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Man of the Month
Ariel Sharon: Do Opposites Attract? The big question everyone is asking about Israel’s new prime minister is whether he will go the way of Nixon, Reagan, de Gaulle and Begin, and move from right to left, giving the Palestinians what they want in exchange for a peace deal. There is the obvious political rationale for such a switch, pointed out by many, which is that only the leader with the right wing credentials can sell to his constituents the concessions required to make a deal. But there is also a personal, psychological dimension to this "soldier turned peacemaker" psychology. On the simplest level it’s about the male ego needing to prove itself to, and conquer, its adversaries. Having won the elections, Sharon may now set his sight on winning over or proving wrong those calling him a war monger. He will show them, and the whole world, he’s the right man for the job after all. If this is the case, abandoning one's stated, even deeply held, foreign policy position is not so difficult because it’s done in the service of holding on to one's psychic policy position, i.e., that of personal conquest. This of course would be consistent with Sharon’s well-documented history as a military commander. As a general he had used surprising and unconventional military tactics which forced the hands of his enemies on the battleground as well as his rivals and superiors in the Israeli military and political establishment. On a deeper level, there is another dimension to this psychology, having to do with the nature of psychological extremes. The psychological origins of extremism is the need to avoid its polar opposite. Demosthenes became a celebrated orator because he had a speech impediment, which in order to overcome he practiced speaking louder than the waves with pebbles in his mouth. Similarly, the rock climber can be someone struggling to conquer a fear of heights and the control freak is someone who unconsciously would want to be out of control. So the warring, hyper-masculine, bulling Sharon might be running away from his softer, submissive, feminine desires. But like emosthenes’ speech impediment, these desires are always there, lurking beneath the surface. Which is why a Sharon transformation is a distinct possibility. Of course, many times extremes remain loyal to themselves and do not transform into their opposites. This is because they find other ways to express the repressed or denied opposite. The neatness freak might marry a messy partner who then both provides enough mess for two and whose messiness is a constant reinforcer of the need to clean and be neat. The nicest, sweetest gentle man who appears to have no aggressive bone in his body might very well be someone struggling with intrusive, consciously unwelcome thoughts about shooting people. And the macho, aggressive and hostile man, might harbor private sexual fantasies about being penetrated by a dildo-strapped Valkire. Not knowing Sharon, we have no way of evaluating what in his life, if anything, is sustaining his extremism. Is picking Peres—an extreme dove from the labor party—to be his foreign minister a sign that he had already been transformed, or a guarantee that Peres will only reinforce Sharon’s long held extremist positions? The unfortunate thing about psychological analysis of this kind is that it can only predict…the past. But whatever the outcome, I’m sure I’ll be able to come up with a good psychological explanation showing its inevitability… |
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