PSYCHOHISTORY
Articles & Texts
[Books texts] [Journal Articles] [Charts] [Prenatal]
[Trauma Model] [Cultic] [Web links] [Cartoons] [Other]
|
Digital
Archive of PSYCHOHISTORY Articles & Texts [Books texts] [Journal Articles] [Charts] [Prenatal] [Trauma Model] [Cultic] [Web links] [Cartoons] [Other] |
IIntroduction
1.) The Nature Of Simple Life In The Balkans
2.) Battering As A Way Of Life
3.) Sexual Abuse
4.) Traditional Life: Combination Of Channeled Rage And Love
5.) Two Case Studies
6.) Some Current Data On Child Abuse
7.) The Death Of The Patriarch And The Dissolution Of The Yugoslav Zadruga
8.) Serbia And The Feelings Of Victimization
9.) War Fantasy And Trial Action
~ REFERENCES
There are many ways of telling the story of Serbia during the past decade. One of them Is the story of severely abused children, whose fantasies for revenge have been steadily growing and voiced, focusing primarily around two early traumas: sibling rivalry (jealousy; fear of violence and death) and sexual abuse. They were spelled out In two major concerns - - the cradle of life (and glory; which Is Kosovo, the seat of their ancient glory; literally home or placenta) and sexual exploitation or rape.
These two major concerns reemerged In 1981, with the first Albanian riots In Kosovo, which were ruthlessly repressed. The Albanians were seen as rivals, competing for the cradle that belonged to Serbia and nobody else, cradle standing for mother's and father's love, their nurturing care, the threatening possibility of infanticide, asphyxiation, loss of home, hearth, life. This fear was soon articulated In additional way: the Albanians posses an extreme potency, they are breeding at an enormous rate, they are copulating all the time, their own women are not enough, they make advances at our women, too, in fact they are raping them, even little girls and nuns.
The first fear gradually spread out and eventually covered the fantasy world provided by cradle to grave verbal image: the cradle is not only Kosovo, the seat of medieval Serbia, it is not only where the Serbs live, it is, moreover, wherever the Serbs had been buried and their bones laid to rest. Every single piece of such territory is actually Serbia, that is, home; it is not the living that constitute the country, it is the graveyards that delineate its borders and make fighting legitimate.
The search for enemies therefore started with Albanians as the target, moving only much later further on: to Slovenes (for siding with the Albanians or showing some sympathy), and quite late to the Croats, still later to the Moslems of Bosnia. The very painful nature of childhood traumas involved in this were quite obvious to a psychohistorically Inclined observer. Slobodan Milosevic actually became the great leader of Serbs In 1987, when he had a remarkable speech, promising a big rally: "Nobody has the right to beat my people! I promise you to take care of it: nobody will be beaten any more!" This forceful message made him an instant hero, a charismatic leader, a cru-sader who promised to fight back-and his people loved and adored him for it. Within few months, Serbia was literally covered with his pictures, thousands of people chanted his name, greeting him as their savior, promising to follow him to the end of the world. The rest of Yugoslavia was either embarrassed-a communist as a charismatic leader at the end of the eighties! -- or perplexed, then more and more frightened.
In fact, I can think of no better case In contemporary Europe to sub-stantiate Jerrold Atias' study on childhood punishment and adult hypnotizability (60) than what happened between the Serbs and Milosevic' in 1987: the Serbs were waiting for him, they created him and they followed him gratefully and more than voluntarily in a hypnotic trance. it was a perfect example of a two-way hypnotic power, the leader enchanting the people, the people enchanting their leader. It was also a perfect example of a popular hero leading his nation through the birth channel.
Three years later, In December 1990, with communist rule gone all over Eastern Europe, the communist party of Serbia finally agreed to elections (the last one to do so In Eastern Europe, excepting Albania); Milosevic' and his party won, Serbia providing the only such case in Eastern Europe. Their election slogan "No uncertainty with us!" tells a lot about the deprivations of Serbian childhood, where any certainty, however painful and abusive it may be, seems the best way of life. While all over Eastern Europe, in varying degrees, people were voting for change, risk, alternative, with ballots or their feet, in more or less vel-vety revolutions, the Serbs behaved in a way typical for battered children: The communist party as the parent was seen as the only provider of love and care; if love comes mixed with anger, harsh treatment, punishment, battering, It is nevertheless love, security, haven.(61) Two years later, in December 1992, the same pattern was repeated, although by then additional evidence of the abusive nature of this love was available.
One of the most interesting features of Serbian group-fantasies evolving into virtual paranoia of extreme self-pity and victimization, can be seen in their rhetoric, for instance in the use of the term genocide. To de-scribe the contemporary (i.e. not the WW2) fate of the Serbs It was first employed In 1985, when a group of intellectuals (members of the Academy of Science and Arts) wrote a memorandum on the current situation in Yugoslavia and the "economic subjugation" of Serbia by Slovenia and Croatia. The experience of Serbs in Kosovo was described as "physical, political, legal, and cultural genocide. "(62) A few months later the same definition was used in several petitions, letters of protest and public speeches all over Serbia. Although there was no evidence of actual killing going on, let alone loss of life on a major scale, the term was repeated over and over, gradually turning into a virtual obsession, justifying any counter-action. By 1988, there was hardly a Serb to be found unacquainted with this Greek-Latin word, and current events were freely mixed with the Second World War, the 19th century rebellions against the Turks, the Middle Ages, the battle of Kosovo in 1389, as well as the horrors that might yet come, In the near future.(63) This gruesome abuse of a very specific term meaning mostly the destruction of half of Jewish population during the Second World War, the extermination planned by Adolf Hitler, the ultimate crime against humanity, became so wide-spread It finally substituted about a dozen words, evolving into one of the most frequent words in the Serbian rhetoric. By mid-1991, when the current war started, it became the third most frequent word used to describe the Serbian fate in Croatia although Serbia was actually attacking Croatia, while still officially claiming It had nothing to do with wan Foreign diplomats were offered extensive studies on the genocide against the Serbs, a permanent exhibition on genocide opened In Belgrade, half a century old mass graves were opened and so on. The phenomenon included some ridiculous elements, provided, for Instance, by generals claiming the federal army was a victim of genocide In Zagreb: its officers were harassed by the neighbors, their life made difficult and unpleasant, in short, they were made to feel unwelcome in their Zagreb flats.
This development of pseudologia phantastica, or borrowing the mask of Jewish victims on a vast scale, was greatly helped by a handful of Jews from Serbia. They put their weight behind the "Serbian cause", drawing a direct parallel between the fate of Jews and Serbs, proclaiming Serbs one of the most victimized people in the history of humanity, standing alone in the face of the entire threatening world: Vatican plots, German plots, American plots, Croatian plots, all united with a single aim - to wipe out the Serbs. To prove it and to fight against it, an association of Jewish-Serb friendship was established in 1988; its leader (who survived Holocaust as a baby and was brought up In a Serb family In Belgrade) has this to say, using the first person plural for the Jews, the second for the Serbs: Your people have passed through Golgothas, too, through hell, your people know how to fight, know how to survive. I am positive this is the last hell you are meant to pass through. Bear it with dignity. I am simply delighted I have the privilege to live amongst you... You are actually one of the very few peoples on this earth that just does not know how to hate. Your enemies are lucky, the God has not provided you with this ability. You cannot hate even those who caused you evil. Jewish people are not used to being loved either. People work with us, they cooperate with us, they trade with us, but I have never been convinced of any genuine affection or love towards us. With the Serbs, the situation is totally different... So fight and save your nation! The European gangster democracy will never break the Serbs!(65)
This highly emotional collective fantasies of Identification with Jews have an interesting trait: they are used exclusively to express enormous fear and pain, as well as suicidal readiness for self-immolation. The mask of Jewish victims comes dose to necrophilla, as In their love for the Jews the Serbs recognize nothing else but Holocaust or a horrible pile of six million corpses, the only difference being that they will die proudly, In battle. But no amount of victims Is too great, as revealed by a recent state-ment: "There are 12 million Serbs, if half of us should get killed, there will still be 6 million of us left."(66) The other half of the stereotype and the possible use or abuse of Jews has been reserved for some enemies of the Serbs: The Slovenes or the north westerners are greedy, thrifty, money-makers and money-grabbers, blood-suckers, exploiters, who know no shame. These accusations played a major role, due again to the differences In tradition, that is the zadruga type of family which functioned without private property and left a heritage of seeing money as an evil, corrupting agent and commerce as a shameful, humiliating activity.
The extremely regressive way that the Serbian revitalization movement took could be seen, too, quite literally, as much of it was publicly produced, in sequences of mass spectacles; they resembled medieval pilgrimages and gatherings, revealing a massive slide into history. If during the Eighties all over Eastern Europe a popular rediscovery of the national past could be detected - this was one of the major forms of defiance against the communist power - and a lot of it was labeled nationalism, the case of Serbia was a particularly severe example of peopie trapped In time. The country was soon drowning In ancient history, with crowds dressed in folkcostumes, waving medieval flags and similar ancient symbols. The other quite visible feature was a rediscovery of religion, with heavily adorned Eastern Orthodox priests becoming prominent public figures.
And if all over Eastern Europe people proclaimed their boundless love for Europe (meaning the West, democracy etc.), behaving like orphans In search for adoptive mother, the Serbs developed a hostile attitude toward the same Europe or West, turning instead toward Russia. The 19th century romantic movement of Slavophiles was revived, stressing the bonds of blood, brotherhood, common soul, spiritual inclinations, purity of simple life, special destiny, religion, as well as a pronounced ability to fight and stand against the rest of the world. This new family romance provoked a great deterioration of the already tenuous relations between the northwest and the southeast: My God, Big Brother again?!
When actual fighting started, the fear proved well grounded: Russians soon became involved, either as soldiers, fighting for the common cause, or as a growing number of visiting public figures and writers, proclaiming the same with words. The most prominent among them Is Eduard Limonov, who often tours the battlefields, firing a few shots here, a few there, or promising the nuclear weapons to his Serb brothers, if the pro-Western Yeltsin finally falls, as he did on March 16, 1993 in Belgrade.(67) To substantiate his claims, one can quote many ar-ticles In Russian press; thus, an article on "Our men in Belgrade" In Novoe Vremya asked: "Why does not Boris Yeltsin, with so many nuclear bombs at his disposal, do something to help our Orthodox brothers" and answering with a battle cry: "To the weapons, Slavs!"(68)
It has been proposed by Casper Schmidt, in his "Trial Actions" article,(69) that groups go through various distinct stages during their preparation for war, floating fantasies, with a trial action being the most prominent. He defined trial action as "a form of floating a fantasy in which the verbal component of the fantasy is repressed," this mock battle being the safest way of Informing the leader what the group really wants. I would like to offer a comment or some additional thoughts and illustrations. Essentially, my argument is that this is true of the way the more advanced psychoclasses behave; children raised with a modest use of physical force, children permitted to quarrel but not to fight, usually show an Inhibition and repression of aggressive impulses; they learn to try and hide them and express them in all sorts of oblique ways, but are reluctant to display their aggression openly, even verbally. They resort to quite fantastic trial actions and mock battles.
On the other hand, children of much lower psychoclass, beaten, battered and actually taught that violent behaviour is a virtue, do not display such inhibitions. On the contrary, they quite easily express them and are extremely direct and picturesque when doing so. As I am convinced that this Is the case of the Serbs and Montenegrins, I will offer a collection of examples.
As early as 1987-that is, four years before the fighting actually started -- enormous crowds started chanting declarations of war. The message was either simple, "We want arms, give us arms!" or "The battle of Kosovo!" or "We want Russians!" (meaning to help us fight.) They were more elaborate, too, either on soccer stadiums, In pubs or rallies as one of popular rhymes reveals:
Tonight is our night,
Tonight so-and-so is set alight,
Let him roast from left to right
The wretched fuck had no luck.
In 1988 and 1989, old chetnik songs came into vogue, one of them announcing: "We'll drink Croatian blood, send us the salad, we'll take care of the meat (flesh), butchering the Croats."
Or: "Hey, ustashi, never mind, there's a deep pit set aside, For you, one metre wide, And deep one kilometer inside. " (70)
A great number of intellectuals and writers joined the game of war declarations. Thus In September 1988 Vuk Draskovic announced on BBC: "If Europe wants her own Lebanon, she'll have it!" Two months later, Milan Komnenic said to "all Albanian criminals" that "we all know we are at war and that this is not the first undeclared war in which we have found ourselves. But this war is the most brutal of all." He promised Serbs will fight and "we'll burn all Europe, if necessary." And the writers as leaders of the movement of rebirth through war were soon joined even by psychiatrists.(71)
in 1989, a public opinion poll was carried out among the high school students in Belgrade, with several respondent saying that "all Slovenes should be killed." A Montenegrin boy became famous by his public statement: "If the 7th session of the Central committee does not solve all our problems, I will search for freedom on the bombing fields like Bosko Buha" (this being a teenager hero from WW2 resistance). (72)
And the story goes on and on, reaching one of the first climaxes in June 1989, the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the battle of Kosovo, where several speakers, Milosevic among them, announced the approaching war-and the crowd roared with pleasure and approval. As it came nearer, the first paramilitary units started to pose with weapons, knives Included. In winter 1989119901 first saw a photograph of a group of heavily armed men, waving a black flag, with a scull and crossbones. As the urge for war increased dramatically, the threats be-came extremely elaborate and obscene, promising not lust war and death, but endless torments, mutilations, rapes, all of It In garish de-tails. The Americans might not be aware of It, but one of the most fa-mous Serbian painters, who loves to be a poet, too, has written an epic poem in seventy verses on their eventual fate: From their sockets your eyes shall ooze, Gorged as they drip by crows let loose. Backward hence-forth shall turn your toes, And with dogs you shall scramble for bones. Black shroud shall envelop your home, From the itch no scratch shall help you. Your sickle shall cut thorns full of snakes, And icy stone your scythe shall rub. Your girdle shall be the horse's cord, And beggar's cane your main support. Down to the ground your guts shall dangle' Fowl shall peck you up to the waist, From the waist up your flesh worms shall gnaw. Dying on end, unable to die, With your own hands digging your grave. Smitten forever by Negro wrath.(73) When the same man uses oil and brush Instead of words, he loves to paint the scenes of war devas-tation, for Instance the death of Vukovar: "Vukovar was liberated from the Croat Nazis. They were helped by Central European scum. They crawled from under the papal tiara, as a dart of a serpent's tongue that protruded from the bloated Kraut and Euro-communal over-stretched anus. The figures of Genseher, Kohl, van den Broeck, de Michelis, Mock, and Waldheim will help me finish my new painting, The Mocking of Christ, in the manner of Bosch. The title will be augmented into The Mocking of Serbian Christ."(74)
Epic or lyric poems with similar contents have lately developed into the latest artistic craze In Serbia, based mainly on the ancient tradition of magic curses. Some of them are even written by teenage girls, for instance on "Europe the bitch", which strings a long line of curses, concluding:
"Your screams, bitch, will be lonely, no one will hear them because we are heading for the sky to punish God!"{75}
In short: the approaching reality was forecast, with atrocities spelled out in forte fortissimo, spread out In print, and no verbal component repressed, long before they happened. Most of it could be detected in cartoons and similar visual material as well, again in advance, as an avalanche of printed media reveal. But there is a notable exception: sexual abuse or, to be specific, rape.
Let me return to the dominant hi-polarity of Yugoslavia in the mid-Eighties, the northwest - southeast split, meaning mostly Slovenia and Serbia as the most outspoken representatives of the great divide. Slovenia, as I have shown, increasingly behaved like a rebellious adolescent: provocative, nasty, let's raise hell type of behavior. That at least was how an Important part of the opposition behaved: sexual freedom was one of the most prominent ways of showing off, of proving freedom and gaining it at the same time. Among many printed proofs of this phenomenon Is Its self-portrait as Pornoslavia: the heroine of a comic strip, a bi-sexual, more lesbian than heterosexual, prepared for a sadomasochistic orgy and determined to enjoy it. In 1988 she was openly saying: "Rape? Go ahead, the pleasure will be mine. But let's not be mistaken: you'll be sorry!"(76)
Such comic strips, some of them running under the title of "hard-fuckers, were an Important component of the so-called "Slovene spring" or "Slovene syndrome," that Is, its growing opposition against communism and the patriarchal regime of Yugoslavia, the deliberate rocking of the boat. The so-called alternative scene in Slovenia was very strong, closely connected to various artistic movements In the West, and finding enormous satisfaction In being as provocative as hell. It spelled out as clearly as possible: "War is rape - let's enjoy it when it comes. "(77)
When It did come, there was a lot of joy In it, and It offered great sat-isfaction. But there was not a single actual rape! /_\164
The fighting lasted for ten days, It was a very modern affair, and the overt sexual abuse played no part In It. When it was over, it was over,
The Poisonous Placenta: November 1991
Serbian political orgy
Slovenes were more than satisfied with the result, nobody dreamed of prolonging it by going over the border and fighting for Croats or Bosnians, even less to cross over and have some fun in raping. For the more advanced psychoclass, the chapter was over.
On the other hand, in the printed media in the rest of Yugoslavia there are no cartoons or comic strips with open sexual contents, let alone rapes. And there are no pictures of naked or half naked people at all. (Of course, I am not referring to pornographic magazines, which are numerous and show very explicit pictures.) In fact, I cannot provide any cartoons with women at all. They are lust not there. All political cartoons or article illustrations from Croatia to Bosnia and Montenegro show men and men exclusively: adults, boys, babies, but never women or girls. The situation is the same in either peace or war: women are absent.
And yet, as we are by now painfully aware, women are one of the prime targets of the current war, be it Bosnia or Croatia. No reliable figures are available) but there arc firm reasons to believe that thousands of women, of all ages, have been raped so far. Yet none of it can be seen in nonverbal communication.
On the other hand, the trial action, as well as the actual, very real actions, have been full of direct, non-repressed verbal threats of just that: We shall rape, we want to rape! As early as 1986, a man proclaimed In a public gathering In Belgrade: "Let them (the Albanians) rape our women, we shall rape, too!"(78) In 1988, there were already large crowds shouting: "We'll fuck so-and-so!" (names provided) and using various four letter words in public speeches, in connection with specific names, some of them drowning in obscenities. And they more than fulfilled their promises.
What accounts for this intriguing pattern? The reason can probably be found In a fairly early mode of childhood, where children are largely brought up by women, men being high above the job. Women are the sole source of love and care, but at the same time children, particularly boys, are prodded and taught to despise them. The conflicting feelings of love and hate towards women in general, love for the affection received, resentment for the affection not received and hate for the abuse suffered in the process, all seem to accumulate, waiting for an outburst of revenge. Or the reason may be hidden In an enormously high incidence of direct sexual abuse of children, who just cannot bring themselves to touch the subject, unless it is expressed In a socially accepted, unthreatening way of swearing and shouting obscenities.
Let me conclude with an observation on "ethnic cleaning" All such expressions, not to mention the reality they cover, are revolting, but this one is inappropriate, too, in fact as misleading as it can be. it has nothing whatsoever to do with the concept of cleanliness, which implies order, discipline, punctuality. On the contrary, it is sheer tenor on a vast scale, messy, dirty, drunk, random, berserk. And there is no plan behind it, no vision of a structured, orderly, rational eventual life. The wish behind it is very simple: Let's huddle together, brothers, and let's butcher as many of those who do not deserve to be our brothers any more, before they butcher us. Let's inflict our childhood traumas upon others, rather than work it through in our new freedom. And let's enjoy the messy carnage!
As a shocked observed put it: "There is a repulsive Serbocroat proverb about a cretin sexually abusing the deaf-mute. I think about it often."(79)
In fact, if, as deMause has said, wars are flashbacks to abusive childrearing practices, the one in Bosnia offers a perfect example: chaotic, torturous childhoods turned into chaotic, torturous war.
|
Digital
Archive of PSYCHOHISTORY Articles & Texts [Books texts] [Journal Articles] [Charts] [Prenatal] [Trauma Model] [Cultic] [Web links] [Cartoons] [Other] |
To report
errors in this electronic
transcription please contact:
[email protected]