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PATRIOTISM can be a force for goodor evil. American patriotism helped van-quish fascism; German patriotism helpedcreate and sustain it. Wars of nationalliberation depend on patriotic fervor tooppose colonial rule; unfortunately, eth-nic cleansing draws on this same fervor.Appeals to the transcendent value of the

nation-state can be progressive or regressive.But regardless of the purpose to which patriotism

is harnessed, all forms of it share similar psychologi-cal dynamics. Patriotic symbols such as the nation including its manifestations in images like the flagor the Founding Fathers represent the fulfillmentof our longings for connectedness and safety. In thissense, the nation is a metaphor for a family. Familiesserve the function of providing psychic security andattachment. We project onto ever-expanding forms ofsocial authority the longings originally satisfied by par-ents in childhood.

Its easy to see the workings of these two needs inour collective responses to the attack of 9/11 and tothe devastation visited on New Orleans and the GulfCoast by Hurricane Katrina. In the first instance, peo-ple looked to government to provide security and de-fense, including a muscular retaliation against our en-emies. On a symbolic level, we looked to our leadersto provide the protection and strength usually associ-ated with fathers. In the second instance, people lookedto government to provide care and nurturance, a safetynet qualities associated in our culture with mothers.

While patriotism draws a great deal of its energy

from the unconscious mind, it is not reducible to it.That is, social attitudes and behaviors are the prod-ucts of a complex interplay between the rational andirrational, conscious and unconscious, private and pub-lic factors. Nevertheless, one of the reasons that patri-otic fervor can be so passionate and, as a result, sovulnerable to manipulation and exploitation is thatits roots lie in deep levels of the psyche.

Patriotism is a container for a range of psycholog-ical needs that originally play themselves out in thefamily. Over 50 years of psychological research haveestablished that human beings have an innate need forattachment and recognition and that not only is thesatisfaction of this need essential for psychological andphysical survival, but its frustration is one of the pri-mary sources of mental suffering.1 I see such sufferingever day in my consulting room families in whichparents cant empathize with their children or eachother, or narcissistically use their children, or neglectthem altogether. I see children who grow up taking careof others instead of themselves or who retreat from in-timacy because of fears of rejection and abandonment.

Furthermore, the helplessness of the human infantand its absolute dependence on adult caregivers forsurvival generates a powerful need for protection andan idealization of the power and authority of thesecaregivers. When parents are protective and reason-able, children grow up with a basic sense of securityand an ability to rely on others. When parents fail toprotect children and exercise their authority in arbi-trary, frightening, or inconsistent ways, children growup with a basic sense of insecurity and difficulty trust-ing others. Unfortunately, this latter scenario is all toocommon.

However, the fact that our needs for connection andsecurity are often thwarted does not mean that they

MICHAEL J. BADER is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in pri-vate practice in San Francisco. He is a contributing editor ofTikkun and co-founder of the Institute for Change, currently af-filiated with the Service Employees International Union.

The Psychology of PatriotismPatriotism is so compelling, Mr. Bader explains, because it promises to satisfysome of our deepest psychological needs. And the vulnerability that thoseneeds create can be exploited by either the Right or the Left.

By Michael J. Bader

Patriotism and Education

go away. We continue to long for recognition and re-lationships of mutuality even as we often suffer fromloneliness. And we continue to seek security even aswe feel unsafe and unprotected.

In this context, its easy to understand the powerfulpsychic meanings of patriotism. To feel like an Amer-ican, to identify with the United States of America,is to feel at once safe and connected. Patriotism estab-lishes a we that satisfies the longings for connected-ness and affiliation that are so often frustrated in ourprivate lives. And it offers an image of a strong andfair authority in relationship to which we can feel safeand secure.

These powerful satisfactions provided by patriot-ism become even more compelling when we considerhow imperiled or absent they are in everyday social life.A great many sociologists, psychologists, and philoso-phers have written about the ways that a market econ-omy based on an ethos of selfish individualism under-mines communities, atomizes social life, alienates work,and tends to make relationships increasingly instru-mental. From David Riesmans 1950 masterpiece TheLonely Crowd, to Paulo Freires Pedagogy of the Op-pressed in 1970, to Robert Putnams 2001 sensationBowling Alone, social critics have argued that the de-cline in traditional communities of meaning in contem-porary society has had disastrous consequences for thepsychological well-being of citizens.

Thus the unfulfilled longings for attachment, recog-nition, and security first manifested and frustrated inearly family life get further blocked in our everydaylives as citizens and workers. The suffering that resultsis often unconscious. As children, we invest our fami-lies with an awesome power to define the way thingsare and the way theyre supposed to be. We experienceour frustrations and psychological pain as normal, assomehow wired into the fabric of reality, fate, or ourgenes. Similarly, in a culture based on individualism,needs for community can seem foolish. We grow upcynical about the possibility that things could reallybe different and so we conclude that our suffering isillegitimate and unworthy of articulation. Our loneli-

ness and collective insecurity become problems withno names.

Patriotism, appeals to national pride, invocations ofhistorical purpose, symbols of collective unity (the flag,the Constitution, etc.) all offer a symbolic resolutionto unspoken and inchoate longings for relatedness andsafety. For as much as there are powerful forces in ourfamilial and cultural lives that create alienation andapprehension, there are forces acting as an undertowagainst the prevailing waves. To the extent that peoplecontinue to need to feel safe and connected, they willmake do with whatever they can find to satisfy theseneeds.

Political movements on both the Left and the Rightseek to link their partisan agendas to the evocationand satisfaction of these frustrated longings. LinguistGeorge Lakoff, for example, has argued that liberalsspeak to values arising from a conceptual paradigmthat he calls the nurturant parent including thevalues of empathy and responsibility for others whileconservatives appeal to a mental metaphor involvingdiscipline and self-reliance that he terms the strictparent. Both models seek to address needs for con-nectedness and security, albeit in radically differentways.

Thus the political exploitation of our collective pas-sions and distress is ubiquitous in our public lives. Thepassions evoked by politics must, of necessity, involvean encounter with deep-seated human longings. Wheth-er people are marching against abortion or against thewar in Iraq, intense emotions and not simply cog-nitive beliefs are on parade.

Sometimes, in fact, a movement or institution canuse the power generated by its success in satisfying thepsychic needs of its members to promote both liberaland conservative agendas. For example, the hugely suc-cessful fundamentalist megachurch run by Rick War-ren in Orange County, California, manages its rapidgrowth by encouraging the formation of small prayergroups that function to provide social and emotionalsupport and affiliation, as well as spiritual develop-ment. And Warrens Saddleback Church simultaneous-ly supports a conservative social agenda and has in-vested heavily in creating a safety net for the homelessin Orange County.2

However, while both Left and Right seek to takeadvantage of the frustrated longings for communityand safety, the conservative side has done so more suc-cessfully of late. In the post-9/11 climate, conservativeand neoconservative ideologues used the need for pro-

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Sometimes a movement can promote both liberal andconservative agendas.

tection that so many Americans felt to promote dubi-ous justifications for war with Iraq and a massive in-crease in the police and surveillance powers of the gov-ernment.

Similarly, conservatives have been more successfulthan liberals in using one other crucial political tech-nique in their attempt to create an experience of com-munity and safety: namely, the evocation of a de-meaned other. While liberals are certainly guilty ofthis maneuver when they express their disdain for cari-catured Evangelical Christians, conservatives are es-pecially skilled at evoking prejudice and erecting de-valued caricatures. For example, the satisfying sense ofwe-ness that accompanies being an American isdeepened and solidified by the creation and demoni-zation of an enemy. It used to be the Communists;now, its the terrorists. Membership in a group is en-hanced if there are people who are excluded. If thesepeople on the outside are bad or dangerous, thenit enables those of us on the inside to feel good, right-eous, and safe. This process of exclusion and demoni-zation is the essential dynamic behind all forms of eth-nocentrism, racism, sexism, and homophobia.

The feelings of insecurity and disconnectednessthat plague us in our personal and social lives can beblamed on the actions of some other who is then de-meaned and attacked. This process of projection is de-liberately used by conservatives to solidify their base.By creating an imaginary us and them, they canthen promise satisfaction of deep and legitimate long-ings for a community safe from both real and illusorythreats posed from the outside. On the internationalfront, the currently favored other is the swarthy ter-rorist. On the domestic front, the Religious Right hasmost recently focused on gay marriage. Both the ter-rorist and gay newlywed are used as lightning rods todraw out the collective passions of Americans lookingto be temporarily relieved of feelings of insecurity anddisconnectedness. Ironically, the us/them tactic ulti-mately serves to undermine a more authentic commu-nity that would better meet the psychological needsfor connectedness of most individuals. Like a cliqueof schoolchildren who gain a temporary sense of be-longing by demeaning other classmates, the ReligiousRight promises a temporary and partial remedy forthe symptoms of an illness that lies at the heart of thesystem that they, themselves, promote and defend.

Such solutions whether promoted by the Left orthe Right are transient and require the constantstimulation and reproduction of paranoid mechanisms.

The real reasons that our longings for recognition andsafety are continually frustrated are not substantivelyaddressed by the creation of demeaned others. Whilethe longings are healthy, their frustration is the resultof dysfunctional family systems, the ethos of individu-alism, the greed of the marketplace, the powerlessnesspeople feel at work, and the violence resulting fromdiscrimination and the deterioration of social safetynets.

In this sense, people who lean toward the more pro-gressive end of the political spectrum have a chance,at least, to win hearts and minds, not by erecting anenemy against whom we can all unite, but by appeal-ing in a healthier way to these same unmet needs forsecurity and connection. As Michael Lerner argues inThe Left Hand of God, progressives could begin to ar-ticulate a politics explicitly based on a recognition ofthe centrality of these desires, specifically condemninginstitutions that frustrate them, and fighting for so-cial changes that increase the possibility of their realsatisfaction.3

Schools can play an important role in a politicalproject seeking to identify healthy solutions to the prob-lems of disconnectedness and insecurity. Schools canteach and model empathy; provide recognition; en-courage discussions of values, including those foundin the various spiritual traditions; and confront preju-dices born of the need to define the self in oppositionto a demeaned other. In other words, schools couldtry to create an environment in which the legitimateneeds of children for connectedness and safety are grati-fied in ways that inoculate them against the psycho-logical appeal of messages of racism, arrogant nation-alism, and moral intolerance.

The psychological needs that drive patriotic fervorare universal. People will always need to be connectedand secure. These longings can be gratified in healthyor unhealthy ways. They can be distorted and exploit-ed in the interest of agendas that are immoral, or theycan be addressed and gratified in ways that promotethe general welfare. Like patriotism itself, the humanpsyche is intrinsically neither good nor bad. It all de-pends on the uses to which its put.

1. For a good review of the relevant psychological literature, see PeterFonagy, Attachment Theory and Psychoanalysis (New York: Other Press,2001).2. Malcolm Gladwell, The Cellular Church,New Yorker, 12 Septem-ber 2005, pp. 60-67.3. Michael Lerner, The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country fromthe Religious Right (San Francisco: Harper, 2006). K

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