Two books by two renowned psychologists I read long ago have been haunting me the more and more focused I become on the tragic dynamics of the Israelis and Palestinians. I am also more and more mindful of how this toxic dynamic is endangering the entire world.

One book was written by Eric Berne, Games People Play, in which he sets forth his theory of Transactional Analysis. Berne contends that human beings relate to one another from three basic ego states: the Parent, the Adult, the Child. Some people stay locked into one ego state more than others. Sometimes one ego state invites a counterpoint ego state, for example, a scolding parent voice might evoke a submissive, childlike response or, on the other hand, a rebellious, childlike one.

I won't linger on his general theory, though it is very rich reading. What was most provocative in his approach for me then and now, is a subgroup of the child ego state Berne labels the "pig parent". The "pig parent" pretends to be "parent", but is really an immature, primitive, narcissistic child ego state masquerading as the "caretaking" parent. I did a blog a while ago in which I cited John McCain as slipping into a "pig parent" ego state when he was running for president. The way he often forcefully and paternally scolded the country for not doing the right thing. The "pig parent" voice can really enthrall certain citizens -- maybe citizens who were raised by "pig parent state" parents?

I am of the opinion that the Israeli government and many Jewish citizens right now are locked into the "pig parent" ego state in relating to the Palestinians. The Gazan War at the end of 2008 and the Freedom Flotilla Slaughter on May 31st were caused by a murderous "pig parent" child ego state, the participants of which enabled, authorized and/or perpetrated such inhumane and merciless, irresponsible behavior.

Now, soon after the violence, as a primitive, irresponsible, immature child, Israel is posturing as the "parent" of Gaza, expecting not only Gaza but other countries looking on to buy it, but it is really the "pig parent", still punishing and not in the caretaker role at all.

When I heard about the lifting of some of the blockade items that included cookies, jam and potato chips, I thought to myself, of course -- that is the response of a pathologically narcissistic child who has just been responsible for the murders of 9 (or maybe six more) peace activists and the wounding of fifty plus more and the traumatizing of a total of 750, as well as those watching on beyond the flotilla in horror. Cookies and chips after committing mass murder? A good enough concession? Stunning and grotesque moral immaturity. I will offer some cookies and jam and I have restored the status quo. It is deranged.

Of course, what does that say about our government officials rushing up to the plate to stand by Israel's war crimes? Dear God. Schumer's aggressive cronyism. Cornyn's?

When I read about Senator Chuck Schumer's statements on the need to economically "strangle" the Gazans to make them see the right path and change theirs I heard that sick, scolding "pig parent" voice. As I hear it just reading about Senator Cornyn rallying to gather all the Israeli cronies in Congress to support the mass murder. A U.S. government exhibiting an "adult" ego state would call out Israel for its war crimes and violations of international law. A "parent" U.S. would exhibit tough love to this out of control, acting out, grotesquely immature country.

The second book that haunts me now is Alice Miller's For Your Own Good, subtitled Hidden Cruelty in Child-Reading and the Roots of Violence.

I see Israel, aside from being the "pig parent", as a traumatized grown up child. Having survived the Holocaust. The savagery of that history is profound. It is certainly understandable that the collective psyche of an entire group of citizens and progeny of those citizens is struggling to recover. Miller contends that if that trauma is not processed eventually in one's life -- or one's collective life -- a repetition compulsion will occur. Either one, or the collective group, will become self-destructive victim, or one, or the collective group, will become victimizer.

Israel has turned victimizer in the case of the Gazan people.

Miller also contends that certain toxic, child-rearing climates, like Germany pre-Hitler which embraced certain dangerous child-rearing philosophies, such as the ever-popular eighteenth century "spare the rod and spoil the child" approach, can inflict such profound trauma on children not only from the merciless demand for obedience from parents, teachers and churches but also the demand for stoicism -- the repression of their pain. It is the stoicism Miller believes that causes a child to grow up to either become amoral victimizer or over-identifier with cruel, amoral authoritarian victimizers. This is how she maintains Hitler came to power and why he was enabled by so many seemingly "good" Germans.

Flipping through Miller's book this time around, the money quote for me:

This speech [Himmler, 1943] contains all the elements of the complicated psychodynamic mechanism that can be described as splitting off and projection of parts of the self, which we encounter so often in the manuals of "poisonous pedagogy." Schooling oneself to be senselessly hard requires that all signs of weakness in oneself (including emotionalism, tears, pity, sympathy for oneself and others, and feelings of helplessness, fear and despair) be suppressed "without mercy". In order to make the struggle against these humane impulses easier, the citizens of the Third Reich were offered an object to serve as the bearer of all these qualities that were abhorred because they had been forbidden and dangerous in their childhood—this object was the Jewish people. Freed from their "bad" (i.e., weak and uncontrolled) feelings, so –called Aryans could feel pure, strong, hard, clean, good, unambivalent and morally right if everything that they had feared in themselves since childhood could be attributed to the Jews and if, together with their fellow Germans, these "Aryans" were not only permitted but required to combat it relentlessly and ever anew among members of this "inferior race."

And then Miller (she published this in 1983) adds:

It seems to me that we are still threatened by the possible repetition of a similar crime unless we understand its origins and the psychological mechanism behind it.

How the Nazis scapegoated the Jewish people. How the Israeli government is scapegoating the Palestinians today. How the American Christian right neocons are scapegoating the Muslims.

We could make a very long list, here.

Miller:

But often the child's feeling of helplessness leads to increasingly aggressive behavior, which in turn convinces parents and educators of the need for strict countermeasures.

The Palestinians rebel and elect Hamas to govern them. Israel intensifies their collective punishment. Muslims rebel to military occupation and control. The United States escalates the violence. Sends in the drones. Arrests, cages and tortures.

The oppression by the would-be righteous and aggressor groups (going back to my first book, the "pig parents") often inspires radicalization and rebellion among those haplessly targeted by them. And the aggressor groups decide more aggression is required for control since the projected will to subjugate them is not working. The aggressor groups so often don't see themselves as aggressive or wrong-headed at all. They are superior and righteous – exceptional -- and are trying to "help" those they see as inferior. Just as parents during authoritarian times easily beat their children as a punishment "for their own good" (Miller's book title) as they were beaten and punished by their parents whose cruelty too many struggle to deny. This was, again, the pedagogical approach to child-rearing of the eighteenth century that still revisits us today. Miller maintains that it is POISONOUS.

Listening to Senator Schumer's chilling and repellent reference to "economically strangling" Gaza, with that "pig parent" resonance, reflects that poisonous pedagogy. In fact, Glenn Greenwald made reference to it in a recent column, saying how condescending Schumer sounded as if the Palestinians were dogs that needed to be trained.

Flipping through Miller's book, I found myself considering the Nazis in the role of abusive surrogate parent authoritarian figures during the Holocaust and inflicting horrifying levels of punishment and humiliation on their Jewish captors with no conscience.

Miller believes that the Germans who perpetrated such inhumanity had been separated from their own souls and feelings during their own harsh and repressive, heavily-religious childhoods and were acting out by viciously scapegoating their prisoners. She speculates that cruelty of a parent figure to a child stems from the parent figure punishing the child for the wrongs of their own childhood and punishments from their past parent figures.

"...in beating their children, they are struggling to train the power they once lost to their own parents. For the first time they see the vulnerability of their own earliest years which they are unable to recall, reflected into their children (cf. Sulzer). Only now, when someone weaker than they is involved do they finally fight back, often quite fiercely. There are countless rationalizations, still used today, to justify their behavior. Although parents always mistreat their children for psychological reasons, i.e., because of their own needs, there is a basic assumption in our society that this treatment is good for children. Last but not least, the pains that are taken to defend this line of reasoning betray its dubious nature."

Unrecovered former victims scapegoat. Whether the Nazis projecting onto and punishing the Jewish people. Priests who had very likely been sexually violated violating young children. Abusive parents abusing their own children. The tragic horror continues in so many tragic cases.

I see it in the projected hatred of some Israelis for Palestinians.

Miller:

"Beatings which are only one form of mistreatment are always degrading, because the child not only is unable to defend him- or herself but is also supposed to show gratitude and respect to the parents in return."

Senator Schumer sounded like an exasperated parent who was trying to teach naughty child Palestine a lesson and get it to wake up and give Israel the respect it deserves.

Again, Miller contends that religious backgrounds that stress obedience at the expense of honoring feelings and spontaneity create a dangerous symbiosis between the parent figure and the child. The child is trained to surrender his or her will. The child becomes separated from his or her authentic self. From the joy and exercise of self-determination. Miller calls this a "poisonous pedagogy". This poisonous pedagogy is what ripened Germany for the mania of an Adolph Hitler and for Nazism. Over-identifying with an authority figure, having been overwhelmed and systematically punished as a child, can create a dehumanizing symbiosis.

I remember the stunning moment in the movie The Color Purple when Whoopi Goldberg's character's son-in-law asks her for advice on how to treat his willful wife, played by Oprah Winfrey. Whoopi responds with the chilling, "Beat her!" How many of us saw that coming? But it is the pathology Miller is describing.

Miller writes:

A person who can understand and integrate his anger as part of himself will not become violent. He has the need to strike out at others only if he is thoroughly unable to understand his rage, if he was not permitted to become familiar with this feeling as a small child, was never able to experience it as a part of himself because such a thing was totally unthinkable in his surroundings.

The reason why parents mistreat their children has less to with character and temperament than with the fact that they were mistreated themselves and were not permitted to defend themselves.

It is part of the tragic nature of the repetition compulsion that someone who hopes eventually to find a better world than the one he or she experienced as a child in fact keeps creating instead the same undesired state of affairs.

Miller contends, if you can't talk about the cruelty as an adult, you are destined to demonstrate the cruelty -- either in self destructiveness or finding victims to victimize.

What cruel, sad irony.