| Doubling: The Faustian Bargain
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Generally speaking, doubling involves five characteristics.
There is, first, a dialectic between two selves in terms of autonomy and
connection. The individual Nazi doctor needed his Auschwitz self to function
psychologically in an environment so antithetical to his previous ethical
standards. At the same time, he needed his prior self in order to continue to
see himself as humane physician, husband, father. The Auschwitz self had to be
both autonomous and connected to the prior self that gave rise to it. Second,
doubling follows a holistic principle. The Auschwitz self “succeeded”
because it was inclusive and could connect with the entire Auschwitz
environment: it rendered coherent, and gave form to, various themes and
mechanisms, which I shall discuss shortly. Third, doubling has a life-death
dimension: the Auschwitz self was perceived by the perpetrator as a form of
psychological survival in a death-dominated environment; in other words, we
have the paradox of a “killing self” being created on behalf of what
one perceives as one’s own healing or survival. Fourth, a major function
of doubling, as in Auschwitz, is likely to be the avoidance of guilt: the
second self tends to be the one performing the “dirty work.” And,
finally, doubling involves both an unconscious dimension — taking place,
as stated, largely outside of awareness — and a significant change in
moral consciousness. These five characteristics frame and pervade all else that
goes on psychologically in doubling.
For instance, the holistic
principle differentiates doubling from the traditional psychoanalytic concept
of "splitting." This latter term has had several meanings but tends to suggest
a sequestering off of a portion of the self so that the “split off”
element ceases to respond to the environment (as in what I have been calling
“psychic numbing”) or else is in some way at odds with the remainder
of the self. Splitting in this sense resembles what Pierre Janet, Freud’s
nineteenth-century contemporary, originally called “dissociation,”
and Freud himself tended to equate the two terms. But in regard to sustained
forms of adaptation, there has been confusion about how to explain the autonomy
of that separated “piece” of the self-confusion over (as one
thoughtful commentator has put it) “What splits in splitting?”¹*
“Splitting” or “dissociation” can thus denote
something about Nazi |
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* This writer seemed to
react against the idea of a separated-off piece of the self when he ended the
article by asking, “Why should we invent a special intrapsychic act of
splitting to account for those phenomena as if some internal chopper were at
work to produce them?”² Janet meant by “dissociation” the
hysteric’s tendency to “sacrifice” or “abandon”
certain psychological functions, so that these become “dissociated”
from the rest of the mind and give rise to “automatisms,” or
segmented-off symptom complexes.³ Freud spoke, in his early work with
Josef Breuer, of “splitting of consciousness,” “splitting of the
mind,” and “splitting of personality” as important mechanisms in
hysteria.4 Edward
Glover referred to the psychic components of splitting or dissociation as
“ego nuclei.”5
And, beginning with the work of Melanie Klein, splitting has
been associated with polarization of “all good” and “all
bad” imagery within the self, a process that can be consistent with normal
development but, where exaggerated, can become associated with severe
personality disorders now spoken of as “borderline
states.”6 |
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