By Eric Ting
On Denial
When reality becomes unbearable, the mind must withdraw from it and create a world of artificial perfection.
- Arthur Koestler
The word denial seems to find its origins in the 14th-century French verb denier, "to deny," which itself has roots in the Latin denegare, from de- ("away") and negare ("refuse, say 'no,")1 - that is, to "refuse something away."
Denial as a defense mechanism first appears in 1901 in Freud's "Psychopathology of Everyday Life." Often associated with loss or traumatic experiences, defense mechanisms are represented in psychoanalytic theory as "unconscious resources used by the ego to reduce conflict between the id and superego and thereby anxiety."
Thirty years later, Anna Freud, daughter of Sigmund, brought a deeper level of order and consideration to the defense mechanism. She broke it down into an expansive list including repression, displacement, dissociation, projection and denial, which she defined as "unconsciously refusing to perceive the more unpleasant aspects of external reality (feelings, events, or both), replacing it with a less threatening but inaccurate one."2
Ignorance Is Bliss
Even a cursory glance at history should convince one that individual crimes committed for selfish motives play a quite insignificant part in the human tragedy, compared to the numbers massacred in unselfish loyalty to one's tribe, nation, dynasty, church, or political ideology, ad majorem gloriam Dei ("for the greater glory of God"). The emphasis is on unselfish. Excepting a small minority of mercenary or sadistic disposition, wars are not fought for personal gain, but out of loyalty and devotion to king, country or cause. Homicide committed for personal reasons is a statistical rarity in all cultures, including our own. Homicide for unselfish reasons, at the risk of one's own life, is the dominant phenomenon of history.
- Arthur Koestler
We practice denial all the time. In small ways. When we diet, we deny our hunger; we convince ourselves that the ache in our stomachs will pass. When we procrastinate, we deny our responsibilities (or the consequences of shirking them); we make up excuses for our failures, convincing ourselves the fault was never ours.
When we look in the mirror at the thin trenches digging their way across our faces, we deny age; we armor ourselves with lotions and ointments and herbal supplements against the ravages of time.
When those same ravages tear at the bonds of lovers, we deny the space creeping between us and our partners; until finally the distance is too great and we deny the breaking of our hearts, we deny our loneliness.
When 9/11 happened, I witnessed the second plane crash into the towers. I stood on the Brooklyn shore and watched these mammoth structures topple to the ground in massive particulate clouds, separating into crumbling, warping, bending, basic components.
And to my great shock, the sheer force of the denial radiating from the masses of people standing with me was not enough to turn back time. And denial became anger, became disbelief, became sorrow.
The Ghost in the Machine
If one looks with a cold eye at the mess man has made of history, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he has been afflicted by some built-in mental disorder which drives him towards self-destruction.
- Arthur Koestler
In 1967, Hungarian-born polymath and philosopher Arthur Koestler coined the term holon in his book "The Ghost in the Machine." He described the holon as "a system that is a whole in itself as well as a part of a larger system."3 Sounds, emotions, language, ideas, history - any identifiable system can be considered a holon.
Holons exist in a hierarchical structure known as a holarchy, in which influence and information are passed simultaneously from whole to part and part to whole. If a type of holon is removed from existence, then all other holons of which it was a part must necessarily cease to exist.
For instance, consider an atom and a molecule. Remove an atom, and all molecules cease to exist; remove the molecule and the atoms remain. The atom is said to be more fundamental than the molecule, but the molecule more significant. This is known as the Doctrine of the Fundamental and the Significant.
Amidst the nuclear proliferation of the Cold War, Koestler cautioned that humanity's tendency is towards fundamental expressions of hate and anger; that while our brains have evolved, they have layered over primitive structures which can at times override significant cognitive function; that it is these "ghosts in the machine" which drive us towards self-destruction.
A Family Portrait
A whole is defined by the pattern of relations between its parts, not by the sum of its parts; and a civilization is not defined by the sum of its science, technology, art and social organization, but by the total pattern which they form, and the degree of harmonious integration in that pattern.
- Arthur Koestler
In the human holarchy, no system is more fragile, more precariously balanced than that of the family. It resides in the eye of the storm, buffeted on one side by the unique and complex psychoses of the individuals who compose it; on the other, by the whims of government, the vagaries of politics and economics.
In the face of such fury, is it any wonder that lines of communication between part and whole are repeatedly compromised? When the system begins to break down, "wholes no longer recognize their dependence on their subsidiary parts, and parts no longer recognize the organizing authority of the wholes."
Denial settles in; the center falls away. The family denies the individual, casts him out through a lintel of mistrust and self-preservation to fend for himself. The individual denies the family, and the illusion of autonomy infects the whole, contaminates it, pollutes it.
And yet. The criticism of Koestler's theory is that the same "primitive structure" in the human brain that contains anger and hatred also contains love and hope.4 Destructive. Constructive.
The tendency of any system is towards the fundamental; that is, entropy. The effort, the struggle is towards the significant - towards the formation of molecules, the construction of words, the preservation of families, the maintenance of nations.
The ghost in the machine is the echo of what was, what came before. It is the father's failed war. It is the history of alcoholism, neglect, violence, intimidation and abuse. It is the primal, animal instinct in each of us that rages against the bars of civility and good manners.
It is also a first kiss, random acts of heroism, small charities, forgiveness. The ghost is that against which we struggle, every moment, to deny; even as it lifts us towards something greater than we are.
1. Modern Language Association (MLA): deny." Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglas Harper, Historian. 06 Sept. 2007.
2. Freud, A. (1937). The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence. London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis.
3. Koestler, Arthur (1967). The Ghost in the Machine.
4. There are, of course, those who would argue that love and hope are themselves tools of self-destruction.
