Psychoanalysis, Culture and Social Action

Act Signatures of the Unconscious

Dieter Flader, Bettina Vestring

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367363642
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000517385
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Dieter Flader explores how current social and cultural concerns are connected to the unconscious, and how this affects our responses to them. Flader focuses on the role of the ego, assessing how our feelings about these issues in adulthood grow from childhood fears and desires, and integrating the existing psychoanalytic theories of Winnicott, Lacan, Kohut, and others with sociological and political theory. The interdisciplinary approach not only analyses current social issues but also generates new perspectives and solutions, and examines examples including climate change, bullying, and vegetarianism.

Chapter 1 Basic assumptions and some concepts of the psychoanalytic theory of action

DOI: 10.4324/9780429345449-1

1 The act signature of the unconscious – a new approach of psychoanalytic cultural critique

This book puts the focus on psychoanalysis not as a method of therapy but as a research approach – the research paradigm (Kuhn, 1973) developed by Freud. I am referring to the collection of exemplary research that Freud initiated to develop his theory of the unconscious. I assume that such research has the potential of providing us with explanations without which we cannot adequately grasp important social phenomena of our time. In a systematic perspective, I now propose to examine selected social fields to find out how the unconscious can determine interactive action.¹

We should distinguish the socio- and psycho-historical perspective from the systematic perspective. From the latter, the urgent questions arise: How do we find a viable approach for an analysis of the relationship between psyche and culture? What can be the basic element of such an investigation? In other words, how do we actually see the interrelation of psyche and culture? Which phenomena should we choose in order to investigate this relationship?

Mendel (1969) has emphasised that as a psychoanalyst, he has only “imagines” – meaning inner images – at his disposal in therapy. We can add that this must also refer to his conclusions about the overall cultural changes of his time. From this historical perspective we can at least gain some orientation about the theoretical foundation of narcissism research that is relevant here as well as the psychological changes that have been documented in therapy. But are these “imagines” really the only existing basic unit of this investigation?

Let us look at scientific tradition in this field of research. It is worth considering because we can learn which elements still make sense and which parts of the tradition seem problematic today. If Freud (1927c, p. 367), for example, diagnosed (Christian) religion as a collective compulsive neurosis that spares the believer from having to form an individual neurosis – is such a diagnosis plausible? Freud's approach simply consisted of drawing an analogy between symptoms of obsessive-compulsive patients (their tendency towards ceremonies and rituals) and a corresponding neurotic problem of the Christian religion or church. Both ceremonies and rituals seemed comparable to him.

But is that really true with regard to their likely psychological background? According to Freud's model of mental development, both groups – the group of compulsively ill patients and the social group of believers – have quite different mental backgrounds. For his patients, under aspects of drive development, the fixation on the anal phase of development was characteristic, while the group of believers received support by society's cultural institutions for coping with the Oedipal complex. In addition to legal institution, ethics, and state institutions, these also include the social institution of religion (Freud, 1924f, p. 426). In this respect, according to Freud's development model, the two groups are not at all on the same psychological level. Thus, the psychological background of both social groups is also different.

I assume that Freud believed them to be comparable primarily based on an analogy procedure. Freud took the description of symptoms and the genesis of obsessive-compulsive disorder from his therapeutic perspective. It was this perspective that he then extended to religion. In the process, however, the social content of this social institution disappeared. With it disappeared the question that I regard as central to a psychoanalytical critique of culture: What actually is the connection – using religion as an example here – between the social and the psychological?² The Freudian approach cannot give us any information about the unconscious dimensions of social institutions, for example those of Christian doctrine.

Should we not consider that from a therapeutic perspective, when it is simply extended, society may appear as an ensemble of patients? Winnicott (1973) provided us with an example. He drew up the following list of mentally ill people who are part of society: The psychopaths, the neurotics, the melancholy, the schizoids, the schizophrenics, and the paranoids (ibid., p. 157).

This list corresponds to a viewpoint from where society actually appears as a collection of potential patients. Such a list may be a useful marketing strategy for the profession of therapeutic psychoanalyst. But there is a danger that this extension of the therapeutic perspective to society, if it is intended to help us gain insights in the sense of a psychoanalytic cultural critique, will fail. Instead, it will result in the loss of its object – and thus also its content.

Since Lasch (1979), several attempts have been made to diagnose Western society as narcissistic in the therapeutic-clinical sense of psychoanalysis and to interpret conspicuous behaviour of individuals as “typically narcissistic”. In most cases, the result is at best essayistic. To my mind, the main reason for this is the application of symptom descriptions to social phenomena outside the therapeutic context, which is problematic. Since this procedure is quite common among psychoanalysts working in therapy, I will go into this in more detail.

1.1 The description of symptoms in psychoanalytic therapy

Therapeutic descriptions of symptoms are firmly linked to the therapeutic context. They are part of the defining conditions of psychoanalytic therapy because, from the outset, they are tailored to the demands made by the psychoanalytic-therapeutic discourse – not only on the analyst but also on the patient. The patient will need some time to meet the specific demands of this discourse. For example, the person seeking therapeutic help will frequently not see himself as a psychoanalytic patient in the beginning. He often has to be instructed to do so, because the psychoanalytical concept of illness differs from the medical one, which a patient usually knows. The study on “The Effect of the Basic Rule of Psychoanalysis”, which I conducted together with Flader & Grodzicki (1982), illuminates these requirements from a perspective which combines communication-related linguistics with psychoanalysis.

While these symptom descriptions thus have an important functional significance for psychoanalytic therapy, they do not work for analysing non-therapeutic phenomena of collective subjectivity. They obstruct the view rather than sharpen it.

In my view, the following aspects of psychoanalytic-therapeutic descriptions of symptoms are particularly relevant here: (1) The problematic assumption of normality as a yardstick for diagnosis; (2) the concentration on the individual; and (3) holding the patient responsible for the symptom.

The following examples are taken from the highly differentiated and concise “description of the different facets of self-esteem disorders close to everyday life” given by Mertens (2005), an experienced therapeutic psychoanalyst (ibid., p. 128).

1 What is assumed to be mental normality becomes the yardstick for a diagnosis

The idea that there is a standard for health, by which individual behaviour is measured and abnormalities can be detected and registered, is important in the therapeutic context. The therapeutic diagnosis establishes a link between a traumatic childhood relationship experience of a patient and the conspicuousness of his or her actions outside therapy. The latter is understood as the expression of certain character traits that are considered typical for a certain mental disorder. Mertens characterises in detail what he calls a “healthy narcissistic personality”. This is a person who

can appear self-confident and self-assured, who loves to be the centre of attention occasionally and is not too shy to talk about himself. As he can convince other people, they like working with him without feeling ignored or exploited. His talents and gifts, especially his unshakable conviction of the meaningfulness of his goals and visions, allow him to realise many projects. If he is able to create a benevolent environment for himself, his creative urge knows practically no bounds. (ibid., pp. 181–182)

Mertens adopts a concept from folk psychology to diagnose narcissistic behaviour. He makes the following comments on when to use it:

One [describes] someone as a ‘narcissist’ when the person concerned tends to be egocentric and overconfident; if he has a pronounced predilection for manipulating other people; if he has not only an extreme self-centredness, but also an overpowering feeling of how important it is that he is right in his views, convictions, and actions. One also finds in him a reluctance to empathize with and listen to others, an exaltation of constant attention and admiration, the spending of unusually long periods of time on observing himself, his appearance, talents, and abilities. (ibid., p. 129)

This psychological description can be functional in a therapeutic context if it leads the patient to understand himself or herself as sick. This can be a starting point for gradually introducing the patient to the specific psychoanalytical concept of his or her illness.

However, this psychology, when applied to the extra-therapeutic context of human action, has a potentially dangerous dimension: It assigns to a group of persons all the negative characteristics which in the political context correspond to the discrimination of minorities.

In contrast, one of the goals of my research is to circumvent the collective defence against the narcissistic or, rather, to contribute to it becoming unnecessary over time. After all, narcissistic problems are not an issue of the mentally ill but part of our social reality – albeit in a form that is often difficult to understand.

Ultimately, this therapeutic assumption – which is based on the idea of mental health, insofar as it is understood as a standard for normality – follows the inner logic of a psychology of deviance. It proceeds in the following steps: First, an assumed normality is taken as the standard; then abnormalities of individual behaviour are registered according to this standard as deviation; finally, the persistence of such abnormalities is determined as a character trait of a person. As I understand it, this deviance psychology marks the exact opposite of the psychoanalytic cultural critique that I propose here.

In everyday life, the word “narcissistic” is often used as if a narcissistic issue was a personal flaw attributable to others but not to oneself. Mertens does not address the fact that the psychological concepts of narcissism and narcissistic behaviour can be used in an extra-therapeutic way to achieve a certain psychological defence against one's own anxieties and feelings of smallness.

But he also says that psychoanalysts have a certain susceptibility in this area:

However, from a psychoanalytical point of view it is always necessary to recognise one's own prejudices and offenses. Certainly, it is rare for someone to be admitted to psychoanalytic training who has a serious narcissistic disorder. But wounds to a child's self-esteem, traumatisation which has made one feel insecure in certain areas, or the lasting effects of narcissistically compensatory fantasies are part of the basic equipment of almost every person and thus also of every therapist. These, too, therefore react to the narcissistic airs and graces of certain personalities, and it takes quite a lot of experience not to immediately put a diagnostic label on every personal insecurity in interpersonal encounters. (ibid., pp. 168–169)

If we see the increase in narcissistic problems today in the context of processes of social change – as pointed out by the sociological discussion of individualisation – then these problems are by no means only a part of the human basic equipment, as Mertens believes. Rather, they are phenomena that we are all dealing with in a certain psychological way because we are all children of our time.

2 The focus on the individual

The concentration on the individual in therapy has a side effect: The patient's behaviour outside of therapy is removed from the complicated social contexts in which he or she behaves and interacts with others in everyday life. It may seem as if the psychoanalyst who works in therapy would also be concerned with the behaviour, modes of experience, and action strategies of his patient. Mertens reports in detail on this. After all, the analyst receives a great deal of information regarding the patient's extra-therapeutic behaviour, which he or she also explains during the course of therapy.

But this information is always tailored to the patient as an individual and to the possibilities of helping the patient therapeutically. Especially, the therapeutic descriptions of symptoms do not show the connection between social and psychological aspects in certain phenomena outside of therapy. Mertens explains politics, for example:

Politics is in any case an outstanding field of activity for narcissistically disturbed people. Being in the limelight, appearing as a guest on countless talk shows, and being used by complementary narcissistic journalists and consumers as a mirror of their own grandiose dreams, means that early violations of self-esteem can be compensated for at least for a while. (ibid., p. 155)

This interpretation of politics explains next to nothing. A complex social phenomenon, such as that of politics, is reduced to the defensive strategy of politicians who suffered narcissistic childhood mortifications. It is assumed that they compensate for these mortifications with a contrasting public performance that is intended to confirm their own greatness. Since journalists (and their readers) are also included in the interpretation, everybody involved in politics is considered to be affected.³

Mertens, for example, believes that today's societal problems have primarily been caused by the increasing reduction of the ability to empathise and sympathise. The fundamental shocks to the cultural foundations of our society, which we must accept as real today – for example, the increasing insecurity of parents about imposing limits on a child's actions; the consequences of the fact that the social relevance of the Christian churches is becoming fragile; the increasing helplessness of experts to react appropriately to climate change; the widespread uncertainty as to how leadership in social organisations can still be possible today; and much more – all of these are reduced to the therapist's fundamental skill, which he needs to bring to his or her profession and then differentiate further.

The extra-therapeutic assignment of negative character traits to a person or a group of people in society does not only block out the mental conflict behind it. It also blocks out continuing social differences. It abstracts from successful interpersonal relationships and from concrete actions. No matter how negatively a person is judged, he or she will never be as completely absorbed by those traits as other people are inclined to believe. This is how Mertens describes people in leadership positions:

Narcissistically disturbed personalities can be socially well adapted and successful. Not infrequently, they even occupy top positions in our society as bosses, managers, politicians, or professors. Yet as they are led by appearances and market values and attracted by success and fame, interpersonal contacts are usually only a tool for them. They use them to motivate employees on their behalf and to instrumentalise them for their...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Basic assumptions and some concepts of the psychoanalytic theory of action
• 2 Mobbing and its connection to the unconscious
• 3 Depth psychological aspects of the public debate about climate change
• 4 Other contemporary cultural phenomena and their connection to the unconscious
• 5 Psychoanalysis in the perception of modern science
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index