do be my enemy-1

8/3/2019 do be my enemy-1

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Journal of Analytical Psychology,2005,50,2734

00218774/2005/5001/27 2005, The Society of Analytical Psychology

Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600Garsington Road, Oxford OX42DQ, UK and 350Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

Do be my enemy for friendships sake(Blake)

Rosemary Gordon Montagnon, FranceEditor from 1987 to 1994

Abstract: The author explores our psychological need for enemies and the contribution

this makes to overt conflicts in the external world. Enemies serve as an opposite fromwhich we can differentiate ourselves, either as an individual or as a group; they help usto define our physical and psychological boundaries. Enemies provide a target and anoutlet for our aggression and also for the projection of the shadow. They also providethe stimulus to individuation, through the heroic encounter with the enemy in theunfamiliar world outside the home, particularly in adolescence. The psychic integrationof self and enemy is explored as the outcome of individuation.

Key words: aggression, concept of identity, individuation, psychological need forenemies, shadow.

And there is a prayer the Abyssinian person addresses to God: Dont, please, denyme an enemy.

What led me on to my theme and my thesisthat men and women needenemieswas not, at first, my clinical experience with patients, but events inthe world outside the consulting room, and in particular the events in theBalkans, and, in its most dramatic form, in Yugoslavia. As it appeared to me,

hardly had the people freed themselves from the big enemy, the Soviet State,than they looked around for a new, a smaller and a nearer enemy, the persons,the people next door, close by.

Of course, this is a simplified view, a simplified perspective of these events.No doubt there had been rumblings of distrust, dislike, rivalry and competi-tion for many years before, with their roots in history. Nevertheless the rapid-ity, the urgency and the violence of these recent eruptions provoked me toreflect and to explore my own field of study, the human psyche, for some more

light, some more understanding than history and politics alone can provide.My thoughts about enemy and enmity lead me first and foremost to theconcept of identity and to the establishment and the protection of identity.When I speak of identity, of personal or social identity, I denote by that term


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28 Rosemary Gordon Montagnon

the fact that a personor a groupand I will say more about that laterhascertain particular and characteristic qualities and also a certain continuity, acertain cohesion over time that marks him/her as separate and distinguishablefrom others. A mother, for instance, even from the earliest age, was specialand different from all others; in other words, they had from very early on aquite distinct and personal identity.

However, the concept of identity extends beyond this natural individualspecialness to a much more interesting and vital quality that has considerablepsychological consequences. It is a persons awareness that he or she is notonly truly distinct, separate and different from all others, but also that he/sheis a whole, a unique and relatively indivisible individual. This awareness, this

consciousness of ones own selfhood is indeed the basic goal of the processthat Jung has termed individuation; the development of this capacity to real-ize and to experience ones separateness, ones wholeness, ones uniqueness(Jung 1934/1950, para. 490).

Having spoken up to now of personal identity only, we must also look atand examine social identity, that is the experience of identity through identi-fication with ones race, nation, religion, class, gender or with particular socialand ethical norms. Obviously there is a real problem in the kind of relation-ship made between an individuals personal and his social identity or identi-

ties. Clearly some sense of social identity, that is of belonging to one or moresocial groups, is inevitable, is even necessary but is or should be compatiblewith the experience of personal identity.

But where the experience of personal identity is weak, fractured, vulnerableor unreliable then reassurance may be sought through submergence of onespersonal identity in the social identity. For it is through identification with asocial group that a persons sense of control and of power, and his belief thathe has indeed special characteristics and a definable existence is buttressed,

confirmed and assured by the identification with a social group, a nation, aclass, a work group, a sports club or even a street gang.But, and this is my contention, the experience of identity, whether personal

or social, is deeply enmeshed with and dependent on the existence and theexperience of boundaries and this experience depends so much on, and is soenmeshed with and so relevant to, the idea and the actual presence of theother, of the enemy.

Looking up the synonyms for enemy I found that they lend weight to myideas. Thus, antagonist, adversary, opponent, contender, contestant,

competitor, all reinforce the sense of otherness, and of opposition, ofstruggle, of separateness. Indeed the presence of an enemy makes and rein-forces awareness of boundaries, of being different, distinguishable, recognizedand recognizable as an other. An enemy is naturally suspected of wanting totest and to challenge the boundaries, of wanting to storm them, to overturnthem, to deny them, to ridicule them or even to melt them. The existence of anenemy forces one to be and to remain forever vigilant in relation to ones


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Do be my enemy for friendships sake 29

boundaries, and fully aware and conscious of who and what one really is andwhat one really values in oneself and for oneself. It is the enemy who keeps usaware of the danger of losing oneself or even forgetting who and what one is.It is the enemy who keeps us alert and on our toes, ready to defend what onevalues. In the words of an Abyssinian prayer: Dont please deny me an enemy.

My interest in this theme takes me on to the theme of the shadow. This is aconcept Jung developed to define and to denote that part of ourselvesthoughts, memories, feelings, actionsthat we would rather not know aboutand would rather not have to acknowledge as belonging to us. It is that part ofourselves that is so painful, so shameful and so frightening. Many of thecontents of the shadow belong to our personal history, to our own past that

we have split off from what we recognize as ourselves and that we have pushedinto the dark and obscure side of ourselves by repression, that unconscious,deliberate mechanism of forgetting. But the shadow, as Jung has described it,also contains primitive forces and processes issuing from the collective uncon-scious, that have never yet been conscious (Jung 1959, paras. 1319).

Clearly the presence of the shadow, the recognition that it exists inourselves, that it is part of us, this awareness is uncomfortable, is heavy andburdensome. It imposes on us a constant vigilance in order that we should notbe suddenly surprised by it, be in its grip and find ourselves acting out what

we have already condemned. But, what is also distressing is the fact thatawareness of our shadow disturbs our sense of identity, our confidence thatwe really do know who we are and what we can expect of ourselves.

The discomfort of living with this shadow can be alleviated, if not totallyundone, if we can actually unburden ourselves of it by projecting it, by invest-ing it and pouring it into somebody else. And who else would be more appro-priate for this particular psychic transaction than the enemy. Investing him/herwith our shadow qualities makes him even more truly detestable but alsofrightening. The enemy becomes the person we must really oppose, and whofacilitates that delicious sense of righteous indignation.

Another use of enemies in relation to our various psychic processes is astargets for our aggression; aggression is a fundamental and ineradicable char-acteristic of all social mammals including man (Stevens 1982, p. 227). Humanaggression, whether regarded as a basic constitutional and innate force or as alearned and acquired reaction to frustration is indeed a general, observableand undeniable fact. It demands acknowledgement and an arena in which itcan be exercised and enactedbut in order to express themselves fully and

satisfyingly they need the other, the enemy, the antagonist.I believe that aggressiona word that etymologically means to move

forward, to step towards urgentlyis separate and distinct from destructive-ness. Its roots are located in and nearer to Eros, the life force, than to Thana-tos, the death force. For as Stevens remarked, without aggression survivalwould be impossible, but survival also demands that aggression be con-strained (ibid., p. 227). Aggression is thus compatible with the ethologists


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view of it; but apart from its protection and defence of physical survival it isalso needed to ensure self-cohesion and self-maintenance, now and in thefuture.

In order to practise and exercise we need a partner, the enemy. Not allaggression has a consciously recognized enemy but all experience of aggressionis inescapably a search for an aggression-worthy object. The presence of anenemy ensures a certain amount of internal cohesion as well as pleasure andpride in ones own qualities, characteristics and distinctness. There is theamusing and thought-provoking essay by William Hazlitt, On the pleasure ofhating.

Nature seems made up of antipathies: without something to hate we should losethe very spring of thought and action. Life would turn to a stagnant pool were it notruffled by the jarring interests, the unruly passions of men.

(William Hazlitt 17781830)

The enemy is often recognized and marked out as the enemy by beingdifferent, looking different, speaking differently, in different tongues, and bybehaving differently, dressing differently and adhering to different aesthetic orreligious or political norms. So here is somebody to whom, so we believe, wemay express anger, rage, contempt and to whom we may act more or lessviolently with impunity and the absence of guilt.

Politicians have of course always known about the need for enemies. Theyhave known that in order to make, to create or to maintain internal peace,accord, agreement and unity they must designate and find an enemy or ene-mies, either outside their group or else inside it; the enemy will then be nameddissenter, deviationist, fifth columnist or the intruding foreigner.

This particular strategy, this manoeuvre, is well caught and satirized byOrwell in his novel 1984, in which the leaders themselves create the arch-

enemy, Emmanuel Goldstein; the masses are taught to hate him, to fear andto detest him. And in his novel Animal Farm the dominants, that is, the pigs,lead the anti-human battle cry, Four legs good, two legs bad.

The experience of ones aggression gives one a feeling of vitality, of beingenergetically alive; there is excitement, there are thrills. A depressed patient,who frequently expressed and even acted out her anger and her hostilitytowards her analyst, ends the last session before the summer holiday by say-ing, rather sadly and rather wistfully, I shall miss not having you around totease and torment; I will have no-one to be nasty to.

Here, as in the case of the shadow, the enemy can also be thought to beinside onea weakness whether physical or psychican unruly part of one-self, an achievement one is determined to better; all these can very well engageand rouse ones aggression. The idea of competition with and against oneselfhas often been encouraged and fostered by liberal and peace-loving educators,that is, self-competition.


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This brings me directly and logically to another archetypal figure that alsodepends on the existence of enemies, the figure of the hero. Jung saw it as thetask and the aim of the hero to work for, and to effect, separation from thecloying cosiness and dependence on mother, on home, family, childhood andall that is familiar (Jung 1956, para. 459). Instead the hero must wander intothe unknown, the strange, the new, the unfamiliar. He must prove himselfthere to be strong, brave, resourceful and perhaps even a cunning conqueror.But we must remember that in order to be or to become a conquering herothere must be somebody or something there to conqueran adversary, a con-testant that is an enemy.

Awareness of how difficult it is to leave home, mother and childhood, and

how daunting to venture into the unknown and face there the encounter and thebattle with the monsters is often shown and expressed in the various hero myths.The power of this archetypal personage, the hero, and the influence it can exerton the feelings, strivings and activities of an individual tends to be particularlyprominent during adolescence. Adolescence is indeed one of the most importantstages of transition in the human life cycle. It is at this stage that a person has toprepare to leave home, to set aside childish things; how he must plan, prepareand work towards laying the foundations of his/her own life style in terms ofcareer, profession and the making of his own family and future progeny. It is

well known, and no secret that, at least in Western society, adolescence is theage of strong aggressivity and rebellion. Of course, the hero archetype is presentand functions also at other stages of the life cycle and there are indeed otherperiods of transition. Nevertheless adolescence seems to be a particularlyimportant period of transition, making a particularly powerful impact both onthe individual adolescent as well as on the people around him/her.

It is thus not surprising that most societies have institutedmainly for itsadolescent boysinitiation ceremonies, ceremonies that are often arduous,painful, even cruel, demanding from the individual courage, persistence, thecapacity to bear pain, a readiness to learn and absorb, submission to the socialrules and the elders, and acceptance of the groups decision as to who isconsidered a foe, an enemy or a friend and ally.

Obviously since this is such an important feature and achievement for thehero, there must be somebody or something there with whom he can engage inbattle. Once more an enemy is required for the potential hero to engage with,so that his relationship with the heroic image, the heroic figure, can becomeembodied in a socially acceptable manner. The absence in our present culture

of such initiatory ceremonies or the devaluing or even ridiculing of the figureof the hero is very likely to tempt the adolescent nowadays to create his ownceremonies, his own tactics, his own hero figure, so he can prove to himselfthat he is indeed courageous, masculine and sexually potent. But this maylead to far less socially acceptable rituals, and to far less socially approvablemethods of confirming his manhood, both to himself and to others. The enemieshe then chooses as targets will lack a general social consensus. Delinquencies,


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crimes and arbitrary and random acts of violence may then become substitutesfor what the society has let go of, has suspended or even suppressed.

Then there is the opposition between the conscious part and the uncon-scious part of the psyche, a thesis that is basic to Jungs concept of comple-mentarity and compensation, that is, the inherent dynamics of the psyche.These are concepts essential to Jungs general thesis that the psyche is adynamic system, that energy depends on the presence of at least two opposingforces and that, therefore, opposites are the ineradicable and indispensableprecondition of all psychic life.

The experience of challenge and opposition is of course relevant to thefigure of the hero; and as I have already mentioned this unconscious arche-

typal figure, the hero, though particularly dominant in adolescence, yetbelongs to all human beings, men and women, all their life. Admittedly it ismore present and pervasive in some persons than in others and it will exert amore powerful and controlling influence in some stages in life and in somepersonal crises. Consequently, the heros particular association with challengeand opposition will be felt by everybody at some time in their life.

The enemythe challenger whom we have to oppose and fighthelps us torecognize and to confirm our own aims, goals, our own space, our own being,thoughts, values and beliefs. In fact, enemies can vitalize us, they can make us

feel energetic, full of life and they can provide us with, as it were, a sense ofour own raison dtre, with a sense of the possible meaning of our life and whyit is worth living. An enemy tends to dispel lassitude and depressive moods,when we are roused sufficiently to engage in battle to win.

These are the powerful dynamics in the psyche that propel societies into war.

Conclusion

I have argued that enemies fulfil a number of functions for us, but are theynecessary in order to have a personal or national identity? By threatening theboundaries of our identity, enemies can heighten our experience of theseboundaries and our determination to protect and to defend them, but it is notonly through a defensive response to threats that nations become strong or weas individuals become ourselves. In order to become oneself one needs toexperience the Other, but it is when the unconscious Other within ourselvesis denied that we then seek enemies to sharpen our sense of having a personaland distinct identity.

Enemies are useful to us in acting as recipients of our own shadow qualities,of those thoughts, feelings and actions we regard as bad and therefore unac-ceptable as being a part of ourselves. Although enemies provide temporaryrelief by serving as recipients of shadow qualities, without owning these uncon-scious aspects of ourselves we remain unevolved, incomplete and impoverished.

In terror, aggression and war, the internal enemy is projected and internalconflicts are enacted in the real world. In this paper, I have concentrated on


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the positive value and function of the enemy but we also have to remember thepain, grief, cruelty and suffering that enmity can and does create when we finda target against whom to unleash our aggression.

But as I am ending this paper and survey my arguments, it occurs to me thatby juxtaposing self and enemy we have only reached the second phase in thedialectical process of thesis and antithesis which, if all goes well, should leadon to the third and final phase, the achievement of synthesis, that is when thequalities of thesis and antithesis join up and combine and so make some-thingor somebodynew, enriched and more evolved. In other words this,the third phase, corresponds to Jungs coniunctio (Jung 1963). Such comple-tion of the dialectical process in the case of self and enemy is perhaps more

likely to be achieved if projections outward of, for instance, the shadow, arereduced, and if the encounter between thesis and antithesis happens and isworked out inside rather than outside our psyche.

Of course the emergence of a new self, the result of transformation andsynthesis, will not necessarily lead to the absence of all enmity. There will nodoubt quite soon arise new enemies; like a phoenix the new, perhaps superiorand more evolved enemy will rise from the ashes of the earlier enemy and solaunch a new cycle, a new dialectical process.

TRANSLATIONSOF ABSTRACT

Lauteur explore le besoin psychologique que nous avons davoir des ennemis etcomment cela contribue amener nos conflits dans le monde extrieur. Les ennemisservent dopposs dont nous pouvons nous diffrencier, soit en tant quindividu, soit entant que groupe; ils nous aident dfinir nos frontires physiques et psychologiques.Les ennemis fournissent une cible et un but notre agressivit et aussi nos projectionsdombre. Ils donnent aussi de lnergie lindividuation par le biais de la rencontre

hroque avec lennemi dans le monde tranger, quest-ce qui est hors de la maison, enparticulier dans ladolescence. Lintgration psychique de soi et ennemi est explorecomme tant un des rsultats de lindividuation.

Die Autorin untersucht unser psychologisches Bedrfnis, Feinde zu haben, und wiedieses hilft, unsere Konflikte in die Auenwelt zu bringen. Feinde dienen alsGegenstze, von denen wir uns differenzieren knnen, entweder als Individuum oderals Gruppe; sie helfen uns, unsere physischen und psychischen Grenzen zu bestim-men. Feinde und Feindinnen bieten ein Ziel und ein Ventil fr unsere Aggression undauch fr die Projektion des Schattens. Sie bieten auch eine Anregung zur Individua-tion durch den heroischen Zusammensto mit dem Feind oder der Feindin in derunbekannten Welt auerhalb unseres Zuhauses, insbesondere in der Adoleszenz. Diepsychische Integration von Selbst und Feind als Resultat der Individuation wirduntersucht.


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Lautrice esplora il nostro bisogno psicologico di avere nemici e il contributo che essoporta nel superare i conflitti nel mondo esterno. I nemici servono come un opposto dalquale noi possiamo differenziarci, sia come individui che come gruppi; ci aiutano a

definire i nostri confini fisici e psicologici. I nemici ci forniscono un bersagli e uno sfogoper la nostra aggressivit e anche per la proiezione dellombra. Forniscono anche unostimolo allindividuazione, attraverso lincontro eroico con il nemico nel mondo nonfamiliare fuori casa, in particolare nelladolescenza. Viene esaminata lintegrazione psi-chica del s e del nemico come risultato dellindividuazione.

La autora explora nuestra necesidad psicolgica de enemigos y el aporte que esto hacea la apertura de conflictos en el mundo exterior. Los enemigos sirven como opositores

desde los cuales podemos diferenciarnos, como individuos o como grupo; ellos nosayudan a definirnos en nuestras limitaciones fsicas y psicolgicas. Los enemigos nosproveen de un objetivo y de una salida para nuestra agresin y tambin para la proyec-cin de nuestra sombra. Tambin nos estimulan para la individuacin, a travs delencuentro heroico con el enemigo en el mundo desconocido fuera del hogar, especial-mente en la adolescencia. Se explora la integracin psquica de Self y enemigo en eldevenir de la individuacin.

References

Hazlitt, W. (17781830). On the pleasure of hating. In An Essay.Jung, C. G. (1934/1950). Conscious, unconscious and individuation. CW9i. (1956). The battle for deliverance from the mother. CW5. (1959). The shadow. CW9ii. (1963). The conjunction. CW14.Orwell, G. (1945). Animal Farm. Harmondsworth, Middx, UK: Penguin Books, 1956. (1949). Nineteen Eighty Four. Florida, USA: Harcourt Brace.Stevens, A. (1982). Archetype. A Natural History of the Self. London: Routledge &

Kegan Paul.

do be my enemy-1

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