Since September 11th 2001, the day that shook the world, it has become even more important to distinguish between creative and destructive fighting. Lacanian Attachment Analysts, have been working on this problem for several years, based upon first hand experiences in relatively small organisations using our knowledge of psychoanalysis, politics and group dynamics. The original pictures were the earliest result of our work.

One of the notions we used was that of a "Judo" where a smaller and lighter person can use the weight of a heavier person to throw them to the ground. However, before this events of September 11, we did not connect this with a large scale cultural, economic and political structures. The suicidal attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Centre is perhaps the most dramatic example of a Judo in the history of the world.

To understand these events, we need to acknowlege the simultaneous existence of a pre-modern, modern and post modern world

1. By pre-modern, we mean countries whose culture remains in a largely pre-industrial religious way of life. It has taken over 300 years for the present western industrialised world to move from pre-modern to the modern. The pre-modern world has only been finding the necessary means of production for about 70 years.

2. The Modern World. By this we mean the industrialised modern capitalist structures, mainly western.

3. The Post Modern World and Post-modern Materialism. The post-modern thinkers, for example Jean Baudrillard, critique the Modern world but tend to be sceptical and cynical about development. We propose that a Post-modern Materialism, would aim to develop societies that are emotionally, erotically, and environmentally creative and that such fighting that has to be done would be creative fighting rather than destructive fighting (ref

Western Global capitalism prior to the 11th September felt itself as living in a high-tech state of invulnerability. The Real, Imaginary and Symbolic signifier was the twin towers of the World Trade Building representing endless expanding capital high-tech. The Pentagon symbolised high-tech military domination. Attachment, Desire, openness about the erotic and democracy was officially OK, at least in the Western Democracies.

It was in the name of the religious (dead) Father and son that many western countries and particularly the USA could idealise their religions. One problem can be stated succinctly that the Father may be dead but his law is alive and well - both East and West.

Many religions and ideologies have an idealised "good" aspect and simultaneously an exciting bad object that is its shadow in the Jungian sense. In its simplest form it is God versus Satan. It is commonly found that members of ritual abuse cults are church members also or even priests. Or for some there is a splitting of the personality - what Robert Fliess called the secret psychotic.

In times of war there can arise a collective idealisation of country or ethnic group which leads to the wish to destroy another group`which is believed to be evil. At the unconscious level , in Lacan's terms is an imago known as the idealised law of the (dead) Father. The emotions of the destructive cycle are hate, envy, greed, masochism, shame, castration, dissociation, repression panic and fear (see picture 4). This contrasts sharply with the emotions that accompany the creative fighting cycle which are : Anger, Sadness and Calmness. (See picture 3). Analysis of emotional reactions can therefore help to diagnose and differentiate the creative and destructive cycle in the world.

Prior to September 11, the USA-led West had Strategically supported dictatorships in the Muslim world and elsewhere. It sought to dismember (i.e. the destructive fighting group) any perceived threat to the dominance of high-tech trading. But the alive law of the (dead) Father is a blunt and indiscriminate instrument for fighting guerilla-based organisations as in the present situation in Afghanistan

What, in principle would be a creative fighting strategy?

First of all there would be the goal of disarming in the sense of both armaments and emotionally being disarming. There would be the provision of succourance both literally and in terms of food and safety. In the longer term historical period there needs to be a low-tech personal and creative fighting that is based upon demands, needs, wants and desire for primary and secondary erotic attachment. The primal model for this is the Mom-baby relationship. Only then can the (dead) Father rest in peace. And only then can there be world peace.

©lacanian attachment analysts 2001