After working with thousands of abusive men, Lundy Bancroft wrote a book titled Why Does He Do That? In it, he documents his insights into the way abusers think. He explains that most abusive people are not psychologically abnormal. And most of them do feel emotions such as remorse and guilt. So, how do they sleep at night after doing what they do?
Bancroft says they do so by objectifying and depersonalising their victims. “The abuser tends to see his partner as less intelligent, less competent, less logical, and even less sensitive than he is… Most abusers verbally attack their partners in degrading, revolting ways. They reach for the words that they know are most disturbing… These words assault her humanity, reducing her to an animal, a non-living object, or a degraded sexual body part… By depersonalizing his partner, the abuser protects himself from the natural human emotions of guilt and empathy, so that he can sleep at night with a clear conscience.”
In the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire calls this objectification ‘dehumanisation’. That is any process by which the value of the oppressed person is reduced, making him or her feel like a lesser human being and inferior to his or her oppressor.
While individuals can of course be oppressive, dehumanisation can also be the result of oppressive situations or systems. For example, sickness and disability can make a person liable to be treated in such a way that makes them feel dehumanised. When we hear an older or sick person say that they don’t want to be a “burden” to their kin or “a parasite” to their children, their language reflects some lesser or greater degree of dehumanisation. The language that is used by the oppressor tells us their conscious, or even unconscious, strategies and tactics, while the language used by the victim tells us that sickness and frailty have made an individual or group feel less human and more like impersonal burdens. Sickness, deformity, caste, and colour are some of the things that can derail one’s personal worth.
Is dehumanisation rampant in our society? Can it be considered to have been almost normalised in our culture? Societies depersonalise individuals by pejoratively stereotyping them. It is at work in casteism, racism and patriarchy where some people are considered inferior and meant to be exploited. A narrative during the era of slavery was that dark skinned people were less intelligent and indeed were specifically created only for doing gruelling labour. In Indian culture, some people were considered “lower” or even untouchable – and some cultural practices relating to that still remain. In patriarchal traditions, women are often seen as possessions meant only to bear offspring and do the bidding of the men of the house. They are assumed to have no intrinsic worth.
The kinds of situations that I have mentioned so far are quite clear and stark. In other cases, systemic dehumanisation is more insidious. If our identity is based primarily on gender, abilities or occupation, that can also serve as the basis for dehumanising us. How so? First, by stripping us of our individuality and freedom; second, they may place on us expectations that may be outside our nature. Here is a personal experience of how assuming the identity of “the doctor” dehumanised me.
To give you context, I am a sensitive and empathetic person. My natural inclination to seeing a person in tears is to cry with them. On witnessing their pain, I feel my own gut wringing. And when their wounds are cleaned, poked or sutured, I wince and whimper as if the procedure were done on me. Though medical school was not the right path for me, circumstances dictated that I join one and complete the course.
By the third year in medical school, I knew that my sensitive personality was clashing unmanageably with my profession. So, I sought the counsel of a senior doctor. She said, “It is selfish of you to be so sensitive. Your patient needs you to be unmoved and firm so that they can take comfort in your confidence.” I internalised, and tried to abide by, her words that sensitivity (and therefore, me being myself) was unacceptable while cold stoicism was good – until an experience two years later.
I was an intern by then and that month I was doing my rotation in orthopaedics. I had been given the peer-coveted “honour” of amputating a person’s leg. I prepared for the surgery as best I could. I reviewed my anatomy and orthopaedic textbooks, double checked that the patient’s laboratory parameters were alright and when it was time, carefully scrubbed in. My seniors – the junior consultant and postgraduate student assigned to the patient – did most of the work. And when it was time to cut the bone, they handed me the saw.
I remember standing on a stool with that contraption in my hand, looking down at the flesh and bone. Of course, the patient needed the surgery – an amputation is only done when the limb concerned threatens the life of the patient. Yet, I felt faint at the thought that I was mutilating a person. In desperation, to regain my composure and keep from keeling over, I weaved a story in my mind. I told myself, “The flesh on the table is neither human nor alive.”
It worked. The swaying stopped, and I was able to complete the procedure. But when I peeled away the scrubs, left the operating room and had a moment to myself I wept. I had dehumanised and objectified a person. In doing so, I felt less like a human myself and more like a monster. I had also dehumanised myself.
This experience confirmed to me that to be a doctor, I had to deny the affective and sentient side of my personality. Never before that moment had my resolve to leave this profession been stronger. I knew I would rather be my empathetic self than fully become an unfeeling pair of hands. However, I had signed a contract with a hospital to work for two years after my internship, and I chose to honour that promise. After the two years were over, I stopped working as a clinician. In doing so, I affirmed and honoured my personhood. Understandably, the people around me – my fellow doctors, friends and family – found it difficult to comprehend my choice. In their words, I felt judgment. I internalised that too, and for years, I carried tremendous guilt over both studying and quitting medicine.
Just as I did, most people internalise what is told to them. In many ways, it is what we internalise and believe that truly dehumanises us. Our abasing thoughts and opinions of ourselves diminish our self-worth. Paulo Freire says it this way: “Self-depreciation is another characteristic of the oppressed, which derives from their internalisation of the opinion the oppressors hold of them. So often do they hear that they are good for nothing, know nothing and are incapable of learning anything – that they are sick, lazy and unproductive – that in the end they become convinced of their own unfitness.”
However, the fact that such opinions (that we are lesser humans, objects or things) are internalised from outside of us rather than inherent within us also means that we can unlearn them and reclaim our humanity. That pursuit is called ‘humanisation’ by Freire. I see it as healing. For me, leaving the clinical work behind and embracing my sensitivity was treading the narrow path to self-humanisation and recovery. It is a journey I am still on. I persevere with this journey of self-discovery and do what I can to nurture my strengths and to hear and heed my internal voice.
Healing from any form of oppression requires the oppressed to rediscover themselves and rehumanise. Regarding victims of abuse, Bancroft writes, “When I work with an abused woman, my first goal is to help her to regain trust in herself; to get her to rely on her own perceptions, to listen to her own internal voices.” It is the victim who must trust herself. Rebuilding her opinion of herself is what will help her change her situation and heal her.
Likewise, in dealing with systemic injustices, Freire writes, “The oppressed have been destroyed precisely because their situation reduced them to things. In order to regain their humanity, they must cease to be things and fight as men and women. This is a radical requirement.” Freire goes on to explain that humanisation is not just a way of thinking. It only becomes a reality when we take action towards becoming more human. Humanisation is an active pursuit.
In the case of sickness, instead of seeing themselves as burdens or parasites, some people with physical illnesses, including cancer and chronic pain syndromes, find ways to preserve and accentuate their worth. They do this by giving meaning or purpose to their experiences, by recognising their creativity and strength in the face of suffering, and by appreciating the merit of the wisdom they have gained in the process. When they do this, even if their illness leads to or continues until death, they feel a certain wholeness and healing in themselves.
This pursuit of our individuality, “the struggle to recover [our] lost humanity ” as Freire calls it is the healing journey. The suffering inflicted on us (physical, mental, social and spiritual) dehumanises us. The journey to being humanished is also the way to being healed. The encouraging and reassuring news is that we have the capacity for it.
Citations:
1. Bancroft, Lundy. 2002. Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men. New York: GP Putnam’s sons.
2. Freire, Paulo. 2017. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 13th ed. London: Penguin Classics.
