Contents
- The Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Culture
- Hitler’s Ideology
- War and Genocide
- The First World War
- War as Sacrifice
- Training Soldiers to Die
- Like Sheep to Slaughter
- The Psychopathology of War
Works Cited
- The Psychological Interpretation of Culture
- Hitler’s Ideology
- War and Genocide
- The First World War
- War as Sacrifice
- Training Soldiers to Die
- Like Sheep to Slaughter
- The Psychopathology of War
Works Cited
I. The Psychological Interpretation of Culture
A psychological approach to the study of society seeks to identify the sources and meanings of its cultural formations. For any ideology or institution, I pose the question: “Why does it exist?” To understand an element of culture requires uncovering and revealing the psychic function that this element of culture provides or performs.
An ideology or institution comes into being, is embraced and perpetuated insofar as it does something (psychologically) for individuals within that society.
Cultures are social constructions, but constructed for what purpose? Based on what foundation? A psychological approach to the study of society poses questions revolving around the creation and perpetuation of specific cultural forms. For any belief-system or institution within a society one may pose the question: What psychological work does this element of culture perform for members of society?
The fundamental flaw of cultural theory is that there is reality “out there” (constituted by language, discourse, etc.) that exists and can be studied separately from the minds those of human beings who create, embrace and perpetuate this reality. It is obvious that particular human beings are born into symbolic systems that already exist. Still, we pose the question: Why does any particular symbolic system exist in the first place?
Based on our experience of symbolic systems as overwhelming in their impact, we imagine that they constitute “objective realities” separate from human beings. We experience society as an entity “out there,” above us, forgetting the human source of our cultural world. Why do some elements of culture become stable and persist while others fade and disappear? I suggest we investigate specific ideologies and institutions posing the question: What does this element of culture do for the population that embraces it? One “explains” the existence of a cultural form by interrogating the psychological gratifications it provides and psychic functions it performs.
Freud’s analysis of dreams slips of the tongue, and psychosomatic symptoms was guided by the principle of psychic determinism, which asserted that there are no accidents in the life of the mind. Our unconscious mental life is the source of the images we dream at night, the mistakes and blunders of our everyday life, and the pains in our bodies. A psychological approach to the study of culture extends the principle of psychic determinism. We examine belief systems, institutions and historical events, assuming these cultural creations have not come into being by chance.
We imagine that ideologies and institutions have a “life of their own,” as if they keep on keeping on independently of the people who create and embrace them? Why do we imagine that culture or society descends upon us from above, as if emanating from another domain of existence? Why do people believe that cultural ideas and institutions are separate from human beings?
I theorize that society is created by human beings and serves a human purpose. Cultural forms exist to the extent that they allow us to externalize, work through and come to terms with our deepest desires, fears, conflicts and fantasies. Cultural ideas and institutions are not separate from the psychic functions they perform. Indeed, we may theorize, ideologies and institutions exist and are perpetuated precisely by virtue of their capacity to perform psychological work.
Norman O. Brown (1959) states that “culture exists in order to project the infantile fantasies into external reality where they may be seen and mastered” (154). Cultural forms function as a vehicle for externalizing and working through unconscious fantasies. Brown sees culture as a “transference screen”—a vast canvas or tableau onto which the psyche projects and dramatizes fundamental conflicts and existential dilemmas.
Brown wrote of the “human neurosis,” viewing history as a form of collective psychopathology. Indeed, the extraordinary record of slaughter in the Twentieth Century (well over two-hundred million deaths caused by political actions undertaken by societal groups) suggests that Brown’s diagnosis was kind. Yet in spite of this grotesque historical record, people rarely conceptualize historical as psychopathology. Human beings tend to idealize societies, turning out eyes away from the ugliness and sickness that emanates the very fabric of civilization.
II. Hitler’s Ideology
For many years, the idea of "functionalism" dominated social science approach to explanation sought to ascertain the “function” of particular elements of society, governed by the assumption that each element of society serves a more-or-less rational purpose. In light of recent developments in American politics, this approach now seems quaint. Of course, the Holocaust and other developments massively irrational and destructive events in the Twentieth Century already had constituted a refutation of the notion that societal institutions serve a "rational" purpose.
We turn to Hannah Arendt's observation that by virtue of their project of locating and transporting Jews to death camps and gas chambers, the Nazis had turned over a substantial component of their economy and society to the “production of corpses.” Has there ever been such an irrational and useless form of institutionalized behavior?
The Nazis brought death camps into being. Daniel Goldhagen (1996) suggests that the concentration camps were the Nazis most original contribution to culture, an excellent of the concept of the “social construction of reality.” Why did the Nazis create the Final Solution? What was the purpose and meaning of this monumental societal project?
The death camps and Final Solution grew out of the minds of Hitler and his colleagues. This project represented the materialization or actualization of Hitler’s desires and fantasies which, eventually, came to be shared by many other Germans. The Final Solution was the result of the collective enactment of desires and fantasies contained within—articulated through—Nazi ideology.
A character in James Joyce’s novel Ulysses said that “history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken." We might do well to take this idea of “history as a nightmare” --literally. In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud provided a method for analyzing the dreams of individuals. I'm presenting an approach to analyzing collective dreaming. I interpret elements of culture as manifestations of shared fantasy—as if a dream that many people are having at the same time. The psychological interpretation of culture revolves around delineating the nature and shape of those desires, conflicts and fantasies that give rise to and are articulated through collective representations.
My method of interpreting collective dreaming (the shared fantasies of a culture) focuses identifying recurrent images and metaphors appearing in relationship to ideological terms and propositions. Hitler, for example, referred to Germany as a “living organism” and to Jews as bacteria, viruses and parasites feeding upon this organism. Metaphors within Hitler’s writings and speeches allow us to reconstruct the fantasies that were the source of his ideology.
The Final Solution grew out of a fantasy contained within Hitler’s ideology. Jews were conceived as bacteria or viruses the cause of a disease within the body politic. As pathogenic microorganisms, Jews were imagined representing a mortal threat to the life of the nation. Genocide was undertaken in order to destroy the source of the nation’s disease, thereby to “save the life” of Germany.
At first, Hitler’s ideology seems outlandish and bizarre. Gradually, one realizes that one has heard this before. Hitler’s ideology reflected a mode of nationalistic thought attributing all of society’s problems to a particular group or class of people. Resolution of the country’s problems—the “return to health” of the nation—is understood to require the destruction or elimination of a particular group or class of people.
People prefer to think of Hitler’s ideology as an aberration, but it was not; it lay fully within the mainstream of Western political thought. Hitler’s ideology represented an instantiation of that most banal of political propositions: If the nation is to survive, its enemies must be destroyed. The title of Lucy Dawidowicz’ book on the Holocaust is War Against the Jews (1986). By virtue of the Final Solution, the Nazis enacted this banal idea—that survival of one’s nation requires destruction of its enemies. The Nazis carried through this banal idea to an extreme, bizarre conclusion.
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