Why We Create Enemies to Escape Ourselves?

Jung’s Terrifying Prophecy

Carl Jung’s insights into the ‘psychic epidemic’ reveal a dangerous truth: our collective tendency to manufacture adversaries stems from a profound avoidance of our own inner shadows. This deep guide explores how projection fuels societal conflict and offers a path toward individual and collective integration.

The Silent War Within: Unmasking the Psychic Epidemic

In an age increasingly defined by fierce polarization and seemingly intractable conflicts, Carl Jung’s concept of the ‘psychic epidemic’ offers a chillingly prescient lens through which to understand our collective predicament. It’s a profound warning that humanity’s deepest battles are not merely fought on political or ideological fronts, but within the very fabric of our shared unconscious. This isn’t just about disagreement; it’s about a dangerous societal mechanism where we manufacture external enemies precisely to avoid the uncomfortable truth of our own inner turmoil.

Jung, the pioneering Swiss psychiatrist, observed how societies, much like individuals, could externalize their unacknowledged flaws, fears, and suppressed desires—what he termed the ‘shadow’—onto others. This projection creates convenient scapegoats, allowing groups to rally together, consolidate identity, and deflect attention from their own unresolved internal struggles. The consequences are dire: distorted realities, escalating societal unrest, and a tragic avoidance of the profound self-reflection necessary for genuine growth and harmony. I invite you to join me on this intellectual journey to understand why we do this, what it costs us, and how we might begin to disarm the inner enemy.

The Invisible Weight of the Shadow: Confronting Our Repressed Selves

At the heart of Jung’s profound insights lies the concept of the ‘shadow.’ This isn’t merely our darker side; it encompasses all the repressed aspects of ourselves—both negative traits we deem unacceptable and positive qualities we’ve never fully developed or acknowledged. From childhood, we learn to internalize societal norms, often pushing aspects of our true selves into the unconscious because they don’t fit the approved mold. This hidden part of our psyche, when left unexamined, becomes a powerful, autonomous force.

Confronting your shadow is inherently uncomfortable. It requires an honest gaze into the parts of yourself you’d rather ignore, the memories you’ve suppressed, or the potentials you’ve denied. Yet, as Jung posited, this engagement is crucial. Without it, these repressed elements don’t simply vanish; they manifest in various ways, often leading to internal distress, interpersonal conflicts, and—most significantly for our topic—external projection. As Jung himself noted:

The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real.

– C.G. Jung

This process of facing what we’ve hidden away is the first, vital step in understanding how societies can collectively avoid their own moral responsibility by inventing external foes.

The Collective Delusion: How Psychic Epidemics Grip Societies

When individual shadows coalesce, fueled by shared anxieties and unconscious fears, they can erupt into what Jung termed a ‘psychic epidemic.’ This isn’t a metaphor for widespread delusion; it’s a description of collective psychological phenomena that arise within groups, leading to irrational behaviors driven by powerful, shared unconscious forces rather than conscious reasoning. Think of political mass movements, societal manias, or moral panics that sweep through a population, often overwhelming individual critical thought.

Jung characterized the political mass movements of his time as psychic epidemics, observing how leaders and media, perhaps unwittingly, could trigger deep-seated collective psychological responses in the populace. The characteristics of these epidemics are unmistakable: a group’s behavior becomes guided more by shared psychological factors—unexamined fears, resentments, desires for belonging—than by tangible problems or rational debate. What seems like a disagreement over policy can quickly escalate into an almost religious fervor against an ‘other,’ transcending logic and evidence.

Manufacturing Our Adversaries: The Mechanism of Projection

The manufacturing of enemies is the dark art through which individual and collective shadows are externalized. Projection, in Jungian terms, is the process where we attribute our own unacknowledged traits, conflicts, and undesired qualities onto others. This mechanism is a psychological shortcut: it simplifies the messy complexities of human interaction by creating clear boundaries between ‘us’ (the good, the rational, the pure) and ‘them’ (the bad, the irrational, the corrupt). By identifying an enemy, we bolster our self-identity, often projecting onto them the very characteristics we despise or reject in ourselves.

Consider how readily groups demonize their opponents, attributing monolithic evil intentions or irrationality to them. This isn’t always a conscious deception; it’s often a powerful unconscious defense. The enemy becomes a convenient screen onto which we project our own suppressed insecurities, collective guilt, or unexamined societal flaws. In essence, the adversary becomes a distorted reflection of what we refuse to confront within ourselves and our collective psyche. This mechanism allows individuals and groups to sidestep accountability, preserving a fragile, often false, sense of moral superiority.

Archetypes of Conflict: How Universal Myths Drive Division

Further compounding the mechanism of enemy manufacturing is the role of archetypes. Jung understood archetypes as universal, archaic patterns and images that derive from the collective unconscious and are the psychic counterpart of instinct. When we create enemies, they often manifest as archetypes in our minds—exaggerated representations of traits or behaviors we oppose or fear.

For example, a political figure or an opposing social group might become the ‘tyrant,’ the ‘deceiver,’ or the ‘chaos-bringer’ in our collective imagination. These archetypal roles are not just figments of our individual minds; they tap into deep, shared human patterns of understanding good and evil, order and chaos. This makes the ‘enemy’ feel more real, more urgent, and more profoundly threatening, transforming complex social issues into a battle between primal forces. By externalizing these archetypal conflicts, we avoid grappling with the nuanced, often contradictory, internal struggles within our own society and ourselves.

The Perilous Unity: Social Dynamics of Common Adversity

Historically, groups have always rallied around a common enemy. It provides not just a target for aggression but also a potent means to foster unity, cooperation, and a strong sense of collective purpose among members. In political contexts, leaders often harness the fear of an external threat to consolidate power, diminish internal dissent, and create a powerful ‘us’ against ‘them’ narrative. While this strategy can produce short-term cohesion and a powerful sense of solidarity, it invariably leaves underlying tensions unresolved.

Once the external threat diminishes or is overcome, these unresolved internal conflicts often resurface, sometimes with greater intensity. This phenomenon leads to what some Jungian thinkers describe as ‘enemy addiction’—the cyclical nature of this dynamic, where individuals and groups become so accustomed to conflict that they actively seek out new foes to justify their existence and reinforce their beliefs. The comfort of a clear enemy often outweighs the difficult work of internal reconciliation.

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.

– C.G. Jung

This relentless search for new adversaries traps societies in a perpetual state of external conflict, preventing them from addressing their true internal imbalances and shadows.

Consequences of Collective Shadow: Societal Disruption and Personal Cost

The implications of manufacturing enemies are far-reaching, affecting both individual psyches and the broader social fabric. On an individual level, persistent projection distorts our perception of reality, hindering genuine empathetic interactions and fostering mistrust. We lose the ability to see others as complex human beings, instead reducing them to the caricatures we’ve created.