War Part 1 – On War And Death
Excessive pride
Freud, like many European citizens, were quickly disillusioned with the Great War. The lens of superiority that Europeans viewed themselves with was altered. “When I speak of disillusionment, everyone will know at once what I mean…We were prepared to find that wars between the primitive and the civilized peoples, between the races who are divided by the colour of their skin – wars, even, against and among the nationalities of Europe whose civilization is little developed or has been lost – would occupy mankind for some time to come. But we permitted ourselves to have other hopes. We had expected the great world-dominating nations of the white race upon whom the leadership of the human species has fallen, who were known to have world-wide interests as their concern, to whose creative powers were due not only our technical advances towards the control of nature but the artistic and scientific standards of civilization – we had expected these peoples to succeed in discovering another way of settling misunderstandings and conflicts of interest…He was above all forbidden to make use of the immense advantages to be gained by the practice of lying and deception in the competition with his fellow-men. The civilized states regarded these moral standards as the basis of their existence.”
Taken for granted
In the European experiment, the idea of civilization allowed people of different cultures to intermix with a common set of standards of conduct to make things run smoothly. “Relying on this unity among the civilized peoples, countless men and women have exchanged their native home for a foreign one, and made their existence dependent on the intercommunications between friendly nations…one…could create for himself out of all the advantages and attractions of these civilized countries a new and wider fatherland, in which he could move about without hindrance or suspicion…” The advantage, that we take for granted, was a diversity of choices to explore, and modes of living one’s life. “In this way he enjoyed the blue sea and the grey; the beauty of snow covered mountains and of green meadow lands; the magic of northern forests and the splendour of southern vegetation; the mood evoked by landscapes that recall great historical events, and the silence of untouched nature. This new fatherland was a museum for him, too, filled with all the treasures which the artists of civilized humanity had in the successive centuries created and left behind. As he wandered from one gallery to another in this museum, he could recognize with impartial appreciation what varied types of perfection a mixture of blood, the course of history, and the special quality of their mother earth had produced among his compatriots in this wider sense. Here he would find cool, inflexible energy developed to the highest point; there, the graceful art of beautifying existence; elsewhere, the feeling for orderliness and law, or others among the qualities which have made mankind the lords of the earth.” This freedom allowed one to compare and criticize modes of living from one’s own culture and upbringing by allowing access to new role models. A “School of Athens…None of these great men had seemed to him foreign because they spoke another language…”
Regression to barbarism
Even with the odd war that did brake out, due to traditional differences, there was still an expectation of showing deference to non-combatants and the injured. The paradox of technological advancement, also meant advancement in the ability to dispatch enemies. “Within each of these nations high norms of moral conduct were laid down for the individual, to which his manner of life was bound to conform if he desired to take part in a civilized community. These ordinances, often too stringent, demanded a great deal of him – much self-restraint, much renunciation of instinctual satisfaction. They took serious steps if anyone ventured to tamper with them, and often declared it improper even to subject them to examination by a critical intelligence…Not only is it more bloody and more destructive than any war of other days, because of the enormously increased perfection of weapons of attack and defence; it is at least as cruel, as embittered, as implacable as any that has preceded it. It disregards all the restrictions known as International Law, which in peace-time the states had bound themselves to observe; it ignores the prerogatives of the wounded and the medical service, the distinction between civil and military sections of the population, and the claims of private property. It tramples in blind fury on all that comes in its way, as though there were to be no future and no peace among men after it is over. It cuts all the common bonds between the contending peoples, and threatens to leave a legacy of embitterment that will make any renewal of those bonds impossible for a long time to come.”
Freud then gave a great example of Splitting, in which people can be treated as all or nothing. When there is conflict it is very easy for one to look at the reason for the conflict and zoom in on it to such an extent that “…the attempt can actually be made to exclude [nations] from the civilized community as ‘barbaric’, although it has long proved its fitness by the magnificent contributions to that community which it has made.” Not only is the enemy made so extremely Other, the same distortions of perception can apply to how we ignore our own problems. The stark contrast between good and evil in our minds has to be viewed with suspicion. “We live in hopes that the pages of an impartial history will prove that that nation, in whose language we write and for whose victory our dear ones are fighting, has been precisely the one which has least transgressed the laws of civilization. But at such a time who dares to set himself up as judge in his own cause?”
Freud then shows how far the self-serving excuses go. It goes all the way to the top. Even today in modern politics, the endless Splitting and sense of Otherness dominates the news where each participant relishes the pleasure to twist any scrap of information for bashing their political foes. The amnesiacs decry the lack of decorum in politics as if it was the newest complaint to be brought up. It was always there. Typical leadership in all human groups highlight the problems of the “enemy” and hide their own problems. “The individual citizen can with horror convince himself in this war of what would occasionally cross his mind in peace-time – that the state has forbidden to the individual the practice of wrong doing, not because it desires to abolish it, but because it desires to monopolize it, like salt and tobacco. A belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual. It makes use against the enemy not only of the accepted ruses de guerre, but of deliberate lying and deception as well – and to a degree which seems to exceed the usage of former wars. The state exacts the utmost degree of obedience and sacrifice from its citizens, but at the same time it treats them like children by an excess of secrecy and a censorship upon news and expressions of opinion which leaves the spirits of those whose intellects it thus suppresses defenceless against every unfavourable turn of events and every sinister rumour. It absolves itself from the guarantees and treaties by which it was bound to other states, and confesses shamelessly to its own rapacity and lust for power, which the private individual has then to sanction in the name of patriotism. Two things in this war have aroused our sense of disillusionment: the low morality shown externally by states which in their internal relations pose as the guardians of moral standards, and the brutality shown by individuals whom, as participants in the highest human civilization, one would not have thought capable of such behaviour.” Freud then smacks squarely into the problem of evil. What is it and how does it form? Is it inherited? Here disappointingly all he has to say is, “we shall not consider this view any further here.”
Beyond Good and Evil
Not entirely moving on from the subject of evil, Freud then changes the subject to that of human development, like he did for most of his career. Civilization aims at “eradicating…evil human tendencies and, under the influence of education and a civilized environment, replacing them by good ones.” For Freud, this doesn’t get at the source of evil but instead adds a layer of confusion. “…It is nevertheless surprising that evil should re-emerge with such force in anyone who has been brought up in this way…In reality, there is no such thing as ‘eradicating’ evil. Psycho-analytic investigation shows instead that the deepest essence of human nature consists of instinctual impulses which are of an elementary nature, which are similar in all men and which aim at the satisfaction of certain primal needs. These impulses in themselves are neither good nor bad. We classify them and their expressions in that way, according to their relation to the needs and demands of the human community. It must be granted that all the impulses which society condemns as evil – let us take as representative the selfish and the cruel ones – are of this primitive kind. These primitive impulses undergo a lengthy process of development before they are allowed to become active in the adult. They are inhibited, directed towards other aims and fields, become commingled, alter their objects, and are to some extent turned back upon their possessor.”
The result of such socially-unacceptable impulses are forced ego postures to appear the opposite of what one feels, and the natural hypocrisy when unconscious forces rebel. “Reaction-formations [reacting opposite to how one feels] against certain instincts take the deceptive form of a change in their content, as though egoism had changed into altruism, or cruelty into pity. These reaction-formations are facilitated by the circumstance that some instinctual impulses make their appearance almost from the first in pairs of opposites – a very remarkable phenomenon, and one strange to the lay public, which is termed ‘ambivalence of feeling’. It is not until all these ‘instinctual vicissitudes’ have been surmounted that what we call a person’s character formed, and this, as we know, can only very inadequately be classified as ‘good’ or ‘bad’.” Matching Carl Jung’s opinions of the human personality, Freud concurs that, “a human being is seldom altogether good or bad; he is usually ‘good’ in one relation and ‘bad’ in another, or ‘good’ in certain external circumstances and in others decidedly ‘bad.’”
How a person transforms from bad to good in Freud’s understanding is a volitional choice that one makes because one can gain a better result. An authentic change because one wants to change. An early theoretical form of intrinsic motivation. The opposite influence is extrinsic motivation. He also brings up a tantalizing theoretical life path that could go in a healthy direction or an unhealthy one. The more we can transform our authentic desires by aiming them at socially accepted goals, the more we can join in with society and feel authentic pleasure ourselves. The healthy path is finding a partner we actually like, finding jobs we like, and transmitting biological tendencies to our children and teaching the next generation how to develop motivated endeavour. The unhealthy path is to do everything by force without finding any activity enjoyable. The unconscious constantly rebels.
“The transformation of ‘bad’ instincts is brought about by two factors working in the same direction, an internal and an external one. The internal factor consists in the influence exercised on the bad (let us say, the egoistic) instincts by erotism – that is, by the human need for love, taken in its widest sense. By the admixture of erotic components the egoistic instincts are transformed into social ones. We learn to value being loved as an advantage for which we are willing to sacrifice other advantages. The external factor is the force exercised by upbringing, which represents the claims of our cultural environment, and this is continued later by the direct pressure of that environment. Civilization has been attained through the renunciation of instinctual satisfaction, and it demands the same renunciation from each newcomer in turn. Throughout an individual’s life there is a constant replacement of external by internal compulsion. The influences of civilization cause an ever-increasing transformation of egoistic trends into altruistic and social ones by an admixture of erotic elements. In the last resort it may be assumed that every internal compulsion which makes itself felt in the development of human beings was originally – that is, in the history of mankind – only an external one. Those who are born to-day bring with them as an inherited organization some degree of tendency (disposition) towards the transformation of egoistic into social instincts, and this disposition is easily stimulated into bringing about that result. A further portion of this instinctual transformation has to be accomplished during the life of the individual himself. So the human being is subject not only to the pressure of his immediate cultural environment, but also to the influence of the cultural history of his ancestors.” Freud throughout his works focused more on the variable side of human character and how goals and objects of desire could change. This could harmonize with others or lead to conflict.
Like Nietzsche, Freud looks at our impulses as considered good or bad depending on the culture evaluating. As long as you behave, the wider culture doesn’t care what is lurking in your unconscious. “This or that action which is ‘good’ from the cultural point of view may in one instance originate from a ‘noble’ motive, in another not. Ethical theorists class as ‘good’ actions only those which are the outcome of good impulses; to the others they refuse recognition. But society, which is practical in its aims, is not on the whole troubled by this distinction; it is content if a man regulates his behaviour and actions by the precepts of civilization, and is little concerned with his motives.” The problem with this is when many individuals falter in being able to gratify their desires to satisfaction. The sense of rebellion can spill over into conflict. “Encouraged by this success, society has allowed itself to be misled into tightening the moral standard to the greatest possible degree, and it has thus forced its members into a yet greater estrangement from their instinctual disposition. They are consequently subject to an unceasing suppression of instinct, and the resulting tension betrays itself in the most remarkable phenomena of reaction and compensation. In the domain of sexuality, where such suppression is most difficult to carry out, the result is seen in the reactive phenomena of neurotic disorders. Elsewhere the pressure of civilization brings in its train no pathological results, it is true, but is shown in malformations of character, and in the perpetual readiness of the inhibited instincts to break through to satisfaction at any suitable opportunity. Anyone thus compelled to act continually in accordance with precepts which are not the expression of his instinctual inclinations, is living, psychologically speaking, beyond his means, and may objectively be described as a hypocrite, whether he is clearly aware of the incongruity or not. It is undeniable that our contemporary civilization favours the production of this form of hypocrisy to an extraordinary extent. One might venture to say that it is built up on such hypocrisy, and that it would have to submit to far-reaching modifications if people were to undertake to live in accordance with psychological truth. Thus there are very many more cultural hypocrites than truly civilized men – indeed, it is a debatable point whether a certain degree of cultural hypocrisy is not indispensable for the maintenance of civilization, because the susceptibility to culture which has hitherto been organized in the minds of present-day men would perhaps not prove sufficient for the task. On the other hand, the maintenance of civilization even on so dubious a basis offers the prospect of paving the way in each new generation for a more far-reaching transformation of instinct which shall be the vehicle of a better civilization.”
The Great War for Freud was a reminder of this hypocrisy. “In reality our fellow-citizens have not sunk so low as we feared, because they had never risen so high as we believed. The fact that the collective individuals of mankind, the peoples and states, mutually abrogated their moral restraints naturally prompted these individual citizens to withdraw for a while from the constant pressure of civilization and to grant a temporary satisfaction to the instincts which they had been holding in check.” The problem of childhood development is that it can easily revert back to older forms, and newer forms of development rest on shaky ground. “…Every earlier stage of development persists alongside the later stage which has arisen from it; here succession also involves co-existence, although it is to the same materials that the whole series of transformations has applied. The earlier mental state may not have manifested itself for years, but none the less it is so far present that it may at any time again become the mode of expression of the forces in the mind, and indeed the only one, as though all later developments had been annulled or undone. This extraordinary plasticity of mental developments is not unrestricted as regards direction; it may be described as a special capacity for involution – for regression – since it may well happen that a later and higher stage of development, once abandoned, cannot be reached again. But the primitive stages can always be re-established; the primitive mind is, in the fullest meaning of the word, imperishable.” Disease for Freud is regression, and “impacts of life,” such as war, can accelerate regression. “What are called mental diseases inevitably produce an impression in the layman that intellectual and mental life have been destroyed. In reality, the destruction only applies to later acquisitions and developments. The essence of mental disease lies in a return to earlier states of affective life and of functioning.”
What I gather from Freud’s analysis is the all important response to society from the individual has to avoid excessively false reaction formations. Social pressures to force people into cooperation require constant individual adjustments. With each new social impediment to an individual goal, an individual can feel alienated and lost, but as with so many of my prior reviews have pointed out, the message is to develop stronger concentration towards a new goal that is individually chosen so that the individual response is authentic, while being flexible enough to change objects when society changes. So many personality problems, especially narcissism, are failures to achieve this. Constantly looking for attention in inauthentic ways to force appreciation from others can never really replace a loving intimate relationship, a job you have mastered, and the beautiful wonder of existence. Instead of being an actor on the stage, life must be real and engaging. If this balance happens then the need for constant wars disappears.
Unconscious self-interest
How some of these psychological diseases can manifest in culture, in a way that we can witness, is how our aims to improve the world can go awry. Freud has probably the best description of unconscious motives that I’ve ever read. You can apply his understanding to any professional, including psychologists, any self-help motivations, and of course any form of political, environmental and economic “solutions” that all too often cause unforeseen damage. One can feel that one is a hero but one can easily appear as a villain to others when unconscious desires, goals and intentions clash. All heroes who solve social problems have the problem of unconscious self-interest. “Students of human nature and philosophers have long taught us that we are mistaken in regarding our intelligence as an independent force and in overlooking its dependence on emotional life. Our intellect, they teach us, can function reliably only when it is removed from the influences of strong emotional impulses; otherwise it behaves merely as an instrument of the will and delivers the [reasoning] which the will requires. Thus, in their view, logical arguments are impotent against affective interests, and that is why disputes backed by reasons, which in Falstaff’s phrase are ‘as plenty as blackberries’, are so unfruitful in the world of interests. Psycho-analytic experience has, if possible, further confirmed this statement. It can show every day that the shrewdest people will all of a sudden behave without insight, like imbeciles, as soon as the necessary insight is confronted by an emotional resistance, but that they will completely regain their understanding once that resistance has been overcome. The logical bedazzlement which this war has conjured up in our fellow-citizens, many of them the best of their kind, is therefore a secondary phenomenon, a consequence of emotional excitement, and is bound, we may hope, to disappear with it.” This is also how Freud views the collective passions of the nations mobilized for war. “…Nations still obey their passions far more readily than their interests. Their interests serve them, at most, as rationalizations for their passions; they put forward their interests in order to be able to give reasons for satisfying their passions.” For Freud, it is only the awareness of this problem and our social constructions that respond to this understanding, that will advance civilization further. “It may be that only later stages in development will be able to make some change in this regrettable state of affairs. But a little more truthfulness and honesty on all sides – in the relations of men to one another and between them and their rulers – should also smooth the way for this transformation.” One of the ways to do this is hinted with Freud’s understanding of how people can be good in certain situations and bad in others. To find places for people who are good at different things and are able to trade those specialties with each other, so as to offset individual weaknesses, creates another possible answer to the problem of class warfare and resentment. A bigger variety of places for people, where they can feel special, allows for more peace. The goal changes from social climbing to feel happy to intrinsic motivation.
Why we do what we do – Edward Deci: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780140255263/
Loss of innocence
The other casualty of the Great War for Freud was innocence towards death which “was natural, undeniable and unavoidable. In reality, however, we were accustomed to behave as if it were otherwise. We showed an unmistakable tendency to put death on one side, to eliminate it from life. We tried to hush it up…It is indeed impossible to imagine our own death; and whenever we attempt to do so we can perceive that we are in fact still present as spectators.” He feels that our grieving process is evidence of how “at bottom no one believes in [their] own death, or, to put the same thing in another way, that in the unconscious every one of us is convinced of his own immortality.” The unconscious is surprised by death, so much so that “when [it] does happen, we are always deeply affected, and it is as though we were badly shaken in our expectations. Our habit is to lay stress on the fortuitous causation of the death – accident, disease, infection, advanced age; in this way we betray an effort to reduce death from a necessity to a chance event. A number of simultaneous deaths strikes us as something extremely terrible. Towards the actual person who has died we adopt a special attitude – something almost like admiration for someone who has accomplished a very difficult task. We suspend criticism of him, overlook his possible misdeeds, declare that ‘[of the dead, say nothing but good’], and think it justifiable to set out all that is most favourable to his memory in the funeral oration and upon the tombstone.”
Death ultimately ends up being more about the survivors. “Our hopes, our desires and our pleasures lie in the grave with him, we will not be consoled, we will not fill the lost one’s place. We behave as if we were a kind of Asra, who die when those they love die…Life is impoverished, it loses in interest, where the highest stake in the game of living, life itself, may not be risked. It becomes as shallow and empty…” Survivors move into avoidance behaviour such as “…expeditions to distant countries…” and look for “compensation for what has been lost in life…in the world of fiction, in literature and the theatre…”
The Asra – Heinrich Heine: http://www.heinrich-heine.net/pdf/asrae.PDF
Ironically, after Freud’s heavy criticism of the war, he managed to find a positive angle revealing that desperate libido trying to find something exciting to latch onto, even if it’s evil or destructive. Facing death in a real way adds a kind of zest for Freud because the stakes are higher. The fright and contemplation of one’s own death gains a reality that the emotions require in order to activate. “It is evident that war is bound to sweep away this conventional treatment of death. Death will no longer be denied; we are forced to believe in it. People really die; and no longer one by one, but many, often tens of thousands, in a single day. And death is no longer a chance event. To be sure, it still seems a matter of chance whether a bullet hits this man or that; but a second bullet may well hit the survivor; and the accumulation of deaths puts an end to the impression of chance. Life has, indeed, become interesting again; it has recovered its full content…If you want to endure life, prepare yourself for death.”
Here we get to the classic opposing views of how to view our own death. There’s an argument for religion vs. atheism. For an atheist, the fact that weapons can transform the human body into small fragments, not much different from the dirt pellets displaced by mortar shells, it’s a clear sign of finality. A terrible nothingness and futility. For a religious person, they can ask, “why are there dirt pellets, or anything at all for that matter?” Either way, the other side is an “undiscovered country” as Shakespeare put so well. The anxiety of obliteration is interrupted by the habits of training when the trench whistle is sounded.
The Seventh Seal – Witch Burning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK-u-ClOTU0
Reflections On War and Death – Sigmund Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781473319943/
Psychology: https://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/