The Psychology of War and Peace, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 1991 The Image of the Enemy

Can a Baby Be an Enemy? Our world is in a deep, prolonged crisis. The threat of global nuclear war, the chronic condition of local wars, the imperilled environment, and mass star­ vation are among the major forms this crisis takes. The dangers of massive overkill, overexploitation of the environment, and overpopulation are well known, but surprisingly little has been said about their potential interac­ tions, their bearing upon each other. If there were to be a nuclear confronta­ tion between today's superpowers, it might not take place in today's world, but in a far less friendly habitat, such as the world may be some decades hence. And it need hardly be added that the era of this particular super­ power configuration may be waning rapidly, its place to be taken by other international arrangements not necessarily less threatening. To understand and cope with our situation we need correspondingly serious reflection. This volume forms a welcome part of that process. Un­ avoidably, a large part of our thinking about the issues of human survival must be oriented to physical and biological aspects of the total danger. But it has not escaped the authors of this book that, coupled with these aspects, there are profound psychological dangers, such as loss of the sense of futu­ rity, moral deterioration, and a fatalistic decline in the will to struggle to protect our home, the Earth.

I. Theory and History.- 1. Substance and Shadow: Images of the Enemy.- 2. Some Philosophical Propadeutics toward a Psychology of War.- 3. Enemy Images in the United Nations—Iraq and East—West Conflicts.- 4. The Contributions of Psychology to International Understanding: Problems and Possibilities.- 5. Babes in Arms: Object Relations and Fantasies of Annihilation.- II. Empirical Research.- 6. The World Is a Dangerous Place: Images of the Enemy on Children’s Television.- 7. Perceptions of the Soviet Union and the Arms Race: A Ten-Nation Cross-Cultural Study.- 8. Fearing the Army and the Enemy: Psychological Explanation of the Dutch Sociopolitical Reality.- 9. Image of the Enemy: Critical Parameters, Cultural Variations.- 10. Psychological Correlates of Threat Perception in West Germany, 1978 and 1981.- 11. Generalizational Learning and Paradigms of Military Threat in West Germany.