Them And Us
To effectively deal with terrorism, we should recognize the power of cult thinking and how pervasive it is.

BY JULIANNE POIRIER LOCKE

Love your enemy is a radical moral teaching that is generally ignored. But psychiatrist Arthur J. Deikman says it’s important to recognize ourselves in our enemies in order to understand and deal with them.

A Harvard-educated M.D. and clinical professor of psychiatry at UCSF, the soft-spoken Deikman is author of Them and Us: Cult Thinking and the Terrorist Threat (Bay Tree Publishing, 2003). Deikman is routinely consulted as an expert on cult psychology and earlier this year discussed terrorism and cult thinking as a guest of Michael Krasny’s on KQED-FM radio’s Forum program.

Among the most surprising and perhaps unsettling conclusions of Deikman’s research is that cult thinking permeates all our lives and perspectives. We unconsciously participate in cult thinking, for example, each time we congratulate ourselves for belonging to a superior circle of humans—because that supposes inferior persons exist outside the circle.

“A basic problem in cult behavior is the devaluing of the outsider,” says Deikman, who welcomed me to his book-lined study and answered questions from an armchair beside a cello and a stand scattered with loose sheet music. As a dense Tamalpais fog obscured his view of the East Bay, Deikman spoke about how a basic practice of cult psychology—the demeaning of outsiders—is part of countless social structures, including those we consider admirable. “Once you devalue the outsider, then you can do anything you want because they’re defined as not-you,” Deikman explained. “The fiction that then becomes easy to maintain is that the world is comprised of them and us. It’s easy to categorize the terrorist as completely alien, evil, crazy, but the motives and concerns of such people are no different in kind from our own. We often engage in forms of cult thinking similar to that of the terrorist—not as intense, but similar.”

It’s a repellent idea—that we, even to a lesser intensity, practice the same them-and-us mind-set that paved the way for the attacks of September 11 and preceded such horrors as Waco and Jonestown or the rise of Stalin and Hitler.

Yet by Deikman’s definition we nevertheless participate in cult thinking when we practice certain unconscious behaviors common in families, corporations, religious groups and political organizations. Even in our most cherished social groups, according to Deikman, we often share key thought and behavior elements with cults: reliance on an esteemed leader, a shared fantasy, absence of dissent among followers, a sense of superiority over outsiders and conformity to group behavior. This description fits a range of groups from high school cliques and dysfunctional families to exclusive religious congregations or political administrations. It also fits terrorist organizations, including al Qaeda.

It is not Deikman’s intent to suggest our participation in cult thinking makes us criminals; rather, his goal is to educate us about the way cult thinking works so we can become conscious of when it occurs. “Learning about how it works,” claims Deikman, “armors you against it, enables you to recognize it and take steps to thwart it instead of being captured by these same forces we’re talking about. Awareness is a great defense.”

We need to understand what makes a person become a terrorist since no one, according to Deikman, is born that way.

“Humans share the same fundamental needs and desires. We are all alike on the deepest level. People want security, protection. We want to take care of our children and we want to lead a meaningful life. This is true of everyone. And it’s much more important than the way we dress or the language we speak or the religion we have. And the strongest human impulse,” says Deikman, “is not preservation of the self, but of the self-image. We need to feel that our lives have meaning, that we are good and that we are valued. And terrorist organizations actually offer that to their members, saying, ‘Here’s a purpose, you’re serving God, you’re doing good, you may die but you’ll be lauded by the community and your family will be raised up.’ All this stuff is fed into the fantasy. As far as we know from reports that have come back, even then it takes special training and isolation to get these martyrs’ brigades going. And then their society considers them to be heroes. There’s no question about it.”

IN THIS COUNTRY, Deikman explains, “we’re heroes if we rescue people from flaming buildings. Soldiers give their lives and we receive them as heroes. But the enemy is always in a separate category. I’ve read that the biggest problem generals have is getting soldiers to shoot at other human beings. To actually put in your sight and pull the trigger on another human being is very difficult. For good reason we have strong inhibitions against killing.”

Those inhibitions, however, can be overcome. “People become terrorists,” Deikman explains. “They are not born that way. They experience a transition from angry disagreement, to support of a terrorist organization and, finally, to engaging in terrorist acts. The progression may be gradual or rapid, depending on the beliefs and actions of the people who matter to the terrorist. Violence is justified by the sense of outrage at recent or previous wrongs. Violence is also attractive because it can dispel feelings of impotence. Even though the group’s political goals may actually be impossible to achieve, revenge and the sense of empowerment can be enough.”

As a result of cult thinking, Deikman explains, a terrorist “believes he or she is serving a higher power that renders the usual moral constraints inapplicable. Thus women and children become legitimate targets. Dissent or criticism of the group’s position is labeled heresy and not allowed, and typically there is a leader who is looked on as inspired by God.”

It is important to recognize that al Qaeda is similar to other fundamentalist religious groups throughout history who have demonized people to justify hate crimes and terrorism. “The Crusades are an example of horrendous behavior in the name of God or a particular faith,” said Deikman. During the Crusades, Christians who slaughtered the so-called infidels were celebrated as heroes.

“Anytime you set up absolutes where you’ve got the devil and evil, there’s no compromise possible,” said Deikman. “That’s the problem with the current war on terrorism. The terrorists have been defined as evil.” The crimes are evil, but the agent is the product of cult thinking. What is behind the cult? Deikman doesn’t suggest attempting to negotiate with hardened terrorists, but there is a need to understand what is going on in order to do anything about it. “People who do not do terrorist acts themselves but who may support or be part of a supportive network and background for terrorists, those you can talk to,” says Deikman. “But you have to ask what are they concerned about? Why would they support terrorism? What’s going on in them? And those questions aren’t being asked.”

What Deikman proposes is no easy task—these questions must be asked of those who have demonized inhabitants of the United States. Doris Lessing, in her passionate foreword to Deikman’s book, gives a disturbing example:

Outside our chief Moslem Mosque, in London, at the time of the September 11 attack, a Moslem youth was filmed saying, “Did you see those yuppies flying out of the windows? It was so funny.” He meant the people jumping to their deaths. One’s blood freezes at what is revealed here. First the language of the dispossessed; the word “yuppies.” Envy, powerfully part of the hatred of the Great Satan. And then, those people working at the World Trade Center, and they included Moslems, were enemies, not human, their deaths were “funny.” The youth was rebuked by religious superiors, but the chilling evidence is there on record, and to be learned from.

Learning from those who have demonized you is a daunting task. Still, Deikman insists that we must try to communicate, and to better understand. “I’m not saying you can reason with Osama bin Laden, but he got to his position via a series of psychological steps and the people who support him one way or another have certain needs that are being met by those actions. What are those needs? Are those people angry with the Untied States? Why? You can’t say they’re angry with the United States because we’re so good. You listen to the speeches of our noble president and that’s the only explanation. The question is never raised that perhaps some of our policy has engendered some of this hatred; you don’t hear that at all.”

THE CURRENT REPRESSION of dissent in the United States is cult thinking, for example, when critics of federal policy—such as fund-cutting for levee repair in Louisiana—are accused of being haters of the president. Critics of federal policy following the September 11 attacks were accused of threatening national security or, alternately, accused of being terrorists themselves. In a cult, one never criticizes or questions the leader. Dissidence is not tolerated in cults, and the leader is often considered to be divinely inspired.

One aspect of cult thinking especially attractive is the leader in whom one can believe. Deikman explains that humans share a deep need for a benevolent and strong parent to make things right, to drive the car as it were, while we ride snugly in the back seat. But such a parental leader is mere fantasy. “Essentially, we want to have a shepherd,” explains Deikman, “and so we’ll make someone else a shepherd and ignore the fact that the shepherd is actually another sheep.” We do this when we are not willing to think for ourselves, to struggle with the complexities of the world.
“We’re in a world situation that no one can figure out,” says Deikman. “There are more factors than we can account for. We have to be aware of that, otherwise we come up with simplistic solutions that create more trouble than the problem they are set up to serve.”

The problem of getting simplified reporting from the major media outlets, now controlled by six corporations, is that the kind of information dispensed about groups like al Qaeda is likely to be simplistic enough to support a grand distortion of reality: that we are good and everyone else is bad. A great deal of political power rests, Deikman claims, upon our collectively maintaining the them-and-us fantasy rather than looking closely into the complex issues of our international policies. While we allow ourselves to be taken in by the distortion that we are morally superior to other cultures, we are less likely to demand accountability from our political leaders.

“The other problem,” says Deikman, “is that we are all biased. We all have a certain slant to things that has its limitations. I might be a liberal or a conservative, but there might be ways my position might be realistic and other ways in which I am quite ignorant. That is why we need dissent. And cult behavior works against that. We need dissent because life is so goddamned complicated and we have a limited ability to understand. And we’re prejudiced by virtue of whatever upbringing we’ve had. That’s why I say that the best response you can make to someone who disagrees with you or puts out a position with which you disagree is to ask, ‘Why do you believe that?’ And to ask it with real curiosity. Chances are you’ll learn something and the other person will be less demonized and they will appreciate that you’re asking and it will get you out of the armed combat between the two of you.”

Implied in Deikman’s advice is an interdependency not always acknowledged in a culture that supports the collective fantasy of the individual, the go-it-alone arrogance that might be fueling hatred toward the United States. The fantasy that we do not need others—other cultures, other perspectives—because we are superior, leads us into the them-and-us trap in which we, like the Muslim youth with his chilling response to the September 11 attacks, are able to view the deaths of other persons with a mere good riddance. If we are participating in cult thinking, we accept news reports of dead Iraqis with little or no feeling. We can’t identify with them as fellow parents, siblings and children who share our basic needs and concerns.

“I’ve been struck by the fact that people say in this war as in previous wars the enemy is a number,” said Deikman. “They used to say, ‘15 Vietcong killed.’ They didn’t say 15 surgeons killed. And now they don’t say 15 husbands or 15 brothers. They don’t say any of that stuff that would cause us to identify. We talk about our own soldiers in Iraq and show them on PBS but PBS doesn’t show pictures of slain Iraqis or slain insurgents and I don’t expect that they would. But the fact that they don’t says something about the way our perception is kept distorted.”

Distorted perception is part of all cults and cult thinking, which is why cults discourage deviance from group norms and squash dissidence. “What’s missing from our political discourse is any looking at our own behavior and acknowledging it,” said Deikman. “You don’t get a word of that from Washington. And it’s crazy unless you say the explanation is we are good and they are evil. As long as you have that mind-set there’s nothing to be explored.”

What we tacitly agree to as a populace is reflected on a more intimate scale in our work and social lives. “The division of them and us is not just in war but is a part of our everyday lives,” Deikman says. “You get a certain security of thinking you’re good, but at the expense of not seeing what’s actually going on, the expense of not being able to look at yourself.”

Anticipating perhaps our reluctance to look at ourselves in relation to cult thinking, Deikman has created a checklist to aid in the process. In an unpublished short paper titled, “How to Think Like a Terrorist,” Deikman lists six ways in which we all engage in forms of cult thinking.

1. Speaking of adversaries or outsiders (e.g., conservatives, liberals, yuppies, blue-collar, rich, poor) as if they were all the same; characterizing them by negative traits only; attributing unflattering motives to them but not to oneself.

2. Lacking interest and information concerning the actual statements and actions of opponents or outsiders.

3. Failing to consider the possible validity of an adversary’s point of view.

4. Not taking a critical look at one’s own position.

5. Disapproving or rejecting a member of one’s group for departing from the group position; devaluing the dissident, regarding him or her as an annoyance or problem.

6. Feeling self-righteous.

“Terrorist thinking,” Deikman says, “is an intensification of the everyday distortion of reality in which we all take part: the creation of Them and Us. We seldom notice that we are doing this, but the reality is that all human beings share similar passions, similar needs for meaning and security, and the similar problem of confronting death.” Deikman points out that because the potential for nobility and violence co-exists in each of us, the role of societies is to reinforce which of the two will dominate.

Deikman proposes that beyond the other popular distortion that a shepherd—who is really just another sheep—can solve it all for us and keep us safe, is this fundamental reality: Humanity exists in a vertical configuration. Deikman calls it the eye-level world. “It doesn’t mean we’re the same, it means we occupy the same basic human level. Some are skilled in languages, some in mathematics. There’s no reason a person can’t have superior skills, but we’re at eye level when it comes to what we need and what we’re afraid of. If you look at the deep needs and concerns we all share, there is no Them—there is only Us.”

Lest he be misunderstood as a moralist, Deikman reminds us, “Letting go of the us-and-them mind-set is not a question of being ‘good’ but of being practical because cult thinking is a perpetuation of the fantasy, requiring us to distort or diminish reality. And above all, in the problem of dealing with terrorism we need to be realistic.”

For further information on cult psychology, go to www.deikman.com

BY OF ARTHUR J. DEIKMAN BY JULIANNE POIRIER LOCKE

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