A majority of Americans are not only opposed to legalization of drugs, but violently opposed to it.1 This intense emotionality is a serious obstacle to a rational exploration for solutions to the problems caused by drugs in our society. As with any debate, the objective basis for the arg-uments on both sides of the issue are of primary importance. But anyone who is interested in obtaining a reasoned hearing for the concept of legalization will also be engaged in a struggle with powerful affective responses. Rational arguments are not sufficient to combat potent effects. Insight into the psychological determinants of these reactions would improve the chances for a productive debate.

A Psychoanalytic Model for the Development of Political Beliefs

A basic tenet of the psychoanalytic perspective is that much of human behavior is unconsciously designed to defend the individual from the pain of anxiety, depression and guilt. Behavior, in the sense it is used here, includes not only physical action, but also mental or psychological activities, such as thinking, believing, imagining, and emoting. Psychoanalysts do not believe that the only motive for behavior is defensive, but that almost all behavior can be seen to have a defensive aspect, as well as other non-defensive aspects. To take some simple examples: You find yourself leaving a party, with overtly salacious intentions, in the company of a man or woman to whom you have just been introduced. Although you heard the name clearly, you do not consciously register the fact that the initials are the same as those of a friend of whose fatal illness you have just learned. In this case a psychoanalyst might point out that your behavior is serving two functions: It pushes away the distressing fear of impending death, and is also an attempt to make a fantasied reparation for the anticipated loss. (The new JB or TL can replace the dying friend. Naturally this is all unconscious; such thoughtless betrayal of your friend would be indignantly repudiated by your conscious self.) Or you start daydreaming you are Napoleon reviewing the troops right before a business conference at which you are unconsciously afraid you will be outvoted. Here the fantasy functions to restore your narcissistic equilibrium and also points to the hostile impulses stirred in you by the anticipated humiliation. (Many of your troops will be slain in the battle that follows the review.) You may be aware of your fear or it may have been repressed so that only the invigorating fantasy is in consciousness.

Social, moral and political belief systems are certainly "behaviors" that can function defensively. Although there is no rigid correlation between personality factors and political beliefs, an individual's ideology is usually consistent with his general character style. In other words, political, economic and social convictions are shaped by unconscious conflict as well as by rational deliberation.

What do we know about how people develop political beliefs? Political psychologists, sociologists and common sense all furnish some immediate answers. Our beliefs are formed in the matrix of our family, community and national culture. Parental political attitudes influence us, as do the attitudes of friends, and admired figures in our schools, places of worship and neighborhoods. In addition, the media has a powerful influence on the development of socio-political consciences.

Every generation, impacted by a particular set of historical experiences, develops a characteristic political and cultural tone. Protests against the Vietnam war have been succeeded by environmental activism.

In addition to, and in interaction with these "externar influences, individual psychodynamics help to shape our political stances. When we are infants (and perhaps too, for many of us, when we are adults) the only human we are concerned about is ourself and we have small interest in or even awareness of other human beings except as need-providers. As we mature, our sphere of awareness enlarges to include members of our immediate circle. Through childhood this circle enlarges, and we gradually learn to recognize that some of our concerns are shared by others, and that other people close to us have some concerns that are different from our own. As humans enter adolescence and early adulthood, their sphere of interest typically expands to include some sort of acknowledgement of the psychological existence of humankind in general. It is during this period of rapidly expanding ego boundaries, when the young human is undergoing a period of redefinition of the self and its place in the human race, that some sort of political identity is formed.

Various psychological processes come into play during the evolution of an individual's political beliefs. The adolescent may begin to move towards a certain position on the political spectrum because of an unconscious identification with, or idealization of, certain political leaders, or with a group. The task of adolescence is the detachment of the youth from his primary adherence to family so that he can take his place in the larger community. The adolescent needs new objects for his passions, and politics can receive the affects that must be displaced from primary objects. An individual may be attracted to a certain political movement because it provides a socially approved outlet for aggressive or libidinal drives which are particularly intense in adolescence. Participation in fascist rallies or war protest "love ins" are two examples that spring readily to mind. In groups, all emotions can become intensified, which is a stimulating experience for the group member. The consolidation of a political identity is not in the usual sense, a conscious process. Political attitudes develop over time, continue to evolve as the adult matures, and often never become the subject of much conscious attention on the part of the individual who possesses them.

Some General Psychological Mechanisms Involved in Opposition to the Idea of Legalization

Our purpose is to understand some of the reasons that legalization evokes a heated response from so many people. Before, however, considering the reaction to legalization, it is important to point out that not all emotionality is generated by the issue itself. There is also an element of animosity which derives from traditional hawk-dove antagonism. The legalizing doves, who want to end the war, characterize the hawks as hyperpatriotic thugs, while the hawks denounce the doves as passive namby-pambies whining for a dishonorable peace. This name-calling converts an intrapsychic problem into an interpersonal conflict. The individuals can turn aside from the difficult and anxiety producing experience of working out their stand on the issue and haul out their standard complaints against a familiar foe. Stereotyping of the opposition leads to an automatic discounting of the opponenes point of view. People in the grip of rigid, emotionally charged thinking are prone to preconscious fantasies of their own side as fighting a moral crusade against the dark forces of the opposition. Such images are intoxicating, and like all successful intoxicants, tend to raise self-esteem and to cloud objective judgement. Hawks are invigorated by pictures of themselves as valiant warriors for Good, while doves are gratified by images of themselves as bringing Peace and Love to mankind. Over and over one sees the issue of legalization denounced as an idea of "economists, lawyers and college professors". The 'real' people, it is implied, have no enthusiasm for this "irresponsible" idea cooked up by a few "pointy-headed intellectuals". This attack is in the spirit of anti-intellectualism which denounces theoretical thinking as alienation from the grass roots. As Claude Brown, a black writer said in a presentation in which he opposed pro-legalization academic arguments: "I haven't done any studies, I've just taken drugs and lived on the streets for 30 years."2 (with a knowing grin to the addicts in the audience, and a slight sneer towards the blackboard covered with statistics on drug use).

Views that are diametrically opposite on the political level may be produced by the same psychological mechanism. (My pro-tax hike position may be an expression of the same conflict that underlies your anti-tax hike stance.) Holding one position on the issue of legalization is no more prima facie evidence for neurosis than holding the other. Keeping in mind, therefore, that as much could be said about the psychology of proponents of legalization, let us turn to examine some of the psychological functions that a prohibitionist stance can serve.

1) The drug war relieves pervasive fears by supplying a concrete enemy.

Faced with insoluble social problems such as poverty or the threat of nuclear annihilation, people tend to despair of the efficacy of any effort. The overwhelming anxiety that awareness of our helplessness engenders can be averted if we can channel our energy into a fight. War against a common enemy raises community morale, revitalizing forsaken standards and promoting a sense of increased control over destiny.

Our politicians and journalists, selecting from among the myriad intractable problems that our society faces„have named "Drugs" our "Number One Problem". While a minority of citizens may feel that other, perhaps less overtly dramatic problems deserve equal attention, many Americans have accepted the selection without a quarrel. This may in part be due to a tendency of any large group to accept the word of its authorities, and to want simple solutions to disturbing problems. "Mind altering substances" (aside from alcohol, whose destructive power is formidable, but familiar) frighten many people. Fantasies about their power to destroy both the bodies and the humanity of users and to produce violent and hypersexual behavior are reenforced by media images of brutal crimes committed by addicts. Drugs have become an absolute symbol and explanation for social disorder.

With drugs, or drug dealers as targets, life becomes simpler; objective fear is much easier to cope with than the interior terror generated by the inevitability of death or awareness of evil. Diffuse fear can be defensively converted to anger, an effect that is easier to bear. The identifiable devil can be fought against, not in the isolated nightmare of the unconscious inner world, but in cooperation with comrades in arms in the reassuringly tangible external world.

2) A tough law-and-order regime relieves anxiety by projecting the image of a strong, loving parent.

Young children turn to their parents for comfort and reassurance when frightened. In the refuge of mother's lap, their sense of safety is restored, or at father's side they gain the courage to walk down the dark hallway. Who can protect the adult? The concept of God is a profoundly important source of security, but in addition, the sense of a strong government is sustaining for many adults. To paraphrase Charles Brenner, a well-known psychoanalyst: Politics makes of the society at large a new version of the child's family. In the new family the political leaders are the parents, and are looked to for a sense of security.3 Or, as another analyst writes, human despair over the sense of being alone can be assuaged by the "grand illusion ...that [society] recreates the dual unity of mother and child as an experience of perfect love... since it shields members from a sense of being motherless in the universe."4

In order to understand how this tendency of humans to look to government for surrogate parenting affects attitudes towards drug laws, let us look at some of the functions of a good parent and at how the drug laws are experienced as consonant with these functions.

A. A good parent provides physical protection for children. Since drugs are perceived as not only dangerous in themselves, but also the key element in a dangerous culture, many people look to government to protect them from these dangers by law enforcement. Thus, while the police may be regarded with distrust or contempt by ghetto dwellers for much of the time, they are seen as protectors of the community when they are busting drug dealers. If drugs were no longer illegal, the police would be withdrawn from serving this protective function. This is experienced consciously as callous betrayal, and precon-sciously as traumatic parental abandonment. (There are, of course, a number of other reasons that the poor, particularly the inner city poor, oppose legalization, some of which will be mentioned below.)

B. A good parents sets clearly defined rules for the children. Uncertainty is anxiety provoking. Parents who institute a reliable system of rewards and punishments for their children provide a reassuringly predictable family atmosphere. Ideally, as children mature, the system of control becomes internalized, and they gain the capacity to rule themselves and to exercise judgment and choice to avoid danger externally. Some individuals, however, do not feel confident enough to rely on their own judgment and are more comfortable with the image of strong central authority. Those people who are most in favour of central authority — that is, individuals with an authoritarian ideology - are more likely than others to view the world as dangerous, and to feel that tough measures to control danger are a vital function of government.5 Since they believe that the opfimal way for society to deter crime is by a system of severe and certain punishment, and that conformity to rules laid down by officials is more important for society than the preservation of personal freedom, people with authoritarian politics generally do not support decriminalization. For these people the very phrase "civil liberties" may be a red flag, signifying "loopholes" for miscreants to escape from punishment.

The fact that many young blacks have grown up in single parent homes may account for some of their expressed desire for government to act as a restraining force. Longing for a strong father figure may be expressed as a longing for a paternalistic government which provides the security of strict rules. Drug laws, which are responsible for the incarceration of so many young black males, may be experienced as "tough love", while legalization is conceived of as a manifestation of indifference.

C. A good parent is a moral mentor. A good parent encourages or insists that his children behave according to his own moral laws. Right and wrong are thus defined for the child by the parent. Some believe that government should assume this parental function for its citizens. This is a proposal for institutionalization of what Piaget calls the "morality of constraint",6 an early stage in the development of moral judgrnent in the child. The child, however, gains in the ability to form autonomous moral decisions as he matures, while, the citizens of a state that serves as moral arbiter never attains this autonomy. Those who feel that government ought to legislate morality assume that a significant portion of mankind would, if granted autonomy, go astray. People who unconsciously fear that their instinctual impulses will lead them to transgress against their own moral strictures are reassured by external controls. Some of those who hold that use of mind altering drugs is, in itself, amoral, are afraid of the regression and de-repression of primitive parts of their psyche that they imagine drugs could induce. For such people, legal sanctions are reassuring. Another defensive strategy employed unconsciously by those afraid of their impulses, is to split them off from awareness, project them onto others, and then attempt to control outbreaks of these projected impulses. Drug laws can represent this sort of hoped for control.

The fact that addicts repeatedly and defiantly break the drug laws does not mean that they want the laws to be abolished. This may look like hypocrisy, but it is in accord with a deep human need to come to terms with ambivalence. Before children are mature enough to exercise restraint over their own impulses, they need their parents to act as limit setters. Naturally they will rebel against the limits, and denounce the parent who curbs their desire for total instinctual freedom, but the parents' continued firmness is vitally needed by the child. Pleasure is desired, but fulfillment precipitates guilt feelings. The id has constantly to struggle with the superego. One way that humans manage the conflict between these two aspects of their psyche is to retain one set of guidelines and to project the other on to another individual or group. For the young, this solution often takes the form of retention of the id impulses and assignment of the superego's strictures to the parent. Young adolescents are customarily delighted to discover the pleasures of sexual acting out, and may freely behave in ways that seem forbidden by the adult community. If they are prevented access to the forbidden pleasure they feel not only frustrated, but outraged, and the restraining parent is denounced as an authoritarian prude. However, far more distressing to the adolescent is the parent who does not forbid indulgence, or, even worse, condones or encourages it. Children want very much to see their parents as asexual. (It is really they who are, in a strict sense, prudes.) This dynamic holds true for drug use, and is one reason why so many drug addicts oppose legalization. They have a deep ambivalence towards drugs, both over and undervaluing them. An addict may rob his mother to get drugs and despise his non-drug taking friends, but on the other hand, having experienced the destructive potential of narcotics, he hopes that a responsible society will condemn the use of drugs and make every effort to rescue him from his habit.

A variant of the principle that the state should be in loco parentis for society is the view that the state should serve this function, not for all citizens, but for a vulnerable few. People who hold this view might not feel that drug use is intrinsically wrong, or even harmful for everyone but that it is dangerous for certain people — children particularly, of course, but also other citizens who are perceived as weak. Drug laws are seen as protecting these weak individuals from temptations that they are not equipped to resist. Legalization seems, from this perspective, an abdication of a moral responsibility. The fantasy is that government will function as a beneficent older sibling or parent who looks out for the welfare of the weak children. Dependency longings are gratified by this fantasy, as are repressed aggressive tendencies, for, under the conscious guise of "protecting the weak", lies an unconscious thought of controlling the "inferior" members of society.

3) The drug war provides a sanctioned outlet for aggression, hatred and envy.

Inner city residents are the most directly affected by the criminal activities of the drug addicts and dealers. It is their neighbors and children who are dying, and they are the angriest. They tend to want tough criminal enforcement and to care less about the civil rights of criminals. Playthell Benjamin, a black writer and activist, expresses this anger vividly:

"I live smack dab in the middle of the hub of the crack/cocaine trade...in the center of a war zone. Hence my views on the drug plague have been forged under fire.... I am indifferent to the moral issues.... For me its a question of the survival of my family and my community. [To end the destruction of the African-American communities by the narco-terrorists] I am prepared to resort to mass executions by firing squads and concentration camps in the Arizona desert." (The Village Voice, Sept 19, 1989).

He advocates violence against drug dealers for ostensibly pragmatic reasons (survival), but he is functioning here as a social agitator, designating a villain - the drug dealer, or narco-terrorist - against whom his neighbors can unleash the rage and frustration they experience daily in their crime torn neighborhoods and within themselves. He can suggest the transgression of normal moral standards and the institution of a counter-terrorist terrorism, with firing squads and concentration camps, (or even, as William Bennett suggested, decapitation of dealers) without guilt because his anger has freed him of any doubt about the justice of his views.

Another effect powering the drive to keep drugs outlawed is moral indignation, a satisfying feeling that is often directed towards criminals. It is a sort of toned down hatred that feels legitimate because its object is someone who has violated societal norms. Law-abiding citizens, under the sway of the protestant ethic, have trod the straight and narrow path of work, moderation and future-oriented planning, and suppressed, often with a struggle, their own delinquent impulses. Such individuals often feel strong disapproval of people who use drugs recreationally, even in moderation. Seeing others get away with transgressions that they have resisted committing leads to resentment. Punishment of an offender, on the other hand, rewards the law-abider for his good behavior and compensates him for the frustration of his animal passions. Since the punishment is socially sanctioned aggression, citizens can, without guilt, experience the gratification of sadistic wishes by imagining the suffering of the punished.

4) Legalization may be opposed by those who fear the consequence of their own destructive impulses.

For some people, drug laws provide an outlet for aggressive impulses; for others, they may be used as a bulwark against the expression of destructive wishes. Many overtly earnest and mild-mannered individuals are engaged in an unconscious struggle to keep hostile impulses repressed. Their benign demeanor is the result of a defense known as "reaction formation". Thus, vegetarianism may be functioning as a defense against unconscious wishes to be cruel to animals (Here the animals are likely to be serving as displacements to receive fantasied revenge originally devised for parents or siblings). Individuals of this psychodynamic constitution may oppose legalization out of fear that it will lead to increased use and hence, to more harm to users.

People who are not troubled by their own hostile wishes may support legalization, responding to the threat of increased use with the sentiment that if addicts want to kill themselves with drugs, it's their own business. But those who fear their sadistic impulses may try to placate their superego by voting for the most restrictive measures. Again we encounter the principle of compromise formation: the drug laws are consciously perceived by the voter as protection for potential drug users. Unconsciously the voter's hostile impulses may be gratified by images of the punishment mandated by the laws.

5) The drug war helps maintain self-esteem in the minority communities by demanding a high level of performance from the community members.

Inner city residents resent outsiders describing their lives as hopeless. They bridle particularly at the tendency of some liberal whites to "forgive" the minorities for all sorts of behaviors they would not tolerate in their own communities because of a sense that the disadvantaged have been so damaged that they can simply not be held to the same standards as the well off white people. This reverse discrimination in moral matters is perceived as patronizing and insulting.

"The trend in addiction treatment programs is to brainwash people into believing that the reason they use drugs is because they suffer from an incurable biological disease...they should not blame themselves for their behavior because they have a biological disease...This is a convenient way of avoiding the development of self-efficacy, or the belief that a person can be successful at projects he or she undertakes."7

Individuals who feel this way are more prone to espouse a hard-line approach to the drug problem because they feel that demonstrates more respect for the potential of their people.

Conclusion

In an ideal society, all adults would equip themselves for the privilege of citizenship by educating themselves on important issues. Willing to consider the likelihood of non-rational forces operating within their personality, they would be more likely to be able to develop a balanced and less prejudiced view of the world. However most people do not think out their positions in an objective fashion. They "inherit" political beliefs from their families and social groups without conscious reflection. Opinions formed in this fashion are much more prone to emotional bias and cultural prejudices.

In a democratic society decisions are not made by "perfectly rational", or even just responsibly well informed members of the community, but by everybody. The illiterate town drunk's vote is as valid as the mayor's. Furthermore, even the most educated and ostensibly reasonable individual may have powerful, irrational, affectively based biases which can escape notice, since they are embedded in the structure of rationally based abstract propositions.

In order to have an impact on public policy one has to do more than support or refute logical argruments. The irrational and purely emotional aspects of people's convictions must also be addressed and dealt with. Psychology does not produce the ultimate truth but appreciation of psychology can remove some of the barriers to its pursuit.

Joanna Chapin, M.D. can be contacted at 250 East 87th St., New York, N.Y. 10028. (212) 534-5671.

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Footnotes

1 One might say that emotionality does not preclude social change. Integration was, after all, achieved in spite of the violently emotional opposition to it. Strong, however, as the opposition was, there was in the civil rights movement a massive swell of energy that had possession of the moral high ground. Very few people, on the other hand, are ready to argue that drug use is a valuable cause for which to fight. In fact, as we shall see, the small fraction of our society who is passionate enough about drugs to rob and kill to get them are largely opposed to legalization.

2 "Legalization and Urban Culture", oral presentation at "Drug Policy Reform: A Training Session" at City College of New York, February 17, 1990.

3 Charles Brenner, An Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis. (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1974) , p. 208.

4 F. Fornari. The Psychoanalysis of War. (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1974), p. 146.

5 Bob Altemeyer, Enemies of Freedom. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1988), p. 147.

6 Jean Piaget, The Moral Judgement of the Child. (Glencoe, IL: Free Press) p. 93.

7 Jeffery Schaler, "Racist Trends in Drug Policy" The Washington Afro-American, December 30, 1989.