What follows are some loose speculations about the recent re-emergence of mass movements and the appeal of the ideologies that organize them. Before proceeding, I should say that my purpose is not to speak to the ethical rightness or wrongness of these movements, and what I will put forward regarding those who participate in groups that are organized according to left-wing ideologies can in many cases be applied equally to those who adhere to and protest on behalf of right-wing causes.  It is, I think, safe to assume that the motives for participating in such movements are almost as numerous as the participants.  

Some who are in streets protesting on behalf of these causes may be moved to act by a highly developed sense of conscience together with a realistic assessment of social conditions.  Realistic perception, ethical thinking, and the kind of sophisticated instrumental reasoning that is necessary for coming up with measures to transform an unjust social reality are the products of a very high level of emotional, intellectual and moral maturity.  Whereas a developed sense of conscience is the result of a highly integrated, depersonified superego that fosters ethical reasoning that is based upon abstract principles, the capacity for a sober assessment of social conditions is the result of advanced ego integration in which archaic fantasies are prevented from excessively mediating one’s perception of the social reality.  Full ego integration also requires that aggressively-charged component drives are libidinally bound, which prevents these drives from undermining higher-order rational judgment or transforming it into a perverse instrument on behalf of ‘lower’ pregenital drives. A figure like Martin Luther King Jr. exemplifies this combination of depersonified superego and highly advanced ego integration.  Moreover, it is difficult to see how King’s activism could in any way be viewed as a regression to group thinking or involving a loss of his individuality.

There are others, however, for whom the psychological value of participation in group movements must be understood to be independent of any genuine ethical dimension or clear-eyed perception of social realities.  In these cases, we should expect to find that archaic fantasies severely distort the individual’s perceptions of self and social reality and that they are unable to articulate the cogent ethical principles that motivate their activism.  In these cases, whatever ethical legitimacy their activism and its underlying ideology might have is accidental to the role that it plays in the gratification of primitive psychological drives in which sophisticated conceptions of justice and equality play no part.  Additionally, their participation in mass movements or in mob behavior exhibits the loss of individuality and the “massive regression” to group thinking that Wilfred Bion has describes in ‘Experience in Groups.”

This propensity for the detachment of basic psychological needs from ethical concerns can help us to explain why it is that political movements such as the French Revolution, which began, we might say, as a perfectly legitimate moral stand against injustice and inequality, can often devolve into a violent reign of terror.  The powerful instinctual drives that are satisfied by these mass movements ultimately override whatever ethical considerations that may have apparently served as its original impetus. Insofar as poorly-integrated individuals do attempt to provide a rationale for their group activism by appeal to an ideological superstructure, this ideology is likely the result of a process of secondary elaboration in which irrational impulses are justified after the fact.  Reasons are marshalled in the service of the gratification of primitive component drives, and these reasons stand or fall not according to rigorous standards of evaluation but according to whether they provide an adequate façade behind which aggressive drives find occasion for gratification in and through the group.^[1]  

The patient of a colleague, “Sam,” would appear to fit this profile of someone who is susceptible to this regression from individual to group thinking.^[2]  Sam, a young white woman, is deeply inhibited in intimate relations, attempts to establish relationships with partners who are unavailable for emotional connection, is promiscuous but does not enjoy sex, engages in periodic self-mutilation, and has attempted suicide years prior to entering therapy.  She is profoundly anxious and depressed.  Archaic aggressive fantasies, which stem from early disturbances in her relationship with her deeply narcissistic mother, unconsciously mediate her relations with authority figures.  Furthermore, she exhibits all of the features of a what Winnicott called the false self in which she feels that she must “act happy all the time.”  She seems to have deep fears that her emotional needs will overpower intimate partners, and so she withdraws from intimacy altogether.  She idealizes her therapist in order to sustain the therapeutic relationship and to protect the therapist from overpowering feelings of envy and oral aggression. 

What follows is an exchange between Sam and her therapist concerning her participation in mass protests:   

A: I did end up going out to a protest, on Thursday… or Wednesday. I’m not sure which day. But anyway, I went out to protest and had some bad interactions with police. So I’ve been recovering from that.

N: Bad interactions.

A: Yeah so… I was riding toward Bridgeport and I got stopped by the cops. First they told me I couldn’t go through, that the whole area was blocked off, and then they searched my bag. When they saw my Black Lives Matter sign they seemed angry. The cop said, you can’t go through here because people like you are starting fires. And I was like, I’m just trying to go home, how am I going to start a fire with just a water bottle?

N: What was happening for you inside, when you were standing there with the cop and he said, “people like you are starting fires?”

A: It felt horrible. Believe me, I’ve interacted with cops before, and it has never been like this. I guess I’m used to the police treating me a certain kind of way because I’m a white woman… this was different. It was aggressive. They accused me of lying because when they asked what was in my bag I just said a water bottle, I didn’t mention the sign… I was like, how could I cause damage with just a cardboard sign. They felt like a gang. Like they weren’t trying to help or redirect me, I asked which way I should go, and the cop just shrugged, like, I don’t care. And it was the third time I had been stopped within a few blocks.

N: The first two times you made it through?

A: No, the first time they stopped me and said I had to go south to 35^th. And then I got stopped again and they sent me back north. I told them I had just been sent this way by your friends and they said they didn’t care, so I had to turn around. I was getting more and more pissed. And then I was riding along 30^th place or whatever because it wasn’t closed, then I saw the cruiser pull up and block off the street right in front of me and that’s when they searched my bag. I said I had ordered food on my way home, which I had. I had to call the restaurant and say, I’m really sorry you aren’t going to get paid for the food you made because the fucking cops in your neighborhood wouldn’t let me through.  They said they would arrest me if I went through. I was kind of scared. The cop said he was going to arrest me just when I was going to the other side of the street to turn my bike around. I said, “You told me to go this way!”

N: You were a little defiant with them.

A: In the past, being like that has been okay, or even worked out in my favor. This felt like… they were like cornered animals. Like they were scared and they could attack. 

N: That sounds really frightening. 

A: Well, I learned to stay out of Bridgeport, first of all. I knew it was a racist neighborhood where a lot of cops live, but I know anarchists who live there too, and Black and Latino people too… I heard later that there were white guys with bats walking around wanting to beat up protestors. 

N: What a disorienting experience.

A: After all that I still made it home before curfew. And since then, I’ve just been recovering. So now I know to stay away from cops and to stay out of Bridgeport.

N: You said a couple times that it took a while to recover.

A: Well, when I got home I cried all night and I cut. I ended up staying up until 5 trying to calm down. I eventually was able to zone out with movies and eventually I fell asleep. I did make a post on social media about what happened, and a bunch of friends texted me and said it was fucked up and asked me how I was doing. I told them I was fine and not to worry about me, that worse things had happened to other people. But it did feel good to have people reach out like that. 

Sam’s involvement with the Black Lives Matter movement provides the opportunity for the development of a compromise formation that satisfies conflicting psychic demands: namely, the demand for affirmation and emotional connection on the one hand, and the demand for maintaining a defensive insularity and protective distance on the other.  A compromise formation such as this would appear to have an important function for someone who presents deep inhibitions in personal relations that follow from fears that her emotional needs will overpower her intimate partners and friends.  Evidence for the existence of a compromise formation of this kind can be found in Sam’s comment about “bad confrontation” with the police on her way to a BLM protest, in which the police redirected her away from the protest and searched her bag: 

 “I [made] a post on social media about [my negative encounter with the police], and a bunch of friends texted me and said it was fucked up and asked me how I was doing. I told them I was fine and not to worry about me, that worse things had happened to other people. But it did feel good to have people reach out like that.” 

The elements of the compromise formation can be articulated in the following way:  Sam says, “Don’t worry about me,” since this might open the door to the expression of Sam’s rage, which is so powerful that it might destroy the other.  At the same time, “it felt good to have people reach out” because Sam nevertheless needs affirmation, warmth and regard from her peers.  

I want to examine more closely the mechanisms at work in this compromise formation, because I think they can help us to understand the contemporary appeal of mass movements and the ideologies that underlie them, specifically those which fall under the rubric of what is often called ‘identity politics.’   Not only does Sam’s activism and her relationship with the political group provide the opportunity for a kind of contact with others that is sufficiently remote from the intimacies of her own inner life, this kind of political community also seems to render possible a representational displacement of suffering from her own individual ‘body,’ with its own unique family history and personality, to the deindividualized ‘body’ of the group.  A consequence of such a substitution is that one’s suffering is no longer personal, it is collective, it is distributed equally among those who share the group identity or, as is Sam’s case, who fight and suffer on its behalf.^[3]   

At the same time that one’s suffering is displaced from the individual to the group, so also is the responsibility for remediating it.  This is a gesture of profound helplessness.  Confronted with an impasse from which she cannot remove herself, the patient has given up the impossible effort to overcome the mental disturbance by her own means.  The defenses that have been mobilized against these disturbances have proven hopelessly inadequate to the task.  The displacement of the responsibility for managing and ultimately for overcoming this suffering represents a last-ditch effort to find a cure.  It is, in this sense, a final appeal for help in the face of a profoundly desperate situation.^[4]  

Before saying something more about Sam’s propensity for group regression, I’d like to say something about some of those with whom she is protesting, namely, representatives from a black community who believe that police regularly target blacks because of the color of their skin.  To the degree that Lives Matter attempts to bring attention to particular cases of suffering, such as the violent murder of George Floyd, this is because the particular case is felt to exemplify a kind of suffering that is generalized within the body of the group.  Very often, this suffering does result from a form of violence that has been perpetrated widely against a historically marginalized group.  In these cases, identification with the deindividualized group not only provides an important defense against traumatic suffering that fortifies the individual’s fragile ego against further disintegration, it also provides for the reinforcement of an important sense of shared identity among these historically marginalized and terrorized groups.  Something like this can be detected in the ways in which black activists often speak of “black bodies” as sites of racist violence.  The body is depersonalized in order to defend against the deeply intimate and personal nature of one’s traumas, and to link the violence that has been endured immediately to that of others within the group.              

In cases such as this, Bion’s claim that “the belief that a group exists as distinct from an aggregate of individuals is an essential part of […] a massive regression to psychotic mechanisms […] as typical of the earliest phases of mental life” (Experience in Groups, pg. 141-2) would appear to be incorrect.  Though it is hard to deny that this kind of group thinking does indicate the existence of a “massive regression,” it seems that this regression does not always occur on the side of the individual who identifies with the group.  Or, if we insist upon understanding the loss of individuality that is consistent with group thinking to always indicate a massive regression, then this regression would seem to be one that has been inherited.  I do not mean this phylogenetically, in the sense in which one inherits the genes for an endogenously produced psychological disease.  What I mean to say is that, by virtue of the symbolic value of black skin color for the racist other, the black individual has been born into a world in which his skin color compels him to play a specific role for the other.  This role to which he has been confined by the color of his skin unites him with other black people who are equally compelled to play this role because of their skin color, thus cementing the “regression” from individual to group identity.  

Irrespective of the quality of one’s early family life, which psychoanalysis believes to be the primary in the etiology of psychopathology, one is born into a “regressive” situation by virtue of having been, drawing upon the thought of Melanie Klein, marked out as a receptacle for the bad objects of others whom one has yet to encounter.  This regression has been, in essence, imposed by the other, often having been historically reinforced by the power of legal authority. It is, in this sense, a socially inherited regression. The black-skinned person has been effectively disallowed from becoming an individual due to the manner in which projective identification has been inscribed within the social milieu, effectively limiting him to the identification that has been projected upon him because of his skin color.  Black identity, if such a thing really exists, thus arises downstream of a massive socially reified regression, which must have first occured on the side of racists and the social world that they have created. It should be stated here that historically marginalized groups such as the black community are not the only objects of these negative projections . Clearly, we are now seeing a reversal by which white individuals are likewise being compelled to play these specific roles for the other. In like manner, the individuality of the white person is minimized in favor of the symbolic value of what is often called ‘whiteness.’ The latter functions as a container for bad objects no less than ‘blackness’ functioned in this way at earlier moments in American history.

This appears to be what the Belgo-Austrian writer Jean Amery has in mind when, in his book At the Mind’s Limit: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities, he offers an explanation of his identification with the Jewish people. Amery describes the moment at which he realized that he was a part of this group despite sharing almost nothing with them in terms of religious or cultural commitments.  When reading a newspaper in a Vienna coffeehouse studying the Nuremberg Laws, which enacted in law the degraded status of the Semitic race, he states that “a new dimension [was given] to what I had already known earlier, but which at the time was of no great consequence to me, namely, that I was a Jew” (Amery, 85).  In the course of the final chapter, Amery writes at length about his non-existent relationship with Jewish culture and religion, saying, “After reading the Nuremburg Laws I was no more Jewish than I was a half an hour before.  My features had not become more Mediterranean-Semitic, my frame of reference had not suddenly been filled by magic power with Hebrew allusions, the Christmas tree [that I loved] had not wondrously transformed itself into the seven-armed candelabra” (ibid.).  Later in the chapter, Amery seems to speak quite directly to this question of whether his identification with the group represents a form of pathology:  

Am I perhaps mentally ill and am I not suffering from an incurable ailment?  The question is merely rhetorical.  I have long since provided myself with a fully conclusive answer.  I know that what oppresses me is no neurosis, but rather precisely reflected reality.  Those were no hallucinations when I heard the Germans call for the Jews to “die like a dog!” and, in passing, heard how people said that there really must be something suspicious about the Jews, because otherwise they would hardly be treated so severely.  “The are being arrested, so they must have done something,” said a proper social-democratic worker’s wife in Vienna.  “How horrible, what they are doing with the Jews, mais enfin…?” speculated a humane and patriotic minded man in Brussels.  I am forced to conclude that I am not deranged and was not deranged, but rather that the madness is on the part of the historical occurrence.  The others are the madmen, and I am left standing around helpless among them.”  (Amery, 96)^[5]

The case of Amery stands out as an obvious instance in which identification with the group is not made on the basis of a need to gratify some regressive intrapsychic need.  It should be obvious that same applies for those within the black community who have endured racist violence.  

We should, nevertheless, bear in mind that the identification with the group together with the displacement of suffering from individual to the deindividualized body of the group can enable the transformation of radically personal traumas that are too intimate to be confronted, which one has suffered in the context of those who are closest—parents, siblings, friends, neighbors—into traumas that are believed to have been perpetrated by some other deindividualized group, or even by ‘society’ itself.  A defense such as this may equally supply an explanation for why an individual from a minority may find racism around every corner–why, that is, there might be a tendency to see racism where it may not exist. This tendency for offloading radically individual suffering onto the group in order to relieve the weight of this suffering from one’s own fragile ego can thus be found in minority individuals as often as those who enjoy racial privilege. (Spike Lee’s 1989 film, Do the Right Thing, beautifully portrays the complexities of what I have described here.)

We have to wonder whether relatively privileged individuals like Sam don’t indeed envy these historically marginalized communities for their ability to collectivize their suffering on the basis of their belonging to a such a group.  A psychological maneuver such as this, whereby suffering is symbolically displaced from individual to identity group, allows the individual to evade the particular, personal character of his or her own suffering. 

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^[1] Kohut:  “Group cohesion is brought about and maintained not only by an ego ideal held in common by members of the group, but also by their shared subject-bound grandiosity, i.e., by a shared grandiose self.  Indeed there are groups which are characterized by the fact that they are held together by this latter bond—crudely stated, by their shared ambitions rather than their shared ideals.” (“Narcissism and Narcissistic Rage” p. 398)

^[2] Kohut:  Schitzoid personalities consist in “a breakup of the nuclear narcissistic structures (the development of an overt or latent psychosis) [has an] ever present pathognominic potentiality, which is however prevented by the patient’s avoidance (through emotional distancing) of regression-provoking narcissistic injuries.”  (“Narcissism and Narcissistic Rage” p. 370)

^[3] This displacement also appears under the triangular oedipal constellation.  The attempt is made to shift the conflict from narcissistic to oedipal because within the oedipal conflict the objects have achieved a high enough level of representational cohesion to create the appearance of clear obstructions to one’s oedipal strivings.  This corresponds with the transformation within object relations between the part and the whole object.  One strives to achieve representational coherence and cohesion in order to render clear the problematic with which one is confronted, by projecting this problematic into the outside world where it can be combatted and overcome (or at least this is the hope).  This is what Kohut calls “oedipal dramatizing,” which represents, what he calls “a remedial stimulant, [the intensity of which] is used by the psyche to counteract the tendency toward the breakup of the self—just as the small child may attempt to use self-inflicted pain (head-banging) in order to retain a sense of aliveness and cohesion.  Patients whose manifest psychopathology serves this defensive function will react to the analyst’s interpretations concerning the object-instinctual aspects of their behavior with the fear of losing the stimulation which prevents their fragmentation; an they will respond with an intensification of oedipal dramatizing so long as the analyst does not address himself to the defect of the self”  (Kohut, “Narcissism and Narcissistic Rage,” 371).  One attempts to reinforce the cohesion of the self by borrowing it from the loved parent.  At the same time, one’s hatred is directed toward the other parent.  This functions  to direct powerful feelings of aggression outward, and thus preserve what little cohesion of the self that one already possesses.  

^[4] Group as container for suffering which cannot be contained by the ego.  Failure of original self-object (mother) to contain one’s suffering. 

^[5] Also notable are the following quotes from Jean Amery:  “I am not traumatized, but rather my spiritual and psychic condition corresponds completely to my reality.  The consciousness of my being a Holocaust Jew is not an ideology.  It may be compared to the class consciousness that Marx tried to review to the proletarians of the nineteenth century.  I experienced in my existence and exemplify through it a historical reality of my epoch, and since I experienced it more deeply than most other Jews, I can also shed more light on it.  That is not to my credit and not because I am so wise, but only because of the chance of fate.” (Amery, 99)  “[Mine] is a social unrest, not a metaphysical one.  It is not Being that oppresses me, or Nothingness, or God, or the Absence of God, only society.  For it and only it caused the disturbance in my existential balance, which I am trying to oppose with an upright gait.  It and only it robbed me of my trust in the world.”  (Amery, 100)

It should go without saying that we live in unprecedented times. The range of problems with which our society is confronted at the moment is both breathtaking and unnerving. Given this alarming range of problems, it would seem that we have neither the time nor the energy to devote to navel-gazing or empty philosophical reflection. Now must be a time for action. Imagining alternative ways of living and of engaging with the world—these are luxuries that we can scarcely afford at the moment. Philosophical questioning, we are told, is an extravagance of the privileged few who needn’t worry about putting food on the table, fighting off a deadly virus, or securing the economic future for themselves and for their children.

All of these problems, whether of sustenance, health, or of future economic prospects are practical in nature, and practical problems call for solutions in which philosophical reflection has no place. It would seem that our times would be the least favorable for philosophizing. Whatever the problem—be it climate change, social unrest, personal economic difficulties, issues with one’s health—all of them would seem to deliver us already within the domain of practical concern. Take, for example, a problem that all of us must contend with today, which has enormous implications not only at the level of each and every individual’s immediate way of life, but which also concerns our society’s approaches to public health, the economy, leisure, travel and education: COVID-19. What room for philosophizing is there in such a situation? If there has ever been a purely practical problem, isn’t this it? 

This is a problem that calls for a level of expertise which we, as individuals, often do not possess. COVID-19 is a public health crisis that demands special expertise to manage. As such, it would seem that virologists, physicians, and epidemiologists should be given the proper authority to solve this problem, deploying their scientific and technical expertise unimpeded by the political or social concerns of the populace. If these problems carry an absolute priority for all, then we must submit ourselves to the process of solving them, whatever that might entail. And indeed, when the pandemic reached the shores of Europe or the US, this was most people’s attitude to the crisis. 

The pandemic has generated all manner of obstacles for the European and American ways of life, and so our first and foremost concern should be deal with this very real practical problem, putting empty philosophical reflection to the side. Stores and restaurants must be shuddered; sporting events cancelled; schools closed for the remainder of the year; travel must stop. If ending the epidemic takes absolute priority, then there is no reason whatsoever to violate the directives of public health officials to stay home and avoid social contact with others. Case closed.

However, as time went by, many people began to feel that the imperative to stay home in order to slow the spread of the virus conflicted with other imperatives. In April 2020, we saw protests from those who were calling for the economy to be reopened. They asserted that their livelihoods were at risk, and that some of them could lose everything if we continued on the course and remained in lockdown. In May of 2020, we also saw in the media that people had cavorted carelessly at a pool party at the Lake of the Ozarks in the Midwest of the U.S. In the days hence, there was no shortage of attempts from legacy media elites to shame those who made this choice to violate the imperative of social distancing. By prioritizing their own short-term enjoyment, these people were putting us all in danger, it was said, since there was no doubt that this congregation of people would result in exponential spread of the virus.

In late May, another protest broke out. This one had vastly greater intensity than the first, and was completely unprecedented in its size, scope, and duration. This time the catalyst was police violence. A black man, George Floyd, had his life taken from him by a police officer who knelt on his neck for no less than 9 minutes, apparently without cause. The same media elites who participated in the efforts to shame the partygoers and the lockdown protesters as selfish or stupid united in a chorus of affirmation and admiration for the thousands who were in the streets protesting the death of George Floyd. 

Above all, what these events demonstrate is that our values and imperatives are often balanced one against another, and sometimes it is not easy to decide which should be given priority. What explains these shifting imperatives—staying home to prevent viral spread, protesting the closure of the economy, enjoying oneself at a pool party, protesting police violence—if not assumptions about the ultimate meaning, value and purpose of one’s existence? 

If protecting the individual’s body from disease is what is most important, then experts can tell us what measures are necessary to accomplish this. When we submit ourselves to the directives of these experts, we implicitly affirm that physical health is a fundamental value that supersedes all others. This makes sense, insofar as good bodily health seems to be a condition for the other values that concern individual human beings. Of course, this value of health is one among many values. If one’s livelihood and the accumulation of wealth is what is most important, then the advice of epidemiologists and public health officials should take a back seat to economic activity. If short-term hedonistic enjoyment is what is ultimately valuable, then the imperative to stay home is equally invalid, since these competing values are impossible to realize simultaneously. If fighting against police violence and racism is supremely important, then, once again, this will take precedence over concerns about the pandemic. People may die from the viral spread that occurs as a result of the protests—many of whom did not themselves chose to protest—but the value of the transforming society, it is believed, exceeds that of the infirm and the elderly who will may have to pay with their lives for this to happen. 

Whether people are balancing these values against one another in an explicit way, considering carefully which imperatives take priority over the others, or whether they are acting impulsively without regard for such considerations, it does not change the fact that what we see in this equation are values in competition. It scarcely needs to be said that the value of prosperity or hedonistic enjoyment is one that is predicated upon being healthy enough to enjoy it. The fact that in death it matters very little whether one was a king or a pauper demonstrates very plainly the way that values are sometimes layered one upon another. In this case, the one value (wealth or physical pleasure) would seem to presuppose the other (health). However, even here, things are not so clear. Some would argue that an eat-drink-and-be-merry attitude is precisely the appropriate response to a fatalistic, hopeless situation. 

Implied in the competition of values are beliefs and suppositions about the nature of human existence. If human beings are exclusively corporeal beings—that is, if our fundamental defining attribute is that we exist as living bodies who are vulnerable to death and disease—then this definition clearly has implications not only for how we think about ourselves in the abstract, but for the kinds of choices that we make from day to day. If on the other hand, human beings are not purely corporeal, if we have some invisible, spiritual nature that equally defines us, then, likewise, this will also determine how we conduct ourselves. In other words, how we understand what we are in our innermost being and existence has enormous implications for how we relate to ourselves, how we relate to other human beings and how we relate to nature. With these kinds of questions, we pass beyond what we call ‘ethical’ considerations concerning how we understand what is valuable and right to ‘metaphysical’ considerations about the kind of beings that humans are. Both metaphysical definitions of human being—that we humans are basically embodied creatures with no invisible spiritual features which are irreducible to our physical embodiment or that we humans also carry an irreducible and essential spiritual dimension within us—these definitions orient us within the world and provide us with the foundation of our values.

Understanding this, we can raise some interesting ‘philosophical’ questions about, for example, the protests surrounding the death of George Floyd. Are these protests really only about the lack of physical safety that afflicts black people in American cities because of police violence? It should be clear that, at least with regard to the cumulative impact on the total population, the physical dangers of the virus vastly exceed those of police brutality. (Incidentally, the epidemiological data about the impact of the virus even suggests that black people are dying from the disease in somewhat higher numbers than whites.) If the physical dangers are the only consideration, because the virus clearly represents a greater threat than police violence to human bodies, black or otherwise, would it not be necessary to reject the urge for protest? 

On what basis, then, does the moral legitimacy of the protests rest? The murder of Floyd obviously says something about the lack of physical safety that afflicts the poor and minorities in this country. However, the fact that so many would risk a new wave of deadly viral infection in order to protest police violence and repression tells us that their concerns, whether they understand this clearly or not, outstrip the concerns of the physical body as such. As such, the moral legitimacy of the protests seems to be based upon the belief that dignity is more important than safety. After all, where in the physical body does dignity reside? It is, we might say, a feature of the soul which is clearly irreducible to the living body or its parts. Indeed, in many cases, it can be seen that dignity can to some extent survive the physical degradation of the body. One can have a physical disability, for example, and be no less deserving of dignity and respect. This belief in dignity thus rests upon a still deeper assumption about the nature of the human being—that we are more than the bodies that we inhabit, and that being physically embodied and existing as a living organism is insufficient as a definition of human being. 

What follows is a description of the three forms of neuroses that are enumerated by Freud; namely, anxiety hysteria/phobias, hysterical neurosis and obsessional neurosis. My aim here is also to clarify the specific mechanisms of defense that are mobilized in the various neuroses and the stages of their development.

The symptom formations of each of the neuroses are the answer to a basic problem for the psyche, which is that of how to minimize unpleasurable affects that are caused either by the external world or by the accumulation of biological drive energy. This imperative for minimizing negative affects Freud calls the “pleasure principle.” Each of the neuroses thus represents a solution to a problem with which the psyche is confronted in its effort to maintain itself as an organic unity through time and space. The principle tools or mechanisms that the psychic apparatus utilizes in the construction of its defenses are flight, substitution, displacement, splitting, and repression.

Each of the neuroses, as we will see, begins with a conflict: in anxiety hysteria, the conflict concerns the qualities of an important object that is at once threatening and inescapable; in hysterical neurosis, the conflict arises as an opposition between reality and an idea that is unserviceable within reality; and, finally, in the obsessional neurosis, the conflict arises at the level of the drives themselves and then insinuates itself into the world of objects.

To begin, I will enumerate some of the tools or “mechanisms” that are used in the construction of neurotic defenses. After this, I will move on to a description of the stages in the construction of each of the neuroses. I will then proceed to a discussion of the relative success or failure of these defenses, and whether they are sufficient as solutions to the conflicts that generate the neuroses. This will also provide the occasion for a discussion about the nature of repression and whether its origins can be found in social relations or whether it is already at work at the biological level before it expresses itself in social relations. I will conclude with a discussion of the way that the respective neuroses exert themselves upon the mind and body of the hysterical neurotic, and, in the case of the obsessional neurotic and anxiety hysteria, the way that they also express themselves as a need to transform the wider social world.

The Tools of Defense

Flight is the simple maneuver of physically removing oneself from an external source of unpleasure. Because flight from internal excitations caused by the drives is impossible, the psychic apparatus must find ways to evacuate drive tensions in the external world. To this end, it constructs mental structures that function to store up, channel and ultimately to release into the external world these internal quantities of drive energy, thus avoiding the unpleasurable excitations that are a consequence of dammed up drive energy.

Substitution is the process by which one object representation is traded for another. To the mental structures that have been constructed to release drive energies corresponds object representations that orient the release of drives. When these objects are unavailable and the chosen paths of release are obstructed, the psychic apparatus makes a substitution regarding the object representation toward which the drives are oriented. Substitution can also be performed at the level of motor images, which are mental representations of bodily actions that are calculated to produce satisfaction.

Displacement is the process by which drive energy (see the term, ‘cathexis’ below) is transferred from an object representation that does not allow for the release of drive energies in the external world to one that does. Wherever there is substitution, there is at least a partial displacement of drive energy. In the neuroses, substitution does not manage to fully displace drive energy from the primary object representation that is unserviceable in reality. Some investment of libidinal drive energy remains absorbed in or ‘fixated’ with the original, unserviceable object representation, and this is what precipitates the disturbances of the neurosis (with the exception of the anxiety hysteria, for reasons discussed below). Neurotic substitution merely places an intermediary between the primary cathected object representation and the aim of the drive through which it can find satisfaction that is acceptable for consciousness and surpasses the mechanism of repression. While the substitute object representation is allowed to pass into consciousness as something desirable, the desire for the primary object representation remains in the unconscious. This means that wherever there is neurosis, there is only a partial displacement the investment of drive energy away from the original, unacceptable object representation to the new acceptable one. 

Repression is the process by which ideas, representations, and processes that have proven to be dangerous are held back from consciousness. Repression also plays an important role in the displacement of drive energy from the unserviceable idea, representation, or process to one that can be actualized under the conditions of reality. It is thus responsible for maintaining the new arrangement in which the original object representation or motor image has been substituted for one that is serviceable in reality. Like all of the tools of defense, its aim is to eliminate the negative affect to which the psychic apparatus is subjected.

Splitting is the mental process by which the elements of an idea or object representation are dissected into its respective parts, thus preparing the way for their reapportionment according to the mechanism of repression, substitution, or displacement.

A brief few words about psychoanalytic metapsychology and terminology: Just as external dangers represents a threat to the homeostasis of the body, so also does the excessive accumulation of internal drive energy. These concepts are dynamic in that they concern the forces that exert pressure on the psychic apparatus, whether from within or from without. Freud uses the term cathexis to describe the specific amounts of drive energy that are invested in an idea, object, or psychic process. Cathexis is an economic concept that concerns the way the psyche distributes, stores and releases its quantities of drive energy. Ideas are object representations and motor images that are projected to produce satisfaction by releasing drive energy. Fantasy is the process of the mental rehearsal of the realization of ideas in reality. All processes concerning the management of internal quantities of drive energies can be either conscious or unconscious. Because they concern the relative levels of the psychic processes, the latter are topographical concepts.

The Stages in the Construction of the Neuroses:

What follows is an attempt to describe each psychoneuroses in terms of the stages in the construction of its specific defenses. Each stage involves the deployment of some combination of the mechanisms of defense that are described above. In some cases, I have filled in examples of substitutions to provide clarity. The reader should bear in mind that these are just examples of possible substitutions, and that object representations or motor images will vary widely from one individual to the next.

Anxiety Hysteria, the Phobias:

Stage 1: there is realistic anxiety and flight in the face of unpleasure vis-a-vis a dangerous but beloved object.

Stage 2: Because this danger proceeds from an object from which the child cannot totally escape (e.g. threatening father), a defense is constructed against the persistence of the negative affect of fear. The representation of the object is unconsciously dissected, and a substitution occurs whereby the the dangerous dimensions of the object are attributed to a remote object. This moderates anxiety if only because the phobic object is more remote than the primary object (e.g. dog is substituted for dangerous father). The dangers may be real, but more often they are fantasies, as they are with castration anxiety. In the case of Little Hans, the little boy has fantasies of stealing his father’s big penis in order to win the exclusive affection of his mother, and he images that this will provoke retaliation from his father. It is the fear of retaliation that generates so much anxiety. The dangerous representation is then substituted for another. (See Freud’s case study about Little Hans.)

Stage 3: The surroundings are controlled in order to prevent release of unpleasure. After substitution is accomplished, there is perceptual vigilance (anticathexis) against the substitute object which promises the release of unpleasure. Unlike the other neuroses, anxiety hysteria is not essentially related to the sexual function. Anxiety hysteria encompasses cases in which danger, rather than sexual pleasure, from the object is the primary concern. Because one cannot finally escape from the father, the dangerous component of his mental representation is split off and put into another object representation, which, in turn, generates the phobic reaction.

Hysterical Neurosis:

Stage 1: There is anxiety and flight in the face of disappointment or unpleasure vis-a-vis object.

Stage 2: the idea is not given up, but undergoes repression as a defense against negative affect resulting from disappointment or unpleasure vis-a-vis object (father). Here, the substitution takes place at the level of motility. The affect is not allowed to mobilize motility in service of satisfaction vis-a-vis the object, but instead manifests in nervous disturbances. Unlike anxiety hysteria, where the substitution involves a perfect trade off between one object representation and another (father for dog), in hysteria the substitution occurs at the level of the program of bodily action. Just as the repressed returns as the substitute object for anxiety hysteria, here it returns as pronounced nervous disturbance in the bodily apparatus. This defensive solution also eliminates the need for control of environment that it is to be found in both the phobias and obsessional neurosis. The anticathexis occurs at the border between consciousness and the unconscious rather than at the level of perception as vigilance or watchfulness.

Obsessional Neurosis:

Stage 1: There exists a component drive that aims at objects toward which it is ambivalent. What this means is only that the objects toward which the drive is oriented generate a mixture of pleasure and disgust. Because it is the drive itself that is the source of this neurosis, the conflict at the core of this neurosis does not concern the representation of a single object as they do in anxiety hysteria (e.g.,the terrifying father) and hysterical neurosis (e.g., the father as sexual object). Rather, they concern a series of objects to which the drive relates (e.g., feces). Thanks to this ambivalence, reaction formation develops in relation to the series with which the drive is concerned. Disgust produces vigilance (cathexis of perception, anticathexis) against the offensive object series. The fact that the drive itself mobilizes the first movement of repression demonstrates that repression is not object-libidinally dependent. Here, the object cannot be the cause of the initial movement of repression ( e.g., father’s strict prohibitions). Rather, the object (feces) provides the occasion for the mobilization of primary repression–i.e., for reaction formation and feelings of disgust that are built into the drive itself. While the object series with which this process is concerned can be libidinized, it is nevertheless a general process that can also operate upon material that is not libidinally invested. Indeed, an intense libidinal investment in this object series is what explains the need for additional defenses. In such cases, the strength of disgust proves to be insufficient to overpower the pleasurable affects that arise in relation to the object series.

[Note: The account according to which the drive itself produces the first movement of repression has significant implications for the question of whether the origins of repression are purely social. Even today, there are many sociologists complain that repression is entirely a function of social relations. Similarly, there are many feminists who believe that repression is a straightforward consequence of men’s patriarchal control. Men, they claim, are obstructing the path to pleasure by fiat. If patriarchy is dismantled and these impositions are prohibited, then this will result in the end of repression and boundless sexual enjoyment. Against such a view, Freud claims that, insofar as it begins with the drive itself, repression is first of all an organic rather than a social process. Insofar as this drive is among our basic evolutionary endowments, it is to be found in everyone, if only in varying degrees of strength. Repression does, however, become social force, but only at a later stage in the development of the obsessional neurosis, as we will see below.]

Stage 2: There is the formation of the obsessional idea and the struggle against it. This struggle against the original series of objects through which the drive seeks to realize its aim produces substitution and, in turn, the substituted object series now becomes the object of attentiveness or surveillance. This substitution often consists of the substitution of primary object series for an expanded object series that includes the original series. The series of feces is, for example, substituted for the expanded series that includes not only feces but also dirt and other kinds of filth.

Stage 3: Just as with the phobias, the anticathexis pertains to the external world where the new series of objects exists and perception is cathected, producing vigilance against the offending object series. Control of external reality now function to reinforce what already occurred with primary repression in terms of reaction formation (disgust with the initial object series). A further similarity to the third stage of defense in the phobias is that restrictions upon the environment are created and enforced (‘alloplastic’ solutions). However, unlike the primitive fright mechanisms that occur in the presence of the phobic object, these restrictions and prohibitions operate in a logical manner and generate a totalizing system of codes and regulations–that is, the world is organized according to principles and rules that pertain to the object series. This logic can manifest in a narrow sphere such as in one’s home, or it can be extended to the totality of the social sphere, where the offending object series must either be put in its proper place or eliminated altogether (when Hannah Arendt refers to “the tyranny of logicality” in the final pages of The Origins of Totalitarianism, she describes this ‘logic’ of obsessional neurosis when it is taken to extremes.) Because tertiary repression cannot eliminate the drive’s basic ambivalence, the potential for pleasure with the object series in which the drive is invested constantly resurfaces anew. What results is a vicious cycle in which newer and further reaching prohibitions and restrictions become necessary.

The Success of Symptom Formations in the Respective Neuroses

In both hysteria and the phobias, there is perfect success in terms of the establishment of a defensive solution. When we say that the symptom is identical with the substitute in the hysterical neurosis, we mean that the symptom, which in this case involves various bodily convulsions induced by what appears to be unstructured nervous energy (‘conversion’ symptoms), evacuates all of the affective energy associated with the repressed idea (e.g., sexual union with father). The repressed now returns only as these convulsions, which we call ‘conversion.’ In anxiety hysteria, likewise, the symptom (irrational fears of an object series such as dogs) functions to neutralize the affective energy associated with the repressed idea (danger of father). Here, the repressed returns as flight from the substituted object series. In both cases, this produces a perfect closure that does not necessitate further defensive solutions. The excess of negative affect is perfectly neutralized by the symptom. (What we mean by “perfect success”in this context is that there is a symmetry between psychic problem and psychic solution. Of course, these solutions invariably generate disturbances at the level of consciousness. In this restricted sense, these solutions are anything but perfect successes.)

Obsessional neurosis does not exhibit this perfect closure between substitute formation and symptom. Since the initial reaction formation has proven insufficient for the complete repression of the pleasure associated with the drive, additional defensive measures must be added to the organic reaction arising out of instinctual ambivalence. The failure of repression stems from the way that the libido has seized upon the ambivalent object series as an opportunity for sexual pleasure and refuses to give it up. Spontaneous feelings of disgust, for example, have proven insufficient to neutralize the obsessive idea about maximizing pleasurable affects vis-a-vis the object series. The return of the repressed thus manifests in the obsessive idea and in the struggle against it– a struggle that takes the form of renewed anticathexis, substitution with expanded object series, and imposition of additional prohibitions and restrictions within the broader social world regarding it. Even after this imposition, however, the return of the repressed often occurs yet again, both within and at the margins of the field that has been purged of the offensive object series. When, for example, meticulous personal hygiene proves insufficient as a defense against the anal drives and its forbidden objects, one must go further and undertake public hygiene initiatives that promise the elimination of the offensive object series from the wider social world. When the potential for pleasure reasserts itself once again in the new series, new substitute formations are to be created to which new restrictions and prohibitions will apply. As mentioned above, the creation of new substitutive formations and the corresponding imposition of restrictions and prohibitions can become a relentless process involving ever-enlarging concentric circles of interdictions that orbit and expand the original series. (The Nazi’s opposition to pure sadism can be examined in this light. Nazi sadism was always couched in an overarching concern for “hygiene.”)

The Need to Transform the External World

The hysterical neurosis does not modify the social world by imposing renunciations and restrictions within the surrounding social world. Whereas both the phobias and obsessional neurosis result in an effort to control the surrounding external world that occurs in more advanced stages of repression, the hysterical neurotic constructs her defenses through the repression of the object representation. While the idea is held back from consciousness by repression, the affect passes into the motor apparatus. The hysteric thus opts for regression of the ego to a stage before the development of the instruments by which human beings transform their world in accordance with their desires–namely, the faculties of language and motor coordination. The hysteric’s defensive solution takes place exclusively in her own body, without modification of the surrounding environment. In this sense, the defense is autoplastic.

Ego regression is not unique to hysteria. Traumatic neurosis also involves ego regression. In both cases, the neurotic does not make positive demands of external world. If there is a demand that is made at all, it is the negative demand to be cared for. The lapse of the ego into a regressed state prior to the separation of perception and the unconscious, which preceded the development of speech and censorship, renders the neurotic passive and unavailable to meet the demands of reality that have been imposed from without. The ego functions by which ideas are synthesized with precise motor actions calculated to realize these ideas are relinquished in favor of an earlier developmental moment which is prior to this synthesis. Insofar as this early moment is one in which ideas have yet to synthesize with motor images, well-defined channels for affect evacuation are not yet established. Affect is instead evacuated by motor convulsion, as can be seen with babies who have developed neither motor control nor the power of representation.

The development of hysterical neurosis is often precipitated by the imposition of stringent restrictions and prohibitions surrounding sexuality–the very restrictions and prohibitions that result from tertiary repression of the obsessional neurotic. Borrowing from object relations theory, we can see that development of hysterical neurosis will probably be aggravated by an obsessional neurotic parent in whose world the would-be hysteric must live, a parent who, in accordance with their own neurotic tendencies, compulsively controls the other. Under the inhospitable conditions of a generalized “tertiary repression” that has been inscribed within the social or familial milieu, it becomes all but impossible for the hysteric to work through the conflicts that produce her illness without the aid of transference neurosis in the safety of the psychoanalyst’s room. Oppressive social conditions reinforce the repression of the offending idea and render the generation of symptoms inevitable as the only solution. Likewise, as the obsessional parental imago with his restrictions and prohibitions is introjected into the superego, the conflict that produces the neurosis intensifies. Short of working through the conflict, this psychic impasse can only be surpassed by a compromise formation allowing for the return of the repressed in conversion disturbances.

Unlike hysterical neurosis in which ego regression is selected as defense, obsessional neurosis involves regression to a fixation point in the course of libidinal development. i.e., libido regression. Of central importance here are constitutional factors that must have predisposed the neurotic to extraordinarily intense affects in one of the libidinal stages of development and, more precisely, in the erogenous zones that are privileged within them. Unlike hysterical neurosis, the obsessional neurosis does not primarily concern the object but rather the drive itself, which governs the selection of objects. An inordinately strong drive that has its origins in the constitutional factors of inheritance must play some role in the emergence of this neurosis. We can wonder whether these inheritances are not residues of the acquisition of our ancestors and thus hard-wired phylogenetic dispositions that pre-exist and structure ontogenetic development.

Just as the hysterical neurosis is likely to be provoked to some extent by the restrictions and prohibitions imposed by the obsessional neurotic, so also is the obsessional neurotic’s condition exacerbated by environmental factors. What provokes strong reactions in the obsessional neurotic, as we have seen, is an object series that elicits strong feelings of ambivalence characterized by both negative and positive affects. The enjoyment of this object series by others within the surrounding environment is no less problematic for the obsessional neurotic who will, against his own conscious wishes, find himself identifying with the others in their enjoyment. A prevalence of “perversion” within the social field generates strong reactions in those who are already grappling with ambivalence concerning the object series. The enjoyment among others of the very object series that the obsessional neurotic spends so much effort trying to suppress within himself will intensify the obsessional neurotic’s need to extend the restrictions that apply for him to the “perverse” others, and to suppress the enjoyment of the prohibited object series not only in himself but also in these others.

I have placed the word, ‘perversion‘ in quotes in the previous paragraph so as to emphasize the historicity of this term. The psychopathologies that are common within a specific social arrangement and the ways that these pathologies are defined will change over time, and always in a co-constitutive manner. The obsessional neurotic is more likely than others to find around every corner some offense to propriety. Where the threshold between perversion and licit pleasure is located within a given social order will therefore be influenced by whether obsessional neurosis has become more or less common within the social field, and a civilization with a large number of obsessional neurotics will probably be one that has a more expansive definition of perversion. The location of this threshold is also likely to be influenced by the fact that those with obsessional neurosis will naturally gravitate toward positions of power and authority from which they can influence what gets classified as perverse. Institutional and bureaucratic ambition is often a manifestation of tertiary repression.

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