The Psychology of Demonization

by Nahi Alon, Haim Omer

Throughout human history, the relationships of individuals and groups have been disrupted by what the authors sum up as "demonization," the attribution of basic destructive qualities to the other or to forces within the self. Demonization results in constant suspicion and blame, a systematic disregard of positive events, pressure to eradicate the putative negative persons or forces, and a growing readiness to engage in escalating conflict. Richly illustrated with 24 case stories, this book explores the psychological processes involved in demonization and their implications for the effort to effect change in relationships, psychotherapy, and beyond the office or clinic in the daily lives of families, organizations, and societies.

Recent popular psychology--the authors argue--has tended to encourage demonization. An appropriate alternative to this view is known as the "tragic view": Suffering is inevitable in life; negative outcomes are a result of a confluence of factors over which one has only a very limited control; there is no possibility of reading into the hidden "demonic" layers of the other's mind; the other's actions, like our own, are multiply motivated; escalation is a tragic development rather than the result of an evil "master plan"; and finally, skills for promoting acceptance and reducing escalation are necessary for diminishing interpersonal suffering. The authors describe and illustrate a series of these skills both for psychotherapy and for personal use. Finally, they lay out an approach to consolation and acceptance, the neglect of which they attribute to the dominance of demonic views.

The Psychology of Promoting Acceptance and Reducing Conflict will be appreciated by all those professionally and personally concerned with the state of relationships.

168 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Raquel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most useful idea that I got from this book was the one of nonviolent resistance.

[Riley Holmes · Rating 5 out of 5]

The case studies were the best part, but here's the underlying theoretical formulation:

The "demonization view" is a response to problems of suffering and fear. It stems from the traditional religious-demonic attitude but the same mental processes create parallels in political ideologies and pop-psychology.

The demonizing process occurs in personal/intimate conflicts as well as sociopolitical. It causes symmetrical escalation and leads to zero-sum destructive conflicts.

Demonic assumptions:
1. All suffering comes from evil
2. The presumed enemy is an evil and dissembling creature
3. The basic human condition is innocence
4. The roots of evil lay hidden
5. Detection of hidden forces requires esoteric knowledge
6. Acknowledgement and confession are preconditions of cure
7. Cure consists of eradication of evil.

An alternative to the Demonic view is the Tragic view.
Tragic assumptions:
1. Suffering is an essential part of life
2. Bad acts often stem from positive qualities
3. The other side is similar to us
4. There is no outside priveledged view to anyone's experience
5. Radical solutions often increase suffering
6. Ubiquity of suffering requires acceptance, compassion, consolation.

Therapeutic application requires shifting narratives from "Either-or" formulations ("She disguises her control as love" or "He's either with me or against me") to "Both-and" formulations ("All evil has a seed of good", "He's against you in his thoughts but with you in his feelings"). Past-directed guilt can be shifted constructively to future-directed remorse.

Threads to follow:
-Hayes 1999 Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
-Blume 1998 Secret Survivors: Uncovering Incest and its Aftereffects in Women
-Therapies gaining ground that discard pretension to a priveleged look into clients' inner experience:
Hoffman 1993 "Exchanging Voices", White&Epston 1990 "Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends"