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GENERAL COURSE DESCRIPTION
This intermediate level course explores one of the most significant human characteristics, the capacity to hate and to create enemies. This unique and timely course explores the psychological roots of enmity and human vulnerability to war propaganda. It explores the psychohistory of war and provides a typology of different kinds of war, such as heroic wars, ritualistic wars or holy wars. It also defines terrorism, differentiates it from martyrdom and explores the roots of war in group and individual psychology.
The course details the way propaganda dehumanizes the enemy so they can be killed without guilt. Citing most authoritative research on the psychology of war, the course provides one of the most extensive analysis of the elements and dynamics of enmity and includes many examples from wars in the last half century, including the most recent war in Iraq. Finally, it provides some suggestions of how psychological research can help us prevent and stop wars.
Educational Objectives:
This course will teach psychotherapists to
Review the psychological research on enmity.
Define war, terrorism and martyrdom.
Teach therapists the ways that propaganda works.
Outline the different levels and ways that dehumanization operates.
Review the psychohistory of warfare and enemy making.
Discuss the roots of enmity in the individual and in the group.
Detail the dynamic of enmity.
Course Syllabus:
INTRODUCTION
A PSYCHOHISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF ENMITY - A TYPOLOGY
Type 1: The symbolic enemy of primitive or ritualistic warfare
Type 2: The withholding enemy of the political/greedy warfare
Type 3: The worthy enemy, a fighter of heroic/aggrandizing wars.
Type 4: The enemy of God in a holy war
Type 5: The frightened threatening enemy in defensive wars.
Type 6: The oppressive enemy in the liberation or revolutionary wars.
Type 7: The invisible enemy-within terrorist or guerilla warfare.
ON TERRORISM AND MARTYDOM
Terrorism.
Martyrdom.
ON ENMITY, ENEMY IMAGES, PROPAGANDA AND PARANOIA
Enmity.
Enemy image.
Enemy image index.
Propaganda.
Consensual paranoia.
ROOTS OF ENMITY IN GROUP BEHAVIOR
ROOTS OF ENMITY IN THE INDIVIDUAL
Self psychology,
Authoritarian personality theory.
Jungian psychology.
Developmental psychology & Piaget.
Prejudice and stereotypes & Allport.
Political socialization theory.
DYMNAMICS OF ENMITY
The double standard in attention and evaluation.
The double standard in attribution.
Hostile prediction and self-fulfilling prophecies.
The mirror image.
Selective attention.
Bias in credibility assessment.
The co-existing of oppositional and paradoxal images.
The kinetic nature of enmity.
Network of enemy and friends (i.e., "The enemy of my enemy is my friend").
Knowledge and ignorance.
DEHUMANIZATION OF THE ENEMY-LEVELS AND TYPES
Full human being.
Faceless.
Humanoid.
Animal.
Feminized.
Criminal.
Homosexual.
Inanimate object.
Abstraction or numbers.
Doublespeak.
THE FUTURE OF ENMITY
REFERENCES AND RESOURCES
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