Underneath his tough exterior, he’s very weak. To sum it up, he doesn’t feel like a man. What is it, though, that Epps is getting rid of?īelieve it or not, Edwin Epps feels inferior. Because of men like Epps, Northup (and countless other slaves) were robbed of their human rights and forced to suffer unspeakable cruelty, abuse, and dehumanization. The problem, then, is not in Edwin Epps himself, for example – it belongs to “ them.” Therefore, they (the slaves) are the ones with the problem. The hated part of the self is now lodged inside them. The end result is an equally violent hatred of the person at the other end of the projective identification. When projective identification is used to an excessive degree, especially in a troubled person like Epps, the thoughts and feelings and parts of the self are cast off because they’re violently, but unconsciously hated. Unacceptable thoughts or feelings are forced into someone (who, yes, is a good hook) and that someone is induced to become-to actually live out-what is projected. Projective identification goes one step further. Psychoanalysts call the unconscious need to get rid of certain internal feelings or fantasies by putting them into another person (a mechanism used by Epps), projective identification, To be clear, this was Melanie Klein’s refinement of the concept of projection. ![]() How does something like this happen? And, why were some slave owners like Epps, crueler than others? What are the psychological mechanisms at play? Hate & Getting Rid of Hated Parts of the Self This was the fate of Northup, a loving husband, father, concert violinist. We become first-hand witnesses to exactly how certain entitled Southern white people thought nothing of invading the North, kidnapping free black people, and selling them on the slave trade market. McQueen’s film, 12 Years A Slave, is set in 1841, Saratoga, New York. ![]() The true story of Solomon Northup ( Chiwetel Ejiofor) gives us a brutally searing picture of a horrific and shameful part of our country’s history. The important question is why? Why does this need to have someone to hate (or someone to control and use for one’s own psychological purposes) operate more intensely in some people than in others? Like in Edwin Epps, the vicious slave master ( Michael Fassbender), in Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave. In Jean-Paul Sartre’s essay, “Anti-Semite and Jew,” he says: “If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him.” I don’t think it’s a far leap to put the history of Blacks in America in the same category.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |