THE POLITICS OF PREVENTION
Political movements derive their vitality from the displacement of
private affects upon public objects. The intensive scrutiny of the
individual by psychopathological methods discloses the prime importance
of hitherto-neglected motives in the determination of political traits
and beliefs. The adult who is studied at any given cross-section of
his career is the product of a long and gradual development in the
course of which many of his motivations fail to modify according to the
demands of unfolding reality. The adult is left with an impulse life
which is but partially integrated to adulthood. Primitive psychological
structures continue in more or less disguised form to control his
thought and effort.
The state is a symbol of authority, and as such is the legatee of
attitudes which have been organized in the life of the individual
within the intimate interpersonal sphere of the home and friendship
group. At one phase of childhood development the wisdom and might of
the physical symbol of authority, typically the father, is enormously
exaggerated by the child. Eder traces the significance of this for the
state in the following words:
What occurs as we come more in touch with the external world, when
the principle of reality develops, is the finding of surrogates for
this ideal father. We discover that the parent is not all-wise,
all-powerful, all-good, but we still need to find persons or
abstractions upon which we can distribute these and similar
attributes. By a process of fission these feelings are displaced
on to and may be distributed among a number of surrogates. The
surrogates may be persons, animals, things or abstract ideas; the
headmaster, the dog, the rabbit, the Empire, the Aryan race, or any
particular “ism.”
He comments that it is upon this self-ideal that is formed the
possibility of leadership, of leaders, and of the supreme leader,
who is the one capable of doing all that the child once thought the
physical father could do. The unconscious motivation is reflected in
the sober formula of Blackstone, “The sovereign is not only incapable
of doing wrong, but even of thinking wrong: he can never mean to do an
improper thing; in him is no folly or weakness.”[45]
There is very deep meaning in the phrase of Paley’s that “a family
contains the rudiments of an empire.” The family experience organizes
very powerful drives in successive levels of integration, and these
primitive attitudes are often called into play as the unobserved
partners of rational reactions. To choose another extract from Eder:
The behaviour of the elected or representative politician betrays
many characteristics derived from the family. For example, during
the time I filled a political job in Palestine I noticed in myself
(and in my colleagues) the satisfaction it gave me to have secret
information, knowledge which must on no account be imparted to
others. Of course good reasons were always to be found: the people
would misuse the information or it would depress them unduly
and so on--pretty exactly the parent’s attitude about imparting
information, especially of a sexual nature, to the children....
At the back of secret diplomacy, and indeed the whole relationship
of the official to the non-official, there rests this father-child
affect. This also serves to explain the passion aroused in former
days by any proposed extension of the franchise.
In the sphere of political dogma, unconscious conflicts play the same
rôle which Theodor Reik discussed when he drew a parallel between
religious dogma and obsessive ideas.[46] Dogma is a defensive reaction
against doubt in the mind of the theorist, but of doubt of which he is
unaware. The unconscious hatred of authority discloses itself in the
endless capacity of the theorist to imagine new reasons for disbelief,
and in his capacity to labor over trivialities, and to reduce his whole
intellectual scheme to a logical absurdity. Sometimes this appears in a
cryptic formula to which some sort of mysterious potency is ascribed,
but which is hopelessly contradictory in so far as it possesses
any manifest meaning. The celebrated doctrine of the unity of the
trinity is an instance of such culminating nonsense. Words lose their
rational reference points and become packed with unconscious symbolism
of the ambivalent variety. The description of sovereignty found in
Blackstone refers to nothing palpable, and functions principally as an
incantation. Much solemn juridical speculation, since so much of it is
elaborated by obsessive thinkers, ends thus. Deep doubts about the self
are displaced on to doubts about the world outside, and these doubts
are sought to be allayed by ostentatious preoccupation with truth.
Defiance of authority is defiance of the introjected conscience, and
involves a measure of self-punishment. We have seen how a powerful need
for self-punishment is the stuff out of which martyrs and sensational
failures are made; but of more general importance is the rôle of
the sense of guilt in supporting the _status quo_. Deviation from
accepted patterns becomes equivalent to sin, and the conscience visits
discomforts upon those who dare to innovate. Radical ideas become
“sacrilegious” and “disloyal” in the view of the primitive conscience,
for they tend to represent more than a limited defiance of authority.
They put the whole structure of the personality under strain. The
childish conscience is easily intimidated into preserving order on
slight provocation; it knows little of the capacity to consider the
piecemeal reconstruction of values. “Radicalism” is felt as a challenge
to the whole system of resistances which are binding down the illicit
impulses of the personality, rather than as an opportunity for detached
consideration of the relation of the self to the rest of reality. There
is little boldness in political thinking which is not accompanied by an
overdose of defiance, for even those who succeed in breaking through
the intimidations of their infantile consciences must often succumb in
some measure and “pay out.” Much of the struggle, the fearful _Sturm
und Drang_ of the emancipated thinker, is his unconscious tribute to
the exactions of the tribunal which he erected within himself at an
early age, and which continues to treat innovation as _ipso facto_
dangerous. The non-obsessive thinker is one who can coolly contemplate
revisions in the relations of man to reality unperturbed by his
antiquated conscience. Often readjustments of human affairs which are
proposed are driven to absurdity because the original mind is compelled
to transform his mere departure from the conventional into a defiance
of conventionality. When one perceives the operation of this powerful
self-punishment drive, and the secondary efforts to free one’s self
from feelings of guilt for defying the authorized order, it is possible
to remain understandingly tolerant of the eccentricities of creative
minds. To put the point a bit sharply, it is safe to say that the
adult mind is only partly adult; the conscience may be four years old.
The conscience, the introjected nursemaid, reacts undiscriminatingly to
change, and construes it as rebellion.
The organization of motives which occurs in adolescence possesses
direct significance for the interpretation of political interests.
The physical and mental storm of puberty and adolescence often
culminates in the displacement of loves upon all humanity or a
selected part of it, and in acts of devotion to the whole. It is here
that the fundamental processes of loyalty are most clearly evident
as they relate to public life. S. Bernfeld has written extensively
on the psychology of the German youth movement. He comments on the
very different lengths of puberty, and distinguishes between the
physical and the psychological processes. When the psychological
processes outlive the physical ones, certain characteristic reaction
types arise. Dr. Bernfeld believes that the discrepant type prevails
most characteristically in the youth movement, and he enumerates its
characteristics. The interests of this group are turned toward “ideal”
objects like politics, humanity, and art. The relation to these objects
is productive, since the youth tries to produce a new form of politics
or art. There is always a great deal of self-confidence present, or
many symptoms of a repression that has failed. This is expressed in
the high opinion of one’s self and the low opinion one holds of his
companions. An outstanding individual, the friend or master, is loved
and revered. Often this love for a friend is extended to the whole
group. The sexual components of the personality do not concentrate on
finding objects, but in creating a new narcissistic situation. Bernfeld
distinguishes this secondary narcissism from infantile narcissism on
the ground that it is accompanied by deep depression reminiscent of
melancholia. The reason lies in the formation of an ideal self that
attracts a great part of the libido and enters into contrast with the
real ego, a process which is particularly characteristic of the complex
or discrepant type which he found in the youth movement.[47]
Political life seems to sublimate many homosexual trends. Politicians
characteristically work together in little cliques and clubs, and many
of them show marked difficulties in reaching a stable heterosexual
adjustment. In military life, when men are thrown together under
intimate conditions, the sublimations often break down and the
homosexual drives find direct expression. A German general has gone so
far as to declare that one reason why Germany lost the war was that
the command was shot through with jealousies growing out of homosexual
rivalry. Dr. K. G. Heimsoth has prepared a manuscript describing the
rôle of homosexuality in the volunteer forces which continued to
operate against the Poles and the communists after the war. In the case
of certain leaders, at least, the reputation for overt homosexuality
was no handicap; indeed, the reverse seemed to be true. Franz Alexander
has suggested that one reason why homosexuality is viewed with contempt
in modern life is the vague sense that complex cultural achievement
depends on an inhibited sexuality, and that direct gratification
tends to dissolve society into self-satisfied pairs and cliques. The
observations of Heimsoth throw some doubt on the wisdom of this “vague
sense.”[48] The prominence of alcoholism and promiscuity among like-sex
groups has often been observed, and both indulgences appear to be
closely connected with homosexual impulses.[49]
Political crises are complicated by the concurrent reactivation
of specific primitive impulses. War is the classical situation in
which the elementary psychological structures are no longer held in
subordination to complex reactions. The acts of cruelty and lust which
are inseparably connected with war have disclosed vividly to all who
care to see the narrow margin which separates the social from the
asocial nature of man. The excesses of heroism and abnegation are alike
primitive in their manifestations, and show that all the primitive
psychological structures are not antisocial, but asocial, and may often
function on behalf of human solidarity.[50]
Why does society become demoralized in the process of revolution? Why
should a change in the political procedures of the community unleash
such excesses in behavior? Reflection might lead one to suppose
that since important decisions are in process of being made, calm
deliberation would characterize society. Evidently a reactivating
process is at work here; there is a regressive tendency to reawaken
primitive sadism and lust. The conspicuous disproportionality between
the problem and the behavior necessitates an explanation in such
terms. Federn published a sketch of the psychology of revolution in
his pamphlet _Die vaterlose Gesellschaft_ in 1919. When the ruler
falls, the unconscious triumphantly interprets this as a release from
all constraint, and the individuals in the community who possess the
least solidified personality structures are compulsively driven to acts
of theft and violence. An interview which Federn gave to Edgar Ansel
Mowrer in 1927 on the occasion of the Vienna riots reviews in somewhat
popular form some of his conceptions.
Vienna, Austria, July 20.--“Distrust of father was the chief
cause of the Vienna riot,” said Paul Federn, onetime president of
the Psychoanalytical Society. From a psychoanalytical standpoint
all authority is the father, and this formerly for Austria was
incorporated in the imposing figure of Emperor Franz Josef. But
during the war the father deceived and maltreated his children, and
only the material preoccupations of life and the joyous outburst
when at the close of the war the old authority broke asunder
prevented Austria from having a revolution then.
The state again built up the old ruling caste and began to hope for
restoration, and therefore an abyss opened between Vienna, which
under socialist leadership is trying to replace the traditional
father principle by a new brotherhood, and the Austrian federal
state, which had returned to a modified father idea. Trust in
father is the child’s deepest instinct. Vienna first respected the
Austrian republic, but gradually this belief was undermined by the
continual misery, by newspapers preaching fanaticism and by legal
decisions which virtually destroyed the people’s belief in the new
father’s justice.
Accordingly there occurred a spontaneous manifestation which
unconsciously drove the disillusioned and furious children to
destroy precisely those things on which the paternal authority
seems to rest--namely, records and legal documents.
Why the peaceful Viennese should suddenly be transformed
temporarily into mad beasts is also clear to the psychoanalysts.
Had the police offered no resistance the crowd would soon have
dispersed and no harm would have been done. But once the police
fired blood flowed and the mob reacted savagely, responding to
the ancient fear of castration by the father which is present in
all of us unconsciously in the face of the punishing authority.
Therefore, fear grew along with the violence, each increase leading
to new violence and greater fear, as appeasement can only follow a
complete outbreak and as the inhabitants were widely scattered in
their houses it took three days before the last hatred could fully
get out.
One further point can only be explained by psychoanalysis. The
social democratic leaders are at heart revolutionary, but they
did not wish this demonstration. They realized that revolution in
little Austria today would be suicidal, and, therefore, at a given
moment called out the republican guard with orders to interfere and
prevent violence. The guard arrived much too late.
Why did not the leaders send out the guard at 6 a.m. when they knew
the demonstration was beginning? They say they “forgot.” This is
_a flagrant_ example of unconscious forgetfulness. The socialists
forgot to take the only step which could have prevented something
which they consciously disapproved, but unconsciously desired.
The Vienna riots were in the deepest sense a family row.[51]
Eder speculates about the unconscious factors in the well-known
tendency of certain political alternatives to succeed one another in
crude pendulum fashion.
I think it was Mr. Zangwill who once said that it is a principle
of the British Constitution that the King can do no wrong and his
ministers no right. That is to say, the ambivalency originally
experienced toward the father is now split; the sentiment of
disloyalty, etc., is displaced on to the King’s ministers, or
on to some of them, or on to the opposition.... Modern society
has discovered the principle of election, and the vote to
give expression to the hostile feelings toward their rulers.
Psychoanalytically an election may be regarded as the sublimation
of regicide (primary parricide) with the object of placing oneself
on the throne; the vote is like a repeating decimal; the father
is killed but never dies. The ministers are our substitutes for
ourselves. Hence the political maxim of the swing of the pendulum.
Alexander and Staub have undertaken to explain the unconscious basis
of the crisis which is produced in the community when criminals are
permitted to go with no punishment or with light punishment. The study
of personality genesis shows that the sublimation of primitive impulses
is possible on the basis of a kind of primitive “social contract.” The
individual foregoes direct indulgences (which have the disadvantage
of bringing him into conflict with authority), and substitutes more
complex patterns of behavior on the tacit understanding that love and
safety will thereby be insured. When another individual breaks over
and gratifies his illicit impulses directly on a primitive level, the
equilibrium of every personality is threatened. The conscious self
perceives that it is possible to “get by,” and this threatens the
whole structure of sublimation. The superego tries to maintain order
by directing energy against the ego, perhaps subjecting it to “pricks
of conscience,” for so much as entertaining the possibility of illicit
gratification, and seeks to turn the ego toward activities which reduce
temptation. This may involve the reconstruction of the environment
by seeking to eliminate the “non-ideal” elements in it, and may be
exemplified in the panicky demand for the annihilation of the outsider
(who is a criminal) for the sake of keeping the chains on the insider
(who is a criminal). Every criminal is a threat to the whole social
order since he reinstates with more or less success an acute conflict
within the lives of all members of society. The success of the superego
depends upon imposing certain ways of interpreting reality upon the
self. When reality grossly refuses to conform to the “ideal,” the
energies of the self are divided, and an acute crisis supervenes. The
superego undertakes to reinforce its side of the contradictory ego
trends by punishing the ego, and by forcing the projection of this
situation upon the outer world. Certain aspects of the outer world
become “bad” because they are connected in private experience with the
pangs inflicted by the taskmaster within, the conscience. A strong
conscience may enforce this “distortion” of reality upon the self
to such a degree that the self acts on quite fantastic assumptions
about reality. These are most acutely manifested in such phenomena as
confusion states, hallucinations, and delusions, all of which are forms
of deformed reality. When reality becomes “ominous,” violent efforts to
change may appear futile, and safety is sought in physical flight, or
in physical passivity and autistic preoccupation. Since our conceptions
of reality are based upon little “first-hand” experience of the world
about us, the superego usually has a rather easy time of it.
Political movements, then, derive their vitality from the displacement
of private affects upon public objects, and political crises are
complicated by the concurrent reactivation of specific primitive
motives. Just how does it happen that the private and primitive drives
find their way to political symbols? What are the circumstances which
favor the selection of political targets of displacement?
Political life is carried on with symbols of the whole. Politics has
to do with collective processes and public acts, and so intricate are
these processes that with the best of intentions, it is extremely
difficult to establish an unambiguous relationship between the symbols
of the whole and the processes which they are presumed to designate. To
the common run of mankind the reference points of political symbols are
remote from daily experience, though they are rendered familiar through
constant reiteration. This ambiguity of reference, combined with
universality of use, renders the words which signify parties, classes,
nations, institutions, policies, and modes of political participation
readily available for the displacement of private affects. The
manifest, rational differences of opinion become complicated by the
play of private motives until the symbol is nothing but a focus for
the cumulation of irrelevancies. Since the dialectic of politics is
conducted in terms of the whole, the private motives are readily
rationalized in terms of collective advantage.
Politics, moreover, is the sphere of conflict, and brings out all the
vanity and venom, the narcissism and aggression, of the contending
parties. It is becoming something of a commonplace that politics is
the arena of the irrational. But a more accurate description would be
that politics is the process by which the irrational bases of society
are brought out into the open. So long as the moral order functions
with spontaneous smoothness, there is no questioning the justification
of prevailing values. But when the moral order has been devalued and
called into question, a sincere and general effort may be made to find
a reflectively defensible solution of the resulting conflict. Politics
seems to be irrational because it is the only phase of collective life
in which society tries to be rational. Its very existence shows that
the moral order, with all its irrational and non-rational sanctions, is
no longer accepted without a challenge. A political difference is the
outcome of a moral crisis, and it terminates in a new moral consensus.
Politics is the transition between one unchallenged consensus and the
next. It begins in conflict and eventuates in a solution. But the
solution is not the “rationally best” solution, but the emotionally
satisfactory one. The rational and dialectical phases of politics are
subsidiary to the process of redefining an emotional consensus.
Although the dynamic of politics is to be sought in the tension level
of the individuals in society, it is to be taken for granted that
all individual tensions are not removed by political symbolization
and exertion. When Y hits a foreman in the jaw whom he imagines has
insulted him, Y is relieving his tensions. But if the act is construed
by him as a personal affair with the foreman, the act is not political.
Political acts are joint acts; they depend upon emotional bonds.
Now people who act together get emotionally bound together. This
process of becoming emotionally bound is dependent on no conscious
process. Freud said that he was made clearly aware of the emotional
factor in human relations by observing that those who work together
extend their contact to dining and relaxing together. Those with
whom we work are endowed with rich meanings on the basis of our
past experience with human beings. Since all of our motives are
going concerns within the personality, our libido is more or less
concentrated upon those with whom we come in touch. This reinforces
the perception of similarities, and supplies the dynamic for the
identification process. Even the negative identification is a tribute
to the extent to which the affective resources of the personality
become mobilized in human contact.
People who are emotionally bound together are not yet involved in a
political movement. Politics begins when they achieve a symbolic
definition of themselves in relation to demands upon the world. The
pre-political phase of the labor movement as sketched by Nexo in his
_Pelle the Conqueror_ is an able characterization of what the facts may
be. The workers had plenty of grievances against their employers, but
individuals took it out in sporadic acts of violence, and in frequent
debauchery. It was not until a new “set” of mind was achieved with the
appearance of socialist symbols, and their adoption, that the tension
found an outlet in political form. When J hits a foreman on the jaw
because the foreman swore at him, J is not acting for the working
classes; but after J becomes a socialist, his acts are symbolically
significant of the expanded personality which he possesses. Acts cease
to be merely private acts; they have become related to remote social
objects. The conception of the self has new points of reference, and
points of reference which interlock with those of others.
It is of the utmost importance to political science to examine in
detail, not only the factors which contribute to the raising and
lowering of the tension level, but the processes of symbolization. In
regard to the former aspect of the problem, data will have to be taken
from specialists of many kinds, but in regard to the latter problem,
the student can come into ready contact with the raw material. The
stock in trade of realistic politics is the analysis of the history of
“pressure groups,” ranging from such associations as the Fabian Society
through political parties to conspirative organizations. What are the
conditions under which the idea is itself invented, and what are the
conditions of its propagation? That is to say: What are the laws of
symbolization in political activity?
I wish to call attention to certain possibilities. Several social
movements will be found which represent a desire on the part of an
intimate circle to perpetuate their relationship at the expense of
society. It is worth remembering that Loyola and the other young men
who founded the Jesuits were in long friendly relationship before
they hit upon their famous project. Not only that: they were anxious
to remain in some sort of personal relation through life, and they
invented many expedients before they hit on the final one. What we had
here was a friendly group which desired to preserve their personal
connections before they knew how they could actually do it. It is less
true to say that institutions are the lengthened shadow of a great man
than that they are the residue of a friendly few.
Other social movements will be found to have adopted their project
from a lone thinker with whom they have no direct connection. The
process here is that one member of the group, with whom the others are
identified, is impressed by the scheme, and interprets and defends it
to the others. He gets a hearing because of his emotional claim on
the others, and he may whip the doubters and waverers into line by
wheedling or by threatening to withdraw affection.
The formation of a radiating nucleus for an idea is especially common
among adolescents, and among those who function best in single-sex
groups. Thrasher has described gangs which had a mission in his book
on _The Gang_, and the literature of youth study is full of instances
of two’s, three’s and quartettes which have sworn undying fealty to
one another, and to a project of social reform. When the idea is
embraced later in life it not infrequently appears among those who have
shown pronounced evidence of emotional maladjustment. Much social
and political life is a symptom of the delayed adolescence of its
propagators, which is, of course, no necessary criticism of its content.
The psychology of personal, oratorical, and printed persuasion by means
of which support is won for particular symbols has yet to be written.
William I. Thomas long ago commented on the quasi-sexual approach
of the revivalist to the audience. Some orators are of an intimate,
sympathetic, pleading type, and resemble the attempts made by some
males to overcome the shyness of the female. Other orators fit into
the feared yet revered father-pattern; others are clowns who amuse by
releasing much repressed material; others address the socially adjusted
and disciplined level of the personality. Thus the relationship between
the speaker and the audience has its powerful emotional aspects,
which are not yet adequately explored. There are some who excel in
face-to-face relations, but who make a poor showing out on the platform.
The processes of symbolization can be studied with particular ease
when widespread and disturbing changes occur in the life-situation of
many members of society. Famine, pestilence, unemployment, high living
costs, and a catalogue of other disturbances may simultaneously produce
adjustment problems for many people. One of the first results is to
release affects from their previous objects, and to create a state of
susceptibility to proposals. All sorts of symbols are ready, or readily
invented, to refix the mobile affects. “Take it to the Lord in prayer,”
“Vote socialist,” “Down with the Jews,” “Restore pep with pepsin,” “Try
your luck on the horses”--all sorts of alternatives become available.
The prescriptions are tied up with diagnoses, and the diagnoses in
turn imply prescriptions. “A sinful world,” “Wall Street,” “a collapse
in the foreign market”--all sorts of diagnoses float about, steadily
defining and redefining the situation for the individuals affected.
Political symbols must compete with symbols from every sphere of life,
and an interesting inquiry could be made into the relative polarizing
power of political and other forms of social symbolism. Certainly the
modern world expects to fire the health commissioner rather than burn a
witch when the plague breaks out.
The competition among symbols to serve as foci of concentration for
the aroused emotions of the community leads to the survival of a small
number of master-symbols. The mobilization of the community for action
demands economy in the terms in which objectives are put. The agitation
for the control of the liquor traffic passed through many phases in
America until finally legal prohibition became the chief dividing-line.
To prohibit or not to prohibit grew into the overmastering dichotomy of
public thought.
Symbolization thus necessitates dichotomization. The program of social
action must be couched in “yes” and “no” form if decision is to be
possible. The problem of he who would manipulate the concentration
of affect about a particular symbol is to reinforce its competitive
power by leading as many elements as possible in society to read
their private meanings into it. This reinforcement and facilitation
of the symbol involves the use of men of prestige in its advocacy,
the assimilation of special economic and other group aims, and the
invention of appeals to unconscious drives. Propaganda on behalf of a
symbol can become a powerful factor in social development because of
the flexibility in the displacement of emotion from one set of symbols
to another. There is always a rather considerable reservoir of unrest
and discontent in society, and there is nothing absolutely fixed and
predestined about the particular symbol which will have attracting
power.
The analysis of motives which are unconscious for most people, though
widespread, gives the propagandist a clue to certain nearly universal
forms of appeal. The moving pictures which have been produced by the
communist government in Russia are often remarkable examples of the use
of symbols which not only have their conscious affective dimension, but
which mobilize deep unconscious impulses. In one film, for instance, it
is the mother who suffers under tsarism and fans the flames of revolt.
Analysis has disclosed the general, and presumably universal, meaning
of the attachment to the land. The boy-child’s wish for union with the
mother, for all-embracing care and protection, undergoes some measure
of sublimation in social life. Eder remarks that it finds expression
in attachment to the earth, the land, the mother-country, home. The
_Heimweh_ of the Swiss, the pious Jew’s desire for burial in Palestine,
and a host of similar manifestations are instances of this emotional
tie whose significance for state loyalty is large.
At first sight it might appear questionable that political science
can ever profit from the disclosure of motives which are supposed to
operate in the unconscious of every human being. If these motives
are equally operative, how can they throw any light on differences
in political behavior? And are we not able to point to conditions of
a more localized and definite nature which suitably explain why the
Republican party loses out when the farmer loses his crops? Or why
there is revolution in 1918 and not in 1925?
The mere fact that motives are more or less universal does not
mean that they are always activated with the same intensity. They
may block one another, until some exciting condition disturbs the
adjustment and releases stores of energy. Indeed, the exploration of
unconscious motivation lays the basis for the understanding of the
well-known disproportionality between responses and immediate stimuli,
a disproportionality which has been the subject of much puzzled and
satiric comment. Farmers do vote against the Republicans when the crops
fail through adverse weather conditions, although reflection would tend
to minimize the possibility that the party in power exercises much
authority over the weather. Oversights in personal relations which seem
very slight do actually give rise to huge affective reactions. The clue
to the magnitude of this notorious disproportionality is to be found
in the nature of the deeper (earlier) psychological structures of the
individual. By the intensive analysis of representative people, it is
possible to obtain clues to the nature of these “unseen forces,” and to
devise ways and means of dealing with them for the accomplishment of
social purposes.
Modern democratic society is accustomed to the settlement of
differences in discussion and in voting. This is a special form of
politics, for differences may also be settled with a minimum of
discussion and a maximum of coercion. In its modern manifestation,
democracy and representative government have enthroned “government by
discussion,” that is, “government by public opinion.” President Lowell
some time ago pointed out that public opinion could only be said to
exist where constitutional principles were agreed upon. Differences
must be treated as defined within an area of agreement. Democratic
and representative institutions presuppose the existence of the
public which is made up of all those who follow affairs and expect to
determine policy in discussion and by measures short of coercion. The
public has a common focus of attention, a consensus on constitutional
principles, and a zone of tolerance for conflicting demands respecting
social policy.
When debate is admissible, some standards of right are tacitly admitted
to be uncertain. The zone of the debatable is not fixed and immutable,
but flexible and shifting. Questions rise and debate proceeds; and
presently the resulting solution is no longer discussible. It has
become sanctified by all the sentiments which buttress the moral order,
and any challenge is met by the unanimous and spontaneous action of the
community in its defense. In the presence of a challenge, the public
may be dissolved into a crowd, by which is meant a group whose members
are emotionally aroused and intolerant of dissent.
What light does the study of the genesis of personality throw on the
factors which determine which symbols are debatable? What is the
mechanism of the process by which the moral patterns are broken up,
discussed, and eventually reincorporated in more or less modified form
into the moral consensus of the community?
The growth of emotional bonds among individuals of diverse cultural
and personal traits is the most powerful solvent of the moral order.
A valuable treatise could be constructed on the theme, “Friendship
versus Morality.” It is well-known that governments are continually
handicapped in the impersonal application of a rule by the play of
personal loyalties. Robert E. Park has stressed the importance of
curiosity in the field of interracial relations. In no small measure
this is very primitive curiosity about the sexual structure and
behavior of odd-looking folks. When personal ties are built up,
exceptions are made in favor of the friend; what, indeed, is the
constitution among friends?
The mechanism is clear by which issues once settled are presently
non-debatable. Growing individuals incorporate the end result into
their own personalities through the process of identification and
introjection. Once a part of the superego of the rising generation,
the moral consensus is complete. Where no dissent is tolerated and
dialectic is impossible, we are dealing with a superego phenomenon.
Certain symbols are sacrosanct, and aspersions upon them produce the
crowd mind and not the public.[52]
Even this brief sketch of political symbolization has shown ample
grounds for concluding that political demands probably bear but a
limited relevance to social needs. The political symbol becomes ladened
with the residue of successive positive and negative identifications,
and with the emotional charge of displaced private motives. This
accumulation of irrelevancy usually signifies that tension exists in
the lives of many people, and it may possess a diagnostic value to the
objective investigator. The individual who is sorely divided against
himself may seek peace by unifying himself against an outsider. This
is the well-known “peacefulness of being at war.” But the permanent
removal of the tensions of the personality may depend upon the
reconstruction of the individual’s view of the world, and not upon
belligerent crusades to change the world.
The democratic state depends upon the technique of discussion to
relieve the strains of adjustment to a changing world. If the analysis
of the individual discloses the probable irrelevance of what the person
demands to what he needs (i.e., to that which will produce a permanent
relief of strain), serious doubt is cast upon the efficacy of the
technique of discussion as a means of handling social problems.
The premise of democracy is that each man is the best judge of his own
interest, and that all whose interests are affected should be consulted
in the determination of policy. Thus the procedure of a democratic
society is to clear the way to the presentation of various demands by
interested parties, leaving the coast clear for bargain and compromise,
or for creative invention and integration.
The findings of personality research show that the individual is a
poor judge of his own interest. The individual who chooses a political
policy as a symbol of his wants is usually trying to relieve his own
disorders by irrelevant palliatives. An examination of the total state
of the person will frequently show that his theory of his own interests
is far removed from the course of procedure which will give him a happy
and well-adjusted life. Human behavior toward remote social objects,
familiarity with which is beyond the personal experience of but a few,
is especially likely to be a symptomatic rather than a healthy and
reflective adjustment.
In a sense politics proceeds by the creation of fictitious values. The
person who is solicited to testify to his own interest is stimulated
by the problem put to him to commit himself. The terms in which he
couches his own interest vary according to a multitude of factors, but
whatever the conditioning influences may be, the resulting theory of
his interest becomes invested with his own narcissism. The political
symbol is presumably an instrumental makeshift toward the advancement
of the other values of the personality; but it very quickly ceases to
be an instrumental value, and becomes a terminal value, no longer the
servant but the coequal, or indeed the master. Thus the human animal
distinguishes himself by his infinite capacity for making ends of his
means.
It should not be hastily assumed that because a particular set of
controversies passes out of the public mind that the implied problems
were solved in any fundamental sense. Quite often the solution is a
magical solution which changes nothing in the conditions affecting the
tension level of the community, and which merely permits the community
to distract its attention to another set of equally irrelevant symbols.
The number of statutes which pass the legislature, or the number of
decrees which are handed down by the executive, but which change
nothing in the permanent practices of society, is a rough index of the
rôle of magic in politics.
In some measure, of course, discontent is relieved in the very process
of agitating, discussing, and legislating about social changes which in
the end are not substantially affected. Political symbolization has its
catharsis function, and consumes the energies which are released by the
maladaptations of individuals to one another.
But discussion often leads to modifications in social practice which
complicate social problems. About all that can be said for various
punitive measures resorted to by the community is that they have
presently broken down and ceased to continue the damage which they
began to inflict on society.
Generalizing broadly, political methods have historically been of three
kinds: the method of violence, of exhortation, and of discussion.
All these methods have the common characteristic that they are to
be applied in the settlement of conflicting demands, and not in the
obviation of conflict. In so far as they rest upon a philosophy, they
identify the problem of politics with the problem of coping with
differences which are sharply drawn.
The identification of the field of politics with the field of battle,
whether the theater be the frontier or the forum, has produced an
unfortunate warp in the minds of those who manage affairs, or those
who simply think about the management of affairs. The contribution
of politics has been thought to be in the elaboration of the methods
by which conflicts are resolved. This has produced a vast diversion
of energy toward the study of the formal etiquette of government. In
some vague way, the problem of politics is the advancement of the good
life, but this is at once assumed to depend upon the modification of
the mechanisms of government. Democratic theorists in particular have
hastily assumed that social harmony depends upon discussion, and that
discussion depends upon the formal consultation of all those affected
by social policies.
The time has come to abandon the assumption that the problem of
politics is the problem of promoting discussion among all the interests
concerned in a given problem. Discussion frequently complicates social
difficulties, for the discussion by far-flung interests arouses a
psychology of conflict which produces obstructive, fictitious, and
irrelevant values. The problem of politics is less to solve conflicts
than to prevent them; less to serve as a safety valve for social
protest than to apply social energy to the abolition of recurrent
sources of strain in society.
This redefinition of the problem of politics may be called the idea
of preventive politics. The politics of prevention draws attention
squarely to the central problem of reducing the level of strain
and maladaptation in society. In some measure it will proceed by
encouraging discussion among all those who are affected by social
policy, but this will be no iron-clad rule. In some measure it will
proceed by improving the machinery of settling disputes, but this will
be subordinated to a comprehensive program, and no longer treated as an
especially desirable mode of handling the situation.
The recognition that people are poor judges of their own interest is
often supposed to lead to the conclusion that a dictator is essential.
But no student of individual psychology can fail to share the
conviction of Kempf that “Society is _not_ safe.... when it is forced
to follow the dictations of one individual, of one autonomic apparatus,
no matter how splendidly and altruistically it may be conditioned.”
Our thinking has too long been misled by the threadbare terminology of
democracy versus dictatorship, of democracy versus aristocracy. Our
problem is to be ruled by the truth about the conditions of harmonious
human relations, and the discovery of the truth is an object of
specialized research; it is no monopoly of people as people, or of the
ruler as ruler. As our devices of accurate ascertainment are invented
and spread, they are explained and applied by many individuals inside
the social order. Knowledge of this kind is a slow and laborious
accumulation.
The politics of prevention does not depend upon a series of changes in
the organization of government. It depends upon a reorientation in the
minds of those who think about society around the central problems:
What are the principal factors which modify the tension level of the
community? What is the specific relevance of a proposed line of action
to the temporary and permanent modification of the tension level?
The politics of prevention will insist upon a rigorous audit of the
human consequences of prevailing political practices. How does politics
affect politicians? One way to consider the human value of social
action is to see what that form of social action does to the actors.
When a judge has been on the bench thirty years, what manner of man has
he become? When an agitator has been agitating for thirty years, what
has happened to him? How do different kinds of political administrators
compare with doctors, musicians, and scientists? Such a set of
inquiries would presuppose that we were able to ascertain the traits
with which the various individuals began to practice their rôle in
society. Were we able to show what certain lines of human endeavor did
to the same reactive type, we would lay the foundation for a profound
change in society’s esteem for various occupations.
Any audit of the human significance of politics would have to press far
beyond the narrow circle of professional politicians. Crises like wars,
revolutions, and elections enter the lives of people in far-reaching
ways. The effect of crises on mental attitude is an important and
uncertain field. Thus it is reported that during the rebellion of
1745-46 in Scotland there was little hysteria (in the technical
pathological sense). The same was true of the French Revolution and of
the Irish Rebellion. Rush reported in his book _On the Influence of the
American Revolution on the Human Body_ that many hysterical women were
“restored to perfect health by the events of the time.” Havelock Ellis,
who cites these instances, comments that “in such cases the emotional
tension is given an opportunity for explosion in new and impersonal
channels, and the chain of morbid personal emotions is broken.”[53]
The physical consequences of political symbolism may be made the topic
of investigation from this point of view:
When the affect can not acquire what it needs, uncomfortable
tensions or anxiety (fear) are felt, and the use of the symbol or
fetish, relieving this anxiety, has a marked physiological value
in that it prevents the adrenal, thyroid, circulatory, hepatic and
pulmonic compensatory strivings from becoming excessive.[54]
Political programs will continually demand reconsideration in the light
of the factors which current research discloses as bearing upon the
tension level. Franz Alexander recently drew attention to the strains
produced in modern civilization by the growing sphere of purposive
action. He summed up the facts in the process of civilized development
in the following way: “Human expressions of instinct are subject to
a continual tendency to rationalization, that is, they develop more
and more from playful, uncoordinated, purely pleasure efforts into
purposive actions.” The “discomfort of civilization” of which Freud
recently wrote in the _Unbehagen der Kultur_ is characteristic of the
rationalized cultures with which we are acquainted. Life is poor in
libidinal gratifications of the primitive kind which the peasant,
who is in close touch with elementary things, is in a position to
enjoy.[55] Modern life furnishes irrational outlets in the moving
picture and in sensational crime news. But it may be that other means
of relieving the strain of modern living can be invented which will
have fewer drawbacks.
Preventive politics will search for the definite assessment, then, of
cultural patterns in terms of their human consequences. Some of these
human results will be deplored as “pathological,” while others will
be welcomed as “healthy.” One complicating factor is that valuable
contributions to culture are often made by men who are in other
respects pathological. Many pathological persons are constrained by
their personal difficulties to displace more or less successfully upon
remote problems, and to achieve valuable contributions to knowledge
and social policy.[56] Of course the notion of the pathological is
itself full of ambiguities. The individual who is subject to epileptic
seizures may be considered in one culture not a subnormal and diseased
person, but a supernormal person. Indeed, it may be said that society
depends upon a certain amount of pathology, in the sense that society
does not encourage the free criticism of social life, but establishes
taboos upon reflective thinking about its own presuppositions. If
the individual is pathological to the extent that he is unable to
contemplate any fact with equanimity, and to elaborate impulse through
the processes of thought, it is obvious that society does much to
nurture disease. This leads to the apparent paradox that successful
social adjustment consists in contracting the current diseases.
If “health” merely means a statistical report upon the “average,”
the scrutiny of the individual ceases to carry much meaning for the
modification of social patterns. But if “health” means something more
than “average,” the intensive study of individuals gives us a vantage
ground for the revaluation of the human consequences of cultural
patterns, and the criticism of these patterns.[57]
If the politics of prevention spreads in society, a different type of
education will become necessary for those who administer society or
think about it. This education will start from the proposition that it
takes longer to train a good social scientist than it takes to train
a good physical scientist.[58] The social administrator and social
scientist must be brought into direct contact with his material in
its most varied manifestations. He must mix with rich and poor, with
savage and civilized, with sick and well, with old and young. His
contacts must be primary and not exclusively secondary. He must have an
opportunity for prolonged self-scrutiny by the best-developed methods
of personality study, and he must laboriously achieve a capacity to
deal objectively with himself and with all others in human society.
This complicated experience is necessary since our scale of values is
less the outcome of our dialectical than of our other experiences in
life. Values change more by the unconscious redefinition of meaning
than by rational analysis. Every contact and every procedure which
discloses new facts has its repercussions upon the matrix of partially
verbalized experience, which is the seeding ground of conscious ideas.
One peculiarity of the problem of the social scientist is that he must
establish personal contact with his material. The physical scientist
who works in a laboratory spends more time adjusting his machinery
than in making his observations, and the social scientist who works in
the field must spend more time establishing contacts than in noting
and reporting observations. What the instrumentation technique is to
the physicist, the cultivation of favorable human points of vantage is
for most social scientists. This means that the student of society, as
well as the manager of social relations, must acquire the technique
of social intercourse in unusual degree, unless he is to suffer from
serious handicaps, and his training must be directed with this in mind.
The experience of the administrator-investigator must include some
definite familiarity with all the elements which bear importantly upon
the traits and interests of the individual. This means that he must
have the most relevant material brought to his attention from the
fields of psychology, psychopathology, physiology, medicine, and social
science. Since our institutions of higher learning are poorly organized
at the present time to handle this program, thorough curricular
reconstructions will be indispensable.[59]
* * * * *
What has been said in this chapter may be passed in brief review.
Political movements derive their vitality from the displacement of
private affects upon public objects. Political crises are complicated
by the concurrent reactivation of specific primitive motives which
were organized in the early experience of the individuals concerned.
Political symbols are particularly adapted to serve as targets for
displaced affect because of their ambiguity of reference, in relation
to individual experience, and because of their general circulation.
Although the dynamic of politics is the tension level of individuals,
all tension does not produce political acts. Nor do all emotional bonds
lead to political action. Political acts depend upon the symbolization
of the discontent of the individual in terms of a more inclusive self
which champions a set of demands for social action.
Political demands are of limited relevance to the changes which will
produce permanent reductions in the tension level of society. The
political methods of coercion, exhortation, and discussion assume that
the rôle of politics is to solve conflicts when they have happened.
The ideal of a politics of prevention is to obviate conflict by the
definite reduction of the tension level of society by effective
methods, of which discussion will be but one. The preventive point
of view insists upon a continuing audit of the human consequences of
social acts, and especially of political acts. The achievement of
the ideal of preventive politics depends less upon changes in social
organization than upon improving the methods and the education of
social administrators and social scientists.
The preventive politics of the future will be intimately allied to
general medicine, psychopathology, physiological psychology, and
related disciplines. Its practitioners will gradually win respect in
society among puzzled people who feel their responsibilities and who
respect objective findings. A comprehensive functional conception of
political life will state problems of investigation, and keep receptive
the minds of those who reflect at length upon the state.