Modern Psychology Fails to Comprehend Human Nature 

by Peter Michaelson

One of the strangest stories in psychology (and in the history of human evolution) involves our unconscious denial of a crucial flaw in our human nature. The existence of this flaw (and our denial of it) results in a significant loss of brain power, making it harder for us to deal with both our personal problems and the problems of the world.

I learned about this flaw in human nature in 1985 when I began to study the writings of psychoanalyst Edmund Bergler, M.D. (1899-1962.) Bergler wrote 24 psychology books along with 273 articles that were published in leading professional journals. Ten of his titles are in print and available at International Universities Press (iup.com). 

Bergler, an Austrian Jew who fled the Nazis in 1938 and lived in New York City, is completely ignored by modern psychologists and researchers. PhD graduates from leading universities usually have never heard of him. 

Bergler agreed with conventional psychoanalysis that we interpret many of our daily experiences through unresolved emotions from childhood involving actual or perceived experiences of deprivation, helplessness, and criticism. In childhood, we also acquire impressions of being rejected, unloved, and betrayed. Our emotional side remains entangled in varying degrees in these negative impressions. If we had dysfunctional parents, or if our genetic makeup is unfavorable, our entanglement in these negative emotions can be more problematic. 

Bergler broke with convention when he claimed that we have an unconscious willingness to continue to experience our negative emotions. Not only do we refuse to let go of this negativity, we secretly look for ways to re-experience it. We recycle what is unresolved over and over, while claiming to be innocent victims of the insensitivity or malice of others as we cover up, through our psychological defenses, our participation in our suffering.

According to Bergler, our psyche is infused with unconscious masochism. If so, it would indeed be very humbling, very offensive to our egotism, to acknowledge the fact. I believe that we do have in our psyche such a “black hole,” which scientific psychology has yet to discover. For more than twenty years I have, with considerable success, been using talk therapy based on this knowledge to treat people for a wide variety of emotional and behavioral problems. 

Bergler called this flaw “the basis neurosis,” which is the title of one of his books. His clinical term for this flaw is “psychic masochism.” This dark side hides out in us all, and it can produce, among other emotional frailties, defensiveness, apathy, self-pity, self-doubt, and self-absorption. It weakens us and makes us prey to addictions and compulsions. 

This means that the negativity we feel in our everyday experiences belongs to us. We often want to blame others (frequently our parents) for our negative feelings, and we can hold grudges and become resentful and angry towards them. This claim of innocence on our part is a psychological defense that covers up our emotional investment in our negative feelings. 

We can quite easily begin to eliminate our negative feelings, impressions, memories, reactions, beliefs, and behaviors when we understand our attachment to their source. That source is our masochistic attachment to deprivation, helplessness, criticism, rejection, abandonment, and betrayal. (Greed, for instance, has its roots in an attachment to deprivation; jealousy has its roots in an attachment to rejection; apathy and procrastination have their roots in an attachment to helplessness; and chronic loneliness has its roots in an attachment to abandonment.) 

This knowledge is immensely empowering. It enables us to be responsible for our own happiness and the destiny of the world. As we awaken to this part of our unconscious mind, we can each become free of the corrupting influence of negative emotions and the self-absorption they produce. This enables each of us to become a center of power and wisdom.  

An aspect of our masochism can be detected through our entanglement with self-aggression. Our superego (or inner critic), which assumes in an authoritarian manner to be the voice of our own self, can harass us and undermine us with utter ruthlessness. (We are weakened in the face of this self-aggression by our masochistic attachment to criticism and to helplessness or passivity.) When we are at war with ourselves in this way, the negativity we feel is transmitted outward to others in the form of indifference, mean-spiritedness, or violence. We act out this hidden negativity in our families, communities, and, collectively, through our domestic and foreign policies. The negativity can also be acted out passively, as when, unable to stand up to our inner critic and establish true inner authority in the self, we are unable to stand up to our political and economic leaders when they abuse their power. 

Cognitive approaches to psychotherapy will become more effective when the underlying masochism is exposed and understood. Bergler said it required about eighty one-on-one sessions to cure a relatively healthy person of unconscious masochism. I have found that shorter terms of therapy—as few as ten sessions—can bring vast relief to a person’s pressing issues. New technologies for brain enhancement such as Interactive Metronome and therapeutic listening are evolving, and can reduce the time spent in talk therapy. 

Psychology needs to be vitally engaged in defeating the dark side of human nature and speeding up the process of human evolution. The biggest obstacle in this quest is human resistance to the shattering of illusions and egotism, to which we cling for a sense of identity and security even in our suffering. The deeper we go into our own psyche to renew our self, the more resistance we feel. People can test this fact for themselves by reading Bergler’s work. Many people describe going into a mental stupor when reading his books and stopping after a few pages, even though his writing itself is excellent.

Bergler has been criticized because he believed that homosexuality was caused by psychological issues. This has made it easier to relegate him to obscurity. In his defense, his views on this subject were framed by the rigid attitudes of the mid 20^th Century. It would surely be unwise to discredit his whole body of work on the basis of his writings on homosexuality.

Bergler was aware of the enormous resistance to his ideas and understood that we are determined emotionally, through our defenses, not to disturb the psychic status quo. He wrote once that his books were time-bombs that would go off in 100 years. Perhaps now in this summer of 2008, as we observe with chagrin the psychological inadequacy of our political and economic leaders, we have become frustrated and evolved enough to take a second look at his ideas.