EDITH KURZWEIL
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wall." Theoretically, Wyatt found, ideology combines highly subjec–
tive, defensive needs with relatively impersonal, sometimes highly
abstract ideas - which may result in the disappearance of neurotic
and existential anxiety and confusion. So the secret motives for em–
bracing ideology, stated Wyatt, cannot be easily discerned in the
new synthesis of person and ideology. But he found that the need to
renew this synthesis over and over again leads to increasing ac–
tivism, to externalization and militance, and finally to growing
alienation from one's own inner world.
When I attended the meeting of the International Psychoana–
lysts Against Nuclear Weapons I asked myself whether Wyatt had
thought of them when writing his paper. For these highly respected
analysts were repeating the information and slogans distributed by
the many professional organizations set up to oppose nuclear war.
The chairman, John Sloane of Montreal, called the unconscious
forces Freudians try to uncover the "crucial deterrents to what we
call the arms race." Just as the paternal father is able to survive the
child's hatred, he thought, so nations may be learning to do this for
one another. Eero Rechardt of Helsinki rehashed all the arguments
against deterrence and called for negotiations by the Reagan Ad–
ministration, apparently unaware that these have been going on for
some time. He was correct, of course, in stating that we have no con–
ceptual tools to grasp the potential destructiveness of a nuclear ex–
plosion, although it seems somewhat politically inappropriate to
assume, as he did, that the nuclear threat is caused by the United
States planning a first strike-"because it fantasizes the U.S.S.R." as
the aggressor. Moses Laufer of London blamed the power that se–
crecy bestows on those in authority for the terror. Scientists and
political leaders work intimately with each other, he maintained,
and the rarefied atmosphere and intimacy of their work strengthen
the power of their illness (a need to hold on to the childhood om–
nipotence), so that they are unable to evaluate the consequences of
their judgements. His discussant, Howard Levine of Boston, talked
of his own workshops on "the nuclear threat," where he focuses on
the participants' denial of helplessness and powerlessness, and on the
links between unconscious identification with the omnipotence of
nuclear weapons.
No one, of course, would disagree with the aims of the organi–
zation or would deny the horror of a potential nuclear war. But it
seems to me that such psychologizing about the means to achieve
peace seems to follow the ebb and flow of the movement rather than
