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In Life Against Death: the Psychoanalytic Meaning of History (1959), Norman O. Brown reshaped psychoanalysis into a wider general theory of human nature, culture and history, to be appropriated by the consciousness of mankind as a "new stage in the historical process of man’s coming to know himself.” The unconscious can become conscious, Brown stated, only through “projection into the external world.” Culture is not external to the human psyche. Rather, it performs a psychic function, namely to allow us to "project infantile fantasies into concrete reality, where they can be seen and mastered.” In Sublime Object of Ideology (1989) and Mapping Ideology (2012), Slavoj Žižek states that ideology is not a dream-like illusion that we build to “escape insupportable reality,” rather is a “fantasy-construction which serves as a support for our reality itself.” Shared fantasies create reality. In The Plague of Fantasies (2009), Žižek writes that the “unconscious mind—operating through fantasy—makes us susceptible to ideology.” Ideology is a “waking dream,” acting upon us from the outside, but exerting its hold because it resonates with unconscious desires, fantasies and conflicts. In Hitler’s Ideology: A Study in Psychoanalytic Sociology (1975) and The Psychoanalysis of Racism, Revolution and Nationalism (2011)—Richard Koenigsberg theorizes that ideologies exist as a modus operandi for the expression of fantasies that are shared by members of a population. Ideologies transform dimensions of psychic experience into elements of culture. Ideologies—like “funnels”—draw forth energy bound to unconscious fantasies—making energy available for reality-oriented action. Politics enacts shared unconscious fantasies—through the vehicle of ideologies. What does it mean to understand reality as a dream that many people are having at the same time? |
