Book Review by Abdullah Bin Khalid
The prevalence and pre-dominance of Positivism, as a paradigm of knowledge in sciences, has pushed to the margins those who are unable or unwilling to use mathematical logic for attempting generalisability of their results. Positivism endeavours to seek a “single reality which is out there to find out”. This has, on one hand, created homogeneity for testifying certain claims, and on the other hand, has overlooked subjective experiences. The same negligence of subjectivity extends its reach to the field of psychology, too, where an overwhelming reliance on empiricism has left unaddressed some very crucial psychological phenomena. Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, revealed that it was crucial to address some of the pathologies for which existing mechanisms proved insufficient. For instance, the concept of God is a subjective epistemological position. Sigmund Freud attempted interpretivism as a paradigm of hermeneutics to offer an in-depth analysis of patients’ mental pathologies in psychoanalysis extending the inquiry into civilisation and its pathologies, the subsequent discontent inherent in humankind’s presumably greatest victory against the forces of nature in his book Civilisation and its Discontents.
Before looking deeply into the book’s substance, it is pertinent to understand an important Freud’s idea. He is of the view that humans are driven to act not by rationality but by instincts. Freud argued that the human mind comprised three parts, namely the id, ego and superego. The id is the region from where desires originate in the form of instincts (known as the pleasure principle). But gradually, with the process beginning since birth, man encounters various experiences and learning exercises which develop his internal conscience called superego, partly due to cultural conditioning and religious values, and partly due to his experiences. Whenever an instinct arises whose fulfilment could be harmful to society, the individual’s ego, a bridge between the two (id and superego), mediates and finds a way to satisfy the instinct in a manner that is both fulfilling and in accordance with the norms and values one has internalised. Freud calls this internalisation of norms, in general terms, civilisation. In Freud’s view, it is the progress of an individual from his state of nature, where instincts are instantly fulfilled, to a “civilised” condition where freedom of fulfilment is abandoned for the security and stability of society.
But civilisation isn’t necessarily an ideal that mankind endeavours to pursue and then relinquishes any further ambitions. Freud remarks that humankind has instincts that exist in parallel with each other. For every good instinct, there is an accompanying bad one. For an instinct of love towards the fellows, there is an accompanying “death instinct”. In plain terms, the death instinct is the tendency of an individual to inflict harm on others through aggression. Thus, aggression is a primary and primitive instinct of an individual, which is suppressed through civilisation. And since civilisation is premised upon the notion that one “ought to afflict no harm upon others”, the aggression or savagery finds no outlet for its manifestation, and lurks underneath the blanket of civilisation.
A question arises: how does the aggression create discontent? Freud furthers his argument that the more civilised a person becomes, the more he suppresses his internal instincts of aggression. The mechanism for this is to strengthen of the superego, the internal conscience of individuals that acts as a guard against the instincts. When one feels an instinctual arousal, he/she employs his/her superego to put a lid on the arousal and suppresses it. The superego feels that any instant fulfilment of instinct can be disastrous for the civilised society that mankind has created by relinquishing its writ on instincts. This process directs the energy of aggression towards an individual’s superego, which creates a sense of guilt in the individual. This guilt is directly proportional to civilisation. The more civilised a person is, the more guilt he internalises. Lesser the civilisation, lesser the guilt and even lesser would be the discontent. This is why Freud maintains that primitive people were content with their lies for they could fulfil their instincts readily. This argument can be extended to mental health issues which appear to be characteristic of the present times.
Upon examining and problematising humankind’s perceived victory against the forces of nature, i.e., civilisation, one would naturally assume that Freud would attempt to give solutions on how to resolve this tension, or how to walk the tightrope of instinctual freedom and stability. However, Freud has nothing but pessimism to offer. This is no metaphorical flourish. He argues that there is no permanent solution to this dilemma. It is a situation that operates on crests and troughs. Humankind will produce civilisation to snub the uncontrolled manifestations of instincts. In civilisation, the instincts would feel discontent and find for itself an outlet. The discontent produced will reinforce civilisation.
A mind trained in empirical reasoning would ask that this isn’t scientifically verifiable. Sure, but the modern manifestations of this phenomenon could be observed in a variety of forms, i.e. in the discontent embedded in liberalism, or the rise of fascism and populism, or even the banality of acts that were previously deemed as taboos.
Various studies in voting behaviour have shown that those voters with right-wing beliefs were happier and mentally more content than those with liberal beliefs. Now, an on-surface explanation would attribute the happiness of right-wingers to some metaphysical scriptures and the relatively lower levels of liberals to the miseries of the world. But the right-wingers aren’t always religious, and liberals barely concern themselves with anything that doesn’t somatically affect them. One observes that right-wing beliefs are particularistic and operate on the mechanism of in-group favouritism and out-group animus. That is, they struggle against or identify themselves against a certain system, a change of cultural code or even a group. Liberal political beliefs function on the maxim of pleasure maximising, to paraphrase Jeremy Bentham. This includes hate for no fellow human, pursuing the greatest “happiness” for the greatest number, individualism and fulfillment of instincts. A psychoanalyst would scratch the surface and observe that those with right-wing beliefs are happier because they have an identified enemy on whom to project their aggressive instincts. Those of liberal beliefs are in a state of mental discontent because they don’t have an out-group animus to project their aggressive instincts onto. One will observe them directing their aggression time and again on historical institutions like patriarchy, homosexual rights and various substances that we’ve come to incorporate in the broad term of cultural Marxism.
In the 1930s, when the infamous propaganda minister of Hitler’s cabinet, Joseph Goebbels, undertook the task of disseminating Nazi propaganda, he couldn’t withhold himself from the “other-ising” of minority groups like Jews, upon whom aggression could be directed. Austrian psychoanalyst, Wilhelm Reich, in his 1933 book The Mass Psychology of Fascism, argued that Fascism wasn’t only a political phenomenon but a suppression of instincts or libidinal energy. This suppression finds its manifestation in the form of fascism, where the libidinal forces are transformed into love for the leader and aggression/hate towards “other” or “out-group”. Thus, it concurrently gives mental contentment and “escape from excessive personal freedom by integrating into a larger whole”, to paraphrase Eric Fromm, another prominent psychoanalyst.
While a new surge in fascism seems impossible given the horrors inflicted by the surge, an almost similar phenomenon can be observed that is on the ascendancy presently, the phenomenon of populism. Although it doesn’t aspire for absolute glory as Fascists did, it certainly functions on the mechanism of in-group favouritism and out-group animus. A Freudian psychoanalytical explanation for this would be that excessive freedom leads to little fall back on psychologically. And that, with no outlet available for libidinal forces and aggressive instincts, the individual is in discontent. A populist pops onto the surface in this climate and directs their libidinal forces towards either the elite or the system, thus providing both an outlet and group belonging to individuals who have felt discontent in “civilisation”.
The writer is student of Department of Political Science, University of Peshawar. He can be reached at Email: abdullah1khan2002@gmail.com