Chart 4: Thanatos Cycle
Chart 4a: Where Thanatos overshadows Eros
The proposition here
is that all the conflicts we know
whether personal, local, or international
are fundamentally conflicts over
an attachment space.
As children we become anxious resistant
when the interaction on the space
is contradictory, loved then abandoned
hated then loved frightened and then comforted.
We become anxious avoidant
when we cannot get too close
and we cannot afford to be too far away
and have to pretend
we are self sufficient.
If the attachment space
is filled with chaos and disorganisation
then abuse and abandonment are likely
so we become anxious disorganised
and maybe have to dissociate
to survive the other two terrible possibilities
madness or death.
And finally in groups and society
the fights for the attachment space
lead to war and violence
primitive envy, greed and murderous emotions
fuelling the events
we read of every day in the newspapers
or remember a war we have lived through
or worse if we now live in one.
This is not a simple theory regarding territory
but the amazing complexities of the basic needs
around the internal and external attachment spaces
that exist in an infinite multiplicity
in conscious, preconscious and unconscious forms
that make us the complex creatures we are.
capable of great love, hate and fear
and yet, at heart,
very vulnerable.
