce symptoms: for example, a failure in one's life.
Every man has mental satellites. It is on a psychologist to discover
them and to bring them to the personality's consciousness, to unify
the
personality. But, these are not the subpersonalities in terms of this
presentation.
The appearance of the MPD is reached when one or more of these mental
sattelites becomes stabilized and inspired by all the greater quantums
of emotions and energy, and all the more fulfills the person's psycho.
And then, for some reasons, it begins to be linked to somebody else's
personal identity.
Human identity is either built from the early childhood or is crumbled,
depending on the circumstances, heredity and other influences. A self
concept is created from the other people's reactions, through
comparisons with the others and according to the role played
It is well known that a person can behave differently in his family,
school, at the job, in his church, sport club or neighborhood, but
depending on who he is talking to, his own sex, age, education, social
status, or how he categorizes the other person (everybody has his own
criteria). Psychosociologists have noted that some persons, depending
on
their mental health or some other criteria, can be, even during one
and
the same day, dominant or submissive, conformist or deviant, affiliative
or aggressive, cooperative or aggressive, popular or unpopular, etc.
The appearance of MPD might occur in the following kind of childhood
circumstances. An intelligent girl from a family of divorced alcoholics
lives with her mother who is not giving her an adequate upbringing,
and
she is not seeing her father. In the neighborhood she happens to be
well
accepted by her pals through a concurrence of circumstances, so she
is
happy playing with them: in the neighborhood she is a quite popular
girl. In her school, however, where she shows to be a poor pupil from
her first grade due to unacceptance by the school pals because of her
parents' reputation, she feels rejected, sad, lonesome and timid. These
two divergent processes can develop and lead to a fixation towards
two
distinct identities, which then indicates existence of a distinct
pathology.
A mentally strong and healthy personality keeps absorbing the daily
shocks that he or she is exposed to and thus maintains an enriching
continuity. But that personality which lacks an adequate mental health,
by reestimating oneself in the daily living dramas, tries to maintain
one's personal balance because the process of creating a personal
identity is very complex and continual. Under such circumstances a
mental satellite might begin to separate for some reason from the
personality's fluid and might become linked to some other identity.
It
is interesting that some passing or some more distinct symptoms of
MPD
might occur even among adults or elder persons, perhaps even daily.
The
modern man's mental health is highly endangered. Psychic shocks, abrupt
changes, misadaptations, fatigue, illnesses - especially if they are
combined with poverty - tend to weaken and split his personality, push
it into apathy or depression, and weaken his mental energy. The weakened
personality of an adult under these circumstances becomes fixed to
another identity in its daily relations - which is a psychological
defensive mechanism - so as to find safety, support and acceptance,
and
thus a basis for a so-so interaction is formed. A majority of such
personality states disappears, but still some of them keep surviving
through more intensive social association.
This field, however it may be fascinating, is even more simple for
analysis. People should be given liberty and welfare, and then they
would develop hope. Only then would they be capable of achieving the
libertarian dream of happiness. Ayn Rand says that liberty means mental
health. MPD actually reduces to a research of the unliquidated
situations and inadequate fixations, their taking out to consciousness
and recovery of the mental and organic health.
4. Nations' subpersonalities
Recently an American psychiatrist has said that we were all located in a
same boat. The nations that are now passing through a transition stage
and are knocking on the Europe's door in a rush into the era of
capitalism, need understanding and support.
One can not speak of a true self responsibility in the cases of those
nations which have had the previous rule imposed on them - the rule
that
made them miserable and helpless and which has continued to this day
to
plunder and mistreat them. The ruling class is still applying a
brainwashing and is abusing their feelings to maintain that way their
own power.
As Ayn Rand says, the historical interrelationship of some Balkan
nations is contained in the endless wars and clashes. The term
"balkanization" does derive from such circumstances. The upbringing
that
is based on a belonging to ethnicism breaks up one's personality and
renders poor estimates and prejudices, while pushing millions of people
to spin around their national myths and archetypes. Similar psychologies
are produced by other kinds of collectivisms as well, including various
statisms and bureaucratic systems. Communism has deteriorated the
inherited condition, has impoverished the local populations and
furtherly confronted them. Nowadays the national myths of a great
Serbia, great Albania, etc. are quite fashionable in the Balkans. New
languages that are status symbols of belonging to a certain nation
and
theories of national origins of these peoples keep sprouting.
The local nationalists and their extras, in order to preserve their
positions while exploiting the conveniences and infrastructures from
the
inherited power, are working on a discrediting of the Serbian people and
the Serbian opposition so that they could be the only partners of the
international community. They are falsely representing the Serbian
people in the world, they are transforming it into a general culprit
and
a sacrificial lamb and are channeling a collective aggressiveness onto
it. To speak of a collective responsibility of a nation means to yield
to a crowd psychology. This is a collectivism in its darkest form.
The
truth about Serbs is different. The Serbs have have always liked the
West and the USA, they favor joining with Europe and NATO because for
centuries they have stood at the defending frontiers of the European
civilizatiuon. In Serbia there has never occured any oppression or
persecution of Jews, but rather the Serbs and the Jewish people have
always lived in harmony and friendship. These are actual facts - the
rest are lies.
Such political career makers and extremists, who for the sake of their
careers are pushing millions of their compatriots into sufferings,
are
equally harmful for the international community and for the world's
peace and stability, and they cost the international community a lot.
That is why they ought to be replaced so that the international
community can appoint in their place moderate and balanced pragmatists.
Serbs, wo have always been wise and sturdy, are nowadays a tired and
ruined people: only five percent of them are healthy under the world
criteria. The nation's mental health is weakened to a significant
degree. A massive and disturbing trend of sorting the social trash
of
the previous system into groups and gangs that sometimes even gain
a
power is noted. Psychopats are a very interesting group from the present
and local point of view. The main symptoms are impulsiveness,
unrestrained aggression and sexuality, lack of conscience, sympathy
and
consideration for the others. While they appear to have no interest
for
affiliative relations with people, they often join the groups and
organizations of very disturbing social influence. They can be very
coherent in their groups, sometimes they behave with a charm and
spontaneity so they are thus able to manipulate other people to achieve
their ends. The persons of this kind were formed among the broken up
families where they had not been receiving an adequate upbringing -
they
have become various delinquents, criminals and agents. Unfortunately,
nowadays such persons often hold the positions from which they can
make
big problems for the citizens, and this just happens to be the case
in
Serbia. Serbia is nowadays a heaven for the asocial personalities.
In the Balkans the previous national states are reaching their end and
the current repitition of nationalism is only a passing stage towards
civil societies. The world renown business strategist Kenichi Ohmae
is
right when he says that nation states are just dinosaurs waiting to
die
and that they are not capable of ensuring a further growth.
Ayn Rand says that a group of intellectuals after World War One, in
order to stop the balkanization process, formed the former countries
-
Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Czechoslowakia. These countries were necessary
at the time. Today these countries are no longer necessary. Therefore,
the Balkan peoples need to be assisted in their adaptation to the new
circumstances that have been imposed on them and which have never been
their personal choices.
The Balkan peoples should be assisted to reach dialogue and peace. In
place of poor judgments, prejudices and conflicts they need to live
in a
cohabitation with the differences and in a search for the similarities
that are abundant and for common interests. Instead of giving word
to
the quarrelsome politicians and warriors, an opportunity should be
given
to those that Ayn Rand suggests: anthropologists, historians,
psychologists, sociologists - who ought to study in an objective way
everything that burdens the mutual relations and bring that to the
level
of conscience and reveal it. Only then will a new page in their
relations be turned.
The right solution is capitalism and civil societies. The exit lies
in
the individuals, Margaret Mead would say. "Never doubt that a small
group of thoughtful, committed persons can change the world. Indeed,
it
is the only thing that ever has happened." Our contributionin in Serbia,
ever since the beginning of our cooperation with the ISIL in 1992, has
been translation of the libertarian authors and the pamphlets into
local
languages, and their promotion and spreading in the public. The
libertarian ideas are now present in our country, we have given our
contribution and we are ready to develop our activities even more.
This
work of mine has the same purpose. During this time of cooperation
with
the ISIL we have realized the power of truth. So, Frederic Douglas
- the
writer, orator, abolitionist and a former slave who lived between 1817
and 1895 - has said in his lifetime, "When a great truth once gets
abroad in the world, no power on the Earth can imprison it or prescribe
its limits or suppress it. It is bound to go on till it becomes the
thought of the world." Hasn't he been right?
