g A flexible use of the conception I have presented can provide a framework for understanding many types of harmdoing – for example, father-daughter incest. With all forms of harmdoing we need to identify what motivates the perpetrators, how their inhibitions are lost, and what blocks them from other ways of fulfilling motives.
In addition to cultural and subcultural characteristics (like devaluation of women, rules about ways of relating and sexual relations between men and women, tolerance for incest or sexual abuse) the culture of the family must be considered. This is largely the result of the parents’ past experience, their “blueprints” from their families of origin. Difficult life conditions in the society can generate intense needs; added to this are the conditions of life in the family. Within incestuous families emotional disconnection and withdrawal by the wife are common.
Individual characteristics assume special importance. In one type of incestuous family the man is insecure and has strong needs for being cared for, for emotional security, and for feelings of control. These needs had been satisfied by his wife, but her emotional and sexual withdrawal powerfully activate them. The evolution toward incest begins when a “parentified” daughter replaces the withdrawn mother, initially in physical caretaking (preparing food, etc.), then in providing emotional closeness. Ultimately, the father violates the parent-child boundary. His insecurity prevents him from seeking the satisfaction of his needs outside the family.
Another type of perpetrator clearly devalues women, and considers his wife and children his property, to do with as he pleases. In such cases physical violence is likely to accompany incest. In both types of incest some perpetrators use fantastic justifications or forms of moral equilibration: that it is good to teach the child about sex, or that incest protects the daughter from wild sex outside the home.
The mother is frequently a passive bystander. At least in the first type of incest she may (unconsciously) defend herself from awareness of it, partly because not being burdened by her family is one of her important needs. When the perpetrator is of the second type, fear may contribute to her passivity. Occasionally mothers join fathers or stepfathers as accomplices or coperpetrators.
Incest usually has a profound impact on the victim. In her own home, where she should be most secure, she is victimized by one parent and abandoned (not helped) by the rest of her family.
Part IV
Further extensions: the roots of war and the creation of caring and nonaggressive persons and societies
16 The cultural and psychological origins of war
Many of the psychological reactions, motives, and needs that give rise to genocide can be a source of war as well. Difficult life conditions and their psychological consequences combined with cultural preconditions can lead to the selection of another nation as the enemy rather than a subgroup of society.
War has other sources as well, of course, among them the relationship between a nation and one or more other nations and, more generally, the quality and mood of the international order. However, relations among nations are themselves shaped by their cultures, which join with “real” conflicts of interest and other conditions to generate the psychological reactions that are often the main cause of war.
Motivations for war
Like genocide, war may be an attempt to fulfill motivations that arise from difficult life conditions and cultural preconditions – the need to defend or elevate the personal and societal self-concept, the need for connectedness, the need for a renewed comprehension of reality.a Other motivations are power, wealth, and national or personal glory. In addition to occupying territory or gaining physical dominance, conquest may involve getting others to adopt one’s ideals and values. Conflicts of interest – conflict over territory or competition in trade – can also give rise to hostility and war. Insecurity and fear of attack are obvious sources of hostility and at times of “preventive” attack. Such fear may be realistic, as in the case of Poland facing Nazi Germany, or exaggerated. Feelings of injustice, deprivation, or suffering attributed to the actions of other nations can also be powerful sources of hostility.
Injured honor and the need to defend it (what Ralph White calls macho pride) are another important source of antagonism.1 But cultural and psychological factors determine what is insulting, what causes embarrassment or shame, and what is regarded as weakness or failure that must be balanced by the assertion of strength.
Like genocide, war is often the outcome of steps along a continuum of antagonism. Hostile acts by one party or acts of self-defense that are perceived as hostile cause retaliation, which evokes more intense hostility. A progression of mutual retaliation may start with small acts that escalate. Morton Deutsch calls this cycle of negative reciprocity the “malignant social process.”2 As hostility increases, nations may operate in a conflict mode. Each wants to impose loss on the other to gain relative advantage, even if this does not realistically serve security or other aspects of the national interest. One frequent antecedent of the conflict mode is a history of antagonism between neighboring states.
Cultural preconditions for war
The ideology of antagonism
Often what participants see as genuine conflict of interest or threat from another country is the result of “us”-“them” differentiation, negative evaluation and mistrust, or a societal self-concept.
The wars between India and Pakistan (1947-49, 1965, and 1971) are good examples.3 Free from British rule, the two became separate nations because of the mutual distrust, devaluation, and fear of Moslems and Hindus. The leader of the Moslem League, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, explained his insistence on separate states this way:
How can you even dream of Hindu-Moslem unity? Everything pulls us apart: We have no intermarriages.
