Even paranoids have
enemies -new perspectives
on paranoia and persecution



Edited by Joseph H. Berke,
Stella Pierides, Andrea Sabbadini
and Stanley Schneider





Routledge
London and New York


Even paranoids have enemies





'Even paranoids have enemies' is the reply Golda Meir is said to have made to Henry Kissinger who, during the 1973 Sinai talks, accused her of being paranoid for hesitating to grant further concessions to the Arabs. It is used as part of the title of this book to highlight the complex relationship between paranoia and persecution.

The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 addresses aspects of the complex psychological impact that experiences of external and internal persecution have on the individual. Part TI brings together expositions on paranoid and persecutory processes in groups, institutions and bureaucracies. Part 111 discusses the social, political and cultural factors which give rise to these processes.

The theoretical viewpoints introduced and discussed come to life in the political, social and historical arenas where the politics of the Middle East, the pressures of Japanese society and the dynamics of the drug scene are used to illustrate and understand the issues involved in paranoid thinking and in persecution. The authors' perspectives, from psychoanalytic psychotherapy, psychiatry, politics, sociology, history and the arts, shed light on phenomena which are often taken for granted and show how our thinking on these matters has implications for social and ethical concerns, and for clinical practice.

Joseph H. Berke is the founder and Director of the Arbours Crisis Centre, London. Stella Pierides is Associate Director of the Centre, and both are psychoanalytic psychotherapists in private practice. Andrea Sabbadini is a psychoanalyst in private practice in London. Stanley Schneider is a psychoanalyst and Professor of Psychology at the Hebrew University and Michlalah, Jerusalem.

Contributors: Joseph H. Berke; David Edgar; Leonard Fagin; Calvin C. Hernton; Robert D. Hinshelwood; John Jackson; Otto F. Kernberg; Ilany Kogan; Robert Jay Lifton; Stella Pierides; Salomon Resnik; Andrea Sabbadini; Stanley Schneider; Varnik D. Volkan; Hisako Watanabe.


Contents


  List of contributors

vii

  Foreword Vamik D. Volkan xi

 

  General introduction

 

  Joseph H. Berke, Stella Pierides, Andrea Sabbadini and
Stanley Schneider

1

  Part 1 Psychological  
  Introduction

13

1

Being in a persecutory world: the construction of a world
model and its distortions
Salomon Resnik

16

2

From wounded victims to scarred survivors
Andrea Sabbadini

36

3

The black hole of dread: the psychic reality of children
of Holocaust survivors Ilany Kogan

47

4

The 'end-of-the-world' vision and the psychotic experience
Robert Jay Lifton

59

5

Only pretend: the dramaturgy of paranoia
David Edgar

75

 

Part II Social and institutional

 

 

Introduction

85

6

Paranoid social developments as a consequence of ideological
and bureaucratic regression
Otto E Kernberg

87

7

Paranoia, groups and enquiry
Robert D. Hinshelwood 100

 

8

Paranoia in institutional life: the death-throes of the asylum
Leonard Fagin

 

9

Bureaucracies at work
John Jackson

125

 

Part III Cultural and political

 

 

Introduction

141

10

Reefer Madness: social fears and self-fulfilling prophecies
Joseph H. Berke

144

11

Between history and me: persecution paranoia and the police
Calvin C. Hernton

166

12

Machine phenomena
Stella Pierides

177

13

Paranoia and persecution in modern Japanese life
Hisako Watanabe

189

14

Peace and paranoia
Stanley Schneider

203

  Name index

219

  Subject index

223



ISBN 0-415-15558-4

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