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Psychoanalysis
It is often assumed that psychiatry
is the school of thought which focuses on the individual, that its main concern
is , moreover, the various forms of mental illness which some individuals
suffer from. This is not true. Freud wrote a book entirely devoted to Group
psychology, and there are various studies which relied on the insights of
psychiatry to explain such cultural phenomena as Literature, the Cinema, and diverse cultural
phenomena. Politicians today rely on the insights of psychologists to
comprehend the motives for world leaders acting as they do.
Freud
Defense Mechanisms:
It is well known that Sigmund Freud based his analytic
system on interaction with his patients. During the exchange, he discovered
that patients resist telling him the truth about certain experiences from their
past. He thought that this is intentional, at first, and then he came to
discover that, sometimes, patients just forget, or deny, or repress, the truth, because it is difficult to
deal with.. The anxiety level of the subject rises considerably when reminded
of such experiences, some of which being traumatic and frightening. Therefore,
the defenses are methods of concealing, either from the psychiatrist, or from
the self, at least some of these experiences which could well be partial causes
of the illness the patient suffers from..
It is therefore important to stress that these defense
mechanisms are rhetorical.. They express the self in language.. as the subject
wishes to present him/herself to the world.
It is certain that most normal humans use them as much
as mentally ill people do. As usual, what distinguishes the normal individual
using defenses from the ill person is a matter of degree.. When these methods
are used to guard the individual from real or potential harm, then he still
controls the usage. However, when the usage confuses the user, when he gets
caught up in the defenses he creates, then they become harmful, and the usage
ought to be stopped.
This study seeks to explain the
defense mechanisms of Sigmund Freud, and apply them to certain cultural phenomena.
I will try to suggest that those defenses are rhetorical, that is, they are
specific uses of language meant to defend the self from specific threats, and
are therefore embedded with social values. One cannot, after all, defend any
act or thought, without its being previously attacked, both the attack and
defense being always related to social norms.
What follows here is a list and a brief
discussion of some of these defenses, with their applications to everyday
lives, and political and social debates…
Rationalization:
To rationalize is to offer others, or oneself,
acceptable reasons for unacceptable acts.. Sometimes, one rationalizes
unacceptable thoughts, giving to himself some form of justification.. Many
times, in life, people make mistakes, act meanly to each other, husbands betray
wives, children harm parents (and vice versa). One finds some form of
justification for those kinds of unacceptable acts.
The first question which a human being needs to deal
with is that of his/her own existence. What am I doing here? Am I helpful to
others, or am I doing harm?
Human beings need to find some form of justification
for their existence which is daily contested by others. Why are You alive? What
are you doing with your life? A famous existential philosopher puts it in a
crude fashion:
At the basis of human life there exists a
principle of insufficiency. In isolation, each man sees the majority of others
as incapable or unworthy of being. There is found, in all free and slanderous
conversation, as an animating theme, the awareness of the vanity and the
emptiness of our fellowmen.. the sufficiency of each being is endlessly
contested by every other. Even the look that expresses love and admiration
comes to me as a doubt concerning my reality. A burst of laughter or the
expression of repugnance greets each gesture, each sentence, or each oversight
through which my profound insufficiency is betrayed..
Most of us lead superficial lives. We fulfill duties
which might not be significant. Our lives are dull. Yet, each one of us loves life, and rationalizes his/her
continuing to exist. When we commit errors, make mistakes, occasionally fatal
ones, we have to find rationalizations.. I did not intend for that to happen.
It was not my fault. I am a loser, so why don’t you kill me? How did Mr. Nobel
justify his invention of the Atomic bomb and its children, deadly toys which
damaged the lives of Millions of peoples worldwide? He created the Noble Peace
Prize, as a kind of apology, which was all what he could have done. That was a
rationalization, to himself more than to any of the victims of his invention.
As one becomes increasingly aware of the
insufficiency of his individual being, he seeks solace in the social system.
One joins a party, Democrats, Republicans, even the Green party, or the KKK,
any group which conceals the insufficiency of each individual entity, merges it
in the group.. One finds Safety in Numbers.
However, groups need their rationalizations to exist
as well. And one of the easiest is to degrade other groups.
A story entitled the Vigilante by John Steinbeck
describes Mike, a white man,
rationalizing his participation in the lynching of a black man. Mike was
one of the first men to attack the jail where the black man was imprisoned, and
was the one to tie the knot around the neck.. His justification is: This will
save the county a lot of money, and no sneaky lawyers getting in.. He explains
further: Lawyers can get them out of anything. I guess the nigger was guilty
alright. However, Mike does complain when the mob tried to burn the hanging
body: He is dead now. That can not hurt him none. Yet, his narrating the tale
again and again, describing with evident pleasure how the mob stripped the
black man, and beat him until he is semi dead, and took his unconscious naked
body and tied the rope around the neck, all this suggests a different
motivation, which appears later in the story. For, when Mike gets home, his
wife confronts him: You been with a woman.. and he acknowledges to himself: She
is right. That is exactly how I do feel.
The secret motivation of Mike is the pleasure of
torturing another person, and watching them die..A sick hunger for power and
control over others. His awareness of the insufficiency of his own being makes
him participate in the killing of another, in the hope that this way, he will
feel alive, significant.
However, this story goes beyond the individual, since
a whole group of people participate in the crime committed. Here there is a
reminder of the slavery system, which was also rationalized by society to
conceal basically greed and the pleasure people get from abusing others.
A well known historic document, the Narrative of the
life of Fredrick Douglas, describes in detail the rationalization used to
justify slavery. For instance, the author recollects that the wife of his
Master, Mrs. Auld, tried to teach him to read and write, but quickly her
husband stops her from doing so, saying: A nigger should know nothing but to
obey his masters. If you teach him how to read and write, he would at once
become unmanageable. (667)
The author also describes some masters who: find
religious sanctions and support for their salve holding activities.. Here,
religion is used as pretext to justify brutality, since this master in
particular starved his slaves, while forcing them to do hard labor for longer
hours than other masters. The author expands on the use of religion to justify
slavery:
The man who robs me of my earnings at the end
of each week meets me as a class leader on Sunday mornings, to show me the ways
of life, and the path of salvation. He who sells my sister, for purposes of
prostitution, stands forth as the pious advocate of purity. He who proclaims it
a religious duty to read the Bible denies me the right of learning to read the
name of the God who made me.(715)
Rationalization therefore is a system used to cover up
the sense of insufficiency most individuals feel by justifying inhumane acts
towards other people. As we have seen, from various examples, slave holding
societies rationalized their abuse of slaves on grounds of religion, even as
the very essence of that religion was transgressed. Sometimes, as in such
instances as slave lynching, the individuals derive a perverse sick pleasure
from participating in group violence against other groups. This was
rationalized on the grounds of exacting justice..
Rationalization, for Freud, was a method of dealing
with guilt, stemming from the super ego. And it is necessary occasionally to
rationalize lies, faking excuses, betraying trust, etc. In such instances, one
is forced to rationalize. However, one can go so far as to participate in
killing other human beings illegally, and rationalize his participation later.
Therefore, as with all other defenses, some rationalization is necessary, but
excessive use of it is very harmful to the self and society.
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