To help define the ideologies dominant in the United States and other parts of the world, I offer in Chapter Two a critical analysis of Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind.2 I turn to this book because it also presents five specific political belief systems, but his reliance on evolutionary psychology prevents him from taking a psychoanalytic perspective on political psychopathologies. Moreover, through its commitment to biological determinism, his work unintentionally feeds a Right-wing backlash discourse.3
Chapter Five moves from a look at the Right to an examination of the contemporary Left. In reading Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility, I show that her insightful critique of progressive racism and liberal defensiveness is coupled with the use of a Left-wing rhetoric centered on making others feel guilt and shame for their words and thoughts.6 Through the use of the unconscious processes of denial, splitting, and projection, DiAngelo helps us understand some of the problematic aspects of contemporary Leftist thought and politics.
Theoretical Introduction: Understanding Political Ideologies
I argue in this book that throughout the world, we often find four basic political ideologies: liberal, conservative, Left, and Right.9 These ideologies can be placed in the structure of a logical square determined by two binary oppositions:
On the most basic level, we see here how the Right is defined in opposition to the Left, and liberalism is defined in opposition to conservativism. However, this structure is complicated by the way that contemporary liberals are much different from modern liberals, and so it is necessary to add a fifth ideology, centrism to the structure:
As I will demonstrate, we should not think of centrists as a neutral middle-ground because they have their own psychopathology that distorts their view of themselves and the world.10
Starting with conservative ideology, this belief system still structures many of the cultural oppositions that shape our social systems. On the most basic level, this discourse is tied to the premodern focus on a predetermined social hierarchy internalized through a process of unconscious identification and masochistic submission producing the three central premodern institutions of religion, feudalism, and monarchy.11 In contrast, what in part defines modern liberalism is the invention of three alternative institutions: science, capitalism, and democracy:
While premodern subjectivity is dominated by faith, belief, and the acceptance of a naturalized social hierarchy, the modern subject is supposed to use reason in a neutral way to determine the truth about empirical reality. Moreover, modernity itself is determined by the necessary but impossible ideals of universality, objectivity, and empiricism.12 According to this structure, the modern liberal subject must use the reality principle to move beyond the biases derived from the premodern order. I argue that this investment in universality shapes the ethics of globalization and modern democratic liberalism.13
In response to premodern conservatives and modern liberals, we find Left-wing ideology that is centered on a hysterical identification with suffering and the use of a victim-based fantasy structure to influence others on an emotional level.14 Part of this ideology is determined by a desire to reverse the social hierarchies shaping premodern culture. For instance, instead of men dominating women, women seek to gain more social power. The postmodern period is then shaped by minority-based social movements seeking to expand the modern system of democratic justice, but as we will see, these movements often become fixated on a particular group identity. Since in order to promote in-group solidarity, it is necessary to draw a clear distinction between the good “us” and the evil “other,” this type of political polarization tends to create an ideology centered on the conflict between the pure and innocent victim and the evil perpetrator. Moreover, in this structure, the victim’s vengeance is always justified, and the victim cannot be criticized or questioned, and so this group psychopathology makes it difficult to resolve conflicts and embrace the modern ideals of neutrality, objectivity, and universality.15
In response to Left-wing politics, we are witnessing the rise of Right-wing ideology. A key aspect of this psychopathology is a stress on the freedom of the competitive individual who resists being shamed and censored by the politically correct Leftist super-ego.16 Through a combination of perversion, sociopathy, and borderline personality structures, the Right-wing libertarian expresses impulses without shame or guilt using the unconscious processes of denial, splitting, and projection.17 Furthermore, the Right often takes on its own victim identification by reversing the postmodern reversal of premodern social hierarchies. In a dialectical structure, the Left seeks to overcome conservative prejudices, and the Right then strives to overcome the Left’s social movements and censorship.
In response to the Left and the Right, we find the centrist compromise, which itself is structured by a narcissistic and obsessional psychopathology.18 Since the narcissist wants to have its ideal ego validated by others, it often signals its moral virtues by accepting the moralism of the Left, and yet these obsessional centrists want to maintain the status quo, and so they seek out slow reforms instead of the revolutions demanded by the Left. These centrists also tend to see the political world in a polarized way as they gain a sense of moral superiority by laughing at the “insanity” of the Right.
I realize that some people will be turned off by this effort to pathologize political ideologies and different groups of people; however, I believe that it is necessary to look at politics from a psychoanalytic perspective because much of the social and subjective processes are irrational, unconscious, and unintentional.19 Moreover, I argue that psychoanalysis is a modern liberal discourse because it seeks to apply the scientific method to everyday life as it develops a practice centered on neutrality and uncensored speech. Unfortunately, not only has modern democracy itself come under attack by the Left and the Right but the analytic idea of neutrality has also been rejected by people inside and outside of psychoanalysis.20
One reason why the modern concept of neutrality has been criticized is that people do not accept the possibility of being unbiased and objective. Instead of seeing neutrality as a necessary but impossible ideal, many only point to its failures.21 For example, while we want our modern legal systems to treat everyone in an equal way and judge evidence from an impartial perspective, it is clear that the system is often biased and discriminatory. In response to the evidence of this lack of neutrality, many people on the Left reject the very ideals of objectivity and impartiality, and so they end up making universal human rights impossible.22 I counter that the only way we know a system is unjust is if we compare it to the ideals of justice, and so even the people who appear to reject modern universality are still invested in this standard. Likewise, the people who reject the value of reason and objectivity still want their arguments to be understood through reason and without bias.
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