Fears and terrors. Their causes and consequences

We live surrounded and inhabited by fears and terrors, whether realistic or fantasized. Terrorists — though they are not alone in this — know how to provoke them, multiply them, and turn them to their advantage. To resist them, it is desirable to understand the causes and the mechanisms of our fears and our terrors. In order to develop my reflection at a remove from the pressures of current events, I will draw on the experience of severely visually impaired children and adolescents, whom I know well. Their disability exacerbates and makes more visible the fears and terrors that exist in everyone, with diverse causes and intensities, as well as their consequences for the way they think, react, and act. But each person is responsible for the way in which he tries to free himself from them. I will then try to understand why adolescents who have not necessarily known situations more dramatic than others are today drawn to terrorists.

Among today’s fears, terrorism appears in the foreground. But it coexists with the feeling of everyday insecurity (petty and middling crime, whether economic, financial, or social; loneliness), to which must be added the fears of wars — ever more barbaric — of dictatorships spreading across the world, of ecological catastrophes in their many forms, as well as the fears of aging and of dying in poor conditions, and many others besides.

Severe visual impairment (SVI) has numerous consequences for those it affects, for their ways of thinking, of feeling emotions, of being in the world and among others. Destructiveness, turned against themselves or against others, is one of these. It exists in diverse forms and intensities. Its causes and mechanisms are multiple. Nevertheless, there is no mechanical and immutable relation between visual deficiency (VD) and the phenomena I describe, but rather consequences of varying severity. Parents can — spontaneously or with guidance — help the child to confront his difficulties and keep his confidence in himself and in them. One must also take into account cerebral plasticity, the use of the other senses, or the mobilization of pre-existing circuits for visual stimuli, all of which attenuate the negative and destabilizing effects of the disability.

Fears and terrors take shape early on, from the very revelation of the impairment, which may occur at birth or in the first years of life. The small child cannot rely, or cannot rely sufficiently, on sight to build his adaptation to the world and to what it contains, whether objects or living beings. The child has trouble assessing the size, the shape, the structure of the space around him, as well as the location and characteristics of the objects within it. As soon as he moves about, he experiences their potential dangerousness, when he bumps into them or falls. He cannot know, if they do not announce their presence, whether people have entered his space or left it. He has trouble recognizing their behavior, their face, and the emotions and intentions inscribed there, and thus whether he can trust them or be wary of them. It follows that he has trouble imagining what the other person thinks and putting himself in their place.

Fears are born of our inadequacies in perceiving the world we live in, in finding our bearings within it, in moving through it safely, in understanding others — near or far — their ways of thinking, their actions, in putting ourselves in their place. Diminishing these difficulties is a permanent task, one that concerns individuals (and that from childhood onward), collectives, policies, and leaders.

Of reality, the visually impaired child perceives only what is most salient, according to his own criteria and the means of perception that remain to him, and the representation he forms of it is not necessarily the same as that of others. The gap between his perception of the world and that of others can go as far as rupture, with the risk of no longer living in the same world as they do. Some give up on preserving and developing this relation (the parents, for their part, may do likewise) and grow up in great solitude, shut away in their own world, sometimes with autistic traits, or in a cramped and overcautious life; still others strive to take the opposite tack through risk-taking behaviors. Others try to master the world’s excessive complexity by reducing it to a few simple, indivisible, frozen, abstract elements — bits of minimal knowledge that they learn and add up like Lego bricks or dictionary entries.

Fears are born too of a truncated, partial vision of the world, which induces misunderstandings and errors of interpretation, or a discrepancy with the ways others see and think. Over time, this discrepancy over factual matters can become systematic and lead to the feeling of being misunderstood, to dogmatic and simplistic ways of thinking, to conflictual relationships — setting off the vicious cycle of fears and aggressions.

The feeling of insecurity in these children drives them to band together with one or a few other children like themselves, a feeling in which they then enclose themselves. This group displays a single, cleaving characteristic, dividing the world between “them” and “us.” Other children, to mask or flee their identity as visually impaired or disabled — which they judge shameful — display in caricatural fashion another, more flattering one, such as that of the “kid from the projects,” whether or not they actually live in such a neighborhood; or they fantasize themselves as super-heroes or super-villains — today, gangsters or terrorists — sometimes to the point of believing it.

Closed groups, with their cleaving identities, and sects fragment the social fabric in a way that is negative and neither stimulating nor fertile, unlike other forms of grouping and community. Combating and banning them is futile and counterproductive if the causes behind their formation, the needs they answer, are not understood and taken into account.

The visually impaired baby or small child perceives well enough that his development — of which he has a more or less precise intuition inscribed in his genetic heritage — is not what it should be. Day after day he observes his limits and his inadequacies, which are not those of other children. He also perceives his parents’ inadequate attitudes. And so, for him, the order of the world collapses — that world in which he had his natural place and his parents who were its guarantors, who were supposed to protect him from all suffering. The world returns to chaos; he no longer knows what to hold on to, whom to lean on.

The feeling of insecurity, at the origin of so many fears, becomes major when, beyond the accumulation of factual elements, confidence in the stability of the world and in the capacity of leaders or of society to guarantee it begins to crack.

The child, and still more the adolescent, holds his parents (who also represent “society”) responsible for his misfortune, and rebels against their inadequacies — which shame him — their possible separation or their difficulties, for which he feels responsible. He also rebels when they enclose him in an identity in which he does not recognize himself: “disabled” or, on the contrary, “impeccably normal,” upon whom they impose excessive demands of work and success, as if he were meant to avenge them for their own failures — of which his visual impairment is one.

We are afraid of losing our place, not only in regard to the material, social, and relational advantages it affords us, but also because we would lose the part of our identity attached to it. Likewise, we fear being assigned to a place and an identity that are not our own, in which we do not recognize ourselves. Such assignment is often the first stage of an exclusion which, as history has shown, often precedes an extermination. To combat this logic, it is important not to mistake one’s interlocutor, nor the party held responsible against whom one takes a stand.

The diverse fears the adolescent harbors about the future come to a head when he confronts the end of collège or lycée [middle and high school], or the search for a job, when he observes his difficulties or his failure, and when his hopes — sometimes excessive — or those of his parents collapse. He thinks he has been deceived, that he has deceived himself, that all his efforts have been made in vain. The risk then is that of collapse or of dangerous revolt.

The eruption of violent revolts seems incomprehensible when it comes from individuals or groups previously regarded as reasonable, respectful, well integrated. It seems less so when one considers the unfolding over time of their history, with its pivotal moments, their hopes and expectations, the promises — explicit or tacit — that were made to them.

FEARS AND TERRORS. Among these visually impaired children, it is desirable to distinguish fears from terrors.

Fears. These are the fears of bumping into things, of falling, of being run over while crossing a street or jostled in the métro and falling onto the tracks. The child also fears being assaulted (all the more if he lives in a “sensitive neighborhood”), marginalized (though he may lay claim to this marginalization, so as not to undergo it passively), excluded, humiliated, instrumentalized (by others or by his parents), or again of being without resources, without a sexual or conjugal life, without children, and so on. Against his fears, he may rebel, grow depressed, withdraw into himself, attack others so as not to be attacked, in order to make himself respected — or else seek to be the best, the perfect, the unassailable one, until the moment he sees through the illusion. These fears bear a close relation to reality and reveal themselves fairly easily, along with their causes, behind maladapted behaviors.

Visual impairment can induce a feeling of devaluation, ruptures of temporal and familial continuity — especially for families come from elsewhere — and of cultural and identitarian references. The relation to time is disturbed; the past — individual, familial, or collective — is idealized, frozen, or refused, and the future unthinkable or feared. An identity disorder ensues. These children and adolescents often oscillate between a systematic mistrust and an excessive trust toward others in order to avoid loneliness, often at the cost of cruel disappointments or of dependency. These elements push these children, like their sighted peers but even more so, toward social networks, which accentuates their disconnection from reality, the blurring between fiction-imagination and reality. Before reproaching children and adolescents for the excessive use of the Internet and social networks, it is desirable to understand what drives them to it. It is often the need to feel secure, socially and intellectually. Hence the value of helping them to preserve or recover their continuities and the identity — always a mosaic — that they recognize and assume as their own.

Archaic terrors. These arise when a subject is confronted, early in life, with a situation (violent, senseless, unintegrable into the order of the world) that exceeds his capacity to understand and to bear it — physically, psychically, socially, intellectually. They leave lasting traces. They are not only of economic and social origin, and are not necessarily found in abusive families and disadvantaged neighborhoods. This violence may be due to serious illness or disability, to the inadequacy of the parents, to their absence (as much psychic and affective as physical), to their major unsuitability to his needs and expectations. Also to the loss of confidence in them when they could not play and assume their symbolic function, when the child does not exist, or no longer exists, for them in their life, their psychic apparatus, or their parental identity; or when others, more all-powerful than they, have humiliated or destroyed them before him. These situations, and many others, confirm his idea that adults kill children, from which he will conclude that he is entitled and indeed obliged to kill them. Let us name a few of these terrors. The terror of the formless — of the body or the face, whether his own or others’, and first of all his parents’; the terror of the disorganization of the body, of the psyche, of the world, and the return of/to chaos. The terror of extreme violence, of the end of the world, of losing one’s characteristics and being unable to be recognized, even by those closest, nor to recognize them. The terror of the void, of being alone in the world, nowhere, with nothing to hold on to and no one to count on. The child’s major distress is to observe that the adults (and first of all the parents) have betrayed the absolute trust he had placed in them. His existence from then on rests on nothing; he is without parents, absolutely, because his parents are neither parents nor his parents, and because for him there are no others. The terrifying fear of death — sometimes justified — will later gather these scattered elements together and give them meaning.

These terrors also express themselves in fantasies, nightmares, drawings (erupting volcanoes, deluges, a sun that burns the earth, murderous attacks by the wicked, etc.), or in violent behaviors, as if the one inhabited by them had to inflict them on others to make them understand “from the inside,” so as not to be the only one, or again in the hope of discharging them onto others and thereby freeing himself of them.

Fears and terrors can lead to violence. But fears are more comprehensible, more representable, can be explained — terrors cannot. The latter rest on experiences of early childhood that have remained buried in the unconscious and that are reactivated in certain circumstances (words or phrases, confrontation with an interlocutor, a situation, etc.) which have features in common — not necessarily easy to identify and understand — with what gave rise to them. The prevention or treatment of terrors and of fears are different. To understand (not excuse) violent words or acts, it is important to look for both.

This violence of the severely visually impaired child expresses itself in acts, as a relation of mastery (physical or psychic) over others, and it may, in a second stage, procure secondary advantages (extortion, taking revenge on others for one’s own misfortune, etc.). It may be exercised against the child himself and his body, in risk-taking behaviors or in self-mistreatment. This destructiveness may also touch his psyche (incapacity to think or to feel emotions, dispersion, rigidity and certainty, intolerance of any contestation or doubt); and also his creativity (he is unable to finish a drawing or a piece of work, or destroys them as soon as they are completed). Later, the crisis of adolescence will reactivate these fears and terrors and the destructiveness they entail. The disturbing violence of some of them stems, to be sure, from their visual impairment, but also from the features of the family history and of their current life. Many families, particularly those of more or less recent immigration, have difficult living conditions, often in neighborhoods where violence is present from primary school onward: extortion, bullying, fights, then delinquency of various degrees, all of which increase fears. One must also take into account the sometimes violent educational methods of the parents, methods they themselves suffered in their own childhood and which they continue to apply to their child. These children and adolescents need help in recognizing the multiple elements of this revolt — and not only the most visible ones — the various figures to whom it is addressed — without confusing them or mistaking the target, or the final addressee — and in making good use of it — creative and stimulating rather than sterile or destructive — taking into account the context, the forms, the intensity, the meaning they give it, and their objectives, in the short and longer term.

Fears subside when the causes and the mechanisms of the violence that provokes them are understood and treated, as far as possible. It is always useful to take an interest not only in the present situation, social and economic, but also in the family history, sometimes over several generations, as well as in identitarian reference points. It is important to try to prevent and treat the visual impairment, but also to help the parents — and especially the mothers — to free themselves from the trauma in order to welcome their child, to understand his expectations and his needs, and to accompany him until he is sufficiently autonomous. It is also important to be particularly attentive to moments of fragility: the moment when the adolescent becomes fully aware of his disability and of its present and future consequences, the approaching end of his course within the specialized institution, in collège or lycée. For in the event of failure, the thought that all his efforts and those of his parents — including, for some, the abandonment of the language and customs of the country of origin — will have been in vain, since he remains marginalized or excluded, may provoke collapse or violent revolt.

The destructiveness of “radicalized” adolescents. It is interesting to note that several significant elements at the origin of the violence of severely visually impaired children are also found in their “radicalized” peers. Thus Bonelli and Carrié¹, in agreement with other studies, note among the latter the difficult and complex relation to their body (disability or chronic illness whose consequences are poorly lived), the disrupted trajectories of their parents and families, their social fragility, intrafamilial violence, the absence of a father, the neglect of a mother. Commitment gives them a strong and flattering identity, which papers over the identitarian blur and malaise. Individually or in a group, they trace a strict border between “believers” and “infidels” — between themselves and all others. Some have been persecuted by their peers since their earliest years, on account of health problems or physical peculiarities, and the threat of death is omnipresent, whether in parental upbringing or in relations with peers (“I’m going to get myself killed”). Biographical ruptures (geographical or familial), of support, of identitarian reference points, are significant, and it is necessary to take a systematic interest in them.

These ruptures of place, of identitarian reference points, of temporality, are found among immigrants (first and second generation, even third), but also in families that have lived in France for longer and that have themselves undergone major destabilizing ruptures: social, geographical, familial, cultural, and identitarian, particularly because of the evolution of living conditions. In 1955 there were 6 million peasants; today there are 500,000. Likewise, let us not forget, we are still in the period opened by the Shoah and the A-bombs on Japan, and children, more or less consciously, continue to hear the message: “You can kill millions of human beings” — all the more so since genocides and massacres have not ceased since the beginning of the twentieth century. The parents (or grandparents) who lived through such collective traumas often kept physical sequelae from them, but also persistent fears, the loss of confidence in themselves and in their own worth, in society, in humanity, in what their own parents transmitted to them, as well as hatred and an internalized destructiveness, which may be exercised against themselves, their spouse, their child. Some parents neglect their children, while others give priority to integration into the host country and to the internalization of its norms and values, often at the expense of the transmission of cultural and religious values and reference points. The end of collège or lycée too often reveals that these efforts and sacrifices were in vain, that they remain marginalized and devalued. The brutal collapse of their hopes and those of their parents can tip them over into the terrorist temptation. These adolescents need a clear and simple (binary) explanation of the world, the support of a text closed upon itself, brooking no discussion, no doubt.

Is it necessary to add that not all children who are visually impaired, disabled, afflicted with a serious illness (or formerly so), living in difficult conditions, or whose parents and grandparents underwent violent collective situations, become delinquents and terrorists. If some of these elements are present in “radicalized” adolescents, they in no way constitute excuses or attenuations of responsibility. That, moreover, will eventually be for the judges to decide. But these observations open avenues of reflection for the prevention, individual and collective, of “radicalization” — far from the goad of fear — and for assistance in the disengagement of the “radicalized.” Let us add that these elements are also present in many other children and adolescents, who have known major traumas or inherited them (the twentieth century was fertile in wars, massacres, genocides, as is the twenty-first), and who have not become terrorists or delinquents. On the contrary, a great many of them have been able — without “recovering” from these traumas — to develop a rich and creative life, for themselves and for others².

To terrorize. What fears do terrorists arouse, and what interest can an adolescent see in them? To terrorize makes it possible to render representable the fears and terrors that inhabit him, and to pass from a passive position (undergoing them) to an active position (being on the side of those who instill fear). To kill or to die “gloriously” counterbalances his fear of dying (it is he who kills and others who die). To see bodies explode reassures him about the consistency and unity of his own. To the one who doubted everything, terrorist and massacring groups offer the certainty of the rightness of the struggle and of the word that commands it. The identity of terrorist cures his identitarian fragility, just as his place in the terrorist group replaces the one lost, or never acquired, in his family and in society — the fate of an unbearable solitude. Participation in the eternal combat of Good against Evil, which begins with the Prophet and which brings about the messianic time, soothes the one who was lost in time, inscribes him in a ready-made mythical lineage, spares him from having to search the past for the secrets of his history or the origin of his malaise. His parents were unable to transmit their history to him; the terrorists offer him one that is clear, linear, glorious. The inadequacy and unsuitability of his parents increase his feeling of insecurity; the all-powerful master who speaks in the name of God reassures him: the order of the world that his parents ought to have guaranteed holds once again. Terrorist certainty allows him to escape doubt and bewilderment before the complexity of the world. Dogma and slogans reduce it to a few simple, invariant elements, free of ambiguity or polysemy. The group-sect sets a hermetic border between him and all the others, who used to frighten him. Dehumanizing and killing them confirms the radical distance that separates him from them. When the adolescent feels he is without an identity (or rejects it), that he has lost his identitarian footholds, that he never had them, or that they no longer have any value, the jihadist identity reassures him by its simplism, to which is added the prospect of the glory of the hero or of martyrdom. But reification and the inhuman are the price he must pay for it: he is the chief’s tool, the man-machine, whether he holds the Kalashnikov or is now nothing more than the bearer of the explosive belt.

In conclusion. The present-day world is, to be sure, disquieting, destabilized, and destabilizing, and the solid reference points that once allowed people to situate themselves (in particular the bipartition of the world — or at least of its greater part — between “East” and “West”) no longer exist. There is a continuum, and confusions, among all the fears, the most local and the global, those concerning individuals and those concerning groups, countries, even the whole planet. We can also observe a dialectical relation between the fears given and the fears received, including within each individual. To rid ourselves of our fears, to keep them from leading us into decisions and acts that will, sooner or later, only reinforce them, it is necessary to take a step back from the pressures of current events and to reflect upon terrains, countries, or historical periods seemingly very far from them but which have many points in common with them. Much remains to be understood about major violence and about the fears and terrors it arouses, about their consequences, about the possibilities of attenuating them sufficiently. I hope this article will have contributed to that.

Notes