Psychology Behind Denial (Op-Ed)

In psychology, denial is a type of defense mechanism developed by Sigmund Freud which is used to describe situations in which people are unable to face the truth. On a recent trip to Armenia, French President Nicolas Sarkozy stated that “The Armenian Genocide is a historical reality. Collective denial is even worse than individual denial”. Although Sarkozy’s comment may have been aimed to be political, he may have unintentionally sent a sociological message.

Everyone has been in denial about something one time or another in their lives. According to Freud, denial is a person’s way of defending his or herself from “external realities” that threaten the ego. The ego is made up of logical and rational thinking which allows humans to evaluate the risks and benefits of a situation; “tolerate some pain for future profit”. Moreover, for about 96 years now Turkey has denied the  occurrence of the Armenian Genocide. It is important to note and understand the motivations behind their thinking and mind formulations in order to make sense of their psychology behind the denial.

Ask Turkey to speak of the happenings between the years of 1915-1920 and they will blatantly deny that the genocide ever occurred due to the fact that both Muslims and non-Muslims suffered during those invasions. In a pamphlet on “Armenian Propaganda” published by a Turkish group, it states: “As a result of these conditions, as many as 20% of the deportees, some 100,000 Armenians, may have died between 1915 and 1918, but this was no greater a percentage than that of the Turks and other Muslims who died as a result of the same conditions in the same places at the same time”. Blatant denial presented on behalf of Turkey merely insults the survivors of the genocide and their relatives. In an article written by psychologist and historian, Israel W. Charney, he addresses Turkey’s continuous acts of denial: “...continuing manifestations of the kinds of dehumanization and disentitlement that we know are the basic psychological substrates that make genocide possible to begin with”. 

Furthermore, Charney- an executive director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide , embarked on a quest to find out the psychology behind denial. He came to an understanding that those denying the genocide- in particular the Turks, may not be out on a “we hate Armenians” rampage and are quite possibly denying the Armenian Genocide due to personal gain and economic advantage. After doing research by conducting studies on scholars who also deny the genocide, Charney came up with five main categories used to analyze the psychology behind the denial.

1. Innoncence and Self Righteousness 

The respondents claim that they don’t believe that human beings are evil enough to live up to the descriptions of the genocide. They also believe that even though many lives may have been lost, it is time to forgive and forget.

1. Scientificism in the Service of Confusion

     The position take within this category is mainly innocent in the fact that there is not enough to know what the exact facts of the history were.

1. Practically, Pragmatism and Realpolitik

     Dealing with “ancient history is impractical, it will not bring peace to the world in which we live today. One must be realistic and live through realpolitik.”

1. Idea Linkage Distortion and Time-Sequence Confusion
       A simple dishonest linkage of varying ideas which are used to excuse the denial of the facts. “Present needs, whether justified or not, are taken as a reasonable basis for censoring or changing the record of past history.”
2. Indirection, Definitionalism, and Maddening

These are responses that do their best to avoid the issue by not  responding or by going off on tangents about trivial issues that avoid essential idea of whether or not the genocide took place.

In addition to Charney’s findings and explanations behind denial, another added notion may be repressed guilt. Repressed guilt is guilt or burden that we hide and in turn deny by projecting it onto others. The psychology behind repressed guilt works as follows: We live in a competitive world and we’re not guilty of creating what has happened, it’s everybody else out there. Countless amounts of times we have heard Turkey blame the killings of Armenians as a part World War I and not an act that they belligerently committed themselves. So perhaps an added reason to their denial of the genocide may have to do with repressed guilt and their fail to completely accept the genocide as their doing.