The Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Society by S. Freud
Besides the fact that Sigmund Freud is the founder of psychoanalysis and many other important psychological theories, this great psychoanalyst also had his own unique views on society and the processes within it. Most of his theories related to such concepts as "libido", "groups", and "crowd" form rather a strange and ambiguous interpretation of society. Freud hardly distinguished the individual from the context of the whole society and divided the society itself into the crowd, or the groups, which is compared with the primitive horde. This radical disregard for the human qualities of the individual, as a separate and independent unit of society, points at the psychologist's pessimistic views. He hardly saw anything positive in society, which could serve for the development of each individual. Thus, the consideration of the psychoanalytic interpretation of society by Freud makes it clear that his views were extremely pessimistic.
The psychoanalytic interpretation of the various phenomena of interpersonal relations and mass psychology is an important part of Freudian sociology. "The analysis of the nature of social relations, the research entities of organizations and groups, the study of the phenomena of mass psychology and behavior of various social communities" occupy the significant place among the various problems of this part of Freud's studies (Rennison 2001, pp. 57-58). Freudian sociology is characteristic of the fundamental assumption of the existence of the "constant mass psyche", based on the continuous recognition of the feelings of people in life, making it possible to ignore the periodicity of individuals' mental acts as a result of death, because the mental processes of one generation finds its continuation in another; Freud introduced the idea of "the existence of a “mass psyche” and an “organised inherited endowment”, both bearing witness to the modalities of intergenerational transmission, therefore of acquisition of a culture" (Smadja 2015, p. 53). In this case, Freud clearly neglected historical psychodynamics, which is why his arguments often had an abstract nature. Freud distinguished two major types of the many human communities: the crowd and the group in his book Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (Freud 2013, p. 29). This division of society into two types is already a sign of his pessimistic views. What follow is an explanation of what the crowd and the group are, which will confirm the pessimism of one of the most famous psychoanalyst.
According to Freud, the crowd is an uneducated conglomerate or a bunch of people, while the group is a specially organized crowd, which establishes a certain commonality of individuals with one another: i.e., general interest in the project, uniform sense of a certain situation and well-known ability to influence each other:
"Moreover, by the mere fact that he forms part of an organised group, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilisation. Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian — that is, a creature acting by instinct. He possesses the spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and also the enthusiasm and heroism of primitive beings" (Freud 2013, p. 36).
Whereby, Freud implied that the group or a "psychological group" is a community of people, whose feature was the libidinal attachment to the leader, the leader of all members of the community and the libidinal attachment between its constituent individuals (Rennison 2001, p. 53). Diverse types of mass are divided mainly into two types of the groups: the natural groups, that is, those who are able to independently organize themselves (self-organized masses) and the groups of artificial type, that is, those who require external violence for the purpose of their preservation (Freud 2013, p. 42). One cannot but notice Freud's extreme pessimism in such form of the classification. After all, this classification refers to the inability of a person to control their own destiny. Each individual pulse of energy is a psychological reaction that links the group, leaving no possibility of development of a personality. However much Freud "regretted the anxieties with which society burdens its members", he also believed that "presocial humans were guilt-free homicidal maniacs and that therefore a guilt-ridden social order is preferable to no social order at all" (McCall 2006, p. 261). The main feature of the Freudian understanding of the nature and essence of the masses is the fact that Freud often identified the masses with other types of social communities without sufficient grounds and equated them to the primal horde:
"men are not gentle creatures who want to be loved, and who, at the most, can defend themselves if they are attacked; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness" (Freud 2011, p. 302).
Describing and characterizing the different social groups, the psychologist neglected the individual qualities of any person, which also points to a pessimistic sign in his views. In particular, he pointed out that in the Horde, as well as in the group, were not carried out any pulses other than the collective; there was no an individual, independent will and that the individuals' life acts are similar by the nature:
"Society was now based on complicity in the common crime; religion was based on the sense of guilt and remorse attaching to it; while morality was based partly on the exigencies of this society and partly on the penance demanded by the sense of guilt" (Freud 2002, p. 208).
Freud singled out the disappearance of a conscious personality, the orientation of thoughts and feelings in the same direction, the predominance of efficiency and unconscious psychic system, the tendency for the immediate implementation of the emerging intentions both in the masses and in the horde.
The bulk of Freud's views can be considered pessimistic, because he wrote about the society and about each person individually in terms of the worst possibilities and abilities. Freud saw psychosis, neurosis or pathology in almost every area of human endeavor. In his view, the mass is identical to the primal horde; hence, a primitive man can be preserved in each individual. Thus, at any time, this part of society that has been called by Freud a "mass" or a "crowd" can turn into a primitive horde. One can say that "the Father of Psychoanalysis" sought to reduce the various forms of individual behavior and all other kinds of relationships to a single universal basis. Freud transferred the action of his theories and mechanisms on the interpersonal relations and the psychology of the masses. Thus, it appears that he did not deeply understand the essence of social processes, as his mechanisms and methods were designed primarily to detect abnormalities in the behavior of patients. "Certainly, in his social analysis, Freud does consider the imperative of societal work, but he does not take note of the particular relation to external nature" (Honneth 2014, p. 698).
According to the ideas of Freud, the various forms of manifestation of the libido play a crucial role in the organization and the existence of the masses, which constitute the essence of the "collective soul" (Freud 2013, p. 29). The psychoanalyst pointed out two important functions of libido within the crowd. The first function of the libido acts as the principal link that binds the individual members of the mass to each other, while the second function is associated with the motivational principles in the behavior of individuals and the masses in general (Thurschwell 2002, p. 98). Despite the controversial nature of the treatment of libido, Freud insisted on the libidinal structure of supply and allocated two of the most characteristic types of libidinal connectivity of members of any human community, which was especially clearly manifested in the artificial masses:
"because of the traditional hedonism passed down to us, “we are still to include among the aims of our cultural development a certain amount of satisfaction of individual happiness,” by which the integrity of a social order should be measured (204); correspondingly, earlier in the text it is claimed that a culture is active, intellectually energetic, and thereby healthy enough to the extent that it holds out the prospect for a sufficient sexual permissiveness" (Honneth 2014, pp. 196–197).
Among them, he included libidinal connectivity for submission to one common leader and libidinal cohesion between all members of the crowd. At the same time, Freud considered the first to be the main type of libidinal connectivity of the masses, resting on the illusion that the leader, like the primitive father-leader, equally loved all the individuals included in the mass. He emphasized that the illusion of the leader's same love to all members of the masses was one of the major connecting links, and that the mutual affection of individuals that made up the mass tended to disappear with the disappearance of attachment to the leader (Honneth 2014, pp. 198). Consequently, the mass disintegrates. Thus, it follows that the psychoanalytic interpretation of the different phenomena of interpersonal relations and mass psychology was an important part of Freudian of sociology. With regard to the pessimism in this case, everything remains the same. Freud hardly drew the line between the collective and the individual, thus equating people to the foolish to cattle, which came with one shepherd. Freud ignored the difference between the social and psychological problems; social life, in his opinion, was "governed by the same laws that he had found in an individual's life during the years of psychoanalytic practice" (McCall 2006, p. 266). Just as he used his initial analyses of hysterical and neurotic illnesses to formulate a universal theory of sexual and mental development, so "he applied his ideas which began as theories of the individual, such as the Oedipus complex and repression, to society at large" (Thurschwell 2002, p. 95). He sees the social structure mostly in patriotic terms, considering only one scheme: "the leader – the elite – the crowd" (Freud 2002, p. 209). However, Freud dwelled on the class structure as well in his work On narcissism: an introduction (1914) (cited in Smadja 2015, p. 45):
"The ego ideal opens up an important avenue for the understanding of group psychology. In addition to its individual side, this ideal has a social side; it is also the common ideal of a family, a class, or a nation. It binds not only a person’s narcissistic libido, but also a considerable amount of his homosexual libido, which is in this way turned back into the ego."
Nevertheless, he believed that there was only one form of government, which was able to cater to the majority – the authoritarian government (Thurschwell 2002, p. 98). Accordingly, Freud believed that the masses were always looking for the leader or worshiped leader. From Freud's viewpoint, the idealization of the leader and identification with him is one of the basic mechanisms of the "intra-group solidarity and social domination" (Smadja 2015, p. 46). The coercive factors are of primary importance in Freud's concepts of the main factors that make up a society. A significant part is assigned to the mutual, labor interests, the "social feelings", and the non-sexual forms of emotional relationships between the members of the group. There is a view of "altruistic love and friendship, which represent a modified form of sexual impulses" (Honneth 2014, p. 695).
A man, according to Freud, is basically a biological being and his/her whole activity is directed and organized by an internal excitement to satisfy their instincts. Nevertheless, according to Freud, "the essence of this group formation implies the existence of libidinal ties of a new sort, for which he appealed to the concept of identification that, from then on, would render the notion of social instinct useless — insufficiently precise, no doubt" (Smadja 2015, p. 22). However, the society, its organization, and interaction are based on the social norms, principles and rules, and a person should replace the pleasure principle to the reality principle in order to co-exist in society, which subsequently could lead to dissatisfaction and mental disorders. One can say that Freud's views on society are not quite full and deep; and even such thinkers and researchers as Fromm and Jung, who took to correct and supplement his theory later, agreed with this statement (Rennison 2001, p. 77). Freud transferred a method of the patient's personality analysis on the analysis of the whole society. This method is not entirely reliable and completely pessimistic.
In conclusion, the psychoanalytic interpretation of the different phenomena of interpersonal relations and mass psychology became a crucial part of Freudian sociology. Hence, Freudian sociology is characteristic of the fundamental assumption of the existence of almost constant mass psyche that is based on the recognition of the life continuity in the people's senses, making it possible to ignore the interruption of mental acts of individuals as a result of death, because the mental processes of one generation finds its continuation in another. Freud distinguished two basic types of communities among the various human collectivities: i.e., the crowd and the masses. According to Freud's ideas, the various forms of manifestation of the libido play an important role in the organization and existence of the masses, as they constitute the essence of the "collective soul". Freud said that the illusion of the leader's same love to all members of the masses could be considered one of the major links that connected them. To summarize, it is necessary to answer the question whether Freud's views on society are pessimistic. The study of the materials related to the work on social theory suggests that the psychologist's views on the structure and functioning of the social system are extremely pessimistic. His teaching on the development of the crowds and the masses, which are similar in structure to the primitive horde, points to the fact that there is virtually no such thing as "individuality", uniqueness, or independence.
Reference List
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Honneth, A 2014, 'The Diseases of Society: Approaching a Nearly Impossible Concept', Social Research, 81, 3, pp. 683-703, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 4 June 2016.
McCall, T 2006, 'Society – "A Gang Of Murderers": Freud on Hostility and War', Common Knowledge, 12, 2, pp. 261-278, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 4 June 2016.
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Smadja, E 2015, Freud and Culture, Karnac Books, London, GB. Available from: ProQuest ebrary. [4 June 2016].
Thurschwell, P 2002, 'Chapter 6: Society And Religion', in Sigmund Freud (0-415-28817-7) pp. 95-110 n.p.: Taylor & Francis Ltd / Books SocINDEX with Full Text, EBSCOhost, viewed 4 June 2016.
