Geo Cosmos:

The family legends of Populist and Rightists Majority in the Hungarian Parliament

In present day Hungary and Eastern Europe  youth in Nazi  uniforms or Palestinian shawls frequently appear in the news at demonstrations and in courtrooms. Their main focus is the terrorizing of „disorderly parasitic” Roma villages through paramilitary punishing exercises held under their windows, claiming „pennyiless hungry Roma youth /after having been spent their money on alcoholic beverages/ frequently attack unguarded elderly Moral Majority /=white/ ladies before groceries”. In the following article I am trying to see how we can better understand this phenomenon by presenting the Social-Psychologic /or Psycho-Historic/ theory of Lloyd deMause.

In the last twenty years there was always a 15-20% of Extremist presence – Anti-Foreigner, Anti-Capitalist parties that preach violent punishing solutions to an „effeminated” „lazy”, „self-pampering” society. In those groups  – mostly jobless, elderly, „pampered by Socialist dictatorships”, isolated in Hungarian language, under-informed, unable to process „change” and freedom and individuality there is an ever-present  subtext of Anti-Semitism that was suppressed under Soviet rule. Now it has reappeared echoing pre-war writers unheard of before /Albert Wass, Cécile Tormay,  Emma Ritoók,  the last two  women have invented the Slogan „No, No, never” – against Trianon where the Allied victors have chopped off two third of ancient Hungary that has been already empty of real Hungarians, except Hungarian-speaking Jews and the „new” nationalities: Slovaks, Rumanians, Serbs, and  ever-present Germans and Gipsies /Romas/.  These Extreme Conservative Racist women were very good friends with Jewish (converted to Catholicism)  Intellectuals of the era, like the Liberal –leaning essay-writer Antal Szerb, –  they all were rather accepted best-seller writers. They even adopted Roma children /paying for their training/.  Their present-day fans similarly claim to have no animosity against Roma /Gipsy/ people. But today there are no friendship left between today’s Extremists and Liberals.

I  believe that the American writer Lloyd deMause is right:  there are different „psycho-classes” who do have clashes in history.

In today’s Social Psychological litterature the concepts of „Psycho-History” and psychoclass are used by Lloyd deMause in the USA whose theory researched through decades and published after several previous attempts in 2002 /in the version I have first met and from which – from the Emotional Life of the Nations - I will quote/. It is about the evolution of empathy, and the „war” between emphatic and aggressive psychoclasses and it must be presented, to show how his basic tenet (claiming that child raisng is the motor of historical progress) is completely and uncannily describing these present-day Anti-Semites, who regularly use the cliché – similarly to the above mentioned two typical ideologues – that „their best friends are Jewish/Roma/Gay.”

We happen to stumble upon the same expression /”Jewish- or Roma -  best friends”/ in the Diaries of several pre-war (pre-1945) Anti-Semites /or even if it happens in my own street, where, like everywhere, former members or supporters of the Sovietist Authoritarian One-Party have all suddenly reinvented themselves as Authoritarian Extreme Rightists and they have a substantial influence even on the present Government that won a Two-Third landslide just last year /2010/ and I need some  analysing it today, after the war and after the Shoah, I will have to use innovative view-points, like those of deMause.

Lloyd deMause (whose highly original psycho-historical theory is illustrated with utmost care and richness of source material) represents exactly those thoughts – respectful both towards Freud and the rival Theorist, Wundt – with which the post-modern „Non-Nazi” Rightists and the pre-war writers in those Diaries all could agree (especially if some of them has chosen the anti-Freudist psychiatric Tradition of Wundt). Lloyd deMause’s main topic covers exactly the main focus of the speeches and discourses of present-day conflict-mongers in Hungary: he analyzes  the motivations for war and collective aggression.

It is clear to the other Psycho-Class /who had a better, or more functional, less violent upbringing/ and also to other Anti-Semites that they are using the Jewish Question /or the other Minorities: Gays and Romas/  as a method to hide and cover their disturbed self-acceptance, and many times their disturbed gender role and the fact that they were abused as children.

But this is not a widely accepted causative element in the public discourse. Denial is rampant.  There are now hundreds of „family violence” mediators (under the auspices of former  Socialist Foreign Minister dr. Kinga Göncz) and  research shows that even during mediations the actual abuse is not mentioned in 47% of the cases – from 39 074 /in 2007/  „domestic violence„ reports in a population of 10 million where 200 000 children are in state institutions. (Herczog, 2009). In the research about phone help-lines  conducted by responsible ministerial agencies /and reported by Domonkos Búza (Búza, 2004) / in 2003/4  we see that there are 400 000 calls /for help due to family violence or abuse/. There are 34 such psychological or charitative phone services and 21 among them participated int he survey. An average call number at one particular agency was 800 call per month. On average 40% concerned abuse against children (most typical was the „emotional violence” complaint generally from third parties) 40%  of the calls pertained intimate partner abuse reports, 15% hinted at violence against elderly people and appr 5% concerned violence among young peer groups. /An interesting statistical aside: ont he internet-using hotlines there are 80%  suicide calls while on phone this is only 2%./

Statistics are not giving an adequate picture. We turn to the fantasy analysis suggested by Lloyd deMause, because the violent contents of present-day Rightist politicians are not so elusive, not so hidden as actual family violence. 

The  demausian point of view differs from the usual paradigm, which claims that  enlightment is the key (’it is untrue that Jews/Gays/Romas do this or that…’) to change attitudes and maybe implementing Reforms is also needed (to diminish bad feelings in the environment) [1]

I do agree with Lloyd deMause that ethnic hatred stem partly from „Freudian” child-raising causes and even earlier traumas that may happpen in embryonic stages  (a strangulation by the umbilical chord that has physical hormonal remnants) and hence these can be relieved eventually only through widespread usage of socal therapy techniques.  (Lloyd deMause, 2002.)

Lloyd deMause is highlighting in his essays how the causation in History cannot be reduced to economic and social interests, /as is claimed by most socially biased historians/.[2] As told by  him:  psychological motives are decisive. But instead of Freudian fantasies, he claims that real hurts are in the background (as in the Wundtian experimental psychology he reminds us, probably wanting to avoid the „un-scientific” label all Freudians easily get from mainstream psychiatrists and Popperists.) [3]  Progress is itself a stressing situation or a stressor (like a new flat,or a  birth of  a child), which is capable of re-activating the stressed ego-part or alterego. (He uses the simpler word „alter”.)  Lloyd deMause  describes how the ”protective and attacking” alter  from early childhood (images injected experiencing frightening or abusive parental figures ) get projected onto certain members of the surrounding environment  (many times upon minorities, Jews, Romas, Blacks, Gays or women). According to deMause all ethnic animosity  appears and can be described  through such "social alters" (or  "common alteregos") be it a witch hunt or a Jew-hater movement or any other civil strife.  

            As Lloyd deMause writes:

„…success is felt undeserved and  makes people feel sinful. And nations feel the same after periods of peace and wellbeing. (…) There is no difference between the belief that child sacrifice will help me gather the yearly crop and the belief that killing Jews or Romas /at present this last group is under actual attack/ and their children will help against the enemy. Only after having been switched into this alter are otherwise average people able to don frightening masks or a uniform with a swastika /also a placental symbol/ and go out to chop off the head of the enemy or put them into a gas chamber.  And after having discharged the restimulated trauma they may go home and have a dinner among their family members.„ (Lloyd deMause, 2002. p. 114. )

 I will analyse here the present-day  Salon-Anti-Semitism (going hand in hand with „Having Jews Among My Best Friends”-slogans  as they always  claim to pretend benevolence if questioned), not as a simple Racial hatred or Christian „ Replacement Theology”). I will be trying -  with the help of the demausian arguments - to show how the hurt soul (or role disturbance) is connected to (wordly) legends of descendance (like the Davidic Saviour legend, a protective social fantasy alter) and the „manly” ambitions it endengers and how all this constructs a „social alterego” built upon the personal ego (which is similar in deMausian theory to the  more speculative -  Jungian ’collective archetypes” ) The extreme hatred of Gays clearly hints at some inner imbalance in gender role, as this intensity can only be understood if we imagine they feel the inner „man touch craving” – caused by fathering deficit according to some Freudists – and they loath to act it out.

Naturally there are many experts who do not accept the theories of  Llyod deMause as they claim that it is not evident how exactly psychological inner events do have an effect on the outside world. [4]

 The New Rightists frequently quote the „Rightous Kingly Ancestors” when they pound the table and demand harsh punitive measures. They assisted as the similarly biased Populists in  Government have implemented hundreds of amendments in the Constitution in order to punish homeless people, to nationalize assets of pensioners, to  constrict lawful criticism of the government and to actually prosecute minors in shoplifting cases (putting minors in overcrowded jails after catching them with a bar of chocolate.) They indignantly reject any charge of their own harsh upringing: they keep repeating „battering or child-hitting made me a better man”.  

   Lloyd deMause describes how inner insecurities are created by some /aggressive/ child-rearing patterns, and how these inevitably create an authoritarian personality type, who is dependent, paternalistic, insecure and oppresses his feelings (both hatred and love) and how he projects love onto some autorithy figures (who are the core of  „social  alters” that help to switch into a hypnotic trance when stressed), and anger is projected to out-groups, to „aliens”  [5]

In the case of most present-day Anti-Westerners or Anti-Americanists  the root of self-esteem deficit is the inner identification with Father due to a definitive parenting-deficit - this is clear from their blogs and texts and urban legends on today’s governing public figures. Their  (reportedly violent) conflicts with their parents created negative characteristics that can be projected easily to the group of Non-Hungarians  seemingly so full of animosity. In Germany at the Turn of the Century children were swaddled immobile for long periods to accumulation of anger discharged in a world war 30-40 ys later, as in Yugoslavia the still-swaddled babies of the Stalinist 50s created havoc and blowed up the Multi-National federal state ruled by the majority Serbs. The cold ideological war in Hungary between Western-leaning ex-Comminists allied with Liberals and China-friendly new Nationalists in the two-third Government  silently supported by Non-Nazi Nazis whose best friends happen to be Jews and Romas can be probably explained by harsh childrearing patterns – mainly abandoning and abusive aggressively hitting fathers like the one of the present Prime Minister according to urban legends – child battering was still prevalent int he 70s and 80s /when his new politician-genration was born and raised/.

„When a little child is crying, the immaure mother hears as if his own mother, father, siblings or husband would shout at her too.” (Lloyd deMause, 2002. p. 151.)[6]

 The father of the Extremist-backed Populist Prime Minister today  was a cool, rational, emotionally un-expressive person (he was lacking in empathy) who has regularly beaten his sons „to help them become real men” [7]

The most famous heroes of Hungary – mostly they have streets  named after them in every village /Bathory, Hunyadi, Bethlen, Rakoczi, Transsylvanian Princes/ are simply family relations of 20% of the population as the so called non-taxpayer „nobles”  have been famous of regularly feuding and robbing each other even among close family members (mothers or fathers against children and vice versa.) . Some of these struggles are depicted in a somewhat Romanticized form in Hungarian popular litterature. When they proudly don the national colors and cite these Transylvanian Princes, they are enlisting the generations where their descendants should look for relatives: in the Anjou Era /XIV.Century/ the Palatine Office was held by the Naples Frankish-originated – originally non-Hungarian, Frankish - family, the Drugeths and later the Drugeth-relative Szapolyai’s cousins the Hunyadi kingly family belongs to these ancestral line. The Drugeths were the „secret ingredient”, the „common link” between the dozen ruling families or clans. Whenever they are among themsleves they feel re-vitalized by using again the old Ranks /Count, Prince etc/ to demonstrate against the Republican Democratism and Equality. Gabor Bethlen, the famous Prince of Transsylvania (who reigned between 1618-1630) and all other Princes are cousins or in-laws of the – since non-existing - Drugeths: Prince Bocskay (d.1606) the Princes Bathory ( one elected King of Poland int he 1580s) who  followed him and the respected  Rákóczi families and the Nabobs Zrinyi and Nadasdy and Balassa, Török families all belong to this Clan of Stars on the Sky of Real Hungarians.

 It is never mentioned in Hungarian school-books – or int he Rightist speeches int he media or in Parliament - that the fate of this nation was decided by a close knit net of very rich land-owner families, who regularly imprisoned each other for differing religious fantasies and intrepretations of the „Davidic” legend, the messianic throne pretenders wanting to conquer the ’Antichrist’, the Habsburgs with help of the Turkish Sultan /whom they considered to be also a family relation, a cousin of Matthias of Hunyadi/)[8]

 If we look at the typical bookshelf items  of present day Rightists /or any other Hungarian Gentry family/ we discover heroic Romantic descriptions of the „national” Kings /who were actually generally Protestant insurgents against the legitimate, but – most of the time - Catholic  Habsburg King who inherited Hungary’s thrones from indigenous Dynasties, the Arpads/. Prince Bocskay accuses his Catholic Chancellor Kathay to have poisoned him, hence he will be beheaded and – but this is only mentioned in rare instances - children will play football with ont he streets. /1606/ A few generations earlier /in the 1530s/ King Szapolyai puts his enemy’s chopped-off head on his dinner table and he even speaks to him reprovingly. /He forced his enemies to eat from the flesh of a vanquished Crusader rebel./ Naturally this is not mentioned in schoolbooks, only the fact that he forced some rebels of the meat of the rebel leader.  It is quite evident and never a questioned custom that most Hungarian Gentry parents have been giving away their childrens to be  raised by relatives and  cousins in order to learn ’etiquette’ and how to ride and to  fence.

Hungarian school-children  simply took it as granted since generations that the family members of these ancestral Princes treat each other with a murderous fury, especially when they claim allegiance to opposite religious camps and especially against Judaizing groups (who also expect the imminent arrival of the „Son of David”).

They keep repeating how much „heroism” and „magnanimity” they see in the Hungarian Aristocratic idols but they keep forgetting to even mention the frequent family violence in those princely families. And it is also strange to see that approximatively 20% have Noble Ancestors and 20% vote for Traditionalist Punitive Extremist solutions./I would not think that all nobles are invariably Rightists, ther may be many exceptions./ It is frightening for the more developed psychoclass to be under existential threats /because most financial restrictions and punishing measures are focused on Intellectual workshops and cultural centres/ inspired by „real Hungarians” who respect those aggressive ancestral thugs. Yes, those nationalist war leaders were sometimes heroic and magnanimous, but it would be more mature to reveal them as sometimes simply murderers and robbers /switching into ancestral abusive alters in demausian parlance!/[9]

 Lloyd de Mause’s advice: only a large scale campaign on more emphatic  child-rearing could help as the Marshall Plan was assisting the families surviving Nazism, and so he advises conflict-prone groups to find Peace Counselors or Mediators to learn how to change parenting modes for teh sake of a more serene future.

 As social therapy ideas are not yet widely known in Hungary today most people are  unaware of the slowly diminishing characteristic of these extreme violent behaviors /related to violent child-rearing: violence starts with swaddling, as immobilization cannot let the children discharge their tensions which accumulate and get discharged in adult warmongering./  It is important to mention that not only abused children become fused with their punishing arring alters or /fantasy/ ancestors, as obviously everone has traumatic pre-natal experiences during the struggle in the  sometimes toxic /desoxygenated/ Placenta. Great-great-grand-uncle King Mathias- who has the surname „the Just One” in folklore -  was slaying his imprisoned rebels alive, later great-grand-uncles Kings  Szapolyai and Bathory (a hundred years later)  were „only „ chopping off” the noses and ears of their prisoners, Prince  Rákoczy (again some  hundred years later) was only beheading through intermediaries. Today children are simply abandoned by their fathers as divorce is above 50% in marriages, and this parenting deficit may cause dissociative un-emphatic behaviors and symptoms later.

            Actually the shameful hiding of these sad facts are blocking the wider  Hungarian public  of  ever being able to ascertain the real /diminishing/ dangers of these New Rightists. As no one knows the accumulated psychological litterature that proves with scientific clarity /research and statistics/ how and why Ethnicist Violence is developing through parenting deficit and how it could be slowly treated with effective therapy techniques /of good parenting models/ the public gets aroused  due to  the lurid daily mediatized details of angry Parliamentary debates and sporadic violence against monorities /mostly Romas who are mostly jobless due to lack of trust/. The wider implications of the real existing hopes in social therapy simply escape the Horizons of this „heroic” and „proud” noble nation – meaning that they stay as before : an uninformed group „in denial” of vulnerability and of shame, mostly unable to ever become balanced grownups.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

On Judaism and Messianism: 

Frenkel-Brunswik, Else, R. Sanford, Nevitt, Some Personality Factors in Anti-Semitism, Journal of Psychology, 20. Heldref Publications, 1945.

Idel, Moshe, Mystical Messianism, SUNY, Albany, 1998. 

deMause, Lloyd, The Emotional life of the Nations, Karnac, N.Y. 2002.

Hungarian History:

Búza, Domonkos, Családon belüli erőszak tárcaközi kampány,/Campaign on Family Violence by inter-ministerial agencies/ Szociális Minisztérium honlapja, 2003.

Magyarország története, History of Hungary, 1526-1686 ed. Pach, Zsigmond Pál, R. Várkonyi, Ágnes I. Akadémiai, 1985.

Erős, Ferenc, A válság szociálpszichológiája, /Social Psychology of Crisis/ Bp. T-twins Kiadó, 1994.

Herczog, Mária. „Mitől szűnik az erőszak?” /How can violence be stopped?/ Népszabadság. 2009.01.05.

Kuszing, G. „Statisztikai adatok a partnerbántalmazásról.” Kuszing G. és Szil P. (szerk.) Férfierőszak. Írások a nők és gyerekek elleni erőszakról. Male Violence; Statistical Data…Budapest: Habeas Corpus Munkacsoport – Stop-Férfierőszak Projekt, 2007.

Nagy, László, szerk., Báthory István emlékezete, é.n. /Memory of  King Bathory/ (1991)

Nagy, László, Az erős fekete bég, /The Strong Black Bey, Nadasdy- Husband of Elizabeth Bathory/ Zrínyi Kiadó, 1987

Takáts Sándor, Buda két árulója,/Two Traitors of Buda/  Szépirodalmi Kiadó, 1979.