People who object to the coronavirus vaccines will give you the most ingenious reasons as to why they are opposed to it, but, at the bottom, when judged psychoanalytically, invisible to their consciousness, it is a reflection of their wish for the Pandemic to continue.
It sounds counterintuitive. The direct evidence from our observations is just the opposite. Did not humanity rise as one to combat the menace of Covid, with all the nations promulgating the most stringent measures ever devised by mankind against an illness, selflessly ignoring the negative impact it would have upon their economies, in fact, every aspect of their living. Were not all rivalries between researchers and pharmaceutical companies put aside, information shared freely, and highly effective vaccines forged in record time? Whence comes such a preposterous idea, then. that we are about ending lives not saving them?
Granted, humans are remarkably noble, yet alongside our nobility isn't there the possibility that plenty of base impulses also coexist, and the heroism is so unremittingly pursued, and its drums so loudly beaten, to prevent the evil side of us getting a foothold upon our conscious willful behavior? Once we go past our conventional hypocrisy regarding issues of death which we so scrupulously keep off-limits from our thinking in our daily conduct and furthermore try to analyze as to why impulses out of nowhere come to our mind of harming others or harm befalling them and, no doubt, as a punishment for these evil thoughts, we visualize our own death or death of those dear to us, my claim does not sound as preposterous. And the idea gains further traction when we recall what Freud had to say about the human tendency to murder each other individually and en masse: “The very emphasis of the commandment: Thou shalt not kill, makes it certain that we are descended from an endlessly long chain of generations of murderers, whose love of murder was in their blood as it is perhaps also in ours.”
We all have different degrees of axes to grind, and it appears that through the agency of Covid morbidity and mortality we have found a most convenient conduit to discharge our gripes. The fear that the vaccination will cause us harm and the government and the medical profession is conspiring to hide information on the downside of these vaccines, is a "projection" of our own unconscious conspiratorial thinking to harm others. This wish however is not evenly distributed, and the presence of the counter wish to help others and prevent their death obscures the picture of what goes on in the deeper layers of our psychic life.
"Projection" is an ego mechanism, present from the very first stirrings of our separation from our mother. We "introject" what we feel as "good" about others and strive to make it our attribute. We "project" upon others what we feel as "bad" within us and would rather see it as a problem of someone else's. An interesting phase of this ego mechanism, which incidentally explains why we spin conspiracy theories, occurs during the oedipal period. The child gripped in the throes of the parental complex of love and hate, hatches all kinds of plots to do away with the feared oedipal father and mother and to lessen the guilt of parricidal and matricidal thoughts "projects" these unacceptable fantasies upon the latter. "It is my father (for it is towards him these fantasies are the most virulent and extensive) who is the bad one, not me. It is he who is full of ingenious schemes to harm me, not I who is planning his death. And it is my mother who practices voodoo, witchcraft, and black magic and will cause me all kinds of strange maladies, not I who wants her to disappear." With the end of the oedipal phase, these phantasies go into repression, but their influence upon our thinking and behavior unbeknownst to us continues till our dying day.
While the human species is infinitely kind, and we will lay down our lives for others, we can, nevertheless, alongside, be infinitely cruel. No memory is completely obliterated in the unconscious and we never let go of our grudges in it, harboring long chains of convoluted thoughts, designed to result in the death of all those, no matter how far in the past, who have crossed our path, done us wrong and caused us pain. These memories are like our cross to carry. They may be faint, they may be strong, but they are there to stay. And they put constant pressure upon us to seek new paths of discharge for the affects (emotions) associated with them. Since most of the originators of our pain are long gone from our current existence we have to find new, often ingenious, ways to do so, and upon people and entities who had nothing to do with our original hurt. Life is mostly about finding reasons for and means of discharging our bottled-up emotions upon the wrong people. By not getting vaccinated we may want to make our own little contribution to keep the hellfire of the Pandemic going and the hope alive of our imagined enemies catching the virus either directly by our own unvaccinated self or by the mysterious workings of karma with the aid of the still smoldering disease.
People who harbor such wishes in their behavior are either paradoxically the most conscientious advocates of social distancing, mask-masochists would be an apt moniker for them, rarely if ever stepping out of the house, not even visiting their parent or children since the Pandemic started, and always ready to chime in "be safe"', all of which is as much a "reaction formation" against their evil intentions as concern for others or are flagrant violators of the COVID norms, believing in the theory that COVID is a hoax, in being mask skeptics, and in taking pride in hugging and doing high fives with each other in social gatherings, which is a deflected continuation of their unconscious foul designs into their conscious conduct as well.
Behind the slogan of "health freedom" of the latter group is the demand for the freedom to exact vengeance, and if not via God Himself, indirectly through an Act of His. The Pandemic after all is an Act of God. When these rebels suspect that the government is pushing these vaccines without having enough data on it and may turn us into Frankenstein monsters from some rogue element of the inadequately studied mRNA, or suspect the opposite that the vaccines are such advanced sci-fi stuff that embedded in them are chips that will carry all our medical data along with a GPS to locate our whereabouts 24/7 through 5G towers, they are hatching up theories which are a distorted elaboration of the conspiracies that they have been cooking up in the recesses of their own mind. The bizarreness of chips and GPS being embedded in the vaccine makes sense only when we make the construction that they are a reflection of the fear that the government (parent substitute) will through them get hold of their sick thinking. What they cannot see in their own interior, because of their refusal to accept that the darker side of their selves can possess such mean murderous thoughts, they can easily suspect in the act of the government, the Pharma, and the big business. These are parental entities against whom they can rant and rave without fear of making a dent because of their size, and from whom, for the same reason, they need not fear retaliation. You can take on a super Goliath (George Soros, Bill Gates, and the government itself) as your enemy with impunity if your entity is no larger than a gnat in the grand scheme of things. Sometimes of course this game of revenge is not all symbolic and does come down to actual interference like the behaviors of vaccine skeptic legislators who, when the Pandemic was at its zenith, were introducing bills to totally end lockdowns and COVID mandates totally and all those who peddle vaccine misinformation like that it is a conspiracy to depopulate and that vaccinated individuals, even entire families, will start falling dead after two or four years. As to how they arrived at the figure of two or four remains a mystery but certainly gives a ring of scientific exactness.
But the above cannot be wholly true. We instinctively feel that something is missing here, even if we cannot tell exactly what. There are too many people you know who are opposed to the vaccine but don't give you the impression of being tortured by death wishes and revenge fantasies, even if it remains in their unconscious mind as I claim but are just regular guys. There has to be more to the story.
Well, we can never overestimate the herd mentality of humans. People who are quite rational in other ways, even of penetrating intelligence in their own field, show remarkable infantilism in making an independent judgment in matters outside their expertise. One of my patients who completely believed in not taking the vaccine until he had done enough research and he would not buy my logic that if “Bill Gates comes from a family of eugenicists and unleashed the virus to reap profits from the vaccine the patent of which he holds” why would he want to depopulate his customer base through mass infertility (apparently, his researches also had revealed that a lipid in the vaccine uncouples once inside the body and goes to the ovaries to render women infertile) because of his trust in me as his doctor got the vaccine and not surprisingly this reformed anti-vaxxer is now the most ardent vaccine promoter.
While it is tempting to see the matter simply as a lacuna in such people's ability to trust their own judgment, such shirking of responsibilities arises from a fear that if they make their own decision their hostile wishes towards others may get the upper hand. It is only when we fear that we have too much troublemaking inside us that will overwhelm our good sense if we fully take over the reins of our affairs that we begin to rely upon others to make up our minds for us. It may be worthwhile to add here that in my patient’s case there was a particularly strange dread and horror of the mRNA of the vaccine. Despite the fact that he did not know a thing about the molecular biology of RNA or DNA, he quivered in his boot thinking as to how the messenger RNA once inside him will take over his DNA and destroy everything good and precious about him. It was easy to see by putting on psychoanalytic spectacles that the mRNA symbolized to him his base, aggressive destructive anal id impulses, which if they once broke through his ego shield will overpower his rational self.
We cannot ignore the fear of the needle-phobes either, who rather die of Covid than be poked with that pinprick. The problem here is not the fear of the vaccine but of the prick (pun intended). Since phobias are a matter of hysterical anxiety it behooves us to figure out what the needle symbolizes to these hysterics. A seasoned psychoanalyst would tell you the needle is a quintessential symbol of the penis and the queasy nauseous feeling that is evoked by the poking of the skin and the gushing of blood into the syringe a displaced dread of castration and impregnation. The phobia is a neurotic precipitate of a premature repression of cruel impulses from the anal sadistic phase now displaced and condensed with all its fury upon the dread of the needle. The mechanism appears to be as follows: the advancement from the pregenital to the genital phase of psychosexuality is met with a hysterical horror of the brutality of the reproductive (genital) sexual act and a regression back to the anal phase, where the fear of penis is now displaced upon all things cruel, including the medical profession and their needles. However, this psychoanalytical knowledge of the needle phobia at the practical level does not mean much for by the time the needle-phobes will get analyzed, if we can find enough psychoanalysts, for there are hardly any left, and their phobia cured, the Pandemic will be over.
Then we come to those who are rugged individualists and take pride in rejecting anything imposed from "the top". They are freedom nuts. Behind the rebellion lies the oppositional defiance disorder, such a large part of human nature, and once again a remnant of the Oedipal Phase of our psychosexual development. It is in the human DNA to be insubordinate to authorities, the father substitutes. Rejecting vaccine is experienced as standing one's ground, being a man. Underneath lies obsessive-compulsive's stubbor
But the one which is the hardest to contend with is due to the distrust of the government. Anything that comes from the government they suspect is designed to favor others over them. Here lies the sibling rivalry behind the vaccine skepticism. My parents favored others over me so I should be wary; for what is being offered must be at my expense and to the advantage of my rivals. Rejection of the government is being acted out through the rejection of the vaccine. While defiance against the government is at the core of the vaccine opposition of many disgruntled folks there are two demographic groups who have the most reasons for wallowing in such morbid thoughts.
We will start with the first group whose opposition to the vaccine is more perplexing: the traditional White Americans. They are more likely to be from rural or smaller cities than metropolitan areas, parochially religious than self-dependent on spiritual matters, blue than white-collar, Republican than Democrat. These are the folks who since the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the change in the immigration policies in the Sixties have seen a steady decline in their relative standing when compared with those who hitherto they had taken for granted were born inferior. Their overall standard of living has improved but since happiness depends more not on what you have but what you have that others don't, they have a feeling the outsiders are making strides faster than they are. On the world stage too, they have suffered a narcissistic setback. Other economies and political powers are challenging their geopolitical supremacy. But what is causing the greatest rage in them is their helplessness over new legal and cultural changes that are eroding their traditional way of living. Their greatest pride - that America is the land of the free and home of the brave; where one can do as one pleases as long as one is twenty-one and white - is becoming an empty phrase. For quite a few things that were once looked upon as “boys will be boys” and dealt with a rap on the knuckles and something to laugh about, are now treated as severe moral lapses, especially in matters such as sexual harassment, and criminal charges, heavy fines, and prison terms can be quickly imposed by an increasingly punitive and rapacious legal system. Within the confines of their homes as well they cannot discharge their pent-up aggressive energy [thanatos] upon their spouse and children and then make up for the excessive aggression by the release of equally strong compensatory love impulses [eros]). Self-appointed moral police of all kinds are breathing down their neck knowing more than they do as to how one should live one's life.
All aggression is becoming off limit but that which can be taken out on one's own self through LGBTQ dilution of one's once strictly practiced masculine or feminine gender identity, self-cutting, drugs, physical and mental illnesses, and outright suicide. Forget going to war in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan and fighting with other races, even ethnic jokes, the staple of mankind to let off some steam and feel better about oneself through one's group identity is now forbidden. They are also askance at their hard-earned White Credibility being declared as White Privilege.
There is no denying that these cultural changes have their good points and are making the world a more level playing field, but can one really deny that embedded within this culture war there is not a mad self-destructive fratricidal sadism and a perverse interest in bringing down everything that was once held as sacrosanct. No wonder these Trump supporters are resentful towards the government. By not trusting the vaccine they are registering their displeasure. By declaring the virus is a hoax they are making a statement that the government is working for their best interests is a hoax.
The other group is the African Americans. They too are government skeptics rather than vaccine skeptics despite their loud proclamations that their opposition is intellectual in nature and they are researching the matter and have not made up their minds yet. Unlike the former group whose rage at the government is for destroying the natural right of white people to dominate and lead, and for imposing too many stringent ordinances and self-restraints on their daily living, the gripe of Black people is for exactly the opposite reason. The government is not doing enough to remove the gap that exists between their living standards and those of other ethnicities. There is little insight here that the government cannot legislate away discrimination. The laws can only go so far in molding social behavior. Deeper change can only happen through the co-mingling of ethnicities on their own without coercion depending upon the natural instinct in all humans for upward mobility through using each other's gene pool and unique skills. But meanwhile, somebody has to be held responsible for the lack of the so-called equity and all the pain that darker hued have to undergo for being less white on the color spectrum. As one of my African American patients once quipped, "We have to catch subtle hell from the minute we get up to the time we fall asleep for being black." Rejecting the vaccine is one way to get even for this unfairness. The reasoning goes: since I have no choice over being black and the government has been worthless in preventing all the ignominies that go along with it, I rebuke your vaccine. There are far weightier issues that adversely impact my life than that virus does. If anything, that virus has been a great leveler, killing whites and blacks alike. Even then the virus is unfair towards the Black, for the amount of harm Fate/Ananke/Government has done by making us black, I need to be compensated with a million bucks each. Give me a million and I will take your vaccine.
There is two surprising or perhaps not so surprising commonality between the African American and Trump vaccine skeptics. Both groups believe that the Government and Big Business are out to selectively depopulate their particular ethnicity and the Jews are its prime movers as they were of 911. Since the world has made it it's business to depopulate Jewish ethnicity, it is not that puzzling as to why they want to blame them for all ethnic cleansing and genocide that occurs anywhere. It is a form of adding insult to injury.
I cannot take leave without making a comment as to how utterly useless it is to persuade those people whose resistance arises from unconscious emotional hangups to accept rational scientific reasoning. A 70-year-old assisted-living patient, who smokes two packs of cigarettes a day, is in poor health and barely able to breathe due to COPD, told my wife, who is her internist, that she will not take the vaccine because she does not know what is in it and will not allow anything unknown inside her body. When asked that considering that she smokes like a chimney does she realize that she regularly inhales hundreds of toxins that she knows nothing about, she responded that that is different because we have known for a long time that cigarettes are harmful but we know nothing about mRNAs’ long term effects. When it was pointed out that she is already too old and in poor health and that she should worry more about the possibility of immediate death from Covid than about the vaccines turning her into a tridactyl or affecting her fertility or causing her to drop dead in a set number of years, she agreed with the logic but said that she still does not trust the vaccine for it came to the market too fast. When countered does she trust the virus more than the vaccine, she declared that she trusts only the Lord. It is He who giveth life and it is He who taketh it away.
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