Existential Psychology

Dehumanization

By  | 

When we hear about monstrous acts, about atrocities like genocide, we’re apt to paint the perpetrators as monsters, as less than human. The psychological reality is more complex because the perpetrators rationalize their monstrous acts through this very same process of dehumanization, painting their victims as less than human, calling them ‘cockroaches’, ‘rats’ , fully believing in the righteousness of their cause, in the need for ‘extermination’.

Only through the rationalization of dehumanization can most perpetrators commit their monstrous acts. These same people surely have moments of tenderness within their own families and cultural groups, they have known kindness, generosity, mercy. They don’t consider their evil acts to be evil because they don’t consider their victims to be human.

Actually at the center of humanistic thought is the insight that there is nothing in you that couldn’t also be in me. This goes for our best and our worst qualities, for all that is noble and all that is dastardly within us. With this insight comes understanding. We don’t condone monstrous acts but we do see a fuller picture, gaining awareness about how people are able to commit these acts, realizing that the majority of ‘monsters’ don’t consider themselves to be monsters at all. By viewing these people as less than human we fall into the same psychological trap that they fell into to commit their evil acts in the first place.

Related posts:

  1. Afraid You Are A Monster If you are afraid you are a monster, well, we all have monsters lurking inside of us, monsters that Jung called our shadow sides. The monsters within us are not the problem, refusing to recognize them is, and this lack of insight into our own baser instincts is what leads to monstrous acts. The freudians […]...
  2. Narcissism Of Business People It can be hard to understand how many of the business people who represent large corporations could value profits over human lives and the sustainability of our planet, how they could continue to rob, cheat, lie, and price gouge in the face of the clear suffering of those who desperately need access to the products […]...
  3. The Lost  I dislike the term ‘predator’ to describe a person who rapes or kills innocent victims. Predators in the wild are not evil. They follow their genetic programming and do what their instincts tell them to do. They are not self-conscious like humans; they can’t think about thinking or conceptualize their behavior. They help keep balance […]...
  4. Abusers Need Help Too Most of us find it irresistible to vilify those we believe have done us or others wrong and the way we treat abusers is no exception. We’re talking about something quite different here from holding people responsible for their actions. What we’re talking about is a psychological process whereby we rob people of their humanity […]...
  5. Forgive The Person Who Has Wronged You Today The ingrained assumption that someone needs to apologize before forgiveness can take place leads those who have been wronged to carry around a painful emotional burden for a long time, sometimes their whole lives, since most perpetrators have no intention of apologizing for what they’ve done. What forgiveness does is close an open gestalt, it […]...
  6. Sadism And Rationalization There are very few sadists out there who would consciously categorize themselves as sadists. For one thing it’s not socially acceptable to derive pleasure from causing emotional, psychological, or physical pain. It’s not socially acceptable to delight in the humiliation and suffering of others. But from our existential point of view it’s not just the […]...
  7. Do Not Fear Conflict And Struggle Most of the worthwhile art and literature is produced out of conflict, it’s the creative expression of and the psychological solution to struggle. We all want life to be smooth sailing but not much of import comes out of smooth sailing. We either actively commit to our growth and self-actualization, in which case conflict and […]...
  8. Compassionate Listening Compassionate listening comes from a place of non-judgment where the goal is to hear and understand the other’s perspective better in order to help uncover and reduce the various sources of suffering in this person’s life. Compassionate listening becomes possible when we come to the insight that all of us suffer as human beings due […]...
  9. Self-Full Acts A lot has been made of whether there is such a thing as a selfless act. From the behavioral point of view the answer is a resounding no. All behavior is explained by reinforcements. If it’s not reinforcing in some way there will be no behavior. In the context of supposedly selfless acts, these acts […]...
  10. Confronting Cruelty The most important thing to understand about cruelty, about taking pleasure in inflicting pain upon on others, is that the life attitude is the result of stunted psychological and emotional development. Cruel people might seem powerful, imposing, even godlike, they might exercise real power in the world, but in actuality they’re broken human beings. And […]...
  11. Projection and Compassion The natural outgrowths of ignorance are fear, hatred, and violence. The natural outgrowth of understanding is compassion. A very useful idea to increase understanding is the psychoanalytic concept of projection. It’s a defense mechanism where we unconsciously try to place our own undesirable thoughts, motivations, or feelings onto others. The most undesirable feeling that exists […]...
  12. Scapegoating In any struggle for power, even if the cause is right and just or maybe especially when the cause is right and just, it’s almost irresistibly tempting to heap all the blame onto a specific group or entity, to paint this group or entity as evil and villainous, as the incarnation of all that is […]...
  13. The Draw of Being the Victim in a Relationship Victimhood Implies Innocence At the conscious level none of us want to be victims. Being victimized means getting damaged emotionally, psychologically, or physically and being powerless to stop it. Who in their right mind would want that? Yet the truth is that many people secretly or vocally do fancy themselves the victims in one or […]...
  14. Thoughts Are Just Thoughts Some people have thoughts so disturbing and disorienting that they wonder if they are evil. They feel isolated, that they’re flawed and different from everyone else. They’re terrified of what these thoughts might mean or what they might lead to. If you have these concerns, they make you, as Nietzsche would say, human all too […]...
  15. Fear Of Commitment Fear of commitment is something that plagues a lot of people, and while we usually think of the phenomenon in terms of romantic relationships, psychologically speaking it extends to any sphere of life where a choice must be made that will exert a decisive influence on the life path. When we pull back the layers […]...
  16. Loving Acceptance From The Existential Point Of View A question we’ve been hearing a lot in the wake of an election where incompatible life ethics, humanism on one side and authoritarianism on the other, have come to the fore is “How do I practice loving acceptance towards people who actively promote hatred, intolerance, bigotry, racism, sexism, and xenophobia?” The philosophical block for the […]...
  17. Emotional Detachment And Commitment Commitment is a vital ingredient for successful outcomes in any long-term endeavor, which might sound self-evident, but what does this mean for people who associate commitment with unwanted consequences The most frequent unwanted consequence is the feeling of being trapped, tied down, imprisoned. Many equate an act of full commitment with the loss of personal […]...
  18. Working With Abusers The tendency is to villainize abusers but trying to get them to accept the role of villain is a terrible idea. They won’t play ball, even if they seem receptive. What they will do is actively or passively thwart every therapeutic attempt. This is because at the conscious level abusers don’t believe they’re villains, they […]...
  19. Cultivating Compassion In The Face Of Hostility, Hatred, And Injustice In the face of hostility, hatred, and injustice the knee-jerk reaction is to respond in kind. Hostility rises up within us, our own hatred grows, we want to punish those perpetrators of injustice, to exercise revenge, to get the satisfaction of seeing them suffer for what they’ve done. When we let ourselves fall victim to […]...
  20. Abuse Is An Around The Clock Problem For Victims When laypeople conceptualize the detrimental effects of abuse they are likely to focus on the psychological, emotional, or physical pain caused by abusive actions in the immediate moment. But for victims of abuse it’s an around the clock problem, a constant specter hanging over everything they do. This is because of the expectation that abuse could […]...
Related Items