Lord John Alderdice, Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly and a psychoanalytically trained psychiatrist, described the importance of psychoanalytic concepts in his own peacemaking efforts as one of the key negotiators of Ireland's Belfast Agreement signed on Good Friday, 1998, in a talk on “Terrorism: Looking toward Conflict Resolution” at the Winter Meeting. Nadia Ramzy, editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, chaired the symposium. Ramzy is also co-founder, with Stuart Twemlow and others, of the new International Association for Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, which promotes the application of analytic thinking to social problems.
Alderdice has written, “Armed only with non-analytic explanations of violence, our world community will not make sense of terrorist attacks like those of September 11, 2001” (Introduction to Terrorism and War: Unconscious Dynamics of Political Violence, Kamac Books, Ltd., 2002).
He took a personal developmental approach to explain his gradual immersion in electoral politics and the peacemaking effort in Northern Ireland. Though he has continued to be active as a psychoanalytically trained psychiatrist and is a senior lecturer on the Faculty of Medicine at Queens University at Belfast, Alderdice has been deeply involved in seeking solutions to the violence that has troubled his country.
Lord Alderdice, psychoanalyst and member of Irish Parliament spoke on “treating” terrorism at New York meeting.
As a teenager in the 1960s, Alderdice was struck by the “frightening and stimulating violence” on his own streets and affecting members of his extended family. He was convinced that such self-destructive activities could not be explained only by economic or political arguments, and wondered if a psychoanalytic approach might aid in understanding them. With this goal in mind, he trained in medicine and psychiatry and enrolled in higher specialist training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy.
Realizing, “One can't just put out a brass plate announcing ‘political analyst,’” but must get involved politically “so that when you make an interpretation, it will be listened to,” Alderdice joined the Alliance Party, the only
Marie Rudden, M.D., is training and supervising analyst at the Berkshire Psychoanalytic Institute, on the faculty of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, and a clinical assistant professor of Psychiatry at Weill Medical College of Cornell University.
party then made up of both Catholics and Protestants. In 1987, he became party leader. Working in this position, he was later able to lead his party's delegations to the Inter-Party and Inter-Governmental Talks in Belfast, London, and Dublin on the future of Northern Ireland, to represent his party in the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation established by the Irish Government (the only non-Nationalist party in attendance), and to ultimately lead the Alliance Delegation in the multi-party peace talks chaired by Senator George Mitchell.
Alderdice observed that while he had been analyzed, “my party hadn't!” Many members joined this party out of fear of the violence between Catholics and Protestants, and preferred that its leaders make even-handed comments about each side of the conflict.
Humiliation and profound disrespect of another's experience are the most important contributors to violence.
This attempt at balance did not fully address the evolving situation. Alderdice, by contrast, used psychoanalytic principles to guide his conflict resolution work, and found that this approach was gradually accepted.
First, Alderdice found it most helpful to make an intervention only appropriate to a current event, even if it seemed to support one of the warring parties in favor of another. “You'd have to believe that the other side would eventually do something later that you could address, and, that over time, you would thus be seen as even-handed, and trusted to be honest,” he remarked. Like good therapy, he noted, political conflict resolution involved establishing two-way communication, and a process of regular meetings (three days a week) over years. “A long-term commitment involving people who don't make interventions until they fully understand the conflicts” is required in a peace talks process, he contends, and compared Senator George Mitchell, whom he felt fully understood this, to one of his best psychotherapy supervisors.
As in psychoanalytic therapy, Alderdice also found inclusivity to be essential. “If a patient says that there are two or three things that can not be discussed in treatment, that doesn't work!” he said. Similarly, all parties needed to be included within a peace process for it to work, and all viewpoints represented. Also, the peace talks had to develop a “containing structure” that remains to stabilize the process, even after elections occur. “Just as you don't leave a psychotic patient who has been hospitalized and needs to return to treatment,” it has been important not only to establish an end to terrorist violence in Northern Ireland, but also to establish political structures to help the peace endure.
Lord Alderdice emphasized the importance of understanding the tremendous anxiety members and leaders of both sides of the conflict experience, and of observing how the different political parties defensively process and express this anxiety. In his view, the anger, frustration, and resistance to the peace talks he witnessed were expressions of deep anxiety within the different communities that they could be annihilated. Each side had not just fantasies of annihilation, but real historical examples to remind them of this possibility, and, as in psychoanalysis, the history of past conflicts cannot be ignored. Certain English ministers couldn't believe that memories of “1641, when some of our people were massacred by these people” were still invoked with great emotion, he noted. “If 40 or 50 years for an individual doesn't ameliorate certain early traumas, which may even be passed on to another generation in some form, then several hundred years for a whole nation to process grave historical events does not seem so long.”
Using such insights, interpretations can be directly made to the warring political groups. One such interpretation occurred the first time Nationalist leaders met directly with Ian Paisley's Unionist group. “You had to talk about the fear that was in the room, and you wanted to create at the same time enough collegiality to bind the group together temporarily.” Thus, Alderdice stated to both sides, “Everybody outside believes that we will fail, and there is a real danger that we will. If we go too far, if we give too much, we will betray our constituencies, but if we can't reach agreement and must return to the violence and the hopelessness, we will betray future generations.” In doing this, he explicitly named the anxieties operating on each side, but also reminded each group of the realistic reasons for their cooperation. Alderdice pointed out that not just one interpretation, but a process of repeated interventions was needed, as in therapy, to allow the peace process to continue.
Developing a process of respect between the party representatives had been vital to the peace process, for, he believes, humiliation and profound disrespect of another's experience are the most important contributors to violence. During the peace talks and afterwards it was crucial to find a way for the parties to disagree while still treating each other respectfully. Because of this perspective, the Irish peace process was constructed, not as “horse-trading among conflicting groups,” but rather as the establishment of systems of communication among the parties to the conflicts.
The Irish and British governments regard the peace process as requiring several steps to become firmly established. The peace talks, then the establishment of the Northern Ireland Assembly began the process. Now, an Independent Monitoring Commission monitors and reports on paramilitary cease-fires, security force normalization, and political terms of
the Belfast Agreement. Lord Alderdice is one of four international commissioners appointed to this task, which he sees as bringing closure to the peace process by monitoring remaining paramilitary activity. Alderdice believes, “Understanding the secondary gain of the paramilitary is essential; a man can have no job and no money, but he does have a gun. If he gives this up, he is no longer a big man.”
He feels that the peace process has resulted in a new sense that it is possible for the conflicting groups to work together, although anxiety and differing aims among the groups remain. He sees the “need to maintain a containing environment, an external view, and continued communication” as crucial to its ongoing success.
Lord Alderdice concluded with general observations on terrorism, which he distinguishes from the use of terror by governments. He sees terrorism as a tactic of war in which people without power approach a very powerful group after other tactics fail. Unlike criminal actions, for the terrorist, the victim is not the target of his action, but a means to affect a government or group. The terrorist, unlike the criminal, claims responsibility for his action and seeks transcendence through it. He tries to break social and moral conventions to shock and to generate terrible fear.
Because of the amount of fear engendered, it is very difficult for the attacked group to hear interpretations aimed at understanding the acts. Alderdice thinks that, given this, groups often need external help to be able to listen and interpret the historical context and particular motivations behind terrorist actions, and thus understand the best way to respond to them. His own mission and charge to the audience is to contribute to such a body of knowledge, so that “If one can keep lighting a candle rather than cursing the darkness, one can make a genuine contribution toward peace.”