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Reconciliation is explored through a Kleinian psychoanalytic lens, viewed in the context of the South African situation in the last months of the apartheid regime. Longstanding severe intercommunal conflict and low intensity war increase the use
of rigid, primitive defenses in the population. One may observe, in particular, the widespread deployment of splitting, giving rise as it does to idealization of communal heroes and saviors and vilification of the enemy. While this represents an adaptation during war, it obstructs the shift toward reconciliation as war and conflict give way to peace and nation building.
Following Klein's description of the task of entering and working through the depressive position, the authors discuss how reconciliation requires recognition of the fallibility of idealized figures, and rehumanization of the enemy. Relinquishing idealized figures and ideas gives rise to the experience of loss, which entails a process of mourning and coping with guilt connected with destructiveness previously directed toward the vilified enemy. In order to achieve a more integrated and realistic view of all individuals and the society as a whole, this guilt must be borne, but in a bearable way, and the loss of idealized objects and wishes likewise accepted in a manageable way.
A particular danger on the path to true intercommunal reconciliation, just as it is an obstacle to individual integration and reparation, is the manic defense, in which the damaged object is apparently repaired, but in a facile way. The appearance of a new understanding is maintained, but guilt and loss are in fact not truly experienced, and beneath the apparent restoration of the object and acceptance of a new reality lies a persistent, disguised omnipotence and continuation of idealization. Inevitably, in this situation, the hated bad object reappears, inviting a return to polarization on the communal level and splitting on the psychological level. True reconciliation entails a comple