The Doubling Effect

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The Doubling Effect One of the key aspects to understanding how perpetrators of genocide work is the psychological principle called “doubling”. Doubling is an active psychological process, a means of adaptation to extremity. The adaptation requires a dissolving of “psychic glue” as an alternative to a radical breakdown of oneself. Doubling is the division of the self into two fully functioning wholes, in which a “part self” is able to act as an “entire self”. It is perceived by a perpetrator as a form of psychological survival in a death-dominated environment; in other words, there is a paradox of a “killing self” being created on behalf of what one perceives as one’s own means of survival. Doubling involves both an unconscious dimension — taking place, as stated, largely outside of awareness — and a significant change in moral consciousness. An individual would need this new part of himself to function psychologically in an environment so antithetical to his previous ethical standards yet the same time, he would need his prior self in order to continue to see himself as human; a friend, a husband, a father, a son. But the second self can become dangerously unrestrained, as it so often does in perpetrators. When it becomes so, that opposing self can become the usurper from within and replace the original self until it “speaks” for the entire person. A major function of doubling is likely to be the avoidance of guilt: the second self tends to be the one performing the dirty work. The way in which doubling allows perpetrators to avoid guilt was not by the elimination of conscience, but by what can be called the transfer of conscience. The requirements of conscience were transferred to the second self, which placed it within its own criteria for good (duty, loyalty to group, “improving” conditions, etc.), thereby freeing the original self from responsibility

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