{"id":2608,"date":"2021-01-29T16:22:25","date_gmt":"2021-01-29T16:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.massenpsychologie.com\/2021\/01\/29\/centenario-di-psicologia-delle-masse-e-analisi-dellio\/"},"modified":"2021-05-07T12:31:35","modified_gmt":"2021-05-07T12:31:35","slug":"social-psychology-according-to-freud-one-hundred-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.massenpsychologie.com\/en\/2021\/01\/29\/social-psychology-according-to-freud-one-hundred-years-later\/","title":{"rendered":"Social psychology according to Freud One hundred years later."},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t

Social psychology according
to Freud\nOne hundred years later.<\/h2>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

\u00a0By <\/em>Sergio Benvenuto.\u00a0<\/i><\/a><\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
The essay\u00a0Group Psychology and The Analysis of The Ego\u00a0failed to influence the broader cultural scene as it should have because in the last hundred years or so readings of psychoanalysis in a political key have been dominated by Freudo-Marxism. And, as we shall clearly see, this Freudian text does not play into the hands of Freudo-Marxism.\nHere Freud seems to take up again a theme that intrigued the Ancients: is the rationality of single individuals superior to the rationality of the\u00a0Massen, of groups or collectives, or is the opposite true? The theory that every person is rational when taken individually but loses it when part of a collective has always run counter the theory that a collective is capable of a higher rationality than that of single individuals.\nThe main advocate of the latter thesis is Hegel, for whom the Objective Spirit (Objektive Geist), \u201cthe spirit in the community\u201d, expresses a Reason superior to that of each individual subject, often manipulated by the Cunning of Reason. As for the former thesis \u2013 which expresses a deep aristocratic contempt for \u201cthe crowds\u201d \u2013, one of its best-known proponents is Gustave Le Bon, by whom Freud is inspired. But Freud thoroughly deviates from this age-old opposition.\nFreud tries to account for\u00a0any collection of people\u00a0\u2013 from an improvised crowd assembled to loot a bakery to highly structured ones like the church or the army \u2013 taking as a starting point Eros, i.e., the drives. This text was conceived and written together with\u00a0Beyond the Pleasure Principle\u00a0and should be seen as one of the first applications of the former. In other words, a group is the product of Eros, of the impulse that tends to make individuals connect to each other. When a group breaks up, Thanatos, death drive, takes over and individuals disconnect.\nNow, the essential point in Freud is that this erotic attachment always takes place thanks to a leader, a\u00a0F\u00fchrer. At the time the term F\u00fchrer lacked the sinister connotations it has for us, but in fact,\u00a0apr\u00e8s-coup, with hindsight, we can state that Freud basically describes\u00a0any group as a fascist formation. Because every group stands thanks to a process in which an external object \u2013 the F\u00fchrer \u2013 replaces the Ideal Ego. Every group is based on a shared alienation: what unites us is our love for the same leader. In short, there can be no anarchic collectives: a gang of anarchists also needs a F\u00fchrer to be able to function, even just as a gang.\nFreud couldn\u2019t talk about fascism at the time, of course, as in 1921 it still hadn\u2019t established itself. But if we read correctly the diagram of group alienation as described by Freud, we can agree the it is ultimately an exact description of what we call fascism:\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

The external object is the person who will become F\u00fchrer, insofar as it replaces an idealized object. Paradoxically, therefore, according to Freud a group always forms narcissistically. Narcissism is precisely a replacing of object love with something idealized, which for Freud is above all an idealization of oneself. For this reason, Freud opposes the love couple to the collective, as its biggest threat and limit. The love couple is not narcissistic. If \u2013 like Paolo and Francesca or Romeo and Juliet \u2013 it is the epitome of Eros, the erotic couple is a deadly threat to the\u00a0Masse<\/i>, to the collective. The couple is always centrifugal from the Eros of the\u00a0Masse<\/i>: paradoxically, sexual Eros tends to destroy the erotic bond of a group. For Freud sexuality is de-socializing. After all, all societies that aim at an extremely solid social bond \u2013 theocratic regimes, Communism \u2013 always end up devaluing couple relationships, they are sexophobic societies.<\/p>

Conversely, Freud describes hypnosis \u2013 which he had himself practiced for years \u2013 as a\u00a0crowd of two<\/i>. Which simply means he believed that\u00a0every group is hypnotic<\/i>. \u201cA group is a dream\u201d Jean-Bertrand Pontalis said. But, in contrast to his predecessors, Freud wasn\u2019t interested whether a group is or is not the sleep of reason; he was interested in saying that groups are hypnosis, and in hypnosis there is always someone who is commander, the hypnotist. In this way Freud innovated compared to a previous tradition that based groups on mutual imitation among members. Mutual imitation is not the essential point (unlike in hysteria). Collectives are not hysteric, they are fascist: they are always hypnotized by a F\u00fchrer.<\/p>

Some may object that this is not always true. We could say that if millions of human beings followed Stalin or Mao it\u2019s because Stalin and Mao in turn personified an ideal: Communism. It is not enough for someone to present him or herself as a F\u00fchrer, this someone must also be inspired by a shared ideal. But the point is a different one: lots of people believe in Communism, but they stay home, they don\u2019t become involved with political parties or unions, they don\u2019t join \u201cgroups\u201d. For an ideal to attract a crowd, for someone to be prepared to kill or be killed for an ideal, a F\u00fchrer is required. For Freud politics always exploits, to the very end, narcissistic identification with a leader.<\/p>

Of course, such an image of the collective could not be accepted by Freudo-Marxism, from Fromm to \u017di\u017eek, from Wilhelm Reich to Badiou, from Marcuse to Althusser\u2026 Marxism has a Hegelian mold, it believes in a collective Reason that does not culminate in fascism. Hence a certain embarrassed marginalization of this text from the official Freudian Canon.<\/p>

Note that Freud himself was the F\u00fchrer of a collective, the psychoanalytical one. And we know only too well, alas, how much fascism there has been in the history of psychoanalysis as an institution: expulsions, intolerance, wars of succession, conflicts over intellectual legacies.<\/p>

There is, however, something missing in Freud\u2019s theory. Something not even added by W.R. Bion, author of a group theory that restructures and enhances Freud\u2019s.<\/p>

In collectives, Freud only sees idealization processes, idealizing alienation. Had he been familiar with Carl Schmitt, he would have seen how a group is always based on the difference between friend and enemy. For Freud \u2013 who does mention armies in the essay \u2013 a group does not need an enemy; it need not necessarily\u00a0elect\u00a0<\/i>an enemy. In actual fact, any collective is always based on a difference, which can turn into hostility or war, between an\u00a0us<\/i>\u00a0and a\u00a0them<\/i>. Who the us are and who the them are is of no importance.<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

M. Klein spoke of a splitting of the object into good and bad. We can say that when the external Object takes the place of the Object of each of us, its idealization splits this Object, in the sense that a part of it identifies with the Ego Ideal and another part takes a different route, that of ejection, and is like thrown back into the real.<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

Beyond the process of idealization, therefore, we have to look at its revers, its sinister fold, which psychoanalysis hasn\u2019t named but which I would call\u00a0debasement<\/i>, the reverse of idealization. Every collective self-idealization produces a discarded object, a scrap, an expulsion (which, according to Freud [\u201cDie Verneinung<\/i>\u201d], is the matrix of the real itself), something that Lacan tried to explain, I think, with the concept of object\u00a0a<\/i>. Because\u00a0a<\/i>\u00a0is certainly a scrap, a \u201cpiece of shit\u201d, but it is also, or can also become, a splendid precious object, an\u00a0Agalma<\/i>, as we shall see. I therefore propose to complete the Freudian diagram as follows:<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

In \u201cMourning and Melancholia\u201d Freud said that in melancholia the shadow of the object falls on the ego (meaning that the shadow of a hated object falls on the ego, thus the ego itself becomes hateful). In every group, insofar as it is a collective of\u00a0us-versus<\/i>, idealization throws as its shadow a discarded object in the overturned space of idealization. The other as discarded object will always trouble the nights of even the most tolerant groups.<\/p>

And in fact, even when a society is extremely tolerant and open \u2013 for example, Norwegian society today \u2013\u00a0it produces<\/i>\u00a0(or finds?) an Anders Breivik, the terrorist who killed 77 people in that country in 2011. A tolerant society will always find an intolerance to quash. Terrorist intolerance is today the shadow that \u201csoils\u201d the idealized image of openness and tolerance that European societies offer of themselves. Intolerance always ends up producing the intolerance of the tolerant.<\/p>

But this discarded object very often slips into a process which is the opposite of debasement, one I would call of \u201creassessment\u201d. In this way, the discarded object, like the Lacanian object\u00a0a<\/i>, climbs back up to the position from which it sets itself forth as F\u00fchrer. It is a mysterious process, but one that finds thousands of confirmations, particularly in religious history. I\u2019ll limit myself to the case closest to us, to Jesus.<\/p>

Significantly, the cross remains the principal symbol of the Christian faith. The cross was an atrocious form of torment that the Romans inflicted mainly on slaves and that Jesus, the outcast among outcasts, underwent. Abandoned by his disciples and by the people, Jesus sinks into the lowest condition that was conceivable at the time: the \u03ba\u03b5\u03bd\u03c9\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2<\/span> (kenosis<\/i>) that Christianity gives such great importance too. But it is precisely this absolute abjection that makes him, in the eyes of his apostles and worshippers, the Christ, the Messiah, even equivalent to God Himself. We can find this process of reassessment, often hyperbolic, of the discarded object in nearly all the Great Collectives, not only in religious ones. The discarded object turns from being an enemy into no less than the F\u00fchrer of the new Collective, there where the sun of the future shines.<\/p>

It could be argued that there are some absolutely good-natured and tolerant societies, like certain religious orders, like the Franciscans, for example. But the story of Francis of Assisi \u2013 sackcloths, mortification of the flesh and a crude search for an even moral mortification \u2013 shows that this extreme tolerance towards outsiders has to be paid for with an extreme intolerance towards oneself, which replaces the discarded object. But sometimes even Franciscan masochism turns outwards. Thus, in the fifteenth century the Franciscan Bernardino da Feltre actually became a ferocious persecutor of Jews, even accusing them of imaginary infanticides.<\/p>

Some might argue that rigid caste systems, like the one that still prevails today in India, don\u2019t allow this \u201cupswing\u201d. The Untouchables, the Dalit (the oppressed) are impure for the superior castes and are therefore given the job of cleaning up their excrements. But it is unthinkable that a Dalit could become a F\u00fchrer. Yet Gandhi, who belonged to the superior castes and even supported the caste system, presented himself as the F\u00fchrer of India dressing, or better, stripping down to, the robes of an Indian peasant, or rather a fakir. He needed to disguise himself as a discarded object to take on the legendary position he holds in India and beyond.<\/p>

This is how what I would call the\u00a0Samsara<\/i>\u00a0of human political alienation takes shape, the circle that never really ends, between processes of idealization and processes of debasement.<\/p>

Completing the Freudian diagram in this way, we could find again a circularity accounting for historical dynamics, those that lead on the one hand to collective identifications (\u201cus\u201d) and on the other to conflictual struggles against the other as a scrap (\u201cthem\u201d).<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Social psychology according to Freud One hundred years later.  By Sergio Benvenuto.  The essay Group Psychology and The Analysis of The Ego failed to influence the broader cultural scene as it should have because in the last hundred years or so readings of psychoanalysis in a political key have been dominated by Freudo-Marxism. And, as we shall […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2610,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[31],"class_list":["post-2608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-relatori-en","tag-benvenuto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.massenpsychologie.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.massenpsychologie.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.massenpsychologie.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.massenpsychologie.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.massenpsychologie.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2608"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.massenpsychologie.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3975,"href":"https:\/\/www.massenpsychologie.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2608\/revisions\/3975"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.massenpsychologie.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.massenpsychologie.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.massenpsychologie.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.massenpsychologie.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}