Internal and external destructiveness

The violence of the inner world and its potential transformation

Abstract

Stekel (1910/1967) suggests, “no one kills himself who has never wanted to kill another or at least wished the death of another” (cited in Bell, 2001, p. 24). In this paper, I will suggest that such inner destructiveness, if not murderousness, is reflected not only in the inner world of suicide but also in the microcosm of so many clinical presentations, be it, for example, relentless self-harm, the cruelty of emotional self-attack, the intrapsychic hatred of eating disorders, or the violence we perpetrate on ourselves, others, and the natural world. In the public sphere, such inner cruelty is further made manifest in Aotearoa’s tragic suicide statistics, horrific attacks on public figures, particularly when they reveal vulnerability, and cross-cultural attacks in relation to ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. These inner dynamics are further reflected in the macrocosm of interlinked global threats of the human-induced climate crisis, the threat of nuclear war, and the pandemic, in which psyche is writ large. Yet there is a profound absence in public discourse of reflection on the violence of our inner worlds, and how these cruel dynamics are replayed clinically, interpersonally, cross-culturally, and globally, generating destructive and murderous impulses and actions.

I will draw on a range of psychoanalytic and Jungian theoretical lenses in an exploration of the nature of inner destructiveness, and its manifestation, within both the clinician and the patient, and how this inner destructiveness also manifests in wider societal and global destructive dynamics. I will weave personal and composite fictional clinical vignettes to illustrate these ideas, and will conclude my paper with an exploration of how surrender to intrapsychic deaths, including surrender to the inevitable and painful mourning such surrender requires, might facilitate the emergence of more creative and life-giving responses, within ourselves as clinicians, within our psychotherapeutic relationships with patients, and in the cross-cultural and global communities and natural environments with which we are embedded, and within which life-giving responses are so crucially required.