Death toll
The meaning of life is that it stops. ~ Franz Kafka
At the end of WWI the unimaginable losses piled up. Margaret MacMillan, in Paris 1919, lays out the historical aftermath. “Four years of war shook forever the supreme self-confidence that had carried Europe to world dominance. After the Western Front, Europeans could no longer talk of a civilizing mission to the world…Millions of combatants died in those four years: 1,800,000 Germans, 1,700,000 Russians, 1,384,000 French, 1,290,000 from Austria-Hungary, 935,000 from the British Empire…Children lost fathers, wives husbands, young women the chance of marriage. And Europe lost those who might have been its scientists, its poets and its leaders, and the children who might have been born to them. But the tally of deaths does not include those who were left with one leg, one arm or one eye, or those whose lungs had been scarred by poison gas or whose nerves never recovered.” To add a bitter sting to the end of the war, the Spanish Influenza was estimated to have killed more people than in the Great War.
Sigmund Freud described very well the empty void people feel when the light of life is snuffed out by an invisible enemy, including his daughter Sophie. “This afternoon we received the news that our sweet Sophie in Hamburg had been snatched away by influenzal pneumonia, snatched away in the midst of glowing health, from a full and active life as a competent mother and loving wife, all in four or five days, as though she had never existed.” When consoling Ludwig Binswanger, who was suffering from a similar loss: “We know that the acute sorrow we feel after such a loss will run its course, but also that we will remain inconsolable, and will never find a substitute. No matter what may come to take its place, even should it fill that place completely, it remains something else. And that is how it should be. It is the only way of perpetuating a love that we do not want to abandon.”
Sophie Halberstadt-Freud: https://www.encyclopedia.com/psychology/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/halberstadt-freud-sophie-1893-1920
Group Psychology
After focusing so much on individual dynamics in psychology and healing from trauma, Freud found so many group dynamics that it became necessary to study the influence of groups separately. “In the individual’s mental life someone else is invariably involved, as a model, as an object, as a helper, as an opponent, and so from the very first Individual Psychology is at the same time Social Psychology.” Humanity provides labels for all these individuals in our lives, but we also provide labels for groups. Whether it’s our country, ethnicity, institution, or even a makeshift crowd that spontaneously gathers, labels for groups have emotional significance for us. One of the main ways to see how powerful this impact is, is to notice how one reacts when one is by oneself, and how that quickly changes when a person interacts with another person or a group. Freud surveyed the literature on group behaviour and quoted heavily from Gustave Le Bon, who viewed these behaviours as evidence of a collective mind. “‘There are certain ideas and feelings which do not come into being, or do not transform themselves into acts except in the case of individuals forming a group.'” Here a collective mind has less to do with a shared brain, but more to do with a part of the mind that activates in certain ways when people are interacting in a group.
Le Bon believed our influences from others starts in our biological inheritance and those influences coming out of our unconscious. “‘The greater part of our daily actions are the result of hidden motives which escape our observation. One of the changes we undergo when we move from individual to group life, is that we start to become more like others…What is heterogeneous is submerged in what is homogeneous.'” What worried Le Bon was the unconscious connection people had and some of their ill effects. “‘…The individual forming part of a group acquires…a sentiment of invincible power which allows him to yield to instincts which, had he been alone, he would…have kept under restraint.'” The key for Le Bon, on what leads to bad individual behaviour in a group, is how he uses the words invincibility and anonymity. He viewed that individuals were much more responsible by themselves than when in a group. Modern examples of this would be anonymity in a chat room. A person can insult, or ‘troll,’ a person that they would never do face to face, because of anonymity. People behave differently when they don’t fear social consequences, and not fearing consequences means they feel they can do anything, which is what I think Le Bon was getting at. The feeling of omnipotence or invincibility is the feeling that there are no consequences and one can do what one wants. There is pleasure and relief when social inhibitions are lifted. So here, the example is one type of group interaction, where group members condone bad behaviour, as opposed to the typical expectation of people being bad when they are alone, and good in public. Both situations, of course, exist in their own contexts, and as we will see later, will require leadership that steers the group more one way or another.
Le Bon viewed the unconscious as what was inherited and what gets unleashed in group behaviour. For Freud, he is more interested in what was imitated and repressed, than what was inherited. One way or another, there is a predisposition coming from the unconscious. “…In a group the individual is brought under conditions which allow him to throw off the repressions of his unconscious instincts. The apparently new characteristics which he then displays are in fact manifestations of this unconscious, in which all that is evil in the human mind is contained as a predisposition. We can find no difficulty in understanding the disappearance of conscience or of a sense of responsibility in these circumstances. It has long been our contention that ‘dread of society’ is the essence of what is called conscience.” What is curious is Freud’s view of repression, which can create a super-ego of conscience, partially from a dread of social punishment, yet at the same, as can be seen in the Great War, society can condone the dark side of people’s personality, so that it operates very different from a conscience per se, or a conscience that uses social excuses and reasons to condone sadistic behaviour.
Moving into the power of suggestion and hypnotism, Le Bon asserts that the mind switches from a personal interest to a collective interest when in a group, but he slips in a power differential between the hypnotized and the hypnotist. “‘The conscious personality has entirely vanished; will and discernment are lost. All feelings and thoughts are bent in the direction determined by the [hypnotist].'” The power differential leads to reciprocal condoning that strengthens what is typically inhibited. “‘Under the influence of suggestion, he will undertake the accomplishment of certain acts with irresistible impetuosity. This impetuosity is the more irresistible in the case of groups than in that of the hypnotized subject, from the fact that, the suggestion being the same for all individuals of the group, it gains in strength by reciprocity…He is no longer himself, but has become an automaton who has ceased to be guided by his will….Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian – that is, a creature acting by instinct. He possesses the spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and also the enthusiasm and heroism of primitive beings.'”
Reading Le Bon, Freud sees his version of the Unconscious, in that it “may desire things passionately, yet this is never so for long, for it is incapable of perseverance. It cannot tolerate any delay between its desire and the fulfillment of what it desires. It has a sense of omnipotence; the notion of impossibility disappears for the individual in a group.” As the rationality decreases to simple rationalization a collective unconscious can appear. “A group is extraordinarily credulous and open to influence, it has no critical faculty, and the improbable does not exist for it. It thinks in images, which call one another up by association (just as they arise with individuals in states of free imagination), and whose agreement with reality is never checked by any reasonable function. The feelings of the group are always very simple and very exaggerated. So that a group knows neither doubt nor uncertainty.” Freud then describes what we see in ALL political parties where followers have to toe-the-line and follow the group objective, no matter the facts or the doubt. “[The group] goes directly to extremes; if a suspicion is expressed, it is instantly changed into an [established] certainty; a trace of [opposition] is turned into furious hatred.” Freud characterizes group psychology as incapable of nuance. It is only moved by suggestions from others that “paint in the most forcible colours.” There must be exaggeration and repetition to convince a group. If there is too much nuance, it naturally breaks down the cohesiveness of a group. I would add to Freud’s theories by saying that a group has so many people with individual perspectives, that they will only agree on a small group of ideas. Any motivation in a group has to be influenced by simple, but also precise ideas, that many can gather around to agree on. If they agree on enough, they will be willing to let go of some of the disagreements because their core issues are agreed upon. Often politicians will defect parties because the core ideas of a political party have shifted so much that there is not enough in common to keep that individual identified with that group.
Freud then sees the eternal difficulty the individual has, especially one who is different, with new ideas, to make changes, and advancements in society as a whole. “Since a group is in no doubt as to what constitutes truth or error, and is conscious, moreover, of its own great strength, it is as intolerant as it is obedient to authority. It respects force and can only be slightly influenced by kindness, which it regards merely as a form of weakness. What it demands of its heroes is strength, or even violence. It wants to be ruled and oppressed and to fear its masters. Fundamentally it is entirely conservative, and it has a deep aversion from all innovations and advances and an unbounded respect for tradition.” Now here one has to be careful of the term conservative, because this could apply to any group, including scientists. Once a new scientific theory gains strength it can be ossified by the group and turn into a dogma. The people who decried a lack of scientific rigor and open-mindedness, can turn into a theocrat attacking all newcomers. This ironically can be seen in psychology itself. If a financial well-being and the pleasure of positive attention is in danger, leaders of an old movement will feel threatened by new theories purely out of addiction. Losing what you enjoy is always a cold bath and painful. It brings up all the individual resistances that naturally motivate, those who have enough power, to scapegoat and oppress. To me this hints at a personal self-interest that hides in the collective interest. People are always monitoring a self-interest in a group, and as described above, there’s plenty of repression of desire in groups, not just condoning. Individuals can support group goals that also support individual goals, a sense of harmony, but not all those goals are constructive.
Freud then describes this dichotomy of unleashing condoned desires, and restricting prohibited desires, pushing people into a collective super-ego. “…One must take into consideration the fact that when individuals come together in a group all their individual inhibitions fall away and all the cruel, brutal and destructive instincts, which lie dormant in individuals as relics of a primitive epoch, are stirred up to find free gratification. But under the influence of suggestion groups are also capable of high achievements in the shape of abnegation, unselfishness, and devotion to an ideal. While with isolated individuals personal interest is almost the only motive force, with groups it is very rarely prominent. It is possible to speak of an individual having his moral standards raised by a group. Whereas the intellectual capacity of a group is always far below that of an individual, its ethical conduct may rise as high above his as it may sink deep below it.”
This is why looking at those in power in a group becomes essential. Leaders and followers. Here followers are described by the book as people who are looking for someone to take care of them. The words of the leader are “‘considered as natural forces, as supernatural powers.'” It’s so much easier to believe than to test. “They constantly give what is unreal precedence over what is real; they are almost as strongly influenced by what is untrue as by what is true.” For Freud, the followers have an unfulfilled wish that they hope will be fulfilled by the group or leadership. “…What neurotics are guided by is not ordinary objective reality but psychological reality…Just as in dreams and in hypnosis, in the mental operations of a group the function for testing the reality of things falls into the background in comparison with the strength of wishes with their [emotional investment.]” As can be seen in my Cult Psychology review, the wishes of the followers are so emotionally invested in their leaders, they often tolerate abuse and maltreatment at the hands of authorities, rather than to test reality and to find better environments to satisfy wishes in a realistic way. The internal super-ego can be masochistic and self-destructive when the follower moves into self-austerity and slavery, while the leader exploits. Followers with no willpower are at the mercy of leaders.
How leaders can attract followers is through the wishes of their followers by being a promise of satisfaction, an “idea…to awaken the group’s faith…[Leaders] must possess a strong and imposing will, which the group, which has no will of its own, can accept…” Freud’s two examples are religion and the army. Promises to satisfy wishes involve some form of love that followers sense from the leader “…who loves all the individuals in the group with an equal love. Everything depends upon this illusion; if it were to be dropped, then both Church and army would dissolve…”
Prestige
The danger of this abstract symbol of love can be seen how wishes appear in the minds of followers. In War Pt. 2, I briefly reviewed Freud’s Project, and how hazy wishes appear in the mind. This abstract, unrealistic, hazy wish is looking for satisfaction in the real world, but the real world always seems to have imperfections that disappoint wishes, and sometimes devastatingly so. It’s interesting how hazy, abstract and dreamy a lot of promises are that are made by leaders, or I would say seducers. They are designed to be appear as reality to the follower because they are displayed in the environment. The hazy dream matches the hazy symbol and feels motivated, and continues chasing it. This is often why we like art, which isn’t real, except for being in the environment for us to view, because it can appear as an escape from the real. The abstractness can cover hyper-realistic flaws, but our craving lights up when we see few flaws or cannot find flaws. Virginia Postrel quotes, in The Power of Glamour, the fashion writer Alicia Drake: “Glamour offers ‘the implicit promise of a life devoid of mediocrity.'” If a habit to chase these hazy symbols develops, an idealization, a person can move from one disappointing group, political party, cult, relationship, and product advertisement after another. The person may even ask for help from one group, after escaping another, only to be equally abused by their new saviour group. The hazy, abstract quality of promising symbols fools followers again and again because of how precisely they ignore important contradictory detail. Reality testing always looks for more detail than what is provided and doesn’t shy away from disenchantment. Followers have to see their motivation to run away from reality to see what they are doing to themselves. Almost like a childhood playhouse with unrealistic exaggerated colours, we are trying to find an abstract heaven on earth.
La Dolce Vita – Federico Fellini: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_hfZoe9FHE
In these groups, the leader definitely exploits, but the follower is actually hurting themselves with their need to believe, or their hope. You can even imitate these abusers into your mind and have it abuse you inside of you with false abstract symbols and promises of happiness. The internal symbols become a dangerous Siren, “Greeks bearings gifts”, a backstabber, a Fifth Column in your mind. A form of bodysnatching. The belief goes too far, because the emotional investment is so strong, and the embarrassment so powerful. It is often worth tolerating more abuse than to admit failure. When people get out of cults they feel like they’ve snapped out of a dream. In reality that’s exactly what they did. They allowed healthy scientific doubt to add the detail that the wish didn’t want to look at. Many wishes can’t be satisfied, and no matter what your faith, political inclinations, scientific theoretical inclinations, relationship hopes are, reality is reality, and there is no group or person that has a monopoly on reality. We are all still trying to figure this thing out called existence. If someone on a podium says that they’ve figured it out, they at best are only partially correct.
This dangerous symbol was defined by Freud and Le Bon as Prestige. “Prestige is a sort of domination exercised over us by an individual, a work or an idea. It entirely paralyses our critical faculty, and fills us with astonishment and respect. It would seem to arouse a feeling like that of fascination in hypnosis…[but] all prestige is dependent upon success, and is lost in the event of failure.” Prestige has to be earned, but is often only a hazy promise. Like in Totem and Taboo, when the followers are disappointed enough, they depose their leaders with hostility, because their entitlement was disappointed, like a child disappointed in their parent, or like an infatuated lover disappointed in their love object. The entitled follower can go from idealizing to scapegoating, all the while not seeing their complicity in trying desperately to avoid reality. This putting a leader on a pedestal and tearing them down can go on endlessly with constant new leaders that always disappoint, as can be seen in numerous dictatorships. It’s also a learning process for people who are political junkies who find that responsibility is much harder than criticizing. There’s a natural disappointment and disheartening that happens every time one actually succeeds in getting their politician in power. Deep down people know that they will be disappointed because their expectations were way too high. The healthy and peaceful mind can finally let go of the need to get excited with every new leader who makes a promise. Until those promises are fulfilled, there’s no need to get emotionally invested. Peaceful minds also know that it’s nice to take responsibility for oneself and there’s a pleasure in taking credit for what one has contributed, instead of giving all credit to our favourite leaders. There is no soul-mate, one has to work at relationships and constantly negotiate. Reality becomes much more beautiful, despite the flaws, because at least it is real. The imperfect positive things in reality can now be appreciated. They don’t have to be perfect, and reality testing can confirm their true value instead of chasing a carrot of promises.
The freedom that comes to the person who has a love of reality is partially painful because one now realizes that one has accumulated habits, tendencies and beliefs that steered the personality in a distorted direction. If one was more skeptical like a scientist, and demanded more proof before a decision was made, a lot of damage could have been avoided. Identification is just a series of imitations of suggestions from others, who have varying grasps of reality. “Why, therefore, do we invariably give way to this contagion when we are in a group? Once more we should have to say that what compels us to obey this tendency is imitation, and what induces the emotion in us is the group’s suggestive influence.” As in War Pt 2., Vittorio Gallese viewed the source of suggestion as imitation of goals and I naturally posit that goals are about what Freud described as The Pleasure Principle, The Reality Principle, and Freud’s later welcoming of death, The Nirvana Principle. Those three general umbrellas include all of Freud’s categories for desire including friendship, family, community, self-love and intimate partners. When leaders of a cult are wearing those abstract symbols of success in robes, in expensive accessories, and advertised lifestyles, we followers are partially wishing to be in their place, or we want them to be cooperative for our goals or lovers if we can’t be them. When leaders show weakness, tensions escalate with those who are led, as they see opportunities to replace the leader with themselves, or so they hope. Followers can have desires for revenge, and in some cases it’s achieved, and power shifts in the hierarchy. In some cases, leaders see the writing on the wall and work on a succession plan, or conflict increases until they are ousted.
Beyond the Pleasure Principle: https://rumble.com/v1gv855-beyond-the-pleasure-principle-freud-and-beyond-war-pt.-23.html
Bloodied Colonel Gaddafi filmed pleading with his captors before death: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLLa8xDns04
Identification for Freud is a social psychology that is based on imitative desire, but it can have an aggression to it. “Identification, in fact, is ambivalent from the very first; it can turn into an expression of tenderness as easily as into a wish for someone’s removal…The object that we long for and prize is assimilated by eating and is in that way annihilated as such. The cannibal, as we know, has remained at this standpoint; he has a devouring affection for his enemies and only devours people of whom he is fond.” Like in the Oedipus Complex, Freud looks at sexual organization as something that can have a sense of feeding, starting with desires to imitate parents. “In the first case one’s father is what one would like to be, and in the second he is what one would like to have.” In a way it depends on upon whether the feeding is a hostile and competitive one or a cooperative one. From an ancient logic, it makes sense that early humans would eat many different things and some of those good things would lead to an individual to feel better. Through basic thought association, it would be possible to believe that one could gain the qualities of what is eaten. One might then, by thought association, gain the qualities of a competitor in victory or preserve characteristics of a lost loved one, through eating their flesh. Whether it’s a competitive or cooperative feeding, there’s a desire to replace distinctive people or to have them as romantic partners, or friends. In the case of leaders and followers, the leader is someone to replace or to have. As the saying goes, “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” Or you can follow in their path. “The mechanism is that of identification based upon the possibility or desire of putting oneself in the same situation.” In some cases one can see how people can flip between one or another mode unconsciously. For example, if a leader corners people by being a source of leverage, it’s possible that the targets will have no chance but to be subservient. The secret of inhibition, is how people feel when the obstacles are too high so they can’t put themselves in the same situation as the leader, or like when you desire someone who is “out of your league.” That stress happens so quickly because the mind likes what it sees in the love-object, but instantly moves into stress and concern because of how love-objects can easily remove attention and presence. We become intimidated.
When in identification mode, chasing after a role model, there’s always a desire to close the gap. The reward of success is to turn the tables with the old leader and to now be looked upon by others as a desired love-object. If the goal is too hard, or actually impossible, the goal changes for the imitator. The role model is viewed as a friend or a love interest. Either way, people are feeding socially, and the unconscious can quickly find replacement objectives if the initial ones fail.
Caniba – Issei Sagawa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEbzcqJ29uc
Emotional Feeding – Thanissaro Bhikkhu: https://rumble.com/v1gqvl1-emotional-feeding-thanissaro-bhikkhu.html
Power and sexuality
As we have already explained, people can move into the powerful position to gain benefits or to give transference of prestige and regard to the leader to siphon off some of the benefits that way. Here Freud finally explains his male homosexual theory with a bit more detail, but it ended up being more applicable in many situations that have nothing to do with homosexuality, and can appear in any dominant and subservient posturing. For Freud, masculinity is being a master and useful. Femininity is being cooperative, but also paradoxically, needing help. “The genesis of male homosexuality in a large class of cases is as follows. A young man has been unusually long and intensely fixated upon his mother in the sense of the Oedipus complex. But at last, after the end of his puberty, the time comes for exchanging his mother for some other sexual object. Things take a sudden turn: the young man does not abandon his mother, but identifies himself with her; he transforms himself into her, and now looks about for objects which can replace his ego for him, and on which he can bestow such love and care as he has experienced from his mother….In this process the object itself is renounced.” Freud uses an example of a child that identifies with a lost kitten, as if to preserve the lost qualities of the missing pet. This is what Freud calls an introjection. In the Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, Charles Rycroft describes how this mental model of a lost love object is introjected into the mind. One of it’s motivations is to “diminish separation anxiety.” Freud described introjection and projection as opposites, and again using the feeding model, the instincts make judgments that say “‘I should like to eat this’, or ‘I should like to spit it out’; and, put more generally: ‘I should like to take this into myself and to keep that out.'” Like with the Dora review, we can reject influences we don’t like about ourselves to outside targets [projection], and we can adore what we don’t have and empathize with the lost loved object and introject it to maintain the loved presence. Introjection, the way it’s described, is almost like a desperate need to remember and repeat something important so as to not forget it. It becomes a habit in us very quickly because of how important those details are to remember. We practice them so well in our minds that we can become skilled with the imitation.
Another type of identification is a love connection treated as a status symbol where we actually want to be in that position [identification], but instead of authentically liking that person, we choose a love object that provides positive social attention that we couldn’t get otherwise. “We see that the object is being treated in the same way as our own ego, so that when we are in love a considerable amount of narcissistic libido overflows on to the object. It is even obvious, in many forms of love choice, that the object serves as a substitute for some unattained ego ideal of our own. We love it on account of the perfections which we have striven to reach for our own ego, and which we should now like to procure in this roundabout way as a means of satisfying our narcissism.”
On Narcissism – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gtgdl-on-narcissism-sigmund-freud-narcissism-1-of-4.html
In these relationships Freud expands love to include pretty much all forms of desire. It embraces any power differentials you can see in the workplace, politics, and economics, that all have these dynamics. With introjection “the ego has enriched itself with the properties of the object…In the second case it is impoverished, it has surrendered itself to the object, it has substituted the object for its [ego.]” So like with being in love, or any other contracts, the master is developing ego skills, while at the same time wanting a companion that is willing to surrender their ego to rely on the master’s ego instead, a form of dependency. The sexuality can then follow in some instances, or fawning, brown-nosing behaviour to curry favour. “From being in love to hypnosis is evidently only a short step. The respects in which the two agree are obvious. There is the same humble subjection, the same compliance, the same absence of criticism, towards the hypnotist just as towards the loved object.” For Freud, there’s always some love going on in the background when there’s a sense of prestige. “The hypnotic relation is the devotion of someone in love to an unlimited degree but with sexual satisfaction excluded; whereas in the case of being in love this kind of satisfaction is only temporarily kept back, and remains in the background as a possible aim at some later time.” With friendships and intimate partners Freud sees again, like in his Love trilogy, the love we have for friends and family has to be applied to our intimate partners to help us go beyond lust, which without tender love, will dangerously drain into boredom every time we satisfy it. “It is interesting to see that it is precisely those sexual tendencies that are inhibited in their aims which achieve such lasting ties between men. But this can easily be understood from the fact that they are not capable of complete satisfaction, while sexual tendencies which are uninhibited in their aims suffer an extraordinary reduction through the discharge of energy every time the sexual aim is attained. It is the fate of sensual love to become extinguished when it is satisfied; for it to be able to last, it must from the first be mixed with purely tender components…” Some insights appear with this explanation. Love and tenderness can become a useful template for comparing a loving introjection, imitation, or the enriching of our ego, to a reaction formation where a person is forcing themselves to be like others. In the later situation the motivation is not supported by love and tenderness but instead by stress. To truly take on details from others, inspiration essentially, one has to love those details and the skills involved. Until a person has repeated those skills with loving attention, it remains unsustainable. Similar to an “mmmmm” feeding, we have to get to the point that new skills are tasty and create an appetite in us to use them. A good sign that a new skill you are developing is finally something that you deeply love, is the stress and yearning that appears when you are away from those activities. For example, a creative person without a creative objective to feed on would likely fall apart emotionally.
Violence and the Sacred – René Girard: https://rumble.com/v1gsnwv-the-origin-of-envy-and-narcissism-ren-girard.html
Love – Freud and Beyond: https://rumble.com/v1gv5pd-love-freud-and-beyond.html
Where’d You Go, Bernadette?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqnroADyAqQ
Relationships can work well enough when the master has enough skills to maintain the economics for the family, business, or department. If that fails or the dependent becomes bored and wants more, as in more rewards from the master’s ego, the relationship can fall apart when needs aren’t met. It’s hard for the master to maintain prestige, or the façade of prestige, and the dependent is restricted in that their success and failure is tied to the master. Success allows sexuality to flourish, and failure the opposite. The man gives his ego-penis, so to say, and the woman receives it. It turns into a castration complex, or a sore spot in manhood if he cannot succeed in business, politics, or to raise a family. As an extension of his penis, the man symbolically gives love by giving a lifestyle. The women wants the lifestyle, and has the pressure of being attractive enough as the object of desire. The man is going through all these hoops and women have pressure to be “worth it!” This predicts Jacques Lacan’s theory of the Phallus and the pressure both sexes are under, and the reaction formations [pretending] caused by the pressure to sell themselves. I remember a very crude example of that at an expensive restaurant. When the bill was brought out to this couple nearby the man literally looked at the bill, looked at the woman, and back and forth between her and and the bill as if he was thinking, “I paid that much, for you?!” The woman had that look of stress of not being good enough but doing her best to pretend, just as predicted. Men have to pretend that they are more successful than they are, and women have to pretend they are more beautiful and seductive than they are. Men have to dress stylish, like a God, as if their door-to-door photocopier salesman job is so lucrative, and women have to pressure themselves with extensive grooming and exercising to appear more fit and youthful than they actually are. The Façade eventually cracks if it’s too inauthentic and there’s relief when the burden is let go of. The realistic fear that remains for each side of a relationship implies the rejection: “You are not worth it!”
The signification of the phallus – Jacques Lacan: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780415708029/
Worth It – Fifth Harmony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBHQbu5rbdQ
Work from Home – Fifth Harmony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GL9JoH4Sws
Just as there’s conflict between love interests on who’s pulling their weight and making the right decisions, groups have to encounter people who aren’t as enamored with them as they would want them to be. If we love a particular group, it’s quite easy to hate those who don’t belong to it, and especially non-conformists who endanger it. Freud here showed some subtlety by not only picking on religious people for their “cruelty and intolerance…Personally, we ought not to reproach believers too severely on this account…If today that intolerance no longer shows itself so violent and cruel as in former centuries, we can scarcely conclude that there has been a softening in human manners. The cause is rather to be found in the undeniable weakening of religious feelings and the libidinal ties which depend upon them. If another group tie takes the place of the religious one–and the socialistic tie seems to be succeeding in doing so–, then there will be the same intolerance towards outsiders as in the age of the Wars of Religion; and if differences between scientific opinions could ever attain a similar significance for groups, the same result would again be repeated with this new motivation.” We are all religious when we succumb to the naive imitation of suggestions of ideal leaders, experts, taste-makers, celebrities, and even “soul-mates.” For all of us, this habit has already been developed since birth. Andrew N. Meltzoff in Mimesis and Science, describes this early development as “gaze following.” It’s a mother-baby-object triangle paradigm where the child follows the “mother’s gaze to an external target in order to see what she is looking at. Such gaze following is not the duplication of exact bodily movements, but rather a taking into account that mother’s behavior is directed toward (or “about”) an external target…Infants begin to pay attention to the fact that mothers do not always look at them, but also cast their gaze on external objects, siblings and spouses in the environment.” The danger of this habit is a lack of reality testing. As a child, it makes sense that you would be aware of the intentions of others, and be dependent on their suggestions. Children don’t have enough capability of reality testing, and rely on mimetics in order to learn, but adults need that capability. Yet the habit to follow suggestions blindly can be so strong. That sense of comfort in relying on the suggestions of strangers, is often on shaky ground, especially when we find out that the product wasn’t that good, the romantic partner was a narcissist, the expert was wrong, or the con artist was duping us. Being in a position where we need people too much is a dangerous dependency because those in power can always withdraw their resources, attention, and they can also hurt us with their mistakes. At the extreme end of relying on suggestions, wouldn’t it lead to a kind of self-brainwashing where one doesn’t trust one’s own reasoning and reality testing, or in Freud’s description, not being able to rely on one’s own ego? If there’s a target for a predator, I can’t think of a better one.
The freedom of letting go of chasing prestigious leaders, and following their suggestions, has it’s difficult qualities, though. If one isn’t used to it then it requires a lot of practice to pull off. There is a lack of comfort when the illusion is seen through, especially if a large section of moral imitation was coming from the leader’s illusory belief system, and aping Nietzsche’s death of God, Freud predicted that followers would release their inhibitions to extremes. Of course, all institutions are open to this kind of disillusionment that seems to sanction a letting go of restraint to the extreme opposite. When dependent followers have to drop their substitute ego, their empty void of skills to face the world can lead to regression to unskillful ways of living, or searches for a new leader. We can hurt ourselves when we don’t have anyone to look to for guidance.
Just – Radiohead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIFLtNYI3Ls
Cult Psychology: https://rumble.com/v1gvih9-cult-psychology.html
Totem and Taboo – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gsmvn-totem-and-taboo-sigmund-freud.html
The ‘Wolfman’ Part 2: Sergei Pankejeff: https://rumble.com/v1gug9n-case-studies-the-wolf-man-23-freud-and-beyond.html
The ‘Wolfman’ Part 3: Sergei Pankejeff: https://rumble.com/v1gulsf-case-studies-the-wolfman-33-freud-and-beyond.html
The Herd Instinct
How leaders and love interests are able to worm their way into power over us is how they can feel their sense of power by how we react. The way towards mastering another person is to have leverage to take away resources and attention. Prestige, “contains an additional element of paralysis derived from the relation between someone with superior power and someone who is without power and helpless–which may afford a transition to the hypnosis of terror which occurs in animals.” Here Freud finally get’s to the individual element of group psychology that adds onto Le Bon’s work. The terror we feel around a love-object is their ability to be helpful to us and their power to remove their presence and resources. It’s not just a group-mind. It’s the same for an employer or political leader. Comparing power to hypnotism, Freud says that “the hypnotist awakens in the subject a portion of his archaic inheritance which had also made him compliant towards his parents and which had experienced an individual re-animation in his relation to his father; what is thus awakened is the idea of a paramount and dangerous personality, towards whom only a passive-masochistic attitude is possible, to whom one’s will has to be surrendered,–while to be alone with him, ‘to look him in the face’, appears a hazardous enterprise.”
Our brain senses this power and unless we gain independence, we are stuck feeling this danger. The other side of mastery is dependency. If the leader, or love-object needs us, we can be comforted by them. We can both loathe the lack of independence and love the benefits of someone taking responsibility for us. “The individual feels ‘incomplete’ if he is alone. The dread shown by small children would seem already to be an expression of this herd instinct.” This explains well the rapt attention we give to those in power and our suggestibility. We would like their power, but because there are obstacles, we surrender and try to cooperate in order to gain a substitute power within the rest of the group. Freud starts this development with childhood. There’s a rivalry with other siblings for their parents’ attention which doesn’t always have a clear winner. Then there’s a surrender and each rival focuses on the other to prevent either from being a favourite. Fandom, worship, and infatuation can co-exist without the jealousy because the target has too many boundaries. So we can’t be the celebrity, or have them, but we still like the products, services, art, and philanthropy they provide. In a way, this is a prescription for success, but also for isolation. Unless you are able to keep people from trying to pilfer your success you won’t keep it. Freud describes a scene that is eerily similar to celebrity today. “We have only to think of the troop of women and girls, all of them in love in an enthusiastically sentimental way, who crowd round a singer or pianist after his performance. It would certainly be easy for each of them to be jealous of the rest; but, in face of their numbers and the consequent impossibility of their reaching the aim of their love, they renounce it, and, instead of pulling out one another’s hair, they act as a united group, do homage to the hero of the occasion with their common actions, and would probably be glad to have a share of his flowing locks. Originally rivals, they have succeeded in identifying themselves with one another by means of a similar love for the same object.” Freud’s description of this phenomenon moves closely to a description of communism when talking about the herd instinct, starting with children. “What appears later on in society in the shape of ‘group spirit’, does not belie its derivation from what was originally envy. No one must want to put himself forward, every one must be the same and have the same. Social justice means that we deny ourselves many things so that others may have to do without them as well, or, what is the same thing, may not be able to ask for them. This demand for equality is the root of social conscience and the sense of duty.” The mentality almost says that if the love-object is forbidden to me then I will only feel better if it’s forbidden to everyone else.
Isolation – John Lennon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8lOLNfnCBg
Now how about the leader? Freud, continuing with Nietzsche’s tradition, places the leader into the template of ancient human groups as he does in Totem and Taboo, a narcissistic father. “…The father of the primal horde was free. His intellectual acts were strong and independent even in isolation, and his will needed no reinforcement from others. Consistency leads us to assume that his ego had few libidinal ties; he loved no one but himself, or other people only in so far as they served his needs. To objects his ego gave away no more than was barely necessary…He, at the very beginning of the history of mankind, was the Superman whom Nietzsche only expected from the future. Even today the members of a group stand in need of the illusion that they are equally and justly loved by their leader; but the leader himself need love no one else, he may be of a masterly nature, absolutely narcissistic, but self-confident and independent. We know that love puts a check upon narcissism, and it would be possible to show how, by operating in this way, it became a factor of civilization.” The early group, or family, would always want to succeed the father as a way to get out of the egalitarian envy of group psychology. This naturally spread to many different systems of government that we have seen. The independence that everyone seeks can be different in their goals, different businesses, or different government positions. Everyone is trying to seek their own path of independence, to escape, with all the struggles of envy and narcissism when people imitate and compete for rewards that can’t be shared. Some of this need for independence comes from goading from abusive powerful people who feel omnipotent, and feel they can do anything they want to people they have leverage against. When people receive enough abuse, some will surrender, but many won’t and will continue trying to gain power to satisfy revenge, but if that’s not possible, then to gain revenge on targets who have less power and to vent their abuse on easy targets, as can be seen in War Pt. 2. Having powerful people in one’s life who only care about themselves means they have no scruples with anyone else.
“I drink your milkshake!” There will be blood: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX-9wXFQRgA
“Because I can.”
The strongest knowledge —that of the total lack of freedom of the human will— is nonetheless the poorest in successes, for it always has the strongest opponent: human vanity. — Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human
The above lessons remind me of the all powerful ring in Lord of the Rings. The more power one has, the more desires can be satisfied. When a dictator, like Sauron, has unlimited power, they unleash desire associations that were thought about continually in relation to power. It’s like spring waiting to be sprung in the right environment. If I achieve this power, then I can get all these goodies, and there may even be a feeling of entitlement for those things. “I should have these goodies.” If one is indispensable, then one can demand as much as the unconscious wants. As John Bargh described, “by definition, power is the ability to attain one’s desired goals, and so when one is in a position of power those goals are likely to be selected and pursued.” As we gain power, what was filed away in unconscious memory starts to pop up. This is why we can point out corruption when others do it, especially when it damages us in some ways, but we have an unconsciousness about it in ourselves. “Situational power [automatically activates] those goals one has thought about and pursued in the past in situations where one is in a position of power. Over time, the connection between the mental representation of powerful situations and those goals becomes so strong that those goals become active and operate without the person consciously selecting those goals.” If few people have little to no desire, then that means most people have large or indefinite sources of desire, but they are inhibited by obstacles and their safety, with a reduction of temptation, is what we are unconscious of and take for granted. Yet we don’t have to be completely unconscious. One way is to notice what people do when they gain more money, or have less obstacles to power. Economists look at the rule that as people make more money they tend to spend more. With each of us having unlimited desires, it’s quite easy to see how we could unconsciously be the same as those we accuse. The healthy admission, and also an admission that provides relief from perfectionism, is that everyone in a power position can be more or less guilty. Awareness and self-restraint become paramount when there’s temptation. Doing the right thing, when one has power, may actually feel wrong.
The way to gain pleasure from doing the right thing, in Freud’s estimation, is gaining pleasure in satisfying the ego-ideal by making it into a conscience, and this is especially true if the conscience is independent of a corrupt leader. “There is always a feeling of triumph when something in the ego coincides with the ego ideal. And the sense of guilt (as well as the sense of inferiority) can also be understood as an expression of tension between the ego and the ego ideal.”
Tullio Jappelli and Luigi Pistaferri, Fiscal Policy and MPC Heterogeneity, Published in American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 2014, vol. 6(4), October, pp. 107-36.
On War and Death – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gv78n-on-war-and-death-freud-and-beyond-war-pt.-13.html
Gandalf “Don’t tempt me Frodo”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00Jjj6oI5fg
Boromir “It’s a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing.”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHHaKtVdfa0
Galadriel “I pass the test”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3VOf3CBGvw
Bombshell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2IsaFaB1iA
Disclosure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgEtlGdx_zo
Landlords are targeting vulnerable tenants to solicit sex in exchange for rent, advocates say: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/landlords-are-targeting-vulnerable-tenants-solicit-sex-exchange-rent-advocates-n1186416
The War to end all Wars?
Margaret MacMillan described in Paris 1919, all those attempts to create a satisfactory ideal to the end of the Great War, starting with President Wilson’s 14 points, but the final Treaty of Versailles, signed on June 28, 1919 wasn’t able to satisfy all critics. “The Germans were horrified by the peace terms, which they saw as a betrayal of a pledge they felt they had received from the Allies at the time of the armistice: that the peace would be negotiated on the basis of Wilson’s new diplomacy with no unjust retribution.” As long as there are grievances and resentments, there’s always room for war to rekindle again when new generations are energized and motivated. “The young Adolf Hitler was in Munich that June, taking congenial courses on the glories of German history and the evils of international Jewish capital. Already he was discovering his own talents as an ideologue and an orator.”
The circumstances of the Great War showed how the future could hang on hairpin turns. Tim Cook in Vimy: The Battle and The Legend described the horrible twist of fate. “After recovering from an October 1916 wound to his upper leg (and possible loss of one testicle) on the Somme, [Corporal Adolf Hitler] had returned to the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment, which was stationed on Vimy Ridge. But the unit was moved later that month about 15 km north to La Bassée, where the Sixth Army expected a British attack. Had his unit been on Vimy Ridge during the ramped-up Canadian artillery blitz, Adolf Hitler might have fallen victim to the shellfire, as did thousands of his German comrades, and world history might have turned out very differently.”
By 1940 Hitler was able to return to Vimy Ridge and there was a photo taken of him at the memorial proving to the allies that he hadn’t destroyed it as they had thought. The irony was that Hitler didn’t demolish the monument because he enjoyed it’s peaceful nature. The age of personality disordered leaders was reaching its apex.
The Sith Symphony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKYy4sT4pPM
Galactic Empire – Star Wars – The Imperial March: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nohQReM7BpI
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Group Psychology – Sigmund Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780393007701/
Paris 1919 – Margaret MacMillan: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780375760525/
A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis – Charles Rycroft: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780140513103/
The language of Psychoanalysis – Jean Laplanche: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780946439492/
The Use and Abuse of Power – Annette Y. Lee-Chai, John Bargh: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781841690230/
Bargh, J. A., & Chartrand, T. L. (1999). The unbearable automaticity of being. American Psychologist, 54(7), 462–479.
Vimy: The Battle and the Legend – Tim Cook: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780735233164/
Mimesis and Science – Scott R. Garrels: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781611860238/
The Power of Glamour – Virginia I. Postrel: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781416561125/
“The Canadian Unknown Soldier.” After the Battle. Battle of Britain Intl. Ltd. (109).
Psychology: https://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/